Zero Days

By the time Jack gets to her home in South London, it’s almost 4:00 am. She is so tired that she took a wrong turn on the way home, finding herself on unrecognizable streets for a “surprisingly long time” (33). As soon as she opens the front door, she knows something is wrong. The “fetid, iron-rich” odor that greets her reminds her of a butcher shop. She finds Gabe slumped over his desk, his throat slashed from behind, producing a horrible, jagged hole in the front of his neck.

Feeling faint, Jack drags herself to the couch and sits in shock. She knows she must find her phone to call the police, something she “should have done the moment [she] walked in the door” (36). Jack locates her phone and charger so she can call emergency services.

For the next several hours, officers interrogate Jack. She tells them that Gabe had no enemies because everyone loved him. As forensics officers study the scene, a female officer helps Jack change clothes and escorts her to a patrol car. The police want her to come to the station while her memory is fresh. Although she would rather not, she knows she’s “already wasted precious minutes, maybe even hours, by going into shock in the living room” (39). Detective Constable Miles introduces himself to Jack and thanks her for agreeing to come to the station.

In the interview room, Miles and Detective Sergeant Habiba Malik question Jack. Malik asks her to run through the last several hours one more time. Jack feels too exhausted and grief-stricken to continue, and she cannot remember what she said before; she cannot seem to remember anything clearly. Jack explains that her phone battery died and her car is too old to have satellite navigation or GPS. She cannot provide evidence of her whereabouts at the time of the murder. Miles and Malik take Jack to the home of her sister, Helena Wick.

Helena, or “Hel” as Jack calls her, ushers Jack to the guest room, where she sleeps the entire day. When she awakens at dusk, she knows where she is but not why until she remembers Gabe’s murder. She wonders if she will become like her grandfather, who lived with Alzheimer’s and felt grief for Jack’s mother every time he was told of her death.

Jack takes a shower before going to the kitchen. Hel’s husband, Roland, hugs her, but the kindness is more than she can bear. As Jack tells Roland and Hel what happened, the couple become alarmed by the police officers’ questions and the amount of time Jack’s phone was off. Because of the murderer’s method—cutting Gabe’s throat from behind—Hel thinks it was a professional hit; as a journalist, she has written about contract killings, and she says the method is “pretty distinctive.” Moreover, the killer didn’t leave footprints or anything else to implicate themselves, which suggests that they are a pro.

Jack reveals that Gabe was convicted of computer hacking when he was a teenager. Hel and Roland agree that this likely has nothing to do with the murder. Hel says that the only people who hire contract killers are those involved in organized crime and spouses. Since Gabe had no obvious connection with criminal organizations, suspicion will likely fall on Jack. There was no sign of a break-in, Jack has no alibi, and she waited a long time before calling the police. Jack is angry that the police might suspect her, and she promises her sister she’ll call a lawyer if the police ask to question her again.