The lights were still on in reception, but I looked in and saw the girl there had gone home for the night. And the front door was locked: another good sign. I used my swipe card to get inside, and the door shut behind me, the magnetic seal ticking as it came to rest.
I listened for a moment.
From somewhere on the higher floors came the suck and bang of a corridor door. Then nothing.
I took the stairs, telling myself to relax. Keep calm. Breathe steady. There was plenty of time.
Our office was dark and quiet, with just a couple of green standby lights visible on the hard drives, and the slight whirr of electrical equipment in the air. I left the lights off, went over and jogged the mouse to bring my monitor to life. The screen was immediately headache-bright in the dim room. After I entered my username and password, the computer began the long, difficult process of pondering life and wondering what it was all about.
A shrill, nasal blare burst across the office.
Over by the door, the intercom was flashing red. Someone was downstairs, buzzing to get in.
As they leaned on the button, it felt like they were electrocuting me. The sound continued for a few seconds, then cut out, leaving my heart racing.
The computer had gone to desktop now, but the icons spread around the screen were appearing painfully slowly, one at a time. Down on the hard drive, the LED was flashing overtime. Busy, busy, busy.
I lifted one of the slats in the blinds a fraction and peered down. Two uniformed policemen out on the street. One of them looked up at the window and I stepped away, the blind clicking back into place.
Keep calm and take it steady.
One thing at a time.
I opened the shared email package and saw the message from Tori at the top of the list. Instead of deleting it, though, I opened an internet browser window and went straight to Yahoo. The accounts there were as anonymous as you needed them to be, and quick to set up.
As I ran through the fields, creating a random ID and inventing details, the intercom blared again. I glanced over, then back at the screen. They'd try another office soon, and someone would buzz them in.
Breathe deeply.
With the account set up, I returned to the email program, selected 'forward' and sent the message from Tori to my new account. Then I deleted it, along with the new version in my 'sent items', and emptied both from the 'trash' folder. If I needed the email, I had a copy.
One last thing to do. Back on the internet, I removed the pages I'd just visited from the browser's history. A technician would still be able to recover them, but it would at least give me a bit of breathing room.
I heard a dull tone from downstairs.
The police had tried another office and got lucky.
I turned the computer off at the plug, then moved back out into the corridor, closing the office door behind me. The corridor formed an 'L', with the stairs just to my right. I could hear the footfalls chitting up. I ran in the opposite direction, rounding the corner in time. The fire door was at the end. As I put my hand on the metal bar, I heard someone knocking on a door back down the hall. The sound echoed for a second - and then was cut off by the piercing alarm as I pressed the lever down and pushed through into a drafty, concrete stairwell.
Two flights of stairs: my feet drumming; a grip on the banister spinning me round the bend on each landing. At the bottom there was another levered door, and I fell through it into a dirty court-yard behind the building, full of wheelie bins and drains.
Keep calm.
I pressed the door closed behind me, dragged a large bin in front of it, and ran.
The car park in the Sphere was built on about six different levels, and my car was right in the basement. I came down in the elevator and paid for my exit ticket at the vending machine.
It was quarter to six. Behind me, large colourful panels on the wall advertised films showing in the cinema, and a couple were standing in front, clearly debating what to see. I envied them. I wished I could do anything as simple and straightforward as catching a movie right now.
Back at my car I sat in the dark, listening to the high-pitched squeak of tyres that echoed around the garage from the levels above. Every sound down here was amplified and threatening.
Sarah would be on her way home from the studio by now, if she wasn't back already, and she'd be expecting to see me at The Olive Tree in about an hour and a half.
I was thinking. The police knew I'd been in the city centre. If they were going to trace me, it didn't matter too much if they had this car park down as my last known location. After I left, they couldn't know in which direction I'd gone.
So I turned my mobile back on.
Am sorry,
I typed in.
Something's come up and I can't make tonight. Will talk soon, promise. Take care in meantime.
I stared at the message, which felt incomplete and ridiculous, imagining her reaction when she received it: if it had been a letter instead, she might screw it up and throw it away. Frustration rose up within me, and I pressed 'send' before the feeling could overwhelm me.
Then I turned the phone off again, started the engine and drove out. Halfway up the ramp, a sign reminded me to turn my headlights on, and then the car bumped up into the cold, crisp night, and I headed for home.
Chapter Twenty
Friday 2nd September
You smoke too much, Mary told herself.
But that was okay.
When she'd been a teenager, she'd enjoyed the easy, safe flirtation with death. She felt each intake of poison in a similar way to the thin slice of a razor on her skin. Without having to think about it consciously, smoking had always seemed to keep her on some form of level, as though a part of her was always checking to make sure she was being punished, and slowly killing herself was enough to pacify it most of the time.
A man had come up and talked to her once, outside some bar, and said that only interesting people smoked. He'd told her 'it's about the urge to self-destruction', as though there was something fascinating and even romantic about such a thing, and maybe more people should pursue it. She'd wondered, briefly, how interesting he'd find it if she stubbed it out on her hand.
Mary flicked some ash out of her bedroom window.
She was sitting at one end of the sill, her legs stretched out so that her small feet were resting against each other. It was an old house. The window here was one of those old-fashioned ones that you simply hefted upwards, and then it stayed aloft by magic until you hefted it down again.
On her right-hand side, there was about a metre of cold, night air. Below, a paved back garden full of split rubbish bags. Each house on this street had these little courtyards at the back: all full of crap, because you had to take your bins out front for collection, and most people were lazy. Most people didn't care.
She took one last drag and tossed the cigarette out into the night. But she stayed where she was for a moment. There were no streetlights in the back alley. Everything there was blue or black, except for the dull red dot of her cigarette end.
Mary could imagine her father standing down there right now, hiding in some wedge of darkness and watching her. She was brightly lit up. He would be able to see her very well.
Are you out there? she thought.
It had taken her a long time to calm down after he'd seen her outside his house that day. She'd been frantic because it was clear she couldn't deal with him herself, and yet she had to. If he wasn't down there tonight, he would be tomorrow. And nobody would stop him.
Gradually, though, she'd come to a kind of peace with the idea. It was either that or go insane. In place of the terror her body kept producing at the thought of him, she tried to will some determination into herself instead, and it seemed to have worked. Last time, the sight of him had slipped a key into a lock inside her, opened it, and let everything out. Next time, she would be better prepared. He was just a man.
She kept repeating that to herself: a mantra that would help her through the approaching madness.
Just a man.
Mary hopped down and closed the window. It descended with a screech and a judder, and then she closed the latch. Despite her efforts, the bedroom smelled of smoke. She wasn't sure why she even bothered--
The phone rang.
She held very still, listening to the noise as it blared through the quiet house. There wasn't a single person in the world, as far as she knew, who had any reason to call her.
Suddenly, she didn't feel as sure of herself anymore.
The noise kept coming, insistent and alarming.
You have to do this.
She crossed the hall and went into the front room.
The phone here had Caller ID, but the number on display was unfamiliar . . . and then she placed it. The area code was Rawnsmouth. Her brother's phone number. She felt a flash of anger, remembering how the police had found her. She didn't need this conversation. But she answered it anyway.
'Hello?'
'Mary?'
She didn't answer. She wasn't sure why. Instead, she shook the curtains across with her free hand, closing herself off from the main street below.
'Are you there?'
'Yes,' she said.
'It's me.'
'I know. Why are you phoning me?'
He paused, sounding unsure of himself.
'The police called me . . .'
'I know that too.' The anger rose up: 'And you told them my number. How could you do that? Did I ever give you permission to tell people my business? Do you remember that happening?'
'No.' His voice was almost whining. 'I'm sorry.'
'You've no idea how hard I've worked to keep my life private. None at all. And with one . . . you've put me at risk.'
'Hang on.' He sounded like he was about to start arguing with her, but then seemed to think better of it. He paused. 'Look: I'm sorry, okay? I didn't realise it would be that big a deal.'
'Well, it is.'
'I said sorry. What else did you expect me to do, though? He wanted to know where to find you, and it didn't sound like he was going to give up very easily.'
Mary closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, wanting to hang up the phone. Wanting all this to go away. But she couldn't.
Over the years, she'd been through so many emotions. She'd felt anger at the people who did nothing, fear at what her father might do next, and there had even been hope that someone, somewhere, would help them - because that was what good people did. But one thought had remained constant over time. It had filled her mind on that desperate night in the snow, almost the only thing she could still feel.
I must protect him.
Her beautiful little brother.
I must make sure he's safe.
That urge had been the only thing that kept her moving.
'Mary?'
She opened her eyes and said, 'Is that the only reason you've called? To tell me that the police have been in touch?'
'No.' He hesitated. 'I . . . need some more money.'
She should have expected that. Why else would he call? 'Money,' she said.
'Yeah. Just . . . I just need some.'
Mary pictured her brother in her head. Whatever he said or did, she always remembered him in the same way, and she always would. His eyes, wide and blue, his face so still it wasn't even trembling. Just a little boy who hid away from the terrible things he saw, and sometimes became so lost inside himself that she had to coax him patiently out again, feeling responsible with every soothing word she uttered. No matter what he did, he would always be that little boy, and she would always feel that way.
'Mary?'
She said, 'How much do you need?'
Later, she was sitting in the front room, her legs tucked beneath her on the settee, still thinking about her brother, when the phone went again. She didn't check the ID this time, assuming it would be him again, and just picked it up.
'Hello?'
Nobody replied.
She looked at the display on the phone. Number withheld.
Mary's skin was suddenly alive, tingling. She could feel every hair, every faded white line hidden away on her body
Slowly - as though something dangerous was in the room with her - she uncurled her legs and stood up.
She didn't say anything else, but kept the receiver pressed tightly to the side of her face, listening carefully to the silence on the other end of the line.
There was somebody there.
Someone who was listening right back.
She went through the checklist in her head. This window, that window, the front door - they were all locked. The nearest escape route, if necessary, was the network of pipes outside her bedroom window. This process was second nature: Mary did it every time she heard a creak in the night, or a thump from the plumbing upstairs.
She crossed the room, listening to the heavy silence on the phone, turned off the front room light and returned to the window.
Crouched down and edged the curtain aside, just a little.
A car was there. Parked up directly opposite the house.
She stared down, unable to make out much detail at first. The interior was dark, but she could see just enough through the windscreen to be sure there was someone inside. She could see his leg. Tracksuit bottoms.
Oh god, please not now. The panic overwhelmed her. Not yet.
She cancelled the call, jabbing at the receiver, her finger trembling so much she had to press the button twice, three times. Then she looked out at the car below, watching it through the sliver-gap her finger dared to make in the curtain.
Nothing.
And then the engine grumbled, the sound muffled through the glass. A second later the headlights came on, and the car pulled out and drove away up the street.
Mary watched it go, then allowed the curtain to fall back into place.
She put the phone down carefully and deliberately on the table. It felt like her mind was starring over and her thoughts disappearing entirely. She sat down on the settee, pulled her knees up to her chin and closed her eyes, searching inside for the determination and fortitude she'd once had, and finding in its place only the sensation of leather round her wrists and a body that refused to move.