“No, no, I’m fine. Thank you.” I leave it at that.
Patrick doesn’t work for the prison. And if Patrick doesn’t work for the prison, who the hell does Patrick work for? He wanted my name and he wanted to find out why I was here. A cold nasty thought forms in my head: does Patrick want his bag back?
* * *
—
When I get home something is not quite right. The house is empty and when I walk into the kitchen an icy breeze is blowing in through the slightly ajar back door. It’s open. Mark would never leave the back door open. Someone else has left the back door open. Someone else has been in here. And might still be in here.
I stand there for a second frozen in disbelief, unwilling to accept the implications of what this means. I sense something shifting in the corner of the room behind me. I spin around but, of course, there is no one there, just the fridge clicking on in my silent empty house.
Room by room I check. I nudge open doors, bursting in, Mark’s cricket bat in hand, for all the good a cricket bat will do me. My adrenaline is off the charts as it pounds through my system. Room by room I search for someone, or something, evidence that someone was here. I scan for anything missing, anything disturbed, but nothing obvious stands out.
Finally, once I’ve checked the whole house is empty, I make my way to the landing and pull down the attic ladder. I need to check under the insulation. As I ascend, a simple sentence repeats over and over in my head. Please don’t be gone. Please don’t be gone. But as I approach the loose section where the diamonds are hidden, the mantra shifts, without a second thought, to: Please be gone. Please be gone. Because if the diamonds are gone, then whoever came in through our back door has no reason to come back again. Unless, that is, they want their money back too.
Under the dry insulation everything remains as it was. The diamonds sit sparkling in their warm pouch, the phone and the USB still safely tucked in its casing. We weren’t robbed. Whoever broke in was checking up on us, not stealing.
But the seed of doubt is now firmly planted in my mind. Perhaps I’m missing something. I search the whole house again, every room. I look harder this time, searching for any signs of interference, any possible clue as to who has been here. And then I see it.
In our bedroom, on the mantelpiece of our Georgian fireplace, next to our concert tickets and our antique clock, there is an empty space. An empty rectangular shape left in the mantel dust. Our photo. Gone. A photo taken the day of our engagement, us smiling into the camera, Mark and me. Someone has stolen a photo of Mark and me. And that is all they took.
Down in the living room the answerphone’s red message light is flashing. Five messages. I sit in silence and listen.
The most recent is from Alexa. She’s been given the go-ahead for IUI. It’s good news. Her appointment is next week.
The answering machine segues into the next message. At first I think it must be a pocket dial. I hear the sounds of some unknown location. Muffled background noises, the occasional snippet of barely audible conversation. The low hum of a large busy place. A station perhaps? An airport. The phone is on the move. I wonder if maybe I pocket-dialed myself at Waterloo East. The call came on Wednesday when we were on our way to Folkestone. I listen harder for our voices. Ghosts from the past. But I can’t hear us. I listen to the whole message. Two and a half minutes of muffled life, somewhere. Until the line finally clicks out. I stare at the answering machine. There’s nothing that strange about a pocket dial really, is there? I mean, they happen all the time. Don’t they? But they do feel eerie, even at the best of times, like gateways back through life. Or maybe not, maybe I’m just creeping myself out.
The next message starts and things get really weird.
It’s the same. Well, almost.
I know what you’re thinking, that’s perfectly normal. Whoever pocket-dialed the first time must have just kept leaning on the same button. But the second message is from the next day. At the same time, exactly—11:03.
I was in the clinic then with Alexa and the crew. My phone was off. So it definitely can’t have been me pocket-dialing myself. This call is different; it’s outdoors. A park maybe. The gentle whistle of breeze over the receiver. The occasional shriek of kids in a playground. The caller is walking. At a minute in, I hear the rattle of an overground train. Or it could be just a train; nothing tells me this call was made from London but my own mind. The walker reaches a road. The sound of cars passing. And then the line clicks out again. Why would someone call two days in a row at exactly 11:03 and not speak? Why indeed. They could still be pocket dials, of course, but they’re not, are they? Somebody is checking to see if we’re in.
The next message begins. Left at 8:42 this morning while I was in my meeting with Alison Butler, the warden at Pentonville. This one is quieter. Indoors. A café perhaps. I think I can just about make out the clink of cutlery on plates, and the mumble of conversation in the background. Breakfast for someone. I strain to hear more, a snatch of context, and then it comes. A voice, not the caller but someone speaking to the caller. It’s so soft I might have missed it if I weren’t listening so hard.
“Are you still waiting? Shall I come back in a moment?”
The caller gives a low mumble of ascent and the rest is just background noise. So I know that this morning whoever called me was waiting for someone to meet them. At around 8:45, in a restaurant. A restaurant somewhere in London, judging by the waiter’s accent.
But it’s the final message at 9:45 today that scares me the most.
It’s inside again. The low hum of something electrical. An industrial freezer, cold storage, something like that. Muffled conversation in the background again. An irregular electrical beeping. People shuffling about. And then, suddenly, a noise that I recognize. A noise that I know very, very well. It cuts through all of the other background sounds: the automatic two-tone beep-bleep of our newsagent’s door when it opens. This call was made from inside our newsagent’s. It’s just around the corner from our house. A tingle runs straight down my spine and I have to sit down hard on the study chair.
I got home about fifteen minutes after that message was made. Whoever left that message was here. I think about calling Mark. Calling the police, maybe? But what on earth would I tell them? Everything? I’d have to. No, I can’t do that.
I guarantee Mark hasn’t got any idea that these messages exist; he never checks the house phone, he never even gives anyone this number. This is essentially my work number.
I think of Patrick’s cold hand in mine. Number unknown. Could Patrick have come here after leaving me? Or did he come here before going to Pentonville? Is that how he knew what I looked like? But why would he come back here after meeting me? Or maybe Patrick was only supposed to hold me up while whoever was in the house could do what they needed to do. I sit in the fading afternoon light and listen to the messages again. Straining to catch a hint of anything I may have missed.
I try to remember Patrick’s face. His hair, his clothes. Oh God. It’s funny how little we pick up, isn’t it? There’s nothing I can cling on to. Middle-aged, a suit, a firm handshake. His voice British, with a hint of something else. French? European of some sort? I want to cry. I’m such an idiot. Why didn’t I pay more attention? I guess the situation was distracting; I wanted to smooth the transaction so I didn’t really look.
What did he want? To show himself? To scare me? Or maybe to find out my connection to the prison? If I was visiting anyone else inside? Could this be about Eddie? Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s nothing to do with the bag at all. Maybe this is something to do with Holli—Holli and SO15?
When Mark gets home I know I have to tell him everything.