suddenly and not seeming to care that my best friend had disappeared. When I said that she knew he wasn’t my best friend, that I didn’t even like him, she waved her arms dismissively and told me that may be true, but then he was my only friend, and would I please start taking this more seriously.
And anyway, I’m not sure the police would be that impressed if they knew you were linked with a missing person and there are bloodstains all over your flat.
(It took me a second to process this). I’m sorry, are you accusing me of killing Mark? The sentence seemed ludicrous even as I uttered the words.
Don’t be stupid, Sylvain. Of course I’m not. I’m just saying that if anything has happened to him, and the police see your flat like this, they may start poking their noses in, and finding things that they really shouldn’t find, if you get my drift.
(I got her drift). I’ll clear it up.
Yeah, and I wouldn’t hang around, if I were you. They seemed pretty keen on talking to you when they were at Louise’s last night.
I told her not to involve the police.
Well, what did you expect? She’s really worried. I can’t believe you didn’t have the guts to tell her what you saw.
I was just thinking of her… (I started, but decided not to finish. Of course she was right, I thought, and there was also, if I admitted it to myself, a little bit of hurt that she was so upset. I went with my favourite reply, changing the subject).
I can’t believe Mark lied to me about where he works. Maybe let’s check out Arnold and Partners.
Sylvia raised her eyebrows but nodded. I fetched my laptop and logged onto their website. Sure enough there was a picture of Mark, his dark, handsome features accentuated in the professional photograph. We clicked on the link and it came out with the standard profile of a successful lawyer, which I skim read.
So, this is all completely untrue?
I guess. Maybe he works for the same company as you.
I don’t work for a company. I work for a government department. A secret government department.
Yes, yes, we all know that, dear. It’s got to be this woman, she’s got to be key to it. You have to tell the police about her, even if you can’t bring yourself to tell Louise. All right, Sylvain? Promise me? For everything we had together, it’s important. If they have run off together, then Louise has a right to know, and if something’s happened to Mark, well, she could at least help point them in the right direction. Sylvain? You will, yes?
(Deep breath). What was her name again? Angel…?
Angel Marston.
You know anything about her?
No, I just got introduced to her at the beginning of the evening then that was it. I think it’s you who should know more about her… What did you say to her, I mean, she looked like she wanted to kill you?
I didn’t say anything to her (somewhat defensively). I don’t remember her at all (and this was absolutely true. I’m sure Sylvia must have mistaken her for someone else.)
Try googling her?
I tapped her name in and the results flashed up. There was a picture of her – definitely her – and underneath – Angel Marston, Senior Project Manager, Calypso Software Solutions. Isn’t that… Sylvia started?
Calypso Software Solutions was, supposedly, a software house that specialised in development of systems for agricultural optimisation, which included things like calculating the optimal number of cows to make a farm collective profitable. I knew about it because it was one of the cover companies for the department I worked for – when we had to pretend we weren’t associated with the government - a little bit of an in joke that X thought up when he took over and the department started again from scratch; putting the r in rural, he used to say, though I had no idea what he meant. I nodded slowly, seeing this day’s rollercoaster take yet another bizarre turn.
But I have no idea who she is! I have never seen or heard of her. (And I thought, privately, how come she has her name and photo on the website when I have only managed my name, even after so many years).
Well, it seems like you do work with her after all. Too many drugs, maybe?
I don’t… (I started, but Sylvia put a finger to my lips).
(She leant over and kissed me lightly on the cheek). I’m going to head home, Sylvain. Call me tomorrow, all right? And Sylvain, clean this place up.
Good idea. Maybe I’d even find the VDE.
The truth about unicorns
I turned up early for the project briefing, which wasn’t like me, but I don’t mind admitting to you that I felt slightly intimidated as I stood outside the nondescript building that was, apparently, Department G’s headquarters. I smoked a cigarette as I waited, pacing up and down the street in the April sunshine and drinking a coffee to try and clear the fogginess from my mind. I had stayed up last night, staring at the shot of Angel and wondering why I didn’t know her, what she was doing at Mark’s party and what was going on between her and Mark. No matter how many times I’ve gone through it, I can’t escape the conclusion that Mark killed her and did something horrifying like dissolve her body in the bathtub of that hotel and maybe, just maybe, had some part of her, some sort of trophy, in that bag that he was carrying. What happened between then and me waking up covered in blood I still couldn’t work out, bar the obvious conclusion that I was still not willing to acknowledge.
Putting that to one side was clearly the best solution until I’d worked something else out, though I really did need to clean up my apartment – Sylvia was right about that. I had started to make a half-hearted attempt after she left, but the lure of whisky and contemplation of Mark’s misdeeds seemed altogether more attractive. Mark Forth, I thought I had known you, but it seems that you had many secrets. Bizarrely, I had found the prospect of him being a serial killer easier to fathom when I still thought of him as a corporate lawyer, dull and petty and narcissistic, but him being a government agent or a spy or whatever he was put a different complexion on it entirely, and I really didn’t know what to make of it. Maybe I would go to the offices of Arnold and Partners, maybe Louise was wrong, maybe it was all part of an elaborate ruse on his part and he’d be sitting there, in his big lawyer’s office, doing lawyer things and talking to other lawyer people and criminals.
Okay, so maybe there was an Angel Marston in our department – it was a big department after all, I didn’t know everyone there - and maybe it was a coincidence that she met Mark, maybe Sylvia just got confused about what she’d heard. Whoever said don’t believe in coincidence has no imagination, forcing themselves to see the world through the dull eyes of predictability, whereas life is in reality a game of chance and should be played as such, with the abandon and recklessness of a compulsive gambler. Unless it’s dangerous, of course. Or in any way detrimental to me.
I signed in at the building and was ushered into a large, airy room, with a glass table in the middle and screens all around and asked to wait here, please do not leave the room by someone small, young and efficient, before being left by myself. I wandered back out into the corridor in search of the loo but got slightly lost and ended up walking down a long, thin corridor with few markings and a door at the far end. There was a strange sign on the door that I seriously hoped meant the men’s toilet, but did look a little unusual. I tried the door and fortunately it was open, and it brought me out into a small room with a huge window at the end, a small desk and a computer sitting on it. No toilet, then. But I was here.
The door clicked closed behind me and so I walked over to the window and looked out. The window looked over a large, empty room, a little like a squash court, and if I’m honest my first thought was that I had walked into their gym area by mistake, and if so, there may be some toilets around. A closer look at the room and I realised this was completely wrong. The room had metal walls and a seat in the centre that reminded me immediately of an electric chair – not that I had seen one in real life, but you’ve seen I’m sure, like I have, those horror films which have these
metal chairs, unforgiving and cold, with straps on the armrests and a helmet to keep the head from jerking too much in its final death throes. Just to add to the sense of foreboding, there were dark stains on the painted floor, spreading out from the chair as if unfortunate victims had bled out, struggling against the electricity coursing through their body and the knives ripping through their veins, seeing their lives leave them in the full horror of what was happening to them. All this was of course in my imagination only, and I must confess to a love of body horror, albeit on screen only – although I felt a strange thrill about what I was seeing and the possibilities it raised. As I watched, however, a door opened in the far side of the room and a man stumbled in – clearly pushed from behind. I say a man, although I couldn’t be sure – he had a black mask over his head, tied around his neck. His gloved hands were tied behind his back and he stood uncertainly, trying to regain his balance, half crouching in fear.
Someone else walked in and the door closed behind him – disappeared, actually, melting back into the metal wall, as if it had never been there. There stood a man, tall and slight, with a thin neck and a gaunt face, his black hair cropped short on his head. He smiled a cold smile on a mean face, holding his hands behind his back, and he was smartly dressed in