If there is, they will figure out now, as we push the shelving unit to the side, that they’re not alone.
But everything remains silent. No footsteps, no voices.
“Wait in the kitchen,” whispers Erik, as he takes a look in the living room. “I’ll check upstairs.”
He is back downstairs within five minutes, and finds me huddled up on the couch. “There’s no one here, I’ve checked everywhere.” He smiles at me, but his face is deeply lined with fatigue again. “Should I make us some breakfast?”
Before I can answer, my phone vibrates again. Ela again, this time I pick up.
“Morning,” I say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear the telephone earlier—”
“Jo!” Just one syllable, but even that is barely comprehensible. Ela isn’t just crying, she’s sobbing loudly into the phone, barely able to catch her breath. My first thought—that she has confirmation that Erik is one of the victims—is, of course, complete nonsense. After all, he’s standing right in front of me, with a questioning frown on his face, pointing at my phone.
It takes me a while to understand what he wants. The loudspeaker.
Now Ela’s despair fills the entire living room. “What happened?” I say tentatively, and then, even though it makes me feel bad: “Is it about Erik? Do you have any news?”
She gradually gets ahold of herself. “No. No, still nothing, but—” She struggles to breathe. “Nadine is dead. I just found out. Her mother called me.”
I can see Erik grasping for something to hold on to, his left hand finding the back of one of the barstools, putting his right hand over his mouth, as if he wants to make sure he doesn’t make a sound.
“Oh my God.” There’s no need for me to act devastated. I wasn’t particularly fond of Nadine, but then I hardly knew her … which brings me to the question of how the news could reach Ela. A moment later I answer my own question: Ela and Erik have been friends for years, and he was with Nadine for a long time—so of course they knew each other.
“How did it happen?” Boiler, car accident?
“She killed herself.” Ela begins to cry harder again. “She jumped out of her bedroom window. On the ninth floor. The doctors said she died immediately.”
I can’t drag my gaze away from Erik, who is clearly using all of his strength to keep his composure. Is he thinking of how he threw Nadine out of the house? Was that their good-bye, their last encounter? Hopefully not.
“That’s … unbelievable,” I stammer. “She was just here. Yesterday. She wanted to know if there was any news about Erik.”
At the other end of the line, Ela takes a shaky breath. “Her mother thinks that’s why she did it. Because she thought Erik was dead. Apparently she had been getting her hopes up again recently.”
I find myself wanting to turn the loudspeaker off, because it’s obvious how hard each of Nadine’s words is hitting Erik.
“I spoke to her on the phone myself yesterday,” she continues, “and she was … sick with worry, just like I was, but not despairing. Do you think she found out something about Erik during the night? Is it possible that she knows more than we do?”
Oh yes, that’s entirely possible, but in a different way to how Ela means it. I would even bet on it. “Was there a suicide note?”
“No. The police didn’t find one.”
Of course not. How could they have? Had our two nocturnal intruders made a stop at Nadine’s place after coming here? Or perhaps they had been there first.
I try to remember our conversation from yesterday—Nadine was afraid of the Islamists and was saying something about Project Phoenix … but I was far too busy trying to get rid of her to listen in any detail.
“If you spoke to Nadine on the phone recently,” says Ela, interrupting my thoughts, “then it’s possible her mother might call you too. She’s calling everyone Nadine had contact with in the past few days, she wants to understand, why…” Ela’s voice fails her again.
“Yes, of course.”
The ninth floor. That would be enough time to realize what’s happening. And to know that it’s all over.
My stomach cramps up. “I’m going to hang up now, OK? Thank you for letting me know.”
After I’ve put away the phone, the silence in the room is tangible. Erik is leaning against the wall, his arms slung around his body, staring into nothingness. For the very first time, it’s as though he’s not even aware of my presence.
I want to comfort him, but I don’t know if he would want me to. Or if it’s the worst thing I could do right now.
Because you don’t know him, the familiar thought pops up. Unlike Nadine, who didn’t forget him, but who instead was in love with him until her very last hour, and who is now dead.
Is Erik having similar thoughts?
Better not to ask him, I decide, and get up to turn on the espresso machine—we have to keep our wits about us and concentrate on what lies ahead of us today. We can’t make any mistakes on the home stretch.
“No.”
I turn around to face Erik, his voice sounds surprisingly calm.
“We are not going to do anything else here that isn’t absolutely necessary. We can’t even risk the smell of coffee drifting outside.” Erik brushes his hair from his forehead, his hand trembling. “Nadine didn’t kill herself. I’m sure of it. I wish, I…” He closes his eyes.
The words on the tip of my tongue sound too cliché to be spoken out loud. You couldn’t have known. You didn’t do anything wrong. There’s nothing you could have done.
Erik abruptly pushes away from the wall. “Stay here, I’ll be back in a moment.” He runs up the steps, and I hear him opening the bedroom door.
When he comes back, his face is even paler than before. He sits down next to me on the couch and grasps my shoulders. “They’re here. I looked down at the road through the curtains—a little way up on the other side there’s a car with blacked-out windows, one that I’ve never seen in our street before.”
“But that doesn’t necessarily mean—”
“Yes. It does.” Erik’s grip tightens. “It makes complete sense: they didn’t find you in the house, but you’ll have to come back at some point. So they wait. I’d be surprised if Gabor doesn’t contact you again soon and try to lure you back here. And if your father’s people pick us up from here, those men outside will know. I’m sure they won’t let us get away that easily.”
That’s the least of my worries. As soon as Gavin and his team get here, we’ve won. But until then …
“We’re not going to wait,” Erik says decisively. “We’ll go out the back, through the terrace and the garden and then along that little path. No one can see it from the street, and they won’t be expecting it.” Only now does he let go of my shoulders. “I’ll go crazy if I have to stay here and sit around.”
I nod halfheartedly. I can let Dad know on the way, of course, we can change the meeting point—but I feel safer here than out on the open street.
I relent nonetheless, because I can see how much effort it’s taking Erik not to peek out through the shutters and check whether the car is still there.