Bryony died before Caro’s accident. Looking back, it’s funny to think of Caro’s family gossiping about Bryony’s tragic demise, just weeks before her own unhappy end. I wonder if Caro’s death hit them as hard as Bryony’s hit Simon. I suspected (correctly) that Bryony would be the kicker for him. You could always marry again, and a man like my father, well, he wouldn’t wait long. A new squeeze half his age would emerge before the headstone had time to be engraved, I was sure of that. But Bryony was his only child and, unlike his wife who spent her time shuffling between plastic surgery offices and stuffy restaurants in Monaco, Bryony actually chose to live with Simon. I thought her death might well tip him into some kind of action. So Janine would go first.
I’d decided how to kill Janine before I’d even thought about anyone else in the family. That seems ridiculous really, but there it is. A lot of these plans have come down to luck, despite the constant plotting I did as a teenager, coming up with meticulous and ingenious ways to kill these people. It turns out that as with everything, the reality is always slightly more given over to chance, or an idea that pops into your head at 3 a.m. Janine’s murder was a bit of both. I read an article in some Sunday supplement three years ago about the rise in ‘the internet of things’, a term which gets bandied around a lot by excited nerds but basically means a bunch of devices connected to the internet which can communicate with each other. They have automated systems and can gather information and carry out tasks – collate a shopping list when you run out of cleaning products for example, or turn on your heating when you’re set to come back from holiday. It’s hardly the vision we had of the near future, this isn’t The Jetsons and we still don’t have flying skateboards – but we can now expect our houses to do more of the work. No keys needed for the front door when it just takes a fingerprint, no time spent vacuuming when a robot can do it for you while you’re out. At the moment, the most normal people come to having a smart house is by buying an Alexa or something like it, which they smugly instruct to play music or google something. Mainly in front of bored friends who dread coming over. But for the uber-wealthy, it can mean linking up your entire house and everything in it.
Guess what Janine had done with her penthouse in Monaco? That’s what I mean about chance. I read that piece with a slight hangover and only a vague interest one morning, and three weeks later, Janine was featured in the magazine Lifestyle!, a monthly glossy which mainly featured interviews with very rich women photographed on plump sofas and let them talk about whatever they wanted. Normally that was a charity lunch or a renovation project which involved a lot of glass and marble and an overuse of the word ‘authentic’. I think the only people that actually bought this magazine were other rich women who wanted to hate-read pieces about their society rivals, but they ran a lot of adverts for exclusive interior design companies and craftsmen and so the serpent ate the tail and the magazine stayed in business.
Janine’s feature focused on her new terrace, something she’d added on a whim when she realised that she wanted somewhere to do yoga in the morning sun. The roof garden was at a slightly tilted angle, she explained, and was much better suited to the evening light. I wondered how the interviewer reacted to this, presumably with genuine sympathy for such a terrible burden. But she didn’t stop at the terrace, which seemed to have been modelled on some kind of Grecian vision, with large terracotta pots and an honest-to-God white marble fountain twice the size of anything else in the space. There was a tour of the rest of the penthouse, which spanned three floors and housed nine bedrooms, six bathrooms, and a, wait for it, ‘serenity room’ which seemed serene only in that it didn’t contain any furniture apart from one cream sofa and a floor-to-ceiling mirror. Janine explained that she retreated to it when ‘life gets overwhelming and I need to recentre’, which didn’t explain the mirror but perhaps sometimes it’s better not to ask. The reason she moved to Monaco, she explained, was for her health. A heart scare made her ‘reassess how she lived’. There must be an awful lot of health benefits in the principality. The tax loopholes? Not mentioned.
As the interview spread out over 5,000 words, the interviewer clearly got slightly desperate for something new and original and prompted Janine to talk about her clever wardrobe. ‘Tell us about your dream closet, it’s got some special features I can imagine every woman reading this will be dying to hear about.’ Accompanied by a photo of an enormous walk-in wardrobe, Janine explained that every item in her cupboards was itemised, photographed from every angle, and stored in a database which she could access from an iPad. It made dressing in the mornings a dream, she told the magazine, because the system could tell her which item to match with what. ‘It reminds me of clothes I’d forgotten about. Just last week I bought a beautiful Chanel bouclé jacket in royal blue, only to find, when I added it to the database, that I had two exactly the same!’ Those jackets retail for £5,000. How we all laughed. The technology didn’t stop with the wardrobes though. That was just the start. Everything in the home had been connected to the internet, Janine explained. The lights were no longer turned on with switches, the oven did not have buttons (‘Not that I’ve cooked in a while,’ she trilled) and even her morning sauna was temperature-controlled by the smart hub. Every room was able to be locked remotely, in case of a security breach, and it gave her so much comfort to know that, she confided, ‘I don’t completely understand how it all works really, but our wonderful housekeeper has really mastered it and I barely have to do a thing.’ That was the motto of Janine’s life really.
It was her mention of the sauna which really piqued my interest. It seemed like the set-up in a crime novel and I had visions of infiltrating her house, perhaps as a maid, before shutting her in the sauna and watching her beg for mercy. Perhaps this wasn’t exactly feasible. But the remote element appealed, and it felt like a house connected to the internet would be worth at least a little research. Could you use this technology to nefarious ends? Was it completely secure or could it be hacked with little effort?
The web was full of stories about smart devices breaking down, malfunctioning and messing up. Couples who’d split up when their AI gadgets accidentally mentioned the name of a mistress, children exposed to swear words, kettles boiling for hours on end and heating systems which were impossible to work. But the really interesting flaws in this kind of intelligent design were in the security element. There was a spate of scare stories online about people breaking into baby monitor streams and parents hearing strangers talking to their children at night through the devices. There were reports of burglar alarms being easily hacked into and silenced well before intruders even entered the house. Frazzled families claimed that their smart devices had been taken over by criminals who demanded ransoms to stop tampering with the temperature and playing music at all times of the day and night. In most cases, this was because the system which these devices ran on was not encrypted nor updated. Sure, some of these companies took it a little more seriously, but most businesses just sold you the kit and told you to make sure you had a good password.
I had to find out whether it would be possible to hack into the system Janine had, but where to start? I couldn’t just type ‘how to find a hacker’ into Google and take my chances (I actually did do this initially, and felt incredibly foolish for days afterwards). Moving on, I searched for academics who were doing research on smart devices, and found a woman who’d written a paper on the future implications for home security in the era of smart houses. She worked at UCL and, God bless our higher education system, her email address was right below her name on the website for anyone to find. I emailed Kiran Singh from the mailbox of sarah.summers@journo.com and asked her if she’d have some time for an interview. I told her I was hoping to place a piece with the Evening Standard on the dangers of inviting this kind of technology into our homes.
Everyone always wants their name in print. Even though print is dying on its arse, people still get excited to see themselves mentioned. Online, you disappear within minutes mostly. But your gran can tear out the page of a newspaper and show her mates. Perhaps frame your achievement in the downstairs loo, where you’ll see the paper yellowing and curling every time you go in there to pee. Academics are no different. Kiran emailed me back within an hour to say that she’d be happy to speak to me and was the coming Friday any good?
We met at the café in the British Museum. Her idea, and a nice change from the normal banality of grabbing lunch from one of eight million Pret A Mangers in this city. I went armed with a notebook and a tape recorder, bought that morning from a tech shop on Tottenham Court Road, in the hopes that it made me look somewhat like a journalist. The recorder was guaranteed to be simple to use, I was told by the slightly desperate man selling it to me from his empty shop, nestled between two furniture megastores displaying identikit pale pink velvet sofas in the window displays. I switched it on and hoped for the best.
Kiran was a nice woman, if a little earnest, sitting at a table sipping green tea when I got there, but easily identifiable as an academic. Normal people don’t wear cords. They think about it, perhaps even try some on in the near permanent half-price sale at Gap. But ultimately they realise that they cling to you, collect fluff like no other fabric on earth and worse still, they make you look like an academic. After some small talk, she was happy to get down to the topic in hand, and gave me a ton of helpful information on whether it was possible to use this technology to hurt someone. Kiran thought there was one obvious way she could see a hacker using these smart home devices maliciously. If you could obtain access to the owner’s hub, then all bets were off.
The hub, she patiently told me once I’d asked her to go back and explain it again, was the brain box running all the gadgets in a smart home. It sends out commands and they obey. The hub can instruct the thermostat to increase the temperature in a home, or tell the TV to update the channels. Once a device is marked as ‘trusted’ by the hub, it’s in the network and can converse with all the other gadgets.
Some of these smart devices run on end to end encryption. ‘Amazon is generally pretty good with cloud security, but I wouldn’t touch Ergos devices with a bargepole,’ she said, sliding a finger across her neck. A lot of them didn’t though, given that the companies are smaller and the resources limited. There were easy ways to get access to the hub, Kiran told me – if you can obtain the serial number from the owner, then it’s a piece of cake.
‘I see people post it online all the time,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Even if it’s not handed to you on a plate, there are ways of getting it by force if you’ve got basic hacking skills.’
Once a hacker gains control of the smart hub and the devices connected to it, the smart home can become a weapon for the person in charge.
‘You could use the homeowner’s cameras to spy on them,’ she said, ‘or gaslight someone by turning on music at certain times of day, opening doors, closing blinds.’ I suppressed a smile, she wasn’t to know how wonderful her hypothesis was. ‘But mostly, we’re not at that stage yet. Most people buy an Alexa or a Google device and use it to order milk. Sure, those devices are hackable, but the real danger is when everything in your house is connected, and we’re not there yet. That technology is still in its infancy, the preserve of the very rich.’
I asked her who was doing this kind of hacking and she looked around the café quickly, as though we might be surrounded by people eager to know where to start. In actual fact, we were sitting between an elderly woman in a floral coat eating blueberry cake on one side, a Japanese couple who were busy taking selfies on the other, and a young guy with dark hair and a well-cut coat engrossed in a book sitting three tables in front of us.
‘The big stuff is done by nation states – China, Russia, the US – though they deny it. Second-tier hacking tends to be groups focused on extortion – using webcams to blackmail LGBT people in the Middle East, for example. Then you’ve got isolated teens in their bedrooms who are totally self-taught and do it for laughs, because they’re bored, who knows? They have time to mess with someone’s head by interfering with their doorbell or turning off their heating, and then boast about it on Reddit or 4Chan or Babel …’
After a few more questions and a promise to get in touch when the article was done, I made my exit, careful to avoid the couple still determined to get that perfect selfie, and headed back to work. I walked briskly through the back streets behind Oxford Street, mulling over whether I could risk recruiting an accomplice to help me hack Janine’s house or not. I’d been loath to outsource any part of my plan from the outset, unwilling to add any obvious tripwires when there would be so many already. But I was sure that I couldn’t do it alone – my understanding of technology began and ended when I had to update my phone software – and I was already completely enamoured with the idea of Janine’s own home turning on her. Could I find someone I trusted enough to help me do it?
* * *
That weekend, I spent twenty-eight hours online, rubbing at my eyes every five minutes and alternating between coffee and wine depending on my energy levels. I looked at the sites Kiran had mentioned, reading thousands of posts by amateur hackers who boasted of their successes, crowing about infiltrating clouds, hubs, phones, and cameras in language that was almost completely alien to me. Was it lazy to imagine they were all scrawny 16-year-olds who’d not seen daylight for weeks? Perhaps, but I have no doubt it was accurate nonetheless. There were many posts from people asking hackers to help them, mainly to spy on partners suspected of cheating. ‘Girl (22) needs help to prove BF (28) is carrying on with co-worker. Help!’ was typical of such a plea. Normally the replies offered to take the conversation private, so I didn’t get to see what the result was, and whether a helpful hacker stepped up to the job.
But I was exhausted and tanked up on caffeine, so I posted a message. It didn’t matter if it failed to attract anyone, but it was worth a shot. It was vague and short, explaining that I was female (16, I figured that might appeal to some white-knight nerd), and wanted help to mess with my horrible stepmother. I won’t go into the details of some of the messages I received in the days that followed. Suffice to say, my plea was like honey to a bee. If the honey was a young vulnerable girl and the bee was a fucking swarm of old gross blokes. I replied to the least disgusting messages and blocked everyone else. I spent the next week drip-feeding further details to three users, seeing how they’d react, what they knew about hacking and what they’d want in return. The one I held out least hope for was ColdStoner17, who seemed not to be able to use proper words and replied at the most random times of day, often with gifs which I didn’t understand. I was about to cut him loose when he messaged me at 7 a.m. one day as I was getting ready for work.
Yo, he typed, when we freaking out the old lady then? I fucking hate my stepmom too. This can be like the therapy my dad won’t pay for. The language was basic but the full sentences were a start. I discovered that he was 17 (hence the username), lived in Iowa with his dad and the aforementioned evil stepmother, and spent a lot of time messing around on the internet when he should be doing his school work. I told him bluntly that it seemed unlikely he’d be a superstar hacker, but apparently I didn’t understand 17-year-olds very well at all. He spent the entire morning bombarding me with all the ways he could infiltrate laptop cameras, mess with baby monitors, and turn off people’s heating. It was mild stuff, but it still sounded more impressive than anything I could attempt, and so instead of binning him off, I engaged with him.
We talked a lot into the night on an encrypted instant messenger, as he told me how lonely he was and I told him fabricated stories about how much I hated my parents. The more we spoke, the more he relaxed and used proper spelling. He told me how much he loved reading, and we bonded over a love of Jack Kerouac (I have never read any Kerouac but Google kept me just about up to speed). I deliberately held off on any proper details about my plan, happy to form a relationship with him first, albeit one based on lies and sexist fairy-tale stepmother tropes.
This went on for a few weeks, as I attempted to act like the fictitious 16-year-old he thought I was, while also giving him a confidence boost that I reckoned would help him feel indebted to me. He confided in me about being bullied when he was younger because his parents had got a divorce (I guess Iowa wasn’t the most progressive of places) and he told me about his fears that he’d never get a girlfriend. Despite my attempts to keep it entirely chaste, sometimes I’d wake up to voice notes where he’d sing me little songs about how much I cheered him up, and I’d bat them away with smiley emojis. He was becoming infatuated. I’d forgotten how easy it was to manipulate teenage boys, but it came back to me pretty fast. I felt like I was on the right track with Pete (he told me his real name on day four, I told him that my name was Eve) and decided to press ahead and tell him a little bit more about what I wanted to do to Janine, my terrible stepmother.
I explained that she lived in Monaco (kind of like France, yes) and that she’d turned my dad against me over the years so that we were almost entirely estranged (not a complete lie). I wanted to freak her out and teach her a lesson. Did he know anything about smart houses? He knew a little, he said, but came back to me a day later fully clued up on the different methods used by companies who offered smart technology. The kid must have been up all night reading about all the ways you could infiltrate a home like Janine’s, and he was confident that we could get into her hub. The best way would be if we could get a new device into the house – if you can add another item to the system, we can take control of the whole thing. Are you planning a visit any time soon? This threw me. I had hoped that we’d be able to access the home hub without ever having to set foot inside the property and I had no clue as to how I might be able to get into Janine’s apartment without risking everything. I wasn’t a cat burglar and I had no illusions about how well secured it would be. But then, I’d never actually been to Monaco to see how Janine lived for myself. I had some holiday to take, there was no harm in seeing the lie of the land, even if it meant knowing for sure that there was no way to carry out this particular plan.
I told Pete that I was going to be out there in a couple of weeks but wasn’t sure if I’d actually be invited in. She hates me lol, I wrote, and I usually stay with my mum at a hotel and see my dad when she’s not around. It was weak, but if Pete thought this was a weird familial set-up, he didn’t say. Despite nearly being an adult, his family made him go to church twice a week and every day during the holidays, so I guess he didn’t have a great yardstick for what was healthy.
I booked a week off work and sorted out a hotel in Monaco, which hit my finances hard. This entire project had drained a large amount of the savings I’d diligently gathered, and it pained me to see my hard-earned funds being depleted like this. I’d been putting a little bit aside every month since I started getting an allowance from Sophie and John (they obviously felt as though they had to treat me like one of their own in this respect. I felt uncomfortable about it, but I still took the money) and it gave me a sense of security that I didn’t get from anything else. Every time I checked my savings account I felt a fresh sense of fury at the imbalance between the Artemis financial landscape and my own. I accept that this is ridiculous, given that I was spending my money in order to kill them, but not every emotion is rational.
Still, a week in the sunshine wasn’t something to entirely despair about, and Monaco was tiny, roughly the size of Central Park, so deliberately bumping into Janine wouldn’t be a problem as long as she was in town. Unfortunately, there were no guarantees for this, given the propensity of the super-rich to jet off at a moment’s notice. Her Instagram was private, but she’d accepted a request to follow her from the handle ‘Monaco deluxe’, which was an account I’d made with pictures stolen from society sites. They showed the rich and powerful at parties and charity events – it was easy to repost them with gushing tributes to ‘Mrs Daphne Baptiste, generously donating a beautiful mink coat to the Children’s care fund’ or ‘Mrs Lorna Gold, who hosted an elegant evening soiree at her beautiful penthouse for the street dog society.’ If these women ever even looked at my page, they would just accept the praise at face value. They were pillars of Monaco society, of course people wished to show some thanks. From that page I could see a little of what she was doing, but Janine wasn’t a frequent poster, nor was she a talented photographer. Apart from a few posed pictures taken by professionals, the images on her account were mainly blurry photos of sunsets from private jet windows, the odd snap of a lunch table with a caption like, ‘Great time catching up with Bob and Lily at Cafe Flore’, and a few photos of family events. Bryony lived her life in real time on Instagram and it was invaluable. Janine was old school. Her last picture was three days ago, and was a close up of her slightly chubby bejewelled hands, showing off a dark red manicure. The caption said, ‘Thanks again to @MonacoManis for a good job’, so at least she was there for now.
I flew out on a Monday, and as soon as I’d showered off the sadness of a budget flight and a shuttle bus, I went out to explore. Of course, I knew where Janine’s flat was. It’s remarkable how easy it is to find out where people live. Even if they’re not on the electoral roll, so many people geotag their locations, or follow accounts on social media from their area. If you follow eight different accounts with ‘Islington’ in their name, nobody gets a prize for figuring out where you get your morning paper. Even worse, people are so trusting that they post photos of the view from their bedroom windows, or of their own front doors. And for celebrities, it’s even easier. A lot of the time, the media will report on the exact location of someone’s home. If they’re involved in something truly scandalous, they might even fly a helicopter over it, or mock up a floor plan. Janine gave me her address directly. She gave it to every reader of Hello! two years ago when she opened her doors for a reception to honour a Turkish businesswoman who was winning much praise for inventing a possible cure for eczema. The piece literally opened with ‘Janine Artemis welcomes us to her beautiful penthouse in the Exodora building in Monaco’s gilded playground.’ The businesswoman by the way, was later sentenced to eight years in jail for taking close to £100 million in funding and fabricating research. The fight to eradicate eczema goes on.
It was a lovely warm day and I used the map on my phone to take me to the Exodora building, walking past cafés stuffed with feline-faced women and tubby men in shirts with contrasting collars, all of whom could have used some factor 50 earlier in their lives. The building was only ten minutes from my hotel, which was a relief because the heat was rising now and the hope of a nice walk was slightly marred by the supercars which left a trail of fetid petrol fumes in their wake every time they whizzed by me. It’s said that one in three people who live in Monaco is a millionaire. I understand that rich people mainly stay alive in order to keep hold of their money, and that a tax haven like this one helps them to do that, but it felt like one big gated community where there’s no need for open space or fresh air because the helicopter can take off in twenty minutes and zip you over to Switzerland or Provence if you find yourself craving it.
The building Janine lived in was stunning, in a sort of McMansion type of way. It was a cream stucco house, though house is a misnomer. I’d wondered why the Artemises had chosen a flat instead of a secluded villa somewhere, but now I’d seen the place, I understood. The building was vast, stretching the length of at least six houses, and as it rose, balconies appeared, getting larger and larger. Roses bloomed off the sides of them, tumbling down as though they were allowed to grow wild, but retaining a very symmetrical appearance. Carefully arranged to look casual. The windows were floor to ceiling but all blocked out by blinds, and the top of the building had a large flag pole from which hung the principality’s colours. I stood back and counted the floors. Eight in total, and I knew from the design magazine that the Artemis property took up three. Craning my neck, I could just see the glass balcony at the very top where Janine liked to do her yoga in the morning sun. I walked around to the back of the property, but it was shut off with a large and imposing wall and a gate which presumably led to the car park. There was a big metal entrance door to one side, which suggested the presence of a goods lift.
Naturally, CCTV cameras were dotted about, I could see them in at least five places. For all that, the main door was remarkably easy to access, only a wrought-iron gate and a big gold knocker stood between me and the intercom. Oh, and a man standing guard at the door. I was fucked if I thought I could just walk in though. Security was almost certainly why they’d chosen this place. It was fortified and presumably had porters on call 24/7 on high alert.
Disheartened, I walked down the street and found a coffee shop where I ordered a café creme and messaged Pete. Had a huge fight with Dad and can’t stay here, no chance of getting into wicked SM’s. Guess it’s all off. I added a crying emoji for full effect and lit a cigarette. He pinged back immediately: oh no, that sucks. Can you give ur dad something to take home? Now there was a thought. Maybe I couldn’t get into the flat, but there must be staff coming and going all day. Janine clearly hadn’t lifted a finger in several decades apart from to point and click at hired helpers. There must be someone who would be open to taking a small device into the property in return for suitable compensation.
I spent the next two days watching the people who entered the building through the side entrance. At first it was hard to tell which flats they were going to, but I built up a profile of them, using my eagle eyes and my perceptive acumen to figure out who worked where. Of course I didn’t. It turned out that the staff at Janine’s all had to wear white hospitality uniforms with Artemis sewn in italics on the breast. Nothing says ‘I’ve lost my humanity’ like making underpaid migrant workers wear your name across their hearts so it was very on brand for this family. Slightly nervous-looking women would emerge carrying laundry bags and handing them over to drivers of dry-cleaning vans, or they would sign for parcels from delivery men and head back indoors quickly, as though they were being timed. I never had the chance to talk to any of them, such was their rush. But there was also a lady who emerged every day at 8 a.m., 2 p.m., and 6 p.m. on the dot with a fluffy little Bichon Frise, and marched off down the street to the promenade. I hate fluffy dogs. They’re always so fucking yappy and up themselves. I assume they’re that way because their owners make them so. You never see a nice calm person with a Bichon Frise. It’s always permanently discontented middle-aged women who communicate their disappointments through the dog. ‘Betty can’t sit here, it’s too hot and she’s getting anxious.’ Betty is fine. You, on the other hand, might want to contact a therapist.
On the second day of surveillance, I went to get a coffee and headed down to the promenade prepared for the 6 p.m. dog walk. Sure enough, the lady in the humanity-free uniform came into view, dragging the unwilling fluffy bundle. I waited for her to pass me, and I followed her for a few minutes before coming to walk beside her.
‘Cute dog,’ I said and smiled. She was tiny this woman, with dark black hair pulled into a low bun. She barely reacted, and would’ve kept walking if the dog had not jumped up at me, leaving faint dirt marks on my pale trousers.
‘No, Henry!’ she cried, bending down to admonish the dog, who looked remarkably uncontrite. I assured her that it was fine but she stopped by a wall and pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and attempted to brush my legs vigorously.
‘Is he your dog?’ I asked, even though it was obvious from her expression that she didn’t have any affection for the animal. She told me she walked it for her employer, and I expressed sympathy, telling her that it was boring to walk a dog every day – especially such a rude one. She smiled at that, before quickly looking around as though Janine was going to jump out in front of us and berate her for not praising the little fellow.
I kept pace beside her as she carried on walking, asking how she found Monaco and telling her that I’d only recently arrived and was finding it all a bit overwhelming.
‘The people are rude,’ she said abruptly. ‘Everyone thinks money is everything and nobody is kind.’ Well what about your employer, I asked, were they not kind? And then it all came out. How Janine harangued her about the smallest things, how she worked six days a week and only got Thursdays off and even then she was called if needed. ‘She took money from my wages last week because a shirt had shrunk at the dry cleaners!’ she exclaimed, shaking her head. Lacey, for that was her name, sent money home and supported three teenage children. She had worked here for three years, before that she’d been in Dubai for another family. They’d not been much better but at least there she’d had her own accommodation. We walked the length of the promenade before she turned around, the dog whining in protest.
I expressed sympathy, and told her that Janine sounded like a total monster, careful not to say her name or give any hint that I knew her. And like that, I suddenly felt I had an in.
‘I work for a newspaper back in the UK. I’m thinking that there’s a story in rich women like this exploiting their hardworking housekeepers. We could expose these people, and shame them into behaving properly.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I need this job. I can’t speak to you no more.’
Lacey increased her pace but I stayed beside her.
‘I would never ever use your name or say who you worked for. But we could hold a mirror up to this behaviour. The newspaper is famous and these women would read it. If they all knew that society thought it was unacceptable, they’d be better – if not for you, at least so that people thought they were good employers.’ This was total bollocks of course. A hundred articles had been written about the way the uber-rich treat their staff and nothing had ever changed. If anything, it was getting worse, with stories coming out constantly about maids who’d escaped terrible and inhumane conditions while their former bosses suffered little to no consequences. I was exploiting her too, I know that. But needs must, and at least I could offer her something for her cooperation.
She shook her head again, more vehemently. ‘I can’t do it. I need this job.’ We were nearly back at the house.
‘OK, I respect that. But I’d barely need anything from you and of course we would pay you for your trouble. That would be cash in hand for your family, Lacey.’ She slowed down but didn’t look at me. ‘Think about it?’ I said. ‘If you’re interested, I’ll wait here at 2 p.m. tomorrow. You’d help so many people in the same situation.’ With one last tug on the leash, she and Henry headed back to the penthouse. She’d do it, I thought, as I saw her look back at me. If Janine had treated her with a fraction of decency I’d have no way in here. Lucky for me, she hadn’t.
I took myself out for dinner that night, and dressed up for the occasion. Even in my knee-length black dress and neon pink heels, I still looked pretty casual by Monaco standards. Despite the heat, fur wraps were in abundance, PETA clearly hadn’t made it to the principality recently. There were diamonds the size of quail eggs stuck to earlobes and fingers at every turn, and watches that I couldn’t identify but knew would be worth more than enough to ensure the downpayment on a flat. Would I be like this when I had money? It was hard to think of a super-rich person who had taken a different path. Bill Gates perhaps, but who wants to wear ugly trainers with chinos and be that earnest? None of these people looked happy. It’s a cliché that money doesn’t buy happiness – tell that to someone struggling on the minimum wage – but it’s clearly true that it breeds dissatisfaction for many. Perhaps the difference for me would be that the money would be mine. So many of these women were wealthy because of their husbands, and that must make for a lifetime of insecurity. Because rich men don’t tend to stick to one wife, do they? They exchange and upgrade, and very rarely do they say, ‘Thank you for being by my side, darling. Thank you for raising our children and running our house and taking care of all the emotional labour, which enabled me to work without distraction. It’s time for something new now but here is 50 per cent of everything we built together.’ No. They lawyer up and try to shaft you, hiding their money offshore, pleading poverty, arguing that you never contributed in any way, protesting that the kids don’t need that much. Or they do what my dad did, and relinquish all responsibility as quickly as possible.
On my way to Monaco, I saw two women looking at a cabinet of rings in duty-free. I heard one of them say to the other, ‘Just once I’d like to be able to buy myself something like that without asking my husband if I can.’ I would never have that problem. I would never be beholden, timid or lassoed to someone else like that. And if I ended up with a partner, I would be magnanimous about the money. We would be equals in it, and enjoy what it could give us. Not diamond rings which made you afraid of being robbed in the street, but experiences and comfort. A life with endless possibility. Perhaps I didn’t know how it would affect me until I had it, but looking at the people around me in the restaurant, I felt certain that I would try to remember how not to do it. And having the Artemis family at the back of my mind would help. Every now and then I would chuck a lot of their cash at charities I felt sure that they’d have hated. It wouldn’t ameliorate their mark on the world, but it would be a small pleasure to start a fund with their name attached to help squatters fight eviction notices.
Back at the hotel, I messaged Pete to tell him that I thought I could get my dad to take something to the house, and asked him what would work best, before turning off my phone and falling into a deep sleep.
The next morning I woke early. Pete had replied with a stream of messages about hubs, unencrypted devices, and routers, which was all written out in techy language I couldn’t quite decipher. I sent back a fairly terse message asking him to be clearer and went for a run. An hour later, I grabbed a book, headed for the promenade, and settled down at a café to wait for Lacey. It was nice to do absolutely nothing for an entire morning, and it almost felt like I was really on holiday – if you discounted the fizzy feeling in my stomach which told me I was slightly on edge. I read a few chapters of Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal, which I’d come across years ago when I was still considering what to do about the Artemis family. It had been sitting on my bookshelf for a while, but I’d noticed it again when I was packing for Monaco and shoved it in my bag. It’s a book about a man in Edwardian England who kills his family for revenge. I wonder if you can possibly decipher the appeal? At 1.45 p.m., I paid for my three cups of coffee and one mini doughnut, trying not to kick off at the waitress when I saw I had been stiffed for 26 euros, and walked towards Janine’s flat.
Just after 2 p.m., I saw Lacey and Henry hove into view. As she got closer, I gave a small wave and fell into step with her. We exchanged brief greetings and I talked lightly about the heat for a few minutes until the dog forced us to stop so that he could relieve himself.
‘What would you need from me?’ Lacey asked anxiously, as she rummaged in her pocket for a plastic bag. I wanted to hug her, and I’m not one for spontaneous physical contact.
‘I think the easiest way would be to put a little microphone in the flat and record how she talks to you. That way, we have hard proof for a story but we still won’t use your name or implicate you in any way. After that, me and you could just have a chat about the industry and what needs to change. How does that sound?’
Lacey bent down to pick up the dog shit and said something I didn’t quite hear. ‘I said how much,’ she repeated when I asked her to say it again. I thought fast. I had to go low for financial reasons, but how much did she really expect? If I went too high, she might assume there was more to come.
‘A thousand,’ I said. ‘You can have it in any currency you like, cash in hand. But my editor won’t sign off on more. Would that help your family, Lacey?’ I couldn’t tell from her expression whether or not this was a decent amount in her eyes, and we kept walking.
‘OK,’ she said finally. ‘But the money upfront and you promise not to use my name or the name of Madame or mention anything about Henry.’ I was puzzled, and it clearly showed in my face. ‘He is a rude dog but I love him,’ she said simply.
‘OK, nothing about Henry,’ I promised, trying not to look incredulous. She was going to let a stranger put a recording device in the house of her terrible employer and she was worried about the ratty dog who clearly hated her. Other people are truly a mystery.
I explained that I would meet her the next day at the same time and give her a device, which she would have to connect to the main hub – did she know how to do that? She did. It turned out that she was the person who had to learn how to use the smart house technology.
‘Madame doesn’t understand but she can use voice commands now.’ Fine, good. Once it was connected, she didn’t need to do anything else, the device would pick up conversation and feed it back to me for the article. We could have a chat on her day off and that would be that. Lacey nodded and made to leave for home.
‘Bring the money tomorrow – in euros. I won’t do it without the money first.’ Canny. I respected that.
‘Of course,’ I said and wished her a good afternoon. Henry flashed his tiny teeth at me and they took their leave.
I spent the next hour messaging Pete, who had finally woken up, about what device would work best. I’d told him that it had to be something I could plausibly give my dad as a gift, and we worked through things we thought were appropriate. I emphasised that it should be small, so that evil SM didn’t notice it and ask what it was. Really I just wanted it to be easy for Lacey to get into the house without any worries. The cordless hoover was too big, the lightbulb too random. Eventually Pete disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a link to a Wi-Fi controlled power strip. This, in English, was just a double plug socket and would fit easily into a pocket.
You’re a genius! I told him, as I began to google where the hell to find such a thing in Monaco. Pete wanted to talk more, he had a test coming up and he was anxious about it, but I swerved it, saying that my battery was dying, and signed off. No wonder he was worried about never getting a girlfriend if that’s the chat he was offering.
Turns out in Monaco there’s not an Argos to be found, so I ordered the power strip on next-day delivery at considerable expense. Then I checked Janine’s Instagram, which had a new post. It was a photo of two dresses hanging up beside each other. One was a full-length pale gold number with sequinned long sleeves and the other was a similar shape but dark red, and instead of sequins, there was a thin trim of fluff around the bosom. Janine had clearly never met an embellishment she didn’t like. The caption read ‘getting ready for dinner, which beauty do I choose?’ The comments were gushing, all exclaiming that it was hard to pick between them, and assuring her that she would look amazing in either. Dolly Parton would’ve approved. As she famously said: ‘It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.’
I decided to chance it. I threw on a black suit with a white T-shirt and added the neon heels of the night before. A cab took me to Janine’s at 7.30 p.m., and I asked the driver to wait across the road for my friend. At 7.45, Janine stepped out of the front door (she’d plumped for the gold dress), accompanied by a flamboyant man in a silver blazer, and headed down the steps to a waiting Mercedes. As the car pulled out, I gave a theatrical sigh and told the driver that my friend must have forgotten that I would pick her up. We followed the car for about eight minutes, pulling up outside a restaurant with a large red canopy and bouquets of flowers in stands around the door. Janine was helped out of the car by her young friend and they walked into the restaurant, a doorman bowing slightly as they passed him without acknowledgement. I gave it a minute, and followed. A woman in a tight polo neck greeted me without a smile. When people like this try to intimidate you, the only thing to do is mirror their behaviour. Without saying hello, I asked for a table.
‘Have you booked?’ she said, looking me up and down.
‘No? I can’t imagine it’s necessary for just one,’ I replied, making a show of checking my phone. She sniffed and walked over to the maître d’. A few minutes later I was given a seat at the bar and left alone. Janine was sitting in a red velvet booth, the colour and fabric conspiring with her dress to give her an unfortunately festive look. Her gaudy companion sat beside her, and two other women completed the party. I was too far away to hear much of their conversation, but I was content to watch. They were hardly likely to talk of anything interesting, but it was nice to see her up close properly. It would have felt sloppy not to see her in the waxy flesh before I killed her, this way I got to feel like I’d given her a proper send-off.
I had a mildly disgusting chicken dish and two glasses of wine, occasionally watching the young man adjust Janine’s hair or offer her a bite of his food. It was weirdly flirtatious, even though he was obviously gay and at least twenty years younger than her. Perhaps the arrangement was that he accompanied her around town and gave her attention that Simon clearly did not. In return, she paid for his dinner and bought him little gifts? How retro. Occasionally they’d all break into tinkly laughter and Janine would stretch her face into a smile. When I saw her signal for the bill I did the same, and followed them out into the night air. The man lit a cigarette as the women chatted, one of them telling Janine that she’d pop over on Thursday for coffee. Janine shook her head ‘No, come tomorrow. The maid is off Thursdays and I’m going to sleep all day. I’m off to Morocco on Friday and need to relax before the early flight.’
I walked back to my hotel. Could Pete set it all up for Thursday? Perhaps that was a rush job, and I knew that rushing led to mistakes. But the thought of being here when she died appealed to me, it would give me a sense of control I was lacking with this plan. And I had no idea how long she was going away for, which might mean weeks of waiting for the next opportunity – who knew if Lacey would get cold feet in the meantime? At the ATM next door to the hotel, I took out 500 euros, the most my bank would allow me to take out in one go. The residents of Monaco would be appalled by such a rule – the initial options for withdrawal started at 500, the kind of petty cash you need on you to tip waiters on yachts, I guess.
Pete was annoyed I’d been offline all evening, and I had to endure twenty minutes of him complaining about his dad not letting him have a lock on his bedroom door before I could move him back to the business in hand. Teenagers are extraordinarily self-absorbed, all during the stage in their lives when they are at their most uninteresting. It took all the restraint I could muster not to tell him that freedom to masturbate at all hours wasn’t a basic human right and that not being allowed a lock on his door was not privacy violation, no matter how much he talked about the Fourteenth Amendment. I told him about the plug I’d ordered, and said that it would be in the house tomorrow. Then I explained that I wanted to freak out my stepmother before I left on Saturday. I thought a little basic reverse psychology might work well on Pete, and assured him that if he wasn’t up to the technological challenge of it all, then that was fine.
It’s just nice to have made a friend in u, I wrote, I can probs find someone else who can help now.
That got his head back in the game. It was too predictable really. He replied with a broken heart emoji, telling me that he was definitely up to it, and would stay up all night to work on the plan. I’d told him what I wanted to do – up to a point. He knew that I planned to lock Janine in her sauna and turn up the heat, but he didn’t know that I wanted to keep her in there until she was overwhelmed by it. And he didn’t know that she had a heart condition that might speed up that process. For all his teenage bravado, I didn’t think he’d fully embrace my real intentions, no matter how much he wanted to impress me. I figured it was better just to pretend I’d pushed it too far, and then place the burden of responsibility on him later if he panicked.
We need access to the CCTV in order to know her whereabouts, he said, launching into action. It should be on the same network but we’ll only know for sure when the plug is patched in. Then we control the place from our phones – you can tell me what you want to do and I’ll make it happen. You can even speak to her if you like, that would really shit her up huh?
We went back and forth into the small hours, Pete telling me how it would work, and me asking him to speak in plain English over and over. By 3 a.m., he was trying to veer the conversation into a more personal one, sending the dreaded voice notes again, so I turned off the Wi-Fi and went to sleep without saying goodnight.
I woke up to the sun streaming through my windows and lay in bed for a bit, feeling positive about my progress. Janine would be a big scalp to take down. Simon might not be a faithful or devoted husband, but they had been married for decades and she was his gatekeeper in many ways. His parents would have been a loss, his brother probably less so. I doubt he’d registered the death of his nephew in any profound way. But losing his wife would knock him sideways. Would he begin to see a pattern, to question the string of deaths? He didn’t strike me as someone who’d buy into any idea of a curse, but would he think that he had an enemy somewhere out there, cutting down his family but never making themselves known? I hoped these notions started to seed. Not enough for him to take any action, but enough that they wormed their way into his brain and made it hard for him to think about anything else. He’d made enemies in business, people he’d fucked over on deals, companies he’d bought and restructured – a polite way of saying that he’d fired a lot of people. He’d had mistresses since my mother, the papers hinted as much. Would he look back and wonder whether any of them hated him enough to take such dramatic revenge? Rich people are paranoid at the best of times, with their security systems and their armoured cars. Perhaps he’d beef up security, hire a private investigator to look into possible enemies. Maybe he’d even go to the police. All sensible tactics, but ultimately pointless. Jeremy and Kathleen were long buried, and their car accident would never be shown to be anything but down to their own carelessness. Andrew was a troubled weirdo in the family’s eyes, his death was a tragedy but hardly suspicious. Lee, well, the less the authorities dredged up about his messy end the better. And Janine had long-established heart problems, she really shouldn’t even have been in the sauna. Let the question linger on people’s lips. ‘But wasn’t she supposed to …?’ Always nice to add a little victim-blaming.
I checked my mobile. One message from Jimmy, asking if I wanted a drink tonight, one from my neighbour telling me there was a parcel waiting at her flat for me. Two emails from work that I ignored. Then I turned on the Wi-Fi on my other phone – the one I used for Artemis-related business, and was alerted to new messages with a string of beeps. Nine from Pete. Scrolling down, one was a message telling me that I had to find out what system the hub was on. I could ask Lacey to get that information. The next few were links to articles about smart doorbells which had been hacked and then there was a message asking where I’d gone and a photo, which when I clicked on it, showed Pete in front of a mirror. His head was cropped out of shot, but his tracksuit bottoms were pulled down and I could see his penis, held up to the camera like a special offering. Why do men send unsolicited pictures of their dicks? I am not friendly with many women, but I feel confident that I could answer for most of my sex when I say that nobody wants to wake up to that. Especially from a barely legal teenager with too much pubic hair and a sad case of chest acne. I felt simultaneously depressed by having to see it and sorry for Pete, who obviously thought it was an obligatory rite of passage when talking to a girl. I saved the photo, and sent it to my real phone. Might as well keep it in case Pete had a crisis of conscience. I messaged him back gently asking if we could take this all a bit slower. I hope I struck a note which made him feel more than a little self-conscious, while still giving him hope that there’d be some sort of reciprocation at a later date. He’d never get anything back from me of course, but I wouldn’t feel too bad for the lonely teen. If you strike up a friendship based on hacking, you deserve to get scammed. In fact, you should expect it.
* * *
As soon as my package had arrived, I took it up to my room, unboxed it and read the instructions. I wrote them down in an abbreviated form on a small piece of paper, and then rolled up the plug and put it in a small toiletry bag along with the money. It was pretty compact now, and would fit in Lacey’s pocket without causing any concern if Janine saw her coming back from the walk. Next door, I took out another 500 euros, added it to the bag and walked down to the promenade, seeing Lacey appear in the distance. She was in a better mood today, clearly she’d spent time planning how she’d use the money. Or perhaps Janine had been extra vile that morning and Lacey just wanted to take back some agency. Probably it was a little of both.
I gave her the money and told her what she had to do. ‘There are instructions in the bag too, if you need them. And my number, so please text me when it’s installed and give me the brand of the hub, and the serial number on the side. It’ll be sixteen digits.’ She nodded, and told me that Janine would be going away on Friday. I reassured her that we’d turn off the listening mode while she was gone, and only activate it again on her return. I wondered whether Lacey kicked back when Janine was out of town, painted her toenails in the cushion-stuffed lounge, smoked in the kitchen, had long baths in Janine’s tub. I hoped so, but she was probably too scared in reality.
‘We only need a week or so of audio – that should give us enough examples of this kind of shoddy behaviour. Then you can remove the plug and throw it away OK?’ She nodded again, and bent down to stroke Henry under one ear.
‘I do this for my family, and so that other women don’t suffer like I do with a bad boss. It makes me feel good to help someone.’ Henry was busy trying to bite her fingers, and I suddenly felt a tiny pang of guilt. She wasn’t helping anyone except me. And she’d be out of a job too, soon enough.
‘What’s your surname, Lacey?’ I said suddenly. She looked up at me, deeply suspicious. Henry looked suspicious too, but that was normal for the little fucker. ‘I promise it’s not for anything but my records – I won’t use it anywhere.’ She still looked uncomfortable. ‘If the story gets sold globally, you’d get a cut of it,’ I said, trying to think on my feet. That worked, money usually does.
‘It’s Phan,’ she told me, spelling it out. I thanked her, and made her promise again to send me a text later that day when she’d installed the plug. She looked solemn and told me she would. We parted, and I walked back to my hotel to wait.
Four hours later, after I’d completed an online workout, had a bath and spent an hour going through Bryony’s back catalogue of videos on Instagram, my phone pinged. All done, the message read. It’s installed, blue light blinking. Make on box is Henbarg. Code is 1365448449412564.
I rolled around on the bed, punching the pillows for thirty seconds, before sitting up and breathing deeply. I messaged Pete, who’d been quiet all day. Even with the time difference, it was unlike him. Normally he was awake half the night, bouncing around his playground, the internet. The blue ticks on my last message indicated that he’d read it. Possibly he was embarrassed, or hurt, or angry. Nothing like a polite knock back to make a man angry. I wrote that the plug was installed, and gave him the hub information. I finished up with, Can we make some fuss tomorrow then? It’ll be soooo funny to get her panicking lol.
It was close to 7 p.m., and I was full of adrenaline, despite the punishing jump workout, so I got back into my gym gear and went for another run. I managed 10 km, running through the clean streets, lined with their neat cobbles and well looked after plants. It was like a toy town really, a place you could feel as though the rest of the world was far away and unable to sully you. I bought myself an ice cream and walked back to the hotel, enjoying the sugar hit as I cooled down.
There was still no word from Pete, but he’d seen the last message. Two blue ticks showed on my screen again. Had his dad taken his phone off him? Was he just busy working out how to hack the system? Or was there a darker reason for his silence? Had he used the serial number to find out who Janine was. If so, he’d have done his research, and he’d surely find out that I was lying about who I was and what I wanted from him.
I’d known it was always going to be a possibility. He was the one with the technology expertise, if you can call a 17-year-old boy an expert on anything except disgusting bodily excretions. That meant I was giving up the control here, and not totally knowing how deeply he’d look into what we were doing. I hoped that he’d help me hack Janine’s house, be shocked when she dropped dead and back away from the entire thing. That was the best-case scenario. But I wasn’t naive, and I knew it was completely possible he’d figure out I was pushing for more than ‘a little shock’ and that he’d want answers from me. Or worse, want to go to the authorities.
That was the trouble with asking someone else for help. On balance, I still felt that it was better asking an idiotic kid for help, using some light manipulation to get what I wanted and claiming ignorance about the eventual outcome than it would have been to hire someone ‘professional’ who would be able to hold it over me forever. That kind of person would have researched everything they could’ve about me, and used it against me forever. Probably to demand an exorbitant amount of money. If Pete was the bored and slightly sad teenager I thought he was, then it shouldn’t be too hard to keep him quiet.
But where the fuck was he? It was 9 p.m. by the time I’d showered and got ready to go and eat and still nothing. I messaged again, asking if I’d upset him, and saying that I missed him. Message me back, I’m sooo bored here and need you xx.
I ate dinner at a touristy bar with photos of the food on the menu. Always a fatal mistake, but I was distracted and in a hurry to get the night over and done with. A wilted salad and two glasses of wine later, I paid the bill and went back to my hotel. On the way, I texted Lacey asking who’d be in the house tomorrow, explaining that it would be good to identify who was speaking so that we could understand the audio we got. She replied quickly, saying that she’d be off from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m., when she’d be back at the flat. When she was off, a girl came in the morning to make Janine’s breakfast and quickly tidy the house, but there shouldn’t be anyone else around until the evening. Madame likes to spend Thursdays at home relaxing. She says it’s nice to have her house to herself. Sometimes she gets her nails done, or her hairdresser comes. I tidy everything up again when I get back.
It didn’t seem like Janine needed to designate a full day every week to relax when her entire life revolved around that singular pursuit, but it kept her at home where I wanted her, so I was glad that she prioritised self-care so rigorously.
I got into bed at 11 p.m., which was ridiculously early for me. The morning people won the battle long ago, but I still resisted their pull, normally going to bed at 2 a.m. and rising no earlier than 11 a.m. whenever possible. But I was keen to get the night over and done with, like a child who is waiting for Santa and forces sleep only so that they can wake up to presents. But I couldn’t sleep. Pete hadn’t sent me a message in sixteen hours, and I lay in bed with the dawning realisation that if he didn’t get in touch soon, I would have no chance to kill Janine tomorrow. And after tomorrow, this particular plan would be unworkable and I’d have to start at the beginning. I tried listening to a calming soundtrack of waves hitting a beach, but it only made me need to pee. I did the breathing exercises I’d taught myself years before, but they couldn’t quash the butterflies bouncing around somewhere below my ribcage. At 2 a.m., I got up and recorded a voice message for Pete. I went up an octave, in order to sound younger than I was, and adopted a suitably shaky tone.
‘I don’t know where you are, or if you’re OK. I’ve been crying for hours, worried that I’ve hurt you or fucked things up. I’m scared of my feelings for you babe, and that made me push you away but I didn’t mean to make you sad. Please get in touch. I don’t care about our plans for evil stepmother, I just want to know you’re OK. I’m here whenever, just please reply.’
Five minutes later, he messaged back. I was fucked up when you told me to go slower lol. Thought you were disgusted by me and felt exposed. Got angry – fell down an incel hole, fuck girls fuck being a nice guy. People are fake, you know? Thought you were fake and wanted you to feel punished. Lol I’m so messed up. I care about you 2 bb. Sorry for taking it too far, when I heard your voice I realised what a fucking idiot I am. But I’m working on making it up to you.
Genuinely disturbing, that insight into his mind. His willingness to punish a girl for not immediately embracing a photo of his penis was chilling, and I say that as someone who has killed six people. I’d be glad when this was all over and I could vanish from his life, retaining his pathetic dick pic as collateral.
We talked for an hour, me playing the part of an injured and shy teenage girl, him puffed up by my display of affection and keen to be my protector once more. I let Pete come around to the subject of hacking, keen for him to be the one to feel in control. As we spoke, he was telling me how he was working on the smart system, always using language I didn’t fully understand. I must have drifted off at some point. He’d left long gaps in the conversation as he figured out how to access the system controlling Janine’s house and, despite the importance of the task, the wait got boring.
I woke up at 9 a.m. with a start, my brain scrabbling around to remember what was so important about the day. I reached for my action phone and saw twenty-two new messages from Pete. Would they be about the plan or would they be penises? The first message was a photo of a naked cartoon figure, complete with a six-pack, holding up a gold cup. Typical teenager, Pete chose to communicate through memes rather than language. I hoped the image meant success and not an incomprehensible way for him to further expose his incel tendencies. The next message was a video, the thumbnail image blurred. I braced myself, and clicked play. The video was dark, and hard to make out. I squinted my eyes, trying to figure out the pale shape in the middle of the screen. There was a movement, a jerk across the object and then a small noise. That was it. I played it again. It was … yes, it was. It was a bed. And that movement was a person. It was easier to see the outline of the mattress this time, and the jerk had been an arm, or a leg maybe? Was Pete sending me videos of him sleeping now? Christ, this was not ideal.
Slightly alarmed, I opened the third message, which was an audiofile. ‘If you’re going, make the bed before, please. I don’t want to have to see crumpled sheets all day. Oh, and call the manicurist and tell them not to come until midday now. No, I don’t know who I booked with, probably Monaco Manicures – just find out, it’s not hard, Lacey! I’m going for a shower, tell the porter to ring when the delivery arrives.’
I sat there completely still, the imperious voice still echoing in my ears. It was Janine. No question. I scrolled back and watched the video again. That must be her asleep – I checked the time Pete sent it over – 6 a.m. And the voice recording at 8 a.m. Only an hour ago. The next few messages were photos of the flat taken from CCTV footage. The beige lounge with its ill-advised gold accents, like a DFS version of Versailles, the hallways, with their gilt-framed paintings of things that people who don’t care about art buy in an attempt to look cultured. Landscapes, horses, a few twee sketches of ballerinas. The kitchen was the only sleek space in the flat, with white cupboards and a marble floor. It looked like it had never been used. The dining room was an assault on the eyes – dark red walls, a fluffy rug underneath an enormous mahogany wooden table which was laid with a full dinner set. Is there anything more tragic than thinking a permanently laid table is the height of sophistication? As though a minor royal might pop in at any moment and be disappointed in the lack of dinner plates.
The photo of the walk-in shower was the prize for me. It showed a vast white marble room, almost the size of my flat, with a huge round shower head, a freestanding bath and two sinks under an ornate mirror. Behind the mirror was a wall which had been decked out in mosaic tiles showing nymphs bathing in a freshwater pool. A glass door from the shower led into the sauna, which was traditionally clad in wood.
Pete had sent a few more messages, where he expressed great pride in his work through the medium of gifs, and then a final comment, which read, And for my masterpiece …
I clicked the last video. It was a shot of the bedroom again, the curtains open this time, Lacey had made the bed. I watched the screen as the door opened, then closed, then opened again. Pete was showing off what he could do. He had control of the house. And I had control of Janine’s life.
I replied to Pete in the most grateful way that I could. I sent him a gif of a sexy cheerleader throwing her pom poms into the air. He was online immediately, and told me that he hadn’t slept.
It’s mad, Eve, I can literally do anything I want in this house. The system has no end to end encryption. I did some digging into the company and knew I was onto a winner. It’s run by some old dude in Germany who only sells it to crazy rich people but he doesn’t bother to run any updates on the tech or secure the data. These fools are paying 100 grand for something with less security than a fucking Fitbit.
I asked him if it was possible to speak to Janine through the system and he mocked me for my terrible grasp of it all. Lol at ‘through the system’, you sound like my mom. But yeah, you can shit her up a little when she’s locked in the shower room – did you see that mural by the way. Sum sexy nymphs for sure. Will your step-mom be naked in our plan?
I ignored this, and we messaged some more about how I’d be able to access the system from my phone too. He sent me a link to a file, and told me to download it. The little icon turned green and I clicked it and it opened up a webpage showing me a live image of the hallway in Janine’s house. Pete walked me through what I could see, and how I could access the cameras in different rooms.
I’ll control the other stuff from here and you can speak through the phone and I’ll link it up with the house whenever you like.
Is she in the house now? I asked, clicking around the apartment in wonder.
Nah she left about ten minutes ago. You didn’t tell me just how fucking rich your dad was. This place is insane.
It’s her money, I wrote back, keen to disabuse him of the idea that I was some kind of heiress.
Well lucky Dad then. Wanna see some cool tricks while the house is empty?
I watched as the blinds started zooming up and down in the lounge, while loud house music blared out from an unseen speaker. He really could do this, it wasn’t some teenage brag. I told him to stop, not wanting neighbours to notice and alert Janine when she got home. I suspected Janine rarely played house music at full blast in the mornings. Really nobody should play house music full stop.
I told Pete to keep exploring and to message me the moment Janine came back to the flat. I showered and dressed in under five minutes, and grabbed my phone, a charging pack and some headphones and went down to the beach, where I chose the nicest looking café and sat outside under an umbrella, watching the waves lap the shore. I turned my attention back to the footage of Janine’s flat, and looked through the rooms to see if there was any sign of her again. Still nothing. Pete hadn’t messaged either, so I ordered a coffee and a croissant and sat gazing out at the beach, forcing myself not to check my phone every ten seconds. I didn’t have to hold this discipline for too long. My phone pinged just as I finished the last few flakes of the croissant, and I hurriedly wiped my buttery hands on a napkin before opening the message.
She’s baaackkk, Pete wrote.
* * *
I click back to the camera view, and see Janine walking into her bedroom. She puts her large orange Hermès bag down on the bed, alongside a small paper shopping bag, and takes out a gold-rimmed candle which she places on the table next to her bed. She walks around the room for a few minutes, plumping up a throw pillow with gold tassels, inspecting her finger for dust after running it along the windowsill. She’s bored, I think. Not the boredom of a rare free day when you feel like you’re wasting time. This is years of built-up ennui, a life filled with lunches and organising staff and too much time spent on physical maintenance. Buy a candle, have a blow-dry, take a yoga class, fly to your other house and repeat the routine again and again. She filled her hours with activities, but none of them really amounted to anything. It was just a carousel of banality. So here she is on a day with no staff and no friends around, wandering through her apartment and trying to find things to complain about to Lacey later on. If she’d had any insight into the depressing reality of her life, she might have jumped off her yoga balcony.
Pete pings me a message, Incoming: woman holding bag – can see on door camera.
Janine walks down the hallway, Henry suddenly appearing behind her, yapping ferociously. She bats the dog away and opens the door. A young woman in a black T-shirt and jeans comes in and follows her to the lounge in silence. As she unpacks her bag, I see it it’s the manicurist, come to fill up an hour of Janine’s day.
Pete and I chat while she has her nails done, mocking the decor in the sitting room and exchanging opinions on what was the worst thing there. I plump for the small neon sign on the wall which says ‘Love’ in italics, a knock-off of a Tracey Emin design from a few years ago and the only concession to modernity in the space. Come to think of it, it might well have been an Emin. Doesn’t make it any less hideous. Pete is adamant that the glass coffee table is the winner, telling me to zoom in on the legs, which show tiny cherubs working hard to hold up the load. I order another coffee, and we wait and watch, two strangers breaking into a house without having to move a muscle.
Eventually, the manicurist finishes her job and leaves, but not before Henry lunges at her, knocking over a bottle of red varnish which leaves a few drops of polish on the woman’s top. Janine scolds the girl for flinching when Henry jumped up, and tells her not to come again if she’s scared of dogs. ‘You really should be more professional, that could’ve gone on the rug,’ she says as she leads the girl out.
As she shuts the door on the chastened manicurist, Janine lets out a sigh and heads for the bathroom. She begins to run the bath, and carefully pins up her hair in the mirror.
Can you turn on the sauna now, without alerting her with lights?
I message Pete. I switch back to the camera. Janine is applying a gloopy cream to her face.
Done and done, Pete replies.
Good. When she’s finished in the bath, make the lights go on in the sauna – she should go in to turn them off and then we’ll shut the door.He messages straight back with a thumbs up.
I decide not to watch Janine take her bath, feeling as though she’s allowed a little privacy in her last moments. But Pete has no such qualms, narrating her ablutions and laughing at the way she sings Celine Dion songs as she lies back and soaks. Some people love to linger in baths, calling it self-care and pretending it’s got nothing to do with wanting to escape your family for a precious hour or so. Janine is one of them, despite having nobody to escape, unless you count the arsehole of a dog. She spends nearly an hour in the tub, topping up the hot water and adding various oils. While I wait, I find I’m becoming jittery from the coffee so I order a glass of rosé to offset the caffeine.
Eventually, Pete alerts me that she’s getting out of the bath, and he makes a crude joke about her breasts which nearly makes me shoot back a choice comment about his dick pic, but I refrain. Pete makes me want to stick up for Janine, a sign that they both need to get out of my life pronto.
The sauna will be baking hot now. I take a deep breath and tell Pete to turn the lights on. I watch the camera footage, and see the sauna suddenly clear in the frame. Janine hasn’t noticed. She’s wrapped in a towel and is cleaning her face with a cloth over the sink.
Make them flicker, I type. The lights duly turn on and off in rapid succession. Janine stops cleaning and frowns. She walks towards the sauna with a look of annoyance on her face. Be ready to shut the door, Pete, please be ready.
I am, jeez, I’m the king of this place babe, comes the reply.
She walks into the sauna, and I hold my breath and scratch at my neck. The door closes silently behind her. At first, she doesn’t appear to notice. I can see the top of her head as she reaches to turn off the lights, fanning herself as she realises that the heat is on full blast. I watch as she pulls the door, the glass wobbling slightly but not giving way.
LOL, she’s realising she’s stuck, messages Pete, but I ignore him, transfixed by an increasingly panicked Janine, who is now pressing a button repeatedly. That’s the alarm huh, says Pete. I’ve deactivated it obviously. Nobody can hear you scream, lady.
Janine has sat down now, and hidden by an angle I can no longer see her, but she’s banging on the glass, and Henry runs into the bathroom, alerted by the noise. She can hear him, and stands up, her eyes peering over the frosted strip on the door. She tells him to get help, an absurd order which shows me that she’s getting frantic now. Henry looks up at her, his ears pinned back and his little body quivering with excitement. Then he tilts his head, turns around and walks out of the bathroom. I flick images, and see him lie down in his little bed in the hallway and promptly fall asleep. Perhaps Henry is a better judge of character than I’d thought.
I check the time on my phone. She’s been in the sauna for fifteen minutes. What’s the temp in there? I ask Pete.
Lemme check. He comes back two minutes later. Sorry I had to convert it into your weird degrees. It’s 110 degrees. Want it higher? She might pass out.
I consider. We don’t have hours to let her sit and slowly cook to death. But I’m reluctant to let it get to a point where she gets badly burnt – a sign that might suggest she wasn’t able to get out. Crank it up a little, I don’t care if she faints. Would do the cow some good.
I sip my wine and savour the breeze anew, knowing that Janine’s entire body will be crying out for it. I distract Pete from watching the CCTV too closely by talking about a potential trip to Iowa, and he rises to the bait immediately, telling me how cool it would be to hang out in real life. We go back and forth on what we’d do together, him getting increasingly flirtatious and me suggesting wholesome activities that his church leader would have approved of.
All the while, I keep an eye on Janine, stuck in that little hot cupboard. There’s no movement that I can see, and I realise that if I want to talk to her, I’d have to do it now. I tell Pete to patch me in, aware that what I was about to say would throw up some questions later.
There’s a short pause and then Pete tells me I can speak. I take a sip of wine and look around to make sure that nobody is within earshot. I lift the phone to my chin and speak quietly but clearly.
‘You’re probably not in the mood for a big heart-to-heart right now.’ Her head shoots up above the frosted glass and she wipes the steam away with one hand. ‘But I just wanted you to know why this is happening to you. It’s not an accident. You’ve probably realised that by now. But I’m not a criminal mastermind who wants to steal your diamonds. There’s nothing you can give me that will stop this.’
She starts to yell something, frantically banging on the glass door.
‘Be quiet. You don’t have the energy for a fuss. Your husband left my mother with a baby. He abandoned her. He rejected me. And your family have lived a life of complete pleasure and comfort ever since. Is that fair? It didn’t seem so to me, watching my mother take a series of shit jobs and get weaker and weaker with every day she worked. Is it fair that your daughter had everything she could ever have wanted and that I was raised by people who only did it so that they could feel good about themselves?’
She looks wild now, one hand clawing at her neck.
‘It’s getting harder and harder to breathe, huh? Well it won’t be a problem much longer so do try to keep calm, it’s worse if you panic, I imagine. I’ll be honest, I considered not explaining any of this, but I wanted you to know the backstory as a courtesy more than anything. My father. Your husband. That’s why you’re in there. It’s good to know who to blame, isn’t it?’
Pete messages me. Mega funny but it’s been ages now. I think she’s really struggling bb, shall we let her out? I don’t care if she stacks it but it’s your call.
One minute. She’s fine. Turn it up a notch and give it a bit longer. I reply, staring at Janine, who’s tracing something with her finger on the glass. I strain my eyes, trying to make it out. She makes a noise, but it’s muffled.
‘Did you want to say something?’ I say. She whispers again. I feel irritation rise. ‘Louder please, you’ve probably not got long so if you want to say something, speak UP.’
But she’s not listening now, intently moving her finger up the glass again. She’s barely able to move more than a millimetre before stopping. We watch in silence, until the first shape becomes clearer. A letter G, wobbly and small but clear enough. I feel a tiny pang of nausea. Pete is engrossed. What is she doing, an SOS message? The next letter starts to take shape, a long line, and then, as she tries to prop herself up against the door, a circle stuck to it. She’s drawn an R. The waves crash onto the beach as my vision goes a little blurry. She is going to write Grace. She knows. She knows everything. She’d probably always known – about me, about my mother, happy to let us live in poverty while her daughter had it all. And now she’s going to expose me. When Simon finds the message, he’ll know. Maybe not immediately, but he’ll put two and two together, think back over the other deaths and realise what was happening. He and Bryony would be safe and I would be in jail for the rest of my life.
TURN IT UP, I message Pete. All the way. The bitch deserves it.
God you really hate her huh? That story was mad, makes my stepmom sound like a fucking angel. Cranking now.
Janine is trying to finish the R. Her perfectly coiffed hair is stuck to her face, which is mottled, parts turning a weird purpley blue. I sit there in the sun, one hand clenched around the phone, the other holding my neck so hard I can feel my eyes bulging. And then, as I watch, her finger slips down the glass, her head disappears from sight and there’s a loud thump. Silence. I down a glass of water. No movement.
My phone beeps. That was DRAMATIC. I think she’s fainted now. Want me to release the doors?
I signal to the waiter to bring me another glass of wine. Let’s do it.
That thump wasn’t just her body falling to the floor. It was too loud. She’d hit her head. I check my watch, Lacey isn’t due back for another two hours. Enough time for her to suffer irreversible damage, if she wasn’t already dead. The door to the sauna opens, and steam pours out, obscuring the view for a minute. As the waiter brings me a fresh glass, I can see the bathroom slowly come back into focus. Janine’s feet are lying by the door to the sauna, her body slightly out of sight, inert and small. The shaky G was already fading away into nothing.
Henry has slept through the whole thing. Truly, we don’t deserve dogs.
* * *
Well she died. The heat and the shock and the burns would have got to her, even if she hadn’t had a mild heart complaint. I guess no heart complaint is mild when you’re stuck in a furnace. God bless Lacey, who never asked a single question of me when I waited outside the promenade the next day. Did she suspect anything? Hard to say. I feigned shock and sympathy at the news. But Lacey seemed completely untroubled by the scene of horror that had greeted her. If anything, she was walking taller, no longer in her uniform but in jeans and a T-shirt, with gold flip flops showing off remarkably jazzy orange toenails. She picked up Henry and stroked his silky little ears.
‘I’m going to give you some money, Lacey, it’s the least I can do during this difficult time,’ I said, looking concerned. ‘Will you be going home now? Or will the family keep you on?’
‘Mr Artemis has given me a month’s pay and told me I can stay for a week, but it’s OK. Madame Janine’s best friend Susan called last night to ask me to come and work for her. She has a much bigger house up in the hills and she’s offering me more money. She told me she’s been planning to ask me to leave for a while.’ She smiled brightly. ‘And she’s not a bitch like the dead lady. And I’m taking Henry. Nobody will stop me.’ I waved her off, marvelling at the incredible chutzpah of Susan, a woman who hired her best friend’s housekeeper less than twenty-four hours after she had died. In another life we might have been friends.
* * *
Pete was a slightly trickier task. He didn’t go to pieces and panic about what we’d done as I worried might happen. Instead he was euphoric, wanting to go over and over the day’s events, sending me memes about barbecues and asking who we could target next.
This could be a business baby, he texted me a week later, as I was drinking a glass of wine and contemplating what colour to paint my toenails. The hormones of a teenage boy are not to be messed with so I didn’t throw the phone in a river and disconnect from him entirely. The boy was infatuated and I didn’t want to test his tech limits so I handled it delicately. Mainly by finding God. A sudden flurry of bible passages every time he messaged me something flirtatious really slowed down the frequency of his contact. Nothing like a bit of smiting to get rid of a horny teenager’s spontaneous erection. But three months later and he wasn’t giving up entirely. He was still getting a trace high off the fumes of our adventure together and wouldn’t leave me be completely. So I took a rougher route. I pretended to have catfished him. I mean, I had catfished him, but I doubled down. Aware that a reverse image search would be easy for him, I joined an online chat forum where you could video chat with anyone on the planet and I clicked through until I found the gnarliest bloke who spoke basic English. I endured five minutes of his company, which mostly consisted of him gesturing at me to show him my breasts. I asked him to send me a selfie first, saved it to my phone and then deleted my account. With the resulting photo, which showed a bald man-mountain grinning and waving, I waited for the next suggestive (read – masturbating) video message from Pete. As sure as the sun rises, there was a wanking video within time. Immediately, I sent back the photo.
‘We are a collective. We have your pathetic videos and we have proof of what you did. Unless you want these files sent to your family you will cease contact and go back to your normal life. And be grateful every day that we allow this.’ He called twenty-two times that evening, but I did not pick up, sending the message again with a FINAL WARNING addendum. He replied saying that he would never tell a soul and begging me not to send his dad the videos. I guess for all his braggadocio, the kid couldn’t bear the idea of his dad thinking he had sent a twenty-stone middle-aged man jerk-off clips. He might have helped kill a stranger, but some things never change. The idea of a parent finding out you have a sex life was still much worse. And that was the last time I ever heard from ColdStoner17. That’s how teenage relationships should be. They burn short, but boy do they burn bright.