Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

I tap on messages. The phone has no saved numbers, so the messages all appear under phone numbers. I Google them. The +1 codes—America; +44 codes—UK; +7 codes—Russia; +352 codes—Luxemburg; and a +507 code—Panama. The Luxemburg number’s text chain seems to be mainly written in French and German. The Panama text chain is in Spanish with the occasional English word cropping up. The American and Russian numbers seem to be purely English. Whoever this phone belonged to spoke a lot of languages and had a lot of balls in the air. So to speak. I tap on the first message, the most recent one, the American number. I read the chain:

THEY HAVE AGREED. THEY WILL EXPEDITE THE TRANSACTION. SAFE FLIGHT

INFORMATION NOT RECEIVED AS ADVISED

IS THERE A PROBLEM? WHERE ARE YOU?

CONTACT ME

THIS COULD TURN UGLY, ADVISE

I go back to the message menu. Choose the next message chain down. The Russian number:

MEETING LOCATION SET FOR TODAY

PICK-UP SET FOR 22:30 AT HELIPORT.

FLIGHT REDIRECTED? WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT LOCATION? IS THERE A PROBLEM? CAN WE ASSIST?

THEY DID NOT RECEIVE. WHERE ARE YOU?

WHERE ARE YOU?

WE NEED TO TALK, RESPOND AS SOON AS YOU RECEIVE THIS.

RESPOND

Suddenly a dotted typing icon appears underneath. Oh my fucking God! Shit.

I forgot about the Wi-Fi connection. The three gray dots blink up at me. Someone is there . And then I remember, remember that iPhones send read receipts to the sender unless you specifically change the settings. And these messages have been marked read.

I scramble to turn it off. What if they’ve traced everything I’ve done? What if they find out who I am?

But they can’t. There’s no camera in here. I’ve used a public computer to read the emails. Anyone in the resort could have done it. There’s no way they—whoever they are—could know it’s me. But what if they’re coming? What if they come here and review the CCTV footage and see me coming in from the lobby at this time? I know there are security cameras in the lobby, in the hallway. Shit.

Okay, but realistically, Erin, realistically . Even if they know where the email account was accessed from, it takes at least a day to fly to Bora Bora from almost anywhere. A full day. And then they’d have to break into the hotel’s security system and view the footage and then they’d have to figure out it was me from that footage. Would they do that? They don’t even know I’ve seen the emails, do they? All they know is that their text messages have been read.

I need to read what they’ve written. I need to check.

I inhale deeply and push the power button again.

White screen, Apple icon, home screen, one unread message.

I tap it.

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

They don’t know I’m not whoever it is. Should I type something? Should I? Maybe I should tell them we found the bag?

No, I don’t think that’d be a good idea. No.

Maybe I should pretend to be them? Should I? It would stop them looking for me, right? Send them off on a different track. Oh God. I wish I’d thought this through before. I can’t think straight now. Okay, think. Think.

The three gray dots appear again. Shit! I have to say something. I tap on my text box. My text cursor pulsing.

Three gray dots will be appearing on his screen now. He’ll know there’s definitely someone there. Someone on the other end. I type.

REDIRECTED FLIGHT. UNAVAILABLE FOR TRANSACTION.

That seems okay, right? Fairly opaque. It should buy us enough time to get out of here before someone comes to find us. I press send. Gone. Off into the ether.

That seemed okay. Yeah. They might think the plane people are lying low or something, right?

And then reality hits me.

Lying low? What the actual fuck, Erin? What the actual, stupid, fuck are you doing? Lying low is not a thing. This is not The Third Man . You have absolutely no idea what you are doing right now. You are a film school graduate on your honeymoon. They will find you and they will kill you. You are going to die, Erin.

And then something very, very bad happens.

WHO IS THIS?

The gray dots pulse.

Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.

Oh no.

I stab the power button on the phone.

Oh God.

—

On the way back to the room I try to think of a good spin on what I’ve done. Some way to put it to Mark that doesn’t make me sound like a liar and an idiot; but to be honest, at this stage it’s fair to say that I am both those things. I just want his help. I’m scared. I need him to help me fix this.

“You did what?”

I stare at him. What can I say?

“Are you completely insane? Why on earth would you do that? Why did you lie? I don’t…These are real people, Erin. Real dead people and real living people. We have no idea who they are or what kind of resources they have. I cannot believe you could be so stupid! Why? Why did you do it?”

I say nothing. I just stand there. I know! I’m an idiot, he’s perfectly right, but we do need to fix this now. That’s all I care about. I just want to fix it. I don’t want to die.

He slumps down on the sofa. We’re in the lounge. I called him over as soon as I opened the door and I told him everything. The companies, the emails, the texts—everything. He sits there thinking, frowning, his mind racing.

“All right,” he finally says. “Okay. Erin, what does he know?”

I shrug, shake my head. I don’t know. There’s no way of being sure.

“No. Think about it, sweetheart. Stop, and think about it. What does he know?” He says it slowly, deliberately.

I swallow. Take a breath.

“He knows someone other than the plane people have the phone.” That much I’m sure of.

“Great, and what will he infer from that?” he asks.

“That we stole the phone, I suppose. That we either killed them or we robbed them. They seem like the two most probable explanations.” I look up at him.

He nods. “So he’s going to want to find us, isn’t he?” he says, thinking it through. “How can he find us?”

“Through the phone signal. Or through where we accessed the email account. They’re the only links,” I say.

“Okay. So, the hotel computer. The hotel computer room. And how will he know it was you on the computer? Rather than anyone else in the hotel?”

I see where Mark’s going with this.

“The CCTV footage in the lobby and hallway. The time codes, me walking toward the room, away from the room. Before and after the access time.” Shudder. Shit. Even though there weren’t cameras in the business center itself, I’m still on film going in there for anyone to see. We need to get rid of the footage.

I notice my sudden jump in logic. From making a mistake to actively committing a crime. Just like that. I wonder if that’s how it starts for a lot of criminals; I wonder if that’s how it started with Eddie. A mistake, a cover-up, and then a slow inevitable chain of events. Nothing like this has ever crossed my mind before, the impulse to get rid of the evidence. I have no idea how one would even go about getting rid of footage. It’s never occurred to me, of course, because I’m just an ordinary woman on her honeymoon, and aside from going over eighty on the motorway sometimes, I don’t even consider breaking the rules. Maybe in my mind sometimes, but never in reality.

“So that’s the only link to you personally, is it? That CCTV footage? Aside from that footage it could have been anyone in that room on the phone, on the computer?” Mark gives me an encouraging smile, not too much but enough.