The Pact

by Amy Heydenrych

  ‘I’m OK, considering . . .’

  ‘Yes, it’s been a big shock to us all. Nicole was part of the spirit of this organization – she fulfilled a critical role.’ He pauses and seems to gather himself, ‘Freya, I’ve been watching you—’

  Here it comes. Her ears start ringing and she feels light-headed. Does he suspect that she and Jay are together? It’s not explicitly against company policy but what if Julian felt it was affecting her focus? The strange messages have all been received on her personal cell, not a company device – but does he somehow have enough access to see her message history over the past three days? She recalls a clause in her contract saying that her devices may be surveilled during company hours, but surely that is for work devices only?

  And then, her greatest fear of all – does he somehow know about the prank? She knows that Julian is advised by a team of tech lawyers. Posting a message as someone else could easily be construed as harassment, or worse still, doxing.

  ‘Yes?’

  A hint of a smile, so out of context, Freya wonders if it is a nervous tic. It makes her feel uncomfortable but she can’t put her finger on why.

  ‘I’ve been watching and I can’t begin to tell you how impressed I am. You have been steadfast and diligent through the horrible announcement of Nicole’s death, and have a sense of calm that I could only aspire to. You have something different to any new recruit that has started here, and I think the word for it is genius. I can teach someone to code, but I can’t teach them instinct, what lies between the lines.’

  A hot, uncontrollable blush belies Freya’s sense of pride. Julian has noticed something that she has always found hard to explain. It started in the math classroom, when she figured out the answer to a problem but could not explain how she got there. It continued when she began learning code. The language itself fell away and revealed its meaning to her. She never even had to try. It has always been a private dialogue between Freya and the symbols in front of her, until now.

  ‘Thank you, Julian – the fact that you have noticed shows I’m working in the right place.’

  ‘I mean it. Talent like yours is hard to come by, which is why I wanted to see you today.’ He coughs. ‘Nicole has left a gaping hole in our hearts, but we now also face the practical issue of how it affects our team. I need to know that my outreach project in East Africa is in safe hands. We have to deliver it in a month and we are behind. This project will benefit so many women. There is no time to lose. I need a strong, smart person like you to drive it. It will stretch you, but I know you’re up for the challenge.’

  It doesn’t make sense. Freya thought she was about to get fired or enter a disciplinary process, not get a promotion! This is the opportunity she had dreamed of while studying, the chance to make a name for herself. And while she has not wanted to offend Julian, her current projects have been too easy. It would be great to have something to really sink her teeth into, something with genuine significance. She hesitates.

  ‘I’m sorry this puts you in an awkward position, given your history with her. I really feel terrible now about not setting up that meeting.’

  ‘It’s OK, Julian. And of course I will do the job.’

  ‘Fantastic! I’ll send you all the details shortly.’

  Julian moves in to hug her. This doesn’t quite feel appropriate for an office, but Atypical isn’t a normal office, is it? It has built a business on not being typical. But her jaw clenches as his arms wrap around her. Although she didn’t say no, she didn’t ask for this lingering embrace, the skin-crawling sensation of his arms curling around her, the brief contact of his hand with her butt. There is a hint of force behind the interaction, an imbalance of power. A sense that he has thrown her a bone, and now she owes him something in return.

  Chapter 45

  Isla

  Eight days after the murder

  Jay Singh. It is a clue, a pathway leading somewhere, but Isla needs more information for it to make sense. It’s time to get back to basics. She takes out the sketch she drew of the murder timeline, back when she read the case file for the first time. This is the best way to make sense of a story. If she can map out the sequence of events that night, and the role of every person involved, something may spark a fresh idea.

  Nicole Whittington left the office at 8.30 p.m., after a few drinks at the office party. They had completed a tough assignment and were celebrating meeting the deadline. Her neighbors heard her let someone in ‘around 9.30 p.m.’ According to Simon, Freya mentioned in her original statement that Jay walked her home. This adds up, as the security-camera footage in the abridged case file shows the two of them leaving the building together at 9.15 p.m. But what happened in the hours between 9.15 and 1.30 a.m.? Does Freya know where Jay went after that? He could have gone to Nicole’s apartment. As Jay and Nicole reportedly dated for a while, he might not have had a problem bluffing his way through the security at the apartment’s entrance.

  She breaks off a square of chocolate, cracks her neck. Perhaps she is more antisocial than most but there are very few people Isla would welcome so eagerly after 9.30 p.m. at night, especially not an ex-boyfriend. But maybe Nicole was different, and was happy to welcome late-night guests who didn’t call in advance.

  Unless. Unless the person did call . . . Her heart beats faster and her mouth goes dry, as if she can physically see the core of the story and she is reaching, stretching towards it. A few flicks through the contacts on her phone to find Simon’s number. After what feels like endless ringing, he answers.

  ‘Simon here.’

  ‘Hey, Simon, it’s Isla.’

  ‘Hi! How are you doing? Taking your vitamins, I hope?’ His voice is gentle and welcoming. The idea of him fretting over her health makes her smile, despite herself.

  ‘Listen, have you checked Nicole’s phone records leading up to her death?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And?’

  A long silence – Isla quickly checks the line to see if it’s still connected. ‘We haven’t had the resources to follow up on anything in detail, to be honest. There was a call earlier that evening, but it was around the time she was leaving work or still at the office party. But I’ve been instructed to focus on other leads right now.’

  Isla is a little annoyed. The suspect Simon hinted at during the press conference fitted Jay’s profile exactly. Why can’t he just confide in her? This is why they could never get closer than they are now – his profession requires him to conceal the truth while he pursues justice, while hers is to reveal the truth to the court of the public eye. Simon uncovers the truth slowly and deliberately, while Isla tries to think five steps ahead, in order to preempt what the big story might be.

  ‘Can I follow it up?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. We would have looked into it if we thought it was a deal-breaker for the case.’

  A fast, furious panic beats beneath Isla’s skin. This may be a waste of time, an unnecessary distraction to the other five stories she has to file for Kenneth this week. But there is something in here worth following.

  Simon whispers the number over the phone. Isla jots it down and slips it into the pocket of her yellow parka. Finally, the prospect of some hard evidence.

  Chapter 46

  Freya

  The night of the murder

  Something in the air makes Freya’s chest clench. It’s the kind of night where either something terrible or something wonderful is about to happen.

  The stakes are higher tonight. Everyone feels it. Just two more hours left to make the seven o’clock deadline. The whole Atypical office is working together to create a new algorithm for a top-secret client. People are divided into teams, coding against the clock. Everyone apart from Julian, that is, who is pacing up and down the open-plan office, his hair pulled up in a warrior-like knot on the top of his head. Amid all the excitement, Freya feels heavy with disappointment. It’s been several weeks and Julian has still made no move to
resolve her conflict with Nicole. And worse, he has thrust her, Nicole and Jay together to check the code for glitches. Doesn’t he understand how much Nicole’s bullying has hurt her?

  At first, she takes a deep breath and zooms in on the work in front of her, lost in the challenge. Jay disconnects and overrides the tension with his usual breeziness. Every now and then, Jay and Freya’s arms brush against each other, and they smile. The thrill of sitting so close together, of being so in love with one another without the rest of the office knowing yet, is electric. Nicole is determined to make every second of the interaction difficult.

  ‘I know what you did, bitch,’ she whispers, loud enough for everyone working around them to hear.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Freya’s hands begin to sweat. What is it now? She has tried so hard to keep out of Nicole’s way.

  Nicole flashes a picture on her cellphone. It’s her shiny red Honda Civic, with a big gash across the left-hand door. She shakes the image in Freya’s face.

  ‘You scratched my car, I know you did!’ People around them start to look uncomfortable. Virginie spots the drama from her side of the office and dashes forward.

  ‘Don’t make a scene, Nicole,’ she says.

  ‘Don’t make a scene, Neek-hole,’ she mimics, with an exaggerated parody of Virginie’s accent.

  ‘You’re crazy, you know that?’ Virginie says. ‘You probably scratched your own car just to get some attention.’

  Jay breaks up the group of women with an impatient wave of his hand. ‘For God’s sake, Nicole, keep your shit together! We’re all on the same side, remember?’

  She huffs off and sulks at her desk, and Jay follows her. From a distance, with Nicole’s waving, passionate gestures and Jay’s calm hands on her shoulders, it looks like a conversation between lovers.

  This is exactly what Nicole wanted. Freya simmers, and while she is now able to work in peace, she can’t help feel a little dirty, a little less confident than before. She checks and rechecks the work she has just completed. There is a fragile, quivering part of her mind that always wonders if Nicole singled her out because she is truly not good enough to be here. The bullying has chipped at her confidence, piece by piece.

  Half an hour to go. The mood has grown hysterical, silly. Julian is pumping the latest hip-hop track and handing out shots of freshly juiced wheatgrass and ginger, laced with ginseng. The whole room whoops and does a limp-limbed Mexican wave every time a task is closed off. It reminds Freya of those early freshman parties, where the air was thick and heady with risk. Everyone laughed and shouted, but underneath the mirth was a sinister undercurrent, a feeling like it could all turn violent in seconds.

  The cheering grows louder.

  Five!

  Four!

  Three!

  Two!

  One!

  Seven p.m. Julian sends off the document, and swaps the juice for champagne. There is toasting, laughter, more music. Everybody is too buzzed to go home.

  Freya strays from the excited crowd and sits alone at her desk, emotionally spent. She checks her work again, petrified that somehow she missed something, that the client will email Julian with a list of mistakes that all turn out to be her fault. It’s irrational but she always doubts herself.

  The champagne sparkles in her hand. She takes a tentative sip. It tastes expensive, like another universe where everything is light and easy. Up until now, she has been the kind of woman to drink the house wine. Her drinks of choice always tasted bitter and severe, like compromise.

  An arm wraps around her shoulder. Jay. They have agreed not to be affectionate during office hours, but the evening’s victory has made his gestures loose and his eyes warm.

  ‘This is quite the sad, lonely sight. Why aren’t you with the rest of us celebrating?’

  ‘I just feel drained, I suppose.’

  He sits next to her and grabs her hand. ‘What you did out there was brilliant, OK? Don’t let Nicole take that away from you.’

  ‘I just don’t understand,’ she says, her voice desperate. ‘Why would she accuse me of doing something as awful as vandalizing her car? I don’t even know what it looks like!’

  ‘Listen, you can’t expect to argue rationally with someone like her,’ he says calmly, as if the accusation was nothing at all. He slips a bottle of champagne out from under his jacket. ‘Now, let’s celebrate you.’

  Freya downs two glasses in quick succession, letting a delicious giddiness fizz around her thoughts.

  ‘Atta girl,’ says Jay.

  But Freya’s hands won’t stop trembling. ‘I can’t let it go, Jay . . . I’m sorry. I think Nicole is a fucking bully. I’m young and new here, she couldn’t have picked an easier target. I have wracked my brain countless times over what it is I could have done to offend her so much, and it just doesn’t make sense. I know you guys dated, but still, does your romantic history warrant this sort of abuse?’

  ‘I’ve noticed the way she acts around you, especially lately,’ he concedes. ‘She’s like a pit bull grabbing the neck of a rabbit, shaking it and refusing to let go. She’s complicated, but this is getting out of hand, even for her.’

  She feels bolder now.

  ‘Tonight she made me feel like I’m some sort of low-life criminal. Do you know how that feels? I have to watch my back all the fucking time, Jay. I overanalyze every single thing I do. I feel like I’m going crazy!’

  Freya doesn’t usually talk like this, all sweary and slurry. Yet tonight it is freeing, as if she is breaking something within her wide open. In the distance, the music reverberates through the speakers. Her favorite song.

  ‘Jay, Jay! I need to go dance to this, right now!’ She tugs his hand and leads him around their cluster of desks, past Nicole’s. Her computer screen is unlocked, and Freya’s eyes unconsciously flit to its contents. She stops abruptly.

  There is no code up on the screen, no work. There are several adverts up, all showcasing apartments nearby. While she was trying to taint Freya’s name in front of the whole office, she was apartment hunting? The rage hits her so hard she almost loses her balance.

  ‘Oh my God. Jay!’ she whispers.

  ‘What. The. Fuck?’ he gasps, and swiftly clicks into her search history. It feels like a step too far, but she is also curious to know the truth. Jay pulls up a long list of the pages she has visited: apartment listings, news sites, Facebook, Pinterest and a Finnish street style blog.

  ‘She wasn’t even working tonight.’

  ‘She shouldn’t get away with it,’ says Jay, his voice brittle. ‘Enough is enough.’

  Freya never wanted to fight back for fear of seeming petty or rash. But her anger feels justified now.

  As the party escalates in the distance, as the sound swells, they click through Nicole’s web browser. Jay is working quickly, like a pro. Before Freya can say anything, he is on an online dating website.

  ‘Jay! What are you doing?’

  ‘Just trust me,’ he says. ‘It will be funny.’

  Freya watches Jay create an online dating profile for Nicole, pulling in a picture from her Facebook account, which is a breeze as she was logged in and had the page open anyway. They’re laughing, whispering, wild and angry. Let’s play a little joke, let’s teach her a lesson. They’re not even sure what the lesson is anymore. Typing furiously, they take turns. Freya forgets what she has said as soon as she writes it but it’s dirty, sexy, a little bit twisted. It’s the kind of daring sex she has had only once or twice when she was really drunk or experimented with drugs, the kind of sex she is having more often with Jay. He one-ups her and they giggle into their hands like naughty teenagers. ‘Maybe if Nicole gets laid she will leave us all alone.’ On some level, she believes it. His hand feels for her thigh. At the end they have a personal advert that reveals Nicole’s full name, phone number and residential address. Its title, ‘Looking for no-strings-attached sex tonight.’

  Chapter 47

  Isla

  Nine days after the murde
r

  Isla can tell it’s going to be a rough day by the way Kenneth minces towards her. She’s done something wrong again – this much is clear – and he is utterly triumphant as a result.

  So what if this story isn’t the big one that puts her on the map? There will be other opportunities. Every day she stays in this shitty newsroom, her don’t-give-a-fuck attitude reaches new heights.

  With such a tiny team, many of the journalists simply loot the flood of press releases for the day, edit them slightly and pass off marketing copy as a story. She may seem cantankerous, but this is not what she signed up for when she studied for her journalism degree.

  And she certainly didn’t sign up for a clueless boss like Kenneth.

  ‘Isla, Islaaa!’ he huffs. ‘You have hardly been in the office. Where the hell were you this morning?’

  Jeez, here we go. His head bobs furiously and the pitch of his voice gets higher and higher.

  ‘I was attending the press briefing on Nicole Whittington’s murder. You know, just doing my job.’

  ‘I told you that we’ve reported enough on that case. There is nothing more to say. There are seven other stories I have emailed you to follow up on, and you haven’t replied to one of my messages.’

  ‘With all due respect, Kenneth, I disagree with you on the Nicole Whittington case. I want to keep going.’

  Kenneth staggers back. ‘Is that how you’re going to play this? Well, that smile on your face is going to fall very quickly when I tell you that we’re scheduling a disciplinary hearing for you. Your old editor may have tolerated this disrespect, but it’s not going to happen on my watch.’

  Sweet old Bernard Labonowski. The mention of Isla’s old editor imbues the scene with a feeling of sadness. Bernard was a rough-around-the-edges old newshound who looked far more intimidating than he actually was. He was of the old journalistic guard, the kind that prized the rustle of in-depth news in a print newspaper over the easily digestible and forgettable news summaries of today. He let his stories prove like a good dough over several days or weeks, until the final result was a joy to consume. He let his journalists find their feet through their own risks and mistakes, gently guiding them away from the edge of career suicide when necessary. He had been let go during the restructure, a bombshell he faced with quiet dignity and the promise to work on his great novel. Bernard, the man who showed her how to correctly use an Oxford comma and where to find the best meatball sandwich on Dutch crunch bread. He sent her three-page, handwritten letters every few months with updates on his life and his new adventure of running a bookstore. They read like poetry. It’s a crying shame this clown has taken his place. Word on the street was that Kenneth had only ever edited corporate magazines, which doesn’t surprise Isla in the slightest.