She was painting the ceiling when she counted the smoke alarms. There were three in a one-bedroom flat, and the third one had no brand name on it anywhere.
Imogen Reyes is up a stepladder with a roller when she notices it.
Hallway. Living room. And one more, in the corner of the bedroom, above the wardrobe.
Three, in a one-bedroom flat.
She climbs down, moves the ladder, and climbs back up.
The hallway one has a brand name moulded into the plastic and a test button and a green LED that blinks every forty seconds.
The bedroom one has no name on it anywhere. No test button. No vents. It is slightly deeper than the others and the small hole in the front is perfectly round.
Imogen does not touch it.
She takes four photographs from the ladder, gets down, and goes and sits in the kitchen.
She calls the letting agent first, because she wants to hear the answer before she has decided anything.
Imogen: There are three smoke alarms in the flat. Is that standard?
Agent: Two is standard. Hall and living.
Imogen: There’s one in the bedroom.
Agent: Then the landlord’s added one. That’s his right.
Imogen: Would that be in the inventory?
A pause and the sound of scrolling.
Agent: …The inventory lists two.
Imogen: Right.
Agent: I’m sure there’s an explanation.
Imogen: I’m sure there is. I’d like it in writing.
She does not call the landlord.
She calls the police, and then she books a hotel for two nights, and then she goes and sits in the car park until the officers arrive, because she is not going back up that stairwell alone.
DC Nnamdi Eze photographs the ceiling before anything is touched.
Eze: Have you moved it?
Imogen: I haven’t been within a metre of it since Tuesday.
Eze: That’s the right answer.
Imogen: I kept thinking I was being ridiculous.
Eze: You counted the alarms in your own home and one of them didn’t match. That isn’t ridiculous.
He gets it down in an evidence bag. There is a micro-SD card inside it and a lithium cell taped to the back.
Imogen: How long.
Eze: We’ll know from the card.
Imogen: Just tell me the range.
Eze: Months, probably. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
What happened after
Trevor Ashby owned four flats in the same building. Devices were recovered from two of them.
He was charged with voyeurism and unauthorised surveillance. He pleaded guilty to both. He was sentenced, placed on the register, and the properties were sold under a management order.
The council’s housing enforcement team wrote to every tenant in the block and then, three months later, to every licensed landlord in the borough, setting out that any device installed in a let property must appear on the inventory with a make and model, and that unlisted electronics in habitable rooms would be treated as a licensing breach.
That letter exists because Imogen Reyes counted to three on a stepladder and then didn’t touch anything.
She was rehoused. The deposit came back in full and it took nine weeks.
She still counts them. Every flat she’s viewed since, she stands in the hall and looks up and counts, and if the agent asks what she’s doing she says she’s checking the ceilings for damp.
Read the rest of the series in The Mosaic Stories.
More from the series: The Bus Was Twenty Minutes Late Every Thursday — She Followed It To Find Out Why · She Checked The Car Seat Straps — Somebody Else Had Been Buckling Her Daughter In