A Face in the Crowd: An absolutely unputdownable psychological thriller

by Kerry Wilkinson

  But why?

  What reason would Harry – or anyone else – have for leaving the envelope of money in my bag? Could he be some sort of secret millionaire-type who’s playing a strange game? It does seem like the type of thing Channel 4 would show.

  I fold my bed away and check on Billy. He’s awake but lethargic and I hide the next dose of his medicine in his food. He eats it without too much complaint and then I take him outside for a short walk.

  Back upstairs and there’s an email waiting for me. Whoever put up the posters replied a little after three in the morning. I’d said I wasn’t going to contact him or her any more if the person didn’t tell me what was misplaced on the bus. I half expected to receive nothing, but the message is straightforward enough:

  I lost an envelope. I think you know that. Can we meet?

  It’s hard not to wonder now whether this is Harry playing games. If it is, then what is the trick? He is asking to meet. Is he gambling that I won’t show up? Or is this going to be the big reveal that it was a joke, or an experiment, all along? I can’t work out what I think is real, so decide to be assertive.

  I can meet today. 11 a.m. at Chappie’s café.

  It puts the onus back on the sender – whether or not it’s Harry: Meet me or don’t meet me. It takes less than a minute for the reply to come.

  See you at 11.

  There’s something unerringly uneasy about the confidence of the reply. I thought the time of day might put the person off – or the public location – but it is seemingly fine. He or she is unfazed by daylight and isn’t at work. I could not turn up, of course, but there’s a big part of me that wants to figure out the mystery. I also realise that, in all our communication, I’ve given this person no way of knowing who I am. I won’t recognise him or her either, and so, unless the café is empty, there’s still some anonymity.

  I check Harry’s last text – the one in which he sent a selfie while wearing the bandage. ‘What do you think of my war wound?’ it says underneath. It’s a little flirty. I didn’t reply last night and don’t now.

  As has been happening so often, I find myself counting the cash in the envelope. After everything else, plus the vet bill and bribe for the bus company employee, there is a little under £2,400 left. I’ve spent more than £1,200 in less than a week. I pack the cash into the same envelope in which it arrived and slip it into my bag, then I say goodbye to Billy.

  Chappie’s is one of the trendy new breed of café-bars that open before I get up for work and close long past my bedtime. The days of greasy spoons and the smell of chip fat in the morning is largely a goner. Now, it is all inoffensive background lift music and lattes made with any kind of milk, as long as it comes from a nut. By the evening it is imported beer from Portugal or Croatia – nowhere too obvious – plus craft ales from up and down the country that are called things like ‘Bloated Emperor Penguin’ or ‘Flighty Orange Fox’.

  I order the cheapest coffee on the menu and it still comes to more than two pounds. I sit cradling it on one of the tables towards the back, far away from the windows. It gives me a good view of anyone entering the café.

  The reason for choosing this place is that, despite the prices, it is comfortably the most popular café in the area. There are people all around. Witnesses all around. Admittedly, many are either hammering away on their MacBooks or sitting cross-kneed in suits and talking about things like ‘this month’s portfolio’ and how Veena from accounting ‘can’t operate the photocopier, let alone an entire payroll’. It still seems like the worst thing that can happen here is that someone’s poached egg is a little overcooked.

  It’s ten minutes to eleven as I sit and wait, listening into other people’s conversations and meticulously watching the door for even a hint of movement. A waitress shuffles by and asks if everything’s all right. It’s hard to get a coffee wrong, so I tell her it’s fine and she moves on.

  Five minutes later and the only people who’ve entered are a pair of mums whose infants immediately begin crying. One child seemingly eggs the other on and, before anyone knows, everyone else in the café is shooting sideways death stares towards the women. The men in suits have seen enough. One leaves a twenty-pound note on the table and then they disappear. Meanwhile, the mothers have ordered a pair of pumpkin-spiced sugar-filled monstrosities that masquerade as drinks. Yet more pumpkinisation of the country. I wonder where it’ll all end. Pumpkin Coca-Cola? Pumpkin tap water? Pumpkin Steak Bakes at Gregg’s? There’ll be riots.

  Eleven o’clock comes and goes and, if someone is coming to confront me about the money, then he or she is not here. Or, they were here before me – and they’re looking out for me in the way I’m looking out for them.

  I eye the other singles around the café – and there’s a bloke in shorts. There’s always one. I’d bet that whenever there’s an Arctic expedition, some fella rolls up in shorts and then shrugs something about not feeling the cold. He’s busy beating a MacBook to death so is perhaps writing a novel or something. Either that, or cranking out one of those massive Facebook posts that only maniacs come up with and are definitely not a cry for attention.

  There’s a woman reading a paperback – but, if she is the person wanting to find out where her missing money has gone, she’s doing a fantastic job of never looking up.

  Other than that, it’s all couples and groups.

  I check emails on my phone, but there’s no reply since the ominous sounding, ‘See you at 11’. It’s gone 11 and I’m not seeing anyone.

  At five-past, a man in double denim walks in. He has a blow-dried mullet and looks a bit like Kevin Bacon in Footloose – if the Hollywood actor had been run over by a bus and then spent the following three or four years doing nothing except eating.

  There’s a fleeting second in which he glances towards the back of the café, settling on me. I figure this is it – he’s going to come and ask what I’ve done with his money – but then he slinks over to an armchair next to a bookcase and waves across to the waitress. Two minutes later and his wife or girlfriend strides in and takes a seat across from him.

  By ten-past, the waitress comes over and asks if I want another coffee. It will be two more pounds that I don’t want to spend. I tell her I’m all right for now and she slips a bill onto the table while clearing everything else away. There are still no more emails. Quarter-past comes and the only newcomers are a pensioner couple.

  My phone rings, but it’s the job agency. The same enthusiastic woman from the other day asks if I can get to an interview on Saturday. I try not to sound surprised, but the ‘oh’ is already out before I can stop it. I ask her where and it’s an office close to Crosstown Supermarket. I’ve walked past it day after day for years and barely paid any attention. She tells me it’s mainly answering phones, along with a bit of secretarial work. I’ll have Sundays and Mondays off and work eight til four every other day. It sounds perfect. The money’s not great, but it’s no worse than Crosstown. It’ll mean the same number 24 bus… my life won’t change that much.

  ‘Do I need to take anything?’ I ask.

  ‘Just yourself. They have your CV and questionnaire. They’re looking forward to seeing you.’

  That last bit does sound suspiciously made up, but it gives me a swell of anticipation. Perhaps they are looking forward to seeing me?

  I almost forget to ask the time, but the woman at the agency is on the ball anyway. She also tells me that I should be there fifteen minutes before to fill in ‘some form or another’. There are always more forms…

  By the time I’ve finished talking to her, the waitress has done three separate passes of the table to see if I’ve left any money. She gives a small ‘in your own time’ wave that really means, ‘I’m calling the police to evict you in ten minutes’ – and so I check my emails one final time. It is 11:23 and I’ve not had anything since the last message.

  I still can’t get my head around the CCTV images of Harry from the bus. I wasn’t sure if I expected him to b
e here, but, either way, I’ve been stood up.

  After leaving some coins on the table – my money, not what came from the envelope – I get up and leave. The mothers are focusing on their kids; deformed Kevin Bacon is chatting to his other half and the waitress is clearing my table. None of them are paying me any attention – but, as I step out of the door, it’s hard to escape the tingling sense of unease that, somewhere near, someone has been watching me this entire time.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  When I get home, I go full internet nutjob by googling ‘Harry Smith’. It’s way too common a name, of course. There are news anchors, wrestlers, bakers and many, many others all called the same thing. Back when we were chatting via the dating app, I’d looked up Harry when he first told me his name and encountered the same problem. This should probably be the first lesson with online dating: never, ever choose someone with a normal name. Dave Brown? Do one, mate. Salamander Higglebottom The Third? Here’s my number.

  Next, I try searching for Harry’s name alongside ‘internet security’, which is the field in which he told me he works. Results are still muddled, but I stumble across a LinkedIn page for a British Harry Smith who lists himself as a ‘White Hat Hacker’, working for ‘Bright White Enterprises’.

  The name makes it all sounds a bit supremacist, but it doesn’t take much to discover that it’s actually an industry in which ‘good’ hackers find flaws in the website or security systems of companies. They are either hired directly by companies to find holes or they do it off their own back in order to claim bounties. Some bloke made millions by finding an iPhone exploit and telling Apple about it. As well as making money, these types of people help protect the public from having their details stolen. It makes sense, but is the first I’ve known of this kind of job. I’ve always heard ‘computer hacking’ and thought it was a bad thing.

  I can’t find out for certain whether the LinkedIn Harry Smith is the same as my Harry Smith. The only real clue is that Bright White Enterprises has an office based on an industrial estate a few miles away. Either there are two Harry Smiths who both work locally in internet security, or it’s the same person.

  I take a few minutes to check on Billy and he’s almost back to his old self. He has finished one bowl of water, so I lay him down another. When he paws at the door, I take him down to the green at the back of the building and wait until he’s done his business. All the while, a thought is beginning to seed that’s so clear it’s hard to dismiss: could Harry have hacked into my computer?

  He sent the first contact via our dating app – but part of the appeal was that we seemingly had so much in common. But what if he was able to make it appear that way because he had access to my emails, my social media and everything else? He knew what I liked and so turned himself into the ideal person for me?

  There are a few issues around this. Not least an inflated sense of my own ego. Why? I live in a flat with one room. Two, if the shower is counted separately. I have no savings and barely anything to my name. I offer little except myself – and do I really believe I’m so dazzling a companion that a stranger would go to such lengths?

  Secondly, if it was Harry who dropped the money into my bag on the bus, what does he get from it?

  I finally reply to Harry’s previous text, the one with a selfie in which he asked what I thought of his war wound?

  How are the injuries now?

  I’ve barely sent it when a single-word reply pings back:

  Recovering!

  I take a moment or two to think about a response and then go for:

  Do you fancy lunch?

  He texts back almost immediately:

  Can’t. Got things to do. Catch up soon.

  There’s a sad face and then a smiley face. I’m not sure what to think. I could ask something far simpler – whether he gets the same bus as me; whether he knew me before we met at The Garden Café – but they don’t feel like the type of questions I can fire off in a text message.

  Before I know it, I’ve taken Billy back upstairs and am hurrying back out of Hamilton House alone in the direction of Harry’s apartment building. It’s one o’clock, but the day seems to be getting colder. Clouds have started to close ranks, bringing a stinging breeze that fizzes between buildings and whips fallen leaves into a swirling frenzy. I was in such a rush that I forgot to pick up a proper jacket.

  It takes an hour until I eventually reach the spot where the taxi dropped off Harry and me the morning after he’d been attacked. It felt different in the dark; emptier and quieter. In the middle of the day, it’s brighter and more vibrant. There is an express supermarket on the corner that I’d missed when I was last here. People are streaming in and out, carrying sandwiches, pastries, bottles of water and coffees.

  I follow the road to his apartment block and then realise I have no idea which specific flat might be his. There’s a screen built into the wall outside, with a list of numbers and names of who lives within and the buzzer number. It is presumably to help couriers get hold of people they’re delivering to – and far more advanced than anything in Hamilton House. There, the postman leaves everything in our hallway.

  I scroll through the list but there’s no ‘Harry Smith’ or ‘H Smith’. There’s nothing that’s close – although there are a handful of empty spaces in the list of occupants for the thirty flats.

  As I’m looking through the names, a woman comes out of the building with a little dog on a lead. It’s one of those animals that’s a cross between a rat and a canine. The sparkly pink collar is more or less the only giveaway. The dog tugs its way over to me, probably smelling Billy on my clothes.

  ‘Sorry,’ the woman says. She’s wearing sunglasses for a reason that’s probably best not to ask about. She’s either a celebrity, a cataract sufferer or a lunatic.

  ‘Do you live here?’ I ask.

  She glances back to the apartment block and then me. ‘Yes…’

  ‘Do you know someone named Harry who lives here?’

  I can’t see her eyes, but her forehead wrinkles. ‘Should I?’

  ‘I guess not…’

  She gives a dismissive shrug and then hurries away with her dog. It’s only when she’s gone that I remember Harry telling me that his building doesn’t allow pets. It’s an eerie moment as I walk back to the road and turn in a circle, wondering if I’ve somehow come to the wrong place.

  I haven’t – it was definitely here that Harry stood outside and told me that he was going to get some sleep… He then walked around the back of the building. I never actually saw him go in. I head back to the main doors and then follow the path around to the side in the way he did. There’s a garden at the back with a grubby sandpit nearby. There is a door through which people could enter – but it’s hard to see why they would. I stand and watch the stream of cars on the far side of the road, wondering if Harry said goodbye to me, rounded the building and then disappeared off to wherever he actually lives.

  I eventually do a full lap of the building and end up back where I started. As I reach the main doors, a man is exiting with a football under his arm. He holds the door open for me with a smile and, without thinking, I take the offer and head inside, giving a quick ‘thank you’ as if this is all perfectly normal.

  The lobby to the building has a large unoccupied desk off to one side, two lifts opposite the main doors and a bank of mailboxes on the other wall. A slim tab accompanies each box, with a name of a person for each flat. I scan through them all twice, but there’s no ‘Smith’. If Harry is living with someone, then he never mentioned it. Otherwise, why wouldn’t his name be on either the directory? Or the mailboxes?

  I hang around the lobby for a minute or so, not sure what to do. There’s nothing conclusive, not yet… but it’s disturbing. I search for him on my phone again and re-find the LinkedIn profile. There are no pictures, no significant details about past education or the like – only the name and ‘Bright White Enterprises’.

  There’s a local phone number a
ttached to the company listing, so I call it. The three rings take an age, but then a man’s voice sounds a chirpy: ‘Bright White.’

  ‘Could you put me through to Harry, please?’

  ‘Who?’

  I feel certain the man on the other end can hear my heart pounding. ‘Harry Smith? I think he works there.’

  ‘Don’t think so. Are you sure you’ve got the right company?’

  ‘Is that Bright White Enterprises? You’re in internet security?’

  ‘That’s us. Still no Harrys, though…’

  I stumble over something that I hope is a thank you and then hang up.

  As far as I can tell, Harry Smith – if that is his real name – has lied about knowing me, about where he lives and where he works. On top of that, for a reason of which I’m not sure, he might have given me £3,640.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I realise as I’m walking home that not everything has to be quite as it seems. The LinkedIn Harry Smith could have added any company to his bio. He could’ve claimed to work at the BBC, or as Prime Minister. It’s not as if anyone would be going around to check. Someone else could have set it up in his name. Other than asking Harry outright, I’m not sure how else I can check what’s true and what isn’t.

  When I arrive back at Hamilton House, there is a small gathering outside. Karen is there with two strangers and, when she notices me, she says, ‘Here she is,’ with a sigh of relief. As I get closer, she adds specifically to me: ‘These are Jade’s parents.’

  Away from their view, she raises her eyebrows a fraction in a clear apology for dropping me into whatever it is I’ve been dropped into.