‘Morehouse always said to me, “He’s a guy, don’t go saying he’s a girl in front of him, you’ll be banned,” but I knew she was pretending to be a boy, probably for the same kind of reasons I was. After Morehouse made that sister comment, I went to find out whether he had one, because I thought, well, why not, maybe they are brother and sister.’
‘And has Morehouse got a sister?’ asked Robin, keeping her tone neutral.
‘Yes, but I knew she couldn’t be Anomie. She’s a lawyer. She just can’t be.’
‘So,’ said Robin, ‘you’d found out who Morehouse really was by that time?’
A long pause followed. Finally, Rachel nodded.
‘And,’ she said miserably, ‘that’s what ended our friendship. He’d warned me to never, ever try and find out who he really was. I didn’t think he was serious, but he was, because when I told him I’d identified him he went ballistic. I was really upset and… I tried to apologise, but he wouldn’t private-channel me…
‘Then I got really pissed off, because it wasn’t as though I was going to expose him on Twitter or anything, he was my friend. And then, one night, I got drunk in my bedroom, and I was on the moderator channel and – and I made a kind of joke about something I knew about him… and that was it. He went apeshit. He’s only spoken to me privately once since, and that was when he attacked me for telling Paperwhite he’s disabled, but I never told her. She probably just remembered the stupid joke I made about him doing wheelies… like, in his wheelchair…’
‘He’s in a wheelchair?’ said Robin, her thoughts flying irresistibly to Inigo Upcott. Rachel nodded, then burst into tears again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said through her sobs. ‘If Paperwhite hadn’t arrived we might’ve made it up, but the two of them became, like, best friends really fast, and he didn’t have any time for me any more…’
Robin passed Rachel another tissue and waited for the worst of her sobs to subside before saying quietly,
‘How did you find out who Morehouse really was?’
‘He made a mistake on Twitter,’ said Rachel in a broken voice, as she frantically mopped her eyes. ‘He accidentally posted a link on the Morehouse account instead of his personal one. He realised what he’d done after about ten seconds and deleted it, but I’d spotted it, so I went and found the link.
‘It went to some crazy astrophysics research project at Cambridge University. He’d told me a few things about himself, when we were private-channelling in the game, so I kind of had clues. He said he was older than me, but he wouldn’t tell me his real age, and he said he’d made the game with Anomie for fun, because it was, like, a nice break from his work, because it was so high pressure. I guessed he was brown-skinned, because he once called himself perma-tanned when I said I had sunburn, and one of the surnames on the research project was Indian.
‘So then I went onto the Cambridge website and looked up the astrophysics department and different colleges and stuff and finally I found a photo of him, in his wheelchair, posing with all the other researchers.
Rachel flushed again.
‘He’s really good-looking. I can see why Paperwhite’s so into him… Anyway, then I had his real name, so I went back onto Twitter and found his personal account, where he tweets about space and posts pictures of Cambridge and stuff.
‘He’s got cerebral palsy. I think it must be quite bad, because he talked about having to adapt his computer and stuff. I think,’ said Rachel naively, ‘he must be a kind of genius, because he doesn’t look that old… Anyway…’
She turned to look directly at Robin again. As the dappled light fell onto her tear-stained face, Robin was struck anew by her strong resemblance to Edie.
‘You won’t tell him it was me who helped you find him?’
‘Of course not,’ said Robin.
Rachel took a deep breath, then said,
‘OK. His name’s Vikas Bhardwaj, and he’s a doctor in astrophysics at Gonville and Caius College.’
83
They are all of them so faithless,
Their torment is your gain;
Would you keep your own heart scathless,
Be the one to give the pain.
‘The only entry I can find for a Dr Vikas Bhardwaj under thirty is in Birmingham,’ said Strike, three-quarters of an hour later in the Three Cottages Café, after he’d heartily congratulated Robin on her successful interview, then opened 192.com on his phone. ‘Might it be his parents’ house?’
‘Could be where he’s registered to vote,’ said Robin, ‘but let’s call them first, rather than drive to Cambridge and back up again.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Strike, getting up. ‘I can have a quick smoke outside.’
He returned five minutes later.
‘Yeah, he’s in Cambridge. I think I’ve just talked to his mum. She said he’s “at his college”.’
‘Bloody typical. We passed him on the way up here,’ said Strike once he and Robin were back in the BMW and heading back south on the M11. ‘Could’ve paid him a visit after I’d had that coffee and bar of sawdust at the services.’
The sun dazzled them again as they drove south.
‘Maybe it’s best we beard him in his den by night,’ said Strike. ‘Probably in the lab all day.’
‘It’s Sunday. Maybe he’ll be out at the pub.’
‘Then we’ll wait for him. I’ll sleep outside his room if I have to. Thanks to you, we’re bloody close to cracking this case.’
‘There was something else Rachel said, that I haven’t told you yet,’ Robin told him. ‘It’s not relevant to Vikas or Anomie, but it’s still odd.
‘She said she first found The Ink Black Heart through a boy she used to talk to, online, on a site for kids called Club Penguin. He called himself Zoltan…’
Robin related the story of Zoltan, his attempts to turn Rachel into a girlfriend once he’d found out she was Edie’s niece, his sudden, violent threats when she’d told him to stop pestering her and then the deletion of his accounts.
‘… but the funny thing is,’ said Robin, ‘the chat-up lines Zoltan started trying to use on Rachel, I’ve had used on me by random blokes hanging round the fandom. Exactly the same. It’s like they’re working off a blueprint.’
‘Lines, like what?’ said Strike, preparing to be amused.
‘Well, one of them was “if that’s your real picture you’re probably sick to death of blokes direct messaging you so I’ll go now”. I set up my Twitter account so anyone could message me, because I wanted to talk to as many Ink Black Heart fans as I could. Obviously, it wasn’t my real picture, I used a stock photo of a teenage girl. Anyway, it was all very self-deprecating and unthreatening, you know, but when I didn’t respond he got aggressive, fast. I was a stuck-up bitch who thought I was too good for him.’
‘Say his opening line again?’ said Strike, now frowning.