I practically skidded down the escalator and out into the car park. There was no sign of Parker amongst the handful of shoppers beginning to arrive at the mall. It must have just opened, and apart from a young couple wrestling a pram from their car boot and a few teenagers mooching around the entrance, the car park was empty. Then, in the distance, I saw a lone hooded figure, running. It has to be him.
I grabbed my bike from where I’d chucked it by the entrance and started pedaling furiously toward the figure, silently cursing all those times I’d stayed in bed instead of going to those Wednesday lunchtime spin classes. I had no idea what the hell I would even do if I caught up with him. He must have heard my increasingly loud panting, as I saw him turn around. His hood was up, and he was too far away for me to make out any distinct features, but I swear he looked me in the eye and knew I was coming for him.
As I gained on him, he reached the barrier at the end of the car park and squeezed through the gap into the skate park next door. I jammed on my brakes, skidded up to the barrier, and jumped off my bike.
I looked around frantically. My heart sank. My field of vision was filled with a sea of hooded teenagers, trundling down the half-pipes and ramps, smoking dubious-looking cigarettes on the bench, and watching each other fall off their boards as they attempted jumps off the handrails. Whoever the runner was, they were lost in a sea of virtually identical hoodies.
“Shit,” I panted.
Defeated, I wandered back to my bike. I picked it up and leaned it against the barrier. I could see an ambulance in the car park, and paramedics were swarming around the entrance to the mall. My heart jumped as Lyons emerged, followed closely by Dev on a stretcher.
“Is he okay?” I asked, running over.
“He’ll make it,” Lyons replied. “What happened to Parker? Did you see him?”
“I thought I did,” I muttered. “But…”
“Right, just stay here, will you? DCI Forrester will be here in a minute,” he said. “We’ll need to take your statement.”
“My statement? I already told you what happened. You’re wasting time. Look at Dev,” I said, pointing to the ambulance crew as they loaded the stretcher on board. “You need to find Parker before he does that to anyone else.”
“No,” Lyons said firmly. “You need to slow down. You’re in shock. We have zero leads on Parker. Forensics are in the bowling alley now, and we’ll speak to Dev when he wakes up. But right now, that’s all we can do.”
I was about to argue with him when a white-jumpsuited forensics officer approached, holding a transparent bag. Inside was a black hoodie, just like the one Parker had been wearing, and I could make out spots of dark-red blood on it.
“We found this outside the back window,” the officer said to Lyons.
“That’s his,” I said. “That’s Parker’s.”
The skateboarder I chased must have been just that—a kid in a similar hoodie.
“Probably dumped it as he ran off.” Lyons took the bag and held it up to his eyeline. “Or maybe it got caught in the window when he climbed out.”
“How’d he get away so quickly?” I said, scanning the car park again.
“Could have had a car here,” Lyons said, noticeably shivering in the cold morning air. “We’ll check the CCTV.”
“You can run tests on that, right?” I said, motioning to the hoodie. “DNA or something?”
Lyons stared at me, barely hiding his exasperation. “Why don’t you wait for DCI Forrester in the lobby,” he said, as politely as possible.
The last thing I wanted to do was go back inside that place, so I wandered back to my bike and kicked the wheel in frustration. I closed my eyes, and all I could see was Dev, gurgling on the bathroom floor. When I opened them again, my hands were shaking. Fuck it. I didn’t have time to be in shock—people were in danger. I took a deep breath, then another one, until my heart rate returned to a vaguely normal level and my hands were steady(ish).
Lyons was right. I had no idea who Parker was. All I knew about him was the sum total of his Connector profile: his favorite flavor of ice cream (rum raisin) and his second-favorite movie (like 98 percent of all other thirty-four-year-old men, Inception). I didn’t know his surname, or where exactly he worked, or which part of town he lived in. All his bio said was Parker, age thirty-four, and an obligatory height boast: six foot one.
Then something hit me. A six-foot-tall person could not have squeezed through the window in the bowling alley toilets. Now, I know from bitter experience that six foot one on a dating profile normally translates as five foot ten or under—but even in the dark, I could see Parker wasn’t even that. It made me wonder what else about his profile might not be true.
I pulled out my phone, which was littered with missed call notifications from Charlie and about seventeen WhatsApp messages from Sarah about personalized napkins for the top table. I knew I should call them and explain where I’d been, but there was no time for that now. Instead, I bashed “data analyst” and “Parker” into Google. A box appeared on my screen and demanded to know if I was a robot or not.
“How many times do I need to tell you, Google, I am not a robot,” I snapped.
The prompt asked me to pick all the images of boats I could see.
“Could a robot do this?” I said dramatically, and quickly clicked on the four images of boats.
A message popped up: Please try again.
By the time I finally passed the stupid test, I was predictably met with approximately one billion pages of results. I scrolled back through his profile, looking for anything that might help narrow it down. Parker did IT for a PR agency, but there was nothing more specific than that. In fact, I noticed he’d carefully avoided saying anything specific about his life at all.
There was an old episode of Danger Land where the police disproved someone’s alibi after spotting the suspect in the back of a Facebook photo. Maybe I could find some clue in Parker’s profile that would lead me to him. I flicked through it again, trying to work out if maybe I’d seen him somewhere before, or recognized any of the places in the photos. Pinching the screen, I zoomed in on the backgrounds, looking for clues, but they revealed nothing but generic bars and soft furnishings.
The only other photo with another person in it looked like it was taken at some sort of awards ceremony. Parker was standing next to an older woman who looked a bit like Helena Bonham Carter but with even more eyeshadow, if that was at all possible. They were holding some sort of ghastly glass trophy. When I zoomed in, I could just about make out the words “Best Brand Strategy” etched into the glass, and “Rosemary Da—” The rest of the surname was obscured by his ridiculously bling cufflinks. I added “brand strategy award” and “Rosemary” to my Google search and clicked on the Images tab. I scrolled down until I saw a familiar face. “Rosemary Daniels, Senior Graphic Designer, Pentangle PR,” the caption read.
Bingo.
I quickly googled Pentangle and called the number. A soft-spoken woman answered the phone.
“Is Rosemary there, Rosemary Daniels?”
“Rosemary? No, so sorry, Rosemary hasn’t worked here for ages,” the woman said.
“What about Parker? Is he around?”
“Sorry, who is this?”
“I’m Parker’s girlfriend,” I said. “He does work there, right?”
“Parker? You mean Colin? Colin Parker?”
Okay, so Parker is his surname?
“Um, yes, yeah, that’s right, Colin,” I said.
“Girlfriend, you say? Are you sure?” she asked.
“Well, it’s complicated,” I said. “But it’s an emergency, is he there?”
“Well, all the senior managers are in a meeting right now,” she said. “They just went in, so it’ll be about an hour, I expect. Should I go in and get him, if it’s an emergency?”
“No, no, don’t do that, I know how much he likes, um, meetings. Tell you what, I’ll come and speak to him in person, thanks for your help,” I said. I hung up and got on my bike.
“Gwen, where are you going?” I heard Lyons shouting from across the car park. “Wait!”
I didn’t listen, I just pedaled.
Cold air blasted into my face as I raced along the Grand Parade. Clutching my phone in one hand for directions and steering badly with the other, I headed down Channel View Road. Five minutes later I was staring up at a tall mirrored building. I stashed my bike in a side alley and ran into the lobby, where a young receptionist eyed me suspiciously over his horn-rimmed spectacles.
“Colin Parker,” I panted at him.
“What company?” he asked, flicking his eyes away from my ruddy face and toward his computer screen with an air of disgust.
“That one,” I managed to spit out, pointing to the word PENTANGLE next to a large number three, in big silver letters behind him.
“Have you got an appointment?” he asked dryly, fully knowing that of course I damn well didn’t.
I shook my head.
“I’ll call up and let him know he has a… visitor,” the receptionist said, enunciating the word “visitor” like I was a particularly clingy STD.
He punched a few numbers into the phone and I waited, leaning over on the desk.
“Sorry, no answer,” the receptionist said after a few moments, looking down disdainfully at the beads of sweat dropping from my forehead onto his very shiny desk.
Just then a tall, bearded man in ripped jeans and, bizarrely, a shirt and tie walked through the revolving doors behind me. Flashing his ID at the receptionist with a smile, he headed straight past and beeped his card on the reader by the lifts.
“Fuck this,” I mumbled.
“Excuse me?” the receptionist said.
“I said, ‘Thanks for this.’ I really enjoyed our time together.”
He gave me a sarcastic smile and went back to pretending to work on his computer.
I watched the tall man stepping into the lift. If I timed it just right, I reckoned I could make it there before anyone could stop me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the lift doors just starting to close.
“Bye!” I said to the receptionist, and made a dash for it. Just before the doors slid shut, I jumped inside the lift beside Ripped Jeans Man and jabbed the number three button.
“Late for a meeting,” I beamed, as he looked suspiciously at my sweaty cheeks and hoodie.
Through the crack of the closing doors, I could see the angry face of the receptionist as he punched more numbers into his phone. When the lift dinged at floor three, I yelled, “See ya!” to the bemused man and rushed out into a sea of desks. Bored-looking workers clicked away at their computers.
“Colin!” I shouted across the office. “Colin Parker!”
No one even looked up. I ran to the nearest person and spun their chair round to face me.
“Where does Colin sit?” I asked.
“Colin Parker?” the man said. “He’s in a meeting right now. Can I help you?”
“I really need to speak to him urgently,” I said.
“Sorry… who are you?”
“I’m just a friend, um, his best friend, actually. His girlfriend. Look, it’s an emergency, I need to speak to him.”
“What sort of emergency?”
“I don’t know, the big kind. Somewhere in between a tornado and a zombie apocalypse. His dog’s on fire. I’m not sure. I just really need to see Colin Parker right now, okay?”
“It’s a very important meeting. Have you tried emailing him?” the man said.
“Yes, I’ve sent him many, many emails,” I said. “Now, please, where’s the meeting room?”
The man gestured toward a glass-walled office in the corner.
“Great, thanks,” I said, taking a step toward it. But as I did, I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. I turned around to see a very large man in a security guard uniform, and the receptionist smirking behind him.
“You have to leave now,” the security guard said slowly, his voice low and considered.
“Okay, look, I’m going, all right?” I said. I held my hands up, as if to show I was totally harmless.
“Yes, you are,” the guard said, turning me round and leading me gently toward the lift.
“Wait, wait,” I pleaded. “Just one second.” I turned back to the guy at the computer. “What’s the number of the conference call speaker in the meeting room?”
“That’s extension two-two-one,” he said.
“Don’t even think about it,” the guard said, but before he could stop me, I grabbed the phone on the desk, pulled it toward me, and jabbed the numbers in.
“Colin Parker! This is an emergency, please leave the meeting immediately and return to your desk,” I managed to yell into the receiver before the guard pulled it away from me. He slammed down the phone and gave me a look like he was about to roll me in a ball and dunk me into the wastepaper bin.
“Just give me a second, please,” I begged him. “This Colin guy could be a wanted criminal. You can arrest him and be a national hero.”
Through the glass office walls, I saw a man stand up, look out at us with a shrug, and open the door. As he walked toward me, I squinted at him. He looked like Parker, for sure, but significantly more round, gray, and annoyed-looking.
“You’re Parker?” I said. I noticed he had a wedding ring on his finger.
It was definitely the same guy from the app, but visibly much older.
“Colin Parker, yes,” he said. “What’s going on here? Do I know you?”
“You tell me,” I said, pulling out my phone. “Have you been messaging me?”
I held up Parker’s profile in front of his face.
“Wh-what?” he stuttered.
“Is this you?” I said, showing him the awards ceremony photo.
“Yes, that’s me,” he said. “But that photo is from about twelve years ago. In fact, it’s from exactly twelve years ago.”
He reached over to a desk nearby and pulled out something from amongst the debris of paper on it.
“Look,” he said, holding up a shiny glass trophy with the words BEST BRAND STRATEGY 2012 inscribed across it. My mouth fell open.
“Looks like you’ve been catfished,” the receptionist crowed from behind the security guard’s shoulder.
“You didn’t send me these messages?” I asked, scrolling through the Connector chat.
“I don’t think my husband would be very impressed if I did,” he said.
I stood there, deflated, the office workers staring at me like gaping salmon that had flopped onto dry land.
“Someone’s been using my photos on their dating app?” Colin asked.
“Yeah, you might want to update your Facebook privacy settings,” I told him. “If you wanna, you know, avoid future office invasions.”
“All right, that’s enough,” the guard said. “I’m calling the police.”
“Yes, good idea,” the receptionist said, a sarcastic smile on his face.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Call them! They need to see this. Ask for Detective Lyons.”
The guard eyed me suspiciously as he tapped the number into his phone and waited for someone to answer.
There was an awkward silence as the three of us stood by the lift. The office workers eventually stopped staring and went back to their precious spreadsheets, and Colin Parker sloped back into his meeting. The receptionist and I exchanged pleasantries: he gave me a sarcastic smile, and I gave him the finger.
“He’s on his way,” the security guard said eventually.
As we waited, I got out my phone and typed “Colin Parker” into Facebook, and clicked on the Mutual Friends tab.
There was only one friend we had in common, and when I saw it, my mouth went dry.
Charlie Edwards.