The Tenant Kept the Key

Vera Lonne comes off a night shift to find her subletter gone mid-lease — bed made, laptop unlocked, coffee still warm. The laptop holds two hundred photographs of Vera, most of them taken while she slept. Under them is a spreadsheet called 'Tenants': three addresses, three women, two of whom are on a missing-persons list. The police take a report. The landlord, a cheerful man named Dennis who collects the rent in cash, insists he never rented to anyone but Vera. There is no subletter in the lease. But there is a subletter in the building — in the attic with its glass floor, in the basement that links every unit, in the cabinet that reflects the bathroom. With the building's oldest tenant as her witness, Vera pulls the 1948 floor plan and finds that every property Dennis has ever owned was purpose-built for watching. Getting the evidence is easy. Getting out with it, and still paying rent, is not. A dark psychological thriller of surveillance, landlords and locked doors.