Free Sepulchre by James Herbert

surprises tonight, even if some jerk had made a mistake in coming up to the twenty-second. Just step outside, lessee the colour of your teeth.
    Still no one. But the doors weren't closing, and that wasn't right.
    Monk crept down the corridor, one hand on the butt of his pistol, a big lumbering man who nevertheless approached the lift silently, soft carpeting helping his stealth. The corridor was gloomy-dark - the way Felix liked it - and mellow light from the opening ahead stained the floor and opposite wall.
    The door should've closed by now. Unless someone had a mitt on the O button.
    Monk drew out the Snaith and Wesson.
    He paused, the opening only two feet away. There were no shadows in the glow that spread from it.
    He braced himself, readied to spring forwards and sideways, gun-arm pointed into the lift. But he thought better of that tactic. Monk wasn't stupid. His bulk was too good a target.
    So he got down on his hands and knees and crawled forward, gunbarrel almost alongside his nose, elbows digging into the deep-pile. No one expected to see a face appear below knee level.
    He was at the very corner, easing his massive head past the shiny metal ridge, the lift's interior coming into view. His gun hand was no more than a few inches ahead of him.
    Nobody there. It looked like there was nobody there after A hand grabbed his hair and yanked him forward onto his belly. A leg straddled him and crushed his gun into the carpet. Iron fingers still dug into his hair making the roots scream. Something slammed hard into his neck and his thoughts became unsettled dreams.
    Janusz Palusinski sat at the kitchen's breakfast bar slapping butter on bread with a carving knife whose blade was at least nine inches long. Beside his plate was a tumbler half-full of vodka.
    He checked his wristwatch, parts of tattooed numbers showing at the edge of the broad strap, then sawed off chunks of roast beef, the red meat rare almost to the point of being raw. As he cut he wondered if Felix - moj Pan, he mentally and with more than a degree of cynicism added - would scream in his sleep tonight. A terrifying sound that stilled the blood of anyone who heard it. What did the man dream of? What fears possessed him when he slept? How close to total madness had he come? But no. Janusz must not even have a negative thought about his master. Felix would know, he would sense.
    Felix, Felix, Felix.
    Just the name could cause an ache in Palusinski's head.
    The Pole wiped the back of his fist across his forehead, the knife he held catching light from overhead in a sudden flare. Normally the kitchen lights, like all the others in the penthouse, would be kept low by dimmer switches, but at present Felix was sleeping, he wouldn't know. Yet sometimes he did . . . Sometimes he would accuse them all of things that he should never have been aware of, and they would cringe, they would cower, they would be craven before him. Still Felix - O lord, master, and oppressor - would make them suffer, sometimes the punishment cruel, other times involving a mere few hours of discomfort. Palusinski often felt that the two Arabs enjoyed that part of their servitude. Monk's brain was too curdled to care either way, blazen that he was.
    But Janusz was different, he assured himself. Janusz was aware of certain things . . . The others were fools. No, the Arabs were not fools. They believed . . .
    Palusinski gulped neat vodka, then unscrewed the mustard jar lid. He dug in the tip of the carving knife, sunk it four inches, then spread the dollop it came out with across the cut meat. He slammed another thick slice of bread, also lavishly buttered, on top, pressing down with the flat of his hand so that yellow goo oozed from the sides.
    Twenty minutes before the gorilla was to be relieved, he told himself as he raised the overflowing sandwich and barged his mouth into it. Monk - a good name for an animal such as he. flours of sitting watching an empty corridor was a fitting task for such