London, 2017
Hoxton Square was almost empty when Clara arrived a couple of hours later, its bars and restaurants locked and silent now, no sign of life on the pavements except for a postman doing his rounds, a homeless woman yawning in her sleeping bag, pouring water from a bottle into her hand for her dog to drink. The sky was filled with a cool, yellow light and behind the black railings shadows lay still and dark upon the lawn. She made her way towards her flat, telling herself she’d stay only long enough to throw some clothes into a bag then drive straight back to Mac’s.
Her building was silent as she let herself in and climbed the stairs. She noticed nothing unusual until she put her key to the lock and the door to her flat opened without resistance. She paused in surprise: she had locked it; she knew she had. Fear prickled the back of her neck now as she stepped inside. And as she looked around she gasped in horror. The flat had been completely ransacked. Drawers pulled out, their contents spilled all over the floor, books torn from shelves and left scattered where they fell, the sofa taken apart, wardrobes and cupboards plundered. Nothing had been left untouched. It looked very much as though someone had been searching for something, but what it was, or whether they’d found it, she had no idea.
It was a long time later that the police finally allowed her back in. Clara closed the door behind the officers as they trudged grimly away with their bags and cases of equipment, then she stood alone, surveying the chaos. Who had done this, and why? The downstairs front door hadn’t been forced, so how did they get into the building? Whoever it was must have known she hadn’t been at home last night. She glanced up at her ceiling, the usual pounding music eerily absent now. The silence seemed to fill the room, travelling to each corner and pressing against the walls and when her mobile rang she jumped in shock then leapt to answer it, desperate to hear another human voice.
It was Anderson. ‘Clara. How are you? DC Mansfield told me they’ve finished searching the flat.’
‘Did you speak to my neighbour?’ she asked. ‘The one I told you about?’
There was a pause. ‘She wasn’t in when we called,’ he told her. ‘We’ve left messages with her to get in touch as a matter of urgency.’
She felt her panic rise. ‘But shouldn’t you – I mean, what if she knows something? What if she’s got something to do with this? Whoever did this last night must have had a key to the main door – what if it was someone who lived here, in the building? Maybe she’s got some weird kind of obsession with Luke, maybe—’
‘We have no reason to think that at this stage,’ Anderson talked over her in the same, infuriatingly calm manner. ‘We will speak to her though, Clara, I promise. We are dealing with it. In the meantime, I would suggest you stay somewhere else for a while, at least for the foreseeable future.’ She felt a little as she did as a child, when her father told her to go to her room to calm down.
‘But—’ she said.
‘I called to remind you there’s a press conference scheduled for later today,’ he went on. ‘MIT wondered if you’d be prepared to say a few words – talk about Luke, about the sort of person he is …’
She closed her eyes. She couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do less. ‘Is there any news about the van?’ she asked.
‘Not yet, no. I’m sorry, Clara. I know this must be very frustrating for you, but we are confident that …’
She sank on to the sofa, her legs suddenly weak. She listened as he reassured her they were doing everything they possibly could, and when she hung up she stared blankly down at her phone, trying and failing to process the terrifying and utterly surreal possibility that the man she loved might die – might already have been murdered.
Later, she tried to soothe herself with the mechanical, mindless act of righting chairs and refilling drawers, and it was while she was in the tiny, windowless room they used as an office that she discovered the photographs. The metal filing cabinet Luke kept his personal documents in had been upturned, its contents rifled through and scattered across the floor. She began stuffing the various invoices and bank statements back into their slots, but when she attempted to slide the drawer into place she realized that she couldn’t. Frowning, she reached in and felt around until she located the obstruction – a large manila envelope that had become caught beneath it. Pulling it out she found three photographs inside – all of them of the same young woman.
She gazed down at the stranger’s face in confusion. She was very pretty, but who was she? An ex-girlfriend? In that case, why had they been so carefully hidden away – in a filing cabinet Luke knew she never looked in? They had always been open about past relationships: Luke had often pointed out his exes amongst the faces of smiling friends that gazed from his treasured photo albums. She knew about Amy, his first serious girlfriend from school, and Jade, the one he’d had at uni, and all the others in between and since, but this woman was definitely someone she’d never seen before – she felt sure she would have remembered such a beautiful face. If she was just someone Luke had had a casual fling with before they’d met, then why hide her photographs like this?
The realization seeped into her like cold water. This was no past love, of course, but someone from his present. The hurt spilled through her, biting and acidic. Who was she? Had he loved her? It was the callousness she couldn’t bear; the deceit of hiding the pictures in their home, presumably to look at during stolen moments while her back was turned. Clara stood very still, staring down at the wide smile, the dazzling blue eyes. She hadn’t really known Luke at all, she saw now, had been like a stupid, trusting child, entirely oblivious to what had been going on right in front of her face, blindly believing in a love that didn’t even exist.
At that moment the intercom buzzed loudly, startling her from her thoughts. ‘Yes?’ she said.
‘Clara?’
She frowned, not recognizing the voice. ‘Sorry, who …?’
There was a crackle of static and then, ‘It’s Tom. Luke’s brother.’
She was so taken aback that she stared at the intercom in blank surprise before pressing the button to let him up. What on earth was he doing here? He rarely came to London, and he had certainly never casually called round like this before; he and Luke didn’t have that sort of relationship. Perhaps he had heard about the break-in, maybe Rose had spoken to Anderson already. Yet surely he wouldn’t have had time to drive down from Norwich? The sound of footsteps followed by a sharp knock on her door a few inches from her face jerked her from her thoughts and, just in time, she remembered the photographs she was still holding. Hurriedly she stuffed them back in their envelope and into a kitchen drawer, gripped by a sudden shame – that Luke had cared so little about her, that he had felt her worthy of so little respect.
‘Tom,’ she said dully when she opened the door. ‘This is a surprise …’
She noticed he looked dishevelled, had dark circles under his eyes, his face unshaven; very different from his usual buttoned up, carefully groomed demeanour. ‘I heard about the van,’ he said, following her into the living room. ‘My mother phoned me last night. I can’t believe—’ he broke off, looking around himself in alarm. ‘Christ, what happened here?’
‘We had a break-in,’ she told him. ‘You didn’t know?’
‘Break-in? No, I – when did …?’
‘I came home this morning and found it like this.’