Andrei’s face remained expressionless.
‘I need your help,’ she said, her tone hushed but panicked.
He checked around the room for any potential threats and pulled out his mobile phone.
‘You won’t get a signal,’ she continued. ‘He saw to that.’
‘Change into clean clothes and then we are leaving,’ Andrei said gruffly, gesturing to the spots of blood splattered across her dress. ‘I know people who can make it look like this never happened.’
Ellie glanced at him with nervous gratitude.
‘Change now,’ he repeated, his voice more authoritative.
She hurried to her adjacent bathroom and dipped into her wardrobe where she kept a selection of spare clothes, pulling out a virtually identical blouse and skirt. She rinsed her face under the tap and the remaining blood from her hands. For a moment, stared at her reflection in the mirror, unable to fully comprehend her living nightmare. ‘He did this to himself, he gave you no choice,’ she said out loud. ‘You’re a good person who has done amazing things for the world. He didn’t just want to take it away from you, he wanted to take it away from everyone. He did this to himself, not you.’
A thud from the office brought her back to reality and she returned to find Andrei rolling up Matthew’s body in the rug he’d died upon.
‘We leave this room for my people to clean up,’ he said, and dragged Matthew into the bathroom out of sight. ‘Do not allow anyone else in.’
Ellie obeyed and Andrei escorted her into the corridor just as Ula ran towards her.
‘You weren’t answering your phone!’ she said, concerned.
‘I have a meeting I need to—’
But Ula cut her off. ‘Your office, it’s being streamed online.’
‘What?’
‘Look,’ she yelled, then pulled Ellie by her arm into her room. ‘You and Tim are all over the Internet. Everyone can watch and hear you arguing. But I don’t understand. How can you be here and yet on my computer you’re still in there?’
Ellie looked at the video footage of her and Matthew. By her estimation it was time delayed by approximately fifteen minutes – to the beginning of their confrontation – as Matthew was pouring his second whisky. She watched as he carried the decanter back to the sofas, and inwardly shuddered at the thought of what the object would be later used for.
‘Who can see this?’ she asked, alarmed.
Ula checked. ‘I think it’s automatically playing on every employee’s computer or tablet through the internal messaging system.’
‘Get hold of IT and tell them to shut it down.’
Ula picked up the phone while Ellie looked at Andrei for reassurance, but for the first time since he’d began working for her, she witnessed concern in his steely grey eyes.
‘They’re saying the IP address is from the desktop computer in your office,’ Ula said, ‘and it’s also being sent as a live feed to dozens of other online sources. YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter … Anyone in the world can watch right now and it’s all coming from your computer’s webcam.’
Andrei ran back into the office with a terrified Ellie in pursuit. She shut the door behind her as Andrei yanked all the leads from the iMac, then picked up the machine, lifted it over his head and hurled it to the floor. He slammed his foot into it half-a-dozen times.
As she and Andrei left her office for a second time, she saw that a small group of secretaries had nowhuddled around Ula’s screen. They took an awkward step backwards when Ellie reappeared.
‘It’s still showing,’ Ula said. ‘I’m sorry but IT says it’s not broadcasting from the servers in our building so there’s nothing they can do to cut the feed.’
Ellie froze. In approximately five minutes, the world would watch as Matthew explained how he’d compromised her database and how 2 million people who’d trusted her were the victims of mis-Matches. Then they’d see one of the world’s most prominent businesswomen beat her unarmed fiancé to death. And she was powerless to stop it.
All eyes, with the exception of Ellie’s, were on Ula’s computer screen. Ellie took a succession of deep calming breaths and leaned against the wall of her office, slowly sliding her back downwards against the glass until she reached the floor.
At Andrei’s order, Ula ushered everyone else out, leaving just the three of them. Ula and Andrei were finding it hard to draw themselves away from the screen, and Ellie didn’t try to stop them. She was forced to listen again to the dull thwack of the decanter as it hit Matthew’s head, the sound of him collapsing to his knees, followed by that of her hitting him a second, fatal time.
Ula gasped and glared at her in disbelief.
‘Come,’ said Andrei in desperation and held his hand out towards Ellie. ‘Let me take you out of this building.’
