Troll Read online

  I’ve got a friend, and when she was at university, some guy took her to this uber-swanky restaurant. It was in the West End, though she doesn’t remember the name. Anyway, as they walk in, the maître d’ comes up to them, and her boyfriend whispers to her, ‘Don’t give him your coat. We’ll be doing a runner.’

  Mine wasn’t that bad, but still … it was pretty bad. I arranged to go on a date with a friend of a friend. Let’s call him Chris, since THAT’S WHAT HIS NAME IS. He’s okay-looking, though he didn’t know whether to shake my hand or kiss me when we met, which was a bit awkward, and he ended up doing both, which just felt weird. Kind of halfway between a business meeting and a date. Pleased to meet … MWAH. Anyway, that’s not the worst of it. Oh no.

  Ready? Okay …

  We sat down and opened the menus, and he said, as casual as you like, ‘If you want a starter, we can’t have a dessert.’

  Puh-lease.

  So anyway, if anybody else out there has anything to share, I want to hear it!

  COMMENTS:

  LozLoz: LOL! I once went on a date with a guy, and he was looking at the menu and he said, ‘I can’t have tomatoes because they give me explosive diarrhoea.’ I counted the minutes after that.

  TinaTee: Went to a posh restaurant with this guy. He was some kind of football hooligan, I think. He spends like ten minutes looking at the menu without saying a word, just looking … angry. Then he calls the waiter over and says, ‘Listen, I ain’t being funny, but you couldn’t ask the chef to make me some chicken and chips or summink, couldja?’

  LozLoz: TinaTee What a catch!

  ShanraJ: TinaTee Don’t tell me, you married him.

  FridayFeeling: TinaTee Mmmm. Chicken and chips. A man after my own heart …

  CrossMyHeart: ‘At the moment I live with my mum.’ Cringe.

  TinaTee: CrossMyHeart Yeah. ‘I live with my parents.’ Why even say it?

  CatLover: CrossMyHeart Instant turn-off.

  Specs And The City: ‘I’m married, but definitely going to get a divorce.’ He was even wearing his wedding ring. I bet he’s still married …

  Starry Ubado: Makes a change, I’m guessing for a starter you usually eat dick. You dumb bitch. Dumb, dumb, stupid bitch.

  MissFortune: Starry Ubado What exactly is your problem?

  Starry Ubado: MissFortune Problem? The problem is whores like you, acting like you’re above men, when underneath you’re just a slut.

  TinaTee: Starry Ubado ???

  CatLover: Starry Ubado Go home, troll.

  LozLoz: Don’t feed the troll!

  Starry Ubado: Hope your next date gives you AIDS.

  MissFortune: Starry Ubado Get a life. Loser.

  Starry Ubado: MissFortune I know where you live. Bitch.

  This is actually beginning to get too much. I know it happens all the time, and that if you put stuff out there in the public domain then you’re bound to attract the odd nutcase, but I just don’t need the hassle and aggravation. It’s a blog about me going to parties and getting in taxis and eating in restaurants. What exactly is the problem with that? And now this guy, Starry Ubado (as if that’s his real name), he’s saying he knows where I live? I’m a good person. Okay, I’m not perfect, but I don’t deserve this. I’m pretty sure of that.

  So maybe I should just close the blog. Shut it down. But then why should I? Why should I let somebody like this troll dictate to me? I don’t know. This, and all the stuff about the noise and partying, I’m tired of it. I’m counting the days until Josh gets here and makes it all go away. It’s only a few weeks now. He’s working on an advert for Adidas, and he told me that I wouldn’t believe it, the amount of money they’ve got and that they can afford to waste. He told me that one of the people at Adidas didn’t like one of the camera angles, so they’ve got to call the whole cast of the advert back, just for one shot that lasts all of just under a second.

  I can hold on for him. I can do that. And no, actually, I won’t turn the blog off. Sorry, Starry, but you don’t matter. You don’t count. I’m young and I’m pretty and I’ve got an amazing man and I’m working on a great story, and I’m better than you, a lot better.

  So there.

  ten

  FORTUNE SAT ONE SIDE OF THE BOARDROOM TABLE, FACING Owen and the company lawyer on the other side. They were both younger than him, a good ten years at least, with neat hair, expensive suits, flawless complexions. They gave off a complacent aura of power. No, not power: privilege. Hell, what was the difference? Behind them was a huge glass window giving Fortune a view of downtown Dubai from thirty floors up, the city’s skyscrapers looking dirty and hazy through the smog and shimmer.

  ‘You look like hell,’ said Owen. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I came straight from the airport,’ said Fortune.

  ‘Yes, well, thanks for coming.’

  Fortune didn’t reply, just nodded.

  ‘This whole thing’s turning into a situation,’ Owen said. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I think it’s too early to tell,’ said Fortune. ‘We might find the missing money.’

  ‘Find it? Where? Under the fucking table?’ Owen ducked in his chair, had a look under the boardroom table. ‘Can’t see it.’

  ‘We switched servers,’ said Fortune. ‘So it might be that.’

  ‘Might be that,’ repeated Owen. He looked at the lawyer next to him; Jeremy, that was his name, Fortune remembered. ‘What happens if we don’t find it?’

  Jeremy lifted his eyebrows, like he was surprised at the question. ‘Well, obviously, we’d be up before the regulator. Doesn’t do to be losing people’s money.’

  ‘We’re insured,’ said Fortune.

  ‘We’re not insured against bad fucking publicity,’ said Owen. ‘Are we?’

  Fortune nodded, conceded Owen’s point. It was a good one.

  ‘I’m not losing my bonus over this,’ said Owen. ‘You understand me, Fortune? This is your mess, and you’re going to fucking clean it up. Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fortune.

  ‘Can’t hear you,’ said Owen.

  ‘Yes,’ Fortune said again, louder this time. He could feel Jeremy’s amused eyes watching him, enjoying his humiliation. These two men, younger than him, treating him like a naughty child. He felt his heart beat faster in anger. This was what he had worked decades for, sacrificed everything, his marriage, his family? For younger men to treat him with contempt?

  ‘Good,’ said Owen, settling back in his seat. There was silence around the table for some moments, and then Owen frowned at Fortune and said, ‘Well? Off you go.’

  The bank Fortune worked for was, he suspected, run the same way as the boarding schools most of its senior management had attended. Fear was the primary motivator. There was a culture of bullying from the top down. Do your job or else. The ‘else’ being public humiliation, scathing reviews, written warnings, a steady application of pressure. How many employees had he seen in tears? The busiest department in the bank, he imagined, was HR, though in Dubai the labour laws were lax to the point of non-existence. You got sacked for not putting in seventy-hour weeks? Tough. That’s life. Man up.

  Fortune had been a ball-breaker himself during the time he was climbing the ranks, not that he was proud of it. A taskmaster, a tyrant. But age had changed him, age and other things. Looking at the fifteen scared faces watching him from their seats in the ops department, he reminded himself that most of them hadn’t been home in two days.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, gently. ‘I know you’ve been working around the clock. I know you’re doing your best. Yes? We’ll work this out.’ He paused. ‘Now, can anybody tell me where we are?’

  There was silence, then Alex said, ‘It’s gone. All the money. Just …’ He shrugged. ‘Gone.’

  ‘Do we know how?’

  ‘Must have been hacked.’ Other people nodded. ‘It’s the only explanation.’

  ‘How can they have—’ began Fortune, but Alex interrupted.

  ‘We don’t know. We d
on’t know anything.’ He shrugged, tried a tired smile. ‘Just managing your expectations.’

  Fortune felt a burst of panicked adrenalin. This wasn’t good. As he rubbed his hands on his cheeks, he felt his mobile vibrate in his pocket and took it out, looked at it. It was Marsh; he recognized the number. He should take it. He looked at the faces of his team, watching him, hoping that he’d make it all right, tell them what to do. He cancelled Marsh’s call, put his phone away.

  ‘Okay. Sadler, what’s your take on this?’

  Sadler stood up. He was young, hardly more than a boy, but he knew his stuff. At a thousand dollars a day, Fortune thought, he’d better.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Sadler, ‘this isn’t some random hack. Somebody’s doing it for a reason, that’s what I think.’

  ‘What kind of reason?’ said Fortune.

  Sadler shrugged. ‘Don’t know. You need someone more forensic, someone who can walk it back, find out where the attack came from.’

  Fortune looked at Alex. ‘What can we do?’

  ‘We’ve changed encryption, put up another firewall. We should be secure.’

  ‘Should be?’

  Alex looked unhappy. ‘Shouldn’t have been able to do it the first time.’

  Fortune nodded. ‘All right. Everybody get some sleep, come back here first thing tomorrow. Do we think we can manage that?’

  The faces nodded, ambivalent, happy to be going home, knowing they’d be back in less than eight hours. It wasn’t long, and what they were coming back to wasn’t anything they wanted to deal with. He felt for them, but then, it was their job, how they made their living. And who said life was meant to be easy?

  Fortune sat back in the taxi as it swept smoothly past tower block after crane after crane after new tower block, along freshly built four-lane roads and past signs in Arabic and English, pointing travellers to airports and malls and business districts. He had always seen Dubai as a kind of Disneyland for adults, a business theme park where the costumed roles of Mickey and Donald were played by imported immigrant labour, Indian and Pakistani and Chinese, who cleaned and built and cooked and served, keeping the business class pampered and comfortable and entertained. It was a place of almost binary opposites, he thought as the highway’s Mercedes and BMWs gunned past workers on bicycles or on foot, carrying loads too heavy for them. The haves and the have-nots. Them and us. They lived behind the scenes, in slums outside the gleaming spires of downtown Dubai, filthy and neglected. He tried not to think about them. This wasn’t his country. What could he do?

  He called Marsh and listened to the call ring through to voicemail as he watched beggars knock at car windows at a red light. Eventually the taxi stopped outside his apartment building, a fifty-storey tower with a gym in the basement and a restaurant on the top floor, another halfway up. Fortune knew the man on the door by sight but not his name, although the man called him Mr Fortune as he opened the door for him. He took the lift to the seventeenth floor, walked along the tastefully lit corridor. The apartment was provided by the bank, a two-hundred-square-metre palace that made him feel, more than anything, like a lab mouse. The only difference between his apartment and a hotel suite was that here his suits were already hanging in the walk-in closets. No photos of family were on the walls, there was no food in the refrigerator. In the year or so he had lived there he had had no visitors.

  He checked his answer machine – no messages – and poured himself a Scotch. Sitting down and looking at his empty apartment, he could not help but think back to his daughter’s meagre possessions, her life stacked up in a damp garage. Psycho Bitch. The words came unbidden into his mind, ugly and cruel. His daughter. Could it be true, what Sam had told him about her? He thought back to her moods and unhappiness, her unreasonable behaviour. Maybe.

  This train of thought led Fortune to find his laptop, get online and look at his daughter’s blog. Perhaps he could gain an insight, find a clue, get a foothold in her psyche. Come to know her better, delve deeper into her life. It might be all that was left of her. He read a blog post about a party Sophie had gone to where the drinks had been served by women in bikinis on roller skates, and her unambiguous opinion of it. It was funny, intelligent and irreverent, and reading it, he could hear her voice, sarcastic and scathing and naturally rebellious. A voice he had never managed to enjoy in real life. He finished the post, read the comments below, the community his daughter had created, agreeing with her how it was demeaning, objectifying, patriarchal. Fortune had to agree. And then, at the bottom, a comment that stood out for its hatred and anger. Starry Ubado: You’re all sluts, so what’s the difference? Dumb whores on legs or on wheels, same fucking thing.

  He wondered at what would make somebody write such a thing, take the time to deliver such vitriol. It was just a story. A funny story, with attitude. Was that so bad?

  His mobile rang, interrupting his thoughts. He crossed to the kitchen bar and picked it up. Marsh. He closed his eyes and offered up a quick prayer: Please. Let it be Sophie. Let her be safe.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mr Fortune. Marsh.’

  ‘Yes?’ Keeping his voice steady.

  ‘I need you to come back to the UK.’

  ‘Sophie?’

  Marsh paused, and for a moment Fortune thought he had lost the connection. But then: ‘We’ve found a body.’

  ‘Is it Sophie?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ He walked to the window of his apartment, looked out over the lights of Dubai, the sun just set. He was aware that his heart was beating hard. ‘It is or it isn’t.’

  ‘We need your help. Identification. We can wait on DNA, but it’ll take time.’

  ‘Have you spoken to my wife?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Marsh hesitated. ‘Mr Fortune, I’ve met your wife, and I’ve met you. Honestly, I think you’re a better person to do this.’

  Fortune watched cars queuing at a junction below, street lights reflecting off their dark roofs. ‘That bad?’

  ‘I’m sorry. We can wait for the lab, if you’d prefer.’

  ‘No. No, I’ll come. Do you think it’s her?’

  Again, Marsh paused. Fortune waited. He could barely feel his legs, his feet on the thick carpet of his apartment. He had an impression of floating, all these floors up, floating over downtown Dubai. ‘Marsh? Do you think it’s her?’

  ‘It’s possible. It’s likely.’

  The cars pulled away from the junction; even from up here, Fortune could see the lights change from red to green. He put a hand to the window to steady himself. ‘I’ll come,’ he said again.

  ‘Call me when you land,’ Marsh said. ‘I’ll take you to her.’

  Opposite Fortune, a light blinked on top of a crane that had been constructed on the highest floor of a half-built skyscraper, on, off, on, off, to warn planes or helicopters, Fortune didn’t know. Her. Take you to her. To Sophie, my daughter. What did they do to you?

  ‘Will do.’ He hung up and stood at his window, looked out over the buildings of Dubai, their indifference, their haughty arrogance. This wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening. Slowly, he sat down on the thick carpet of his apartment, still looking out over his incredible view. What did they do to you?

  eleven

  IF ANYBODY READING THIS EVER DECIDES TO MOUNT A STING operation, believe me, it’s no stroll in the park. No, it’s a whole ton of work, and a colossal pain in the you-know-what (bum, if you don’t).

  Firstly, the whole thing needs signing off by editors, lawyers, an independent ethical adviser, and the entire management board of the magazine publishers. This board is made up of risk-averse middle-aged white men who will do anything, and I mean anything, to protect their share value. So not ideal, basically.

  Secondly, you need money. And to get the money, you have to go to the finance department and lay out your plan. And explaining your plan, which sounds pretty far-out even to me (and I thought of it), is tricky. Because they’re bean
-counters, and you’re an intrepid journalist. All they want to do is spend their money safely, while you want to live on the edge. So they look at you as if you’re mad, and it takes hours of wheedling, and pointing out the extra sales the story will generate, and assuring them that you’ve got it all worked out and signed off by editors, lawyers, board, etc., before they hand over the money. Very, very reluctantly.

  Thirdly, you’ve got to find the femme fatale who’s going to be doing the entrapment. Because this, my friends, is the classic honey trap for our underage-girl-loving celebrity, and it needs to run like a military operation. So the femme fatale has to know her story back to front, say the right things, and make all the right moves. And she’s got to be gorgeous. And at least eighteen. And look, at most, fifteen.

  Last, and definitely not least, is luring said celebrity into the trap. In reality, that’s the easiest bit, because we know where he’s going to be, so we just need to make sure our gorgeous, pouty, leggy fifteen-going-on-eighteen-year-old will be there. After that, it’s finger-crossing time.

  So anyway, that’s what I’ve spent the last weeks doing. Larry, the head of the magazine, has been coming by my desk every hour, with this worried look on his face, asking if everything’s okay, if I need anything, if I’m sure I want to go through with it. I get the feeling that he’d actually rather I didn’t do it at all. And of course nobody else on the magazine knows anything about it, it’s all hush-hush, not even Jessica. So everybody’s looking at me out of the corner of their eyes, whispering and speculating. Sample conversation:

  ‘Hi,’ says Jessica, brightly. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Okay,’ I say, cagily. ‘Not bad.’

  ‘What are you working on?’

  ‘Oh, you know. A couple of things. Nothing much.’

  Jessica sits on the edge of my desk and picks up a magazine, leafing through it in silence. This goes on for thirty seconds, then a minute, until she can contain it no longer and she throws the magazine down and says – no, whispers – furiously: