by Pip Drysdale
Hi Harper, I’m not home. Deadline. Tomorrow?
I stop in the middle of the pavement. Pedestrians bump into me, muttering things under their breath as I look behind me.
Shit.
I look up to the third floor: to his dark window.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
But I can feel Mr Tall and Creepy approaching. I can feel it, even though I can’t see him yet. And so I do the only thing I can: I punch Thomas’s door code into the security pad. The four corners of a square.
Bzzzz.
I push the door open and, the moment before I go inside, I look back towards the corner and see him. I was right.
He’s coming.
I quickly pull the door closed behind me.
Click.
And now I’m here, in Thomas’s building, dripping water from my umbrella all over the mustard tiles by the letterboxes. And he’s not here.
I look to the stairs and swallow hard, dropping my umbrella in the metal bin by the door. Then I take those stairs two by two.
I’m at the third floor now, and Thomas’s hallway is empty. It’s just me and the walls and the old carpet with the 1970s circular patterning that has probably seen far worse things than what I’m about to do. I move slowly towards his door, reaching into my handbag and feeling around for the leather case of my locksmith set.
The one I took with me last night.
The one I didn’t need.
My pulse is thumping as I get to his door and look left, right and left again. I pause for a moment, listening for sounds – footsteps on the stairs – but all I can hear is my breathing. I zip open the case, pull out a tension wrench and my favourite pick, dropping the rest back into my bag.
These sorts of locks consist of five pin stacks of differing lengths. In simple terms, I need to lift all five simultaneously so none of them are engaged.
I push the tension wrench in first, applying the smallest amount of pressure. Just like I did with Harrison’s door when I broke in to get my stuff back. Just like the YouTube videos I watched showed me. Next, I insert the lock pick and gently move it up and down.
I’m almost there. I can feel the lack of pressure from the centre pins.
I keep going.
But shit.
Fuck.
The middle pin stacks have unpicked now.
My hands are clammy and slipping; my heart is fast. What if someone catches me? I glance up to the ceiling and check for the blinking red light of CCTV. But there is none.
And so I take a deep breath, centre myself, and try again.
The middle part is picked.
The outermost pin is picked.
There’s just one more to go.
I calm my breath, and slowly, gently, I twist the wrench ever so slightly as I work.
Then: click.
The final pin lifts and the lock swivels.
I reach for the handle and quickly move inside, relief pulsing through me. I click on the light switch, put the picks back in their case and drop my bag on the floor.
The door bangs gently behind me and I slip off my shoes, sliding off my coat and, as I look towards the window – is he still waiting out there? – I hang it over Thomas’s on a hook on the back of the door. Then I head towards the window and peek out through the curtains. I can’t see him but I know he’s out there.
I look around inside. Everything is just as it was last time I was here: a brown leather sofa, a bookshelf, his bed, perfectly made with hospital corners, is in the far side of the room and that ugly painting sits above it, watching me. Judging me the way he has from the very first time he saw me.
Thomas’s computer is sitting on a desk against the wall and there are a few wires around it. I search for a phone charging cord but there isn’t one. Shit.
I reach for my phone and reply to Thomas. What time do you think you’ll be done? Should I come over?
I stare down at the screen, waiting for typing bubbles…
Waiting.
Waiting.
And then there they are. They stop. They start again. And in comes his message: It’s going to be an all nighter.
Brilliant.
I go to the kitchen, flick on the kettle and type back: Tomorrow then. See you soon.
And then, while the sound of the kettle humming fills the empty flat, I quickly go to my photographs and email the ones I took in the gallery last night to my Gmail account. I hear the whoosh of them sending. And then, with five per cent battery left on my phone, I pull up Safari and type: How to reset the password on a MacBook Pro.
Chapitre trente-cinq
Fifteen minutes later my tea has been replaced by the Scotch I located in Thomas’s upper left cupboard, my phone is dead, Sabine’s hard drive has been plugged into Thomas’s computer and I’m typing the word ‘evidence’ into the subject field of an email. I reach for my Scotch and take a sip, waiting for the heat in my throat to slow my blood, then drag the files from the unnamed folder on Sabine’s drive into the message body.
I’ve already pulled the photographs from my Gmail onto Thomas’s perfectly organised desktop, and so I drag those in too.
Am I one hundred per cent comfortable sending everything I have to Hyacinth? No. It’s a risk. But I don’t really have a choice here. I’m being followed. I need this story out there so Noah is released; so Agnès Bisset has no reason left to silence me. And Hyacinth definitely won’t publish it without evidence. So here we are.
I type: Hi Hyacinth, here is the supporting evidence. Harper.
And then I finally press send.
Then it’s simply a matter of deleting the files from the desktop so Thomas doesn’t know I was here, and double-clicking on the trashcan icon. Mine are the only files in there as I press ‘empty’. The sound of it emptying echoes off the walls.
And then I just sit there, a little dazed, my blood diluted by equal parts adrenaline and Scotch. It’s just me and the hum of traffic floating in from the road outside and that guy in the painting and Thomas’s computer.
I think of the bond and the information he claims to want to share with me tomorrow night as the mouse arrow finds its way up to his search history. What if he knows something that could really help me? And what if I could learn whatever it is without having to see him again?
What if everything I need is right here?
Click.
I scan down through the list of sites but it’s all just news. Nothing about a bond. Or Genovexa. Or Requiem.
I look down to the ribbon at the bottom of his screen, to the blue iMessage icon. Maybe there’s something there. He said that he’d called in a favour…
So I point the arrow over it and click. Up comes the message window. I scroll down the left-hand column, scanning for anything that looks vaguely interesting.
But, again, there’s nothing about the bond.
And strangely, nothing from me either.
Just random chats with a guy called Adam about a game of squash.
And then there, a little way down is a message that begins, Thomas, please talk with me, is not fair that you… It came in a week ago.
I can’t see the rest of the text because it’s too long for the preview, so I click on it to read the whole missive.
Is not fair that you disappear. We liked each other, no? Bisous.
Interesting.
I didn’t think Thomas had ghosting in him. He always seemed more of the dumpee than the dumper to me. Which just goes to show, you never can tell. I remember him in the line at the supermarket, grinning down at his messages. Was he smiling down at a text from her?
I scroll through the many messages she’s sent him. She likes him, poor girl. And he’s ignoring her.
Tu me manques.
Baby?
Why you don’t reply?
God, what a knob.
But then three messages away from that last one, I see something. It’s dated just after Thomas and I met in that laundromat and it reads, Don’t you miss this? I stare at
an image of naked breasts exposed, back arched, head slightly tilted. Wavy dark hair.
But the words are not the reason I am frozen in place. The sexual nature of that picture is not the reason that my stomach is churning. Because I don’t really give a fuck if he’s sexting other people; we’re not in a relationship. And I don’t want to be in one either.
No, the problem is far bigger than that.
I recognise that girl.
It’s my neighbour.
* * *
The little hairs on the back of my neck are standing up on end as I try to make sense of things. I picture my neighbour in the bin room, cutting up boxer shorts. Was it him? Was Thomas the guy? The owner of the boxer shorts? Snip. Snip. Snip.
I saw her boyfriend in her room a couple of times. I try to remember what he looked like. But it was through her window, from a distance, and I didn’t really pay attention. It could have been Thomas. There was another time I saw them in the foyer downstairs but I rushed upstairs without making eye contact because I didn’t want to be drawn into conversation.
I strain to remember: tall, caramel hair.
Was that him?
It feels like something is squeezing the air from my lungs.
But what does this mean? It seems unlikely that he would date two women from the same building, doesn’t it? Or maybe it doesn’t… things like that happen. In my experience of life six degrees of separation has always been more like three. I look around me, searching the room, like maybe there’s something I’ve missed, some vital clue to explain what the hell is going on. Something to flood my veins with calm. But as my eyes graze over the furniture – from sofa to bookshelf, to kitchen to bed, to painting – I find no solace. My eyes linger on that painting, the stern-looking man with his air of disapproval, the frills around his neck. I turn back to the desk. There are two drawers to the left. I open the top one – I don’t know what I’m looking for but I scour through the contents anyway. It’s just a pile of envelopes neatly organised against one side, some coins in a shot glass, a few pens and bills with handwritten notes like PAID on them. I open the next one, but it’s just more of the same.
Shit.
I look back to the computer. Think of the messages I’ve just seen. And something deep inside me screams: Leave.
I eject the hard drive and turn the computer off. I don’t know how I’m going to avoid the man waiting for me outside, but I’m pretty sure I saw a back entrance. It probably leads to a garage. I can go that way. I can go home and he’ll still think I’m here.
I drop Sabine’s drive into my bag and slip on my shoes. Then I reach for my coat behind the door.
I hold it behind me, putting on one arm, then the other, my eyes on the floor as I move. It’s only as I look up, ready to twist the doorknob, that I see it.
Or rather the side of it.
It was hanging under my coat, on the back of the door.
A bomber jacket.
With just the edge of a design visible.
I reach for it, holding it out in front of me, so I can see the painting on the back clearly.
A tiger.
The walls move in towards me as I stare at the brushstrokes. Because I’ve seen this jacket before. This pattern.
And the world stands still, all clocks ticking half time, as I reach back into my bag for Sabine’s hard drive and move back to Thomas’s computer.
I power it on. I enter his new password, the one I just set.
My breath is peculiarly slow and steady, but my hand is shaking as I use the mouse to navigate through the files on the hard drive, looking for the one I want. The video on the bridge.
When I find it, I fast forward to around three quarters of the way through and then press pause. I’m at the part where two other couples are standing by the railing. To the left is the Instagram husband. And to the right stands the other couple looking out at the apricot sky. The man has just put his jacket around the woman’s shoulders.
And I’m staring at a tiger.
It’s the very same jacket as the one on the back of Thomas’s door.
Is that Thomas?
I take in his height, his hair, his shoulders. Maybe. It could be. But this guy has a beard.
But why would Thomas be in Sabine’s video?
My pulse is thudding as I press play again.
He turns his face to look at the blonde girl with him.
It’s Thomas. Beard or no beard, it’s definitely Thomas.
And I’m not sure what I’m looking at or why it’s there or what it really means, but something is very, very wrong.
It’s only as the blonde girl beside him turns around that I know what it is. She’s laughing, her mouth wide as she turns towards the camera. I only see her face for a split second.
But my breath catches and the world starts spinning a little faster.
Because I know that face.
The whole of Paris knows that face.
Matilde Beaumont.
Chapitre trente-six
My pulse thumps in my throat as Matilde watches me from the screen.
Matilde, Sabine’s video, Agnès Bisset, Mr Tall and Creepy, Thomas, my neighbour. How is all of this connected?
I can hear the sound of traffic floating in from the street as conflicting thoughts compete for the microphone: Why didn’t Thomas mention he knew Matilde? I gave him the perfect opening when I came here that night, I spoke about knowing a girl who’d been murdered…
But Thomas is a good guy. He ran outside to confront the guy who’d been following me. He tried to protect me… didn’t he? I look back to the window, to the gauzy curtain I watched him through.
I need to get the fuck out of here. I reach for the hard drive but my gaze catches on a red ‘1’ sitting in the corner of the mail icon. Was that there before? I can’t help myself. I click on it.
And there, at the top, is one new email. It’s from some sort of security system. The subject reads ‘Movement Detected’.
Shit.
My breath is short and sharp as I scan the room: what does it mean by movement detected? Is he watching me? My eyes flit from the corners of the ceiling – there are no CCTV cameras there – to the bookcase, the closet, the bed, the painting, the window and then my skin gets icy cold.
Because there, in the corner of the room, attached to the lamp, glinting in the light, I see it.
A lens.
It’s pointed right at me.
And I don’t recall seeing it last time I was here… but fuck, fuck, fuck.
My heart is thudding in my chest as I conduct a quick risk analysis: Thomas is working, on deadline, not watching a live stream from his apartment right now. He probably hasn’t seen that email yet, hasn’t seen me. I need to leave. Now.
Adrenaline surges through me as I grab my phone, throw the hard drive into my bag and run for the door. I move out into Thomas’s hallway, looking around. But it’s empty.
I need to go to the police.
I get to the steps and take them two at a time, bile rising in my throat as I move.
I’m in the foyer and the door is right there. I can see the street outside.
But I can’t go that way, the tall creepy guy is still waiting for me there.
And I don’t know how it all fits together yet, who is the more dangerous of the two, or whether they’re working together.
I look towards the other side of the foyer: there’s the door to the garage.
I run towards it, pull it open and head down some fluorescent lit concrete stairs. There’s a big, heavy metal door at the bottom of them and I reach for the lever, pushing down on it. It opens and I move out into a car park. There’s strip lighting on the roof and rows of cars and concrete pillars. And on the other side in the corner is another door.
An exit.
I stop still. Listen for sounds, for footsteps, for a car, but there’s nothing but the sound of my breathing.
And so I run towards it, my breath so shallow I’m dizzy.
<
br /> I’m almost there.
I pass a concrete pillar and then bang.
A deep pain in the back of my head.
My ears ring.
Everything spins.
Then: black.
Chapitre trente-sept
My mouth is like sand and my head is throbbing as I try to lift my eyelids: a solid, inky black. It’s hard to tell if my eyes are open or closed and I have to blink a couple of times to be sure. There’s carpet beneath my cheek. And it’s hot. So hot. The air is thick and smells like something familiar… What’s happening? Where am I? I go to groan and sit up, but there’s something on my mouth and my head hits something else and my hands… why the fuck are my hands bound? My pulse speeds up as I pull against whatever it is: duct tape. I try to move my lips. They’re taped too.
And I’m inside something. Stuck. My breathing quickens as I push against the top, the sides. But I’m trapped. Fuck.
I go to scream but all that comes out is a little high-pitched squeak.
But wait. I know what this smells like.
A car.
I’m in a car boot.
The carpet, the purr of the engine, the heat, the sound of gravel beneath tyres.
Yes.
We hit a bump and my teeth clatter together. Ow.
I blink hard, trying to remember how I got here.
The jacket on the back of the door. The tiger. The video on the bridge. Matilde. The stairs. The doors that led outside. The garage. The exit sign. Pain. Ringing. Spinning.
Darkness.
Someone knocked me out.
Who the fuck is driving?
Is it the creepy guy who’s been following me? Or is it Thomas?
Those text messages to Thomas from my neighbour come flooding back. Thomas was dating my neighbour. He was dating her when he met me.
A flashback to the day we met in the laundromat. He was checking me out. That’s why I talked to him – was he looking at me because he recognised me from his girlfriend’s building? Or did he come looking for me?
A shiver runs through me and tears burn in my eyes. But I need to stay calm. I can’t make a noise. The worst thing I could do would be to make a noise. Because if I let him know I’m awake, he might come back here and do whatever he’s going to do early. I don’t want him to come back here.