Soul Fire

up. We head down cobbled streets, through mazes of alleyways.
    He checks the map on his phone: Zoe had given us her address for emergencies and this definitely counts as one. ‘Not far now.’
    I follow behind him on the pavement, because it’s not wide enough for both of us.
    ‘Am I going too fast?’ Lewis waits for me. He points down an alleyway where two middle-aged women in very short skirts are leaning against the wall, smoking. ‘This is
definitely the livelier bit of town.’
    ‘Prostitutes?’ I ask.
    ‘Well, it’s a funny time of night to admire the view.’
    ‘What great places you take me to,’ I say with a half-hearted smile.
    ‘Travel broadens the mind, Ali.’
    ‘But why would Zoe want to live here ?’
    ‘It’s cheap. And real. She was studying digital documentary at uni, wasn’t she?’
    ‘Was she?’ I realise that I never asked what she did before she dropped out of college.
    ‘Plenty to snap around here,’ Lewis says.
    He’s right. We pass Chinese shops, Polish shops, halal butchers, and stores with signs in lettering that I don’t even recognise.
    ‘OK. Here we are,’ he says, stopping abruptly by an unlit glass doorway. ‘Act normal, right?’
    Normal? I don’t know if I can remember what that’s like. He pushes at the door, which rattles but doesn’t open.
    My heart’s racing. ‘Don’t you have an app for burglary, Lewis?’
    He smiles at me. ‘When it comes to breaking into buildings,’ he says, taking out a credit card and slipping it into the gap between the door and the frame, ‘you just need a
little finesse.’
    I stare at the open door, not quite believing what he’s just done.
    ‘Come on, Ali. Unless you want us to get caught.’
    Lewis pulls me into the hallway and uses his phone as a torch, checking the metal mailboxes on the wall. ‘Gonzales . . . Perrera . . . Bingo!’
    He reaches into the gap where the post goes, and pulls something out. As we tiptoe up the stone steps, a cockroach scuttles out of our way. There’s a ringing in my ears from all the
fireworks. Or maybe it’s fear.
    The stairs are steep and worn with age. I hold on to the banister but parts of it are missing, and there’s a slightly rotten smell.
    ‘Almost there. The mailbox says she’s got flat four. So the next landing should be her place.’ Lewis sounds short of breath. He climbs the last steps, then stops. The apartment
door is the same dirty-brown colour as the others, but this is the only one with a spy hole at eye level.
    ‘Lewis, we’re never going to get in there. We should go before the neighbours hear.’
    ‘Don’t be so defeatist,’ he says, and I hear a click, and then the door opens with a whiny squeak. ‘Open sesame.’
    He pulls me inside and closes the door before switching on the light. ‘I’d like to pretend I’m some kind of lock-breaking guru,’ he explains, ‘but actually, she
kept a spare key in the letterbox.’ He holds it up.
    ‘How did you know?
    ‘Lucky guess.’
    ‘But she was so security conscious.’
    Lewis nods. ‘Yeah, but she’d also only just moved here. And she’s not the type to trust people straight away. So she’d have had no one to call if she got locked
out.’
    My eyes adjust to the light. ‘God, what a mess.’
    The room is tiny, and both the floor space and the sofa bed are piled high with paperwork, newspapers and files. The only order is on a small table at the end of the bed, where two laptops sit
next to each other. Their power buttons glow orange.
    ‘Not exactly a room with a view, is it?’ Lewis says.
    There is a window, no bigger than an A4 pad, but when I lift the blind, there’s a steep drop down to a yard where rubbish has collected. I turn back. Lewis is already switching on
the laptops, rifling through the paperwork. I try to imagine Zoe on that bed, working on Burning Truths. I notice the inside of the door has three bolts on it.
    ‘She was really scared, Lewis.’ I point at the door.
    ‘So we need to find out why. Keep looking, Ali.’
    There’s a clothes rail loaded with empty wire hangers that clank together as I brush past it. I open the fridge, but there’s nothing inside except two bottles of water and some
yogurt. Ahead of me, there’s a plywood door, and when I open it, a damp, stale smell hits me.
    ‘I’ve found the bathroom.’
    Except there’s no room for a bath, only a loo and directly above that, a showerhead. On the wall there’s a mirrored cabinet. My own face