“Yes.”
“Come with us.”
I got into the backseat of the musty car. The tall lad sat next to me and lifted up a black hood. “You have to put this on.”
“Oh what? Really?”
“Just for twenty minutes. We need secrecy. Otherwise we leave you here.”
“Haven’t you got something more comfortable like blacked-out sunglasses? I get claustrophobia. I’ll end up vomiting in your car.”
“This is what we’ve got. Are you staying here or coming with us?”
“Roll it up so my nose and mouth are clear.”
“Dave didn’t say you’d be such a pussy about it.”
“Do you put this on his head?”
“We’ve never met him. Here, I’ve rolled it up,” he pushed the hood at me. “In or out? What’s it to be?”
I put the hood on with a sigh.
“Phone please.”
I got my phone out of my jacket.
“It’s off,” I said.
The driver said, “Is it definitely off?”
His friend replied, “Yeah, I think so. I’m taking the battery out anyway. Here,” he handed the phone and its battery back to me, and I dropped them into my jacket pocket.
The car started with a high-pitched screech from its fan belt and we set off on a lurching drive, turning left and right until I had no idea which way we were facing or how far we’d traveled. Twice, with panicked voices, they’d made me lean over out of sight while a police car passed.
Eventually we turned slowly onto uneven ground, the car rocking as it rolled drunkenly over the unmade surface. Bushes dragged noisily on both sides of the vehicle. The engine stopped with a loud rattle. The young driver came round to my side and opened the door against more shrubbery. Both boys guided me forward, through the sound of a wooden door or gate being opened, and up a paved path.
We stopped and they exhaled with relief.
“You can take the hood off now.”
We were outside the rear door of a townhouse, a small garden behind us, separated from the neighboring gardens at either side by high, wooden fences. The car was parked in an overgrown access road that seemed little used. The building looked Edwardian, window frames sunken within plain, dark brickwork. I guessed we might be in a south-east suburb. Perhaps Camberwell. Maybe further out.
They knocked on the door. A portly woman in her late forties opened it, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
“Hi Mrs J. This guy’s here to see Tiger.”
She looked at the three of us for a moment and then eyed me steadily with the air of someone deciding whether I was friend or foe, her hand grasping the edge of the door, ready to close it hard if necessary. She half-turned and shouted up the stairs behind her, “Ashley, your friends are here with a man to see you.”
The boys let out an exasperated sigh. She glared back.
An indistinct reply from inside the house said something like, “Hold on’.
We all stood at the door for a long minute.
Unprompted, the woman shouted again, “He won’t wait forever.”
The reply came back irritably, “I’m fighting Slayer. Give me a minute.”
The woman gave me an awkward smile. “Online nemesis.”
I nodded sympathetically.
“The full name’s something crude. Best not to mention it.”
The boys sniggered.
I nodded understanding again.
After another long minute she said, “You lot might as well go up or we’ll be here forever.” She shouted up the stairs, “They’re coming up sweetheart. He hasn’t got all night.”
We trudged up the stairs to the open door of a teenager’s bedroom.
Ashley wore cream-colored pajamas with broad maroon stripes and orange framed glasses on a pale, freckled face which was surrounded by uncombed red hair pointing in all directions. The noise of simulated warfare blasted from speakers on a desk, alongside three large computer screens.
I couldn’t immediately tell whether the person with the contorted face behind the screens was male or female. Looking around the room for clues I saw movie posters for young-adult sci-fi dramas, books on software coding, history, political history, weapons, cats, an autographed football shirt, assorted hats in a pile, and a poster of a stalking tiger. The single bed had a quilt cover styled as a poster for an epic space-faring movie with people brandishing weapons in dramatic poses. Clothes lying on a small armchair and the bed included jeans, hoodies, sports shirts and tee-shirts. The room smelt of electro-static air and fabric conditioner. I decided to wait for more clues.
The boys stood around awkwardly.
Ashley spoke into a microphone, “I’m really sorry everyone, but I’ve gotta go. I’ve got work booked,” face twisted with discomfort. “This went on longer than expected. Really sorry. Good luck. Yeah, I know. It’s not a habit.” The blasting from the speakers ended abruptly. Ashley’s head tilted to the doorway saying to the boys, “Wait downstairs.”
They left, muttering to each other as they descended the thickly carpeted stairway.
“I’m a girl, by the way. I see you looking around, trying to work it out.”
“Isn’t it a bit late for pajamas?”
She sat back and looked at me expressionless for several seconds. “You’re not exactly at the cutting edge of sartorial elegance yourself with that faded shirt and the jacket with shiny elbows.”
I looked quickly at the elbows of my jacket and was surprised at how worn they’d become.
“And in my world, which incidentally is the entire cyber-connected globe from Stockholm to Sydney, Anchorage to Tokyo and everywhere in between, how often do you think I’m talking and working and gaming with people in their pajamas? I reckon it’s at least half the time. Daytime dress and working hours are an outdated legacy of the industrial pre-digital age. People don’t care whether I’m dressed in pajamas, a space suit or a giant-tomato outfit. They just want skills. And—”
Ashley’s mother put her head round the door, “Do you want something to eat now love?”
“Egg sandwich please Mum,” she said, scarcely breaking her verbal stride, “…time is money. Since I’ve left my team to crash and burn, my time is now your time and that explanation cost you twenty pounds. Next question.”
Ashley’s mother looked at me expectantly from the doorway.
I said, “A coffee would be lovely. Milk and one sugar if you’ve got it.”
“Righto love.”
I moved clothes off the chair, put them at the foot of Ashley’s bed, sat down and got straight to business. “There’s a village in Cumbria called Limewood. I think there might be around three hundred adults there. That’s to say, people with credit cards and bank accounts and phones, so everyone eighteen plus.”
I looked at Ashley, realizing that she was probably under eighteen. The impatient thumb tapping on the desk suggested that my thoughts on adulthood were out of date and she’d already acquired credit cards and bank accounts. I pressed on with the briefing and she didn’t waste time contradicting me.
“The person I’m trying to identify is a woman, so that probably narrows it down to about one hundred and fifty people. I want to know whether any of those hundred and fifty people were in London on October the tenth last year. And if possible, I’d like to know exactly where they went on that evening. I’m guessing that cell phone and credit card usage are the most obvious indicators. Can you identify the person I’m looking for, or narrow it down to a shortlist?”
“Sounds simple enough. Do you want to wait while I do this? Might take an hour.”
“I’ll wait if you’re okay with that. How much do you want?”
“Five hundred.”
“I’ve got four hundred in cash.”
“That’ll do.”
“Does that include the twenty for the first question?”
“I’ll throw that in for free as part of our getting-to-know-each-other session. Don’t look over my shoulde
r. Makes me uncomfortable and I can’t concentrate. Plus trade secrets. Just stay there,” she waved a skinny freckled arm and one jabbing finger at the chair I was sitting on.
Ashley’s face glowed in the flickering screen light, shapes reflected in her glasses as she worked through the databases and servers that were protected from everyone other than hundreds of hackers and government surveillance staff of every political hue. She received and consumed the egg sandwich wordlessly, eyes never straying from the screens, fingers typing one-handed while she ate and drank. After forty minutes of steady drumming on her keyboard, she let out a satisfied sigh.
Beckoning me to come around to her side of the desk, she said, “I’ve got six candidates.”
We looked at the screens together.
“First is this one.”
“No. She looks too old.”
“What’s the age limit?”
“I didn’t want to specify because I don’t really know. It’s hard to put an age on the people I’m looking for.”
She looked at me uncomprehendingly.
“It’s a long story. In terms of appearance, it’s probably under forty. This lady seems older than the one I’m looking for.”
“Alright. The next candidate is this lady,” a face on a driving license appeared on the main screen, “Rachael Newbold.”
“She’s a possible. Who else have you got?”
“Sally Jenkins.”
“How old is this picture?”
“This is her driving license. Starts about five years ago, so at least five years old, but could be longer. People often use a favorite picture, so it’s often out of date at the beginning.”
“This isn’t her. The face is the wrong shape—too round.”
The remaining three all seemed to be potential killer candidates, based on a wide age range and the overall shape of their faces compared to the partial image from the Chinese restaurant’s CCTV.
“For the four that we’ve got, can you get phone movements on the evening of the date that I gave you? From seven o’clock onward?”
“Yeah, can do. Go and sit down again please.” The arm pointed.
I did as instructed and Ashley hammered at her keyboard for another ten minutes before waving me over.
“Rachael was in the West End until ten o’clock. Possibly at this theatre,” she pointed at a square block on a map showing a purple track through London streets, “then at this restaurant or the one next door,” she waved at the map and a street view of two restaurant frontages on the other screen. “By midnight, she was in this hotel in Kensington.”
“Probably not her.”
We ruled out one of the others from easily tracked movements in a northern suburb which put her a long distance from Aleksy on the night of his death. That left two. Louise Picton and Sophie Miller’s phones had been off all night. Neither of them showed any bank or credit card charges away from the hotels. Louise had stayed at the Garden Paradise in Bloomsbury and Sophie at the Strand.
“Where are Louise and Sophie today?”
“Let’s see…” Ashley typed quickly and browser windows flicked up onto one of the screens. “Louise’s phone is on and she’s in Limewood, if she’s with her phone. Sophie’s phone is off. Hasn’t been used for a while. A long while. Maybe she’s using someone else’s phone. Last usage for her registered phone is two days after the date you gave me.”
“Where?”
“Manchester Airport.”
“Do you have anything on Sophie’s credit card spending?”
After some drumming. “Same result. Last transaction is at Manchester Airport in a restaurant. She bought a flight to Toronto the day after the date you gave. Nothing since. Looks like your woman has left the country. Or she wants it to look that way.”
Ashley printed the driving license images for Louise and Sophie, showing their home address, date of birth and picture.
Louise was a redhead. When I saw Sophie’s picture printed large, I jumped. Though she was blonde, she looked very familiar.
I gave Ashley four hundred pounds. “If I need your help again, how do I reach you without getting dragged around with a hood over my head?”
She gave me a printed note with the name of an online voice chat app and password. “If I’m playing on WatchTowerFall, you can speak to me on this other platform. We use it to discuss tactics away from the game site. Register your username as…” she stared at my jacket, “ShinyElbow. Never call me by phone or email. Be discreet please. See that tiger poster? That’ll help you remember my online name; Tigerfeet4. The numeral.”
The boys took me back to where they’d found me.
I took off the hood, “Glasses if we do this again, please.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Christmas embraced me at her door, but I could feel myself holding back a little. I hadn’t planned it. My body just did it. She felt my hesitation and looked at my face.
“Something’s wrong?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong. I’ve had a lot of stuff to deal with today. Head’s spinning a little. Give me a minute. I’ll be okay.”
We sat beside each other on the long sofa.
“So what’ve you been up to?” She poured me a glass of wine and refilled her own glass.
“I’ve filled my apartment with unbroken things, been to the detective agency, the doctor, and a hacker. The doctor took the stitches out, the detective put me together with the hacker, and the hacker gave me names and addresses.”
“Let’s start with the wound. Show me,” she said, kissing my cheek with genuine concern.
I undid my shirt and showed her the partially healed injury, still red from the doctor’s attention earlier. I watched her study it carefully with rapt concentration, breathing steadily, bright clear eyes focusing on the thin line of joined skin, the stitch marks and clotted blood along the wound.
Gently pressing around it she asked, “Does it still hurt?”
“Not really. But I like you being so close.” I kissed her upturned face and then her lips.
She held my shoulders back saying, “Don’t get carried away. We’re not doing that yet. Besides, you’re a little bit off with me and I want to know why.”
“I want to ask you something very personal.”
“Tread carefully then.”
“Am trying.”
I thought about it briefly but then just blundered in. “I can’t figure out the way to ask this because it’s really none of my business, but something has come up.”
“What is it?”
“Were you adopted?”
“Oh!” she said, sitting upright and putting her hands on her lap. “Well I suppose it doesn’t take a genius to see that as a possibility. A strong probability even.”
“Your mother was fifty-six when you arrived so I guessed that you—”
“What’s the relevance exactly?”
“Do you know who your birth parents are?”
She paused. “No. But I have an awareness of my lineage.”
“Lineage? Are you an aristocrat of some sort?”
“No, I’m saying I have a particular genealogy, but so far I haven’t used it to identify my biological parents. Adoption means I’m disconnected from them, obviously. I’ve thought about tracing them. I know some of the people I’m related to. One’s a politician and I’ve done some work for him. Dad would help me if I really wanted to know who my biological parents are.”
From my pocket I pulled the folded sheet of paper that Ashley had printed for me. I showed Christmas the picture of Sophie Miller. “Do you know this girl?” I asked.
Christmas looked and put a hand to her mouth. She took the paper from me and stared at the picture for a full minute before putting the sheet down. She got up and went to her bureau draw. Rummaging briskly, she came back with a plastic identity card. “This is my university pass from ten years ago.”
The pass showed a head and shoulders image of Christmas, looking only a little younger. The pose and camera angle
showed her as Sophie Miller’s near-twin, almost identical apart from Christmas’s darker hair and more confident expression.
I put the grainy picture of the blonde girl with Aleksy in the Chinese restaurant, on the table and said, “Please tell me this isn’t you.”
“Of course it isn’t me you idiot.”
“Is it her? Sophie Miller?”
“How should I know? You think this girl, the one on the driving license, is the killer?”
“I have a hunch that she might be. Would you tell me if you’d helped her clean up the apartment afterward?”
“Well I didn’t. But if she is who I think she is, and she’d asked me, I might’ve helped her.” She stood up. “But I don’t appreciate the accusation.”
“I’m sorry, but I had to ask.”
“And so now you know what I am.”
“That you molt your skin and you’ll be beautiful forever and produce a brood of fifteen or twenty babies in one go and you have exceptional physical strength. Yes, I know. How come you haven’t killed me when you bite me?”
“My goodness, you’re a moron. Have you no tact?”
“I’m really sorry. But you can see why I’d want to know. I’ll be forever worrying when we’re intimate unless I understand.”
“Well perhaps that kind of danger won’t present itself again.” She glared at me. “Alright, I had the op. My dad said that I killed enough people with bullets, and that when I was older I wouldn’t want the anguish of having dead men in my bed. I agreed, even if it was a weird conversation to be having at sixteen with my father. Adoptive father.” She pushed her chin at me defiantly. “And now, I’d like you to leave.”
I buttoned my shirt, picked up the papers and headed to the door. On the landing outside I turned to her, but she kept a distance between us.
“Goodbye,” she said, closing the door without slamming it.
I waited outside for several minutes in case she changed her mind. Like the first time that I’d stood at that door, I heard nothing behind it.
Eventually I left, walking slowly down the street, looking up at Christmas’s apartment. Her curtains and blinds were open but I didn’t see her face or moving shadows from the lights within.