It started with a phone call from his girlfriend’s office.
Apparently, she had to leave urgently, but left a message at reception asking them to call him. The message was to meet her at the address given. The girl at reception said she thought his girlfriend had been acting strangely and had a feeling that she was in some sort of trouble. She had looked upset. Outside, the weather was bad. A forecast storm was building. There was not a lot of rain, but it was extremely windy. He left his office and ran almost all of the three blocks to the building in question. As he entered, he checked the address he’d written down. It said, she would be on floor thirty-six. He went straight to the elevator; inside he pressed thirty-six, noting that it was the top floor. On the way up, he had a chance to wonder what was going on. He couldn’t imagine what sort of trouble she was in.
Coming out of the lift at thirty-five, he saw that floor thirty-six was accessed by a flight of stairs. At the top he pushed a door open. It led out to the huge flat roof that covered the entire building. The storm was still blowing wildly. As he stepped out a fierce gust of wind slammed the door shut behind him. Being nearly blown off his feet, he lunged for the nearby handrail. He held on as hard as he could while the howling, gale-force wind buffeted him around. Despite the noise of the storm, he could hear someone calling for help. Keeping a tight grip on the rail, which ran along a low wall, he worked his way around the stack of air-conditioning units that sprouted up from the centre of the roof.
As he got to the corner he saw who was calling. He had to blink hard a couple of times. It was his loopy neighbour from 19b. She was gripping the handrail and cackling. She had been extremely upset recently, when he’d accidentally backed out and run over her pet hedgehog, Cyril.
She began moving towards him slowly, pulling herself along against the wind and laughing maniacally. A large baseball bat hung from a clip on her belt.
He couldn’t help noticing that she was tethered with a safety line, connected to one of the large metal rings set in concrete, and he wasn’t…