‘Want a tea?’ she asked as the kettle boiled.
‘Lovely, thanks,’ said Pat, e-cigarette waggling as she continued typing.
Robin made both of them drinks then returned to the inner office, closed the door and resumed her seat at the partners’ desk. After staring abstractedly at the Groomer file for a few seconds, Robin pushed it aside, turned on the PC and typed ‘ink black heart animation’ into Google.
‘Indie cartoon attracts cult following… ’ ‘breakout success… ’ ‘From YouTube to Hollywood: will The Ink Black Heart find big screen favour?’
Robin opened YouTube, found episode one of the cartoon, and pressed play.
An eerie, tinkling piano played over swirling, animated mist, which slowly cleared to reveal tombstones by moonlight. The shot tracked through stone angels overgrown with ivy until a translucent female figure was revealed, standing alone, pearly white among the graves.
‘Sad, so very sad,’ sighed the ghost, and although her face was rendered simply, it was odd how sinister her little smile was.
She turned and drifted off through the graves, dissolving into the darkness. In the foreground, with an unpleasant squelch, something shiny and black appeared to burst out of the ground. It turned to face the viewer, and Robin saw that it was a jet-black human heart with a smiling, innocent face completely at odds with its otherwise grotesque appearance. Robin vaguely registered the sound of the glass door outside opening again, as the heart waved a severed artery and said, in the jaunty timbre of a children’s television presenter:
‘Hello! I’m Harty. I live here in Highgate Cemetery with my friends. You might be wondering why I didn’t decay—’
There was a knock on the inner door and Midge walked in without waiting for a response.
‘—well, that’s because I’m evil!’
‘Oh, sorry,’ said Midge, ‘I thought it was your afternoon off. I need the—’
She broke off, looking disconcerted, and moved around behind Robin to look at the screen, where Harty was now bounding between graves, introducing a variety of characters crawling out of the ground to join him.
‘You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me,’ said Midge, looking appalled. ‘You an’ all?’
Robin muted the cartoon.
‘What d’you mean, me and all?’
‘My ex was fookin’ obsessed with that bloody cartoon. It’s shit. Like something you’d make up when you were tripping.’
‘I’ve never seen it before today,’ said Robin. ‘One of the creators was just in here, wanting us to do a job for her.’
‘Who – what’s-her-name Ledwell?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin, surprised that Midge had the name on the tip of her tongue.
Correctly reading Robin’s expression, Midge said,
‘Beth hated her.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘No idea,’ said Midge. ‘That fandom’s toxic. “Play the game, bwah!”’ she added in a squeaky voice.
‘What?’ said Robin, half-laughing.
‘It’s one of the catchphrases. In the cartoon. Beth was always sayin’ it if I didn’t wanna do something. “Play the game, bwah!” Fookin’ ridiculous. She used to play the fookin’ game, too. Online.’
‘The one made by Anomie?’ said Robin, interested.
‘No idea who made it. Childish bollocks,’ said Midge, picking the Groomer file off the desk. ‘Mind if I take this? Got notes to add.’
‘Carry on.’
As Midge left the room, Robin’s mobile rang: it was Strike. She pressed pause on the muted cartoon.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ said Strike, who sounded as though he was somewhere busy: she could hear traffic. ‘Sorry, I know it’s your afternoon off—’
‘No problem,’ said Robin, ‘I’m still at the office. I’ve got a flat viewing in Acton at six; there didn’t seem much point going home first.’
‘Ah, OK,’ said Strike. ‘I wondered how you’d feel about swapping jobs tomorrow? It’d be more convenient for me to do Sloane Square instead of Camden.’
‘Yeah, that’s fine,’ said Robin. On the computer screen in front of her, the black heart stood frozen, pointing into the dark doorway of a mausoleum.
‘Thanks, appreciate it,’ said Strike. ‘Everything all right?’ he added, because he detected an odd note in Robin’s voice.
‘Fine, it’s just – we had a Gateshead in just now. Well, Pat thought she was a Gateshead. She wasn’t really. Have you ever heard of The Ink Black Heart?’
‘No. What is it, a pub?’
‘A cartoon,’ said Robin, pressing play again. The animation was still muted: Harty backed fearfully away from a figure emerging slowly from the tomb’s doorway. It was large, hunched and cloaked in black, with an exaggerated beak-like face. ‘One of the creators wanted us to investigate a fan who’s giving her grief online.’
‘Huh,’ said Strike. ‘What did you say?’
‘That we had no room, but I told her Patterson Inc and McCabes both do cyber-investigation.’
‘Hm. I don’t love giving Patterson work.’
‘I wanted to help her,’ said Robin with a trace of defensiveness. ‘She was in a bit of a state.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Strike. ‘Well, thanks for the swap, I owe you one.’
After Strike had rung off, Robin unmuted the cartoon. She watched for another minute or so, but couldn’t make much sense of it. Perhaps she’d missed key plot points while it was on mute, but on balance she had to agree with Midge: except that it was beautifully animated, it had the air of a stoner’s macabre fantasy.
She was just about to turn off the PC when Pat knocked and entered the room again.
‘This was in the bathroom,’ said Pat, brandishing the cardboard folder. ‘That scruffy girl must’ve left it. It was on top of the cistern.’
‘Oh,’ said Robin, taking it. ‘Right… well, she might come back for it. If not, we should find an address to send it on to. You couldn’t have a quick look and see whether she’s got an agent or something, could you, Pat? Her name’s Edie Ledwell.’
Pat gave a sniff that clearly implied she liked Edie Ledwell no better for having forgotten her folder, and left the room.
Robin waited for the door to close before opening the folder. Edie had printed out a large number of Anomie’s tweets, which she’d annotated in distinctive swooping handwriting.
Anomie had more than fifty thousand Twitter followers. Robin started flicking through the tweets, which were now out of date order, having fallen to the floor.
Anomie
@AnomieGamemaster
Those buying Fedwell’s sob stories of poverty should know her well-off uncle gave her 2 big lots of cash in early noughties. #EdieLiesWell
4.21 pm 22 Sep 2011
Edie had written beneath the tweet: Anomie calls me either ‘Greedie Fedwell’ because I’m a recovered bulimic and because obviously I only care about money or ‘Edie Lieswell’ because I’m supposed to lie non-stop about my past and about my inspiration. It’s true my uncle gave me some cash. £200 the first time and then £500. I was homeless the second time. He gave me the money and told me he couldn’t do anything else for me. Josh knows this and could easily have told Seb.
Robin turned to the next page.
Anomie
@AnomieGamemaster
Fedwell laughs in private about basing prize bitch Paperwhite on black ex-flatmate by name of Shereece Summers. Keep punching down Greedie.