No One Turned Off the Lullaby - Her Dead Sister's Voice Is Coming from an Empty Apartment - Nathan Ashborn

INTRO - No One Turned Off the Lullaby - Her Dead Sister's Voice Is Coming from an Empty Apartment.INTROLena recognized the first four notes before she had time to remind herself that she should never hear them again. She stood on the half landing with a paper bag in one hand and her keys in the other. Outside, October rain struck the tall stairwell window; inside, the building smelled of wet concrete, dust, and someone's dinner frying one floor below. An ordinary evening in an ordinary tenement building. The only extraordinary thing was the voice coming from behind the door of apartment number eight. Marta's voice. Lena did not move. First she thought of a radio. Then a television in one of the neighbors' apartments, sound traveling through the old ventilation shafts, someone out in the courtyard. Her mind supplied one explanation after another with a speed that betrayed panic. Every one of them was better than the single possibility she refused to name. The lullaby drifted softly through the door, almost a whisper. It was not a song anyone else would know. You could not find it online or hear it on a children's television show. Their mother had made up the melody when Marta was six and Lena was three. Later, Marta had sung it to her little sister during thunderstorms, when their parents argued, or when an ambulance came in the middle of the night to take their father to the hospital. Over the years, all that remained were three verses that no one except the two of them could remember in full. Marta was singing the second one now. Lena slowly set the paper bag down on the step. Apartment number eight was empty. She knew that better than anyone else in the building. Eleven months earlier, she had packed Marta's clothes into black garbage bags herself. She had thrown the withered plants from the kitchen windowsill away herself. With the help of a lawyer, she had settled the bills, canceled the internet service, and had the electricity disconnected. They had not sold the apartment because the probate proceedings had dragged on due to a dispute with the man Marta had been involved with before her death. No one had lived there for five months. For the last three, Lena had not even had a key. The set was held in the law firm's custody. And yet there was no light beneath the door, and her sister's voice was coming from the other side. Not a recording, she thought. The thought was absurd, but it came instantly. Marta breathed between the lines. Lena knew those pauses. The short intake of breath after the first two words. The slight stretching of the final syllable. The same way Marta had sung to her over the phone three years earlier, when Lena had spent her first night alone in a new apartment after the divorce and joked that she could not fall asleep. Then she heard the third verse. Her knees went weak. Marta got one word wrong in exactly the way she always had. Lena walked toward the door. "Hello?" The lullaby continued for a few more seconds. "Is someone in there?" Silence. So sudden that Lena heard a raindrop sliding down the outside windowsill. She pressed her ear to the door. Nothing. She knocked once, then harder. "Open the door." The words sounded ridiculous. An order addressed to an empty apartment. She stepped back and took out her phone. The screen showed 9:17 p.m. For a moment she stared at the building manager's number, but she did not call. What was she supposed to say? Good evening, someone is singing in my dead sister's apartment in her voice? Instead, she opened the camera and started recording. "Apartment eight," she said quietly, more to herself than to the camera. "October second. Nine eighteen p.m. I heard music." She regretted it immediately. She sounded like someone preparing evidence against her own sanity. She lowered the phone. Then something clicked behind the door. Not loudly. Like a drawer being closed or something being set down on a wooden surface. Lena pressed the doorbell. It did not work. Of course it did not work. The power had been disconnected. She leaned toward the lock. The old brass plate had a fresh, pale scratch across it. It had not been there that morning. She was certain because she walked past this door twice a day. She lived one floor above, and since Marta's death she had developed a habit of looking at apartment number eight whenever she passed. She had never admitted it to anyone. She checked whether the doormat was still straight, whether anyone had left a flyer on the handle, whether someone had tried to get inside. Now the handle sat a few millimeters lower than usual. Lena touched it with one finger. The door gave way. She stepped back. It did not open wide. The security chain fastened on the inside stopped it. Through the gap she saw a narrow slice of the hallway. Darkness, a white wall, and the edge of a mirror she had left behind when clearing out the apartment. The chain trembled slightly. Someone had to have fastened it from inside. "Who's there?" No answer. Lena raised her phone and aimed the camera through the gap. She zoomed in. Nothing. She lowered the phone. Something pale lay on the floor. A sheet of paper. No, a photograph. The door suddenly jerked toward her. Lena jumped back. The chain snapped taut with a metallic knock, then the door slammed so hard that the stairwell window shuddered in its frame. For several seconds, she could not move her hand. Then a notification appeared on her phone. Not a message. Not a call. A new voice recording had been sent from the number she had kept saved for eleven months as MARTA - DO NOT DELETE. Recording length: seven seconds. Lena stared at the screen until it went dark. She unlocked it again. The number was correct. She tapped the file. First came static, a soft crackle, and the first two notes of the lullaby. Then Marta said: "Lenka, don't go inside yet." The recording ended. Lena stood motionless outside the door of apartment number eight. Not because she had heard the voice of her dead sister. Because Marta had used the word "yet."

Chapter 1 - Locked from the Inside - No One Turned Off the Lullaby - Her Dead Sister's Voice Is Coming from an Empty Apartment.Chapter 1 - Locked from the InsideLena listened to the message a second time only because the first time she could not trust her own memory. "Lenka, don't go inside yet." Seven seconds. Static. Two notes of the lullaby. Marta's voice. End. The third time, Lena stopped the recording after the word "yet." She brought the phone closer to her face, as if a larger screen might reveal something her ears had missed. Above the file was the contact name MARTA - DO NOT DELETE, and below it the time, 9:19 p.m. There was no profile picture. Lena had removed it herself a few weeks after the funeral because she could no longer bear seeing her sister's smiling face appear in contact searches. Now she almost wished the picture would come back. The door to apartment number eight remained closed. The handle had returned to its normal position. Only the fresh pale scratch across the brass lock plate proved that anything at all had happened a moment earlier. Lena called emergency services. When the operator asked whether anyone's life was in immediate danger, she hesitated. "I don't know." "Is someone inside the apartment?" She looked at the door. "I think so." "You think so?" "The door was chained from the inside. Someone just slammed it shut." That sounded reasonable until the next question came. "Do you know the person?" Lena tightened her grip on the phone. "The person whose voice I heard is dead." There was a brief silence on the other end. She did not explain further. She reported a possible break-in, an empty apartment, movement behind the door, and the security chain. She left out the lullaby. Left out the message. Left out Marta. When the call ended, she went down half a flight. She did not want to stand directly opposite number eight. Leaning against the banister, she listened. The tenement had its own nighttime rhythm, one she had known for five years: water moving through the vertical pipes, the thud of the front entrance downstairs, the elevator stopping with a metallic groan, Mrs. Jadzia's television from number eleven. From Wólczańska Street came the sound of passing cars and tires hissing over wet asphalt. Nothing came from Marta's apartment. A few minutes later, the door to number seven opened. The head of Mr. Leon, seventy years old, appeared in the gap. "Everything all right?" "Yes." He looked at the paper bag she had left on the stairs, then at Lena. "Someone banging on a door?" "No." "I heard a slam." "I dropped something." The lie came automatically. Mr. Leon looked toward apartment eight. He had lived across from Marta for eighteen years. At the funeral he had cried harder than some members of the family. "Was someone in there again?" he asked. Lena straightened. "Again?" The old man blinked. "Well... the lawyers. That's what I meant." "When?" "I don't remember." "Mr. Leon, when was someone in Marta's apartment?" His expression changed at once. His eyes dropped to the floor. "Maybe I'm mistaken." "When?" "A few days ago, I think. At night I heard a door. But I don't sleep well, Lena. I get up five times. It could have been upstairs." "Did you see anyone?" "No." "Did you hear voices?" "No." "Music?" For a moment he looked directly into her eyes. "What kind of music?" Lena was about to answer when the front entrance opened below. Two police officers came into the stairwell with a gust of cold air. The younger one, maybe in his mid-twenties, removed his cap and shook the rain from it. The other was a woman in her forties with short dark hair and a face that looked tired before her shift had even begun. "Who made the call?" Lena raised a hand. The policewoman introduced herself as Senior Constable Irena Sokołowska. She made no comment on the story about the empty apartment or the chain. She asked a few short questions, examined the door, and tried the handle. Locked. "Who has the keys?" "The law firm handling the probate case." "You don't?" "No." "The building manager?" "He has technical keys to parts of the building, but he shouldn't have one for this apartment." Sokołowska looked at the door, beyond which the chain could not be seen. "How do you know the chain was fastened?" Lena took out her phone. "The door opened a little. I saw it." She showed them the brief video. For a second, the camera caught the narrow gap, part of the wall, and the taut chain. Then the image jerked wildly as the door was slammed shut. The younger officer watched the clip a second time. "Someone pulled the door?" "Yes." "Did you see a hand?" "No." "A person?" "No." "A shadow?" "No." Sokołowska indicated the phone. "You told the operator someone was inside. Did you hear that person?" This was the moment when Lena could have said she had only heard the sound behind the door. Instead, she opened the voice message. "I heard this." The policewoman listened to the seven seconds without changing expression. "Who is that?" "My sister." "The owner of the apartment?" "Yes." "Where is she now?" Behind Lena, she heard Mr. Leon quietly close his apartment door. "She died eleven months ago." The younger officer stopped looking at the phone. Sokołowska, however, asked calmly, "Was your sister's phone secured after her death?" "The police gave it back. It was damaged. The SIM card too." "Is the number still active?" "No." "Have you checked?" "I haven't called it in months." "Try." Lena tapped the call icon. The phone against her ear stayed silent for several seconds, then an automated voice informed her that the number did not exist. The policewoman raised an eyebrow. "The message came through an app?" Lena looked more closely. Yes. It was not an ordinary MMS, as she had assumed automatically. The notification had displayed the contact name, but the recording was inside the messaging app she and Marta had used almost every day. "The account could have been compromised," Sokołowska said. "Or it may still be logged in on another device." A rational explanation should have brought relief. It did not. "It's her voice." "I'm not saying it isn't." "You can't mistake it." "People have recordings." "Someone would have to know how she spoke to me." Sokołowska glanced at the screen. "'Lenka'?" "Almost no one calls me that." "Almost?" Lena did not answer. The policewoman did not press. She called the station, then asked Lena for the building manager's contact information. Mirosław Gajda arrived twenty minutes later wearing a quilted navy jacket over a sweater. He lived two streets away and had managed the building for more than a decade. Lena had known him long enough to believe that even at three in the morning he would probably appear carrying the small leather case full of keys he always had with him. Tonight was no exception. "I don't have a key to number eight," he announced before he reached the landing. "After Ms. Marta died, they changed the cylinder. The law firm wanted exclusive access." "Who changed it?" Sokołowska asked. "One of my people." "Name?" Gajda hesitated so briefly Lena might have missed it if she had not been looking directly at him. "My son. Tomasz." "Does he have a copy?" "He shouldn't." The policewoman looked at him. "That isn't an answer." "He doesn't. We handed the keys to the law firm." For the next half hour they waited for a locksmith. Lena sat on a step, ignoring the cold creeping deeper into her body. She should have gone up to her own apartment one floor above, but the idea of closing a door between herself and whatever had happened in number eight felt worse than waiting. Sokołowska sat two steps below her. "How did your sister die?" Lena stared at the opposite wall. "Car accident." "She was driving?" "Yes." "When?" "November ninth last year." "Here in Łódź?" "Outside the city. She was driving back in the evening. Went off the road and hit a tree." "Alcohol?" Lena turned her head. "No." "Routine question." "I know." "Medication?" "A trace amount of a sleeping pill. Prescribed by her doctor." Sokołowska nodded. "Investigation closed?" "It was ruled an accident." "And you have doubts?" The question came too quickly. Lena looked at Marta's door. "Not until tonight." It was not entirely true. For several weeks after the funeral she had doubted everything. Why had Marta driven out that night? Why had she not answered three messages? Why had she turned off the location sharing she had once insisted the sisters both keep enabled? Why had she called Adam twice before the crash, the man she had supposedly been planning to leave for months? Every question had possessed an ordinary explanation. People turned off location sharing. They argued. They drove when they were tired. They took sleeping pills too early. They did things that acquired meaning after death only because no one could ask them why anymore. The locksmith arrived after ten. He inspected the lock, shook his head, and said the cylinder did not appear damaged. After a few minutes, he opened the door. It stopped against the chain. Everyone fell silent. "So someone did fasten it," the younger officer said. The locksmith cut the chain. Sokołowska told Lena to stay in the stairwell. The officers went in first. Gajda followed them. Lena heard short exchanges, doors opening, shoes scraping across parquet. Several minutes passed before Sokołowska returned. "No one's there." "That's impossible." "You can come in, but don't touch anything." Lena crossed the threshold. The smell hit her first. For months, Marta's apartment had smelled empty: dust, dried wood, the chill of unheated rooms. Now beneath all of it was something else. Damp wool. Like a wet coat. There was no photograph in the hallway. "It was here," Lena said. Sokołowska swept her flashlight over the floor. "You're sure it was a photograph?" "A rectangle. White border. I only saw part of it." "Could have been a flyer?" "No." She did not know why, but the word came out firmly. The living room was still almost empty. A table no one had wanted to carry away stood against one wall. A paler rectangle marked the parquet where the sofa had once been. The curtains had been taken down after the funeral, so the rain-streaked windows reflected the room like black mirrors. Lena flicked the light switch automatically. Nothing happened. The electricity was still disconnected. So the lullaby could not have come from a television or radio plugged into the mains. "You heard the music from this room?" Sokołowska asked. "Hard to tell. Sound carries in the stairwell." They went farther in. The bedroom was empty except for the built-in wardrobe. The younger officer opened every door. A single metal hanger hung inside. Nothing in the bathroom. In the kitchen, there was an old chair, a refrigerator with its door left open, and two glasses on the windowsill that the cleaning crew had forgotten. Gajda stood beside a narrow door near the pantry. "This is locked," he said. "What's behind it?" Sokołowska asked. "Old service stairs. The back staircase. These old apartments used to have two entrances. Front and kitchen." Lena remembered the door. When they cleared the apartment, a shelving unit had stood in front of it. "You told me that staircase was out of use." "Because it is." Gajda pressed the handle. The door opened. Not far. An old piece of wood stopped it. The building manager went pale. "That was secured." Behind the door, narrow stairs descended into darkness. There was no lighting. Sokołowska aimed her flashlight down. Dust covered most of the steps. On two of them, someone had disturbed it. Not a clear shoeprint. More of a smear, as if someone had moved sideways or placed a foot on the edge. "Where does this lead?" the policewoman asked. "To the courtyard. It used to serve the kitchens in all the apartments. Most of the entrances were bricked up." "And this one?" Gajda did not answer immediately. "It was supposed to be sealed." Sokołowska shone the light down the stairwell. "Can you get outside?" "If the door at the bottom isn't blocked." The younger officer went down. Almost a minute passed. "Open!" he called from below. Lena felt the first rational version of events assemble itself in her mind. Someone had entered by the kitchen staircase. Fastened the security chain on the front door. When Lena opened it, that person had slammed it shut and escaped out the back. Simple. Real. Far worse than a ghost. "Who knew about these stairs?" she asked. "Anyone who's lived here long enough," Gajda said. "It isn't a secret." "I didn't know they were passable." "They shouldn't be." "When did you last check the security?" The manager rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't remember." Sokołowska crouched beside the lower hinge. In the beam of her flashlight, fresh metal gleamed. "Are these screws new?" Gajda did not answer. "Mr. Gajda?" "They look like they've been disturbed." "By whom?" "I don't know." That was when Lena saw something beneath the radiator. A black rectangle. "There." The younger officer put on gloves and lifted it. It was a small digital recorder, barely larger than a matchbox, connected by a short cable to a miniature speaker. Lena recognized it. "That's Marta's." Sokołowska turned. "You're sure?" "She used it to record conversations. Ideas. Shopping lists. Everything." "Did you take it after she died?" Lena shook her head. "I thought it was in the car." She could not remember why she believed that. Maybe because Marta had almost always carried it in her bag. The officer pressed a button. The device did not respond. "Dead battery?" "Or switched off," Sokołowska said. "We'll take it as evidence." "If the lullaby came from that thing, someone had to start it." "Or set it in advance." "Eleven months in advance?" Sokołowska looked at her carefully. "I didn't say that." Lena understood. Someone had been inside the apartment recently. And they had done more than enter. They knew Lena passed the door in the evening. Knew which melody she would recognize. Knew what Marta had called her. And that person had probably been only a few yards away while Lena stood outside the door. After midnight, the police finished processing the apartment. Sokołowska saved Lena's number and told her not to delete the message or the video. They took the recorder. The locksmith fitted a temporary security measure, and Gajda promised to secure the lower entrance to the service stairs in the morning. "Not alone," Sokołowska said as Lena started upstairs. "Excuse me?" "If you get another message, don't investigate anything by yourself. Call." Lena nodded. "Even if it sounds like your sister." For the first time that night, something entered the policewoman's voice beyond professional calm. Lena climbed to her floor. The door to apartment number twelve was closed. The doormat was crooked. She stopped. That morning, she had straightened it with her foot before leaving. She did it automatically every day. Now one corner was folded over. Lena did not touch the handle. First she looked left, then right. The stairwell was empty. She took out her phone and photographed the door. Only then did she lift the mat. There was a photograph underneath. The same one she had seen through the gap in Marta's door. It showed two girls sitting on a wooden jetty. The older girl had one arm around the younger. A lake gleamed in the background. Lena was seven in the picture. Marta was ten. She knew the photograph perfectly. Except this copy had never belonged to her. She turned it over. On the back, in blue pen, someone had written three words. The handwriting was Marta's. I DON'T TRUST ADAM.

Chapter 2 - What Marta Left Behind - No One Turned Off the Lullaby - Her Dead Sister's Voice Is Coming from an Empty Apartment.Chapter 2 - What Marta Left BehindLena did not go inside her apartment. She hurried down one floor so quickly she almost passed Sokołowska, who was putting on her jacket to leave. "Please look at this." The policewoman looked at the photograph but did not touch it. "Where was it?" "Under my doormat." The younger officer immediately headed upstairs again. "When were you last there?" Sokołowska asked. "Before eight. I went out to get groceries." "Was the mat in the same position?" "No." "You're sure?" "Yes." "And you had seen the photograph before?" "I saw it inside Marta's apartment. Through the door. It was lying in the hallway." Sokołowska looked at the three words on the back. I DON'T TRUST ADAM. "Who is Adam?" Lena did not answer immediately. Not because she did not know what to say. The problem was that the answer was too simple. "Marta's partner." "Husband?" "No." "Were they still together when she died?" "Depends which one of them you ask." "I can't ask Marta." The sentence sounded cold, but not cruel. Lena lowered her eyes. "Marta said they'd split up. Adam says they were going through a rough patch." "Did he live here?" "For a while. Officially, he had his own apartment." "Does he have keys?" "He says he returned them." "When?" "After Marta died." Sokołowska put on gloves and took the photograph. "You recognize the handwriting?" "Yes." "Can you date it?" "No." "The picture?" "More than twenty years ago. At our grandparents' lake house." "Where did Marta keep family photographs?" "In a box in the wardrobe." Lena turned toward apartment eight. The wardrobe. The bedroom still had the built-in one. "We emptied it," she said. "I took the photographs upstairs. I don't remember this one." "Maybe you missed it." "Maybe." She disliked that word. Since the beginning of the night, almost everything could have had an ordinary explanation. Someone could have kept a copy of the key. Someone could have found a recording of Marta's voice. Someone could have logged into her old account. Someone could have known about the back staircase. Each possibility, taken separately, was harmless enough. Together, they were beginning to resemble a plan. Sokołowska walked to number twelve. "Do you have a spare key?" "To my apartment? Yes." "Who else has one?" "No one." "No one at all?" Lena thought of Marta. She used to have one. Her key had later been found in the handbag recovered from the wrecked car. Adam had never officially been given a copy, though he could have borrowed Marta's set and made one. "My sister had one. Adam could have had access to her keys." The policewoman asked her to stay in the hallway. The younger officer checked the apartment. He found no one. The windows were closed, the balcony empty, and nothing had obviously been disturbed. Only then did Lena go in. Her apartment was the opposite of Marta's. Warm, full of books, lamps, and things put aside "for later." Her morning coffee mug still stood on the desk. A sweater hung over the back of a chair. Two apples and an unopened package lay on the kitchen counter. Sokołowska stopped by the bookcase. Six cardboard boxes stood there, labeled in black marker. MARTA - DOCUMENTS. MARTA - KITCHEN. MARTA - PHOTOS. Lena felt embarrassed, as though the policewoman had caught her in something more intimate than clutter. "You haven't gone through these?" "Some of them." "It's been eleven months." "I know." "I'm not judging." Of course she was. Everyone did. Lena's mother had said after only three months that she needed to "close that chapter." After six months, Adam had demanded access to several things he claimed were his. The lawyer had advised Lena to make a detailed inventory. Lena had opened only two boxes. The rest were still sealed with the same tape she had put on them in Marta's apartment. "Could this photograph have come from here?" Sokołowska asked. Lena pointed to the box of photos. "Yes." "Then whoever put it under your door didn't necessarily have to enter apartment eight." It was logical. And even worse. "They would have had to come in here." "Not necessarily. They could have had the photograph already." "With Marta's writing on it?" "We don't know that yet." Lena looked at her. "I do." Sokołowska sighed. "We can compare the handwriting. We can analyze the ink if there's reason to. At the moment, we have a break-in or unauthorized entry into an empty apartment, a message from a deceased person's account, and a photograph left under your door. That's enough for me to take this seriously. It isn't enough for me to conclude that your sister predicted her own death." "I didn't say she did." "But you're thinking it." Lena looked away. The policewoman was right. The words I DON'T TRUST ADAM could have been old. During the final year of their relationship, Marta and Adam had argued regularly. Once she stayed with Lena for three days, saying she never wanted to see him again. Another time, a week later, she invited him to a family lunch and acted as though nothing had happened. There were a thousand reasons not to trust someone. He lies. He cheats. He reads your messages. He spends your money. He breaks promises. It did not mean: If I die, investigate him. And yet someone had chosen that exact photograph and that exact sentence. "Where is Adam?" Sokołowska asked. "I don't know." "Surname?" "Adam Rudnicki." "Phone number?" Lena gave it to her. The policewoman wrote it down and checked the time. "We'll call him in the morning. Don't contact him yourself tonight." "What if he contacts me?" "Don't tell him about the photograph." "Why?" "I want to hear his version before he knows what we have." The word "we" reassured Lena more than it should have. For the next half hour, the officers checked the corridor, the main entrance, and the courtyard. The camera above the gate turned out to have been broken for a week. Gajda said part of the system was scheduled to be replaced on Monday. "Of course," Lena muttered. The building manager heard her. "What does 'of course' mean?" "Nothing." "You think I deliberately disabled the camera?" "I didn't say that." "But that's how you're looking at me." Sokołowska intervened before the exchange became an argument. Gajda left a few minutes later. On the stairs he passed Mr. Leon, who opened his door again, this time wearing a bathrobe. "Did you find out who was in there?" he asked the policewoman. "No." "I told you someone had been walking around." Lena turned. "Earlier you said you might have imagined it." The old man pressed his lips together. "Because I didn't want to get involved." "You're involved now." Sokołowska stepped closer. "When exactly did you hear someone in number eight?" Leon scratched at his gray hair. "Thursday, I think." It was Sunday night. "What time?" "Late. After eleven." "What did you hear?" "First the door. Then footsteps." "One person?" "I don't know." "Conversation?" Leon hesitated. "Something like someone playing recordings." A chill crept across Lena's neck. "What kind?" "Voices. Short ones. One after another. A woman's voice." "Did you recognize Marta?" The old man looked at Lena with pain in his eyes. "That's why I didn't want to say anything." Sokołowska immediately straightened. "What exactly did you hear?" "Not words. Just the tone. Ms. Marta had this... soft voice. She always sounded quieter than everyone else." "And you're sure?" "No. At the time I thought it was a television." Lena moved closer to him. "Why did you tell me tonight you hadn't heard anything?" "Because I saw your face." That stopped her. "What kind of face?" "The same one you had after the funeral." Leon closed the door before she could answer. At two in the morning, Lena was finally alone. The police had gone. Sokołowska promised she would contact her the next day. Gajda locked the gate and checked the lower door to the service staircase. Lena wedged a chair beneath the handle of her own apartment door even though she knew it would not stop anyone determined enough to get in. She did not sleep. At four, she opened the box labeled MARTA - PHOTOS. She was not looking for anything specific. She just needed to do something. Inside were albums, loose prints, old envelopes from photo labs, pictures of their parents before they married, and dozens of photographs from childhood. After an hour, she found the series from the lake. The same jetty. The same dress. The same hairstyle on Marta. The photograph from beneath the doormat belonged to the set. One print was missing. Lena arranged the pictures chronologically. On the backs of most of them, Marta, as a teenager, had added places or dates. "Mazury 1999." "Mom got mad." "Lenka fell into the water 5 minutes later." The handwriting was identical to I DON'T TRUST ADAM, but that proved nothing. Marta's handwriting had stayed much the same throughout her adult life. Lena was about to put the photographs away when she noticed the bottom of the box sat slightly raised. She lifted the cardboard insert. Beneath it was a small white envelope. One word was written on the front. LENKA. Her heart beat harder. She sat down on the floor. The envelope was sealed. For several seconds, she only turned it over in her hands. It could have been fifteen years old. Could have contained a birthday card. Marta had a habit of hiding things in places she later forgot about. Lena slid a fingernail beneath the edge. Inside was a sheet of paper folded in half. There was no date. "If you ever go through my things and come across this by accident, throw it away and assume I'm overreacting. If someone told you to start looking through my things first, don't throw it away. This isn't about Adam. Adam lies, but he isn't the one I'm most afraid of. M." Lena read the message four times. Then a fifth. This isn't about Adam. The sentence should have brought relief. It did not. On the back of the page was a string of digits. 31117. Beneath them, one word. "LULLABY." At seven thirty, Adam called. Lena stared at his name on the screen, remembering Sokołowska's instructions. Do not mention the photograph. Do not mention the note. She answered. "Yes?" "What's going on?" His voice sounded tired, but not sleepy. "With what?" "The police were here." Lena sat at the kitchen table. "They were?" "Fifteen minutes ago. Asked where I was last night." "And where were you?" "Lena." "It's a simple question." "At home." "Alone?" Silence. "Yes." "Can anyone confirm that?" "Have you lost your mind?" "The police probably asked you the same thing." "Are you going to tell me what this is about?" Lena looked at Marta's note on the table. This isn't about Adam. Adam lies. "Someone got into Marta's apartment." Silence on the other end. Not surprise. Silence. "Adam?" "When?" Lena felt her breathing become uneven. "Why are you asking 'when'?" "Because I want to know when." "Yesterday." "At night?" "Yes." Another pause. "Were you inside?" The same question. Not: Did they steal anything? Not: Are you okay? Not: Who got in? Were you inside? "Why does that matter?" "Lena, answer me." "I was." She heard him swear. Quietly, more to himself than to her. "What were you looking for?" "Nothing." "Don't touch Marta's things." Lena stood up. "Did you leave me the message?" "What message?" "Never mind." "Lena." "How did you know I might go inside the apartment?" "Because if someone broke in, obviously you'd check." "No. You said 'don't touch Marta's things.' You didn't ask whether anything was missing." Adam exhaled. "Listen to me. You should leave for a few days." "Why?" "Just go." "Where?" "Your mother's. A hotel. Anywhere." "Adam, what are you afraid of?" He was silent for a long time. "That Marta really did exactly what she said she was going to do." Lena looked at the note. "What did she say?" There was the sound of a door closing on his end, as if Adam had moved into another room. When he spoke again, he lowered his voice. "A month before she died, she told me that if anything happened to her, she wasn't going to let anyone quietly clean up after her." Lena felt tingling in her hands. "What does that mean?" "I don't know." "You're lying." "That's why the police questioned me this morning, right? Because you found something." Lena said nothing. "Lena, if you found an envelope or a note, don't do whatever it says." She looked at the white envelope. Adam could not see it. "What envelope?" Silence. Too long. "Adam?" "Throw it away." "How do you know about it?" "Throw everything away and get out of the apartment." "How do you know about the envelope?" He hung up. Lena immediately opened Sokołowska's number. She did not get a chance to press call. Music drifted up from below. Quiet. Barely audible through the floor. The first four notes of the lullaby. Lena froze. Apartment number eight had been sealed after the overnight examination. The music continued. This time Marta was not singing. The melody played without words, like a tiny child's music box. Lena walked toward her door but did not open it. Sokołowska had said: don't investigate anything alone. She called her. Before the policewoman answered, the lullaby stopped. For one second there was silence. Then came three slow knocks. Not from downstairs. From inside Lena's apartment. Lena turned. One of the cardboard boxes stood open in the middle of the living room. She was certain she had left it beside the bookcase. MARTA - DOCUMENTS. The call connected in her hand. "Sokołowska," the policewoman said. Lena did not answer. Another knock came from the box. As though something inside were trying to move. She took one step toward it. Then another. "Ms. Lena?" Sokołowska repeated. Lena knelt beside the box. On top of the documents lay Marta's old phone. The same model that, according to police records, had been smashed in the crash and returned to the family in three separate pieces. This one was intact. Its screen had just lit up. There was no SIM card in it. It should not have worked. An alarm was set for 8:00. The alarm label consisted of a single sentence. DON'T LET THEM OPEN THE WALL.