Chloe stared at her phone, then at the business card, then back at her phone. She didn’t need to look at it, she’d long since realised she couldn’t forget the number. ‘Simmons Glazing’ had been a dud, as had the number written on it. No website, not even mentions on old copies of the yellow pages she’d found pdfs of. She’d taped it back together, not for any particular reason, and had hardly gone two waking hours in the last week without at least thinking about it.

She felt like she should be more worried about the card than she was. A phone number, with a London area code, one that she’d never seen before, and hadn’t even seen yet, but she’d memorised it the same as soon as she’d followed the instructions on the card, “tear me”, written in flaky brown blood. She wasn’t worried though, after the initial confusion of the realisation, she’d acclimated faster than she thought.

Dotty had advised against it, of course she had. Orders written in blood on a magic business card shouldn’t be followed at the best of times, much less after… whatever had happened that night. The police had been cagey with details, but Chloe had been staying with Dotty for a week now to take care of her, and she’d heard snatches here and there. Murders, plural, on their floor, no shooter found, something to do with the government.

The smell of bleach had been overpowering for the first few days, even now it was there if she left the door open too long. But the cleanup crews had been through, carted the bodies away. She still didn’t know who had called it in, Adam in flat 4 thought it had been Dotty, and the man in flat 6 whose name Chloe didn’t know thought it had been Adam.

She turned the card over again, and again. To call, or not to call? Who even had given her the card? She thought about it. Either more than one person had died to bring this to her, or someone was willing to kill people for the same reason.

“What about this one?” Dotty pushed her laptop across the floor to where Chloe was sat

“Hm?”

“It’s a one-bedroom, a bit bigger than this one, and not too much more expensive”

“Yeah, sure. Looks great”

Dotty had spent the last two days looking for a new flat, and Chloe suspected more than a couple of other tenants were doing the same. Even though she didn’t live here, Chloe still felt an air of worry, a feeling of being unsafe. Two, probably more, people murdered inches from your front door, nobody wanted to live somewhere with that. It could happen anywhere, sure, but it had happened here. The seal of presumed safety, the somewhat illogical feeling that it could never happen to you, was broken and the result was a permanent cold shiver.

That decided it. Dotty would move away, stay with Chloe for a few days, and find a new place. Chloe would try her hardest to move on, and the brain worm that had stuck in her mind would eventually leave, as they always did.

Chloe knew she was trying to convince herself.

Dotty looked up from her computer.

“Oh come on, you can’t really still be thinking about it?” Dotty closed her laptop and shifted over, settling herself next to Chloe, leaning against the sofa bed. Neither of them had changed out of their pyjamas, it was 10 am and it was Sunday.

“I’m not, I’m not. I’ve decided, no weird mysteries.” Chloe replied, sheepishly

Dotty laid her head back and closed her eyes.

“Good. You’d just end up like them anyway”

That sentence hung in the air for a second as Chloe wondered if she was joking

“This is a shit place to get murdered in anyway.”

Chloe scoffed slightly at that. Humour as a coping mechanism, Dotty always complained about it making people uncomfy, but Chloe liked it.

“Is that a search parameter on the website? ‘Nice places to be murdered in’?”

“Should be, it makes more sense than trying to tell the difference between a condo and a townhouse.”

Dotty opened her eyes and grabbed her laptop again, positioning it with her toes before sitting up with herculean effort and switching tabs

“I’m bored, grab something out of the fridge, we can watch The Purge”

“How topical,” Chloe stood up with far less drama and opened the fridge, “Beer?”

“Get the cheese too, I’m hungry”

Chloe settled back down next to her, Dotty had grabbed a blanket and threw it over the both of them. The movie was schlocky but fun, and Dotty wouldn’t stop loudly wondering if that’s what it had looked like that night.

Chloe remembered the smell of the hallway that morning. Salt, bleach, and another smell that she couldn’t quite pin; like someone had set off a load of fireworks. The cops had interviewed her, but it was cursory if that.

“Did you hear anything in the night?” the officer in charge had asked, a friendly-looking black man, short, with cropped hair.

“No, nothing,” Dotty had replied, “what happened here?”

“That’s classified, love.” he’d turned to Chloe “And yourself?”

Chloe had been lost in her thoughts, she’d snapped out of it after Dotty had elbowed her, gently bringing her back to the present.

“Oh, uh, same answer, I was asleep by about eleven”

“So was I,” Dotty chimed in, “When did this happen?”

“Also classified. And your names?” the man’s smile had been hidden by a blue facemask, but the crinkle of his eyes betrayed what Chloe had thought to be entirely out of place to the bodybags and blue plastic-wrapped CSI techs, or whatever they had been called.

“Dorothy Ferguson,” Dotty had been somewhat impatient, “And this is Chloe Nash. is there anything you can tell us?”

“At this time, Ms, I’m not able to disclose anything to members of the public.” he didn’t look up and had started scribbling in a notepad. “Between you and me, there isn’t much we do know at this time, but we’ll find who did this and have them locked up tight.”

He’d looked up from his notepad, made his excuses and left, not after more probing questions from Dotty, trying to get things out of her.

“Well he was fucking useless” Dotty had been irritated after they’d left, which meant she talked. Theorised was a more accurate word, the murders had, apparently, been everything from gang shootouts to government operations to mafia to aliens. Well, maybe not the aliens, but there had been about fifteen minutes where Dotty was certain she’d heard someone shouting in Italian.

It had been about then that time that Chloe had seen the card. Stuck on the door hinge, bent and folded by it, haphazard finger-painting covering a smiling young woman in a hard hat.

‘TEAR ME’

She’d shown it to Dotty, who had switched tracks quickly

“If this is evidence, we should give it to them.”

“You said it yourself, government coverups.”

“For fuck’s sake, Chlo, we’re not involving ourselves in that shit, give it to them and let’s be done with it”

Chloe had known that she was right, that it was easier to just let it go and forget about it. She still knew it now, but the curiosity that had made her follow the instructions still gripped her, and although she’d resolved to burn the card and forget about it, she couldn’t stop looking at her phone.

It was late, early, in fact. Dotty had taken the sofa bed and Chloe was on the ground tonight, she was sleeping. Chloe stared into her phone. Burn the card, forget about it, move on, let this become a story to tell on third dates. It was an easy plan, it was an easy outcome, there was no legitimate reason to do anything else.

Chloe got up and crept to the bathroom, typing the number in felt familiar, as if she’d done it a thousand times before. It ring through and Chloe was about to hang up before the reply message came through.

“Hello, Chloe. There’s a kebab stand near the place you work, you know where it is. I’ll be there every morning from 4 am to 7 am. Leave a message so I know to expect you”

A brisk beep, and Chloe had to talk.

“Oh, uh.. I’m Chloe… you already knew that, shit,” Burn the card, forget about this, second date story. She could still get out of this, if she tried.

“I’ll be there.”