Troll E-Book

D. B. Thorne

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 453

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Years ago, Fortune gave up on his daughter, Sophie, after a troubled adolescence. Now she's gone missing, vanished without trace. And after weeks of investigation, the police have given up on her, too. Driven by guilt, and a determination to atone for his failures as a father, he takes on the search himself. He soon finds that his daughter had been living in fear of a vicious online troll who seemed to know far too much about her. Could Sophie's disappearance be linked to this unknown predator? Fortune is about to discover that monsters which live online don't always stay there...

Leseprobe

TROLL

D.B. Thorne has worked as a writer for the last 15 years, originally in advertising, then in television and radio comedy. He has written material for many comedians, including Jimmy Carr, Alan Carr, David Mitchell and Bob Mortimer. He was a major contributor to the BAFTA-winning Armstrong and Miller Show, and has worked on shows including Facejacker, Harry and Paul and Alan Carr: Chatty Man. Troll is his fourth novel.

Also by D.B. Thorne

East of InnocenceNothing SacredPromises of Blood

TROLL

D.B. THORNE

Published in trade paperback and e-book in Great Britain in 2017

by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © D.B. Thorne, 2017

The moral right of D.B. Thorne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 78239 594 2

E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 595 9

Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

one

FORTUNE LOOKED AT THE MAN IN CHARGE OF FINDING HIS missing daughter with the kind of dismay he generally reserved for the most dismally incompetent interview candidates. This was the man responsible for piecing together her final movements? Chasing down leads and taking names? Overweight, crumpled, he had the look of somebody who’d suddenly found himself in charge of his own washing and ironing. In his recent past, Fortune guessed, was a failed marriage and a whole lot of takeaways.

Looking at him over the interview room table, Fortune had a feeling close to panic. He blinked and said, ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Scaled it back,’ said Marsh. He had little eyes and they weren’t looking at Fortune; were looking anywhere but. ‘No choice.’

‘But she’s still missing,’ said Fortune.

Marsh nodded. ‘I know. I’m sorry. But it’s been weeks, and there’s still no …’ He stopped. Body, thought Fortune. You mean body, but you haven’t got the guts to say it. Marsh coughed. ‘We’re not closing the investigation. Just … reclassifying it.’

‘Reclassifying it,’ repeated Fortune. ‘What does that even mean?’ It sounded to him like the kind of empty phrase his younger staff used: moving the needle, taking it offline, reaching out. Air, nothing more. It didn’t make sense.

‘Mr Fortune,’ Marsh said. ‘You’re upset. It’s understandable.’

‘Of course it’s understandable,’ said Fortune. ‘She’s my daughter. She’s disappeared off the face of the earth. And you’ve got no leads, no ideas, no nothing. And now you’re giving up?’ He tried, but he couldn’t quite keep the desperation out of his voice.

‘Not giving up. Re—’

‘Reclassifying. I heard. I still don’t know what it means.’

‘It means …’ Marsh sighed. ‘Mr Fortune, we’re trying to find your daughter.’

‘Not very hard.’

‘As hard as resources will allow.’

‘How many resources does a missing girl merit?’ said Fortune. ‘How important is her life? Ten policemen? Four? One?’

Marsh sat back in his chair, massaged the bridge of his nose. He had thin hair, grey. He couldn’t be in charge, running the show, thought Fortune. His daughter deserved better.

‘Mr Fortune, we’ve done what we can. Thrown bodies at the investigation, set up an incident room, knocked on doors, interviewed friends, ex-boyfriends, colleagues. We’ve spoken to the press, put out an appeal. CCTV, the lot.’ He lifted his shoulders. ‘Nothing. At this point, there’s just not much more we can do. Without …’ Again he didn’t say the word. Body. Without the body of my only child, my daughter. Sophie.

‘You can’t give up on her,’ said Fortune.

‘We’re not giving up. We’re scaling back. No choice.’

‘How many people have you got on it? Right now?’

Marsh picked up a pen, something to look at rather than Fortune. ‘Right now, Mr Fortune, we have one officer continuing with enquiries. The investigation isn’t closed. But, like I say, it’s been scaled back.’

‘One. One officer.’ Fortune closed his eyes for several seconds. He had come a long way. Taken time off. ‘What can one officer do? She’s out there somewhere, and she needs help.’ He could hear a pleading tone in his voice, imploring. God, but he sounded desperate.

‘Mr Fortune,’ said Marsh, ‘what do you think happened to your daughter?’

‘That’s why I’m here,’ said Fortune. ‘To find out.’

‘No. I mean, when you heard that she had gone missing, what was your immediate thought?’

Fortune shook his head. ‘I don’t know. That she’d … I don’t know.’

‘That she’d what?’ said Marsh.

Fortune shrugged, trying to keep calm. ‘Gone on holiday. Run off with a new boyfriend. I don’t know. Could’ve been anything.’

Marsh nodded, leant back in his chair. They sat facing each other and Fortune could hear the hum of the air conditioner, hum and rattle, a world away from the sleek, smooth hiss of his Dubai office.

There was a knock on the door and a young woman came in with two coffees, put them on the table. Marsh nodded to her and she left, closed the door with a gentle click. He lifted one of the Styrofoam cups, took a drink, made a face. He put the cup down carefully, slowly.

‘How many times did your daughter attempt suicide?’

There it was. The question Fortune had been expecting, waiting for. The question he didn’t want to face. He remembered hospital corridors, hard seats, his wife next to him, the click of heels on linoleum. The slow tick of a wall clock, more than one clock, more than one hospital.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’

‘We’re not ruling anything out,’ said Marsh. ‘But given her history …’

Fortune wished Marsh had the courage to finish his sentences. To tell it like it was. That his daughter had had a troubled adolescence, all the way through her late teens and early twenties; that she had been moody, anxious, depressed, angry. Lost.

‘She’d been better,’ he said. ‘Much better. A different person.’

No more suicide attempts. No more pills, flatmates finding her after coming back from a late bar shift. No more ambulances, vigils, apologies, tears. She had been better, making a life for herself, or at least that was what he’d been told.

Marsh sighed and opened a file that he had brought with him, placed it on the table between them. It was beige and thin. If this was it, Fortune thought, the sum total of the investigation, then a lot of midnight oil had gone unburned. Marsh took out a clear plastic wallet with a piece of paper inside, using two fingers to slide it into place between the pair of them.

‘We found this,’ he said, turning it so that Fortune could read. An A4 sheet of paper, covered in scribbles. Fragments of phrases in black pen, haphazardly placed. This needs to end, underlined many times. This ends today, the words gone over again and again so that the ink shone and the paper was indented, almost worn through. Can’t go on. Can’t go on. Can’t go on. In block capitals, at the bottom of the paper, this time carefully printed: WHY SHOULD I TAKE ANY MORE?

Fortune looked at the writing, the flourishes on the tails of the gs and ys, the to-hell-with-you freedom of it. It was Sophie’s writing, no mistaking it.

‘What is this?’ he said.

‘We found it on your daughter’s desk,’ said Marsh. ‘I’m sorry.’

Fortune looked at it again. It wasn’t conclusive, it couldn’t be. ‘This doesn’t mean anything,’ he said.

‘Maybe not,’ said Marsh. ‘But given her history …’ Again, again, he left the sentence hanging, reached forward and took a drink of his coffee, eyes anywhere but on Fortune.

‘This isn’t a suicide note,’ said Fortune.

‘Mr Fortune, your daughter had a history of suicide attempts. She disappeared and nobody knows where she went. There is no body. She had no enemies. Her lifestyle was … unconventional. I’ve read her blog. This is London. It gets to people, particularly young people. Big cities can feel very lonely.’

There was another knock on the door and a young policeman pushed it open a fraction, put his head into the room and lifted his chin to summon Marsh. Marsh pushed his chair back, said, ‘Excuse me,’ and left, pulling the door closed behind him.

Fortune looked down at his daughter’s handwriting, tried to picture her face. How long since he had seen her? Months. He could barely remember her, could better remember her as a child. She had been beautiful, that he could recall. He could remember her weight as he tossed her into the air and caught her, delighted eyes sparkling in the sun. Laughter. His daughter, before he lost her, before her happiness was replaced by something dark and alien that Fortune could not understand or connect with. Before she had given up on him. Or he had given up on her.

He closed his eyes, tried to sit comfortably. It felt as if he had spent the last day being passed from one air-conditioned environment to another, a dreamlike journey completely unrelated to the real, living world outside. Watching the desert sands of Dubai’s outskirts unreel past him from the cool interior of the company’s Mercedes. Reading the paper in the perfect ambient temperature of the airport lounge. Onto the plane, back out at Heathrow and into another Mercedes, an older model than the company’s but air-conditioned nonetheless. Dropped at the hotel, then here, an off-green interview room in a dilapidated suburb of London, blighted by cardboard and polystyrene tossed in the wind. He was tired and he did not want this to be happening, none of it. Did not want this to be real.

Marsh came back into the room, apologized and sat down again. Fortune watched him impassively. Marsh took a deep breath.

‘Mr Fortune,’ he said. ‘I am sorry, I really am. I don’t want you to think this case is closed. But if I’m to be honest, I think both you and I know that your daughter was troubled, and that the most plausible explanation for her disappearance is that she took her own life.’

Fortune had to give Marsh credit; he’d managed to get to the end of that sentence, difficult as it must have been to say.

‘So that’s it?’

‘No, Mr Fortune, that’s not it. But we’ve done all we can. If there are any further developments, then of course we’ll assign more resources. But for now, we’re out of options. And we have other cases. Many other cases.’

Fortune sat in silence until he realized that, as far as Marsh was concerned, this meeting was over. He had travelled two thousand miles, taken days off work, to be told that his trip had been wasted and that his daughter was, in all probability, dead. He stood up.

‘Who’s your manager?’

Marsh just shook his head. ‘It won’t help.’

‘It can’t be … You can’t just leave it. One officer? It’s not right. She’s my daughter.’ So empty, his words. So needy. He felt ashamed of himself.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Marsh.

‘I don’t think you are,’ said Fortune. ‘I don’t think you care at all.’

Marsh looked at his watch. ‘We’re going to have to finish here.’

The public sector, thought Fortune. It was everything they said it was. The monkeys put in charge, the blind leading the blind, the lunatics running the asylum. He ran out of metaphors. He shook his head. There was nobody out there looking for his daughter. Nobody.

Marsh picked up the thin file, stood up, walked past Fortune and opened the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, once again. Again Fortune had a feeling of panic, as if, were he to leave this room, any chance his daughter had of being found would be gone. At last he stood up and walked to the door. He should have looked after her. Been there for her. It wasn’t this policeman’s fault. It was his, his and his alone.

He walked past Marsh without looking at him, not as a show of contempt, but because he didn’t want the policeman to see the shame and guilt in his eyes.

Outside the police station, the weather was cold, even though it was spring, or meant to be. Fortune felt every expat’s momentary incredulity that the people of Britain stayed here, here in this country of decaying infrastructure and eroding values and soul-sapping weather. He looked for a cab, but this part of London, way out east, wasn’t a black cabbie’s turf of choice.

He lit a cigarette, cupping his hand around the flame, took in a lungful with his eyes closed, waiting for the nicotine to do its thing. He coughed, tried to stop, coughed some more. That used to be another thing about Dubai: you could smoke anywhere, not like here. He stood smoking on the pavement, watching immigrants walk past as if it were they, rather than him, who belonged on these streets. A man with a tattooed face and crutches asked him for money to get a hostel for the night. Fortune put his hand in a pocket, remembered he’d spent his last British money on a coffee at the airport.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got nothing left.’

He watched a cyclist overtake a minicab and swear at the driver as he passed. He watched a Middle Eastern man step outside his convenience store and stand, arms folded across his chest, facing the world with pride. He watched a young woman push a pram while swearing at somebody down a mobile phone. Eventually a taxi arrived and Fortune gave the driver the name of his hotel, upscale, five star, where people understood the rules, how things worked.

two

SO WHAT I’D LIKE TO KNOW IS, SINCE WHEN HAS IT BEEN OKAY to pay a thousand pounds a month to rent a flat when said flat a) doesn’t have heating that actually, you know, heats, and b) has no light on the entrance stairs, so at night I’ve got a good chance of falling over and breaking something important (like my iPhone).

I called Sam and asked him pretty much this question, and he told me that he’d see to it, that it was on his list. I asked him how long his list was. He replied by saying, ‘How long is my what?’ and laughing. That, I think, pretty much sums him up.

But then he said, and I’m still turning this over in my head, he said that there’d been complaints about me.

‘What kind of complaints?’ I asked him.

‘Noise.’

‘What noise?’

Sam sighed, like he’d heard it all before. But I was serious, I haven’t made any noise, definitely haven’t. Let’s be honest, it’s not as if I have enough friends to invite over and make noise with

‘Music,’ Sam said. ‘Loud music, on all night. I’ve had a couple of complaints.’

‘I haven’t made any noise,’ I said.

‘Of course you haven’t. Still, though, you know … keep it down.’

‘I told you. I haven’t been making any noise, and certainly not at night. Who complained?’

‘Dunno. Got a message, left on my phone.’

‘I haven’t been making noise,’ I said again. What else could I say? There wasn’t much point in arguing; Sam had obviously made up his mind. ‘Anyway,’ I went on, ‘it’s freezing. Can you please sort the heating out?’

Sam said, ‘Tell you what. You keep the noise down, I’ll put you at the top of my list. Deal?’

He wasn’t even pretending to entertain the slight possibility that I was telling the truth. Even though I was paying him a thousand pounds a month to stay in a cold, dark dump. You know what I said?

‘Okay.’

But honestly, right then I didn’t have time to argue, because I was standing outside a bar called Mingles and hoping that the young lady I’d arranged to meet there had showed up. Because if she was there, and if what she had to tell me was true, then my career as a journalist would be looking up. And I’d be able to move to another flat, one with heating and working lights and maybe even a new television.

The young lady – no names – had told me what she looked like, and she wasn’t hard to spot. She’d told me that she was tall and quite pretty, which was close; she was actually tall and stunning. She was also quite clearly only about fifteen, although that hadn’t stopped the barman from selling her a bottle of lager. It was quite likely that he’d fallen in love with her, as she looked, well, awesome. She was perched on a bar stool, and her legs nearly reached the floor.

I asked her if she was who I thought she was, and she said yes, yes she was. So then I said, look, I’m sorry, but I can’t talk to you here. You’re underage, and you’re drinking. We need to keep this legitimate, all above board. She rolled her eyes and sighed, as teenagers do, and I hoped she wasn’t going to make this difficult.

Let me cut a long story short: she’s fifteen, and a well-known TV celebrity slept with her and offered her drugs, even though he knew how old she was. I’m a journalist. It’s a story. And I need to keep her onside, until the story breaks.

‘Can I buy you a coffee?’ I said.

‘I haven’t finished this.’

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Make this easy on me. Please?’

There was more eye-rolling, and an extra-long sigh, and then she said, ‘Okay.’ I can’t help but like teenagers. They’ll try to get away with anything, but the good ones don’t mind getting busted. She slid off the bar stool like water poured out of a glass and looked down at me, and I’m not short.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I asked her.

‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘He deserves it.’

And I had to agree with her there.

three

FORTUNE TOOK A TAXI FROM THE STATION AND PAID IT OFF AT the bottom of his drive. The sun was out and he had forgotten how many trees there were, this place where he had lived for so many years before he replaced the leaves and grass with desert sand and high-rises. He wondered for a brief moment where it was he called home nowadays and came up short with an answer. Not Dubai. And not here either, not any more. It had been too long.

He swung open the rustic five-bar gate, closed it behind him and crunched up the gravelled drive towards the house. Once a dog would have barked in greeting, a springer spaniel that had never been anything other than crazy, called Peter, named by his daughter. Peter. Odd name for a dog, but then the dog had been far from normal. They’d had to put it down and nobody had volunteered, so Fortune had put his hand up. That he remembered.

He rang the doorbell and waited, listening to birdsong and the soft hiss of far-off traffic. Suburban Essex, the dormitory-town idyll. Commuterville. Stepford self-satisfaction for the white-collar winners, safe, green, the high streets lined with boutiques and expensive wine bars. He’d never much liked it, this place, so superficial, so artificial. As unreal in its way as Dubai was. Sounds came from inside the house, and through the distorted glass he saw a shape approach, turn locks, open the door. And there was Jean.

She looked beautiful blinking into the light and Fortune felt his heart lurch in his chest, a brief chemical explosion of sadness and regret. She regarded him with no expression.

‘Hello,’ she said.

Fortune had an urge to tell her that she looked wonderful, as beautiful as the day they had met, the kind of statement a man still in love with his wife would make, regardless of how long they had shared their lives. He took a breath, knew as he did so that he lacked the courage.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Forgot my keys.’

Jean nodded but did not look at him, instead looked past him. ‘Come in,’ she said as if she was addressing somebody standing behind him, although there was nobody there.

‘You look great,’ Fortune said quietly, but his wife had already turned and was heading back into the house, down the dark hall. She stopped.

‘Sorry?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Fortune.

‘I thought you said something.’

‘No.’

He followed her into the kitchen, dropping his suitcase along the way at the bottom of the stairs, as if he was at a guest house rather than in his own home, where, in another lifetime, he had made an attempt to raise a family.

They sat opposite one another at the kitchen table, two cups of tea and the ticking of the wall clock for company. She looked tired and detached, as if half of her psyche was occupying some other, unknowable place. Fortune watched her.

‘I went to see the police,’ he said, though he had already told her on the phone.

‘That man, what’s he called? Marsh?’

‘He told me they were scaling down the investigation.’

Jean picked up her cup with both hands and nodded at it vaguely. ‘They think she killed herself.’

‘Do you?’

Jean closed her eyes at this question and there was a long silence. When she opened them, they were wet with tears.

‘I wish I could say that I didn’t.’

Fortune thought of all the times his wife had been there for Sophie. The times she had withstood her anger, forgiven her insults, remained strong when Sophie had given up. She had believed in her daughter. Believed far more than Fortune had.

‘We don’t know for sure,’ he said. ‘She could walk through the door any time.’

Jean sighed, shook her head slowly. She still did not look at Fortune, and when she spoke next, it was more to herself than to him.

‘Oh hi, didn’t miss me, did you? Went on holiday, forgot to say. Can’t believe you were so worried.’ Now she did look at Fortune. ‘You don’t think I’ve told myself that a hundred times? But she’s not here, she’s gone, and nothing good has happened to her. Nothing.’

‘Jean,’ Fortune said. ‘It’s too early—’

‘It’s not too early,’ she said, clearly and slowly. ‘It’s too late. It’s far too late.’

‘You can’t give up.’

She laughed, a sound without warmth. ‘I can’t what?’

Fortune knew what was coming. He also knew there was nothing he could do about it. ‘You can’t give up.’

His wife set her cup down on the table carefully. ‘And just what kind of moral right do you have to tell me something like that? Giving up’s what you do, isn’t it?’

‘Jean,’ he said again.

‘You don’t like it, that the police have given up on Sophie? Take a look in the bloody mirror.’

Fortune didn’t reply, and they sat in silence for some time. He could feel his heart beating and he wished he knew what he should say, how he could bridge the gap between them. But at the same time he knew that they were separated by too many years, too many years and an ocean of disappointment.

‘When did you last speak to her?’ Jean asked.

‘Sophie? A month ago, something like that?’

It had been longer, much longer, but he did not want his wife to know that. Three, four months, without talking to your own daughter. Was that normal? No. No, it couldn’t be.

‘How had she been?’ he asked.

Jean drank tea, closed her eyes to its steam. ‘Not good. Chaotic. Paranoid. I …’ She stopped, pressed the cup to her lips, hard. ‘I told her I couldn’t cope, told her she had to work it out for herself.’ She kept the cup to her lips, as if for comfort. This is when I put my hand out, place it on hers, Fortune thought. Offer some comfort. He didn’t do it, didn’t even get close.

‘She was just starting out. It was bound to be difficult, in a new city.’

‘I wasn’t there for her.’

‘She’s not a child.’

‘She needed help.’

Fortune didn’t answer. He wondered how many times he had told his wife to leave it, to let Sophie make her own mistakes, not get involved. Was that just another way of saying that they should give up on her?

‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ he said, the words so worn and tired that they did not even register, didn’t last the journey across the kitchen table.

A cat mewed at their feet and Fortune looked down and tried to remember its name but could not. Jean got up and walked to the fridge, took out milk. She stood with the bottle in her hand and seemed to forget what she was doing, rendered immobile by an unexpected wave of grief and guilt. Despite everything, Fortune felt his throat harden, at the sight of his wife and at the thought of his daughter who was probably dead, who must be dead; weren’t they acting as if she was dead?

He got up from the kitchen table and walked over to his wife, but just as he got to her, she turned and said to him, ‘Please don’t touch me.’

There were many photos of Jean and Sophie in the house, although few of them included Fortune. They were always smiling, their eyes even more alike from the similarity of their expressions. She had been their only child and into her his wife had poured all her love and devotion, an amount that Fortune had imagined endless. He picked up a photo, the two of them on holiday, a Roman ruin behind them, perhaps Greece. He’d missed that holiday, probably been at work. So many missed holidays, missed dinners, missed opportunities to get closer, bridge gaps, give support, show affection. He wondered why he had found it so hard, so impossible. It had always been easier to stay at the office rather than face the hard work of raising a family. And now it was too late.

Jean was upstairs resting and he went to the garage to see if he could find any evidence that he had ever lived in this house, ever called it home. He had never officially left; had only been in Dubai for a year. He felt a hit of resentment as he looked for the garage key. His home. He had paid for it. Worked for it. Where were those keys?

In the garage, his golf clubs were still in the corner, the black and white leather Titleist bag, the full set of irons and woods and wedges and putters. He’d lied about the price to Jean; no way he was going to tell her how much it’d all cost. He wheeled them out, looked at them. Pulled out a seven iron, felt its weight, the balance of it. Imagined teeing off, creaming a drive down the fairway, the snick of the ball leaving the club, faint touch of fade, ball landing in front of the green, his fellow player grunting, ‘Good shot,’ reluctantly. Drinks in the clubhouse afterwards. Congratulations. Carded a round of sixty-eight.

‘You’re not,’ his wife said from behind him.

He turned, club still in his hands. ‘Not what?’

‘Going to play golf.’

‘No. No, just wanted to see if they were still here.’ Jean, the golf widow. They’d laughed about it once. Not for very long.

‘They’re still here. But you’re going to need to take them.’

Fortune frowned. ‘Take them where?’

Jean shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She paused, took a step back as if worried he might come at her with the seven iron. ‘I want you to leave. For good.’

‘What?’ said Fortune.

‘Go,’ said Jean. ‘Just … go.’

Fortune watched Jean and thought of the times they had shared at the beginning, when it had seemed as if their meeting had been preordained, a perfect case of aligned stars. She was standing almost side-on to him, as if to face him directly disgusted her, sickened her. Like the sight of him was an affront. He took a firmer grip on the golf club, as if to defend himself from her loathing. How had it come to this?

And then he realized with a sudden and unexpected sadness that their daughter’s disappearance was not something that would bring them together. It was something that would finally drive them apart. There was nothing left, no glue, no reason to keep up the pretence of marriage. No shared interests. No appearances to maintain. The end.

‘Where will I go?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ his wife said. ‘I don’t know what you do. I don’t know anything about you. Go anywhere you want. But I don’t want you here.’

‘Who’ll take care of you?’

Again, that laugh, devoid of humour or warmth. ‘I’ll manage.’

‘I want to help.’

‘You can’t.’

‘I can try.’

‘Please don’t.’

Fortune turned to look at the house that he had worked to pay for. ‘I’d like to see her bedroom.’

Jean sighed and turned her back on him, and Fortune walked towards his house to say goodbye.

*

He had spent far too little time in this room, although it had been his daughter’s for nearly all of her life. Too late home to read bedtime stories. Banned from when she was, what, ten? Not allowed in. Keep out. Private. The bedspread, the few remaining clothes hanging in her wardrobe, the photos of friends stuck on the wall above her desk, it was all unfamiliar, unknown.

But could he blame himself? She had been so difficult, so angry, so unreasonable. Unknowable. He sat on the bed and felt the silence of the room press down on his shoulders, not letting go of its secrets, its intimate details, the life of his daughter.

After several minutes he went downstairs, picked up his suitcase and walked, wheeling his golf cart, back to the road at the bottom of his drive, where he would call a taxi for the station.

four

High Times and Miss Fortune: Five Things I’ve Learnt in a Taxi

So I was in a taxi last night (yes it was late, no I wasn’t drunk) and I was talking to the driver, as you do. Well, I say you do, but some people don’t like to talk to the driver. A friend of mine told me that he always asks them not to speak to him, which I said sounded rude. He said maybe, but who cares? They’re only taxi drivers.

He’s not my friend any more.

Anyway, so I was in a taxi, chatting away, and I told the driver (whose name was Ted, FYI) that I was just back from Brazil. He told me he’d always wanted to go but hadn’t, on account of how he has a morbid fear of flying and last time he went on a plane, back from Alicante, he ended up being strapped to his seat by five air stewards, screaming all the while.

But that’s not what I learnt. What I learnt was that Brazil the country is named after Brazil the nut, and not the other way round. So basically the nut came first, and then they named the country. Weird, right?

Anyway, it got me thinking of all the things that I’ve learnt in a taxi. And it turned out that I’ve learnt quite a lot. So here is my top Five Things I’ve Learnt in a Taxi:

5. I learnt that one of my ex-boyfriends had slept with not one, but two of my colleagues. Not only that, but one of those colleagues was a man. Not only that, but he’d slept with them while he was seeing me. I found this out because he was in the taxi with me, and he confessed all in a drunken attack of conscience (and in tears, too). Needless to say, I asked the taxi to stop, kicked him out, ignored his pleas that he had no money and no way to get home, and ignored the gazillion text messages he bombarded me with. And good riddance.

4. I learnt that the world is run by Jews, and that they’re in league with the Muslims to destabilize the West. Okay, so when I say learnt, it’s not that I actually believed it, but I’d been waiting for a taxi for hours and didn’t fancy walking home in the rain, so I just nodded and uh-huh-ed as I listened to the man’s drivel. Sheesh.

3. I learnt that one taxi driver’s daughter was in hospital, and that he worked during the night so he could be at her side during the day, and that he was tired but he needed the money, even though he’d recently found out that the brain tumour she had was terminal and it was only a matter of time. His voice cracked as he told me this, and I also learnt that some people’s lives are so hard it is a miracle they continue.

2. I learnt that T—— W—— had been in the back of the same cab only a couple of nights before me, and at the traffic lights on Piccadilly he had leant forward and offered the driver a toot on his cocaine.

1. I learnt that there is no sight more beautiful than two people kissing on Albert Bridge on a summer’s night, with the lights of London reflecting in the Thames and the two figures intertwined, as natural as ivy and as gentle as music.

COMMENTS:

SharnaJ:LOL on the boyfriend, I remember the same thing coming back from a party! He told me he’d kissed my best friend! I didn’t throw him out, though … I married him!

LozLoz:Funny!

CatLover:That poor driver and his daughter! Heartbreaking.

Starry Ubado:Next time you get in a cab I hope the driver rapes you, you stupid bitch.

It’s just a blog. I mean, seriously, it’s just me, writing about my life. Hardly anybody even reads it, although I still harbour this crazy dream of gathering a million followers, turning it into a YouTube channel, serving up adverts and making enough money to buy a chateau in France where I’ll grow grapes and fall in love with a local ne’er-do-well.

But really, it’s just a blog. So why do people feel the need to leave comments like that? I try to tell myself that it’s only a lonely teenager in his bedroom letting off steam because he hasn’t got a girlfriend yet, but what if it isn’t? What if it’s some steroid-addled man-mountain with a wall covered in photos of me, with my face violently scratched out in every one of them?

I read an article the other day that said that trolls have the same personality traits as psychopaths. Apparently they share a lack of remorse and empathy. It suggests that perhaps I should spend less time reading things online, but it didn’t do much to reassure me.

Still, the troll’s not going to win. I’ll keep writing, and keep dreaming of the day I can swap my keyboard for a whirlwind Provençal romance with a roguish Frenchman. Right. Dream on.

I think I made some progress with the young lady I met in the bar, who I’ll refer to as Child Z. She’s still willing to cooperate. I met with her mother (her father’s long gone, barely a memory) and she’s keen to move things along too. The truth is, she wants the sleazeball TV celebrity locked up. Well, she wants a lot more doing to him than that, and I have to give her credit for her imagination, but I did point out that this was no longer the Dark Ages and that we didn’t really do that kind of thing to people nowadays, for any number of good and enlightened reasons.

So now the whole matter is sitting with the lawyers, who are discussing whether or not, if we do run with the story, we’ll be sued back into those selfsame Dark Ages. They want everything so watertight that I worry it will never see the light of day, but I’m doing all I can to make it happen. I kind of feel like Erin Brockovich, only not nearly as glamorous, and without the impeccable moral compass. But a bit like her, even so. Somebody a mother (or father!) could be proud of. It’s all rather exciting.

five

‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN, GONE?’

‘Not gone. Well, we hope not. Just … missing.’

‘Missing, gone, what’s the difference?’ Fortune sat up on his hotel bed, put his feet on the floor. He was gripping his mobile phone, could feel the edges dig into his fingers. His colleague on the other end, Alex, paused and tried to collect himself.

‘It’s missing.’

‘How much?’

Silence again on the other end. A worrying silence.

‘Christ’s sake, Alex. How much?’

‘Just short of ninety million.’

‘Dollars?’

‘Yeah.’

Fortune put his free hand in his hair and closed his eyes, squeezing them tightly as if to blink away this new reality. This was a catastrophe. ‘How …’ He stood up and walked to the window. ‘How did it happen?’

‘Don’t know. Maybe when we switched servers. We’re on it, Fortune.’

‘Ninety million?’

‘Yeah. Approximately.’

‘And it just disappeared?’

‘We’re on it,’ Alex said again, and Fortune could sense the fear and desperation in his voice. Calm down, Fortune told himself. You’re the boss. Set an example.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay, let’s not panic. Who’s working on it?’

‘Everyone. Nobody’s gone home.’

‘Good. Who knows?’

‘The team. We had to tell Owen.’

Owen, Fortune’s superior. His only superior. Fortune was technically responsible for the operations of one of Dubai’s biggest private banks, and Owen was the CEO. This wasn’t good.

‘Shareholders?’

‘They don’t know. Too early.’

‘You need to tell customer relations. Tell them what’s going on. Come up with a story.’

‘What kind of story?’

‘Technical glitch, nothing to worry about. Anything, just keep it vague. I don’t want this getting out.’

‘On it,’ said Alex.

‘Have you got an ETA on fixing this?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Tried calling Sadler?’ said Fortune.

‘Yeah. He said he could come in …’ Alex paused.

‘Yes?’

‘He said he wanted a thousand dollars a day.’

‘That sounds like Sadler.’ Fortune sighed. ‘Okay, doesn’t matter. We need him. Get him in, just make sure he puts in the hours. And keep me posted.’

‘Owen’s going crazy. He wants you here.’

‘Does he know my daughter’s missing?’ He did know that. Of course he did. He just didn’t believe it took precedence over missing M-O-N-E-Y, which, as far as Fortune could tell, was all that Owen cared about. Alex didn’t answer. Fortune felt for him. But he needed to be here.

‘Alex, don’t make me get on a plane. Please? Do not make me get on a plane.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Do everything you can.’

‘I already am, Fortune.’

‘Good. Okay. Keep in touch.’

Fortune hung up, lay back on his bed and looked at the ceiling. Ninety million dollars? That kind of money didn’t just disappear. It was probably a technical thing, a line of code, a command wrongly inputted. It would work itself out eventually. This thought lasted a fraction of a second before the magnitude of the sum hit him again. Maybe he should be there. It was his job, his responsibility. And he took work seriously, took the responsibility seriously. That was the reason he’d missed the holidays with Sophie, the weekends away, the events at school, the bedtime reading. At least that was what he had always told himself. Not that he simply wasn’t cut out for family life, didn’t understand it, wasn’t interested, couldn’t engage. No. Never that.

His daughter had been renting a flat in Hackney, a one-bed-room apartment above a coffee shop run by young men with long beards and tattoos. They looked like pirates who’d just come ashore and developed an immediate interest in roasting and grinding. Fortune did not really know why he was going there. He didn’t have a key. There would be nobody home. But still he could not help imagining his daughter opening the door to his knock, a smile, an explanation of where she had been, and why.

Of course there was no answer when he knocked on the door. He knocked again, waited, then pushed open the door of the coffee shop, into a smell of roasting beans, music. There were young people sitting at a long table, working on laptops. He walked to the counter, long and high and topped with zinc, pastries arranged below behind glass. They were big and untidily made, artisan, looked good.

‘What can I get you?’ asked a young man, ear lobes stretched by circular implants.

‘Do you know who lives upstairs?’ Fortune asked.

‘Nah,’ said the man. ‘Why?’

‘My daughter lived there,’ Fortune said, corrected himself. ‘Lives there.’

The man frowned. ‘So why’re you asking me?’

‘Have you seen her?’ said Fortune. ‘Tall, black hair. Pretty.’

The man wiped at the high zinc counter with a cloth as he thought. ‘Might have.’

‘When?’

‘Not for a while.’

‘How long?’

The man shook his head. ‘I don’t know, man. Weeks? She the one who disappeared, right? Had the police in here.’

‘Did they speak to you?’

‘Yes,’ the man said, impatiently, as if to a child. ‘What I said, isn’t it? You want a coffee?’

‘No.’

‘It’s good. Got a new blend in from Bolivia.’

Fortune shook his head. ‘Thanks for your time.’

The man shrugged, went back to cleaning his gleaming counter. Fortune stood for a moment, lost, with no plan, nowhere to go, nothing to do, nobody to talk to. It was beginning to rain outside, a nasty, spiteful squall making people run, coats pulled over their heads. A man hurried past the window of the coffee shop and stopped at Sophie’s door. Fortune watched him. The man took out a key and let himself in. Into his daughter’s flat.

Fortune knocked again at her door, fading black paint and lines of bare wood showing through where the paint had cracked under the rain and sun. He waited, then heard feet on stairs, and the door opened. The man he had seen – young, short dyed black hair; were there any middle-aged people in this part of town? – said, ‘Yeah?’

‘Who are you?’ said Fortune.

‘Tom,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

‘My daughter lives here,’ said Fortune.

The man looked confused. ‘Don’t think so.’

‘No, she does,’ said Fortune. ‘This is her flat.’

The man, Tom, looked at him. ‘The girl who disappeared?’

‘Yes. My daughter.’

‘God.’ The man scratched his hair, still wet from the rain. He sighed. ‘You want to come in?’

Fortune followed him up a dark staircase, putting a hand on the wall to guide him.

‘Watch yourself,’ the man said. ‘The letting agent’s supposed to be fixing the light.’ He opened a door at the top of the stairs into a bright living room with exposed brick on the walls and badly varnished floorboards. Fortune looked around, looked at the sofa, imagined his daughter sitting on it, her long legs folded underneath her, writing on a laptop. Peaceful.

The man turned to him. He was short and had a friendly face, open. ‘She doesn’t live here any more. Your daughter.’

Fortune frowned. ‘She did.’

‘Yeah. Listen …’

‘Fortune.’

‘Fortune. I don’t know the details. All I know is there was some problem, problems …’ He rubbed at his hair again, uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know.’

Fortune looked around again, confused, at the magazines on the low table, the books on the shelves. ‘So all this … this isn’t hers?’

‘No. That’s what I’m saying. It’s mine.’

‘When did you move in?’

‘Couple of weeks ago.’

‘Then … where are my daughter’s things?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How do you mean, you don’t know?’

‘I don’t know. The place was empty when I moved in. She wasn’t here.’

Fortune stood silently for a moment, at a loss for what to say, what to think. ‘Then where did she live?’

Tom looked uncomfortable, not equal to dealing with a bereaved father’s bewilderment. ‘I … I don’t know.’

‘She—’ began Fortune, but stopped at the sound of the front door opening and feet on the stairs. A woman came into the room, thin blonde hair. She smiled uncertainly at the scene, the uncomfortable silence. ‘Hello?’

‘Harriet, this is … this is Fortune. He’s the father of the woman who disappeared, who lived here.’

Her smile flickered but she put out a hand. ‘I’m sorry, it must be terrible for you.’

Fortune felt too disorientated to reply, standing here in what he had thought was his daughter’s flat, talking to a young couple who knew nothing of her. He started coughing and bent over, put an arm out into the air in front of him, found nothing to hold onto.

‘You okay?’ asked Tom.

‘Need to sit down.’

‘Please,’ said Harriet, pointing to the sofa. ‘You want something to drink?’

Fortune sat, elbows on knees, and shook his head at the floor. ‘No.’

The two young people stood over him and watched him, no idea what to do with this strange man who was sitting in their home.

‘Who can I speak to?’ said Fortune.

‘About …?’ said Tom.

‘My daughter. What happened … what happened to her things.’

‘The letting agent,’ said Harriet. ‘But I warn you, he’s a twat.’

‘I’ve got his card,’ said Tom. ‘Hold on.’

He poked through drawers. Fortune felt weight on the sofa as Harriet sat down next to him. ‘You haven’t heard anything? News? About your daughter?’

Fortune shook his head, still looking at the floorboards. ‘No.’

‘Any leads, any …’ She stopped, unsure what to say. ‘Anything?’

‘No.’

‘Here,’ said Tom. Fortune looked up. He was holding a card and he handed it to Fortune, who reached up to take it. ‘Like Harriet said, he’s a bit of a—’

‘He’s a dick,’ said Harriet. ‘Wanted three months’ deposit. Like, whatever, what, he wanted us to rob a bank? Still haven’t got Wi-Fi, either. And the heating’s knackered.’

‘He should know what happened,’ said Tom. ‘I’m sorry.’

Fortune pushed himself upright. ‘Okay.’

‘I’m sorry too,’ said Harriet. ‘I hope things work out.’

She moved closer to Tom. They seemed a good couple, kind and connected and generous. Fortune nodded, turned, then turned back and said, ‘Thank you,’ before walking back down the dark stairs.

six

IF THE OFFICES OF ALPHA PRIME LETTINGS REPRESENTED THE kinds of properties they rented out, Fortune thought, then his daughter had got lucky. A young woman in glasses and with dark hair pulled tightly back looked up, then down again. She ignored him for some moments before looking back up and asking, ‘Help you?’

‘I’m looking for Sam.’

‘He’s doing a viewing.’

‘When will he be back?’

She frowned as if the stupidity of the question was offensive, as if nobody had a right to ask such a thing. ‘Could be any time.’

‘Today?’

She shrugged. ‘Yeah. Sometime.’

Fortune looked at the card in his hand, back at her. ‘I’ll call him.’ He dialled the number, listened to it ring. The woman behind the desk watched him, tapping a pen on the desk. The phone rang through to voicemail and Fortune hung up before leaving a message.

‘Never answers,’ said the woman. ‘Drives me mental.’

‘Then you’ll have to help, after all. I’m the father of Sophie Fortune.’

‘Oh.’ She didn’t say anything else, didn’t want to look at him.

‘You know her?’

‘No, but …’

‘But?’

‘She …’ the woman started but then looked past Fortune with a relieved look. The door opened and Fortune turned to see a man, maybe thirty, with short blond hair, wearing a well-fitted suit. ‘Here he is.’

Fortune stood up. ‘Sam?’

‘Yep.’ He smiled. ‘What can I do you for?’

‘I’m Sophie Fortune’s father.’

The smile disappeared. Sam searched for something to say, came up short, managed, eventually, ‘Okay.’

‘I went to her flat.’

Sam nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Someone else lives there.’

‘New tenants. That’s right.’

‘You know she’s missing?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’ Fortune took a step closer to him. ‘You’re going to need to do better than that.’

Sam rubbed his face. ‘Look … come and sit down.’ He put out a hand, showing Fortune where to go, one of the desks at the back, then passed him and sat down behind the desk. Fortune stood for a moment and tried to summon his hardest managerial don’t-mess-with-me stare. Sam certainly looked nervous. Fortune sat down across from him.

‘All right. So tell me. What’s been going on?’

‘We, uh … We had some problems with your daughter.’

‘Okay,’ said Fortune. ‘What kind of problems?’

‘Kind of, uh …’ Sam rearranged some papers on his desk as he thought. ‘Pretty serious problems.’ He looked up, met Fortune’s eye with difficulty.

‘Like?’

‘Like,’ Sam repeated, buying himself time. He wanted to be anywhere but here, having this conversation, Fortune could tell. He was acting like a doctor delivering bad news, explaining that it was a matter of weeks, not months. ‘Like, antisocial behaviour. We had complaints.’

‘What kind of complaints?’ said Fortune.

‘Well, kind of, loud music. Parties. Drug use.’

‘Drug use?’

‘Yeah, all kinds of drugs …’ He stopped. ‘Look, I’m sorry, okay?’

Fortune thought of Sophie. She had always been difficult, but he had never thought of her as bad. Complicated, difficult, challenging. Often infuriating. But not bad, never bad.

‘We gave her warnings, but she … she was unreasonable about it. Wouldn’t listen, denied everything. I was getting phone calls, twenty, thirty a day. Letters. All complaining. Recordings of the noise, time-stamped. Three in the morning, four.’ He stopped, realized he was laying it on too thick, that he was talking to a man whose daughter had disappeared without trace.

‘That doesn’t sound like her,’ said Fortune. Sam didn’t respond. He was only thirty. What did he know about problems with children?

‘Had the council around, told us if we didn’t do something, they would. That kind of thing can cause problems for …’ Sam waved a hand at the office. ‘Businesses like ours.’

‘So …’

‘So, uh, we.’ He paused, took a breath, drew in some courage. ‘We evicted her.’

Fortune blinked. ‘You what?’

‘Served an eviction notice. Gave her a date.’ He picked up a sheet of paper, put it down again without looking at it. ‘It’s not like she gave us a choice. Dealers going in and out, parties, police showing up … It was out of control.’

‘When?’ said Fortune. ‘When did you evict her?’

‘Three weeks ago, something like that.’

‘She’s been missing for five.’

Sam nodded. ‘I know how it must look.’

‘She disappears, and you turn up and …’ Fortune stopped. ‘Where are her things?’

‘We had to take them.’

‘Where are they?’

‘At our storage place.’

Fortune shook his head, tried to control his voice, to keep the emotion out. ‘She was only twenty-seven.’

Sam lifted his hands. ‘I’m sorry. But, Mr Fortune, she … she was …’ He couldn’t say it, didn’t have the courage, gave up.

‘I want my daughter’s possessions.’

Sam nodded quickly. ‘I’ll have them sent. Least I can do.’ Like he was doing Fortune a service, like he wasn’t the man who had thrown his daughter out on the street. Or would have done if she hadn’t vanished beforehand. ‘What’s your address?’

‘Sorry?’ said Fortune.

‘Your address. Where do you live?’

Fortune thought about it, but could not come up with an answer. Where did he live? Nowhere. Like his daughter.

‘Just tell me where you’ve put her things.’

*

They were in a damp lock-up garage a couple of streets away. Fortune didn’t speak to Sam, smoked a cigarette silently as Sam led the way through the rain, fine now, fine and persistent. He unlocked a padlock and pushed the door up and over. Inside on the concrete floor were cardboard boxes, sagging from where moisture had weakened them.

Fortune looked at the collection of boxes and could not remember ever having seen a sadder sight. ‘This is all hers?’

‘Not all of it. The ones marked …’ He stopped.

‘Marked?’

‘PB.’

Fortune frowned. ‘Why PB?’

Sam looked uncomfortable, wouldn’t meet Fortune’s gaze. ‘Don’t know, have to ask the people who cleared out her flat.’

But Fortune had managed teams for too long not to know when people were lying to him. He knew what dishonesty looked like, what it sounded like.

‘Come on. PB. What does it stand for?’

‘Mr Fortune …’

‘What does it stand for?’

‘Listen, it wasn’t me, right? Just the lads, a bit of banter. I’m sorry.’

‘I’m waiting,’ said Fortune.

Sam sighed, a desperate sound. ‘Psycho Bitch, all right? That’s what it stands for. Look, I’ll leave you to it. Lock up after you’re done, drop the key round.’

Sam waited for an answer but Fortune said nothing, and he walked away, leaving Fortune surrounded by his daughter’s possessions, wondering what had become of her, what the world had done to her.

seven

EVERYTHING’S BECOMING A BIT STRANGE, A BIT FREAKY