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Numbers. Fortune, numbers. Unlucky numbers, the kind that bring bad fortune. Thirteen. What was it, with the Chinese? Four. They didn’t have floors in buildings with the number four in. Thirteen, four, fourteen, twenty-four? Too many numbers. Anyway, it wasn’t that, it was a stupid idea. Come on, Sophie. Think.

  Okay, okay, maybe it was a trick. The troll loved games and this could be a trick. Do you believe in fortune? So, right, so maybe it wasn’t about bad luck, maybe it was really just about luck. Like, I could put any numbers in, it didn’t matter. So I put the first numbers I thought of into the combination. How would that work? It didn’t matter, just try it. Whatever. I reached over with my left hand again and fumbled with the dials. 1, 6, 3, 4, no, 7, 1 again, 5. Pulled on the lock. Nothing. No surprise there. Sophie, you cretin, you idiot. You sad excuse, you travesty. Think. Think.

  I looked up and the spider wasn’t there. It had gone and I could feel it on me, under me, everywhere, I imagined the insidious pressure of its legs all over me, a dreadful subtle touch, panic stopping my breathing again. Where was it? Where had it gone? Not being able to see it was worse, somehow. Like it might drop from the ceiling onto me. Where was it?

  You need to get out of this, I thought. You need to find the combination and get out of here. I looked at the net, tried to reach it, strained towards it, the plastic cuff like a knife under my skin. I couldn’t get near, not even close.

  Do you believe in fortune?

  Do you believe in Fortune?

  My dad. Everybody called him Fortune, they always had done, like he didn’t even have a first name. Did I believe in him? No, course I didn’t. But then I thought of the Tube, of losing him and how he had come for me and how I had believed in him once, a lifetime ago. When I had said, I knew you would come and find me.

  Do you believe in Fortune?

  I wanted to. I did so want to. I’d always wanted to.

  When was Dad’s birthday? I couldn’t remember. How old was he, even? No idea. Fifty something. Who was it told me once, that Dad had been born old? Who had said that?

  It didn’t matter. Think. When was he born?

  Summer.

  When?

  August. Definitely. In the summer holidays. He wasn’t there, because he was working. We’d call him up from Spain, Greece, Rome, wherever me and Mum were. Happy birthday, Dad. Yeah, I know you’d love to be here. Yeah, I understand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, happy birthday.

  All right. Year. Wait. Work it out. He had a fiftieth. Not a party, but he had a fiftieth birthday, he turned fifty, and it was … after university. During my first job. No, second. I remembered thinking, if I’m still doing this when I’m fifty, I might as well end it now. Someone actually kill me? So that made him fifty-four now. Okay. What year? 1963. Yes, ’63. Okay. Okay, Sophie, that was good. That wasn’t bad.

  Day.

  Oh well now, there was a thing.

  I didn’t have a clue.

  Okay. Didn’t matter. Start at the beginning, and work your way forward.

  So I turned the dials, as quickly as I could. 0, 1, 0, 8, 6, 3. Nothing.

  I turned the second dial. 2. Nothing. 3. Nothing. I was pulling and pulling and my wrist, it was a mess, I looked like the world’s most determined suicide. 4. Nothing. 5. Nothing. I looked up for the spider but it wasn’t there, and then I looked down and it was on my leg, on my leg, right there on my ankle, one of its legs raised like it was thinking, planning what next. Oh God. I froze, didn’t move at all, stopped breathing, my muscles tensed, locked. It was on my leg. I turned and reached again for the combination. 6. Nothing. 7. Nothing. 8. Nothing. I looked back at the spider and it hadn’t moved but I could feel its weight on my leg, light, like a towel, nothing, but it was so big, so so big, and black, and it was the worst thing I’d ever seen. 9. Nothing. My wrist was open, the bloody gash black in the dim light. 10. Nothing. 11. Nothing. The spider darted quickly up my leg, past my knee, and stopped. I made a sound, some noise I’d never made before, small and lost. 12. Nothing. Come on. Please please please come on. 13. I pulled and the lock slid apart. I was free. The spider was there and I thought, come on, Sophie, come on you can do this, and I stood and kicked and the spider fell off and I ran to the net and picked it up and put it over the spider. I ran to the door and hammered on it, hammered and hammered and hammered, and when the troll opened the door I saw his face for the first time, and then I don’t remember anything else.

  fifty-one

  THROUGHOUT FORTUNE’S RESEARCH INTO ST BASIL’S, THE trawling and sifting through the news stories and features, one name had kept cropping up, one byline had appeared more than any others. A local journalist, Essex-based, who had tenaciously kept enquiring, asking questions, speculating. His name was Jack Sumner and his interest in the case, judging by his coverage, hadn’t been entirely professional.

  Fortune stopped at a roadside diner and ordered coffee. While he waited, he called the paper’s news desk and asked to speak to Jack Sumner. The woman asked him what it was concerning.

  ‘St Basil’s.’

  ‘Oh.’ She seemed surprised, and paused for a moment. ‘Could you tell me what your interest in it is?’

  ‘No,’ said Fortune. ‘Is he there?’

  ‘Not today,’ she said, and paused again. ‘But if it’s concerning St Basil’s, he’ll want to hear. Do you have a pen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She read him a mobile number and Fortune thanked her and hung up. A waitress brought his coffee to the booth he was sitting in and he thanked her, then dialled the number. It was answered after a couple of rings.

  ‘Hi, Jack here.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Fortune. ‘I’m calling regarding St Basil’s.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I wondered if you could help.’

  ‘With?’

  ‘I’m looking for people who might have worked there.’

  ‘Mind if I ask why?’ Sumner’s voice was open and friendly, but there was a note of suspicion behind it.

  ‘I need to …’ He paused. Here goes nothing. ‘I’m looking for an ex-ward who, well, it turns out he’s my son.’

  ‘Your son.’

  ‘I only just found out. I’m looking for him because I think he might be in trouble.’

  ‘Right,’ said Sumner, slowly, like he was considering whether or not Fortune was insane. ‘I don’t quite see …’

  ‘I think he’s disturbed, due to what happened there. He’s been making threats. Creating problems in my life.’

  ‘What kind of problems?’

  Like kidnapping and threatening to murder my daughter, Fortune thought. He said, ‘He’s stolen a lot of money. Made false allegations, mounted some kind of campaign. It’s complicated.’

  ‘Sounds it.’ Jack Sumner was silent for a moment. ‘Why do you want to speak to somebody who worked there?’

  ‘To get some background,’ Fortune said. ‘To find out what happened to him there, what went on.’

  Sumner laughed. ‘Good luck with that.’

  ‘It’s important,’ said Fortune.

  ‘Don’t need to tell me,’ said Sumner. ‘How are you planning to get the information?’

  ‘By asking,’ said Fortune.

  ‘Yeah, I tried that,’ said Sumner. ‘Didn’t get me far.’

  ‘I’ll ask to begin with,’ said Fortune. ‘If that doesn’t work, I’ve got other strategies.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Sumner. ‘Want to share these other strategies?’

  ‘Not if you want to be an accessory after the fact,’ said Fortune.

  Jack laughed. ‘Okay, now you’re speaking my language.’ He was silent again, this time for so long that Fortune wondered if he was still there. But then he said, ‘I only know the whereabouts of one of them. Burridge.’

  ‘Oliver James Burridge? The warder?’

  ‘The top man,’ said Sumner.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In a nursing home. Apparently he’s had it, suffered some kind of stroke, can’t eat without dribbli
ng. Serves the bastard right.’

  ‘Can I ask,’ said Fortune, ‘why you’re so interested in St Basil’s?’

  ‘I’m a journalist,’ said Sumner. ‘It’s my job.’

  ‘And?’

  Another silence. ‘Okay, and my wife’s brother was a ward there. Only he didn’t come out. Just disappeared, never seen again. How does something like that happen?’

  ‘Seems to have happened a lot.’

  ‘And yet nobody’s been brought to justice. Helps when your brother’s a peer of the realm.’

  ‘I heard about that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Sumner, disgust in his voice. ‘Come a long way, haven’t we? This country.’

  Fortune thought of Dubai, of its stratified society, its codified injustice. Home didn’t seem so much better. ‘Could you tell me where I can find him?’

  ‘Burridge? On one condition.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You don’t show the old bastard any mercy.’

  ‘I think I can promise that,’ said Fortune.

  Sumner told him to hold on, and Fortune waited for a couple of minutes before Sumner came back with the address, a nursing home outside Brentwood. Not far away. Fortune thanked him and promised he’d call him back, give him any information he found. Then he hung up and finished his coffee. It wasn’t late. He still had time to see Burridge today. All he needed was a story. Shouldn’t be a problem. He couldn’t see anybody stopping him.

  It turned out that getting in to see Oliver James Burridge at Glades Nursing Home was a formality, mainly due to the fact that, clearly, nobody was much concerned for his welfare. Fortune asked at the reception desk if Burridge was there and the receptionist said, ‘Who?’

  ‘Oliver James Burridge.’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’ The receptionist had a look on her face as if Fortune had just asked her if she fancied a threesome. ‘Did you want to visit him?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘You’re family?’

  ‘No. Just an old friend.’

  ‘You understand that Mr Burridge is very poorly.’ Still granting him the title of mister, despite his reputation, the things he was thought to have done.

  ‘I know. I thought, him seeing me, it might do him good.’

  The receptionist looked at Fortune with distaste and Fortune had to fight the urge to tell her that no, she had it wrong, he wasn’t like that, wasn’t like Burridge. ‘He doesn’t get many visitors.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’

  ‘You know about him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you still want to see him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The receptionist nodded, but it wasn’t a nod of understanding. Why would anybody want to see such a monster as Oliver James Burridge? Fortune could understand her point of view. ‘All right,’ she said, no friendliness in her tone, purely professional. ‘I’ll just go and ask him. What’s your name?’

  ‘I thought I could surprise him. He hasn’t seen me for a long time.’

  The receptionist frowned and was about to refuse, then must have decided that protecting the safety of an evil old man wasn’t worth her time or energy. ‘Well, you’ll need to tell me,’ she said. ‘To sign in.’ She put a pen on an open book filled with columns to write down who you were, who you were there to see, the registration plate of your car, time in and out. Fortune scribbled down Harry Marsh, deciding he might as well be consistent.

  ‘If you’d like to follow me, Mr … Marsh,’ she said, turning the book to read it. ‘I’ll show you to his room.’

  She came around from her side of the desk and pushed through a door with a wired glass circle cut in it, down a corridor, around a corner, then another, before stopping before a door.

  ‘I’ll tell Mr Burridge you’re here,’ she said. ‘I won’t say anything else.’ She slid into the room, only opening the door slightly, and Fortune waited outside, wondering whether, if Burridge didn’t want to see him, he had it in him to overpower the girl. Morally he thought he probably did. Physically he wasn’t so sure. But the receptionist reappeared and said, ‘Come in.’

  Fortune walked into the room, which wasn’t large and had a vase of flowers on a table next to a window, a blind shutting out most of the light. Burridge was in a bed that had been adjusted so that he was in a seated position. He looked without much curiosity at Fortune, an old man, frail-looking, with watery eyes. The receptionist watched him without emotion, then said to Fortune, ‘You can find your own way out,’ and left, closing the door behind her.

  There was no window in the door and they were alone, just him and Burridge. Burridge looked at him, didn’t say anything. Fortune walked past him to the window and opened the louvred blind slightly, so that dim daylight came into the room.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Burridge said to Fortune’s back. Fortune didn’t answer. Throw him off, he thought. Make him start guessing. Don’t make it easy. ‘I said, who the hell are you?’ Burridge’s voice was weak, faltering, but still held an authoritarian tone. ‘Well? Answer me, man.’

  Fortune turned and walked to the bed. There was a red alarm cord hanging next to it, and he reached up and tied it up, shortening it, out of Burridge’s reach.

  ‘My name’s Fortune,’ he said. ‘My son was one of your wards.’

  Burridge looked up with difficulty at the red cord, then back to Fortune. ‘Only took in children without parents,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, well. This one slipped through the cracks. Maybe you remember him? His name was Hector. Hector Emmerson.’

  ‘What is it you want?’ said Burridge.

  ‘I want to know what you did to him,’ said Fortune. ‘I want details.’

  ‘Did to him?’ Burridge’s mouth opened and closed, once, three times, a wet, sloppy sound. He still had a fine head of hair, Fortune had to give him that, iron grey and swept back in stiff waves. But underneath the face was weak, the muscles no longer doing their job, one of his eyes sagging at the corner. ‘What do you mean, did to him? I should like you to leave.’

  Fortune gave Burridge’s ear a sharp tug and Burridge turned and looked at him in surprise. ‘I’m sure you would,’ Fortune said. ‘But that’s not going to happen. Not until you tell me what you did to Hector Emmerson.’

  ‘I will not speak to you,’ said Burridge. His voice was upper-class, and despite his frailty and position of helplessness, it still held a condescending sneer.

  Fortune, less educated and cultivated than the majority of his colleagues, had dealt with condescension all his working life. It tended to piss him off. He walked to the window, took the flowers out of the vase, walked back to the bed and emptied the water on Burridge’s head. Burridge spluttered, his mouth once again opening and closing, Fortune thinking of a landed fish, uselessly gasping.

  ‘Now then,’ said Fortune. ‘I’m going to leave this room with the information I need. Even if I have to kill you for it. Do you understand?’

  ‘How dare you?’ said Burridge, his voice a furious whisper, no longer able to raise his voice.

  Fortune walked to the other side of the room, where a kettle stood on a table, next to paper cups, tea and sugar. He lifted the kettle. Empty. He opened the door to the en suite and filled the kettle from the bath tap. He went back into Burridge’s room, turned the kettle on, and came back to the bed.

  ‘When that kettle has boiled, I’m going to pour it over your head,’ he said. ‘It will hurt. Looking at the state of you, I imagine you’ll probably die.’

  ‘Damn you,’ said Burridge. ‘Damn your eyes.’

  People still said that? thought Fortune. He sighed. ‘You need to tell me what happened to Hector Emmerson. You haven’t got much time.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Burridge.

  ‘I think you do. I think you know exactly what happened at St Basil’s, and you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘I have nothing to say to you,’ Burridge said. It was still there, the condescending sn
eer. He closed his eyes, kept them closed, and Fortune looked down at him in exasperation. He didn’t want to pour boiling water over a frail old man’s head, regardless of what atrocities he had probably committed in the past. Hell, he wasn’t capable of pouring a kettle of boiling water over anybody’s head; the thought itself was too horrible for words. The room was silent apart from the quiet hiss of the air conditioner and the gentle roar of the kettle heating up.

  ‘Time’s running out,’ said Fortune. Burridge didn’t answer, kept his eyes closed. Fortune had an urge to pull him out of bed and boot him all the way down the corridor outside, imagining Burridge yelping with each well-aimed kick. If this was what evil looked like, he thought, it was indeed banal. A frail old man acting like a child, pretending he couldn’t hear what was being said to him. Life had never seemed a more futile enterprise.

  The kettle boiled and clicked off. Fortune walked over to it, picked it up and put it back down again. He closed his eyes and sighed, as long and deeply as his lungs would let him. There was no way he could do this. What would it achieve anyway, apart from killing Burridge? He sighed again and turned, to see Burridge crouched on his bed, unsteady, reaching up for the red emergency cord. It was just out of his reach, and he flailed at it and lost his balance, falling off the edge of the bed, landing on his head and neck, urine leaking through his pyjamas, darkening the blue stripes. He lay still, not moving.

  Fortune looked down at him in dismay. Time to go, he thought. He pulled open the door, closed it behind him and hurried back to the reception desk. He hadn’t wanted that, it hadn’t been part of the plan. Not that there had ever been much of a plan.

  ‘Finished?’ the receptionist asked him, looking up at the sound of the door opening.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fortune. ‘All done.’

  ‘You’re really a friend of his?’

  ‘Well,’ said Fortune. ‘Not exactly a friend.’

  ‘They say he did terrible things.’

  ‘Who do?’

  ‘People.’ The receptionist looked away, down at her desk, as if ashamed of what she had said.

  ‘People are right,’ said Fortune. ‘He’s a terrible person.’