Alex listened to the silence.
With his legs crossed and his fingers stroking the armrests of his chair, he was sitting and watching the skyline outside his window. A heavy blanket of fog and cloud had descended over the buildings, as if the night was now making ready to fall asleep. He imagined the noise filling the streets and back alleys down below, the city people coming out to drink and mingle, or going home to seek a hot dinner and bed.
Once he had been a part of this very life, on the fringes of something much bigger than his office on the thirty-second floor. An unbidden smile pushed at his lips—a smile whose nature he couldn’t decide. Was it wishful? Did he want those carefree times back, when the only person he answered to was himself? Or was it relieved, that he was safe from the shadows of hunger and death, safe in his glass office in his glass building? Perhaps he would never know.
A casual glance at the neatly organised desk, at the vintage pen stand tilted just right and the glass paperweight within reach, brought the open file on the blotter back to his attention. He looked at it for a long time, taking in the closely typed words, the sharply lined paragraphs, and the blurry picture on the top left corner. The colours were running into each other, yet the derelict building—with its faded white door and the bell that never worked—and the girl on the porch were quite clear for one who knew what he would find. She was a dark blotch against the pale door, her dress and head covering like spots of condensed night.
He kept staring, feeling uncaring, detached. He was a man on a mission and, if any of his former self still lingered somewhere in his stone-cold breast, he did not feel it stir.
Picking up the untraceable phone lying beside the blotter, he typed out a single text: It’s her.