Troll Page 28

  He pushed open a gate and walked across a gravel drive that had long ago given up the fight against weeds, now more unruly meadow than car park. The house was in a terrible state, window panes broken, their frames rotten, the bricks needing repointing soon or the whole place was going to go. The roof already had, tiles remaining at both ends but the middle fallen through so that the profile of the house resembled Tower Bridge. There was no sound and no sign of life. No dog to bark his arrival, no light to appear, no questioning face at the front door.

  He stood and waited. This was it. This was it, and if nobody came out, then he was in the wrong place. And if he was in the wrong place, if he was mistaken, then his daughter was dead. So it must be the right place. Fortune stood in the cold, bright morning and waited, hoping that this was the right place. It had to be.

  ‘Father.’

  He turned. He should have known that the troll would steal up on him, gain the advantage. Approach him from where he least expected it, from behind, where he’d just been. It was obvious.

  ‘Hello.’ The troll, his son, smiled. Fortune didn’t respond, but inside he died, just a little. Again, he should have known. Of course. So obvious, so ridiculously, stupidly obvious. Tall. Big. Acne scarring. Just like Fortune. Like father, like son. The security guard who had confronted him at St Basil’s the last time he’d been here. That had been the first time he’d met his son. They were the same person.

  ‘Hi,’ said Fortune. So much contempt, so much loathing in the very first word he spoke to his son. God.

  ‘So. You made it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The troll, his son, Hector, shook his head, just a little. ‘But only just. I expected you sooner. Hoped to see you sooner.’

  ‘Really,’ said Fortune. Not a question, more an expression of disinterest.

  ‘I’d hoped you’d be here yesterday. Even the day before, although that would have been exceptional. But yesterday would have been acceptable.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have disappointed you,’ said Fortune.

  His son wagged a finger. ‘No. No, you haven’t disappointed. Most people wouldn’t have been able to find me at all. To do it in the given time is still a feat. You shouldn’t feel bad.’

  Fortune didn’t respond, and Hector said nothing, and after a moment Fortune said, pointlessly, ‘Well.’

  The troll nodded, as if some profound truth had passed between them. ‘Shall we?’ he said. The troll. His son. Hector. Fortune had to decide what to call him. Hell, he was his son. He had a name. He was Hector. Why not call him that?

  ‘Okay,’ Fortune said. ‘Okay, Hector.’

  Hector turned at this, his face suddenly drained of confidence, of authority. He looked at Fortune, swallowed and turned away. But when he turned back, he’d recaptured the same untroubled swagger he’d had since Fortune had met him. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course you know my name. You know many things. But you only know the things that I allowed you to find out.’

  He led Fortune into the house. There wasn’t a lot to it apart from mould and neglect. There was a door built into the casement of the stairs and Hector opened it, stood aside and put out an arm to welcome Fortune into the staircase within.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘You must be curious. And I can tell you everything you want to know.’ He smiled. ‘I think you’ll find it interesting.’

  Fortune nodded, giving his son his due. He was a force, of some kind. He put out a hand and felt his way onto the stairs, held the banister and stepped down the staircase. It was dark, descending into the belly of this wrecked house, and if he fell, he wouldn’t be getting up again. His daughter must be down there, she must be. Sophie, you must be there. He’d kept his promise. He was coming to find her.

  fifty-six

  THE CELLAR OF BAGSY’S HOUSE WAS DARK AND SMELLED OF damp and misery. Not that misery had a smell, Fortune knew, but there it was. Now it did. There was a door to the right of the stairs and another to the left, and Hector opened the door on the right, nodded Fortune past him, then closed the door behind them. They were in a brick-walled corridor, dimly lit. It wasn’t long, and it had three doors in it, doors made of metal. Fortune understood that he was in a dungeon, in a place where people, children, were kept and tormented, tortured, broken. The corridor was narrow, oppressive, as if the walls and ceiling were slowly closing in.

  Hector opened another door, again waiting for Fortune to pass him. The room was brightly lit and surprisingly big, the walls painted white, the floor carpeted. There was a desk and functional wooden chairs, an Anglepoise lamp on the desk. It looked like a GP’s surgery. One wall was covered in paper, sheets of words and arrows, some kind of diagram, large and complex.

  ‘Welcome,’ said Hector. ‘Please. Sit down.’

  ‘I’ll stand.’

  ‘You look like you need to sit down. Please. You don’t look well.’

  Fortune did not want to sit, did not want to show any weakness. But Hector was right, he wouldn’t be able to stand for long. He sighed, sat on one of the chairs and looked at Hector.

  ‘Where’s Sophie?’

  ‘Sophie is here. But before you see her, I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to show something to you.’

  ‘I’m not interested.’

  ‘I think you will be.’

  Fortune didn’t answer and there was a brief silence, then Hector frowned and said, ‘You will watch. And you will listen. Understand?’

  This was his son, Fortune told himself. You made him. But he didn’t feel anything for him except a quiet fury and disgust. No, he had to be honest with himself, underneath that there was a sense of sadness, sadness and regret. That this was happening, that all this had happened. But no love. No love, no admiration, no regard. If that was what his son was hoping for, disappointment wasn’t far away.

  ‘So,’ Hector said, and smiled. ‘How did I do it?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘The Game. How did I make it happen?’

  The way he said the Game. Like it was an entity rather than an activity. As if it possessed some mystical power. His son had the zealotry of a cult member, burning with belief and purpose. Fortune had lived in the Middle East. He knew all about zealotry, and how dangerous it was.

  Fortune shrugged. ‘No idea. I want to see Sophie. Now.’

  ‘Not until you have listened to me.’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘No. I’m sorry, but that cannot be done. Now. The Game.’ He turned to the wall covered in paper and pointed to the top, a sheet with figures on. $89,917,042. $71,023,032. Next to it, 7 DAYS. He turned back to Fortune. ‘First, I stole the money.’

  ‘How?’ said Fortune. He was, at least, interested in that.

  ‘I am what people would probably call a hacker,’ his son said. ‘A very, very good one. You wouldn’t understand exactly how I did it. Just know that I did, and that it was too easy. Your bank needs to take a look at their security.’

  This wasn’t Fortune’s problem any more. He watched his son but didn’t say anything.

  ‘So first I stole the money, stole it twice. How long did it take you?’

  ‘How long did what take me?’

  ‘To work out the dates. The day she was born, the day she would die.’

  ‘Hector,’ Fortune said. ‘Please. You’re my son, Sophie’s my daughter. This …’ His voice faltered, something he despised himself for, but he kept going. ‘We don’t need to do this. It isn’t necessary.’

  Hector frowned briefly, as if Fortune had given a particularly stupid answer to a very basic question. ‘No, I asked you, how long did it take you? To work out the dates?’

  Fortune slumped a little in his chair. ‘I saw it straight away,’ he said. ‘Hector …’

  ‘I think that’s a lie,’ said Hector. ‘There is no way you could have. I estimated a week, and so that is how long I waited. I think I got it right.’

  ‘Got what right?’

  ‘Setting you up. So that you couldn’t go to the police
, or you would be arrested.’

  ‘I did go to the police.’

  Hector looked surprised, a rare show of emotion. ‘You did? Oh.’ He was silent a second, standing in front of his wall of paper. He nodded to himself, then looked up and said, ‘But they didn’t want to know. That’s right, isn’t it? Too vague, too … weird. The police don’t like weird, it falls outside their purview.’

  Fortune didn’t answer. But his son was right. Was there anything he didn’t know?

  ‘In any case, it’s of no matter.’ Hector pointed again at the wall of paper, the next sheet. On it were Fortune’s account details. ‘Then I placed the money in your account, and set off the alarm bells. Yes?’

  Again, Fortune didn’t answer. He felt like a sullen student being given a lecture. He needed to see his daughter. He needed to get out of here, away from this person. He moved to stand up, but Hector wagged a finger.

  ‘No. No, no, no. I’m not finished.’ He took the next piece of paper from the wall and gave it to Fortune. Fortune took it. It was a picture of a girl, young, maybe fourteen.

  ‘Who is that?’ said Hector.

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘It’s me,’ said Hector. He seemed quietly delighted by this. ‘That young girl is me. Charlie Jackson thought it was a girl called Rosie, who lived in Balham, who was his biggest fan and would do anything for him. And I do mean anything. You can imagine her excitement, to be meeting her idol, a clandestine liaison in a hotel room. So, so excited.’ He made a small noise, perhaps a laugh, some sound at the back of his throat. ‘And when Charlie Jackson knocked on the door, imagine his surprise. Imagine his surprise when Rosie was me!’

  ‘How did you kill him?’

  ‘I hit him. I hit him very, very hard with a hammer. Only once.’

  Fortune thought of Bagsy and the torch and shook his head. It wasn’t the same. He hadn’t hit him hard.

  ‘And I left the phone, and sent you a message. And now …’ Hector took a step back from the wall. ‘Now, the game was on. I gave you your daughter’s laptop so you could work out who I was. Your first task. I gave you two days for that. You did well. You see?’ He pointed up to a sheet, STARRY UBADO written on it, 3 DAYS next to it. ‘I then allotted you one day to find my mother’s brother.’ An arrow on the sheet he’d pointed at led to a second sheet, UNCLE TREVOR written on it. T. Emmerson, Claudia’s useless brother. Was everything Fortune had done, all his actions, been predicted before he’d even thought about it? What was it they said about destiny? That it was all already planned, nothing you could do. He’d been directed, manipulated, controlled as if by some deranged god. By his son, Hector Emmerson.

  Next sheet, AIX Industries.

  ‘I’m willing to bet they didn’t remember me with affection,’ said Hector.

  ‘He killed himself. The guy who came up with the algorithm.’

  ‘I know.’ Hector shrugged. ‘Honestly? He believed it to be a lot better than it really was. I told him that. I told him it wasn’t so special. He was very resistant.’

  Next sheet, the story of the orphanage closing down. The article Fortune had found in Hector’s apartment, in his bed. How the hell had he known that Fortune would sleep there, discover it? How?

  ‘So then you found Burridge. By the way, how did you do that?’

  ‘Spoke to a journalist.’

  ‘I see.’ Hector made a face, an ambiguous grimace. ‘I suppose that’s one way. And of course, here’s where you lost a day, because you didn’t get anything out of him, and so you had to visit Foster. The first time there was a need to resort to my Plan B.’

  ‘How’d you know I went to see Foster?’

  Hector sighed, smiled. ‘The truth is, Foster never went to see Burridge. It was me. I went, and I simply gave reception Foster’s details.’ He pointed to a sheet with Foster’s address and number on it. ‘It wasn’t like he was going to argue. The man can’t remember what he did ten minutes ago. He was drunk, I assume?’

  Fortune just looked at his son and tried not to show any emotion.

  ‘You should have done better. You really should have got Burridge to talk.’

  Fortune considered telling his son that he had killed Burridge, maybe killed Bagsy too. But no. He didn’t know what effect that might have, had no idea how he would react to anything.

  ‘He wasn’t a nice person.’

  Hector laughed at this, a real laugh. ‘Nice. Burridge.’ He shook his head, smiled at Fortune. ‘You’re too much.’

  Fortune didn’t return the smile. He watched his son like he would watch a big cat, wary, unpredictable.

  ‘Anyway,’ Hector said. ‘You found out about Bagsy, and here you are. At his house. At the Games Room.’

  ‘Why?’ said Fortune. It was the only question he wanted an answer to. ‘Why did you do this? To me? To Sophie?’

  ‘Because there was a need to,’ said Hector. ‘To show them.’ He gestured around the room, the brick walls, this subterranean prison. ‘To prove to them.’

  ‘Prove what?’

  Hector closed his eyes, kept them closed for a long time. It was quiet in the room and Fortune could hear his son’s breathing. After maybe a minute had passed, Hector opened his eyes and took a breath.

  ‘The Game is designed to make you feel weak,’ he said. ‘It changes for everyone, it is a dynamic event. It is intended to make you feel frightened and weak and confused. They were very good at it. They were like gods. So powerful.’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘Them. Burridge. Bagsy. All the others, the other players.’

  Fortune nodded, but said, ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘But if they are gods, then so am I.’

  ‘You don’t want to be like them.’

  ‘No. No, I want to be better.’

  ‘Better?’

  ‘They did what they did here. To children. I can do it out there, in the world.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Play the Game.’

  ‘What you’re doing … it isn’t a game.’

  ‘Of course it is. It’s the best game. And I’ve hacked it, optimized it, adapted it for playing out there.’ He gestured above him, dismissively. ‘Finding weaknesses. Exploiting them. Taking away control. I think I’ve proven myself to be a master.’

  Fortune looked at Hector, realized that he was fundamentally flawed, broken, that his morality had been perverted beyond recognition. He wanted to outdo Burridge and Bagsy. Emerge from their shadow, eclipse them. Like a child needing to prove itself better than its father, stronger, greater.

  Only his father was Fortune. Didn’t that count for anything? No, Fortune thought. No, of course it doesn’t. Because you’re no kind of father, and never have been.

  ‘But why me?’ he said. ‘And why Sophie?’

  ‘Because you put me here. I wanted to show you what I learnt. All the things I learnt. What I can do, thanks to you.’

  ‘You don’t need my approval.’

  Hector laughed. ‘Approval? No, no, I don’t. But I want you to know how it felt.’

  ‘How what felt?’

  ‘Being in the Games Room.’

  ‘I’ve never been there.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. The Games Room isn’t a place. It’s a feeling.’

  ‘What kind of feeling?’

  ‘The one you have now.’

  Powerless. Scared. Anxious. Confused. Yes, Fortune thought. I know that feeling. Now I know it.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Hector, ‘you’ll go there now.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To the Games Room. That is, if you want to see your daughter. Are you ready?’

  Fortune stood up, feeling his legs trembling, wondering for a moment whether they would give up on him.

  Hector smiled. ‘Let’s go visit my sister.’

  fifty-seven

  SOPHIE WAS STANDING ON A WOODEN CHAIR IN THE DARK Games Room. She had a noose around her neck, the rope connected to a hook on the ceiling. She looked tire
d and very, very scared. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped when she saw Fortune. She looked at him and was silent, and then she started to cry without abandon, her mouth misshapen as the sobs racked her.

  ‘Sophie. Sweetheart, it’s okay. I’m here.’

  She looked so tired, but she was still Sophie, still his beautiful daughter, the little girl whose eyes had sparkled with such delight in the sun, all those long and wasted years ago. She was still alive, and could still be that carefree, glorious spirit.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you really here?’ Sophie’s voice broke and she began to sob again. The rope had little play in it and she needed to stay on the chair. If she fell, if she lost her balance, she would die.

  ‘Be careful, Sophie,’ Fortune said, as gently and calmly as he could.

  ‘I took care of her,’ said the troll, standing behind him. ‘She’s quite healthy.’

  For the first time, Fortune felt genuine hatred, possessed with an anger that was violent, outraged. The troll dared to do this, to his daughter? He felt his fingers bunch into fists, felt himself tremble with rage. He willed himself to remain calm, keep his voice steady.

  ‘Sophie,’ he said. ‘Sophie, it’ll be okay. I’ve come to find you.’

  ‘Dad. Dad, be careful. He’s … he’s …’ She couldn’t find the right words, couldn’t think of an adequate way to describe Hector.

  ‘I know,’ said Fortune. ‘It’ll be okay.’ He didn’t believe it would be okay, not for a second. But that was what fathers did. What they were supposed to do. Reassure their children.

  ‘All right. Shall we begin?’ said Hector. He stepped past Fortune to the chair and gave it a slight shake. Sophie screamed and Fortune started towards her, but Hector held up a finger and said, ‘No closer, thank you. No closer, or over she goes.’

  Fortune stopped, powerless, always powerless. ‘What are you going to do?’