The man came up to the car from down the ally. From his direction and manner, he was clearly doing the opposite of what he had claimed earlier—walking past the car on his way home. There was some kind of tool in his hand. The darkness and screen resolution made it impossible to make out what it was exactly.
The man approached the car. The moment his hands touched the vehicle, the car door sprang open. It really did look like the door had been intentionally opened to slam the man in his face. The man lost his balance and fell on his behind. As he tried to get up again, the door slammed into his face once more. Over and over, it kept doing the same thing as the man attempted to get up multiple times.
Then his body was upright—not balanced on his own feet, but seemingly hoisted up as if by an invisible assailant. His head crashed onto the hood. The man struggled, kicking the tires as he did so, but his head crashed again and again into the hood of the car until he finally managed to gain his balance. That was when the driver-side door slammed him once again. The man grabbed the edge of the door with his right hand for balance, and the door shut with his hand still in it. He freed his hand and fell on the ground, clutching his right hand. The camera did not have a microphone, but the man’s pain was clear from his silent, wide-open mouth.
The detective turned to the man. “So where exactly in this videotape did an assault take place?”
The only person in the footage, from beginning to end, had been the man. No matter how you tried to spin it, all it looked like was the man engaging in self-harm using the car belonging to the woman and her husband.
The detective spoke again. “And just how did you open someone else’s car? Did you steal their keys?”
The man began shouting his objections, but a glance at the detective’s suspicion-filled gaze brought him down to a mumble. “But, but I was sure that someone came out of the car and—”
“What person? What person out of where?” the detective cut in with a rough voice. The man attempted to say something, but the detective didn’t give him a chance.
“So you thought you’d extort these poor people by pretending they beat you up, is that it? Is pressing charges some kind of game to you?”
“But I’m positive that someone had—”
“What someone? Where? You still dare to speak such lies when there’s CCTV proof right in front of you?”
The detective was having none of it. He mentioned that extortion was a criminal offence. But the woman and her husband, saying they all had to live in the same neighborhood, requested leniency for the man, who continued muttering that he was sure someone had been in the car even as they exited the station. But his mumbling was now shot through with fear.
A few days later, they learned that the man had been charged for attempted extortion. And when the woman was on her way home from the supermarket, she saw the man’s expensive sedan parked on the street—its interior filled with heavy rocks and its tires slashed to shreds. The sight was so chilling that she rushed into their building without a second glance behind.
The man never again bothered them about parking in front of their building. Even when they ran into him in the neighborhood, he simply turned his head and went the other way. They could hear him grumble about how they had ruined his day by committing the offence of simply being visible, but neither she nor her husband dignified him with a response.
The child liked to play in the building. She’d go exploring in the different rooms, and whenever she seemed to have momentarily disappeared, she could always be found in the basement.
And that was all she liked to do. She didn’t seem to want to go outside much. The woman tried several times to take her to the supermarket or go for a walk around the neighborhood, but the child always shook her head in refusal. The woman didn’t press the issue.
They had a hard time finding a renter for the third floor.
Collecting rent was the only way her husband and she could have a steady income. The third floor had been empty since before they had moved in, and as time passed, she began to feel more and more anxious about its vacancy.
“Why don’t we remodel it,” suggested her husband.
“Wouldn’t that be expensive? We’d have to get a permit, too. What if no one wants it even after we remodel?”
Her husband, however, was more confident than she was. “My friend said he would use it as an office. He also said he knows someone who can get us a discount on the remodeling. The interior designer went to our school. She’ll take care of the permits and everything.”