Troll Page 14

  This was the man who had invited her to Paris, then stood her up. And on the way home, she’d been stopped by Customs with drugs in her luggage, planted there. He’d invited her. He’d known where she would be. What did he do, ghost into the restaurant, find her case, plant the drugs, then walk away, leaving her sitting alone, watching the clock, wondering what was wrong with her, why her life was coming apart at the seams?

  And what then? Had he come to her house, taken her by force, held her, sent Fortune a message, that he had her and that Fortune only had days to find her? He didn’t know, but he’d work it out. He’d got to Jackson, he’d get to this man. He didn’t know how, but he had nine days left. He’d find him.

  twenty-seven

  THERE WAS A MAN AT OXFORD CIRCUS WEARING A SANDWICH board that read ‘Repent of your sins and turn to God’. He was holding a microphone and telling anybody who would listen, which wasn’t many, about the surest way to heaven. He caught Fortune’s eye as he walked past, but Fortune was wearing his sternest senior-management-shit-to-do look and the man decided against trying to convert him to the true way. In any case, Fortune suspected it was too late. Way too late.

  The streets were busy with shoppers carrying bags of clothing from Selfridges, Gap, Browns; a crowd of kids outside Niketown. Fortune pushed his way through, took a left onto Great Portland Street, leaving the crowds behind so suddenly that it felt as if he’d stepped through some portal into an empty post-apocalyptic future. He walked up the quiet street, keeping an eye on doorways, gratings, wondering whether the man would still be here or whether he’d be gone, moved on or given refuge somewhere else, somewhere warm. It was cold, and a light rain was falling from a white sky, grey clouds scudding maliciously across it.

  He had nearly walked past the man before he noticed him, tucked into a doorway and wrapped in a dirty grey blanket. He was young and thin and there was an upturned baseball cap in front of him with some coins in it, not very many. Fortune looked down at him. It had to be the man from his daughter’s blog. The man who had come to her aid. Last Night a GI Saved My Life.

  ‘Jake?’

  The man blinked, surprised. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘My name’s Fortune.’

  ‘You Old Bill?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘’Cause I’ve got nothing on me. I don’t inject, none of that. I’m clean.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Fortune. ‘I think you knew my daughter. Sophie.’

  ‘Who?’ The man frowned, coughed. ‘Sophie?’

  ‘You helped her. She was attacked.’

  ‘Oh.’ He thought. ‘You’re her dad? How is she?’

  ‘She’s gone missing,’ said Fortune. ‘She’s been gone for weeks.’

  The man, Jake, made an effort to get up, stood and looked at Fortune. ‘No. You’re joking. Really?’

  ‘Yes. I just wanted to talk to you. About what happened.’

  ‘Yeah, sure, no problem.’ Jake pulled his blanket tight around his shoulders and looked up at the sky. It was starting to rain harder.

  ‘Pint?’ Fortune said.

  ‘Well,’ said Jake. ‘Since you ask. Lead the way.’

  That morning he had put a call through to Marsh without expecting him to pick up, not after their last meeting. What had Marsh said to him? Get some help, that was it. He listened to the ringtone, was surprised when Marsh answered.

  ‘What now?’ Marsh said.

  ‘Did you know that my daughter had been arrested for drug trafficking?’

  Marsh sighed. ‘I was aware, yes.’

  ‘But you didn’t think to tell me?’

  ‘No. Got nothing to do with me. I’m not Customs and Excise.’

  ‘But you knew about it?’

  ‘I knew, yes. Might explain a few things, don’t you think?’

  ‘What kind of things?’ said Fortune.

  ‘Like the dealing at her flat. The parties, her behaviour.’

  ‘There was no dealing,’ said Fortune. ‘Or parties. That, all that, it never happened.’

  ‘Really?’ said Marsh. ‘How’d you come to that conclusion?’

  ‘If you’d done your job,’ said Fortune, ‘you would have reached it too. Only you didn’t think my daughter was important enough to put the work in.’

  ‘I’m going to hang up now,’ said Marsh.

  ‘My daughter did nothing,’ said Fortune. ‘Nothing. You’ve got it wrong, all wrong.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Marsh, leaving Fortune with a silent phone to his ear. Perhaps he shouldn’t have accused the policeman of not doing his job properly, though he couldn’t say he regretted it. There wasn’t anything more Marsh could do for him, or for his daughter. No. Not for the first time in his life, Fortune decided that if you wanted something done properly, you were better off doing it yourself.

  ‘What’ll you have?’ he asked Jake.

  ‘Lager,’ said Jake. He paused, scanned the optics. ‘Or …’

  ‘Would you like a Scotch with it?’ asked Fortune.

  ‘Now you’re talking.’

  The barman was watching them warily. Jake still had his blanket around him and his nails were filthy, his hair matted. Fortune couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t smell great either. Still, this was the man who had saved his daughter. He caught the barman’s eye and said, ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘No problem,’ the barman said. ‘No problem at all.’

  He got their drinks and Fortune handed him a twenty. They took the glasses and headed for a table, Jake walking with the apologetic hunch of the chronically disenfranchised. They sat.

  ‘How long have you been on the streets?’ said Fortune.

  ‘Six months, bit more,’ said Jake.

  ‘You were in the army?’

  Jake nodded. ‘Afghanistan.’ He picked up the Scotch, took a sip, downed it. He closed his eyes as he felt it warm his chest and exhaled in pleasure.

  ‘Sophie said you found it hard, coming back.’

  ‘Could say.’ Jake didn’t continue, instead picked up his beer.

  ‘I guess it must be difficult.’

  ‘Yeah. She was nice, your daughter,’ Jake said, changing the subject.

  ‘I know,’ said Fortune.

  ‘Really … how can I put it? Open. Friendly. She had this kindness, like, dunno. Generous.’

  She didn’t get it from me, thought Fortune. He said, ‘So. What happened?’

  ‘She didn’t tell you?’ said Jake.

  ‘No. I just read about it. So I thought, you know, you might be able to tell me more.’ And help reassure me that my daughter wasn’t mad, thought Fortune, though he didn’t say it. Make sure that what she wrote about actually happened, that she was attacked, and that you did save her. That she wasn’t completely delusional. Even thinking it made Fortune feel guilty, but still. He had to be sure.

  ‘She gave me a tenner,’ Jake said. ‘Doesn’t happen often. Then later I see her again, and this guy grabs her, and that’s enough for me, I’m up and over there and I pull him off her.’ He shrugged, drank. ‘Not much more to say.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Fortune.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Jake. ‘Anyone’d do the same.’

  ‘No they wouldn’t,’ said Fortune. ‘They really wouldn’t.’

  ‘So what’s the score?’ said Jake. ‘You said she’d disappeared.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Fortune. ‘The police think she took her own life.’

  ‘No,’ said Jake, certainty in his voice. ‘No way. Not her, not Sophie. Wasn’t the type.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘Listen,’ said Jake, ‘I’ve seen it happen. Seen people do themselves. They’ve given up, run out of options. Sophie, she was happy, interested. Wanted to know about me. No.’ He shook his head into his pint. ‘She wasn’t the type.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Fortune, thinking of her suicide attempts in the past. But perhaps she’d changed. Jean had thought she’d changed. ‘Thanks.’

  They sat in silence
for some moments. Fortune watched Jake. He was young, couldn’t be over twenty-five, and had an open face, thin but gentle.

  ‘So how about you?’ he said. ‘What’s your story?’

  Jake sighed, turned his pint with one hand, the condensation mixing with the dirt on his fingers, making sooty streaks of moisture on the glass. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Probably not,’ said Fortune.

  ‘Not just you. Anybody. That’s the problem. I had a girlfriend, lived with her. But when I came back …’ He took a drink. ‘It wasn’t the same. Not like it was. Nothing was.’

  ‘Because of what happened in Afghanistan?’

  Jake closed his eyes, nodded, opened them again. ‘My mate, next to me, stepped on a mine. There was just this noise and earth and blood, I could see it through the sun, like a mist. Of him. Turned into this mist, and some bigger pieces. And then Stacey, that’s my girlfriend, when I’m back she says to me, can’t you put your cup in the dishwasher? And I thought about my mate, and why the hell does putting a cup in the dishwasher matter, what’s so important about that when other things, terrible things, are going on, but I knew she wouldn’t understand and I just lost it. And that was it. End of.’

  ‘She threw you out?’

  ‘I was happy to go. Couldn’t stand it any more. Prefer it on the street.’

  They sat in silence again, before Fortune realized that they’d both be happier alone. He took out an envelope and put it on the table between them.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Jake.

  ‘Money. For helping my daughter.’

  ‘I didn’t do it for the money.’

  ‘I know,’ said Fortune. ‘I know that. All the more reason, right?’

  Jake picked up the envelope, opened it and looked inside. He looked back at Fortune. ‘There’s a lot here.’

  ‘A thousand. If you need more, just let me know. Have you got a phone?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Give me the number.’

  Fortune put Jake’s number into his mobile and called it to check he’d got it properly.

  ‘Got no battery,’ said Jake. ‘Need to get it charged.’

  Fortune stood up. ‘You take care. If you need anything, call me.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ said Jake.

  ‘I told you,’ said Fortune. But it was a good question. Why was he doing it? Because he thought that it would atone in some way for the lack of attention he’d given Sophie? He was making up for that failure by giving a man who had helped her a pile of cash? No. No, that was as paltry a get-out as the member of his staff who had missed all his targets but tried to persuade Fortune to keep him on because he’d taken a decent catch at the company cricket match. Too little. Too little, and much too late. Still, Fortune thought, it made him feel marginally better about himself. Which was something, at least.

  ‘Well,’ he said to Jake. ‘Can’t take it with you, right?’

  Jake frowned, looked at Fortune closely. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Seen that look before. You’re not well, are you? Not well at all.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I hope you find your daughter,’ said Jake. ‘She was one of the good guys.’

  ‘I hope so too,’ said Fortune. He got up and left the pub, leaving Jake to drink away his memories of war.

  Fortune still had the card the official at the airport, Sunita Gandham, had given him. He didn’t know what agency she worked for, but it had to be something to do with borders and control. She’d said to call any time if he wanted to talk. And he wanted to talk. Needed to talk. And, he figured, she was now the only person he knew who could help.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Ms Gandham? My name’s Fortune. We …’ How to put it? ‘We met at the airport a couple of days ago.’

  ‘We met,’ said Sunita. ‘Right. I remember. What do you want?’

  No pleasantries. He remembered her uncompromising demeanour, her hard eyes. Why did he think she’d do anything for him? ‘I was wondering if you could help me.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘My daughter. You know she disappeared.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You probably know she was stopped recently, too. Coming into the country.’

  ‘Hold on.’

  Fortune listened to footsteps, the sound of people talking, a door opening and closing, then silence. ‘You there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fortune.

  ‘Okay. Now listen. I shouldn’t be talking to you. This is an ongoing investigation, and more importantly, it’s not my investigation. Understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So this is between the two of us. Right?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘All right. So what did you want to ask me?’

  Fortune took a deep breath. ‘I think my daughter was set up. There were things going on in her life … things that don’t make sense.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Sunita. ‘And this is my concern how?’

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Fortune. ‘But I have a name. The person who I believe set her up. She was invited to Paris, but the person who invited her never showed.’

  ‘So she said. I’ve read the transcript of the interview.’

  ‘The name’s Josh. Josh MacDonald.’

  Sunita sighed. ‘I know the name. I know all about him, date of birth, education. Your daughter gave it all to us.’

  ‘So he’s being investigated?’

  ‘He was being investigated,’ said Sunita. ‘Was. Listen, I don’t know what was going on in your daughter’s life. Frankly, it’s not our concern. We work the borders, not domestic crime, so whatever was happening, it’s somebody else’s problem.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Fortune. ‘How does that square with your conscience?’

  ‘Nothing to do with my conscience,’ she said. ‘Just the way things are.’

  ‘So that’s it?’ said Fortune.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Sunita. ‘I can tell you one thing. Josh MacDonald? He doesn’t exist. He never existed. There is no such person. So, you tell me. How does a figment of somebody’s imagination plant drugs in their luggage?’

  twenty-eight

  JOSH HAS BEEN IN TOUCH. JUST LIKE THAT, OUT OF THE COLD. He told me that it wasn’t his fault, that it had nothing to do with him and that somebody was messing with him. He told me that he was being set up, and that there had been allegations made about him, false allegations. He said he’d been accused of breaching his NDA, and of telling the competition about the new ad campaign he’d been working on. He told me that money had gone missing from his bank account and that malicious messages had been sent from his email account, only he hadn’t written them. He said it’s happening to him now too, just like it’s been happening to me.

  He told me that he had never sent an email about meeting in Paris. He said he’d flown straight to London; why would he fly to Paris? It didn’t make any sense. And it’s right, it doesn’t. Why didn’t I think of that?

  We’re meeting tonight but Josh doesn’t want us to be seen together, he thinks it’s dangerous. Somebody’s out there, somebody who means us harm, though he doesn’t know why and neither do I. He said it’s better to stay under the radar and meet somewhere secret. Why? Because he’s got a plan. He’s got a way to get us out of this, at least that’s what he says. Is it true? Can this be true? Have I actually got an ally?

  We’re meeting tonight and it feels like the last roll of the dice. I’m not even thinking about it. I’ll go, and see what happens. What else can I do?

  twenty-nine

  FORTUNE WOKE AND HIS FIRST THOUGHT WAS: EIGHT DAYS. Eight days left. Eight days in this strange fantasy land he now occupied, where reality was twisted, misunderstood, upside down. Where the only people who knew what was really happening were him and his daughter. His daughter, who wasn’t dead, who was alive, captured, waiting, hoping. His daughter, who had stopped believing in him years ago. In his artificial hotel limbo, where every evening his ro
om was reset, cleaned and tidied and washed and restocked so that it appeared the same as the first day he’d opened the door, it could be hard to make sense of time passing. But not any more. Eight days. He had eight days, and he didn’t have the first idea where to go, what to look for, or who to talk to. He had nothing. And in eight days, and he did believe this, his daughter would die.

  He lay in bed and tried to ignore the pain in his chest, the tight constriction that in his dreams often manifested as a snake, winding around and around, squeezing and pressing, black and putrid as he imagined his cancer to be, a vile interloper consisting of nothing but dank, dark rot. He lay in bed and breathed and tried to think, and plan, and tried not to cough. The mornings were the worst, tens of minutes spent barking and hacking into the sink, great globs emerging, weirdly coloured alien entities ejected onto the white porcelain. The mirror above the sink reflecting his face, pale, sagging, racked. Every morning he wondered, how did I become this? Exactly what the hell happened?

  There was a knock at the door and Fortune sat up. Who could that be? Who knew he was here?

  ‘Hello?’ No answer. ‘Hello?’ Louder this time.

  The door opened wide and he had a brief moment of panic before he heard a rattling and a maid walked in pushing a trolley. Fortune remembered that he hadn’t hung the Do Not Disturb sign, but then what time was it? He looked at his watch and saw it was gone eleven. When had he ever slept past eight?

  ‘No, thank you. Thank you. I’m good.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Yes, I’m good. I mean, sorry, I mean come back later.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the maid. ‘Okay. Okay, I come back later.’ She backed out of the door, pulling her trolley with her, cleaning materials clanking. Fortune lay back in his bed, again trying not to cough, holding it all in like an explosive he wouldn’t let go off. God, but he was tired, so tired, the inside of his head dizzy, seasick. He closed his eyes and tried to think. Eight days. He had eight days.

  So, a stocktaking. Where was he? What was the situation? He counted it up on his fingers, his hands invisible under the sheet, pressing a thumb to each finger to keep track. One. His daughter had been tormented by an online troll, who had known details about her that he shouldn’t have. Two. She was missing, presumed dead, though he didn’t believe that. Three. She’d had false allegations made against her, partying, drugs, stalking, antisocial behaviour. Four. She’d been attacked, threatened with acid. Five … He ran out of fingers, transferred to his other hand. Five, a hundred and sixty million dollars had been stolen from the bank he worked at, in two attempts, each matching a significant date: his daughter’s birth, and a date eight days from today. Six. His daughter’s boyfriend had recently proved to be non-existent, a fabrication.