Chapter 1: Prologue

On a small street in a big city, two men sat in a café drinking coffee and speaking of times gone by. Both wore suits, one blue, the other black. The blue was a rich, dark blue that spoke of easy money and subtle power. The black was a pure black, not a charcoal or a dark grey, and it was clean in a way that clothes rarely are, as though no dirt or errant fibres would dare settle on it.

The two men had gone to school together once, a long time ago. They hadn’t seen each other in a long time, but they had once been the best of friends. So, when they bumped into each other in the café, they naturally sat down together to catch up. The man in blue talked about himself at length, recounting his successes and telling anecdotes that had been told so often they were like a well-rehearsed song. The man in black didn’t say much about himself. He was happy to speak of their times in school together, all that time ago, but of his life now he spoke vaguely and said little. Was he married? No, he had never married. Where was he working? In an office. What he had been doing in the last twenty-odd years? You know, this and that, nothing all that interesting.

There was something odd about the man in black. His eyes lingered in places a person’s gaze isn’t normally drawn to, and when he tore open his packet of sugar, the motion was a bit too precise. But they had been good friends once, and it had been a long time, so the man in blue ignored these things and laughed at the silly things they had cared so much about as children.

The conversation was pleasant and the coffee was good, but eventually the conversation wound down and the man in blue politely excused himself. He offered to split a taxi but the man in black said he didn’t live far away and he would prefer to walk. They both said that they should catch up again and promised to ‘friend’ one another when they got home. It was a pleasantry, but the man in blue couldn’t help but think that he really would like to talk to the man in black again. He had spoken of things he hadn’t thought of in years and it had left him with a pleasant nostalgia and the simple pleasure of reminiscing that his life lacked. He smiled to himself as the taxi took him home and gave the driver a generous tip when he arrived.

The man in blue lived outside of town in a house that was large enough to be impressive while still being tasteful. He entered his security code and unlocked the double locks on the door, being careful to lock them both behind him. He valued his privacy; his were the only copies of the keys and only he knew his security code. It would have been more convenient to let the cleaner have a copy, but he often kept sensitive work-documents at his home, so security was paramount. He went straight from the front door to the library, approached one of the many well-stocked and meticulously ordered bookcases and removed a thick, leather-bound volume on legal ethics. The man in blue opened the book to the back cover and removed an oddly shaped key he had taped there. He took the key down the hall to his study and eased a liquor cabinet away from the wall. Behind was an expanse of tasteful cream wall, and a tiny hole at a height most people would miss. The man in blue slid the key into the hole and turned, and the wall came away to reveal a keypad. The man entered a twelve-digit passcode, known only to him and changed weekly, and the keypad beeped once. The man turned away from the secret keypad to another section of wall that had slid away to reveal a door. At the door were fingerprint and retinal scanners that confirmed the man in blue was who he was supposed to be and beeped pleasantly. The man in blue stepped through the door, smiling to himself at his own cleverness in the design of this room. He had only used the most trustworthy labour and even then, had hired different contractors for each step in the security system. The men who installed the scanners hadn’t known the room would be hidden, the men who wired the keyboard hadn’t known it would be behind a false wall and the men who hid the keypad didn’t know what it did. Some would call it paranoid, but the man in blue knew that if nobody knows your secrets, nobody can betray them.

Inside the door was a lavish bedroom. Thick carpets, satin drapes and a king-sized bed with eiderdown pillows. In the corner, curled in a ball and crying quiet tears, was a woman. She was young, no more than seventeen. She had full lips and high cheekbones. She would have been beautiful if she hadn’t been crying. The man had paid an outrageous price for her, but such was the price of quality.

When she saw the man, she let out a sob and spoke something in a language he didn’t understand.

“We talked about this,” the man said, irritation creeping into his voice. “Speak English, and please stop crying.” He didn’t strike her. He never struck her. He considered it a point of pride. She could have been sold to someone awful who would beat her, or someone hideously ugly with boils and blubber. She was lucky. He was handsome and he treated her kindly. And yet she cried. Still, he did not strike her. There were other, less crude, ways to reinforce good behaviour and correct the bad.

“I’m sorry,” she squeaked, her dark hair covering her tear-stained face.

“I accept your apology,” the man said calmly, double-checking the locks on the door and taking off his jacket. “Now please join me on the bed.”

The girl rose and moved slowly, woodenly, towards the bed. Her steps faltered for a moment as she passed one of the two unlocked doors leading off of the room. There was a bathroom of course, but this door was not that one. This door led to a tiny closet with a stooped ceiling, not tall enough to stand comfortably and completely devoid of light. It was one way the man disciplined her. She had been locked inside more than once and the memories of it came unbidden to her mind whenever she saw it.

She lay on the bed. “Would you like me to undress?” she asked.

“Not yet,” the man said, taking off his shoes. He joined her on the bed and put an arm around her. She shivered a little at the touch but the man chose to ignore it and began to tell her about his day. She lay with her head on his chest and listened obediently. But just as he was telling her about his coffee with an old friend, there was a noise from the other side of the door.

The man sat bolt upright and shushed the girl. What was that noise? Had someone broken in? They couldn’t know about this room. Could they?

 The door, impossibly, opened. The man in black was standing on the other side holding a gun and looking like the grim spectre of Death himself.

The man who wore blue opened his mouth to speak but the words never came. Instead, there was the report of a single silenced gunshot. Then nothing.

The girl looked between the two men. The one who had held her captive, now dead next to her, and the man who had killed him, standing silent as the grave in the doorway.

“Four hundred thirty-two,” he said. He left without another word.

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