I've Got Your Number

exactly are you, anyway? You said you’d been helping him. What does that mean?”

“It’s kind of complicated,” I say after a pause. “He was left in the lurch a bit.”

“Oh, yeah?” She takes another bite of chicken wrap and regards me with interest. “How come?”

Has she forgotten?

“Well … er … you left with no notice. Remember? You were supposed to be his PA?”

“Riiiight.” She opens her eyes wide. “Yeah. That job didn’t really work out for me. And the agency called and wanted me to get on a plane, so … “ Her brow wrinkles in thought as though she’s considering this for the first time. “I guess he was a bit pissed off. But they’ve got loads of staff. He’ll be all right.” She waves her hand airily. “So, do you work there?”

“No.” How am I going to explain it? “I found this phone and borrowed it, and I got to know Sam that way.”

“I remember that phone. Yeah.” She peers at it, screwing up her nose. “I never answered it.”

I suppress a smile. She must have been the crappest PA in the world.

“But that’s why I know something was going on.” She finishes off her chicken wrap with a flourish. “Because of all the messages. On that.” She jabs a finger at it.

OK. At last we’re getting to it.

“Messages? What messages?”

“It had all these voice mails on it. Not for Sam; for some guy called Ed. I didn’t know what to do about them. So I listened to them and I wrote them down. And I didn’t like the sound of them.”

“Why not?” My heart starts to thud.

“They were all from the same guy, about altering a document. How they were going to do it. How long it would take. How much it would cost. That kind of thing. It didn’t sound right, you know what I mean? But it didn’t exactly sound wrong either.” She crinkles her nose. “It just sounded … weird.”

My head is wheeling. I can’t take this in. Voice mails for Ed about the memo. On this phone. This phone.

“Did you tell Sam?”

“I sent him an email and he said ignore them. But I didn’t want to ignore them. You know what I mean? I had this instinct.” She swigs her smoothie. “Then I open the paper this morning, and I see Sam talking about some memo and saying it must have been sexed up, and I think, yes!” She bangs her hand on the table again. “That’s what was going on.”

“How many voice mails were there in all?”

“Four? Five?”

“But there aren’t any voice mails on here now. At least, I haven’t found any.” I can hardly bear to ask the question. “Did you … delete them?”

“No!” She beams in triumph. “That’s the point! I saved them. At least, my boyfriend, Aran, did. I was writing one out one night, and he was, like, ‘Babe, just save it to the server.’ And I was like, ‘How do I save a voice mail?’ So he came into the office and put them all on a file. He can do amazing stuff, Aran,” she adds proudly. “He’s a model too, but he writes games on the side.”

“A file?” I’m not following. “So where’s the file now?”

“It must still be there.” She shrugs. “On the PA’s computer. There’s an icon called voice mails on the desktop.”

An icon on the PA’s computer. Just outside Sam’s office. All the time, it was right there, right in front of our face.

“Will it still be there?” I feel a blast of panic. “Won’t it be deleted?”

“Don’t know why it would be.” She shrugs. “Nothing was deleted when I arrived. There was just a big old pile of crap I was supposed to wade through.”

I almost want to laugh hysterically. All that panic. All that effort. We could have simply gone to the computer outside Sam’s office.

“Anyway, I’m going to the States tomorrow, and I had to tell someone, but it’s impossible to get in touch with Sam at the moment.” She shakes her head. “I’ve tried emailing, texting, phoning—I’m, like, if you only knew what I had to tell you … ”

“Let me have a go,” I say after a pause, and type a text to Sam.

Sam, you have to call me. Now. It’s about Sir Nicholas. Could be a help. Not a time-waster. Believe me. Call at once. Please. Poppy.

“Well, good luck with that.” Violet rolls her eyes. “Like I told you, he’s gone off radar. His PA said he’s not responding to anybody. Not emailing, not answering calls—” She breaks off as the tinny sound of Beyonce comes through the air. Sam Mobile has already popped up on the display.

“OK.” Her eyes widen. “I’m impressed.”

I press accept and lift the receiver to my ear. “Hi, Sam.”

“Poppy.”

His voice feels like a blast of sunshine in my ear. There’s so much I want to say. But I can’t. Not now.

Maybe not ever.

“Listen,” I say. “Are you in your office? Go to your PA’s computer. Quickly.”