How to Kill Your Family(68)

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.’