I wake up with a jolt. There is a hand on my shoulder.
‘Dimitri?’ I whisper, turning around, but it isn’t.
‘Sleepyhead,’ says the guard with a leer. ‘Off in the land of nod, were you, love?’ His fingers press into my shoulder blade. I try to shrug them off, but they are planted there.
‘Didn’t realise,’ I mumble. My head is still thick, but my heart recognises danger, quickening into a pounding rhythm. Sweat prickles on my palms.
‘I’ve gone out of my way for you,’ he says. ‘Could get into trouble for this. So that one you owe me …’
He bends lower and buries his nose in my hair. My scalp crawls as if beset with a million head lice.
‘What?’ I try to get the words out but my voice is high and cracked. ‘This’ll be on CCTV. Don’t.’
His meaty hands move down my shoulders over my upper arms. ‘Switched it off, of course. You think I’m stupid?’ His pig’s snout snuffles my neck.
I want to scream, but there’s no point. The clock says five ten. Nobody will be anywhere near this place.
All I can do is moan, ‘Noooo,’ while he chuckles, and then an alarm shrills out, so loud and piercing that we both jump and the top of my head bangs into his chin so that he swears.
‘What the fuck?’ he bellows, racing over to the lift.
I stand up, sit down, stand up again, grab my bag with a shaky hand, look out of the window and around the room. He’s downstairs and I don’t want to encounter him again. Can I get out on the fire escape?
Headless-chicken-style, I run around the third floor, somehow unable to remember its layout even though I’ve been working here six months.
The shrieking in my ears doesn’t help. I put my hands over them and head for the emergency exit. Somewhere before the barred door, a pair of hands grabs hold of me and I scream and flail, aiming a sharp kick for my assailant’s shins.
‘Rosie! It’s me.’
I quit struggling and stare into the face of Dimitri.
‘Was that you?’ I yell over the wail of the sirens. ‘The alarm?’
‘Yes, I set it off.’
‘What’s happening?’
The alarm ceases abruptly and my ears ring with gratitude.
‘Come on, I have to talk to your guard.’
‘No, leave it!’
‘No, come on.’
The guard is behind the reception desk, frowning and fiddling with his CCTV screens. He jumps up when he sees us. ‘Oi! What’s going on? I’ve got the police coming.’
‘Better not,’ says Dimitri, holding up a reel of tape. ‘I’ve got film of you with my friend here. Bad evidence, right?’
The guard swipes for it, but Dimitri holds it up high.
‘She want to tell the police you try to touch her.’
‘I didn’t!’
‘I saw it. I have the film.’
‘Look, I don’t know what your game is but –’
‘But when the police come, you send them away, and then you go home, right? We look after the place until it open.’
‘I’ll lose my job.’
‘You’ll lose more than your job if you don’t do as he says,’ I snap, taking my cue from Dimitri. Something about him makes me feel brave and invincible. ‘Just do it or I’ll take you to court.’
The guard looks at the tape in Dimitri’s hand, looks at the CCTV, then looks back again. ‘You won’t say nothing about this then?’
‘If you go home. And stay away from my girl. Right away.’
‘OK then.’
The guard picks up the phone and makes a short call, explaining that the police are no longer needed, then he takes his rucksack and edges past us.
‘Oh, one other thing,’ says Dimitri politely.
The guard stops.
Dimitri slaps him hard so that the guard’s chops wobble and his eyes bulge in astonishment.
‘Bye bye.’ He pushes the guard onwards by the shoulder. ‘Don’t see you later.’
‘So.’ I draw a breath. ‘Right. That was lucky.’
‘Lucky. I am lucky person.’
‘You’ve been hanging around outside for five hours?’
‘No. I go back to my friend’s place. I go to sleep. But I wake up in two hours, I realise I have question for you. So I come here, see if you are still at the office. Through the window, I see this creep on the TV screen. I break in, set off alarm. Here we are.’
‘Here we are.’
‘You get me a coffee? In your office?’
‘Oh. Sure.’
On the way up the stairs, various things Dimitri has said slot into my thought queue, once the intense relief at not having had to murder the security guard has abated a little.