She answered on the fourth buzz.
She did not speak first. She had learned that from Ola in the early days, the way he let silence do the asking.
The line was quiet for two seconds. Then a woman's voice. Older. Precise without being cold. The same voice that had once told her a surgeon had been trying to tell someone the truth for six weeks.
"Ms. Ademi. You rang twice."
"You gave me a number that doesn't exist."
"It exists when I need it to." A measured pause. "The first time you rang, you were curious. The second time, you were checking. That's the difference I was hoping to hear."
Zara kept her voice level. "Who are you?"
"Solis will do."
"There is no Solis at Kavene."
"No," the woman agreed. "But there was a case at Kavene, and it needed you. Caroline Mercer is a careful woman. She would have spent three months finding the right person. The situation did not have three months. So I shortened the search."
Zara looked at the pages on the table. The red ink.
"You put me on the Ashworth case."
"I put the Ashworth case in front of you. You did the rest. I'd like to be clear about that. It matters to me that you understand which parts were yours."
"Why?"
"Because Diane Ashworth was shopping in the same place I shop," Solis said. "And she was clumsy about it. Clumsy customers draw attention to the shop."
The kitchen was very quiet. Through the bedroom wall, Zara could hear her mother's radio, faint and tinny.
"What shop?"
"You're holding a page from its catalogue."
Zara looked at the stamp in the corner. The initials. S.O.
"Someone is selling police files," she said slowly.
"Someone has been selling files for years. Case papers. Disclosure bundles. Witness lists. The dates inquests open. Quietly, and only to people who can pay and know how to ask. Your timeline was listed six weeks ago. It was interesting, so I bought a copy." A pause. "So did someone else."
"Who?"
"That," Solis said, "is the question I would like to pay you to answer."
Zara said nothing.
"Your mother's next scan is on the nineteenth," Solis went on, in exactly the same tone. "Privately, it could be next week. There is a consultant on Harley Street who is very good. There would be no deposit to find."
Zara's hand had gone flat on the table. She had not told it to.
She thought about Elena Marsh in her tidy flat in Bounds Green. Forty thousand pounds, half before and half after. She thought about what she had said to Elena in that flat, with the mug held between her hands. Someone chose you very carefully. And knew exactly what to offer.
"I know how this works," Zara said. "You find the pressure point, and then you offer a future on the other side of it. I watched someone do it to two women. I wrote it all down."
"I haven't threatened you."
"Not yet."
A short silence. Something in it that might have been approval.
"The person who bought the other copy of your pages," Solis said, "has already called you once. You handled him well. He will not call a second time. People like him stop asking." Another pause. "I'd find him before he finds a reason to stop asking you."
The line went dead.
Zara sat with the phone in her hand until Kofi came in from football, muddy to the knee, asking what was for lunch.
She made him beans on toast. She made herself tea she did not drink. When he had gone to shower, she opened her notebook and wrote down everything Solis had said, as close to word for word as she could manage, before memory had time to smooth it into something easier.
Then she drew a line beneath it and wrote what she actually knew.
There is a seller. The seller has access to police files.
Solis is a buyer. Diane Ashworth was a buyer.
There is a third buyer. He has called me once.
Solis knows the date of my mother's scan.
She looked at the last line for a long time. That one did not belong in a case file. It belonged to her. It was the first time the thing she was looking at had looked back into her own kitchen.
She did not sleep much on Saturday either.
On Sunday she helped Kofi with a history worksheet about the Great Fire of London. Primary sources and secondary sources. Samuel Pepys and his diary. At the bottom of the page, printed in bold, was a single question.
When you read a source, ask who made it, and why.
She circled it without meaning to.
He has already called you once.
She went to her laptop and opened the document. The call from Jordan Fitch was there, recorded the night it happened, the way she recorded everything. Time. Number withheld. Name. Firm. Substance.
6:20 p.m. Jordan Fitch, junior associate, Carver Pennick. Aware of "investigative activity conducted by a private individual."
She read the entry above it, written at her desk that afternoon.
Timeline printed. Posted to D.S. Ola, Lewisham, on way to station. 6:05 p.m.
Fifteen minutes.
The call had come fifteen minutes after she dropped the envelope into the postbox on Fetter Lane. Before it had been collected. Before Ola had opened it. Before there had been a stamp, a reference number, or a file to copy it out of.
At the time she had assumed Mears's solicitors had heard about her through the police. A detective mentioning a helpful friend of the victim. Loose talk. It happened.
But Fitch had not said helpful friend. He had said investigative activity. He had said materials. He had said shared with the prosecution. He had known what she was doing on the day she was doing it.
Someone had been reading her before there was anything to read.
Ola messaged her on Monday morning, while she was on the stairs at Fetter Lane with her coat still on.
Morning. Mears trial date provisionally set for spring. Thought you'd want to know. Hope the weekend was quiet.
She read it twice. It was an ordinary message. Kind, even. The kind of message he had sent her a dozen times since Greenwich, careful and brief and slightly more than he was obliged to share.
She thought about his initials, small and neat, in the corner of eleven photocopied pages.
She typed Thank you and then deleted it. Typed it again. Sent it. Nothing else.
It was the first time she had held something back from him, and she felt the weight of it settle somewhere behind her ribs, where the other things were kept.
Mr. Adeyemi looked up as she passed his desk. "You look like you've been working the weekend," he said.
"Reading," Zara said.
She took her lunch hour at eleven and walked the twelve minutes to the public library, to the same computer she had used for the mudlarking forum. She did not want this search anywhere near the firm's network.
She pulled up the Solicitors Regulation Authority register and typed the name.
Jordan Fitch.
No results.
She tried again with Carver Pennick as the firm. She tried variations. Fitch, J. Jordan Fitch, trainee. She searched the firm's own website, its team pages, its archived versions from six months back.
Nothing.
She sat back.
It was possible he had been a paralegal, unregistered. It was possible he had left and the pages had been updated. A great many things were possible.
She took out her personal phone and rang Carver Pennick's main line.
A receptionist answered. Polished and bright.
"I'm trying to reach Jordan Fitch," Zara said. "Junior associate. He called me some weeks ago about a matter."
"One moment."
A keyboard. A pause that went on slightly too long.
"I'm sorry," the receptionist said. "We don't have anyone by that name. I've checked current and former staff. We've never had a Jordan Fitch."
"You're certain?"
"Quite certain." Another pause, and this time the brightness slipped. "It's only... you're the second person to ask about him this week."
Zara went very still.
"Who was the first?"
"A woman. Friday afternoon. She wouldn't leave a name." The receptionist hesitated, as though she was not sure she should say the rest. "She said that if anyone else rang asking, I should tell them she was one day ahead."
If you've been reading till this point, thank you for your support, guys! Now I plan on doing a mass release, but first you have to show me you want it.
10 Golden Ticket = 5 chapters
20 Power Stones = 2 chapters
1 Gift = 10 chapters
Let's go, guys!