Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill Read Free Book Online

had turned into something raw. Under his blazer, his shirt clung to his back.
    But his respite slumped behind the desk was short-lived. The next person to demand his attention was Mrs Shafer, the elderly wife of an invalided American stockbroker. They lived in apartment twelve.
    Standing outside the building’s front doors, she began ringing the bell. The incessant buzzing tone that sounded behind his desk carried the full force of her annoyance. She appeared even more grotesque than usual, with her hair piled into a messy arrangement of scarves from which strands drooped around her doughy face. Fucking Halloween in a bandanna. He shivered with disgust. How could a woman let herself go like that? Especially one with so much money?
    Seth buzzed her inside via the switch behind his desk. As she trundled into reception on her thick legs, a severe frown eroded her forehead. ‘What is the point . . .’ There was a long pause. ‘We have trouble with it!’ She pointed at the door. Seth winced. Although accustomed to her hysteria and unpredictable temper, she never failed to frighten him. She was mad. Only the head porter, with his graceful manner and soft voice, seemed able to manage her moods.
    She began to take short, shuddering steps towards his desk. ‘Don’t bother yourself!’ she shrieked at him. One of her arms flapped in the air until she resembled a dinosaur, the bulky body set forward at an angle, with short, fetal arms clawing out front. Mrs Shafer expected the porters to rush to the doors and manually hold them open as if she were royalty. Then it was customary to escort her from the lift to the front door of her apartment. This was a precedent set by Piotr and his relentless hustle for tips, but Seth refused to take part in the charade. It made him think bitterly of his wasted education – four years at art school, a master’s degree to follow – only to be reduced to placating a demented, rich bully who terrorized her tiny, disabled husband before the eyes of the door staff.
    Mr Shafer rarely left the apartment. On the rare occasions he was seen, he was always accompanied by his shrill wife. He looked like a puppet with dried-out wooden limbs barely suspended above the ground, as if most of the strings had been severed. His wife would tug the old man about her massive skirts and constantly berate him, while he used all of his concentration and energy to balance as he took one slow step after another. Both the Shafers stank of stale sweat.
    Seth stood up in front of his chair and said, ‘Good evening,’ so quietly he barely heard himself.
    She flapped her arms again in exasperation and her face turned bright red. ‘Get Stephen! Phone Stephen now!’
    She only stopped shouting when the lift doors opened behind her. For a moment the sound flustered her, then she shambled inside. A final mumble from her became a shrill cry that Seth could make no sense of. He had no intention of bothering Stephen; by the time she reached her apartment, she would have forgotten the altercation.
    But he was to get no peace that night. Every arsehole in the building seemed involved in a conspiracy to make him work. By nine o’clock, Mrs Pzalis had phoned down three times from flat twenty-two to complain about the television reception. As did Mrs Benedetti from flat five. He wrote it in the log, but could see that the satellite company had been up on the roof twice since his last shift. At ten thirty, Mrs Singh in nineteen complained about a smell of smoke in the west wing, and before he could go and investigate, Mrs Roth in eighteen called down to tell him the same thing. There wasn’t a peep out of the fire and smoke alarms, but he had to check it out.
    If Singh and Roth could smell it inside their apartments, then the smell was up by sixteen. A part of the building he’d planned to avoid on each of the three patrols he was obliged to undertake during the shift.
    ‘Cunt.’ He took the lift to the ninth floor.
    The moment he