Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

But then again it might just all be fine. I might just turn the phone on and find out whose it is and that could be it. I mean, if I make sure it’s on airplane mode, it won’t pick up a signal at all and that should be fine. No mobile phone record. No evidence. I can definitely do this. I can fix this. I know I can.

I’ll charge it tonight.

Something very, very bad has happened.

Last night Mark went to a private squash lesson over in the hotel complex. He needs the distraction—the stress is getting to him and I suggested it would be a good outlet. Plus he loves squash; it’s really sort of sanctioned shouting for men, isn’t it?

While he was out I took the opportunity to unplug the trouser press that’s hidden inside the closet and plug in the iPhone from the bag using our spare charger. I plugged it in, checked it was on silent, and slid it down the side of the press in case Mark looked in the closet.

I woke up earlier than usual this morning, the anticipation of what I was going to do weighing on my mind. I had to wait until Mark had finished his breakfast and got in the shower to slip back into the closet and unplug it. It hadn’t turned on by itself. I wasn’t sure if that was something that happened automatically—for all I know, it could be broken. And then where would I be? I pocketed it and replaced the spare charger in our suitcase and replugged the presser.

What I need is some more time by myself, just half an hour or so, to check the phone. But it’s hard thinking of excuses to spend time alone on your honeymoon, isn’t it? Nothing seems important enough to be a credible distraction. I think of Holli’s release two days ago. It makes sense that I’d need to Skype Phil to sort out logistics on filming with her as soon as we’re back, now that we’ve missed her actual release. That definitely seems like a good enough reason to leave the room on my own for a while.

I tell Mark I’m going out to Skype my crew. I tell Mark I’ll need an Ethernet connection for the Internet—it’ll make the call signal stronger, the picture quality better. And rather conveniently I’ll need to go to the hotel’s business center for that.

He offers to come too but I say it’ll be boring for him, and maybe a bit weird for Phil and Duncan, and I’ll be super quick. Back before he knows it, I promise. He seems satisfied. I suggest he look through the Interpol missing-persons section today too. Just in case. You never know. But then, I do know—I know they won’t be there. These people won’t be reported missing. They just won’t.

—

The business center is a small room with a large cream PC and a boxy printer unit. There’s a conference table in the center of it taking up almost all the floor space. I can’t imagine the room has ever been used for an actual business meeting. Perhaps they use it for staff meetings.

I give the corners of the room a cursory glance, high up along the coving. No cameras. That’s good. What I’m doing is going to look odd and I don’t want video evidence of me doing it. You know, just in case, in case it all comes out wrong.

I log on to the computer and pull up the search screen. I’m ready. I’ve been reading up on what to do all morning.

I pull the iPhone out of my pocket and push the power button. The screen floods with white light followed by the tiny Apple logo. I’m going to have to switch to airplane mode as soon as the locked screen comes up. I wait, holding my breath, while it slowly loads itself. How long has it been turned off? Does it take longer to load the longer it’s been off? I wonder. Probably not.

Then the screen flashes up. It’s not the locked screen. There’s no locked screen. No password. Just apps. Straight to apps. Oh my God! No password? That’s ridiculous, who does that in this day and age? I hastily swipe up the quick-access Control Center and tap the little airplane button. Safe.

It would have still been possible to switch to airplane mode from a locked screen, which is exactly what I had expected to be doing. My plan had been to bypass the locked screen. Apparently it’s fairly easy to do, according to the Internet. But I don’t need to do any of that now. The owner obviously wasn’t too worried about people checking his phone. I suppose putting it in a case along with a handgun is probably security enough.

My heart is hammering.

I have access to everything. There aren’t many app icons; some I recognize, some look foreign, but it’s mainly just the in-house apps, no additions, no Candy Crush. I tap on Mail. An inbox bounces up. All the emails are in Russian. Shit. I thought something like this might happen. Okay, well, I guess they were Russian. Anyway, it’s an alphabet I can’t read. Okay. The easiest way to do this is to copy and paste into Google Translate, hardly elegant but, again, let me stress: I am not a spy.

I can’t copy and paste the emails from this phone directly into Translate because I can’t let it go online, and I definitely can’t forward them to my email account and do it from there.

I turn to the hotel computer and load Google Russia and type in the email provider that the emails have been sent to. It’s the Russian email provider Yandex. The landing page means nothing to me; the writing is a mess of angular nonsense I don’t understand, but in the top right-hand corner is a familiar box, containing space for a username and password. I type the email address on the phone into the first box and click the illegible squiggles below the password. Password reset. I fill it out and wait. I stare at the phone.

Oh bugger.

I’m not going to be able to get the reset email, obviously! What a fucking moron. I’m not online. The reset email won’t get through. Why the fuck didn’t I think of that? Idiot.

Okay.

Okay.

Hang on…I can turn Wi-Fi on while still in airplane mode. Of course! Mark showed me how to do that on the flight over so we could use the inflight Wi-Fi. Then I won’t pick up any network signal. It won’t be traceable. I can connect to the hotel Wi-Fi on the phone, collect the reset email, and then reset the password. Yes!

I run through it quickly, connect the phone to the hotel Wi-Fi network, and wait for the reset email to arrive. A batch of thirty-one messages download onto the handset, my password reset email being the last one to arrive. Nobody is missing these people yet. Nobody has accessed this account for days.

I reset through the email link and choose the password G650. It seems apt. Holding my breath, I wait for it to confirm. It works. Now only I can access their emails.

I scroll through the emails; the Google banner at the top of the page reads: This page is in Russian. Would you like to translate it? I click Translate.

I read.

Most of them appear to be statements or receipts of some sort. Some are meeting itineraries. Locations, times, and people. Some of the emails are spam. Funny that criminals get spam too. But none of the emails seems to be personal. No names in the emails. I see Aegys-Mutual Consultants referenced a couple of times. Another corporation, Carnwennan Holdings. Transactions between the two. Another called Themis Financial Management. I stop reading. I need something more, a person’s name, something. I commit a few of the company names to memory; I’ll look them up later.

I delete the emails created by my password reset and sign out of the email account; I clear the browser history on the hotel PC and sign out of the guest page.

Now text messages. I’m pretty sure I’ll find something in the text messages. The green message icon shows there are forty-two new messages. I don’t think I’ve ever had more than ten unread texts in my life, but then I suppose these guys aren’t alive, are they? That can cause an unnaturally high buildup, I’d imagine.