Page 19

Chapter 19

?Joon-gi

There is no one at the gatehouse when Joon-gi arrives.

The guard building is locked, shuttered; a small blue light flashing intermittently on its door and two on the main gateposts, are the only signs that the property is not abandoned. The security system is active. He watches the security cameras, their beady crow eyes following in automatic judders as he approaches the property intercom.

He buzzes the intercom, waits, buzzes again, and then makes a show of hefting his tool bag in pantomime at the roving cameras.

Whether anyone is watching is impossible to tell, but no one answers the intercom. No one opens the gates.

He continues his show, for the cameras, of impatience and eventually of giving up. He walks away, seemingly accepting of the situation.

But he is not accepting it, because it’s incredibly strange. For the property to go from high security to no security in just four days is notable. He distinctly recalls the woman saying she would be remaining here for the next ten days.

There is a chance that she has left early. That she has become bored of whatever it is she’s waiting for in there and flown home to wherever she came from.

Joon-gi tries not to think of the alternative: that something bad has happened to her since he left. That the building is now empty because it has in some way swallowed her alive like the house in his dream.

His curiosity piqued, and aware that he can always plead ignorance or professional concern if caught, he considers another way to access the property.

If the cameras are viewed remotely then it will take the company time to respond with no one directly on-site. If he is interrupted, caught short by some hidden security personnel, then he can always tell them his lie: he is here to check the wiring again, as arranged on his last visit.

He feels confident that he neither looks enough of a threat nor presents much by way of motive that he would not be believed as a concerned electrician wary of a lawsuit from a lack of follow-up. Besides, Joon-gi has spent a lifetime cultivating the exact degree of inoffensiveness to these types of rich Western homeowners that he is absolutely assured they will assume he is a nervous jobsworth, rather than a genuine property invader, without too much trouble.

He walks away from the property and makes his way instead to the cove. The entire length of the coast of Gorda is public access. If you can reach it, climb over it, or crawl through it, then you can enjoy it—though the real estate developers and architects tried everything they could to make the beaches in front of the homes of the ultra-rich completely inaccessible. But Joon-gi has lived and worked in the BVI for twenty years now. There are ways around everything. Just as the super-rich find ways around everything in their worlds, so too do the people who live and work among them. Reaching the property’s beach would require a scramble over rocks and perhaps a wade through the shallows, but it is doable. Anything is doable if you have the time and inclination, Joon-gi has found.

If he were to stop now, if the momentum of the day weren’t bowling him on harder and harder, if he stopped to ask himself why he is doing any of this, he might not immediately be able to answer. But Joon-gi will have time over the next year and longer to consider what he’s doing and why and he will eventually land on the answer that in a sense, he recognizes something of himself in the woman in the house. Both of them alone in their different ways.

He will come to understand that he believes what lies under that house, what might have happened to that woman, might be the event he has waited his whole life for. His moment to shine, to be the hero, to be the brave one. Because when he analyzes it, he felt of use during his short time with her, and not just in the sense that he was being paid to help her. For the first time in a long time he felt needed as a person. He felt part of something more. And of course now he cannot stop thinking of that room.

On the public beach of the neighboring cove, Joon-gi decants a few useful tools into his waterproof rucksack, hefts it onto his back, rolls his cargo trousers high, and wades out past the rocks that block the property’s private beach from the public.

As his bare feet grip into spiked rocks and battle slippery seaweed-covered stones he plans what he will do, what he will say if he is caught, if he is wrong about all of this. If he reaches the terrace via the beach steps and there she is, the woman, lounging in her swimsuit, her expression aghast at seeing him there unannounced, he constructs a lie he will repeat. And then he will just apologize and leave. He tells himself it will all be fine.

—

But the woman is not sunbathing on the terrace when Joon-gi finally hauls himself, wet and grazed, up the stone beach staircase to the house.

The traverse was harder and more involved than he’d expected, and now, sore and dripping onto the hot terrace tiles, he feels oddly foolish as he struggles to remember why he thought any of this would be a good idea.

But self-preservation reminds him that there are more important things to consider; he is on private property after all. If he’s going to do something, he had better be quick about it. He has little difficulty locating the cameras around the building as he heads toward the main entrance. They turn, following his journey, and stop when he stops. It becomes clear to Joon-gi that someone is most definitely watching him.

When he reaches the front door he presses the buzzer again and waits, the camera’s beady eyes on him. And even though it is clear they know that he knows they’re watching, still no one replies to him.

He cups his hands and looks through the glass into the lobby. The house is dim; there is no movement within. On the hall table he spots one of his dockets wedged under an ornament.

Nothing within seems to have changed since he left four days ago.

He wanders back around the property to the terrace doors. He gives them a pull but they are locked.

Peeking through the clear doors he spots a half-full glass of water on the marble counter beside the sink in the kitchen. And a jolt of hope leaps up through him. For a moment he is certain she is in there, just out of view, just about to emerge from another room.

He pounds on the door, the sounds reverberating loudly through the empty living room. He waits, eyes flicking from doorway to doorway. Then he calls too.

“Hello. Hello! Is there anyone there?”

The jolt of hope sinks back down inside him. He thinks of the room on the floor below, the white room.

She could be down there. She could be locked down there.

He has concerns, he argues in his mind, concerns for a customer’s safety. Shouldn’t he act on those concerns? If, indeed, they are concerning? He frames this carefully in his mind, and he finds that the answer is yes. If he acts out of concern, he may well save the day. If he is wrong then who could begrudge an over-efficient employee?

And with that his mind is set. He will check on the room. He will need to enter the house to check on the room.

He heads around the building to where he knows the mains enter it as camera eyes follow him. Once there, he removes his rucksack, pulls some tools from it, and sets about removing the external electrical panel for the building.

Five minutes later all the blue lock panels in the building fade, locking solid.

But around the back of the building, one door does not. This is the one mandatory emergency-release fire door that does not deadlock in the case of a full power cut—instead the door buzzes open.

Joon-gi gathers his equipment back into his bag, slings it onto his shoulder, and heads off to find where that one door might be.

—

The sun is beginning to set through the palms as Joon-gi slips inside the dim house, and the change in temperature causes him to shiver, his wet trousers clinging to his legs.

He moves briskly through the house, the way familiar to him, branded on his brain through four nights of obsessive thoughts and unsettling dreams.

He takes the stairs down two at a time. When he reaches the basement, he sees immediately that the door to the white room is shut, and his pace slows. He stops outside the room and places a palm to the coated metal door.

After a moment he pounds his palm on it. He presses an ear to it, squinting to hear through it. He pulls back.

“Hello,” he calls. “Is there anyone in there? Are you okay?”

He presses his ear again.

He shouts again.

His blood pressure rising with each new attempt.

He pulls back suddenly, as if hearing something; he can’t be sure. He stares at the door inert for a moment, his thoughts whirring. Then just as suddenly he is racing back up the stairs and back out of the building, his face set.

Outside in the burgeoning twilight he quickly scans the grounds, jogging to the edges of the grassed areas to find what he is looking for. Then between the bright verdant branches of a purple-flowering frangipani tree he spots the gray bulk of something.

He sprints to it. A power substation. A small gray bunker. This is what he suspected; this is what his mind has circled around in the dead of night these last few days.

The electrics in the white room, in the rooms he suspects continue beneath the house, do not route back to the building’s mains. They need a separate source. And here in the heady-scented shade behind a wall of frangipani trees, he has found it.

He tries to turn the handle on the bunker’s tiny door but it does not shift so he puts his weight against it and slams his shoulder hard, once, twice, three times. Then he pulls back, takes a half skip, and rams his entire body weight hard at the little wooden door. It splinters and the rest he makes short work of with repeated kicks until the dark concrete interior of the bunker is revealed.

He steps inside the bunker, waistband flashlight flicked on, and three minutes later, inside the house, the door panel light on the white room fades, its hydraulic door sliding open into its emergency position, the room beyond it now visible.

And Joon-gi feels a kind of triumph he has not felt since his youth.

He cannot possibly know that he will only remain conscious for another ten minutes.