Exposure

by Aga Lesiewicz

  Aga Lesiewicz

  E X P O S U R E

  MACMILLAN

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  A new email pings in my mailbox and my chest tightens with anxiety. I know I have no reason to react like this any more, but the sound still fills me with dread. I click on the mailbox icon and stare at its contents in disbelief.

  ‘Exposure 5’.

  My worst nightmare isn’t over, after all.

  I could ignore it, I could delete it, but I know it will appear again. And again. I also know there is no point in trying to trace its sender. The person who has sent it doesn’t want to be found and isn’t interested in my answer.

  I take a deep breath and click on the attachment. It’s a photograph this time and it’s mesmerizing. I’ve seen something like this before. It seamlessly blends two images, the one of the view outside and that of the inside of a room. The image of the exterior is projected on the back wall of the room and is upside down. I rotate the picture on my computer screen and take a closer look. It’s a section of an urban riverbank, a uniform row of solid four- and five-storey houses, perched in a neat line above the dark water. The brown and beige brick mass is interrupted by splashes of colour, marking the developer’s frivolous idea of painting some of the tiny balconies white or blue. A modern addition breaks the brick monotony, an incongruous cube of glass and steel crowned with a ‘For Sale’ sign. Below, the river has left its mark on the mixture of rotting wood and concrete with a vibrant green bloom of algae clinging to the man-made walls. My heart begins to pound when I realize the view looks familiar.

  I know where the photo was taken.

  I rotate the image back and concentrate on the interior. It’s someone’s bedroom, dominated by a large bed. The heavy wooden frame fills the picture, its carved antique headboard clashing with the image of the exterior projected over it. The bed is unmade, a mess of pillows and a duvet entangled with sheets that are dark red, almost crimson. A small bedside table on the left, with an unlit brass lamp on top of it. Some books scattered on the floor, mostly large-format, hardcover art albums. I find my eye keeps coming back to one spot in the image, a body on the bed. The woman is partly covered by the crimson sheet, her dark hair spilling over the edge of the mattress. One of her arms is twisted at a weird angle, revealing a small tattoo on the inside of the forearm, just above the wrist. I recognize the image. And I can tell the woman is dead.

  I close the attachment and get up from the table, away from the computer. I feel dizzy and faint, my skin clammy, the thin shirt I’m wearing drenched in cold sweat. No, I can’t let panic get the better of me. I have to think and act. I go to the sink and pour myself a glass of water from the tap. I drink it greedily, spilling some on the floor. It helps a little, but the choking sensation in my throat persists as I go back to the Mac and click on the attachment. I force myself to look at the image again. Yes, there is no doubt about it. I am the dead woman in the photograph. And I know who my killer is.

  1

  Three Weeks Earlier

  It’s an overcast and oppressively hot summer day, so humid everything I touch is damp. We’ve been filming at Shepperton Studios in Surrey since early morning and I have a feeling the shoot is going to run well into the night. The small space, a tarted-up storage room rented out to low-budget shoots, doesn’t have any ventilation to speak of. It’s in a deserted part of the film studio complex, tucked away behind the D Stage. Everything happens in slow motion today and everyone seems to be in a foul mood. Even Milo, the motion-control rig we are using, has succumbed to the tropical temperature. Something is overheating inside, causing the rig to jam, and no one can find the source of the glitch. As the studio guys are trying to fix it, most of the crew lumber to the canteen in search of air-conditioning. When I say ‘the crew’ I mean Jason, the director, Lucy, the production assistant, a couple of model makers and me, the director of photography, or DOP for short. I do mostly still photography these days and don’t normally work on film shoots, but Jason and I go back a long way and I never say no to his little projects. We reach the canteen and stare passively at the locked doors. Of course, it’s past 6 p.m. and the cafe is closed. The studio complex, normally buzzing with life, seems deserted. We begin to crawl back to the studio when my iPhone pings. We’ve been told fixing Milo will take a bit of time, so I fall back behind our group to check my emails. There is a handful of spam offering Ray-Ban glasses and friendship from ‘a pretty Russian girl called Irina’, a couple of emails from my accountant and an email from an unknown sender titled ‘Exposure 1’. My finger hovers over the ‘Delete’ button, but then I change my mind and open it. It has an attachment that most likely contains a virus, but curiosity gets the better of me. Here’s to living dangerously, I think as I click on it.

  It’s a photograph of a crime scene that instantly takes me back to my early days when I freelanced for the Met police as a forensic photographer. The gig, my first attempt at putting my nose to the grindstone, didn’t last long. I quickly realized I simply couldn’t hack the mundane brutality of it. And so I tried my hand at concert photography only to end up working in small, dingy clubs and spending a fortune on earplugs. Craving fresh air and open space, I dropped the gigs arena to become a landscape photographer. I took out a small mortgage to fit my Canon 5D with a reasonable selection of wide-angle, medium and telephoto pro-zoom lenses, packed a sturdy tripod into my bag and headed for America. The only thing I brought back from there was a dislike for chipmunks and a growing debt. What else could I do? The thought of putting up with weddings and corporate events sent shivers down my spine. What about travel photography? After my disappointing landscape-chasing stint in America I knew that getting up at 3 a.m. to climb some slippery mountain weighed down by a ton of equipment to catch a perfect sunrise was not my idea of fun. Food photography, my mate Sophie suggested, leafing through the new Jamie Oliver cookbook. It was easy for her to say: she ran a successful catering business. I couldn’t tell my parsnip from my carrot. All that was left was taking stock pictures, photographing packshots and praying for an occasional job for an ad agency. And this is what I do today, juggling much-needed but rare advertising shoots with bread-and-butter packshot jobs I can usually do in my little studio in Shoreditch. So much for the ambitious dreams of a bright-eyed art college graduate, who imagined herself with a forty-thousand-dollar Hasselblad DSLR camera round her neck and an entourage of assistants.

  But I can’t complain. I have paid off my debts. I own a great loft space opposite a sex shop just off Hoxton Square. I have a trusted Canon 5D Mark III with a lovely selection of lenses and a handful of loyal clients.

  And I have Anton. I am happy.

  Deep in thought, I stare at the photo on my phone screen without seeing it properly. I find that more and more often I tend to drift off into some disconnected reverie, forgetting the world around me. Apparently it’s common among people who freelance from home and rely most of the time on their own company. Wi
th Anton being away a lot I mostly have Pixel and Voxel as my escorts. But cats, especially ginger cats, tend to be fickle friends, so my working hours are rather lonely. Unless, of course, I have an external shoot like the one today.

  ‘Kris, we’re on!’

  I close the mailbox on my phone and dash back towards the studio. Jason is waiting for me, holding the heavy door open.

  ‘Milo’s back online, it looks like we can start. With a bit of luck we’ll be done by midnight.’

  I’m used to overtime without extra pay. It’s common practice these days, when everyone is scrambling for a decent gig and the competition is fierce. But I don’t mind it this time. I like working with Jason, a quiet man with the smile of a happy child and the creative imagination of a teenage genius. We are shooting a trailer for one of the TV crime shows. As the footage from the series isn’t available yet, Jason has come up with the idea of using miniature models to re-enact crime scenes.

  The model makers are finishing setting up the scene, and Jason excitedly reminds everyone what we’re supposed to achieve.

  ‘. . . isolate the central part of the shot in focus, just here, where the woman is standing by the open door, face covered in hands, she’s obviously scared, frozen in fear, while we throw the dark figure in the background out of focus and into a nice, silky blur. And then we gradually shift the shallow depth of field . . .’

  I tune him out as I concentrate on the image. I instinctively know what he wants. We’ve always understood each other like this, Jason and I, even before and after our sweet and short fling ages ago. Jason is married and has three great kids who are probably all in secondary school by now. He is devoted to his family, and his occasional infidelities are, according to him, euphoric outlets for his exuberant creativity. It may sound like complete bullshit, but I think I know what he means.

  Just as Jason predicted, we are done with ten minutes to spare till midnight. While the guys are packing up, I carefully put away my camera and lenses into a hard case. It may seem overcautious, but the case has saved me a lot of money over the years. There is nothing worse than the sound of an unprotected two-thousand-pound lens hitting the floor.

  Everyone is in a hurry to get home. The crew disperses swiftly. I part with Jason and Lucy, who head to the main car park by the reception. I have left my car parked in a small lot behind the A Stage, which is on the other side of the complex, but I don’t mind a short walk. It’s still very warm, but a slight breeze is moving the air pleasantly. As I pull my case through the deserted alleys, I feel tension leaving my body. I love this feeling, tiredness mixed with satisfaction when a long but productive day is over. It’s a cloudless night and the moon is almost full. Actually, I think as I stop and stare at it, it is a full moon. How lucky I am to be able to catch that perfect moment, when the world is bathed in silvery light, making everything seem clean and still. Some birds have begun chirping in the distance, poor little bastards clearly confused by the brightness of the night. I can see my old and faithful 1996 MG roadster convertible, the only car left in the whole lot, when my iPhone pings with a new email. At this hour it’s either spam or a message from Anton who is working on a project in Buenos Aires. I hope it’s from him, it would be a perfect ending to a good day. I squeeze my case onto the back seat of my MG and get in, contemplating whether to put the roof down. I know it may seem rather eccentric in the middle of the night, but the air is warm and inviting. I undo the latches and slowly coax it down. I’ve had this car for years, it’s an old and scratched banger now, but it still gives me a teenage thrill to feel the sky above my head when I’m driving. And there it is, the starlit sky shimmering overhead, peaceful and bucolic. It’s an advantage of working in the sticks, miles from home, but also far from the hustle and bustle of the metropolis. And when it comes to hustle and bustle, Shoreditch rules. It will take me a couple of hours to drive home from the Surrey suburbia, but I don’t mind. I actually like driving at night, especially with the roof down.

  Without turning the engine on I pull out my phone and check my emails. No message from Anton, but the persistent Russian beauty Irina has sent me another email, together with a couple of offers from an online casino. And there it is again, ‘Exposure 1’, from a sender whose name doesn’t mean anything to me. I open it and go straight to the attachment. It’s the same photo, a crime scene in a concrete, urban environment that has already been marked by a forensic team. It looks just like hundreds of forensic photos I have taken, except for one detail: a figure clad in a light-blue uniform covering the whole body, including a tight hood around the head. Blue overshoes, a white face mask and a camera held in both hands, which are protected by blue nitrile gloves. Normally a crime-scene photo would not include a photographer for the simple reason that they would be behind the camera and not in front of it. But in this picture the person seems to be its main focal point, as if the crime scene itself is secondary. A sudden chill goes through my body as I recognize the image.

  The nocturnal birds have stopped chirping and I’m surrounded by silence. The temperature has dropped and I feel cold. I jump out of the car and pull the roof up until it clicks into place. Back inside, I slide the windows up and lock the doors. I turn the key in the ignition and drive off so fast something in the case on the back seat rattles worryingly. I hit the brakes right in front of the security barrier at the exit and drum my fingers impatiently on the steering wheel as it goes up slowly. And I’m off, on a narrow road that will take me to the London-bound M3. I drive recklessly above the speed limit, the adrenaline singing in my blood.

  2

  Taking pictures of dead bodies. I would pack my kit into a white, unmarked Peugeot Expert and drive to the designated police station. There I’d wait for a call-out. Sometimes there were no call-outs at all throughout the whole shift. That would be considered a good day for London. At other times it would be non-stop, especially when there were just the two of us forensic photographers on one shift for the whole of the Met. When I first started my job we’d go out to assaults, to take pictures of victims of violent attacks, as well as to more serious crime scenes. Then our task was narrowed down to serious crimes only, an incessant procession of dead bodies, bloody scenes and cold mortuary slabs.

  I used to smoke in those days, inhale deeply and blow the smoke out through my nostrils to get rid of the smell. But it would linger anyway, in my hair, on my skin, inside my mouth, the sweet, sickly smell of decomposing blood. I still can’t go into a butcher’s shop without getting nauseated by the smell of raw meat. And here’s a paradox: as soon as I’d finished my cigarette, I’d be starving. I’d go looking for food, preferably something salty and greasy, to quench my craving. It was as if dealing with death made me hungry for life.

  I stop at a 24-hour petrol station to buy a packet of Marlboros and a box of matches. I get back to my car and light up straight away, staring at the ‘No Smoking’ sign on the wall of the station. I half prepare myself for some fireworks, an explosion that would wipe me off the face of the earth, but nothing happens. The feeling of smoke in my mouth and lungs is unpleasant, but as the nicotine hits my brain I instantly get light-headed. Then the dizzy spell passes, replaced by a wave of serenity. I needed that. I can think calmly now.

  ‘Exposure 1’. I remember the case. It was a cold and wet night, one of those when I’d put my paper suit on even if I didn’t have to, because it provided extra warmth. I was called in to the Southbank Centre undercroft. The place was deserted, the concert crowds and skateboarders dispersed hours ago. The officer in charge offered to carry my tripod and led me through the echoing concrete caverns with walls covered in striking art and graffiti. We crossed the second cordon and approached the crime scene, brightly lit and protected from view by nylon screens. There was a palpable tension in the air. When I saw the body I understood why. It was headless and armless, and stuffed into a white double bass hard case.

  It was the third murder of the killer dubbed by the media ‘The Violinist’. The name w
as, of course, sensationalist and inaccurate. A human body, even a decapitated and severely maimed one, would not fit into a violin case. The murderer used double bass covers, progressing from a soft padded bag to a hard-shell case. But I suppose ‘The Bass Player’ doesn’t have the same ring as ‘The Violinist’. The bizarre way of disposing of the bodies had riveted the media, whipping up a frenzy of speculation. Double bass cases are not exactly easy to come by and are definitely not cheap. But the police were helpless: they had not only failed to find the source of the cases, but also failed to identify the bodies. Despite an Orwellian network of closed-circuit surveillance cameras covering London, they were unable to catch sight of the Violinist delivering his gruesome cargo. Not even a glimpse, a tiny blur of movement, a hunched figure weighed down by a heavy case, nothing. It seemed almost impossible in one of the most watched cities in the world, where one gets caught on CCTV over three hundred times a day, but it was frustratingly true. And there I was, looking at the Violinist’s third victim, this time neatly packaged inside a shiny white fibreglass case.

  I jump when I hear a knock on my car window. The petrol station’s night cashier is pointing at the ‘No Smoking’ sign on the wall. I mime an apology and drive off. At the first red light, I open the window and throw the cigarette out. But the bad taste in my mouth persists until I get home, greeted by Pixel and Voxel who meow loudly and circle my legs, twitching their tails.

  ‘Sorry, guys, I know, it’s very late.’

  I go to the fridge and give them double portions of their favourite Lily’s Kitchen Organic Lamb dinner. Only the best for my boys. They attack their bowls, instantly ignoring me. The cat pleasantries are over.

  My loft is one big space, with areas assigned to the office, consisting of a large glass table with a six-core and dual GPU Mac Pro connected to an Eizo monitor, my photographic stage, the sleeping area – consisting of, well, a large bed and some storage for clothes – the kitchen and the bathroom, which is the only room separate from the rest. All in all, 1,558 sq. feet of what an estate agent would describe as an ‘open-plan living/entertaining space with floor to ceiling windows which allow a wealth of natural light’. I could never afford a place like this, but I inherited it from my aunt Stella. Stella was a trailblazer, so different to my mother, who was her older sister, that I sometimes wondered if one of them was adopted. She moved to Hoxton long before Peter Ind opened the Bass Clef and Jay Jopling turned an old piano factory building in the square into the White Cube. Faithful to the true spirit of the place, Aunt Stella bought the top floor in a derelict warehouse that used to be a carpentry workshop and set up her own business – furniture design. She would make mostly chairs, drawing her inspiration from the early Scandinavian masters Jacobsen and Wegner, combining Modernist shapes with 1950s eclecticism. I still have her wire-mesh chair, probably the first of its kind in London. I adored Stella and the affection was mutual. I never really got on with my parents and as soon as I could make my own choices I left our family house in Southgate and moved in with her. It caused a bit of a stir at the time, as Stella lived with her lover, Veronica. To my mother’s horror and disgust, Aunt Vero and I hit it off instantly. It was Vero who encouraged me to go to art college and supported me through my creative and emotional ups and downs. After Stella’s death, Vero didn’t want to stay in London so she transferred her share of the warehouse lease to me and moved to Whitstable. Now that she’s retired, she keeps herself busy by tending to her beehive box and making her own honey, as well as being an active member of a bell-ringing society. I visit her whenever I can and she always insists on taking me out to Wheelers Oyster Bar for lunch. According to her, oysters are good for body and soul, and I don’t disagree.