Empty.
It was way too early on a Sunday morning for anybody to be down here.
So, she stepped back into the office and closed the door behind her.
“Lilly?” She called again. This time loud with mock exasperation, since she wasn’t expecting a response.
She was frustrated.
Freaked out about last night, unnerved by the perpetual gloom, and irked that Lilly had left her post and gone home, without waiting for her.
The day she arrived, Lilly lectured her about never leaving the desk unmanned, yet…
Are you looking for a reason to quit?
She sighed. It was that obvious even to herself.
She switched on the computer, turned on the only desk lamp that ever seemed to work down here, and rubbed her arms.
Rachel had become accustomed to the cold in the dungeon, and often dressed to compensate, but today seemed much colder than usual.
She walked over to the radiator and touched it, it was hot.
So why’s it so bloody cold?
She made hot chocolate, while her mind drifted back to everything that had happened since she’d arrived; Jason, the dungeon, Lilly, and last night’s freak show.
It was particularly quiet this morning.
Creepier.
As if the whole of London was sleeping in. The traffic had stopped rolling, people had stopped talking, and the planes had stopped flying.
Or at least it feels that way.
She zipped up her fleece, sat down at the desk, and hugged the hot mug of chocolate for a few seconds, before taking a sip from it.
She signed into the switchboard and checked the daily log which was empty, as she expected.
Because it didn’t matter if she’d gone to the trouble of reconnecting, and reprogramming the switchboard, Lilly refused to use it, stating she much preferred, and was used to, using a pen and notepad.
But then, there were no notes from the night before either. No messages to pass on.
Nothing.
She sighed as her attention was drawn to the flashing cursor that, like an anxious puppy, wanted her to play with it.
She looked at it and then the button above that read, View Logs.
Of course.
Maybe she could find out more information about the mysterious phone call she’d received on Friday night.
She explored Optel’s directory for the log folder then clicked on it. Several files, each ending with the extension of .log presented themselves.
She checked the dates. All the files were recent, from when she’d reconnected the computer to the switchboard.
She spent the next fifteen minutes checking each and every log but found nothing of interest. None of them were for the night in question, certainly not around the time when Tom was with her.
Tom. Yes, what happened to you, and what was with that look on your face when I asked about Keri? You know something about her, don’t you?
She made a mental note to seek him out when her shift was over.
She slowly slouched back in her chair, only to lunge forward once more!
She turned and looked behind her.
“Lilly?”
The room was empty, but Rachel definitely sensed a presence in the room. It was as if somebody had walked up to and was standing behind her.
She searched the room with her eyes: the drinks table, the toilet door, the filing cabinets, empty desks, the coat stand, the closed door, more desks, the patch of grey sky, the radiator, and her station.
The room was empty.
Yet she could have sworn that somebody had moved, displacing the air behind her.
She shivered.
After several seconds, she returned to the computer screen, then quickly glanced behind her, and then back at the computer once more.
On the monitor, she studied the files for a few seconds longer, as if expecting to see something she had missed, but she knew she hadn’t overlooked anything. There weren’t that many files.
You checked every single one, there’s nothing here. There’s no record of that call.
But then she had another thought. What if the file had been saved somewhere else?
She clicked the search button and typed in *.log - she knew that the computer would have to return everything on its hard drive that ended in that extension - and pressed return.
As she waited, she took a sip from her cup, flinched and spat the contents back out; the chocolate was stone cold, as if it had been sitting there all night.
She dumped the mug on the table; it was so cold in here even hot drinks turned cold in minutes.
The computer began to render its results, and Rachel held her breath as the list of files appeared, like a train station board, on the screen.
It had found all the files she had already examined, the ones contained inside the LOGS directory, but it was still searching. That was a good sign. Although, it was slowly reaching the end of the alphabet.
Rachel was about to close down the window when, suddenly, a batch of files appeared, all starting with the prefix of X and all stored within a folder on the root of the C: Drive, called Untitled.
She clicked it open and was elated to find almost 100 files with varying creation dates. Some as recent as a few months back, others from over a year ago.
These must be Keri’s files.
Rachel clicked open the first one:
KERI:> Night and day
0207 373822:> hi keri its laura
KERI:> oh hi. whats up
0207 373822:> I was just calling to check if everything is still okay for tomorrow
KERI:> Yeah thats fine am I still bringing my own stuff
0207 373822:> yeah if you could
KERI:> kay will do see you then bye
0207 373822:> bye
Rachel closed that transcript and clicked on the next.
KERI:> Night and day
UNKNOWN NUMBER:> hello sexy
KERI:> hmm you’ve come back
UNKNOWN NUMBER:>how are you?
KERI:> Im good a bit lonely
UNKNOWN NUMBER:> me too
KERI:> fancy some company
UNKNOWN NUMBER:> hmm yeah what are you wearing
KERI:> oh the usual when I am at home panties bra
UNKNOWN NUMBER:>hmm where are you
KERI> Im lying on the sofa with my legs over the arm rest its really hot
UNKNOWN NUMBER:>what else
KERI> well i just couldn’t wait any longer for your call I started without you I hope you don’t mind
UNKNOWN NUMBER:>hmmm no I don’t mind tell me what you did
KERI:> well at first cos i was so hot i got some ice from the fridge and I played with it
UNKNOWN NUMBER:> where where
KERI:> my neck. my skin my breasts and my nipples
UNKNOWN NUMBER:> how did it feel?
KERI:> it felt sooo good but not as good as your tongue i love the thought of your tongue
UNKNOWN NUMBER:> tell me
KERI:> well…
The rest of the transcript carried on in the same vein, eventually leading to full blown telephone sex.
Rachel couldn’t believe what she was reading. Not that she was a prude, far from it, but she could not believe Keri was taking this kind of call from her boyfriend while at the office. And, most surprisingly, actually enabling and storing the transcripts.
It was only when Rachel clicked on the second, the third and the fourth log file that she realised that the calls were not from Keri’s boyfriend, but from different phone numbers and different men. All with different aliases. There was no doubt that they were calling her with one obvious intention.
The length of the telephone calls varied, from ten minutes to an hour, some with identifiable phone numbers, and others which were “number withheld”.
Who are these sad people?
The next thought that popped into Rachel’s head was dismissed before it could settle there, because that was one treache
rous road she did not want to venture down.
But the thought returned moments later as she stared at the onscreen transcript. Keri was running some kind of sex line, and had managed to amass quite a client list, but who exactly were these people?
There was one obvious way of finding out. That would entail ringing each and every log with an actual phone number and seeing who answered, but that would mean disclosing her own number and identity.
Not if you withhold it like they did.
It was true.
She questioned her motive. What good would it do to know who these people were anyway?
Keri disappeared without a trace.
The thought presented itself.
There may well be information inside the logs that would assist the police in finding out exactly what had happened to her.
Now that was a scary thought. The idea of being on the other end of a phone, to a potential homicidal maniac, made her heart skip a beat.
She rejected the idea of ringing anyone, and opted instead to call Jason and tell him all about her discovery. But when she tried, her call went to voicemail. He was probably still asleep.
She glanced at the rest of the files on the screen.
Why not?
She opened more transcripts, and they read like something straight out of a sex film. Nothing was spared, no words left unused, to describe the ecstasy Keri was allegedly experiencing, while talking to the stranger at the other end of the line.
And, whilst erotic, the transcripts did absolutely nothing for Rachel, who could only imagine seedy men in their underpants doing things to themselves.
She clicked on the next file, and was about to open it when she felt fingers trace the nape of her neck!
She jumped out of her seat, and turned to look behind her, but there was nobody there.
The room was empty.
But she did feel them; cold fingers, or, more specifically, what felt like the jagged edge of fingernails, scraping across her skin, raking the small hairs that resided there. The same hairs that were bristling right now.
There’s nobody here, Rach, it’s just your imagination!
She subconsciously rubbed the back of her neck to dissolve the sensation that was still lingering there, like a phantom limb.
She was breathing heavily, and her heart was thumping so fast, she put her hand on her chest to calm it, and that’s when she noticed.
Like fog in the headlamps of a car, her breath, in the dim light of the desk lamp, was billowing out in clouds.
The room had turned ice cold.
She zipped the fleece as high as it would go.
She looked at the door, then at her desk, and then back at the door again.
Reluctantly, she walked away from the brightest part of the room, and tested the handle to make sure the door was still locked.
It was.
This made her feel slightly better.
She turned and looked back into the room.
It’s empty.
Then why did it feel like somebody was watching her?
Nobody’s here.
But she didn’t believe it.
She stood, back against the door, and watched the empty room, as if expecting someone or something to jump out at her.
Nothing. Just the whirring of the computer.
Eventually, she willed herself to return to the desk, and sat down, while still surveying the room with her eyes.
Okay, I’m done. If Lilly can abandon her post then so can I.
She grabbed the mouse to shut the computer down but something caught her eye. It sent a hot and cold shiver over her skin.
She stared at the screen, incredulously, wondering if her brain was misreading the transcript in front of her, but it wasn’t.
Without thinking, Rachel picked up her mobile phone and opened the address book.
The two matched.
Her stomach turned over.
She read the text:
KERI:> night and day
07700 374872:> hi its me
KERI:> hello you
07700 374872:> what time will you be back
KERI:> i don’t know why
07700 374872:> just wondering
KERI:> oh you missing me?
07700 374872:> what do you think?
KERI:> Ill see you soon big boy
07700 374872:> cant wait
KERI:> kay bye
Rachel gawked at the screen, and then read the transcript again, and again, and one more time.
Each time, it hit her with the same force; Jason, her boyfriend, had called here to speak with Keri. He knew her and, by the sounds of it, he knew her quite well.
It took a while for it to sink in and, as it did so, she was suddenly presented with one hideous reality. No matter how much she believed she knew about her boyfriend, she really knew nothing.
He had known Keri and he didn’t tell her about it. Why? What did he have to hide?
Is he involved in her disappearance?
The thought came to her out of nowhere and it made her feel sick.
There could be a perfectly rational explanation for this. Which is?
Regardless of anything else, he lied to you. Did he lie, though? I can’t remember if I asked him about Keri. Well, he certainly didn’t volunteer the information.
There was only one way to find out the truth.
So, with her heart in her throat, Rachel proceeded to open the rest of the messages.
She found more graphic phone calls between Keri and her so-called clients, and a couple more between her and Jason.
Interestingly, while suggestive, the phone calls between Jason and Keri were nothing like the others, which would imply that the two were either seeing each other, or working together.
Some also mentioned Laura a few times.
Rachel remembered reading that name before. In fact, she’d seen a transcript in which Laura calls to ask Keri if she was ‘on for tomorrow’.
Rachel clicked back to the original log and wrote down the phone number. Then, she traced back through some of the other logs and, where available, wrote down some of these numbers too.
First, she dialled Laura’s number and was both relieved and terrified. She was connected to a female voicemail that told her that nobody was available to take her call, to leave a message and someone would call her back.
Rachel disconnected and waited a few seconds.
She was shaking now, not just from the cold, but from the adrenaline that was surging through her veins.
Worse, she was feeling paranoid. What if she had incorrectly withheld her own caller ID? Laura, whoever she was, might be able to trace her.
She waited a few minutes.
No return call.
She paused for thought and then dialled another number, but got the voicemail of Michael Peters.
A quick search on Wikipedia told her that Michael Peters was a prominent right-wing politician. He was well known for his views on protecting the traditional institution of marriage from the perceived threat of same-sex unions. And, despite being totally turned off by politics, Rachel actually recognised the bushy white hair and teeth-filled grin.
She couldn’t help but smile.
Hypocrite. Bet you thought phone sex was much safer than trawling the streets for a hooker. But you had no idea that Keri was recording your telephone conversations.
There was no doubt in Rachel’s mind that the audio recordings of each call was being stored, in the same way the transcripts were, but for what purpose?
Blackmail?
She dialled other numbers, and was surprised to find herself connected to a whole group of public, and not so public, figures: judges, bankers, businessmen.
The list was long.
So that is what you were, Keri? Some kind of classy phone sex prostitute, slash blackmailer. What the hell is your connection to my boyfriend?
Rachel knew there was only one way to find out. She was going to have to confront him, but her t
houghts were interrupted by a sound across the room.
She looked up and watched, in stupefied wonder, as the once locked door clicked, and slowly creaked wide open.
50 Alive
The patter of soft shoes, the scuffing sound of a wheeling trolley, and the faint smell of cooked breakfast wafted in from the corridor. It signalled the start of a new day at the hospital where, during the night, Elisabeth Harrison had been moved to a side room.
To those close to her, the move felt like a positive sign when, in reality, it was simply the hospital’s way of freeing up vital space in Intensive Care.
Elisabeth was still tethered to an array of machines that the doctor, somewhat pragmatically, explained were the only things keeping her alive.
He had returned during the night, and had ordered regular visits by nurses, as well as hourly updates on the patient’s condition.
Adam had taken the opportunity to ask the doctor if there was any more he could share about his girlfriend’s condition. The doctor shook his head, and repeated that they would not know anything else until later in the morning, when the specialist had examined Elisabeth, and they had managed to discuss test results.
That was nearly five hours ago.
Now, from his position on the armchair, with his jacket over him as a makeshift blanket, Adam’s eyes fluttered open, and joy spread through him like rapid pain relief.
Elisabeth was looking at him.
He sprang to his feet, and was at her bedside in one movement.
“Elisabeth, oh my God, Elisabeth,” was all he could say, as he bent down to caress her matted hair.
Adam masked the fact that she was almost unrecognisable. The face that refused to be seen make-up free was now scrubbed clean, leaving behind jaundiced skin and yellow eyes. There were various lines and tubes leading in and out of her body, and an oxygen mask, affixed to her face, hissed loudly like a reptilian sentinel.
She tried to speak.
“No, no, no…don’t try to speak, Elisabeth, just rest. Everything’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.” He was beaming, as he caressed her hair and wiped a runaway tear off her cheek.
He was so glad to see her conscious, he could have hugged her, but he was afraid of causing pain, so instead he held her hand as his eyes began to well, “Thank God. Thank God you’re still alive,” he muttered.
Unspeakable Page 34
