At midnight, as he crouched in the elevator lobby behind the overturned fire-door, debating whether to risk making a run for Alice’s apartment, Laing saw Richard Wilder standing among the scattered steel chairs. In one hand he still held his cine-camera. Like a large animal pausing for breath, he followed the huge projections of himself cast upon the walls and ceiling, as if about to leap on to the backs of his own shadows and ride them like a troupe of beasts up the flues of the building.
Chapter 11 of Brick High-Rise is available now.