One by One

by Ruth Ware

  Out of everyone here, I believe Liz could kill in cold blood, and conceal that fact from us all. No one pays attention to her. And for a killer, that’s a kind of superpower.

  I am almost at Elliot’s door. I am walking as silently as I can now, remembering the way Liz’s steps along the corridor were audible in the room below. I take the passkeys out of my pocket, and choosing one, I insert it gently into the lock, turn it, and open Elliot’s door, very, very quietly.

  It creaks, just a little bit, and I hold my breath, hoping Liz didn’t hear. But there is no sound from below. If she came up, I would have no excuse for being down this end of the building. The natural thing would be for me to use the staff bathroom, up the far end. Or, if I couldn’t be bothered to walk that far, to access one of the guest bedrooms closer to the stairs. Not Elliot’s. Not a room with a—

  The smell hits me as I open the door. It’s a smell I remember from the teaching hospital.

  There is a dead body in this room—beneath the reek of urine and the incongruously homely smell of spilled coffee, it smells of death. Not badly, the room is too cold for that, but unmistakably. A fetid, animal kind of smell.

  There is no way you would choose to use this room for anything, if you had another option.

  The smell makes me gag, but I push the urge down and edge across the room to the far side of Elliot’s desk. And there it is—sitting like a cinder block on the floor, a single red LED piercing the gloom. My heart gives a thump of relief. And almost at the same time I notice two things. The first is that a phone is plugged into the charging block, and it’s switched on, and fully charged. Elliot left his phone charging. Of course he did.

  But the second thing I see is that he has an android, and mine is an iPhone. My phone is in my pocket, but I can’t use his charger.

  I want to kick myself. I should have collected my own charger first—that was incredibly stupid of me. Do I have time? Ordinarily it would take me less than a minute to run to the other end of the corridor, slam through the staff doors, and grab my charger from beside my bed. But now, I can’t run. I can’t slam through the doors. I can’t afford to make a sound.

  I make up my mind. I will try Elliot’s phone first. You can dial some emergency numbers from the lock screen—I just have no idea whether 112 or 17 are among them.

  I pick it up and the screen jumps into life, but with a lurch of disappointment I see there is still no reception—just an x by the grayed-out scale. I can’t call anyone.

  Still, there are a bunch of app notifications on the lock screen, and it’s with a flicker of hope that I scroll down them, trying to figure out if the phone has connected at all during the past twenty-four hours. If it’s getting even tiny blips of reception, that might be enough. If I can get into the phone I could send a text, which would just sit there in the outbox until the phone connected. I wouldn’t have to do anything. Just wait for it to send.

  And there it is. A WhatsApp from six hours ago. And below that, a notification from Snoop. Anon101 is geoclose, whatever that means. Geoclose? I’ve never had a notification like that on my Snoop account.

  I have no time to worry about that now though. The question is how I get into the phone. I have three tries before it locks out, and then I’ll have no choice but to go back and get my charger, and wait while my own phone powers up, which will take long enough to make Liz wonder where I am.

  I’m racking my brains, trying to remember if Kate ever told me Elliot’s date of birth, and if so whether to try the year, or the day and month, but when I bring up the lock screen, I come up short. It’s not a pin pad, it’s a thumb scanner.

  My stomach drops with disappointment, but then I realize what this means, and I experience a different kind of lurch, this one of nauseated horror, as it dawns on me what I have to do next. Oh God. Can I do it? And if I can, what kind of person does that make me?

  I glance across at the desk. I force myself to look at the shape I have been trying to ignore, let my eyes skitter across: Elliot. Elliot’s body.

  His hand is stretched out across the desk, and I feel my cheeks go hot and then cold and then hot again with a kind of deep piercing shame at what I am about to do. But I have to get inside that phone.

  I stand up. I unplug the phone from the block, and I take a step across the room, closer to where Elliot is sprawled. And then another. And then I am standing by his desk, reaching for his hand—his cold, firm hand.

  It is a little clammy, though that is mostly due to how cold the room is, and his arm is surprisingly heavy to maneuver, but the rigor has worn off, and it is without too much difficulty that I unfurl his fingers, and hold his long, bony thumb between my fingers, chill and firm as a joint of meat.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper to him. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  And then I press the tip against the lock screen.

  For a minute nothing happens and I feel a piecing, shooting sense of disappointment. Can the phone somehow tell? Does it work off body warmth? Does it know that this is a dead man, not a living owner?

  There is only one way to find out. Feeling even sicker, I put down the phone and rub the cold, clammy tip of Elliot’s thumb between my palms, chafing it roughly, trying to get a little of my own body heat into Elliot’s skin.

  It’s surprisingly hard. My hands are cold too, and for a long time, all I can feel is the bone-deep chill of dead flesh against mine. But I persist, huffing on his thumb to try and warm him with my breath, and at last there does seem to be some perceptible difference in temperature. Before it can dissipate, I pick up the phone and press it quickly against the tip, holding my breath.

  And then the display lights up, with the hot pink of the Snoop app’s home screen. And I’m inside Elliot’s phone.

  I’m about to minimize Snoop and navigate to the text message app, when I stop. There is something really odd about Elliot’s Snoop app.

  He is being followed by 1.2 million people. Which is not that surprising, I guess. He’s known to be one of the cofounders of the company, and his Snoop ID is public.

  But the weird thing is that he’s following only two people. One of them is Topher—I remember his avatar and ID from when I followed him myself—Xtopher and a photo of him balancing a spoon on his nose, with a little tick to show he’s verified. Snooping Xtopher for 3 years, says the text beside his name. That’s not the weird part.

  The weird part is that the other person he’s subscribed to is a totally anonymous user, Anon101. Anon has no picture, and when I click on the blank space where their avatar would have been, to take me through to their profile, there is nothing in their bio either. Go away, is the only line they’ve put in the “About” field, which maybe explains why they have only one follower. That’s it.

  But under location, there is an entry. A string of GPS coordinates and a tiny logo saying “beta” in brackets.

  This must be the update Elliot was working on before he died—the geosnooping update that he and Topher were so excited about, the one that let them locate Eva. But who is Anon101 and why is Elliot following them? Is Anon Eva? But, no, that’s ridiculous, not with one follower. And besides, I’ve snooped Eva. I can’t remember what her ID was, but I remember her avatar—a snow leopard wearing Ray-Bans.

  I click back to the previous screen.

  Snooping Anon101 for 2 days says the text beside their name.

  Elliot followed Anon101 right before he died.

  My stomach is fluttering now, and my thumb hovers above the “Geosnoop (beta)” tab at the top of the menu. I remember that notification on the home screen now—the notification that I swiped aside so carelessly. Anon101 is geoclose.

  I press the Geosnoop tab.

  In your area: reads the text at the top of the menu. And then, underneath, there is a list of just two people.

  Littlemy

  Anon101

  I am Littlemy. Which means… Anon101 must be… Liz.

  LIZ

  Snoop ID: ANON101

 
Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 0

  Snoopscribers: 1

  There is something wrong. Erin has not come back from her trip to the toilet. She has been gone a long time, but more than that, I can’t hear anything at all. No doors opening. No footsteps on the stairs. No sound of water flushing. Has something happened? Has she fallen asleep?

  I lie there chewing my lip, trying to work out what to do. I went after her last time. I was worried when she took so long over changing her top, but now I am not sure if that was a good idea. The panic on her face when she opened the bedroom door and saw me standing there, just about to knock, made me think I had made a mistake. And now I wonder, is that when her manner changed? Maybe she is frightened of me. Perhaps she thinks I’m a stalker.

  People have a habit of pulling away from me. It is something I have noticed over the years. It started with the girls at school—they would be friendly at first, and I’d try to make overtures back—and then they would start to cool, for reasons I could never put my finger on. So I would try harder. Make more effort. But the more I tried, the more they seemed to grow cold, until at last everything I did just seemed to make them hate me more.

  At primary school, the other girls weren’t subtle about it. Go away, Liz, you’re so weird. I heard it again and again. As we got older, the girls in my class pretended to be kinder, but underneath they were thinking the same things, beneath their Oh, so sorry, we’re saving this seat or My mum says I can only have three girls to the sleepover, really sorry, Liz.

  The girls were bad. The boys were worse. The worst of all was Kevin.

  Even his name makes me shudder.

  I liked Kevin. I thought that he might like me too. He had acne and his breath was a little stale, and he wasn’t particularly handsome. He didn’t seem as unattainable as some of the other boys. I got a book out of the library on how to make boys like you, but it was confusing and contradictory. Laugh at his jokes, it read. So I did. But then Kevin would look at me as if I were crazy and say, “What are you laughing at?”

  Give him something to remind him of you. I gave him a pair of mittens I had knitted. I left them in his locker, but he never wore them. Later I found them in lost property.

  Engineer chance meetings. I followed him around. I made sure that I was there, leaning against the lockers when he came out of the boys’ toilets. I waited by his bus stop. One day I followed him home.

  It was November and almost dusk. I didn’t think he had noticed me, but he had. We had walked nearly two miles when he turned on me. “What do you want, you fucking weirdo?” he said, his voice cracking and breaking on the last word. Only he didn’t say it. He came right up into my face and screamed it. I could smell his stale breath and feel his spit hitting me as he shouted.

  It was dark. Rain had begun to fall. We were in a lonely part of the park. A small part of me wanted to kill him. But I didn’t. Instead, I cowered away from him, cringing from his anger and then, when he pushed me and yelled, “Are you fucking desperate or what?” I ran. I was crying and shaking.

  By the time I was hired at Snoop, I had learned my lesson. I kept myself to myself. I didn’t try to make friends. I didn’t trust anyone.

  But Erin… somehow Erin seemed different. She was so friendly when we first arrived. I remember her sympathy when I asked her advice about the dress code, her kindness as she towed me to the ski lift that first day. She really seemed to like me. Now I am not so sure. What if she was pretending all along?

  I want to go up there and ask her what she thinks of me, whether she is scared of me, what she is doing up there in the dark. But I don’t know how she would feel about that. Maybe I could say I was worried about her. After all, three people have died. It’s what a good friend would do. Look out for her. Check she was okay.

  But would she see it that way? Would she know I was just being a good friend? Or would she give me that look again—that panicked, terrified look I saw in Kevin’s eyes when he turned on me. The one I saw in Erin’s eyes when she opened the door last time. The look that says, You weirdo. The look that says, I’m scared.

  I am still dithering ten minutes later. At last I can’t take the silence anymore. I have to know what she is doing.

  I swing my legs out of bed and stand up. I’m still wearing my ski suit, so I’m not that cold. My knee still hurts, but I can put my weight on it now. Really I am very glad not to be snowshoeing to the other chalet. I mean, I would never have fallen down the stairs deliberately, that would be a really stupid idea. I could have been killed. But it worked out well.

  Still, I go carefully on the stairs, holding the handrail. The wood is slippery beneath my socks, the treads themselves are hard to see in the darkness, and I definitely don’t want another fall.

  At the top of the stairs I pause, holding my breath, trying to listen. Where is she? In the staff quarters? I’m just about to turn left, to see if she’s down that end of the corridor, when I hear a noise. It’s a very slight one, but it is coming from the opposite direction—from the direction of the corridor that holds Miranda’s, Elliot’s, and my rooms. What would she be doing down there?

  But before I can find out, I hear another noise from the same direction—this time unmistakable. It’s the sound of a toilet flushing. The door to Miranda’s room opens, and Erin comes out. She doesn’t look that surprised to see me, this time, instead she just smiles.

  “Hi, Liz.” Her voice is slightly breathless. “Sorry, were you worried?”

  “A bit.” I frown at her. “What were you doing in Miranda’s room?”

  “I already flushed the staff toilet. I didn’t think Miranda would mind, and it was the closest. Um, Liz, fair warning—” It’s hard to tell in the darkness, but it looks like her face is a bit flushed. “Sorry, this is TMI, but I had a bit of an upset stomach. I think maybe the cassoulet wasn’t heated through properly. That’s why I—well, that’s why it took me a bit longer.”

  “Oh!” I’m not sure what to say to that. Should I laugh? No, that would seem strange. I arrange my features into what I hope is a sympathetic smile. Then I worry that it might just look like a smile, so I frown instead. “Oh, gosh, poor you.”

  “I realize you probably didn’t want to know that, but I thought I should warn you in case—well, I mean, we had the same supper—”

  “Oh, I’ve been fine,” I say hastily. It’s the truth. I haven’t had so much as a twinge. But then I’ve always had really good digestion.

  “Oh, good,” she says. There’s relief in her face. “I’d hate to have given you food poisoning on top of everything else.” She gives a shaky laugh, and then says, “Well, shall we?”

  For a minute, I’m not sure what she’s referring to, but then she nods at the stairs, and I understand what she’s saying.

  “Sure,” I say. But then something stops me. “Actually, you head down. I need the toilet as well.”

  She nods, and begins to limp her way down the spiral staircase. I watch her go for a moment, and then I head down the corridor towards my own room. I unlock the door and slip inside, and go over to the built-in closet in the corner of my room. The door is ajar, which is how I left it. But, is it my imagination, or is it very slightly wider than it was before?

  I stand stock-still for a long moment, looking at the door. It’s cracked open maybe two inches. It looks like a lot. It looks like a wider gap than before. But I can’t be sure.

  Making up my mind, I open the door and pull out my suitcase, and then I unzip the lining. Inside, pressed flat against the base of the suitcase, behind the silky lining and a piece of card, should be a scarlet ski jacket. It’s too dark to really see, and I left my torch downstairs, but when I poke my fingers through the narrow gap, I can feel it is there—its downy softness reassuring. I let out a sigh of relief and sit back on my heels.

  Then I zip up the lining and replace the case inside the cupboard, and I stand painfully and go through to the bathroom. I might as well make my story convincing while I
’m here.

  But it’s only when I’m halfway through peeling off my ski suit that something strikes me, something that stops me in my tracks.

  That suitcase was on top of the stack, on top of my little wheelie cabin bag.

  I left it the other way around. I am absolutely certain of it.

  Someone has been inside my closet.

  Erin? Or someone else?

  My heart is thumping.

  Slowly, very slowly, I pull up the zip of my jumpsuit, thinking hard, trying to figure out what to do.

  Then I flush the toilet and walk back downstairs to try to figure out how much Erin knows.

  ERIN

  Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 5

  Snoopscribers: 10

  From up above I hear Liz’s toilet flush, and I hunker down underneath the duvet, hoping I can pretend to be asleep when she comes back. My mind is racing, trying to figure out what can possibly have happened.

  Thank God I heard her coming up the stairs and was able to leave Elliot’s room and nip two doors down to Miranda’s. If she had found me coming out of Elliot’s, I would have had to come clean. And the truth is, I am much too scared to do that.

  What the hell does it all mean? Is Liz the killer? But how? Never mind motive, she has a cast-iron alibi. She was on the bubble lift going down the valley when Eva was killed.