I get hold of each of O’s birds and remove their pouches and trackers. I can’t take the birds with me, though, because I didn’t think to bring a cage. Unless I try to carry them in my backpack, which seems dodgy. Oh, fuck, I haven’t thought this through at all. Will he notice if he gets home and O’s birds are still here? I’ll have to leave it open and hope they go back to hers, or else the game is up.

I am getting panicky, but that doesn’t stop me noticing the birds are pecking at empty feed trays and their water bottle is empty, too. There is a plastic feed bin on the balcony. I open it and plunge the plastic scoop into the seed. It strikes something hard.

That’s odd.

I dig down with my hands and feel a hard, flat surface. Plastic. I find the edges and drag out a small Lucite box like the kind that crafty-types use to store beads. Aha. I blow the dust off of it, scoop some seed for the birds and retreat inside to investigate the box.

There are microdrives in the compartments.

I should grab them and run now, but I know this is the only chance I’m going to get to search this flat. What if the drives aren’t what I’m looking for and I’ve missed something really important because I grabbed the first thing I saw? I decide to whack them into the home-entertainment system and at least see what’s on them.

The system fires to life and offers me a guest login – enough to let me see what’s on the drives. But it’s disappointing. I whip through them one after the other. Everything seems to be routine backup folders. Invoices, Legal, Correspondence. I scroll down lists of suppliers, consultants, contractors. None of it means anything to me. I wish I could show it to O, who knows so much about these things. There must be some reason they were hidden in the birdseed bin.

Then I see the name ‘Haugh-Wombaur’.

Well. That’s distinctly odd. I open the file. A string of e-mails and attachments. I open the most recent.

To: Martin Elstree

Cc: Olivia Ogiyevich

From: Bettina Haugh-Wombaur

Re: Charlotte Aaron Invoice

Hi, as discussed with Olivia, please find attached my invoice for dream therapy with breakdown of hours worked. The total for my services comes to £3,481.15 inclusive of VAT. PayPal is fine. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need anything else in future.

Kind regards,

Bettina

WTF WTF WTF WTF?

I read it several times. Then I open the attached invoice, which has already been marked ‘PAID’.

Let’s just get this straight. Mrs H-W paid me a total of maybe . . . £320? Over a period of weeks. So why is O paying her ten times that for her ‘services’? What services? Farting? I can’t even.