Three policies came up. Two were for people I’d never heard of—presumably neighbors who happened to have policies under Sunsmile. But the third—the third was the most recent, and it was Gabe’s.
My fingers were shaking as I clicked through and scrolled down the customer record. There were copies of everything. The forms submitted, the payment receipts. I clicked onto the credit card they had stored on file, mentally crossing my fingers for a smoking gun. I’m not sure what I was expecting—a card registered to Jeff Leadbetter seemed like too much to hope for—but my heart sank when I saw the details. It was Gabe’s name, Gabe’s card, in fact; I recognized the number. It didn’t make sense. Gabe was careful about his credit card details. It wasn’t impossible he’d been phished, but that just didn’t seem like Jeff. But then I clicked through to the ID section, and there, right in front of my eyes, was a scan of Gabe’s driving license. And that stumped me. I could not imagine Gabe uploading his license anywhere apart from a real, kosher, secure site with a genuine need for his photo ID. Had I got this all wrong? Had Gabe really taken out this policy after all?
I scrolled down the page, looking for something, anything to give me a clue, but only one thing seemed out of place—the phone number attached to the record. It wasn’t Gabe’s number. But it wasn’t Jeff’s number either—or at least, not the one he’d had when we were together. I didn’t recognize it at all. I wrote it down on a Post-it that Keeley had thoughtfully left beside her monitor and put it in my pocket. A phone number wasn’t much of a lead, but it was something. Maybe I could call it when I got out of here.
I was just about to X out of the database when I saw it, right down at the bottom of the screen—a small icon like a speaker. Call Records said the header. And there was one single date-stamped entry, from just over a week ago—three days before Gabe’s death, in fact.
My heart started thumping again.
A phone call. An actual phone call. With whoever had set this policy up. And I had almost missed it.
There was a headset resting on the desk, and I picked it up and settled it over my ears, then clicked on the recording. I was fizzing with nerves, biting the inside of my lip so hard my teeth almost met in the soft skin. For a second nothing happened—just a whirling “loading” icon. And then a woman’s voice came over the headphones.
“Hello, could I speak to Mr. Gabriel Medway?”
“Who is this?” said a man’s deep voice.
I felt a rush of shock—swiftly followed by a sense of crushing defeat. Because it wasn’t Jeff. It was nothing like him. It was far too deep—much more like… a feeling of dread was pooling in the pit of my stomach. It sounded much more like Gabe, in fact.
Oh God. Had I got this all wrong?
I had paused the call, my finger jerking reflexively on the mouse at the sound of a voice I hadn’t been expecting, but now I rewound it to the beginning and started the recording again, this time steeling myself for the man’s voice.
“Who is this?”
This time, even though I’d been expecting them, the words felt like a stab to the heart. Because it sounded like it could be him. I wasn’t absolutely certain, though. The woman was coming through crystal clear, but the recording at the man’s end wasn’t brilliant. The line was crackly and his voice was distorted. I turned up the volume a notch and closed my eyes, trying to filter out all the call center distractions and focus on nothing but the sound of the voice in my ears.
“This is Jo from Sunsmile, Mr. Medway, you were in touch about setting up a policy with us? We just needed to clarify one point, it’s regarding—”
“I’m sorry, could you email me about this?” said the other speaker, rather brusquely. He sounded rattled and annoyed at being called. “This isn’t a good time.”
And suddenly I was sure, absolutely sure, with a rush of relief that made my fingertips tingle: this wasn’t Gabe. It was very like Gabe, very similar indeed—the same deep voice, even the same London accent. Almost anyone else might have been fooled. But I knew Gabe. His voice had accompanied me night after night, year after year, whispering in my ear for hours with encouragement, instruction, jokes, warnings. And although there was nothing I could put my finger on, nothing I could take to the police as a certainty, I was certain of one thing: The person on the other end of the line wasn’t Gabe. Not in a million years.
“Of course, if you prefer,” said the woman pleasantly, “but this really will only take a moment. It’s just—”
There was a click, and the call ended.
I heard the woman sigh.
“And a nice day to you too, sir,” she said, a little sarcastically to the dead air. And then the recording stopped.
My heart was thudding like a drum in my chest, so hard I could hear it in my ears.
I resettled the headphones, cupped one hand over my ear to shut out as much of the background noise as possible, and squeezed my eyes shut.
Then I turned up the volume as high as it would go and pressed play again.
I’m sorry, could you email me about this? This isn’t a good time.
Again.
I’m sorry, could you email me about this.
I’m sorry, could you
I’m sorry
I’m sorry
I’m sorry
And then—I don’t know how, but—I knew.
I heard the clatter as the mouse slid from the desk and fell to the floor.
I sensed the drag of the chair’s castors against the carpet tiles as I pushed it back from the desk and stood on unsteady legs.
I felt the shake in my hands as I shut down Keeley’s computer and flipped her Rolodex back to A.
But inside—inside I felt strangely numb. Inside I felt nothing at all.
“Are you okay?” a girl at the next desk said to me as I walked away. “Were you looking for Keeley? She’s off sick with her kid.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. My face felt strangely hot and cold. I gripped the strap of my rucksack to stop my hands from trembling. “I’m from IT, I was just updating some patches on her machine while she was off. All done now.”
It was an effort to form the words, but the girl didn’t seem to notice. She simply nodded and went back to her next call.
I felt like screaming, but I couldn’t. I had to get out of here, I had to figure out what to do. I had to figure out why.
Because the voice on the end of the recording, the voice I had listened to again and again and again… that voice was Cole’s.
And I couldn’t even begin to process what that meant.
My legs felt weak as jelly as I retraced my steps back through the maze of Sunsmile offices and meeting rooms, towards the main entrance. My heart was thudding, and I could think of only one thing. I had to get out of here and call Hel, tell her what I had discovered. Because it made no sense. Cole? Cole?
I was almost at reception, fishing in my pocket for my phone, when I rounded the final corner and saw them—a group of security men huddled around a screen behind the front desk. There were three of them, plus a guy in a suit who looked more like some kind of manager, and they looked worried. One of them was pointing to something on what I was horribly sure was a security monitor. Another was talking to Derek, the guard who had buzzed me in earlier. Derek had his hands raised defensively, as if making a counterargument to some kind of claim.
All the feeling seemed to drain out of me. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. But how? I hadn’t slipped up, had I? No one had challenged me. I hadn’t noticed any suspicious looks from anyone in the call center, and I could swear that Keeley hadn’t clocked anything during our phone call.
I had two choices now: barrel through reception at speed hoping nobody registered me, or back away. I was hesitating—after all, the altercation might be nothing to do with me—when a sound from outside caught my ear and sent my pulse racing even faster. It was the short whoop-whoop of a police siren, as a patrol car pulled up in the hatched “no waiting” box outside the office and turned on its blue lights.
Maybe they weren’t here for me. But it was starting to look very much like they were, and I wasn’t waiting around to find out.