Alone in the flat at last, Star flopped into an armchair and waited until she had calmed down. She realized she had faced the ultimate test of her assumed identity and had passed it. She had fooled the father, so should be able to fool anyone.
Gathering her thoughts, Star planned her next moves. The most urgent was a place to put the body, so she reserved a small self-storage unit over the phone. There was a convenient one on the ground floor, not too far from the entrance.
She wanted to arrange the collection of the ottoman from the flat and hire a van to move it into storage, but all this would have to wait until rigor had passed. There was no way Anna could be folded into the box at the moment.
The next problem seemed unsolvable. There was no way Star could do Anna’s job.
The death of Uncle Pete was the perfect excuse to call Human Resources and get time off. Later she could claim to have had a nervous breakdown and leave their employment.
The call was not well received; Anna actually had a key project to complete, so to end the argument with HR, she handed in her notice.
Star dreaded having to deal with the father over the resignation. There would be confrontation, argument and bad feeling; a nervous breakdown might not work out well after all. Short would arrange for Anna to go for counselling and during the course of conversation, she would make mistakes. This was a house of cards in a hurricane.
Star left the flat; at the bedsit, she told Max all that had transpired.
The coincidence of the father being mixed up with the drug dealers and Max’s part in the death of Uncle Pete was unsettling. However, two good things had come from it. First, they had firm intelligence of money exchange, and second, it gave Max the idea for the perfect way to hide Anna’s body.