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ringing them at that number.”
    “He did not seem worried to you, nothing unusual over the last couple of days?”
    “Nothing. In fact, he seemed happier. I don’t know what it was but he actually seemed cheerier. If he knew today was the day he was going to die, he never showed it, not once. In fact, he was planning a trip, not an extravagant excursion, but he wanted to go to the place where he was born. A trip of about a hundred miles but for one who never leaves his house, quite a conquest. One morning when I arrived, he informed me of his plans. I wonder what could be so important there . . .”

Chapter Nine
    B y noon, Sophia was ready to strangle someone and she kicked the radiator again. Damn heat, or rather lack of it. Although it wasn’t raining, a nippy wind whistled in from the poorly insulated windows. She buttoned up her double-breasted cardigan and began to pace the dingy East End flat. Either she would die of boredom or freeze to death. She lighted the gas hob for a few minutes but with strict orders not to open the windows, she shut it off for fear she would suffocate.
    The music didn’t help either. She spent ten minutes trying to imagine what it would take for the roof to topple down on her. Would it be the ear-splitting electro funk or the karaoke dancer accompaniment? Could she run to the doorway in time? She tried the run—if only to keep herself warm—and managed to get herself sweaty and colder. Though tempted to run upstairs and bang on the door, it was one of Liam’s strict instructions for her to stay in the flat. Someone had to be watching the monitors, though Sophia didn’t quite understand why. It wasn’t like the camera’s didn’t record bloody everything. Some days, she wanted to kill that man.
    The other task, which involved scanning the previous night’s footage, only took forty-five minutes to review because the woman only awoke six times during the night. Once for the loo, and the other five to push her cat off her face. As far as Sophia was concerned, the woman in house 412 was the most uninteresting person on the planet . . . or perhaps the second most, after herself. Why the hell was she so important? Perhaps it was Liam’s way to slowly wear her down so that when he finally asked her for dinner, she wouldn’t refuse, not for the hundredth time.
    As Sophia continued to debate her existence, Crystal lumbered into the flat and dropped two brown bags of groceries on the kitchen worktop and headed out of the flat again. She returned with a box.
    “What did you buy?” Sophia asked.
    “Things,” Crystal signed. After stuffing the bags into the small fridge without emptying them, she took the box, laid it at Sophia’s feet, and began rifling through the contents. “What did you do to the floor?”
    “I had some fun with masking tape.” She had taped a body outline on the floor, right where the stain on the carpet was. “I imagine the poor soul was shot in the chest.”
    Crystal laughed.
    Sophia turned her attention back to the box. “What’s this?” Sophia signed. “How much did you spend? I gave you my credit card.” She sat cross-legged on the floor.
    “It’s a mobile phone. But, I need it.”
    “What for?” asked Sophia.
    “To make your life easier, of course.” Crystal tapped her friend on the shoulder and rose to her feet. She took a mobile phone from the box and unwrapped it. She plugged it into the wall and immediately started for her laptop. “You constantly complain that Liam remotely bugs your mobile. Well, I think I’ve found a solution.”
    “How will you do that?” Sophia continued to unpack the box which held thin wires, a mini soldering iron, and other micro-electronic parts.
    “Coding, my friend, what we do best. By the way, I think you should disable your GPS tracker.”
    “I’ve considered that option but I do want people, especially you, to know where I am when in an emergency. And although I don’t want the government—or