The Lazarus Hotel by Jo Bannister

sense of unease. Even before these new complications, they had made a disturbing discovery: that they’d been tricked into coming here by someone who knew private things about them, who had old and personal photographs of them. They couldn’t imagine who he was or what his motive except that clearly it concerned Cathy Beacham. The puzzlement of a few minutes ago turned to anxiety with the discovery that they were no longer free to leave.
    Nor was there much comfort in one another’s company. They were not the random cross-section of humanity they were supposed to be. They traded suspicious glances as it occurred to them, one by one, that if someone had set them up the best place to observe the results was from their midst. They had been learning to trust each other; now they backed off fast. Someone was jerking their strings and, since they couldn’t know who, everyone mistrusted everyone else. It was going to feel a very long weekend.
    Even without some idiot boy poking through their belongings and howling like a banshee. Larry looked up as an idea struck him. ‘He really isn’t here, is he?’
    â€˜The boy?’ Miriam shook her head. ‘We’ve looked everywhere.’
    The coach’s lip curled. ‘Don’t you understand? If the lift’s off and he’s not here there must be some other way down.’
    There was the locked door: the boy might have a key. But Larry didn’t think so. ‘There wasn’t time for him to reach it without being seen. It was just seconds between him haring off and you people getting here. Linford Christie couldn’t have got offside that quickly.’
    Sheelagh hadn’t seen any boy. Her tone was sceptical. ‘Linford Christie was here too?’
    Larry rounded on her, intimidating in his proximate strength. ‘You don’t believe me? You don’t think there was a boy? You think I bit my own hand, screamed, then sat down in a corner? Have you got as far as thinking why?’
    But Sheelagh was the last person he should have got ratty with. She thrived on discord. ‘If that was the oddest thing that had happened it’d still make more sense than something that might be a boy and might be a dog stalking the penthouse of a forty-storey building and vanishing into thin air contrary to the laws of physics and common sense.’
    Tariq distracted them with practicalities. ‘Larry’s right, there must be another way down. A fire-escape.’
    Tessa looked at him as if he were mad. ‘I am not climbing forty storeys down a ladder!’
    â€˜It’ll be more substantial than that – a fireproof stairwell probably. The first thing they do in a fire is cut the power so the lifts go off. There has to be some way to evacuate the building.’
    They’d all seen Towering Inferno. They liked him less for reminding them that they were trapped in a zone where the only passing traffic was weather balloons.
    But they searched the corridor anyway, from the blank wall to the locked door, and there were bedrooms and domestic offices but no staircase. ‘It must be beyond the locked door.’
    Kneeling, Sheelagh put an eye to the keyhole. ‘Then I hope we never need it. The corridor’s full of stuff – piles of bricks, stacks of timber, plumbing. Even if we could open the door we couldn’t get through.’
    Miriam tried to inject a positive note. ‘We could get on with what we came here for. At worst we’re here till Monday morning; at best someone will remember the lift and come back.’ She returned to the conference room, and after a moment an unenthusiastic trickle followed her. They had nothing else to do.
    But they didn’t pick up where they’d left off when the shade of Cathy Beacham joined them. They’d been led by the nose long enough: now they were going to set their own agenda.
    â€˜So this is about Cathy Beacham,’ said Larry. ‘Hands up