Follow You Home

by Mark Edwards

  So while I’d almost been having sex with a Romanian woman, Laura had been pacing up and down outside the maternity ward, waiting for Erin to give birth. It added to my sense of shame. What had I been thinking?

  But layered over the shame was something worse: fear. The questions she had asked, wanting me to tell her my secrets. Was it just sex play, or something more? And if it was something more, what was she trying to get from me?

  She was Romanian. Was there any way she could know what had happened in the forest?

  Or was she trying to find out?

  I wanted badly to cling to the belief that Camelia’s words had been part of a game, the equivalent to asking someone to talk dirty, and that her being Romanian was a coincidence. But as soon as she had left I had checked the CCTV video of the intruders with the dog, studying the shape of the female intruder’s body. Slim, small breasts, a hint of blonde hair beneath the hood she wore. The more I studied the video and replayed our encounter in my mind, the more convinced I became.

  Camelia was the female intruder. And that probably—almost certainly—meant she was one of the burglars who had taken then returned my laptop. I paced the flat as I thought it through. She had followed me to Jake’s gig, tried to seduce me then, for whatever reason. She must have dropped her phone deliberately, knowing I would take it home, not realising I would switch it off. I had no memory of turning it back on—probably because she had done so when she came into my flat with the dog.

  I felt cold and shaken. Why was she following me? Why had she broken in? Had she been trying to kill me? Was it connected to what had happened to Laura and me in Romania, and if so, how?

  I felt sober now, as sober as if I’d never touched a drop of alcohol in my life. I could still feel the echo of Camelia’s body against mine, could still taste her on my lips. But who was she? And what the hell did she want?

  The next morning I went out for a long walk, then decided to take the bus home. There was a man my age on the top deck with three small children who were acting like they were full of E numbers and sugar. Every time he got one of them under control, another would run off shrieking down the bus, or start banging on the windows. I watched him as he eventually gave up, letting them do what they liked as he stared at his phone, pretending they weren’t his, probably wondering how his life had got like this. I empathised, except my toddlers were in my head. Every time I felt like I’d got a grip on one problem, another—Jake, Laura, the break-ins and Camelia—would run screaming into the forefront of my mind. Like the dad on this bus, all I wanted to do was sit and stare at something unconnected to my problems, to hide from everything, switch my brain off.

  But I forced myself to stay switched on. I remembered something Laura used to do when she was overwhelmed at work. She would sit and write everything that was bothering her on a sheet of paper, get everything out. Then she would put it into priority order, bearing in mind the consequences if she didn’t tackle each particular issue. A common technique, but one I seldom used. Now was the perfect time to start.

  I didn’t have any paper with me, so used my phone, tapping words in a stream of consciousness into the Notes app:

  Laura left me, crazy, ghosts, want her back.

  Jake—suicide??

  Who is Camelia? What does she want?

  Health, sleep, alcohol. PTSD.

  This was it. The total of my problems on a single phone screen. Studying the list, it struck me that it could be displayed in a different way, as a mind map. Romania would be in a circle in the centre, with lines leading to all the other problems. Unless Jake’s death shortly after I’d started telling him about my experiences was a coincidence, everything stemmed from that night.

  The thought of somebody pushing Jake from the bridge made me clench my fists, a red mist swirling around me. The anger must have been evident on my face because one of the errant pre-schoolers saw me and ran off crying to his dad, saying something about ‘the scary man’.

  So far, ever since getting back from Romania, I had allowed things to happen to me, a passive victim. Even my attempts to win Laura back had been ineffectual. Installing the security cameras had only led to more questions.

  It was time to change. To be active. I needed to find out exactly what was going on. But how? The first step, surely, was to find Camelia. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to do that, but if I could track her down, I could make her tell me what she knew. There had to be a way to find her. But I didn’t know anything about her: her surname, where she lived, what she did. What was I supposed to do, wander around London looking for her?

  I could, I supposed, sit and wait for her to make her next move. Surely there would be one. But I wasn’t going to do that. I needed to get the upper hand.

  As I approached my flat, I saw the fox, tearing into a bin bag that, yet again, one of my neighbours had left on the pavement. It had crept out beneath the cover of twilight and dug out a KFC box, scattering chicken bones and half-chewed corn-on-the-cobs across the entrance of the building. Sick of the mess, I shouted, ‘Hey!’ and broke into a run, chasing it up the street until it vanished into a garden and shot round the back of somebody else’s house.

  Indoors, I went straight to my laptop and onto Google.

  I typed in ‘private detective London’. There were over one million results, although of course the vast majority of these would be junk. I skimmed through the listings. Most of the private detectives listed specialised in finding out if your partner was cheating, checking up on employees or tracking down debtors. Grim stuff. I was looking for someone who had experience finding people. Clicking onto the various private detective sites, most of which looked like they were designed in 1998, made my sense of determination leak away. I could just pick one at random and hope they were competent, but there had to be a better way of finding the right person to help me, especially as I felt the need to find Camelia quickly.

  Trying a different tactic, I filtered the results so they showed only news stories, expanding my search to ‘private detective London missing’. I wanted to find a news story about an investigator who’d been successful finding a missing person. Again, most of the results were completely unhelpful, but after clicking through a dozen pages I found a news story from the summer, something that had taken place while Laura and I were on our Grand Tour.

  I read through the story. A young Eastern European woman, from Belarus, had been reported missing by her employer. A private detective, based in Kentish Town, not far from here, had discovered what happened to her. It was a dark tale involving London’s immigrant population, illegal employment practices and rough sex gone wrong. The investigator had discovered the truth before handing the case over to the police. His name was Edward Rooney and his website consisted of a single page, filled with basic information and a couple of glowing testimonials, and a contact form.

  I completed the form and hit ‘send’ before I could change my mind.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Edward Rooney’s office was on the second floor of a dirty white building in a Kentish Town side street. The street was half-scuzzy, half-gentrified; there was a betting shop next to a trendy coffee place. The snow here had been cleared from the roads and pavements and it was warmer today, rain in the forecast. By the end of the day the snow would all be gone.

  Erin and Rob lived a ten-minute walk from here. I knew from looking at Rob’s Facebook page that they were home from the hospital and Rob had already shared a dozen photos of little Oscar and an exhausted but happy-looking Erin. Laura was in one of the photos too, holding the baby in her arms. I tried to read the expression in her eyes, saw sadness behind her smile. If everything had gone to plan, she’d be heavily pregnant now. We’d be spending our weekends shopping for pushchairs and decorating the nursery.

  I tried to push this from my mind as I rang the buzzer. Maybe after this I would call round to see them. The baby gave me the
perfect excuse. Of course, I was keen to meet Oscar, wanted to congratulate the proud parents, but really I wanted to see Laura, whom I hadn’t contacted since losing her at the gallery. I had vowed to give her time, deal with everything else first, get answers, before trying again to win her back. But when it came to Laura, I was an addict. I couldn’t help myself.

  I was buzzed in and went up a narrow staircase that smelled of mildew and years of cigarette smoke. A young, punkish woman waited for me, holding the office door open. She reminded me a little of Alina, the way she dressed, the spiky attitude. The big difference was that this woman was still alive.

  ‘I’m Sophie Carpenter, Edward’s assistant,’ she said, looking me up and down. ‘He’s with another client at the moment but you can wait here.’

  I sat on an uncomfortable chair and Sophie offered me coffee. When I said no, it was OK, she sat back down behind her computer, chin cupped in her hand, tapping at the keyboard with one long black fingernail. The desk was open underneath, giving me a clear view of her rather wicked-looking black leather boots, the toe of one of them tapping along with her typing as though keeping time.

  I fidgeted on the chair. Ten minutes passed. I needed the loo and asked Sophie where it was. When I came back, a man I assumed to be Edward Rooney was seeing another man out of the office. Another client, I guessed, one with white hair, though I could only see his back.

  The older man went down the stairs and Edward Rooney turned around. ‘Daniel Sullivan?’ He introduced himself. He was tall, in his early forties, I guessed, with black hair that contained a number of grey streaks and bags under his eyes. He was tall, over six foot, and was dressed in a suit that had probably once been smart but that was now shiny at the elbows and knees.

  ‘Sophie, have you offered this gentleman coffee?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, not looking up from her screen. ‘He didn’t want any.’

  ‘How about tea? Did you offer him tea?’

  She rolled her eyes.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘I don’t want anything. Just your help.’

  He nodded, his expression serious, and gestured for me to follow him into his tiny office. Once we were both sitting down, either side of his desk, I saw that the room was full. There was a tiny window with pigeon-deterrent spikes visible on the sill. His desk was piled high with paperwork. He pulled a laptop out from beneath this pile and flipped it open.

  ‘I looked you up,’ he said, ‘after you called yesterday. You’re an app developer.’

  I was keen to skip the preamble. ‘I need you to find somebody for me.’

  He looked at me over the lid of the laptop, shoved it aside and grabbed a notepad. ‘I was about to go through my introductory spiel but you seem like a man on a mission. Why don’t you start from the beginning.’

  I sighed. ‘I don’t know if I can do that. Do I need to do that? Can’t I just tell you what I know about this person I’m looking for, and then have you find her?’

  ‘Mr Sullivan—’

  ‘Please call me Daniel.’

  ‘Daniel, the more information you give me, the more chance I have of being able to help you.’

  Even if Camelia was connected to what had happened to Laura and me in Romania, I didn’t see the need to tell Edward Rooney about it, couldn’t see how it could help. In fact, it would probably confuse matters.

  ‘The woman I need you to find is called Camelia. She’s Romanian, in her mid-twenties, possibly a bit older. Blonde, very attractive. Speaks excellent English and told me she’s been in London for a couple of years. She uses a Blackberry phone, has a tattoo and wears false fingernails and chunky silver rings. Um, on her left hand.’

  He looked up at me from his notes.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yeah. I met her in a pub, at a gig, and . . .’

  ‘Hang on. I need to know why you need to find her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Yes. Daniel, I only take on missing persons cases where I know my client doesn’t intend to cause the person he’s looking for any harm. I also need to know whether there are any legal ramifications. I’ve had men here asking me to look for their ex-wives who left them because they were being battered. I’ve had gangsters looking for women they’ve trafficked who escaped. I don’t take cases like that.’

  ‘I don’t mean her any harm,’ I said. ‘I want to stop her from doing me harm.’

  ‘OK. So . . . tell me what you know. You met her in a pub . . .’

  There was nothing for it but to give him at least some information. I spent the next fifteen minutes telling him the story of what had happened over the last week, starting with the break-in. I felt myself turning pink as I told him about my encounter with Camelia the evening before last.

  ‘She kept asking me if I’d done anything illegal. When I couldn’t come up with anything, she got angry and left.’

  ‘Any idea what she wanted you to tell her?’

  ‘None at all.’

  He laid his pen down. ‘Daniel, if we can figure out the connection between you, it will make it easier to find her. Are you sure you have no idea?’

  I hesitated. I genuinely didn’t know what Camelia had wanted me to say, and still thought it might simply be her equivalent of talking dirty. The only possible connection I could think of was Romania, but I really didn’t want to tell this person I’d just met about that. I hadn’t even been able to tell my therapist. The only person I’d felt able to tell, after a huge internal struggle, was Jake, and he’d died before I could finish the story. Thinking about Jake made my eyes sting and I looked up to see Edward looking at me curiously.

  ‘I honestly have no idea.’

  He leaned across the desk, elbows resting on scattered paperwork. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you.’

  ‘What?’

  He sat back. ‘I can’t take your case, Daniel. Not unless you’re completely open with me. There’s no point. You might as well go.’

  I opened my mouth, shut it again, aware that I must look like a stranded goldfish. There was a voice in my head screaming ‘Tell him, just tell him!’ but when I opened my mouth again no words came out. I simply couldn’t do it. My frustration with myself transformed into anger with Edward Rooney. There were plenty more private detectives out there. Hundreds of them in London. I’d find someone who didn’t need to know everything, who would just take my money and do what I asked.

  I stood up. ‘Fine. I’ll find someone else.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  I pulled open the door and stomped out into the reception area until I stood behind Sophie’s desk. She swivelled her chair, the wheels squeaking, and, seeing my thunderous expression, asked, ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘No. Your boss is a—’

  At that moment, the front door of the office opened. A man stood there, framed by the doorway. It took me a moment to realise he was wearing a balaclava. The other details only came back to me afterwards: in his hand he held a bottle, three-quarters filled with a clear liquid, a rag attached to the neck of the bottle. There was a cigarette lighter in his other hand.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Get down!’ I yelled, leaping at Sophie and pulling her off her chair onto the floor just as the man threw the now-flaming bottle into the room and slammed the door shut. The bottle shattered on the floor in the centre of the office and exploded with an immense, deafening blast of heat and light.

  I’d piled in next to Sophie behind a tall filing cabinet beside her desk. When I peered around it, I found the centre of the small room engulfed in a ball of flame. I have played enough video games in my life to recognise a Molotov cocktail. Within seconds the room was filled with fire and thick black smoke. I could barely open my eyes, couldn’t breathe, was choking on a lungful of smoke. Almost blind, I figured the door was only ten feet away, her desk between it and us. Remembering
seeing Sophie’s spiky, knee-high black boots from the other side, I knew the desk was open underneath. The quickest and safest route out had to be under it. Squinting from behind the cabinet, I could see the flames spreading, engulfing the two-seater sofa and the bookcase, licking at the edge of the desk. The heat in the room was indescribable. I felt like my insides were cooking. We had to get out. Now.

  ‘Go!’ I managed to gasp, pulling Sophie out from behind the cabinet and shoving her forward. ‘The desk,’ I said. ‘Go under.’ Coughing, guarding her face with a forearm, she crawled like a three-legged dog to the desk and disappeared beneath it. I followed her, though I could hardly see her. It was hot as a blast furnace under there and I thought This is it. I’m going to die. But then I was out the other side and the door was open and someone was shouting, pulling Sophie through first, then me.

  I fell onto the carpet in the corridor, which was full of people, yelling and gesticulating. Looking back into the office, I watched as through the wall of smoke a shape appeared: Edward standing in the doorway of his inner office, grappling with a fire extinguisher which didn’t appear to work. The flames, which had reached the desk now, consuming the papers that lay beside the computer, were blocking Edward’s exit. More people, from other offices in the building, had appeared in the corridor. Sophie lay on the floor beside me, gasping for breath.

  ‘Is there another way out?’ I asked, my throat burning, eyes stinging. The only window I’d seen in Edward’s office was tiny.

  ‘I’ve called the fire brigade,’ said a black woman with an air of competence. She shouted at Edward: ‘Get back in your office, shut the door, find something to block the bottom of the door. Not paper!’