Chapter 9: The First Visit
Sasha's flat was on the third floor of a narrow building twenty minutes from the house.
Her sister, whose name was Donna, opened the door.
She had the look of someone who had been holding herself together through sheer practicality and was beginning to feel the edges of it.
"She's in the sitting room," Donna said.
"Clara's asleep."
The flat was small and carefully kept.
A secondhand sofa with a good blanket folded over the arm.
A shelf of books.
A photograph on the wall of Sasha and Donna as children, standing in front of a garden I didn't recognize.
Sasha was sitting on the sofa with a shoebox on the table in front of her.
"Patricia came here three weeks before she introduced me to Ethan," Sasha said.
"I thought she was just being friendly.
She'd met me once at a work event and she'd taken my number.
She said she wanted to check in."
She lifted the lid of the shoebox.
Inside was a stack of papers, a USB drive, and a small notebook with a red cover.
"She left these," Sasha said.
"She told me they were background documents about the property.
That I should keep them somewhere safe and not mention them to anyone because it was all still being arranged." She looked at me.
"I never opened the notebook.
She told me not to."
I looked at the notebook.
"May I?"
Sasha nodded.
I picked it up and opened it.
The first page was a timeline.
Dates going back nearly two years.
Names.
Amounts.
Account numbers.
Notes in Patricia's handwriting — small, precise, slightly backward-slanting.
It was a planning document.
She had written it herself and left it here, in this flat, in this shoebox, in the care of the one person she believed she had completely controlled.
"She was so certain you'd never come here," I said quietly.
"She told me you were dangerous," Sasha said.
"She said if you ever contacted me, I shouldn't open the door."
"But you opened the door last night."
"I'd been calling her for three days and she wasn't answering.
The baby was sick.
I was frightened and I had no one else." Sasha looked at her hands.
"I didn't know where else to go."
Donna sat down beside her sister and put an arm around her shoulders.
I turned to the second page of the notebook.
There were names I recognized.
The bank manager at the branch Patricia used.
A solicitor I had never heard of — not Gerald's firm, a different one.
A notary.
A property agent in Málaga.
There were dates that matched the transfers Gerald had traced.
There was a note beside Ethan's name: *E.
will not look.
E.
never looks.*
And at the bottom of the last page, in slightly heavier ink as though she had pressed harder when she wrote it:
*Once the house is clear, close everything.
She'll have nothing to fight with.*
I closed the notebook.
"Sasha," I said.
"This is the most important thing she left behind.
She didn't mean to leave it.
She meant to collect it once everything was finished." I paused.
"She never thought you'd let anyone in."
Sasha's eyes filled.
"I'm sorry.
I didn't know what she was."
"You couldn't have known.
She made sure of that."
Donna pulled her sister closer.
I set the notebook carefully back in the shoebox and took out my phone to call Gerald.
He answered on the second ring.
"I need you to come to an address," I said.
"Bring an evidence bag."
"What have you found?"
"Her planning notes.
Two years of them.
In her own handwriting." I paused.
"Gerald, she documented everything.
Every step.
Every name.
Every amount."
A long silence.
"I'll be there in twenty minutes," he said.
I set the phone down and looked at Sasha.
"It's over," I said.
"She just didn't know it yet."
Sasha wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
Clara stirred in the next room — a small, soft sound.
"What happens to Clara?" Sasha asked.
"In all of this.
What happens to her?"
"Nothing in this case touches Clara," I said.
"She's not part of any of it.
She's just a baby who deserves a quiet life."
Sasha nodded.
Took a breath.
"Thank you," she said.
"For not closing the door on me last night."
I thought about that for a moment.
May you like
"You came to the right house," I said.
"Even if it didn't feel like it at the time."
