by Rod Reynolds
He found a link on ExaminerOnline.com touting their tip hotline, and called the number from his throwaway. It rang for more than a minute until a man answered. ‘News desk.’
‘Yeah it’s about that incident on the Tube. I heard there was a reward going or something?’
‘Sorry, what?’
‘A reward. That attack last night. I’ve got information.’
‘You’ve lost me, mate. What attack?’
‘On that guy, really nasty. One of your lot was asking the staff at High Barnet about it. You pay for tips, right?’
‘Yeah, but … look, can you hang on a minute?’
He heard the man shout across the office: ‘Anyone know anything about an attack on the Tube?’ Hold music came over the line – Pachelbel’s Canon. Too soft and too optimistic for the moment. He waited, eyes on the house, the smell of pine oil coming to him – the trees lining one side of the property baking in the direct sunlight.
The line cut in again. A new voice – a woman, breathless. ‘Hello?’
‘Yeah, hi, who am I speaking to?’
‘I’m one of the reporters here. My colleague said you know something about the attack last night?’
‘They found out who he is yet?’
‘I can’t … Sorry, were you a passenger?’
‘I don’t want to say.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Richard. What’s yours?’
‘Lydia.’ A stunted breath, impatient. ‘Can we start with what you saw?’
He brought his other phone up, Googled the name in conjunction with the Examiner. ‘Just, you know, that fella being … I mean it was sickening.’ A list of results came up, a mixture between Lydia Wright and Lydia Sampson-Mills.
‘Did you get a look at the men who did it?’ she said.
He hit the images tab, scanned the results and tapped a picture from the top row. ‘Yeah. You know, actually, I think this is a bad idea. Sorry.’ He cut the call.
He stared at the image, a profile picture from a LinkedIn page for Lydia Wright. The woman wore her hair down and her face was fuller, but there was no doubt it was her. Even the blazer she wore looked to be the same. The latest entry on the profile listed her as a Showbiz & Ents reporter. Jamie Tan had no connection to either world.
His other phone vibrated with an incoming call. The one he’d been expecting: Suslov’s man. He let it buzz four more times while he got his lies in order.
Then he answered. ‘Yes.’
‘I thought I’d have heard from you.’
‘Why?’
‘“Why?”’ A hesitation. ‘Is everything alright?’
‘Did you call for a chinwag?’
‘What? You know why I’m calling. What the fuck is this?’
‘You gave me a job to do; let me do it.’
Another hesitation, startled this time. ‘The job was last night. It’s almost nine a.m.’
A movement in the house drew his eye; looking over, he saw Alicia Tan opening one of the upstairs windows. She was wearing a white vest top, her hair ruffled enough to be straight out of bed. ‘Did you think it was open and shut? This stuff is messy.’
‘What does that … Something went wrong?’
Her image became a silhouette behind the frosted glass window one to the left – he assumed an en suite off the master. ‘Admin. When it’s over, I’ll be in touch. Don’t call me before.’
He hung up and dropped the phone in the console, jammed his head against the seat.
CHAPTER 5
Lydia’s flat smelled of Thai. Saturday morning, the blinds doing little to stop the sunlight streaming in. She laid awake on her bed, time-fucked like she was jetlagged. She had the window open because of the heat, so it was as if every car and moped and bus passed right through her bedroom. But after two years in the flat, Tottenham’s street sounds were like white noise – wasn’t that keeping her from sleep.
She sat up and reached for the wine glass on her bedside table, drank off the last mouthful, fine with it because it was just a drink after work. The Thai was her flatmate’s takeaway from the night before, but it had her craving one now. Ten o’clock in the morning, the taste of warm Sauvignon in her mouth, cereal and toast the last thing she wanted. Tired, wired, a thousand thoughts running through her mind.
Stephen Langham’s WhatsApp foremost among them: Are you awake?
She looked at her phone, the message received half an hour ago. She plugged it into the charger and rolled back onto her pillow. The anonymous tipster call nagged at her. Nothing about it felt genuine, and her first thought was another paper had got a whiff of the story and was on a fishing expedition. But who would’ve known to try her or the Examiner? Unless the caller was ringing around all the papers to glean who knew what – but that sounded a bit keen for a hack on a night shift. Still, it was naive to think she’d have the attack to herself indefinitely. Especially if it was true the video originally came from Facebook. Her searches hadn’t turned up any sign of it, but that meant nothing.
Her phone buzzed. Stephen again: Look out the window.
She sat up, a smile curling the corners of her mouth. She crossed the room and split the blinds. He was leaning against the window of the Costa opposite, a takeaway cup in each hand. The only man on the street in a suit, handsome as fuck. He saw her looking and tilted one of the cups towards her – as if her answer was in any doubt. She let go of the blind and grabbed the wine glass to stash in the kitchen on her way to the front door.
When she caught her breath afterward, she slipped off him and the bed to retrieve the coffees from the floor by the doorway. Hers was lukewarm when she took a sip through the plastic lid.
Stephen shook his head when she offered the other one to him. Lydia set them down on the bedside table and went to pick up her clothes.
Stephen followed her around the room with his eyes. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘Seems like you’ve got something on your mind.’
‘I’m just tired.’
‘Sure?’
‘Sure. I didn’t get any sleep.’
‘Sorry about that.’
‘No, you’re not.’ She jabbed him gently in the ribs as she sat down next to him. He grinned, propping his hand behind his head.
‘You always do that,’ she said. ‘I’m starting to think it’s Freudian.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t have to hide it away.’ She held her ring finger up, gesturing to his.
He brought the hand out from under the pillow and waggled his fingers at her. ‘Seriously?’
‘I’m just saying I know it’s not your style.’
‘What? Marriage?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’d run a mile if I turned up with a ring.’
She turned away, shaking her head. ‘You don’t know that.’
‘Hold on, it’s never exactly been your style either.’ He gathered the sheet around himself and sat up. ‘What’s brought this on?’
She shrugged. ‘Lack of sleep?’
He laughed. ‘No, come on.’
‘This thing…’ She pointed to him and then to herself, flicking back and forth between them. ‘You know I’m not in it for the money. It’s not about climbing the ladder.’
‘I know that.’
‘I’ve never asked you for anything. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘Okay.’ She slipped into a T-shirt in silence. ‘Maybe I just wanted to hear you say it.’
‘Why? What’s going on?’
She stood up again, drifting across the room towards the window. She nudged her yoga mat against the wall with her toe, another new leaf from last year that’d gone untouched since she switched to night shifts. ‘Sometimes I feel like I’ve boxed myself into a corner. I can’t come to you in the office because it looks like I’m sleeping with the boss for the sake of my career.’
‘To who? No one knows about—’
‘To me. I have a har
d time justifying this to myself sometimes.’
‘I’ve never thought of you like that. The idea never entered my head.’
‘I have.’ She brought her hands to her chest. ‘That’s how it feels to me.’
He pulled his briefs on and put his arms around her waist. ‘Things will change at the office. People have short memories.’
‘How short? I swear to god, it feels like I’m losing it some days. I’ve written about every coked-up, manufactured nobody in this country.’
He pressed his lips together. ‘I know. Look, they know how good you are, they’d have got rid of you if they didn’t. And they’ve got me telling them.’
They again. ‘I’m thirty-four years old and skint. I worked my backside off to get to where I did, and I never cared about the hours and the money and the fucking cavemen in that place because it was worth it. You couldn’t pay me enough to do what I’m doing now.’ She ran her hands over her face, breaking away from him. ‘And now it sounds like I’m doing exactly what I just said I wouldn’t.’
‘You can vent without me thinking you’re angling for something.’
She let her hands drop and met his eyes, nodding. ‘I know. Sorry.’
‘When I go in to bat for you, it’s because you’re an asset to the business. Things got screwed up – politics, whatever you want to call it – you are where you are; but I promise you it will come around again. It always does.’
He came to her again, and she kissed him softly on the lips. He reached down to pick up his trousers. ‘Are you on tonight?’
She nodded.
‘You want to do something tomorrow?’ he said.
‘Yeah – sleep.’ She pulled a face to show she was half joking.
He smiled, pulling on his suit jacket. ‘Message received.’ His eyes dropped to the desk and she realised the teacher-training application pack was right there next to her laptop. If he noticed it he didn’t say; he kissed her on the forehead and slipped out. She listened to his footsteps on the stairs, then went to the window to see him hit the street. She didn’t hear him close the front door – never did; it made her uncomfortable to think how practised he was at this kind of thing.
She perched on the edge of the bed and picked up her phone, sleep now a lost cause. She scrolled through the BBC headlines, seeing nothing about Tammy’s story, distracted, wondering whether she believed her own words to Stephen. Thinking about the lies we tell ourselves, and the things we want to be so – and the truths our actions reveal. Lack of sleep making her thoughts run fuzzy, the voice in her head someone else’s.
She jumped around the web – The Mail, Facebook, Twitter, TfL – drew blanks all around. She brought up the video and watched it again, the victim’s face too pixelated to be clear, but his desperate expression as he thrashed and bucked no less unsettling for it. She found herself wondering if the tape over the mouth held a significance beyond just cutting off his air.
Outside, one end of a shouted phone conversation rose above the traffic noise as the caller passed under her window. The woman was speaking Pashto or Farsi, the words accented with hard edges that jarred Lydia into action. She tapped a message to Tammy – Any joy with the name? – and went back to the video.
She paused it when a reply came almost immediately.
Yes…
She stared at the little notification bubble, waiting.
The phone starting ringing. ‘Tam?’
‘Thought I’d call, easier than trying to type it. Paulina Dobriska. That’s the original poster.’ She spelled out the surname.
Lydia grabbed a pen and scribbled it down. ‘Okay, cool. Has she come back to you?’
‘No. And the video’s gone too.’
‘Gone? As in taken down?’
‘Must’ve been. It’s not there anymore.’
Lydia pressed the pen against her cheek. ‘Might be a good sign. If she’s using her Facebook, at least we know she’s still out there.’
‘Unless someone made her delete it.’
Neither of them said anything for a second. Lydia shut her eyes and told herself not to let Tammy’s fervour for the story colour her own judgement. ‘Look, for all we know, the video got reported and Facebook took it down, or she just thought better of it. We shouldn’t get carried away here.’
‘Maybe.’
‘So what now?’
‘Hassle the transport police and Transport for London. I get the impression they don’t know much themselves, and I doubt they’ll tell me even if they do, but unless and until this Dobriska gets in touch, I haven’t got much else to go on. Are you working today?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Okay. Do me a favour and keep an ear to the ground, will you? I still can’t find any mention of this anywhere, even the locals – I don’t understand it.’
‘Well … I think someone’s got a whiff. I had a call last night, felt like someone was fishing for details.’ She told her about the supposed anonymous tipster.
‘Shit. OK, you don’t have any idea who it was? The Standard are all over anything to do with the Tube. I keep assuming they’ll get a whisper. It wasn’t Fergal Lynch from their mob?’
‘No. Definitely not a voice I recognised.’
Tammy breathed out hard. ‘He’s not silly, though, he’d put someone up to it. I’m going to write up what I’ve got. Could you test the water at your place – see if there’d be any appetite?’
Lydia’s first thought was to go to Stephen, an impulse at odds with her little speech to him before; she dismissed the idea, annoyed with herself. ‘I don’t know – it feels a bit early. Write it up first, see where we are then.’
‘Yes, of course. You’re right.’ The sense of deflation wasn’t hard to detect in Tammy’s voice. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’ She was gone before Lydia could offer any words of reassurance.
She looked at her phone, the paused image visible again now the call screen had gone. It was frozen on the moment when the attacker had first noticed the camera, the man’s black eyes looking right down the lens. Unease settled in her stomach like mercury pooling: what if it wasn’t another paper calling the office earlier? What if the fake tipster was staring her in the face?
Stringer used the rearview to watch Alicia Tan on the back seat as he drove. Everything was firing inside him now; not panic, more the heightened awareness that came with high-stakes improvisation.
She’d thrown on light-blue jeans and a cream blouse and carried them off like they were couture. She made eye contact with him twice, but went back to her phone screen each time without speaking. He noted details: she had a dusting of freckles across her nose, a feature she’d concealed in the older photographs he’d seen; her left eye exhibited a slight droop; she didn’t bother with her seatbelt.
She looked up again. ‘How long, please?’
His mobile was in a prop holder on the dashboard, an Uber decal stuck across the top of it. He tapped the map to bring up the summary. It showed their destination as Jamie Tan’s office in the City. ‘Saying twenty-five minutes.’
She lifted her phone to her ear and waited, pointing a haunted gaze out the window. ‘Jamie, it’s me. I got your email and I’m in the car you sent. For god’s sake will you call me. I’m trying to stay rational here but…’ She held the phone in front of her, the microphone to her mouth as if to say more. But then she hit the button to hang up. She slipped the phone into her bag and let go of a breath.
The email that he’d sent, from Jamie Tan’s account. A snap decision born out of his own sense of guilt and obligation. Snatching her based on an instinct, but one that her reaction seemed to validate: she was in danger.
In truth, the flat was thirteen or fourteen minutes away. He would’ve preferred longer to get his story straight.
CHAPTER 6
Paulina Dobriska’s Facebook picture was of a woman Lydia pegged as forty, but could’ve been ten years either side. A crop of the original photo, Dobriska’s head was leaning to one edge of the image, a
s if it was pressed against someone who’d been cut out. She was smiling, the drink in her hand, the pose and the lighting making it look like a snap taken on a night out.
Lydia skimmed the profile; only the public information was visible, and it was light on detail. It said she lived in Whetstone and was originally from Warsaw. No employment or other details were shown. The five photos on display were selfies, solo shots all – three in bars or clubs, the other two seemingly taken in parks or similar. Lydia sent a friend request on the off chance, then sent her a direct message as well, mentioning the video and asking her to get in touch.
The part about Whetstone stood out. It was the penultimate stop on the Barnet branch of the Northern Line, and a theory formed: Paulina Dobriska goes out for drinks on a Friday night and then makes her way home late, getting caught up in this horrific situation. And if that was the case, it narrowed down the possible crime-scene locations – somewhere between East Finchley, where the line popped out of the tunnel for the last time, and the terminus at High Barnet.
She went back to the profile and scrolled further, but it was just as bare: her last post was from 2016, a semi-automated thing saying she’d been watching Love Island, and before that a series of profile picture changes dating back to 2014 – the ones Lydia had already seen.
She pulled up Google and searched the name. The Facebook page was the top hit, followed by links to various websites in Polish. She clicked through two pages of results, not really reading them, then switched over to the images tab. The profile pics were there, surrounded by a slew of Internet junk, no apparent connection to the other hits – people on beaches and soft furnishings and a small crowd and a dozen other irrelevances. The woman had barely left a mark. A search of an online database that scraped details from the electoral roll came up empty.
She pushed her hair back and felt sweat in her hairline, the room starting to bake. Spotify was open in the background so she turned a playlist on and maxed the volume so she could hear it in the shower. She went along the hallway, passing Chloe’s bedroom. The door was halfway open, the smell of green curry at its most potent there. Two plastic tubs were sticking out of a takeaway bag in the wastepaper basket – the flat had no living room so Chloe had taken to eating on her bed when she wanted to have a night in. A sparkly top was slipping off the bed to join a pair of black jeans on the floor; a Friday night outfit, but there’d been no sign of her when Lydia arrived home at nine that morning.