Distress Signals

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  I followed her to the back of the room, to a desk by a large window.

  ‘This is it,’ she said, pointing.

  The desk wasn’t in a cubicle, but backed up on another desk so that Sarah sat facing her co-worker. There was no one sitting opposite now but a half-drunk cup of coffee and that morning’s Examiner spread open across the desk suggested someone had been and would resume doing so soon. On her desktop sat a large computer screen, a phone and some stationery: a pen-pot, stapler and notepad. There were no personal items, no clues that this was Sarah’s desk.

  ‘She’s very tidy,’ Susan said. ‘Very neat.’

  I pulled out the chair and sat down, eyeing the three drawers by my left leg. If I was going to find something, I’d find it in there.

  It felt weird, sitting in this place where Sarah spent the majority of her time. A place I’d never seen before. Had pictured, yes, and heard about in great detail, but never actually seen for myself. A huge part of Sarah’s life took place in this room, a part that I only knew in so far as she decided to share it with me. But did I really know it? Had she told me everything that mattered? Were there other secrets hidden here?

  Susan was looking down at me with her arms folded across her chest.

  ‘I’ll just be a second,’ I said.

  ‘Oh. Right. I’ll, ah, wait over by the door. Holler if you need anything.’

  I waited for Susan to walk away before I opened the top drawer – and immediately saw why Sarah managed to keep such a neat desk.

  It was filled to the brim with junk.

  I poked through it. A couple of blank notecards, a jar of paperclips, a Leap card, a pocket calculator, a packet of chewing gum, a crumpled tissue, a pair of cheap sunglasses, a Nespresso Club catalogue, a pair of headphones, a pendant I hadn’t seen her wear in ages that now had a tangled, knotty chain, an appointment card for a hair salon—

  I pulled out the appointment card. Lane Casey Design, a salon I had a vague recollection of seeing somewhere in the Huguenot Quarter, maybe on French Church Street. A time and date were handwritten on the card: 11:30 a.m. Sat 9th August.

  So much for cutting all her hair off on a whim.

  I pocketed the card.

  The next drawer had only a stack of manila folders, held together with an elastic band. I put them on the desktop and went through them quickly. They were all candidate files: application packages put together by the jobseekers who came to Anna Buckley looking for a job, the job it would be Sarah’s responsibility to find.

  I flicked through a few files at the top of the stack. Each one had a small ID photo printed in the top right-hand corner underneath the candidate’s name. Nearly every one was a man in his twenties who looked like a boy in his teens, complete with the odd spot, oversized shirt collar and excessive hair-gel application, or a young woman with bad eye make-up and bed-head hair that she’d probably spent an hour teasing into position. Finding jobs for newly graduated, over-qualified but totally inexperienced aspiring adults was apparently Sarah’s area of expertise.

  I put them back in the drawer and went to pull open the bottom one—

  Locked.

  For the first time I saw the little round lock in the upper right-hand corner of this, the deepest drawer.

  Where was the key?

  I looked around the room. Every desk was the same. Would the keys be too? The desk opposite was still unoccupied. Susan was still by the door, but leaning down now to chat conspiratorially with someone who was sitting near it. I bet I knew what about. I quickly got up, went round to the other desk and pulled out the small silver key that was sitting in the lock of its bottom drawer. The kind you get with a cheap padlock.

  I sat back down at Sarah’s desk and tried the key. It turned easily in the lock.

  I pulled on the drawer.

  The first thing I saw in there was my own face, smiling up at me. A framed photo that Sarah must have, at some point, kept on her desk. In it, I was sitting on our couch, smiling at the photographer. Her. It was from a couple of years ago, at least.

  I turned it over, moved on to the rest.

  A travel mug with a quip about Monday mornings printed on it. A box of highlighter pens. A pack of five A4 refill pads, unopened, still wrapped in plastic. A half-empty jar of boiled sweets with a sticker that read The Olde Sweet Shoppe. A USB cup warmer shaped like a cookie that I’d given her last Christmas as a joke.

  Why bother locking any of this stuff away?

  I lifted up the pack of refill pads. There was a single envelope lying underneath. White and long, with a window. A bill. It had already been opened and I pulled the contents out now.

  Saw the familiar O2 logo, Sarah’s name and our home address. It was her mobile phone bill.

  Sent to our apartment, brought into work, kept in a locked drawer.

  But why?

  I spread the pages across the desk. There were four of them, each one printed front and back. The cover page had a summary of charges and showed the amount owed. The billing period, a line of bold text said, covered the month of July. The other pages showed Sarah what she had to pay for: line after line of activity, arranged chronologically. Calls to other O2 numbers, calls to other mobiles, text messages, media messages, the odd international text, data usage—

  And suddenly, I knew why.

  ‘How are we going to do this?’ I said to Moorsey. ‘We can’t call them all.’

  We’d walked to the Parnell Bridge end of the Mall, settled on a bench by the river. The sun was shining and the tide was low. The putrid stench of the muddy green water in the Lee wafted up our nostrils.

  ‘We don’t have to.’ Moorsey had pulled a pen from his backpack and was already leafing through the pages. ‘We should be able to narrow it down.’ He handed the pages to me. ‘Go through them and cross off any numbers you recognise. Your own included.’

  I did what I was told. Afterwards, half the bill had lines through it.

  ‘Now what?’

  Moorsey motioned for me to give him back the list.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’m going to call out each of the remaining numbers to you and you’re going to type them into your phone. If they’re in your contacts already, the owner’s name will come up as soon as you press Call. That should get rid of a few more. Just try to hang up before they ring or we’ll be here all day with people seeing the missed call and ringing you back.’

  Using this method, we managed to eliminate several more numbers, such as Sarah’s parents, a couple of her friends and common contacts like our landlord and the management company who looked after our apartment block. But that still left many unknowns.

  ‘What we need,’ Moorsey said, ‘is a time. These are all stamped with time of day, date and duration. When would it have been unusual for Sarah to be making a call or sending a text message? Can you think of a time?’

  I knew instantly: Saturday night. It was the one evening a week we were almost guaranteed to be together, home alone. The going-away party had been our first time out together in weeks, so the four Saturday nights in July were probably safe bets. Possibly Sarah had gone out with the girls on the first one, but that left three in which I was practically positive we were both home, both watching TV, both making a conscious effort to stay off our phones. Phones during TV time annoyed us both.

  I took the bill back from Moorsey and started scanning. Only one number had been called after eight o’clock on the night of Saturday the thirteenth, but it turned out to be a driver for Domino’s Pizza. We’d missed his call and Sarah had called him back. On the evening of Saturday the twentieth she’d called her mother twice, the second call a very short one as if she’d forgotten something the first time around, and later she’d sent a string of text messages to Rose.

  But on the night of Saturday the twenty-seventh – a night I could actually remember, a night we’d spent wat
ching the end of the first series of The Bridge – Sarah had sent seventeen text messages to the same number between 8:15 p.m. and 11.23 p.m.

  Seventeen texts.

  That was one side of a long conversation.

  ‘This is him,’ I said, tapping the paper. ‘It has to be. We were at home that night, watching TV. I’d have noticed if she’d been using her phone that much. She must have sent them when I was in the bathroom. Or when she was. Look.’

  Moorsey took the bill back, studied it.

  ‘There’s calls to that number at other times,’ he said, ‘but not a lot of them. Mostly it’s text messages. Lots of them. Sent mostly during the daytime while . . .’ He glanced at me. ‘While she’s at work.’

  ‘So now what?’

  ‘Now, you call him.’

  My stomach turned. Whether it was the toxic stench of this stretch of the River Lee or the prospect of finding a real, live man who’d been having sex with my girlfriend, I didn’t know.

  A combination of both, perhaps.

  ‘And say what, exactly?’

  ‘Just ask to speak to Sarah.’

  I unlocked the screen on my phone. I shook my head, not quite believing that I was doing this.

  ‘He might hang up on you,’ Moorsey said, ‘so I’d get in there quick with something about how worried her parents are and that you’ve gone to the Gardaí and stuff like that.’

  ‘Why don’t I just text him?’

  ‘Because we don’t know if it’s him yet.’

  I slowly keyed in the number, double and triple-checking that I’d entered it right.

  I looked at Moorsey. He nodded encouragingly.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Here goes.’

  I pressed Call.

  It rang once.

  I got up and walked to the railing. Bad plan. The smell of the river over there was even worse.

  It rang again. Then:

  ‘Hello?’ A man’s voice. ‘Hello? Is someone there?’

  An American accent. He had an American accent.

  I said nothing. I couldn’t say anything. My mouth had gone dry, my mind blank.

  Well, almost blank. There was something in there: an image of Sarah and this man together, naked, in tangled sheets.

  I turned to Moorsey, who was looking at me questioningly. He motioned with his hands.

  Is he there?

  I nodded.

  Then talk to him!

  I needed to find out who this man was. I was supposed to ask to speak to Sarah. Get it out as quickly as possible that her parents were very upset and that the Gardaí were involved.

  I took a deep breath, opened my mouth—

  ‘Sarah?’ the man said. ‘Sarah, is that you?’ I jerked my head away from the phone, as if it burned. ‘Please, talk to me, Sarah.’ The voice was smaller now, tinny, coming from the phone I was holding away from my ear. ‘Just talk to me. Please.’

  I threw the phone.

  It smacked up against the bench with a loud clack, bounced onto the pavement and then skidded beneath Moorsey’s legs.

  ‘Adam,’ he said, getting up to retrieve it, ‘what the . . .’

  Sarah, is that you? Please, talk to me, Sarah. Just talk to me. Please.

  Wasn’t Sarah with him? If she wasn’t, where was she?

  And why had he sounded worried?

  ‘You cracked the screen,’ Moorsey said, handing me the phone. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t . . . I don’t know . . .’

  The phone began to vibrate in my hand.

  Jesus Christ. He’s calling back.

  I hit Accept.

  ‘Who is this?’ I said into the microphone. ‘Who are you?’ Now it was my turn to listen to silence on the line. ‘Where is she, you fucking prick? Her parents are worried sick. We’ve been onto the Gardaí. If I don’t find out what your name is, then they—’

  A click, followed by a dial-tone.

  He’d hung up.

  ‘“Fucking prick”?’ Moorsey said. ‘Way to stay calm, Ad.’

  ‘She’s not with him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s not with him.’

  I repeated what The American Guy had said.

  ‘That’s . . .’ Moorsey shook his head. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘She’s not with him either . . . Does it make you feel better or worse?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Better, I suppose, because . . . Well, because she’s not. Worse because we’re back to square one. But why—’ I stopped. ‘God, I am so sick of asking questions. I don’t remember what it was like to not have a million of them running through my head, constantly, all the time. It’s exhausting. Worse, I don’t know when it’s going to stop. If it is. This could just go on and on. This could . . . Fuck it, Moorsey, this could be my life now.’

  He slung an arm around my shoulders, patted my back.

  ‘I miss her,’ I said, feeling tears sting my eyes. ‘I just miss her.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Can you wake yourself up when you’re having a nightmare? Like, can you tell it’s just a dream? I’ve always been able to. I realise, in the nightmare, that I’m just asleep and that I can wake up and the crazy guy with the knife or the T-Rex or whatever will stop chasing—’

  ‘The T-Rex?’

  ‘I have a lot of Jurassic Park-based dreams.’

  ‘That’s . . . Weird.’

  ‘What I do is I force myself to make a loud noise, like to shout out or moan or whatever, and that wakes me up. Nightmare over. Just like that.’ I clicked my fingers. ‘Do you think that would work for this?’

  Moorsey looked at me sadly. ‘You should really talk to Rose.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About why.’

  ‘She blames me for this. Don’t you think I’ve enough to deal with right now without having to listen to her litany of why I am the world’s worst boyfriend?’

  ‘I think she’d have more to tell you about Sarah than to say about you. It might help you understand.’

  ‘She said it was all my fault.’

  ‘She was upset, Ad. If you’re not going to talk to Rose, what do you want to do now?’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to, but I have to tell Mum and Dad. We’re going to have to do what the Gardaí suggested – put an appeal for information on Facebook and stuff. I don’t want to give my mother a heart attack when she goes online to do Telly Bingo and sees Sarah’s face staring up at her under the headline “Missing Person” . . .’

  But first, I tried calling him again. There was a long pause before a recorded female voice said, ‘The person at this number is currently unavailable. Please try again later.’

  I’d never get through to that number again.

  It’s Saturday morning and Sarah is in the bed beside me. Her back is against my stomach. Her hair is long again. She’s wearing the red dress. I whisper in her ear but she doesn’t stir. When I put a hand on her shoulder, I realise her skin is ice cold—

  I woke up with a start.

  I was in our bed, alone. Despite this, I’d confined my limbs to my side of it while I’d slept.

  The room was dark but for a sliver of sunlight pushing through a gap in the curtains. Had I managed to sleep through the night?

  An angry vibration from the nightstand signalled that I was getting an incoming call. I didn’t remember putting the phone on silent, but then neither did I remember leaving myself a glass of water or a blister pack of Paracetamol or a small bottle of Bach’s Rescue Remedy or a packet of Kleenex. Mum had struck again. Her and Dad had as good as moved in last night. She’d probably crushed up sleeping tablets and sprinkled them over that curry she’d forced me to eat as well.

  I picked up the phone. A blocked numb
er.

  Could this be . . . ?

  I hit Accept.

  ‘Adam? It’s Dan. Don’t hang up.’

  ‘Dan.’ I pulled myself up into a sitting position. ‘Isn’t it the middle of the night there?’

  ‘No, it’s just after nine in the morning.’

  ‘But that means it’s . . .’ I pulled the phone from my ear to check the time. Three minutes after two in the afternoon. What the hell? ‘Uh, listen, sorry about the other day. I was just—’

  ‘That’s why I’m calling. I’m not going to ask you what’s going on, Adam. I don’t want to know, because if I don’t it means I can look at this situation objectively and give you the advice you need. That’s what you’re paying me for. I don’t know what’s happening over there, but I do know this: the script needs to get to the studio by close of business Friday. I need to see it first and we have to allow for changes to be made before I pass it on. You know what that means? That means I need the script right now. Yesterday, ideally, so I could’ve brought it home to read over the weekend.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I just—’

  ‘How far in are you?’

  ‘Dan, the thing is that my girlfriend—’

  ‘I said I don’t want to know. That’s not me being a Grade-A asshole, Adam. I hope you understand that. I just want what’s best for you. I want this to work out. I want to be able to tell you what you need to hear, not just what you want to.’

  ‘I understand, Dan. I do. I just don’t know if there’s going to be—’

  ‘There’ll be no second chance here, Adam. You realise that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is it. One shot.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Like the Eminem song.’

  ‘I . . . If you say so.’

  ‘LA is a small town when it boils down to business,’ Dan said. ‘People don’t forget. They won’t.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘A screenwriter gets his foot in the door with a spec, yeah, but he makes a career out of getting hired. Taking that one-word idea some idiot exec had in the shower this morning and turning it into a five-picture franchise. One of my clients, John Stacy – do you know him? – he’s locked in a sweat-lodge out in the Arizona desert right now, turning the phrase “jungle subway” into a summer blockbuster. That’s all the studio gave him, Adam. Two words. And they were jungle and subway. You only have to finish tweaking your own script. Who’s going to hire someone who missed the deadline for rewriting his own script when there’s the likes of John Stacy out there pulling Untitled Jungle Subway Project out of his ass for one hundred against three hundred, complete with an ending that leaves the door open for a sequel or six?’