Blue Genes - By Val McDermid Page 0,42

locked in with an alarm that was louder than the front row at a heavy metal gig. I switched off my lamp, opened the inside door, but didn't step into the hall just yet. There was still the small matter of the video camera. In the darkness, I strained my eyes to see if there were any dull glimmers, indicating sensors that would flood the hall with light. Nothing. I was going to have to chance it, and hope that the camera wasn't loaded with infrared film. Somehow, I doubted it.

Cautiously, I moved forward in the pitch black. Noth¬ing happened. No lights came on, no passive infrared sen¬sors blossomed into red jewels recording the sequence of my journey. I was so intent on my surroundings, I mis¬judged the length of the hall and went sprawling over the bottom stair. Thank goodness the deep-pile carpet con¬tinued up the stairs otherwise I'd have been on the fast track to Casualty. I picked myself up and climbed as fast as I could manage without breaking anything. I might be in a clinic but I didn't fancy my chances if the doctors arrived to find their burglar languishing on the stair car¬pet with a broken leg.

I made it around the turn of the stairs to the first floor and started to climb again. At the head of the stairs, I began groping down the hallway for door handles. The first one I came to opened and I stumbled inside. I took my heavy rubber torch out of my apron and risked a quick flash. I was in a consulting room. No hiding place. I backed out on to the landing and tried the next door. A bathroom. No hiding place apart from cubicles where any self-respecting security guard would check instantly. The third door was locked, as was the fourth, across the hall. Next came another consulting room, but this time the swift sweep of my torch revealed a kneehole desk with a solid side facing the door. I hurried around the desk and squeezed myself into the narrow space, wriggling until I was comfortable enough to stay still for a while. I checked my watch, which indicated that it had been twelve min¬utes since the alarm went off. That meant it should switch itself off automatically in eight minutes. With luck, I might still have some residual hearing left by then. I stuffed my thumbs in my ears and waited.

When the alarm stopped, it was like a physical blow, snapping my head back. Almost beyond belief, I un-jammed my ears, struggling to accept that the ringing noise that remained was only inside my head. My watch said eighteen minutes had passed since the alarm had started its hideous cacophony. That meant a keyholder had arrived. I felt myself sweat with nerves, clammy trick¬les in my armpits and down my spine. If I was caught now, there wasn't a lie in the world that was going to keep me out of a prison cell. Trying not to think about it, I started a mental replay of every note of the six minutes of Annie Lennox's "Downtown Lights." I was coming to the end when I heard a low murmur of voices that definitely wasn't part of my mental soundtrack. Then the door of my shelter swung open, casting a rectangle of light on the far wall opposite me.

"And this is the last one," a man's voice said, sounding anxious. I made out two distorted shadows, one with a familiar peaked cap, before the light snapped on.

I sensed rather than heard a body moving nearer. Then a second voice, speaking from what seemed to be a couple of feet above my head said, "Your alarm must be on the blink, sir. No sign of forced entry, no one on the premises."

"It's never done this before," the first voice said, sound¬ing irritated this time.

"Have it serviced regular, do you?"

"I don't know, it's not my area of responsibility," the first voice said. "So what do we do now?"

"I suggest we reset it, sir, and hope it's just a one-off." The light died and the door closed. I exhaled slowly and quietly. I gave it five minutes, then I stepped out cau¬tiously onto the landing. Nothing happened. I waved my arms around in a bizarre parody of a Hollywood babe workout video. Still nothing.

I couldn't believe it. They'd spent a small fortune on perimeter security and a video camera, but they didn't have any internal tremblers or passive