by Mark Edwards
‘He’s great,’ I said. ‘I love this song.’
She stuck out her hand. ‘I’m Camelia.’
‘Daniel. Where are you from?’
She grinned and said, ‘Belsize Park. I like your name, Daniel. Makes me think of someone escaping the lion’s den.’
‘Yeah, that’s my job. I’m a lion tamer. I ran away to join the circus when I was ten and I’ve got two pet lions in my shed.’
She smiled generously and laid her hand on my arm.
I swallowed. ‘So where are you from really?’
‘Romania. But don’t worry, I’m not a vampire.’
‘Oh.’
She tilted her head. ‘You want me to be a vampire?’
‘No. Sorry, I was just . . . It doesn’t matter.’ I paused. Her being from Romania had flustered me. It was stupid. London was full of people of every nationality and Romania was part of the European Union so its citizens could come work here whenever they liked. I could hardly go into a meltdown every time I met someone from the country where my life had changed. ‘Your English is excellent. Oh, sorry. Did that sound condescending?’
‘No, it was a compliment. So thank you. I’ve lived here for ages. Ah, I love this one.’
She turned towards the stage, nodded her head and swayed her hips to the music. Her eyes were half-closed, a little smile on her pretty face. I noticed other men in the crowd watching her greedily and felt strangely protective towards her, and flattered that she had chosen to talk to me.
I lifted my beer to my lips and found that the bottle was empty. ‘Do you want a drink, Camelia?’
‘Sure. I’ll have what you’re having.’
I struggled through the crowd to the bar, Jake’s voice loud in my ears, a small pocket of the audience singing along. My blood was thrumming. After a long wait, I bought our drinks and headed back to where Camelia had been standing.
She wasn’t there. I looked around, craning my neck, but there was no sign of her. Great. I told myself it was stupid to feel so disappointed, but I couldn’t help it. There was something about her: not just her looks, but her playful tone, the energy she gave off . . . .
Oh God. Laura. I was hit by a wave of guilt, but then remembered how Laura had been that morning, the tone of her voice as she told me it was over.
‘Hey.’
I turned, flooded with relief, at the same time chiding myself for feeling so relieved.
‘Sorry, I had to use the bathroom and the line was unbelievable. I think there was a couple having sex in one of the stalls.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘So tacky. Though I guess I understand people getting carried away.’
I definitely wasn’t imagining the way she looked at me then. I was momentarily speechless.
‘It’s so hot, isn’t it?’ she said, shrugging off her jacket. Something fell out of her jacket pocket and she stooped to pick it up. It was her phone. She slipped it back into the pocket.
From the stage, Jake said, ‘Thank you. See you soon.’
‘I’d better get backstage,’ I said.
‘You know him?’
Damn. ‘Yes. We’re old friends.’
‘Wow. That’s . . . interesting.’
I wasn’t sure what she meant, but before I could ask, she said, ‘So are you going to introduce me?’
I sighed inwardly. When Jake introduced me to Laura I assumed she was one of his former conquests, but she found this idea hilarious. She said he simply wasn’t her type. ‘Yeah, he’s good-looking and charismatic and cool. But I’m not interested in those things . . .’
‘Thanks!’ I’d laughed.
Why was I thinking about competing with Jake? I wasn’t looking for a new girlfriend. I didn’t even want a one-night stand. My ego felt sore, though. Camelia had lifted my spirits, and now she was about to shift her attention to my best friend.
‘Come on then,’ I said, and she followed me behind the bar and through to the back room where Jake sat, sweating and smiling, the guitar propped against the wall. His manager, Robin, was in the room, talking about how he’d been standing with the A&R guy, who’d been ‘creaming his pants’.
‘That was fantastic,’ I enthused. After lavishing him with praise I gestured towards my companion, whom Jake had been watching since we’d entered the room, and said, ‘This is Camelia.’
‘You were pretty good,’ she said in a cool, disinterested voice. Then she turned to me. ‘Thanks for introducing us, Daniel. Can we go now, though, do you think?’
Once again I was speechless as she took my hand and pulled me through the door. I glanced back at the open-mouthed Jake and shrugged an apology. He waved it off, a big smile on his face.
Camelia led me through the back door and out into the street. It was freezing outside, but I didn’t care. Camelia was still carrying her jacket. The cold clearly didn’t bother her. I was about to say something about this when she pulled me into a shop doorway and kissed me.
Her lips were soft. It felt good, but strange, the unfamiliar shape of her lips and the taste of her mouth, a faint trace of cigarettes. I hadn’t kissed anyone apart from Laura in years. I was so busy marvelling at the fact that Camelia was kissing me, and trying to push Laura’s image out of my head, that I was unable to relax and enjoy it.
I broke away. She stared at me, confused, then moved her lips back towards mine.
I turned my face away. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What’s the matter?’ She looked hurt, pissed off.
‘I can’t. I’ve got a girlfriend.’
She made a little snorting noise.
‘I have to go,’ I said. Passers-by were looking at us, this couple having what looked like a break-up conversation in a doorway.
‘What? Come on.’ She moved towards me but I stepped away.
She looked stunned, as if no man had ever rejected her before. Perhaps they hadn’t. I could sense her searching her head for something to say. It made me think of a robot shuffling through possible responses before finding one, and this image made the chance that I’d give in to her advances vanish completely.
‘Daniel, I like you a lot,’ she said. ‘I thought we had a connection.’
This was awkward. ‘Camelia, you’re gorgeous, but—’
‘You have a girlfriend.’ She took another step towards me. ‘I won’t tell her.’ She leaned in for another kiss but I turned my face away like a shy virgin. Again, she looked shocked.
‘Do you have something against Romanian women?’ she asked, tilting her head. ‘When I told you where I come from you seemed . . . upset.’
There wasn’t enough air in my lungs for me to reply.
‘Oh my God,’ she said, stepping back. ‘You really do have a problem with Romanians? You’re not one of those people who hate immigrants, are you?’
‘God, no!’ I said.
She didn’t appear convinced. ‘Well, you certainly have a problem with something,’ she said. ‘Just me, maybe.’
I tried to laugh it off. ‘How could I have a problem with someone who looks like you?’
She softened just a bit. ‘So it’s just Romania in general, then.’ A little playful now. ‘You should visit, maybe. Give us a chance. It’s a beautiful country.’
‘Oh I know. I’ve been.’
‘Oh yes? How long ago?’
Again, I had trouble speaking.
‘What is it? You had a bad experience?’
‘No, I . . .’ I couldn’t form a sentence.
‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ she said, looking into my eyes.
‘I . . . No. I don’t.’ I hastily added, ‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘Are you sure?’ She laid a hand on my arm and for a moment I was tempted to take her home, to bed, to lose myself in her, to tell her everything. But that moment passed quickly and I shook my head.
&n
bsp; ‘I’m sure.’
‘Fine.’
Before I could say anything else, she spun round and dashed into the traffic, her jacket flapping in her grip. I yelled out as a car swerved around her, a bus swayed, the driver leaning on his horn. Traffic in both lanes screeched to a halt; someone on the pavement screamed. I dashed to the kerb, expecting to see her dead, flattened in the road. But she had gone.
In my peripheral vision, I had seen something drop from her jacket as she’d moved away from me. It was her phone, fallen from her pocket again. I held it in my palm for a moment, then slipped it into my pocket.
Chapter Seventeen
I needed to go home but didn’t feel up to using public transport. I checked my wallet and found that I had no cash left so walked down the busy street to a cashpoint. A homeless man lay by the wall at the front of the bank, shivering inside a ragged sleeping bag, his eyes shut tight against the bitter cold. I slotted my card into the machine and keyed in my pin, choosing to withdraw £50.
The machine beeped and told me the transaction was denied.
Maybe the machine was running low on cash. I tried £30. Again, it was rejected.
Irritated, I pressed another couple of buttons to check my balance, waiting while the ATM contacted my bank before returning with the answer. But the number on the screen made no sense. No sense at all.
£2998 OD.
Overdrawn. £2 away from my overdraft limit.
This was my current account. Most of my remaining money from the deal with Skittle—a sum that was diminishing fast—was in my business account. But there should have been some money, a few hundred pounds at least, in my current account. I wasn’t great at keeping up to date with my balance, but it wasn’t possible that I was almost £3000 overdrawn.
The cashpoint machine spat my card out and I wandered, stunned, to the nearest bus stop. I tried to work out how much money I’d spent in the last week, if there had been any large transactions that I’d forgotten about.
A bus pulled up. Luckily, I had a few quid on my Oyster so I jumped on and headed up the stairs, almost losing my footing as the bus jerked and swayed. There was a seat free at the back and I sat there, behind the drunks, a thrumming in my ears, trying to process what had just happened.
My stolen laptop. Whoever had burgled my flat and taken my laptop must have got into my bank account. I had alerted the bank as soon as I’d returned to the flat to find it burgled, but clearly, I hadn’t been quick enough.
Then a new, horrible thought struck me. What if they’d emptied my business account too? Was that possible? I took my phone out of my pocket. As usual, the battery was almost dead. With fumbling hands, I attempted to log in to my bank account on my phone, pressing the wrong digits, getting the password wrong twice, but eventually logging in. Thank God, my business account appeared untouched. I tried to check the list of recent transactions but the screen filled with the swirling circle of death before going blank.
My mind followed suit. As the bus bumped and rattled, I pressed my forehead against the greasy window and watched the streets of London go past, trying not to think. Trying not to feel.
A fox had been in the bins outside my flat. One of my neighbours had left what had clearly been a stuffed black bin liner on the pavement and it was torn open, segments of pizza and old nappies strewn across the path. This would no doubt lead to a poster in the lobby. I stepped over it and unlocked the door, dragging myself up the stairs to my flat.
As soon as I went inside I knew something else was wrong. I had tidied it and sorted out the chaos before going out with Jake, righting everything the burglar had messed up, and it was still clean and tidy. The cups and glasses I’d used earlier sat beside the sink. So what was different?
I was so shocked by what I saw that I actually rubbed my eyes with my fists, like a cartoon character.
My laptop was sitting on the desk, plugged in to its charger. Beside it lay the iPad that had been stolen. The Bluetooth speaker, iPad and PlayStation 4 were back in their usual spots too.
I picked up the laptop, turning it over in my hands. There was the tiny dent that I’d caused when I’d dropped it a few months before. There was the scratch on the back. I was sure that if I checked the serial number, it would match.
This was my computer. The computer that had been stolen two days ago.
What the hell was it doing back here?
I opened it and logged on. It seemed to be untouched. The same programs were open that I’d been using the other day. I had a habit of leaving my computer switched on all the time, having heard that Macs prefer to stay awake, with whatever programs or documents I’m using remaining open. My memory was a little hazy but these appeared to be the same programs I’d been using two days ago when I left to go to see Claudia Sauvage, my therapist.
To be safe, I opened my virus-checking software and started a scan of the machine.
All of a sudden, I felt sick. My skin went cold, all the way to my scalp, and a wave of nausea crashed over me. I made it to the bathroom just in time, leaning over the toilet, retching and feeling everything I’d eaten and drunk that day violently exit my body.
I sat on the bathroom floor. I couldn’t think straight. I really couldn’t deal with this tonight. After checking the results of the virus scan—all clear—I went into my bedroom.
As I undressed, I found Camelia’s phone in my pocket. She would probably call it when she realised it was missing, but tonight I needed to sleep undisturbed so I switched it off and put it into the bedside drawer.
Sometime during the night I dreamed that Camelia was kissing me, except she had sharp teeth and kept biting my lips.
‘Sorry,’ she murmured, as blood dripped from my mouth. ‘But tell me . . . Tell me about the terrible things you’ve seen.’
She was naked, but her body didn’t look as it should. Her shoulder blades protruded, her ribs stuck out like the grill on a vintage car, and deep, pink scars encircled her wrists and ankles. Blood continued to drip from my lips as the dream Camelia dropped to her hands and knees and crawled across the floor towards me and I backed away until I was against the wall. Something small and square stuck to my back, and I when I tried to pull it off I felt it pulling my skin off like it was superglued to me.
I woke up gasping for air.
The next morning, after showering and drinking three pints of water, and taking what was becoming a daily dose of painkillers, I called the bank. I was transferred to a member of the fraud team, a young woman with a north-eastern accent.
‘We’ve been trying to contact you,’ she said. ‘Did you get our messages?’
‘No. Did you leave a voicemail? Sometimes it takes a day or two for them to come through.’
She didn’t sound like she believed me. Had I heard the messages and forgotten about them, just as I’d forgotten my conversation with Jake?
‘There were a couple of large transactions on your debit card yesterday. Five hundred pounds was withdrawn from a cashpoint machine in East London. There was also a transaction of sixteen hundred pounds at the Apple Store in Regent Street.’
Sixteen hundred pounds. I glanced at my laptop. That was how much I’d paid for my MacBook Pro.
‘Why didn’t you stop them?’ I asked. ‘I thought the bank automatically blocked unusual transactions like that? How on earth were two made without being stopped?’
She sounded annoyed. ‘Both of these transactions were made at exactly the same time. They were picked up immediately afterwards and your account was frozen. That was when we tried to contact you.’
‘But I didn’t get the message. What number did you call?’
She read out a mobile number.
‘That’s not my number!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, of course I’m sure.’
‘Please hold.’
I paced
up and down the room while I waited for her to come back on the line. I looked out of the window. The fox that had ripped open the bins was standing on the front path, eating. I banged on the glass and it trotted away up the road, a slice of pizza clenched between its jaws.
The woman from the fraud team said, ‘You changed your contact details two days ago, on the twenty-third.’
‘I didn’t. I . . . Oh.’ The person who had stolen my computer must have logged in to my account and changed my phone number. I explained this to the woman, who took the correct number. Then I thought of something.
‘I was robbed when I was in Romania last summer. Could someone have used my old card?’
‘Not if it was cancelled. Which, according to my records, it was. These transactions went through on your current card. I expect it was cloned—it’s a common occurrence, unfortunately. When you were burgled, was your debit card in the house?’
I tried to remember.
‘Yes. I think so.’
‘Then it was probably cloned by your burglar. They use these machines—they swipe the card and download the information from the magnetic strip to create new ones. I have already cancelled your card and you’ll be sent a new one. You will get the money back, Mr Sullivan, but it may take up to a week. In the meantime, if you need cash you should go to your local branch.’
After I’d ended the call, I went over to my desk and picked up the laptop. I had half-expected to find it missing again when I’d woken up, to discover that its reappearance had been part of a dream. But it was still here. I had been . . . how could I put it? Un-burgled.
I called the police.
Chapter Eighteen
So let me get this straight, Mr Sullivan. Somebody broke in, stole your laptop and some other gadgets. Then brought it all back.’
The police constable’s name was, confusingly, Sargent. PC Sargent. I hoped he never got promoted. He was six foot two and had that weird Fred Flintstone-like grey stubble on his face. He looked around my flat, taking in the neatness, everything in its place, looking more like a team of cleaners had broken in than burglars.