Exposure

by Aga Lesiewicz

‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Did you try asking what it’s about?’

  ‘No . . . Maybe I should.’

  ‘You could try speaking to the police, if it’s one of their pictures.’

  ‘No, it’s just a photo of me, with my camera, at the scene. It was the Violinist case – remember, I told you about it?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. They caught the guy, right?’

  ‘I think so . . .’

  ‘It’s probably just a stupid prank. As long as they are not blackmailing you over anything, don’t worry about it.’ He laughs, but I don’t find it funny. ‘Anyway, babe, I have a favour to ask. You know the big black art portfolio case, the A2 one, that stands by my desk? It’s got some signed prints of my Prague project, I think about ten artist’s proofs. Could you take them to a gallery just off Brick Lane? The Fugitives Gallery, in Sclater Street. If you could get it to them by the end of the week, it would be perfect.’

  ‘I’m a bit busy, but I’ll try.’ I’m peeved he dismissed my worry so easily.

  ‘You are a star. Gotta go now. But will be back real soon, promise. OK, babe?’

  ‘OK. Love you.’ I don’t get an answer to that because he’s already disconnected.

  That’s my Anton, fierce, formidable and hopelessly unromantic. But he’s probably right when it comes to that stupid email, I think as I put the phone down. I go back to the computer, bring ‘Exposure 1’ back on the screen and hit ‘Reply’.

  Who are you and what do you want?

  I click ‘Send’.

  It instantly makes me feel better. I google ‘The Violinist’ next. I trawl through a handful of violin discussion boards, ads for musicians, a few sites about Paganini and an IMDB entry for a 2009 movie, until I come across a Wikipedia entry.

  Known as ‘The Violinist’ Karel Balek was a Czech national based in the UK who kidnapped and killed four women in London between January 2009 and March 2011. He would decapitate his victims and sever their arms, before putting their bodies in double bass cases. He dumped the cases in public places in the vicinity of famous concert hall venues.

  Tell me something I don’t know, I think, scrolling down the page.

  None of his female victims have been identified, although it was widely assumed they were illegal immigrants trafficked from ex-Soviet republics by gangs specializing in forced sexual exploitation. Balek was a professional contrabassist who began his career with the Ostrava Philharmonic Orchestra, before moving to the UK where he briefly performed with a few of the leading London orchestras. He was forced to abandon his music career in 2008, after a freak accident in which he lost two fingers of his right hand. He famously evaded capture on CCTV despite disposing of the bodies in heavily monitored public places. He was arrested in 2011, following an anonymous tip-off. He hanged himself in his cell while awaiting trial.

  This I didn’t know. During my short career as a crime-scene photographer, I quickly adopted a ‘disengage or die’ philosophy. You take the pictures, produce all the necessary evidence, do the paperwork, sign a statement, turn it in and forget about it. Unless you were required to go to court and testify, in which case disengagement was delayed. It may sound cold and thick-skinned, but it was a simple survival mechanism. If you allowed yourself to feel sorry for the victims, to empathize or, God forbid, follow the case, you were finished. A girl whose place I took over got fixated on a case, started playing at being a detective and ended up at the Maudsley suffering from paranoid anxiety. Faithful to my disengagement method, I never followed any of my cases once I was done with them. I didn’t google them, didn’t discuss them with anyone and stayed away from any headlines even remotely related to them. It kept me sane, but it also kept me in the dark.

  So, the Violinist is dead. He has not escaped from a high-security unit to stalk me, hasn’t been released because of some freak miscarriage of justice – he is gone, buried, six feet under. What is ‘Exposure 1’ about then? My mailbox pings with a new email. My heartbeat quickens as I click on the ‘Exposure 1’ reply.

  Error 553. Inactive/invalid user.

  Was I seriously expecting anything else? A friendly apology? A shame-faced explanation? No.

  A stupid prank, said Anton. Why does it feel so real then? I wish there was someone else I could talk to about it, just to convince myself that I’m fretting over nothing. But Sophie’s away in Brittany, sourcing some crêpes and galettes for her catering business. And most of my other friends have entered the phase of spawning and are busy fighting for a place at the best nursery in town or moving house to be in a catchment area for a good school. Erin – my mind helpfully supplies her name again. OK, I’ll ring her, even though I haven’t spoken to her in ages. If she’s too busy, she’ll simply ignore my call.

  I rummage through IKEA storage boxes until I find my old phone. I plug it in and after a few minutes it springs to life. Yes, Erin’s number is there. I dial it, expecting to hear her voicemail. But she picks up almost instantly.

  ‘Erin, it’s Kristin Ryder . . .’

  ‘Ryder!’ She calls me by my surname and I’m instantly transported to our Cubic Zirconia days. Everyone called me Ryder then.

  Without going into details I awkwardly explain that I need her help with something really silly. I expect her to say she’s too busy to meet up, but she surprises me. She’s doing a photo shoot on the top floor of the Shard. But she should be free by 9 p.m. and we can meet at the Oblix there, if it’s OK with me. The table will be reserved in her name.

  Of course it will, I think as I put the phone down. One of her minions is probably booking it right now, making sure Ms Perdue has a secluded table by the window. A photo shoot on the seventy-second floor of the Shard, in one of those amazing spaces for hire at thirty thousand pounds per hour. Wow. I imagine Erin with a gaggle of waif-like models or perhaps a moody pop star, snapping pictures against the backdrop of the London skyline. Creating a cover for the Rolling Stone magazine. Or a feature for Wallpaper.

  I look at Mr Noah’s animals inside the lighting cube and decide I’m done for the day. I don’t have to deliver the job till the end of the week anyway. I switch off the lights and take the camera off its tripod. Everything needs to be put away, no matter what. I know from painful and costly experience that Pixel and Voxel are attracted to the most fragile pieces of my equipment. They simply can’t resist a shiny reflector, a delicate softbox or a loose spigot. Every bit of kit is a potential enemy that needs to be attacked and destroyed. I pack away Mr Noah’s zoo and the rest of the toys. They rattle dully inside their cheap cardboard packaging. And to think it could be me, rubbing shoulders with the beautiful and famous on the seventy-second floor of the Shard.

  4

  Ms Perdue is running late but our table is ready. A beautiful hostess of immaculate complexion and impossibly full lips leads me through the open kitchen to a discreetly lit dining room. I was right, our table is in the best spot, in a quiet corner right by the glass wall of the window. Although the restaurant is on the less dizzying height of the thirty-second floor, the view is still breathtaking. London lights shimmer below, constant, but somehow alive. The river looks unusually peaceful tonight, a smooth and reflective ribbon of water illuminated in red, yellow, green and blue. It divides the panorama into two parts: the clean and orderly lines of the City and the urban mess of Southwark and Borough, with slow worms of trains crawling in and out of London Bridge. I ignore the menu and the wine list, staring at the view. If only Cubic Zirconia had ever gone beyond the idealistic fantasy . . . My phone pings with a new text message, interrupting my reverie. Guess who it’s from: Jason. I put my phone down, annoyed.

  ‘A message from a secret admirer?’ Her voice makes me smile.

  ‘Erin!’

  ‘Ryder!’

  There she is, standing right in front of me, elegant, slim and long-limbed, with a mass of black hair over her pale face. I jump up without a word and we hug, discreetly observed by our waiter.

  ‘You smell nice.’ I blurt
out the first thing that comes to my mind.

  ‘After a ten-hour shoot? I doubt it.’ She sniffs at her armpit unceremoniously and we both chuckle. It feels like we’re picking up exactly where we left off, the gap of nearly six years disappearing without a trace.

  ‘I mean the perfume.’

  ‘Patchouli Absolut by Tom Ford. It hits the spot, doesn’t it?’

  She doesn’t sit down straight away, but goes to the window and presses the palms of her hands to the glass pane, fingers splayed open.

  ‘I love this view, even after seeing it all day. I love the river.’

  ‘How was the shoot?’

  She shrugs. ‘Run-of-the-mill glitz.’

  She sits down and picks up the drinks menu. I watch her as she orders a bottle of Veuve Clicquot that costs more than I earn in a day. She has changed. She is thinner and rougher, the harsh lines around her mouth giving her a slightly mean, cynical look. She’s no longer the angelic beauty she used to be in our college days, but is stunning nevertheless. And the outfit she’s wearing is probably genuine Vivienne Westwood.

  We order a random selection of starters because we are both too excited to think about food. We have a lot of catching up to do. A bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a couple of Habanero cocktails later I remember why I called Erin in the first place.

  ‘Remember the Violinist?’

  ‘That limp dick Nikolai?’

  ‘You slept with Nikolai Verenich?’ I let the gossip distract me.

  ‘I dumped him after a couple of weeks. What about him?’

  ‘No, not Nikolai, I meant the serial killer.’

  ‘Oh, him. It’s not something you easily forget.’

  ‘I know. I processed two of his crime scenes.’

  ‘Yeah, I remember being relieved at the time it was you who got called out to them. Having seen his first was enough—’ She shakes her head as if to get rid of the memory. It’s the first silence since we sat down at the table.

  ‘I’ve been getting these emails . . .’ I lean down to my bag and get my iPad out. I tap the screen to retrieve ‘Exposure 1’, then show it to Erin.

  ‘God . . . You’ve been getting them recently?’

  I nod.

  ‘Last night. Three identical emails with the same picture.’

  ‘Weird.’ She picks up the iPad to have a closer look.

  ‘You haven’t been getting any of these?’

  ‘Me?’ She looks at me, her striking light-green eyes wide with surprise. ‘No. No, I haven’t. You think it’s something to do with the Violinist?’

  ‘I don’t know. The guy’s been dead for years.’ I debate whether to tell her about the Violin-Land graffiti in the photo but decide against it.

  ‘Could it be one of the anti-Zirconia nutters?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that . . . But why now, after all these years?’

  ‘You’re probably right. They wouldn’t be interested in the Violinist, anyway. Why bother with real evil if you can attack art . . .’

  ‘Anton says it’s a stupid prank.’

  ‘Anton!’ Erin puts down the iPad. ‘You guys still together?’

  ‘We are.’ I don’t elaborate, remembering she’s never been keen on him.

  ‘Good for you.’ Erin’s waving at the waiter again.

  ‘Well, he’s been away quite a lot, so it’s just been me and my boys lately . . .’

  ‘Your boys? You have kids?’

  ‘Cats.’ I make a self-deprecating face. ‘Pixel and Voxel.’

  ‘Voxel? As in “a point in three-dimensional space”?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he’s definitely 3D. Pixel’s a much more two-dimensional character . . .’

  She laughs and shakes her head. ‘Once a geek . . . Another Habanero?’

  The waiter’s arrived and is looking at us expectantly.

  ‘Not for me, thank you.’ I realize I’m quite drunk and tired.

  ‘Oh, come on, just one, don’t be a party pooper . . .’

  ‘Go on, then.’ I’ve always let Erin lead me astray. And I know I’ll regret it later.

  The rest of the evening disappears in a blur of gossip followed by alcohol-fuelled teary reminiscing. By the time we leave the Oblix, we’ve promised each other to keep in touch and never again to neglect our friendship so badly. Erin has an account with Addison Lee and she books a cab for me, ignoring my weak protests. To be honest, I’m grateful, because the world is spinning like the London Eye. By the time the cab reaches Hoxton I’ve sobered enough to direct the driver around the maze of narrow streets.

  Pixel and Voxel greet me with loud meowing as I open the front door. I dish their food out for them, deciding to ignore the fact they did try to get into Mr Noah’s box when I was out. No real damage has been done anyway. Forget the glitzy life of a celebrity photographer and welcome to my world, I think as I pick up the box and put it together with the other toys. But would I really want to swap Mr Noah and company for a shoot with David Beckham or Rihanna? Of course, I wouldn’t mind the creative challenge, not to mention the fee, but the honest answer would have to be no. I learnt my lesson with Cubic Zirconia. I love the buzz of creativity but the truth is I’m an introvert. My studio is my kingdom and I like it this way. And I like the view from my kingdom, I think as I go to the window. My self-satisfaction disappears as soon as I look out. He’s there again, the man in the building opposite, standing in exactly the same spot as last night, staring at me. The widow Clicquot plus a triple Habanero still flowing in my veins, I fling the window open in a sudden fit of rage.

  ‘Oi! You out there! Seen enough or want a bit more?’

  I rip my blouse open, pull off my bra and flash my tits at him. He doesn’t move, just keeps staring.

  ‘Like the view? You fucking wanker!’

  Very slowly, he turns away from the window and disappears inside his dark apartment. Disappointed, I slam my window shut. I was itching for a confrontation.

  5

  I wake up with a well-deserved hangover. Sunshine is flooding the loft, making everything look warm and cheerful. I carefully roll out of bed, shading my eyes with my arm. I shuffle barefoot to Anton’s coffee machine and sway by it brainlessly as it splurts out a double espresso. Its rich smell tickles my synapses and they begin to fire randomly: It was good to see Erin. She’s changed. What a night. Followed by, Oh God, when I remember my Peeping Tom rage. Coffee cup in hand, I shuffle to the window and look out. There is no one in the flat opposite today. The guy might be a pest, but my behaviour was perhaps a touch excessive. Well, maybe it has taught him a lesson.

  Mr Noah beckons and I hop in the shower, hoping the hot water will spur me on. But my head is heavy and my hands shake when I pull the blinds down and begin setting up the shoot. It’s going to be a slow day. By noon I’m barely finished with Mr Noah and his biblical friends. But then I pick up speed and I’m done with the rest of the toys by teatime. I copy the picture files onto my Mac and I’m cleaning the images when my phone rings.

  ‘Ryder, how are you?’

  ‘Erin!’ I groan. ‘What was in those Habaneros?’

  ‘That bad, eh?’ She laughs.

  ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have a date with Mr Noah . . .’

  ‘Noah?’

  I tell her about my shoot and the publisher’s deadline. She laughs at my description of the toys, but I know she isn’t really interested in my mundane job.

  ‘I had this weird dream last night.’ She changes the subject.

  ‘See? I told you the Habaneros were dodgy.’

  ‘We were in this tall building, you and I, and it felt like Zirconia days, except we were both older . . . The building was a bit like the Shard, all steel and glass, very cold and windy because some of the windowpanes were missing. You said you were going to fly and I was trying to stop you. It was getting quite scary, you were determined to do it and I was struggling with you to keep you inside . . . and then . . . and then you slipped out of my reach and you were gone, just stepped out
through the missing window and disappeared . . . I started screaming and I realized I wasn’t alone, there was this guy who’d been watching us and for some reason I knew he was dangerous – and then I woke up screaming . . .’

  She falls silent and I don’t know what to say.

  ‘I know it’s all nonsense, but I just got worried and I had to call you to check if you’re OK . . .’

  ‘Erin, I’m fine . . . Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes!’ I find her insistence a bit annoying. ‘I’m perfectly fine and I’m certainly not planning to take up flying.’

  ‘Well, I better let you get back to Mr Noah then . . .’ I can hear relief in her voice.

  We agree to meet up again once Erin is back from a shoot in New York and I hang up.

  I go back to the images on my Mac, thinking about the phone call. It was totally out of character for Erin to get shaken up by a dream and project her worry on to me. Since when has she started believing in nightmares? Has she changed that much? And why should she care about me all of a sudden? Yes, we were close once, but a lot of water had gone under many bridges since then. On the other hand, her nightmare did sound freaky. The mere thought of jumping off a building gives me shivers. How far would one have to be pushed to even consider ending one’s life like that? When I was a teenager I found the theoretical possibility of suicide reassuring, because in my mind it gave me the ultimate way out of any situation. I must say I haven’t entertained that thought for years.

  Back to the photos for KiddyKraze. All arranged neatly in folders and zipped, I upload the project into my client’s FTP site. My client is Serpens Media, a company that provides marketing solutions in the form of publications, online catalogues and directories for mid-range businesses. It also provides me, Kristin Ryder Productions Ltd, with a lot of work. KiddyKraze is their client this time, ‘a small but robust toys manufacturer’ according to Serpens’ blurb.

  All done and dusted, I feel I deserve an evening off. I wish Sophie was back from her crêpe-finding mission in France. I long for a quiet chinwag with my sweet best friend, right in the middle of my comfort zone. Being outside of it seems totally overrated tonight. Resisting the pull of ‘Exposure 1’, I go to Mubi’s website and scroll through their updated daily viewing offer, but there is nothing in their thirty films for tonight that grabs my fancy. Shall I check Torrent Butler to see what the movie pirates have to offer? Nah. I pour myself a glass of wine and go to the window. The apartment opposite is dark and empty. A tiny prickle of disappointment creeps in. Am I developing an attachment to my Peeping Tom? I think of Erin’s dream and the strange man who was watching me fall to my death. I look down at the cobbled street below our warehouse and imagine a blur of movement, the horrible sound of a body hitting the ground, the silence as blood starts to seep from under my shattered head. Whoa, stop! What is happening to me tonight?