by Tina Clough
‘There are a couple of small flats on the next floor,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘And then Hope’s flat in the attic.’
The top landing is like a long mezzanine gallery with bare concrete walls, a cast-iron railing and ancient-looking patterned tiles on the floor.
‘Don’t trip on those broken tiles,’ says Noah. He swipes a card over a sensor on the door frame. ‘I put this in the other day for some extra security.’
Why extra security? Does he think someone is going to break in – and in that case, who? Maybe Dao is right, and he knows something he has not told us yet; or did he decide to do this because it makes him feel better? His motivations are not easy to get a grip on.
He goes in first, waits until we follow and flicks a switch. At the end of the long room a single spotlight comes on, lighting a carved sculpture and casting a long shadow on the white wall. We take a few steps in and an up-lighter throws an oval of light over a painting on the wall beside us, then more lights in a choreographed sequence until the long room is lit like an art gallery.
‘Beautiful!’ says Dao. ‘Can you do it again please?’
Noah reaches for the switch and the lights go off, one by one in the reverse order they came on. He presses it again and the lightshow starts anew.
‘My God!’ says Willow. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s mesmerising.’
Noah smiles, possibly the first smile I have seen on his face. ‘Yeah, it worked out OK. I set it up as a birthday present for Hope. We spent hours discussing which objects should be lit first and how the room would come to life. This non-linear sequence is important to her – she calls it a non-verbal narrative. The lights show you things in a specific order. Not just first this wall and then the next – you have to turn your eyes to look at each thing in isolation, as they are illuminated. She’s collected these things on her trips for years.’
‘Did you invent it? It’s very clever.’ Dao is remembering what she found out this morning, wants to know more.
‘It’s just an electronic control unit and a bit of software to control the sequence. I had to adjust it over a period of days to get the timing right. Endless tweaks, but we cracked it in the end. There are a couple of single light switches here and there, so you can turn on one light or another, for convenience.’
‘It’s a work of art,’ I say, impressed by how absorbing it is; impossible to look away until the last light has come on. ‘Perfect for this big space. You’ve done a great job.’
Noah points at the desk at the far end of the room. ‘That’s where she sits and works. The laptop was turned on, plugged in and in sleep mode. Hope is very organised. She would never leave without checking the door was locked. Her bag was on the little table over there by the door and her keys too. Only her phone is missing. She is the kind of person who tries the door handle every time she leaves, to check she really locked it. But the door was open.’
We walk slowly around the room and study the art works. Hope bought these things when she travelled, so they mean something to her. They are exotic and interesting in themselves, but they also reflect a deliberate choice, there is a theme: women and children. Dao disappears into Hope’s bedroom at the kitchen end of the studio and I go to look out of one of the three long windows in the wall opposite the door. Dao comes out of the bedroom and starts to say something to Noah, but I interrupt her.
‘Hey, listen, let’s go out on the landing and have a look at the outside of the door again.’
They stare at me, as I walk towards the door. ‘Right now, please. I’ve just thought of something.’
They think I’ve lost my mind, but they come. I push the door nearly shut and go to the far end of the landing and beckon to them to follow; keep my voice low. ‘Noah, did you install a camera in there?’
‘No, why?’
‘I think there’s one in the window frame.’
‘What the fuck! Are you sure?’ His voice is rising. ‘Show me!’
‘Not so loud. I might be wrong, but if it is a camera it might have audio as well. I think we should go somewhere else and discuss it before you do anything.’
‘Yes, let’s,’ says Willow. ‘If you’re right we need to decide how to deal with this. And I have some questions I want answers to, Noah. Where could we go?’
‘I suppose we could go to Verona in Karangahape Road, it’s not far,’ says Noah. ‘They’ll serve anything at any time of the day or night.’
‘Now then,’ says Willow crisply, when we have found a table in an alcove, ‘what makes you think it’s a camera, Hunter?’
‘There’s a hole in the top right-hand corner of the window frame and I think there’s a lens in it, recessed a tiny bit. I noticed because I’m tall enough to look straight at it. I caught a glint of reflected light. To someone shorter it might look like a counter-sunk screw. If it is a lens, I suppose it could be wired to something and send images, video.’
Noah nods, his face grim. ‘I need to have a look. If you’re right it means someone was watching her.’
Willow says mildly, ‘You don’t seem totally surprised. Why?’
He hesitates before he replies, nearly as if he would rather not tell us. ‘You’re probably going to think I’m crazy, but I’ve been worried she got involved in something in Pakistan, either this trip or the one last year.’
‘What do you mean by “involved”?’ Dao asks, not prepared to accept a vague ‘something’.
‘I don’t know, anything. That area is full of stuff that seem far-fetched to us but are everyday events there. What if someone blackmailed her to do something, or if they tricked her to carry something or to forward messages? She’d never do anything illegal on purpose, but you read about people who get trapped like that …’
He stops talking and runs his hand roughly down his face. It reminds me of that film with the alien who’d been pretending to be human and then he peeled his face off.
‘But that camera – shit! It means something bad. Someone’s watching her. Maybe it’s that stalker, or is it the authorities? Or criminals?’
‘Oh, sorry,’ says Dao. ‘I didn’t tell you.’ She pats her pockets and pulls out a phone. ‘I found this in the bedroom. Is it hers?’
Noah turns it over in his hands. ‘Yeah, it is. This crack in the screen, it happened when she was in Pakistan. She showed me when she came back. Where was it? I looked everywhere in case it was still there somewhere and I called the number, but I couldn’t hear it ringing. Maybe the sound is turned off.’
‘It was inside the magazine on top of that low bookshelf beside the door. I saw there was a bulge in it, like there was something inside, so I had a look. Maybe she was sitting on the bed reading and her phone rang. And then she got up and left the phone folded in the magazine.’
Noah looks up from the phone. ‘The battery’s flat. I’ll charge it and have a look. Maybe there’ll be something helpful on it.’
On the way home Dao says, ‘He’s scared that he’ll find out something bad about Hope. Maybe that’s why he seems so nervous. I bet he’s been thinking of all the worst things, like drugs or helping terrorists.’
Chapter six
It is the day after the visit to Hope’s flat. I am working on a proposal that my London partner wants by the weekend, so he can start drafting the personnel contracts. Dao is sitting cross-legged on the sofa with Scruff beside her, very quiet. A textbook lies open beside her, untouched since lunch. She just sits there absent-mindedly patting Scruff.
‘What’s wrong, Dao?’
‘Nothing,’ she says and then she remembers that we have agreed this is not a great answer, unless it is true.
‘I just keep thinking about Hope and where she is now – what might be happening to her. Did Noah tell us how old she is?’
‘No, but I think he said she is older than he is. There must be stuff about her on the Internet. Bound to be, if she’s a well-known journalist.’
I have hardly
finished talking when Willow calls. ‘Hunter, this business of Noah’s sister is getting complicated. I called Benson after I had no luck with the guys at Central. He said he would check it out as a favour. He owes me. I sorted out the complications when he was winding up his parents’ trust fund last year – he knows he got the job done for very little. He came back to me just now with some stock phrases about how adults can leave when they like, and they don’t have to tell anyone where they are going, it doesn’t mean they are missing. The same stuff they keep trotting out at Central. But I had the strongest feeling that he was embarrassed – that he knows something he can’t tell me, and he hated lying about it, even by omission. The only reason I can think of is that Hope’s file is flagged with a notice that the cops are to leave it alone.’
‘And what do you think that means?’
‘Probably that some other authority is involved – our intelligence services or those from another country or Interpol. Or possibly one of those private surveillance firms the government agencies use. It couldn’t really be anything else.’
‘Have you told Noah?’
‘Yes, just now on the phone. He’s asked me to make an official information request to the GCSB, the SIS and the Police. He’s more frazzled than ever – unfinished sentences all over the place. Remember that conversation we had in the car? He’s definitely worried that she got involved in something very dangerous. I don’t think he actually knows anything specific, but he might. If he does, I must find out what it is. I can’t represent him if he withholds information.’
I end the call and turn to tell Dao about it, but she beats me to it. ‘There’s lots of stuff here about Hope.’
She holds up her laptop for me to look at something. I sit down beside her to have a closer look.
‘Which one is Hope?’
‘She’s the one in the red dress. She got an award for investigative journalism – that photo is from a hotel in Sydney. Doesn’t she look great? Not a bit like Noah.’
Hope is in a line-up of four men and two women on a stage. She is probably somewhere north of forty, quite short with black wavy hair worn long. She is in a bright red dress and very high heels and she has a great smile. Not pretty in the conventional sense, but very striking.
‘There’s lots of stuff about her in all sorts of places. She’s really well known, and she got another award – in New Zealand – a couple of years before this one.’
Dao points at all the tabs she has open. ‘She’s been interviewed on radio a couple of times. I’ve bookmarked a few of her articles to read later.’
I go back to work on my proposal; I am deep in a database of ex-military personnel for hire when the doorbell goes. Dao checks her phone. ‘It’s Noah.’
We have the app for the CCTV system on every device in the house. Turning a three-level townhouse into Fort Knox got complicated. I used to have a simple alarm system that I never used. Now we have a sophisticated system with all the bells and whistles. We also have twice the number of devices in the house. Aside from the inherent complications that arise when Dao sets the alarm on the ground floor without telling me, the system has been useful. Without it Dao might well have been killed by the clumsy armed intruder a couple of years ago.
Noah starts talking as soon as he is inside the door, so intent on what he wants to tell us he has no time for greetings.
‘I’ve just talked to Willow. I said I’d show you all the stuff I found – I’ll get it to her later. I’ve been working through files on Hope’s laptop. I had to come over here for a client.’
This guy is so disorganised, I think, he even interrupts himself. What the hell is wrong with him?
‘I was just about to make coffee. Sit down, Noah. It won’t take a moment.’
When I bring the coffee mugs, he is sitting at the dining table sorting sheets of paper into little piles. Dao stands behind him, watching over his shoulder.
‘I found quite a lot of things. Some of it makes no sense. And some photos from her phone but …”
He leaves the sentence hanging and puts two sheets of paper face-up in the middle of the table. One is a picture of a bearded man with unruly grey hair standing in a doorway with a hen to one side of his feet and two cats on the other. The other is of a young man, taken on a street at night. He stands in a wide recessed doorway with bright lighting.
‘I have no idea who these people are. I’ve had a closer look at the one of the young guy and played around with some software to sharpen it. I know where it was taken. He’s standing across the street from Verona in K Road, where we went last night. Hope and I often go there. It’s one of her favourite places.’
‘Do you have the dates?’ says Dao. ‘Were they taken before or after Hope went on her trip?’
‘After.’
He puts a third print on the table: a thin woman with very short grey hair, possibly in her late fifties. She is smiling and has a glass of wine in her hand.
‘This is Hope’s agent, Samantha. It was taken forty-three minutes before the one of the young guy … maybe forty-four. My guess is she and Hope were having a drink in Verona … but probably a meal actually, seeing what time of night it was … and when they came out Hope took this photo of him. I think he’s the one she told me about, the one she called her stalker … said he was too young for her.’ Suddenly he seems to be losing focus, his thoughts drifting.
I pick up the print and look closely at the young guy. He is looking straight across towards Hope and even in this less-than-sharp picture I can see that he is very good-looking.
Noah has a quick sip of his coffee. ‘I also went through her text messages – there are loads of them. I have copied out some that puzzle me, in case they have a bearing on what’s happened. Nothing definite, but … interesting.’
He pauses with a startled look on his face, as if he can hardly believe he is talking about something relating to his sister’s disappearance as ‘interesting’.
‘This is an exchange of text messages that I typed up for you. They start in Pakistan and continue after Hope returned – the other person was still in Pakistan. I can’t make head or tail of them. Nothing she told me about her trip explains anything about this. She always tells me things. Well, not this time obviously.’
He hands me a page and Dao and I read it together.
1. Sent from a Pakistani cell phone number a couple of days before Hope returned to NZ:
My son is concussed, four stitches in his head. They say he will be OK. I am in your debt.
2. Sent from the same number in Pakistan the day after Hope returned:
Are you all right? Are you back in your country?
3. Hope’s reply eight minutes later:
I am back home, bruises and cuts, nothing serious. Thank you very much for what you did!
4. The person in Pakistan replies 45 minutes later:
You saved my son. I saved you. Now we owe each other nothing.
‘So she was involved in something,’ says Dao slowly. ‘She did something for a boy, and his father helped her in return. And both of them got hurt? I wonder what it was.’
‘She had sprained and bruised her arm, quite badly,’ says Noah. ‘She fell over some broken concrete – that’s when she cracked the screen on her phone. She never said anything about someone helping her or saving her. This is so strange, some dramatic event and–’
‘Two events, I think.’ Dao picks up the text message sheet again. ‘First something that involved a boy and then another thing where Hope was saved or helped. How can we find out? Did she write one of her journal stories about it perhaps, one you haven’t found yet?’
Noah shakes his head. ‘Both those “saves” could have been one event. I was thinking about it on the way here. What if something like a riot or an accident happened? Say Hope jumped in to save a boy from some danger, but she in turn got into trouble doing that. And then the boy’s father rescues her – so now they are quits. He’s told her h
is son is going to be OK, she’s told him she got home and there’s nothing much wrong with her.’
‘I suppose it could be,’ said Dao doubtfully. ‘But he did say first he was in her debt and then a couple of days later that they were quits. It seems like two events to me.’
Noah thinks for a moment. ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ He sounds slightly reluctant.
He is not flexible, I think, he finds it hard to let go of a theory once he has formed it. Which is a disadvantage in a situation like this: it precludes him from looking at things from several points of view.
‘What about that camera in the flat? Or was I wrong?’
‘No, it was a camera all right. Well, it’s only a lens in that little hole in the window frame, the rest is inside a unit mounted on the outside wall. The encrypted video would have been streamed to another location using a P2P – sorry, point to point wireless link. So somewhere within line of sight there is a receiver. From there they could have sent it further afield, anywhere at all.’
His eyes move from Dao to me and back again, making sure we understand what he is saying. ‘But I couldn’t reach to remove the unit by myself, so I called in a friend to help – well, not just to help, I wanted a witness too. We removed it and he took it away to look at – he’s a bit of a specialist.’
‘You didn’t think of telling the police to come and see it while it was in place?’
‘No – I’d rather check it out first, just in case…’
Of course, you would, I think, because you think they might take the equipment away and you won’t be able to prove it was ever there.
He pulls a pile of papers closer and flicks through a bunch of photos. ‘These are all the parts and the serial numbers. I asked my mate to take them, for evidence, if we need it. Here is the unit that was on the outside wall.’
He holds up a picture. ‘It’s small and the housing is grey, so nobody would have noticed from the street. You can see it here … I took this photo from the other side of the street. There was no way for us to work out where the video was streamed to, not now.’