That’s it.
Erin didn’t submit any fashion reports.
Why?
We were so focused on that day. The day she disappeared.
What happened in the days before? What happened to stop her doing the job she loved more than anything?
I sit bolt upright in the dark room. Grab my laptop from where I left it on the floor after my last research session. As it fires up, I riffle through my handbag for the coloring book and a pen. Start jotting down as much as I can remember from the Friday and Saturday of the trip.
Friday. She definitely said she was going to an internet café to work—the hotel Wi-Fi wasn’t fast enough to upload high-res photos to the Northern Heart Dropbox account. Did she have problems once she got there? Was the broadband still not good enough? I’m sure she would have mentioned that to Lowe, though. This doesn’t make any sense.
Why?
Pulling my hair into a bun, I prop myself up in bed. Clean my tearstained face with a dried-up makeup wipe. Bring up the remote access email server for Northern Heart. Log in to Erin’s account.
We all have a variation of the same password. Hers is NHBaxter1014. Mine’s NHCorbett1014. NH, surname, the month and year we joined.
There are dozens of unread emails. Nobody’s been checking her account in her absence, probably assuming that an intern has no important correspondence to check. They’d be right. It’s mainly press releases from fashion brands, beauty e-letters and invites to design graduate fashion shows in London. The odd email chain with pushy PRs asking if she liked the pashminas they sent, and whether they’d be making it into the next issue. All unanswered.
Her sent box is pretty unremarkable. Some of the dates do match up with the time we were in Serbia, but they’re mostly just PR inquiries she’s forwarded to the fashion editor to deal with. The only accompanying text from Erin is Sent from my iPhone. So they weren’t accessed from the internet café.
I’m about to log out when I notice the bolded folder on the side panel: Drafts (1). I click.
There’s something there: 10 July 2015. Linda Lowe in the addressee field. I open it.
To: [email protected]
Subject: JUMP fashion report, day one
Date: Fri, 10 July 2015 14:05:21 +0200
From: [email protected]
Hi, Linda,
Hope all’s well at Northern Heart HQ!
Please find attached the first draft of my day one fashion report from JUMP—hope it’s all right. If the subeditor has many changes, feel free to fire them over and I’ll make the amendments down this end.
Currently uploading the accompanying images to Dropbox, so
And then it cuts off. It was never finished, never sent.
What the hell happened at five past two in the internet café? Why did she never send that email?
It’s too weird. Until now I’ve had problems defining “out of character,” but this certainly is. My heart thuds. The world seems to think Erin was raped. Left for dead. Sexual assault gone bad. After all, that’s how most missing girls turn up.
But this proves—or at least hints—that something was awry at least two days before she disappeared.
Doesn’t it?
Exhaustion clings to my body like cigarette smoke, but I’m mentally alert.
Think, Carina.
I’m not the greatest technology whizz, but I try to find some kind of location stamp on the draft. An IP address. Anything.
Nada. If I could narrow down which internet café she was in, maybe it’d help. I don’t know how, but I’m running out of ideas. If only her laptop used location services, like her phone—
Like her phone.
I grab mine from under my pillow. Open the messaging app we use to spam each other with pointless crap. Our ongoing conversation is full of funny memes, tales of public transport woes and messages along the lines of I’m grabbing a Starbucks before work, want the usual? It physically hurts to scroll through and read, like someone’s plunged a knife into my heart. But I know what I’m looking for.
That Friday afternoon, while Erin was working, I was in a pavement café with Jin Ra and Clara. We had pancake stacks bigger than our heads, and I sent her a picture saying: Me and my leaning tower of awesomeness wish you were here! She pinged back saying, OMG! That’s just cruel. I’ll be here crying into my laptop. SAVE ME SOME. Bitch. Sent at 14:01:57 +0200. I swipe the message to the side, praying she enabled in-app mobile location.
Bingo.
Povezivanje Kafe, Novi Sad.
They don’t have a website, but I pull it up on street view on my laptop. I vaguely recognize it—it’s on a side street off Zmaj Jovina, the main drag with pavement cafés and pastel-colored buildings, some sky blue with white gables, some pale yellow with chipped green woodwork and some candyfloss pink with cream-colored cornicing.
I screenshot the shopfront, try to imagine Erin sitting in there working. It doesn’t fit, but it must have happened. What could have stopped her working so abruptly that she didn’t even send her email?
What do I know so far?
I riffle through the pages of my coloring book. My God, I really am nuts. There’s a beautiful lotus flower illustration utterly destroyed by my biro scrawls. The publisher who prints the adult coloring books—claiming they’re excellent for inducing a sense of relaxation and calm—would have a seizure if they could see my copy now.
I find a new page to ruin. A dainty dragonfly. Scribble Povezivanje at the top, underline it twice.
Okay. First, she could have been pregnant. Cramps? Some kind of pain in that general region?
A panic attack about her situation? They’re sort of my area of expertise, but anyone could fall down the anxiety rabbit hole in that predicament.
After a moment’s pause, I also jot down what Karen told me, and what I’ve ascertained myself: when things go wrong, Erin blames herself. Lashes out. Loses her touch on rationality. That could be relevant, or it could be nothing.
Next, her father. Did she receive a phone call from him? From the prison? From her mother or sister fretting about his release? I jot down the exact time the email draft saved, unsent. Make a note to tell the police to cross-check it with her phone records.
And the bruise. How could that tie into this? Maybe it wasn’t as old as I thought. Maybe she sustained it on that day. Did somebody grab her in the café? Freak her out enough that she left, work unfinished, Lowe unanswered?
I make another note: tell police to check CCTV in the café at that time. Look for anyone approaching her, talking to her, touching her.
Andrijo? No. Even I know that’s a huge stretch. No matter how potent his intensity.
Still. I write down: check Andrijo was at work on Friday, July 10. I forget his boss’s name—the one who gave him the alibi—but I’m sure they can contact him again.
I zoom out of street view a little. What else is around Povezivanje Kafe? More shops and cafés, mainly. Liberty Square. The cathedral. Danube Park, where I sat and ate pistachio gelato with Tim, pretending not to be clinically insane. Digging for information about Andrijo.
It’d help if I knew where Andrijo worked—so I could see if it’s near Povezivanje. Did Tim say he was with the tourism board? With the council? I rack my brains, but I don’t think he ever mentioned it. I rub my temple—a tight tension headache is forming. Anxiety med withdrawals. Just what I need.
I tap my forefinger on my bottom lip. It’s likely that if Erin visited this café on Friday, it could be where she spent the blank hour on Sunday. Though no one has come forward, as far as I know, with any reported sightings of her—surely a member of staff or another customer recognized her? You don’t miss people like Erin. She’s never faded into the background in her life.
For lack of anything better to do,
I zoom out even farther. Flick from street view to map and back again. Frown. A few hundred yards away from the fish market, there’s a big building site taking up almost an entire block—like all the houses have been demolished, the ground flattened, and they’re starting again. But on the map view, the plot has a name: Bastixair Distribution Center. Maybe the street view is out of date, and they haven’t had a drone on the area in a while?
It’s absolutely huge, whatever it is. I do a search for Bastixair—it’s a veritable giant of a pharmaceutical company, employing thousands of workers across Serbia. I search for Andrijo’s name, but they don’t have all of their employees listed—only heads of department. There are a ton of news articles praising its scientific research and celebrating its job creation after the bloody Yugoslav Wars, plus a few excerpts from medical journals I have no hope of understanding. I’m about to click off the tab when a phrase catches my eye: Aubin’s syndrome.
I gasp.
Erin’s grandmother died of Aubin’s syndrome.
Chapter Fifteen
July 31, England
THIS HAS TO be relevant.
“Erin’s grandmother had a rare genetic disorder. Aubin’s syndrome. Manifests later in life, like Parkinson’s. She was an empty shell.”
I do a quick internet search. According to the NHS website, it’s a very rare illness. Only around one case in every 100,000 people in the UK.
“She was a wonderful lady, Simon’s mother. I miss her hugely. The way she was with the girls . . . before it all went downhill . . . it was exactly how Simon was with them. Pure, unadulterated love. She’d have done anything for them.”
There’s no way this is a coincidence. Erin’s grandmother, whom she loved dearly, suffered from a rare genetic disorder. Four years after she died from said disorder, Erin went missing within a few hundred yards of the Bastixair Distribution Center in Novi Sad. Bastixair, known for its research into Aubin’s syndrome and easing its unpleasant symptoms.
Definitely not a coincidence.
I scan the NHS entry.
No cure.
I rub my tired eyes again. Think, think, think. How does this fit?
Maybe Erin was looking for a cure. For a way to ease the symptoms.
But why? Her grandmother is already dead.
Does her father suffer from it?
I freeze.
Does Erin suffer from it?
Does her baby?
It’s late on a Friday night, so it’s not like I’m surprised when Officer Tierney doesn’t pick up, but a rush of disappointment floods me anyway. I leave a shaky voice mail—something about being told to leave a message after the tone unnerves me—and hang up.
Have the police uncovered this link yet? Maybe not. I only know about Erin’s grandmother through talking to Karen at her kitchen table. I’m sure the detectives have spoken to her in great detail, but would an ailing grandmother, dead years ago, have come up?
Even if so, they may not have context for the piece of information, like I didn’t until five minutes ago. Bastixair is right on their doorstep, but would they really know what medical research the pharmaceutical giant is carrying out? I’m undeniably ignorant when it comes to knowledge of what scientific discoveries are occurring in my home region. Why would they be any different? Besides, Aubin’s might not have been mentioned at all.
I feel my heart beating: palpitations. Anxiety attacking me with vengeance after I tried to quell it with drugs. Coupled with fear over what I’ve just potentially discovered . . . the dose of adrenaline feels near-lethal.
Aubin’s syndrome. Time to do some research.
Government health websites tell me all I need to know. It’s a degenerative genetic disorder with harrowing symptoms. They start physically—muscle weakness, slow movement, difficulty walking and talking. The mental deterioration comes soon after. Dementia, depression, insomnia, behavioral changes. Sensory confusion. Emotional detachment.
My heart aches for Erin, watching her beloved grandmother become a stranger. Personality atrophy that’d soon drive her father to alcohol and violence. Cramps seize my chest.
I keep reading. The disease tends to manifest most commonly in old age, with most sufferers being over the age of seventy, but several cases of early onset Aubin’s have been reported in the UK this year.
Was Erin one of them?
My mind goes a million miles an hour, a high speed chase between fear and curiosity. Physically, she was the same as always. Elegant, strong. Capable. Mentally? The words depression and behavioral changes leap off the screen.
I look for information on how the symptoms of early onset Aubin’s differ, but find nothing.
Tugging my ridiculous coloring book out from under my pillow, I’m about to start making yet more notes when the blaring of my phone cuts through the darkness. Squinting at the screen, my stomach flips: Paige Tierney.
“Hello?” I say. My voice cracks. I grab my glass of water, sip thirstily.
“Carina? I got your voice mail. Is everything okay?” There’s genuine concern in her voice. Either she’s a great actress or she really does care. “You said it was important.”
“I . . . guess.” I clear my throat again. It’s full of sawdust. “I was just . . . just calling about the case. Erin’s case.” Swallow. “I found something.”
“In what respect?”
I almost say “a clue” before I remember I’m not in a Scooby Doo cartoon. “Just . . . something. Her grandmother. She died, a few years ago.”
“Yes, Karen mentioned that. Erin was heartbroken. Who wouldn’t be?”
Palpitations are getting more erratic. “Yeah. She, erm . . . she had an illness. A genetic disorder, called Aubin’s syndrome. Did Karen mention that?”
A pause. I can hear a TV talk show on in the background. A studio audience laugh uproariously. I wonder if she’s alone. Eventually she replies, “I’m not sure. She could have. I’m sorry, Carina, I don’t have my notes in front of me.”
Notes. She needs notes in order to remember the details of the case. Sometimes I forget other people don’t think about Erin every second of every day.
“Right.” I know my words will have much less impact now, but I persevere. “Well, Aubin’s is a genetic disorder. No cure, but there’s one pharmaceutical company in Europe who produce medication that eases the symptoms. It’s based in Serbia.”
More riotous laughter from her TV show in the pause that follows. “Oh. Okay. That’s . . . interesting.”
“It is,” I insist, as if I’m trying to convince her of something terribly obvious like the sun’s surface being hot. “Called Bastixair. And there’s a distribution center just a few hundred yards from the internet café she was using in Novi Sad.” My words are muddling together. “That can’t be coincidence.”
The silence that follows is painful. “When was the last time you slept, Carina?”
This afternoon, when I passed out at work for hours and was shaken awake by my boss, who promptly fired me.
“I . . . what? What does that have to do with anything?”
“I know this is very tough for you. Please tell me you’re looking after yourself?”
“Yes,” I mumble, suddenly a shy schoolgirl meeting a new teacher for the first time. My cheeks burn. She’s dismissing me.
“Good. It’s late. Go and get some rest. We can talk tomorrow, if you like?”
Paranoia tells me she knows. She knows how badly I fucked up today, and she’s being all sympathetic and maternal, but also disregarding everything I’m saying as a symptom of insanity.
I don’t want that. I want her to listen to me.
But after we hang up, I’m far less sure of the importance of my discovery.
I’ve messed with my meds and now I’m losing my mind.
Chapter Sixteen
Augus
t 1, England
I HAVE NO job, no friends, no life outside my desire to find Erin. But I can’t do that in England. Not with a FLO who thinks (knows) I’m insane, and nobody else I can talk to about it.
Well, not nobody. Karen.
So when I call her, and ask if I can come with her to Serbia . . . I’m really hoping she’ll say yes.
I want to go, and I want to slot all the little pieces of the puzzle into place back where it all began—or ended, depending on how you look at it. I want to prove to myself that my fear and my anxiety do not control me, and that I can overcome my problems when it really matters. Even without Erin.
So I hoped Karen would say yes. And she does.
She wants the company, she says, and she knows how close Erin and I am. Since her daughter started working all hours at Northern Heart, some of her university friends had started drifting away, and a lot of her high-school friends fell out a long time ago. Annabel refused to come. I’m the only one who bothered to visit Karen in the aftermath. I feel terrible when she says that—I had an ulterior motive. But still.
I ask about Smith, whether he’d want to come, too, but she tells me he’s going off the rails. That does not surprise me. I think of the two of us sobbing in that graveyard, of how grief had swallowed him whole.
Karen picks me up. We talk mindlessly on the way to the airport. She’s jittery with nerves about what’s waiting for her in Serbia. Erin doesn’t come up in conversation once, and somehow that’s more awkward than discussing her. I imagine her in the backseat, listening to us dodge around her disappearance by talking about the weather and her new lipstick and how beautiful Belgrade’s waterfront supposedly is. She’d probably find it hilarious, knowing Erin. She always had a morbid sense of humor.
Not had, I correct myself. Has.
I’d be lying if I said I’m not relieved we can’t get seats together on the plane, since I booked so last minute. I appreciate the alone time on the flight, even though I just read the same page of my book over and over again and try to resist the drinks trolley as it clatters down the aisle. Alcohol is not a good move right now. Not when so much hangs in the balance.
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