What on earth is going on inside flat 3203?

Richard Girgis had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but after the latest call from his flat’s concierge, he feels he has no choice: He must know what’s happening inside his flat. 

For some time now, he’s been hearing about all sorts of strange things… parties that go on late into the evening, people coming and going in the small hours of the morning, and delivery trucks pulling up outside, with men carrying boxes upstairs. Strangest of all were the 25 peculiar visitors that seemed to arrive each night, every one of them carrying a black briefcase, and taking it with them into Girgis’ flat.

“Wait — I think someone’s in there,” the chief concierge says to Girgis and his wife as they stand on the 35th floor of Beetham Tower, outside the door of a flat Girgis has been renting to a supposed international student. The three of them strain to hear. They knock on the door — twice. Nothing. But when the trio tries the handle, just to see whether the door has been locked, it gives way. 

“Never in a million years,” Girgis tells me, “did I expect to see what I saw.” 

Girgis owns three flats and lets them via a Manchester-based property agent. It’s March 2026 — three months earlier, the agent had conducted a viewing for an older Chinese man looking for accommodation for his daughter, who was said to be moving to Manchester for university. Girgis thought he’d lucked out: The man seemed respectable, had an excellent credit history and offered to pay six months upfront. 

A tenancy agreement was signed at the end of January and all was going smoothly, aside from one odd request: On the day she moved in, the student asked if all the bedroom furniture could be moved so she could use the space as a gym. 

But within two weeks, the calls from Beetham Tower’s front desk began. The concierge told Girgis the woman had been “partying late into the evening, with people coming and going till 5am.” The smell of cannabis was lingering in the hallways, and other residents were complaining. Annoying, sure, but students throwing parties isn’t particularly exceptional. Girgis texted the student and she apologised, promising it wouldn’t happen again. 

A week later, another call came, and this time, the concierge told him about the delivery truck, and the men with the black cases. Girgis messaged the tenant again, who denied any wrongdoing. He went back to the concierge, who said plainly that the tenant was lying. 

One morning at around 5am, a drunk visitor began hammering on the wrong apartment door after forgetting which flat they were trying to get into, thinking it was Girgis’ flat, terrifying a mother and her baby living next door. Girgis tried calling the tenant, but she didn’t answer. 

“I’m visiting tomorrow. You’ve got 24 hours’ notice,” he texted her.

“I’m going on holiday tomorrow,” she replied. 

Girgis said he was coming anyway — which brings us back to the hallway outside his flat, in front of the door that turns out not to be locked. What he expected to find was evidence of student parties: People asleep on sofas, damage to the furniture, perhaps empty glasses or baggies scattered across surfaces. He found something far more bizarre.