Apartment 16

Thirty-eight

She followed him up the stairs, behind his narrow shoulders in the blue blazer and his long thin legs in the creased flannel trousers. He walked quickly and whenever he turned to take the next set of stairs, she noticed how pale his face was. And how quickly his lips moved as he muttered to himself.

Breathing harder than she liked, or thought she ought to, she went up seemingly endless stairs thickly carpeted in green. Twice on the verge of losing her balance in the high-heeled boots she had worn, she skipped after him, trying to control her fear. The idea of going inside that apartment made her nauseous with the wrong kind of excitement. She had not been an accessory to Hessen’s end, or to the destruction of his art, but she could not stop wondering what his presence would do to defend itself against a threat or an intrusion.

At least Miles was outside the building awaiting her signal. She’d given him the pass code to the front door and directions on how to find the flat once he was inside. If she felt threatened she would summon him immediately. He’d tried to stop her coming here tonight, but this arrangement was his compromise.

And then Seth stopped walking. Turned to her quickly. His face a shock of nerves, his hands clenched. ‘Here we are,’ he whispered, his voice weakened either by the climb or by the prospect of trespassing.

She looked over Seth’s shoulder at the door marked with the number 16, fixed in brass on the teak. This is where Hessen had lived and worked. Where he had tried to seal himself off from scrutiny and interference within the city he drew his inspiration from. The place in which he suffered and where he nearly revised the direction of modern art. But a place where he also achieved the most extraordinary contact with an unseen world. And where his own face was mutilated before he was put away by her flesh and blood, who had led her here in a strange, meandering confession in a series of handwritten journals. But this was now a place that needed to be sealed by more than a locked front door. Whatever still allowed Hessen access needed to be removed and destroyed, and more thoroughly than the last attempt in 1949. Exactly how this was going to be achieved she wasn’t at all sure. But searching the apartment, she swore to herself, was at least a start.

‘You ready?’ Seth whispered.

She nodded.

‘Let me go in first. You wait here. Until I call you.’

‘Sure,’ she thought she said, but her voice was so faint now it probably sank through the warm air and vanished around her knees.

Carefully, Seth unlocked the door.

The moment the front door closed behind Seth, Apryl flipped open her cell phone and hissed into it. ‘It’s me. Yes, yes, I’m fine. I’m outside the flat now. He’s gone inside. I’m going to leave the phone on and hold it in my hand so you can hear everything. OK, I will. It’ll be fine.’