Troll Read online

  ‘Just tell me what it is, for God’s sake!’

  It’s all, if I’m honest, a bit stressful.

  D-Day is in six days’ time, and I’m not going to be able to sleep until it’s done, over, and my name is being talked about by every gutter journalist in the country. Hey, at least it’s an ambition.

  In other news, Sam hasn’t called me again about mystery noises and non-existent parties, which is something of a relief, since it means that I’m probably not going mad (FYI, I have, in the past, occasionally gone a bit mad). And Josh has reshot the scene that needed reshooting, and he says it’s just a matter of going through the rushes and re-editing, resubmitting, and his job is done. I have absolutely no issue with saying that I cannot wait.

  It’s weird, but in a week’s time, after I’ve got my story and Josh is here in my life, all this other stuff might just seem like a distant memory. I’ve got to hang in there for a few more days. How hard can that be?

  twelve

  FOR THE FIRST FEW SECONDS FORTUNE WASN’T SURE WHAT HE was looking at, couldn’t work it out. It was like a person, but at the same time not; more like a crude reassembling. Blonde hair, like Sophie’s. Pale skin, like Sophie’s. The mouth was a mess, and the eyes. He looked away, turned physically away and walked to the opposite wall of the morgue, as far from the body as he could get. Marsh covered it back up and watched him, gave him a moment, waited patiently.

  ‘What happened to her?’ Fortune said. He didn’t look at Marsh, spoke to the floor.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Marsh. ‘All we know is she was murdered. No hands, the teeth were … damaged. She’d been underwater for some time.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Fortune rubbed his eyes, his face. ‘Horrible.’

  ‘Is it your daughter?’

  Fortune didn’t answer, worked the heel of his hand into his forehead.

  ‘Mr Fortune? I know it’s difficult. Is she your daughter?’

  Fortune took his hand away from his face. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘No tattoos, no birthmarks?’

  ‘You already asked. No. Not as far as I know. My wife, too. No.’

  ‘Okay. I’m going to need you to look again. Look carefully.’

  Fortune shook his head. ‘No. There’s no way.’

  Marsh sighed, looked at Fortune and nodded. ‘I understand. We’ll wait on the lab.’

  ‘Earring.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘At the top of her ear.’ Fortune thought. ‘Her left ear. In the …’

  ‘Cartilage.’

  ‘Right.’ Fortune had lost it, when she’d come home. Had asked her what she thought she was doing, how was she going to get a job looking like that, did she know the impression it gave? He’d asked her if she was doing drugs, the two things, in his outraged father’s mind, inextricably linked. She’d looked at him with contempt and hadn’t said anything. Not a word; just looked at him. ‘There should be a piercing, right?’

  ‘Should be.’ Marsh hesitated. ‘Left ear?’

  Fortune thought again, pictured his daughter, remembered her sullen look. ‘Yes. Left.’

  ‘You might want to turn around.’

  Marsh walked to the body. It was on a metal table and Fortune turned away from it, closed his eyes, held his breath.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Marsh. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Sure.’

  A brief silence, then: ‘No. Definitely not.’

  ‘Then it’s not her.’

  ‘Okay. Okay, that’s … Okay. Thank you.’

  ‘Can I go?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry. That you had to see this.’

  Fortune didn’t answer, just pushed the door to the morgue open and walked out, away from the chemical smell and the cold, wishing that he could erase what he had just seen from his mind. Some things you couldn’t unsee. Some things would stay with you for ever.

  Fortune’s wife had come down to London and was waiting in her hotel lobby for him to call. She broke down when he told her that the body wasn’t Sophie. Thank God, she said, oh thank God, thank God, while Fortune stayed silent on the other end, listening to her cry in relief. He asked her if she wanted him to come, to be with her, but she said no, there was no need. An hour later, she called him back and told him that, actually, they should speak, that they had arrangements to discuss.

  ‘What kind of arrangements?’

  ‘About us. The house. What we do.’

  ‘It can’t wait?’

  ‘Wait for what? You’re here, I’m here. Let’s be adults about this.’

  ‘Adults.’ Fortune didn’t like the sound of that. It meant unpleasant conversations and harsh truths. He’d rather do it remotely, by email, through intermediaries, get someone else to deal with his shortcomings as a husband and father, manage the fallout. Wasn’t that what lawyers were for, what they were paid to do? But instead he said, ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’ll book a restaurant. No reason why we can’t do this pleasantly.’

  ‘No,’ Fortune said, though he didn’t believe it. What was pleasant about your wife leaving you? Well, throwing you out. Call it what it was. ‘Let’s do that.’

  Now he was sitting opposite her in an Italian restaurant in Mayfair, wondering what to say. He wasn’t sure why she’d chosen the place, somewhere so expensive. The tablecloth was crisp, the glasses fine, brittle, rather like the atmosphere, he thought. The waiter brought a bottle of Chianti and poured some for Fortune to taste. He smelled, swilled, tried it and nodded. ‘Fine. Thank you.’

  ‘I want the house,’ said his wife. She was wearing a black dress and heels that showed off her calves, which remained shapely after all these years. In fact, she looked wonderful. It occurred to Fortune that she must be having an affair, that she was seeing somebody else, and the instant the thought struck him, he accepted it as a self-evident fact. She wasn’t keeping herself attractive for him. They hadn’t had sex in a decade, and never would again. He closed his eyes. There was no love, no affection, nothing left for them. He had failed, and now his wife was as lost to him as his daughter was.

  ‘Fortune?’ his wife said.

  ‘Where would I live?’ said Fortune.

  ‘You don’t live there anyway. What difference would it make?’

  ‘When I retire.’

  ‘Retire? You? What would you do without work?’

  Fortune didn’t answer, hadn’t thought about it. He drank wine and waited for his wife to say something. She was dangerous, he thought. Out for all she could get. Good on her. She probably deserved it. No, she definitely did.

  ‘You’re not going to make things difficult, are you?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because I can tell you, and I’ve taken advice, you’re not in a strong position. After what happened.’

  That again, after all these years. Would she ever let him forget it? ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  Fortune sighed. ‘Just like that.’

  He had imagined that placation was the way to go, that non-resistance would be the easiest course. But it seemed to make his wife angry, infuriate her, though he could not imagine why.

  ‘You really don’t care, do you?’ she said.

  ‘I care,’ said Fortune. ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘And never did.’

  ‘Jean,’ said Fortune, ‘what do you want from me?’

  ‘Only what I always wanted. For you to give a damn. About me and Sophie.’

  ‘I came back from Dubai. I looked at a murdered girl’s face.’

  ‘You came back from Dubai. What a sacrifice.’ Jean laughed, shook her head. ‘Left your precious work.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to do this pleasantly.’

  She didn’t answer that, instead picked up a menu and opened it. She pretended to read it for a couple of seconds, then put it down again, slowly and purposefully, and looked at Fortune.

  ‘Did you ever wonder what it was like? For me? Dealing with Sophie on my own?
’

  ‘Jean …’

  ‘You knew nothing about her. Nothing. Did you know she was having problems at work? That she thought people were out to get her, causing her trouble?’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She took an angry swig of wine and Fortune wondered if she’d had a couple before she came out. ‘I told her I couldn’t help. I said she needed to speak to someone. A professional. We argued.’ She closed her eyes. ‘That was the last time I spoke to her.’

  ‘You think she was right? People were out to get her?’

  ‘Who knows? No, no, I don’t. She wasn’t making sense. She sounded … unwell. Unstable.’

  Pyscho Bitch. The ugly words came back into Fortune’s mind, unwelcome, impossible to erase. ‘Problems at work?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know. I don’t know what was going on.’ She picked up the menu again, again put it back down. ‘This was a bad idea.’

  ‘Jean …’

  She swallowed the last of her wine. Definitely, thought Fortune, she’s definitely had a few. She’d never been a good drunk; it had always awoken something malicious inside her. She handed her glass to Fortune, who filled it.

  ‘I want the house,’ she said.

  ‘You said. And I said, fine.’

  ‘Good.’ She nodded. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Listen, Jean … I just want to say …’ Fortune stopped, took a breath, as if he was about to take a leap into the unknown. ‘I know I wasn’t there for you, or for Sophie. I don’t know, I can’t tell you why. I was … I just wasn’t good at it.’

  Jean laughed, a derisory sound, but said nothing, so Fortune ploughed on, not looking at his wife, instead at a patch of tablecloth just past his plate.

  ‘I want to say sorry. For all of the things I did, or didn’t do. For all the things I got wrong.’ Now he looked up and saw that Jean was watching him with no emotion, none at all. ‘That’s all,’ he finished, meekly and quietly.

  She kept gazing at him for some moments, then said flatly, ‘Oh, well that’s okay then. That’s fine.’

  ‘Jean …’

  ‘After twenty years of, of what, of misery … you’re sorry? Your daughter spends her adolescence trying to kill herself while you hide at work, can’t hear any cries for help from there, right? And now she’s disappeared and you’re sorry?’ She stood up, pushed her chair back. A couple at the next table were watching, a man at the table behind Jean turning.

  ‘Twenty years,’ she said, raising her voice now that she was standing. ‘That’s how too late this is. Twenty years.’

  Fortune put his hands up, showed her his palms. ‘All right. All right, Jean, please. Sit down.’ The couple exchanged words, the woman’s eyes big and round.

  ‘Where were you?’ Jean said. ‘Every time she needed you, needed a father, where were you?’ She ran out of words, stood still for a moment before knocking her glass of wine over, with force, so that the spilt wine reached Fortune, soaked his shirt. He heard the woman at the next table breathe in, a gasp of excitement. Jean turned and walked out, slightly unsteady on her heels, the muscles of her calves visible beneath her nylons.

  Fortune mopped at his shirt with his napkin, trying to ignore the looks of the other diners. He couldn’t blame her, he couldn’t. She was right. And he’d been wrong, done everything wrong, all of their daughter’s life.

  Back in his hotel room, Fortune lay on his bed and closed his eyes. He was tired, so tired. He let his thoughts drift to the edge of sleep, but was snatched back to reality by his mobile.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mr Fortune? It is, ah, Dr Aziz.’

  ‘Oh. Hello.’

  ‘Yes, ah, you, we, there was an appointment. We had …’ Fortune listened to Dr Aziz clear his throat. ‘Ah, you had an appointment.’

  Dr Aziz was a man who took his time getting to the end of a sentence. An irony, Fortune thought, given that he was the man who had told Fortune how little time he had left.

  ‘I know,’ Fortune said. ‘I had to fly back to the UK.’

  ‘You are in the UK?’

  ‘Yes. There’s been a …’ What to say? ‘My daughter is missing.’

  ‘Oh my, ah, my goodness,’ said Dr Aziz. ‘I am very sorry.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Fortune.

  ‘You will come, ah, you will return to Dubai, ah, soon?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘You are missing your, ah, your treatment.’

  More chemotherapy. Like the previous treatments had done anything, had made any difference. ‘I don’t think I’m going to continue the treatment,’ said Fortune.

  ‘But Mr, ah, Mr Fortune, without it … without it, you, ah …’

  ‘And with it?’ said Fortune. ‘It’s not as if it’s going to cure me.’ He thought of the X-ray Aziz had shown him, of his lungs. There had been misty swirls in them, like smoke trapped permanently inside, steadily growing and spreading.

  ‘Of course it might. Of course, we must never rule out, ah … And certainly, ah, possibly, or even probably, Mr Fortune, it will, ah, prolong your life.’

  Fortune thought of his wife. Of his daughter, missing, long abandoned by him. Wondered just what his life was worth. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘But still.’

  ‘Mr Fortune—’ began Dr Aziz, but Fortune interrupted.

  ‘I’m in the UK,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you when I’m back.’ He hung up on the doctor’s protesting voice, turned his phone off and lay back on his bed. He felt numb, detached from what was happening. From the cancer that was silently killing him, from his daughter’s disappearance, the dreadful sight in the morgue. It occurred to him that he might be in shock. He didn’t know. Didn’t care. He closed his eyes and tried not to picture the girl in the morgue, the face that made no sense. It wasn’t Sophie. No, it wasn’t Sophie. But he now knew what was possible, what people were capable of. There was horror out there, pure horror.

  thirteen

  High Times and Miss Fortune: Last Night a GI Saved My Life

  I went out to the magazine’s Christmas party last night. Dressed to the, well, sevens at least. Maybe eights. LBD, heels, nails, the lot. I thought I looked pretty good. And I suffer from low self-esteem, among other things (too boring to go into now), so I actually probably looked getting-on-for-amazing.

  Anyway, whatever. I was tottering along Great Portland Street in my £500 shoes, feeling like a million dollars, or at least a million roubles, and I passed this homeless person, a young man. And these are the thoughts that went through my mind, in quick succession:

  That’s so sad I wonder what happened to him to be homeless God he’s so young I’m wearing really expensive shoes it’s cold tonight shit I can’t just walk past but I haven’t got any change sod it I’ve got a job and money and he hasn’t I’ll give him a tenner.

  So I did. And he said thank you, and smiled, and I smiled back. And at that moment, at that precise moment, I felt much better than I looked.

  And then I go to the magazine’s party and drink shots and dance and giggle and have an awesome time, the kind of awesome time that when you think back on it is just this crazy montage of lights and music and laughing.

  So anyway, here’s when things go dark. I’m tottering (properly tottering now) back to the Tube, and out of nowhere this guy grabs my arm. He’s wearing a mask over his mouth, it looks like some kind of bandanna.

  I’m too scared to even react, to even try to get away, it’s like I’m just rooted to the spot and my scalp’s gone all cold and all down my back, too. I’m in total shutdown panic mode. He looks at me and all I can really see is his eyes, and he says, quite slowly and calmly, ‘Ever wondered what it’s like to be ugly?’ He holds up a bottle with the arm that’s not holding me; it looks like a washing-up liquid bottle, something like that, and it’s full and I can see the liquid inside it. Still I can’t scream but I do start pulling away from him, though not as hard as I should, not as hard as I know I can. What’s the matter with me?
And I know that it’s acid he has in the bottle and that this is really, really bad.

  The next thing, the homeless man’s there and he’s pulled the other guy off me, and pushed him away. No, not pulled him off me, thrown him off me and out into the street. The man with the mask is on his hands and knees, and he turns his head to look at us, slowly, like I’d imagine a wolf would turn to look at possible prey. Then a car approaches and he gets up and walks, then runs, away.

  And then the homeless guy asks me if I’m okay, and when I nod and thank him he stops me and says, ‘You think I’d forget you?’

  It turns out Jake, that’s his name, is an ex-soldier who couldn’t readjust to life on the outside. I took him for a coffee after the police left, but he wouldn’t accept any more money. He was nice, funny, troubled. Okay, so he wasn’t exactly a GI. But he was all hero.

  COMMENTS:

  LozLoz: Oh my God. Are you okay? Acid? How many sick bastards are out there? Get well, honey!

  TinaTee: Stay strong!

  CatLover: Hope the police catch him. Frightening.

  Starry Ubado: I liked your shoes. Red. Made you look like the whore you are. Next time you won’t get off so easy.

  LozLoz: Tell me they weren’t really red.

  LozLoz: Sophie?

  LozLoz: Your shoes. Were they red?

  I’m done with this blog. Done, done, over. It’s time to pull the plug. Yes, my shoes were red, bright red. The first thing I did after I read the comment was go to the police. And you know what they told me? This desk sergeant and his colleague, a disapproving woman in civilian clothes who looked at me like I smelt bad, told me there was nothing they could do, because a crime hadn’t been committed.

  ‘Knowing the colour of somebody’s shoes isn’t against the law,’ the woman said. I had the feeling she was trying not to smile. I could have slapped her, except of course I was in a police station, which is just about the worst place to go around slapping people, regardless of how supercilious they are.