by Dan Malakin
She’d decided to go first to Konrad’s parents, before thinking about the police. She had no evidence he’d done anything wrong – where was the proof he’d hacked into her Snap account? Or that he got her SecureID reset and transferred her wages to himself? The last thing she wanted was a he-said she-said situation. His parents were good people, they were a respectable family; his dad was an aeronautics engineer, and his mother, aside from raising five children, painted floral watercolours which she sold through her website. If Rachel told them about Konrad stealing her money, they’d be mortified. They might even pay it back themselves.
After spending half an hour gazing blearily into her wardrobe – she settled on all black, jeans and jumper, plus sunglasses to hide her tired eyes – she headed into the dank morning and got on the Northern Line at Archway. Aside from a huddle of middle-aged ravers at the other end of the carriage, who shambled into the gloom at East Finchley, her carriage was empty.
She watched the greyness of north London chug past the window and tried not to think of the other couple of times she’d made that journey, Lily excited on Konrad’s lap, to his parents for a Sunday lunch – or at least their Polish variation on it, the greens replaced with sauerkraut, and a sausage shoehorned onto the plate. She’d loved those afternoons at their house. With his four siblings, brother Noel already married with two of his own, it was always so busy.
They’d never had roast dinners when she was growing up. Her dad either ate in front of the TV or, after a row with her mum, went for junk food. The times her mum sat with her at dinner, always something like spaghetti hoops on toast, she’d push the food around her plate until Rachel finished. To go from such an austere family setting to passing platters of roast lamb and heaped bowls of buttered potatoes, while everyone talked over each other about politics, or renewable energy, or something philosophical, such as whether any of us are truly free, felt to her like someone had opened a door and said, Here’s that world everyone loves so much. Come on in, pull up a chair. More than anything, Rachel had wanted that effortless normality for Lily.
Konrad’s parents lived in a modern red-brick house with a large bay window jutting from the lounge. Rachel cut between the cars on the gravel driveway. No sign of his car. Of course not. What did she expect? She pulled off her sunglasses and rang the bell, catching the ghost of herself in the slanted glass of the bay window and wincing at the haggard woman staring back. Twenty-seven today? She’d be lucky to pass for sixty-seven.
Konrad’s dad opened the door, smartly dressed in beige slacks, a white shirt, and a thick wool vest, despite it being eight thirty on a Sunday morning.
‘Czeœæ, my dear!’ he cried. He ushered her inside. ‘We’re not expecting you. Come in, come in.’
So his dad knew nothing – unless he was as good an actor as his son.
‘Have you seen him today?’ she asked, as they moved to the bottom of the stairs. Laughter came from the kitchen, the clatter of cutlery, Konrad’s sisters chatting, probably leaning against the buffet bar having cereal. Rachel watched his father for his reaction, too hot in her coat, feeling the sweat collecting in her armpits and sliding down her sides.
‘He’s still sleeping. You hear him upstairs.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll wake him.’
She took the stairs slowly, wanting to retch. Her money, that was all she wanted, the rest of it, the psycho stuff, the messing with her head, he could keep.
She got to Konrad’s door. His snores were loud enough to hear on the landing. How could he be asleep? Wouldn’t he be prepared for her to confront him? Not, judging by the volcanic sounds coming from his room, sleeping off an epic hangover?
She opened his door and stepped inside. When was she here last – a month ago? It’d been spotless then, but now wadded clothes, protein bar wrappers, and old copies of the Metro covered the floor. The air was marinated in booze sweat. She spotted Konrad submerged in his duvet, his bare legs sticking out the end. As she approached, she saw an empty bottle of Smirnoff by his bed. So brazen, she thought. Unbelievable. She pushed his shoulder. Nothing. She shook him, harder and harder – Wake up, you bastard, wake up, wake up, wake–
He shot upright, jerking his head around, grabbing the duvet and backing into the corner. ‘I didn’t…’ he muttered. ‘I don’t…’
‘It’s me,’ Rachel said. ‘Remember me.’
He squinted from the shadows – then sprang towards her. She jumped back, leaving him to swipe at mid-air. No, not swipe. He’d gone to hug her.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘Did someone hurt you?’
‘Apart from you?’
He found his jeans. She watched his abdomen divide into fillets of muscle as he shoved them on. Get a grip, woman!
‘I want my money back,’ she said.
Konrad stopped, one leg in. ‘What money?’
‘My money. The money I need to pay the bills and feed my daughter.’
‘What?’
So this was how he was going to be, like none of it happened, she was making it all up.
‘I want every penny,’ she said. ‘Or I swear, I’m going downstairs right now and telling your parents everything.’
He looked down and groaned. ‘They’ll find out soon anyway.’
‘That you’re a thief?’
‘I did what I had to do.’
So that was it. So simple, in the end. He owed people money – and they’d been handing out regular beatings until he paid it.
‘Was any of it real?’ She felt tears pressing against her eyelids and tried to force them back. ‘Or was I just a… a fucking piggy bank to break open when you needed to pay off some–’
‘Rachel.’
‘What?’
Konrad swung his legs to the floor, the bed creaking under his weight, his jeans crumpled around his ankle. He reached for her, like she’d started to glow.
‘What are you talking about?’ he said. ‘I love you.’
‘You love me?’
‘It’s not quite how I wanted to say it for the first time, but yes.’
Was he telling her the truth? Or was this one more twist from a tangled mind?
‘Let me explain,’ Konrad said. ‘The truth this time.’
Chapter Nineteen
Loan
‘Pete should never have put me in charge of the accounts,’ Konrad started, sadly picking at one of the black scabs on his wrist. ‘I’m just not that person. I kept missing tax payments – we were fined twice last year. Anyway, last week, I got a letter from the revenue. We owed five grand, should have been paid months ago. I couldn’t believe I’d messed up again! We didn’t have it in the bank either. I thought Pete was going to kill me.’ He caught Rachel’s eye, but she looked away.
Sighing, he carried on. ‘So next day, I get this e-mail, some loan company. Like a payday loan. Usually I wouldn’t even open that stuff, but this time I thought, why not? We had some big invoices coming in. I could borrow the money until then. So I called them, and it seemed legit, they did credit checks on the phone, everything. They transferred the money to my account and I paid the bill. I thought, fantastic, I got out of that one.’
He bit his bottom lip to stop it quivering. If he was lying, then this was quite the performance. It hurt her to see him this upset, and she had to remind herself that only five minutes ago she’d been certain it was him. And he’d offered no new proof that it wasn’t him, not yet.
‘The whole thing was a trap,’ he said. ‘I’m sure of it. One of them even made a joke about the letter. And when I rang the revenue, they didn’t know anything about this bill. I probably transferred the money I borrowed straight back to them! So when they came to collect it, I told them where to go.’
He tipped his head so his cheek was in the light. The faint yellow remains of his bruises stretched out of his stubble. ‘That was their reply. After that they said that since I was defaulting on the payment, it was going up five hundred pounds a day!’
‘Wer
e they the ones who stubbed the cigars on you?’ Rachel asked.
Konrad nodded, his hand over his eyes, like it was up on a big screen and he didn’t want to look. ‘By then it was eight grand. They got me again the next day, when I was leaving work to come to you. They drove me to some lake and – and I thought they were going to drown me. They pushed me in the water, held my head under. They said this was my last chance. If I didn’t pay, they’d come after my family.’
‘Oh my god, that’s… that’s awful. Why didn’t you go to the police?’
‘Excuse me, officer. I borrowed money off some very bad dudes, and now they want it back with interest?’
In the sickly light, a couple of flies chased one another in tight loops. Rachel didn’t know what to think. If he was lying, why admit he owed money? He’d have to see that would make the raid on her own bank account more suspicious. And if he did do it, then what better way to soften her up, to make her believe him, than to say he loved her?
Until now, love had been hinted at, mentioned in passing – he’d said he loved her eyes, her smile, the way they kissed – but he'd never said he loved her. Maybe he’d seen her flinching at the word, which she undoubtedly did. The truth was, she’d wanted him to say it, she’d wanted to say it back, she’d imagined the moment countless times, but aside from to her daughter, Rachel had never said it to anyone. She wished she were more like other people who seemed to say ‘I love you’ as often as they said ‘hello’, but those words did not come easily to her lips. And yet here they were, being presented to her at the worst possible time.
‘So, yesterday I sold my car,’ he said. ‘And–’
‘You did what?’
He’d had a second-hand racing green BMW he loved so much that he’d ordered the cleaning leathers from a specialist shop in Germany.
‘–My phone, my signet.’ He pointed to his empty finger. ‘Eighteenth birthday present from my dad. I got the rest from the family bank account. Four grand. It’s supposed to be for emergencies, like if one of us gets kidnapped. No-one’s noticed yet. You probably shouldn’t be here when they do.’
‘But why not tell me? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in a relationship? Talk to each other?’
‘I didn’t want you… you know, thinking badly of me. Like I was caught up in some dodgy stuff. I know Mark doesn’t like me, and I didn’t want to prove him right.’
‘You didn’t want me to think badly of you, but you still burst in drunk, late at night–’
‘God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I did that. I don’t even remember what I … I mean…’
‘You pushed me over. I thought you were going to hit me.’
‘Oh, Rach. No, no, no. That’s not me. I’ve been all over the place, not thinking straight.’
‘Enough to believe I sent that picture of myself to Pete?’
‘They left me by that lake. Soaking wet, middle of nowhere. When I finally got a signal, I got that picture of you from him – and loads of messages from the lads, taking the piss. I just lost it.’
‘But you know I’d never do something like that, right?’
‘Of course you wouldn’t. As soon as I thought about it the next day I knew.’ He rubbed his eyes again. ‘I wanted to call you, but I kind of remembered I did something bad, not that I pushed you, but something… I thought you’d never want to speak to me again. But where did Pete…? I mean, how did he get…?’
‘It’s… complicated,’ she replied. ‘It’s a long story. But I didn’t send it to your sleazy mate, you can be sure of that.’
‘I’m done with Pete – the business, everything. I still can’t believe he sent you a dick pic. That’s so not on.’
She frowned. ‘No. It’s not.’
‘I’m not hanging out with him anymore. Or the rest of that lot. I just want to be with you and Lil.’ Konrad was looking at her intently, like he was waiting for her to make up her mind. ‘I want to get back to where we were last week, before all this. Are we…? I mean, if there’s anything I can do to prove to you how much you mean to me.’ He tried for a smile. ‘I’ll even let you go on a date with Harry.’
She ignored the joke – she wasn’t there yet. ‘I just need to know. Have you got my money?’
‘What money?’
‘Your bank account. Let me see it.’
‘What? I–’
‘Someone called my bank yesterday, pretending to be me,’ she said, watching his reaction. ‘They transferred over two thousand pounds, all my wages, to you.’
His body jolted like he’d touched a live wire. ‘I thought when you said your money… I thought you meant I owed you for like, shopping. Not that I’d actually stolen…’
He sprang up and hunted through the pile of work overalls on his desk, spilling a stack of ring binders to the floor, pulling out an old MacBook Air covered in Panini football stickers. He logged into Barclays, mouth working as he remembered his details, tapping his fingers beside the trackpad while his account loaded.
Rachel’s fists were bunched so hard the tops of her nails bent painfully against her palm. The shock of surprise on his face, the agitated glances he kept throwing her way as the page loaded, were making her doubt it was him. Yes, it could all be an act, but this felt like her Konrad, the man who surprised her on the morning of their three month-iversary with a plate of smoked salmon blinis and a bottle of white wine in bed, the man who loved to spin Lily round in the living room until they both collapsed dizzy to the floor. Not some psychopath who’d been stringing her along for the past year, waiting to cash in their relationship. The frames of the web page appeared. Please let it be there. Please let him not be involved.
The summary page finished loading. Rachel scanned it for his current account.
She found it at the top – it was empty.
A sick feeling swelled in her gut. A whole month’s wages. Until now some part of her had assumed that wouldn’t happen, that either Konrad was innocent, in which case the money would still be in his account, or he’d stolen it, so she could take it up with his parents. But if they’d both been scammed, then it was gone, really gone. What were they going to live on?
Konrad clicked into it. At the bottom was the transfer in from her account, and below that a transfer out, the entire balance, beside the description: BRANCH WITHDRAWAL FINCHLEY CENT.
‘No way,’ he said. ‘It can’t be…’
‘What?’
‘Don’t you see? Someone took it out at Finchley Central. Our office is there – I go to that bank. They want you to think it’s me.’ He threw the laptop onto the bed and took Rachel’s hands before she had a chance to react. ‘Who’s doing this to me? Why are they doing it? I’ve never done… I keep trying… but I don’t understand.’
Rachel saw her seventeen-year-old self, reading the awful Facebook comments Alan Griffin wrote in her name. She saw him next to her at the cinema ticket counter, paying to see the same film, casual as nothing, as though she wasn’t even there. She remembered how it felt to run into the toilets, sit in a cubicle with her head in her hands, and wonder if she was actually going insane. She felt again the fear and desperation that had dogged her every waking moment for a year and a half.
‘You believe me, don’t you?’ Konrad pleaded, rubbing his thumb over the back of her fingers. ‘Rachel, tell me you believe me.’
This is what he does to people.
‘I believe you,’ she said.
Konrad exhaled, hand to his chest, as if he’d been given the all-clear from a disease everyone assumed to be terminal. ‘Someone wants you to think I stole it from you to pay those thugs.’ He headed for the sock drawer, saw it was empty, and hunted among the mess on the floor. ‘Let’s go to the police.’
‘But they’ll think you stole it.’
‘I have to prove to you I didn’t.’
It was so clear – a perfect set-up. If Konrad goes to the police, they arrest him for stealing her money; he refuses to go, she thinks he took
it to pay his debts.
‘You can’t go to the police,’ she said. ‘That might be what he wants you to do.’
‘What?’ He leaned against the wardrobe to put on his sock. ‘Who?’
‘Better sit for this,’ she said.
She hadn’t told Konrad much about her past, little more than that her mum had died when she was young. But in trying to explain about Alan Griffin, maybe because she was so hungry and tired that she couldn’t keep her thoughts straight, she found herself going further and further back, until she had told him everything. Her eating disorder, the photo, the d0xing, Griffin stalking her, then the hospital, how sick she’d been at her lowest point, only pausing when she got to the hacker. Aside from Mark, who was as guilty as her, no-one knew about Regret. Not Becca, not Spence. No-one. Even now, Rachel would be in a lot of trouble if the wrong person found out – more than likely both her and Mark would go to prison for a long time. She hoped to God she wasn’t making a mistake.
Konrad listened in silence. ‘Wow, okay,’ he said, when she’d finished. ‘There’s a lot about you I don’t know.’
‘Now you know more than anyone.’
He rubbed under his jaw with the back of his fingers. ‘Right, okay,’ he said, staring straight ahead, his face caught in a frown. She didn’t know if he was annoyed with her for dragging him into her drama, or simply getting his head around what she’d said. A brief smile came to his lips.
‘What’s funny?’ she asked.
‘If I knew all that, there’s no way I would’ve thought you sent that photo to Pete. Not even if I was hammered.’
‘I should have told you,’ she said. ‘I just… It’s not something I like to talk about.’
‘So you think this Griffin bloke had something to do with what happened to me? The money being stolen from my account? That e-mail from those thugs?’
‘It has to be.’ She rubbed her face and let out a noise that even to her sounded tired. ‘It’s the only explanation.’
