Robin considered her answer for a few seconds before texting back:
Why, what’s happened?
Pez’s answer came almost immediately.
I’ve had the fucking police round. Some arsehole’s told them I’m that guy was trolling Edie. Now they’re saying I need to go into hiding. Some far-right nutters are after the troll. The same guys that are all over the news
OMG, Robin texted back. Are you serious?
She had a strong feeling she was about to be asked to lend Pez her sofa, and sure enough:
Couldn’t come and crash at yours, could I?
I’m really sorry, Robin replied, we’ve got two people staying.
Yeah a lot of my mates have got ‘people staying’ now I’ve got terrorists after me
I’m sorry, Robin texted back, it’s true. Let me know where you’re staying? I could come over and cheer you up.
She didn’t have the slightest intention of going to meet Pez, but she could think of no other way of persuading him to tell her his location so that they could keep track of him. However, probably irritated that she hadn’t offered him sanctuary, he didn’t respond. In one way, Robin was relieved: she wasn’t sure her nerves were equal to an evening of text flirtation with Pez Pierce, who might yet prove to be the person Strike believed had cut the throat of the young genius in Cambridge and left him to choke to death on his own blood.
Her upstairs neighbour was once again playing loud music, and for the first time the pounding bass bothered Robin: she wanted to be able to hear unusual noises. Having finished her dinner and washed up, she tried to settle down to examine Lepine’s Disciple’s Twitter account but found it hard to concentrate. When Strike called, she seized the phone with relief.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How did it go with—?’
‘You won’t fucking believe this,’ said Strike.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Ever since Comic Con, Yasmin’s been pretending to be Anomie for hours at a stretch, but she hasn’t kept a note of exactly when she’s been doing it. She twigged that the woman who’d interviewed her was you after she saw your picture in the paper, told Anomie she’d been interviewed by an undercover detective, and Anomie then blackmailed her into impersonating them in the game.’
‘What?’
‘So every fucking suspect we ruled out since Comic Con is back in.’
‘But that’s—’
‘Just about every fucker we suspected in the first place, barring Seb Montgomery. I’m going to have to sit down and work it out, but Jesus Christ, we didn’t need this. I thought we were down to two people. And as far as Paperwhite goes…’
‘Well,’ said Robin, once Strike had finished telling her everything Yasmin had said about Paperwhite and struggling to find any trace of a silver lining, ‘well, that’s something. Redhead, pretty, young, lives miles away from London…’
‘Yeah, it narrows it down to a few hundred thousand women. If you’ve got any good ideas about how we identify which of them is Paperwhite, call me back,’ said Strike.
After they’d said goodbye, Robin sat for a few moments, shocked and dismayed by the new development, until a bang out in the hallway made her jump. She turned in her chair, staring towards the landing. Her front door was secure, the alarm was on, so it was absurd – wasn’t it? – to worry that anyone was trying to get in. After a few seconds, in which she felt her heart beat far more rapidly than was normal in a healthy, stationary woman, she got slowly to her feet and walked to the door, pressing her ear against it and wishing she had a spyhole. She could hear nothing. Doubtless somebody walking upstairs had dropped something, yet the image of Vikas Bhardwaj, murdered in his wheelchair, throat agape, eyes dull, suddenly re-intruded itself into her mind’s eye.
For the first time since finding Vikas’s body, Robin’s thoughts jumped to Rachel Ledwell. The girl must have heard Vikas was dead by now.
And then an idea hit Robin with the jarring surprise of an electric shock. Hurrying back to her laptop, she clicked away from Lepine’s Disciple’s Twitter feed, brought up direct messages, opened the conversation she’d previously had with Rachel, and began to type.
Rachel, it’s me, Robin. I assume you’ve seen the dreadful news about Vikas. I’m so sorry.
I’m now trying to make sure nobody else gets hurt. If you can, please message me back. There’s something you might be able to help me with.
Stop Anomie
Robin knew perfectly well that the girl might not be on Twitter right now, that she might be so thoroughly and understandably repulsed by the online world that it would be hours or even days before she saw the message. Even so, Robin stared at the screen as though she could will Rachel onto Twitter with the power of her mind, and then saw three dots appear beneath her own message: Rachel was typing.
Was Vikas already dead when you got there?
Penny Peacock
Yes. It’s awful. I’m so sorry, Rachel. I can imagine how you’re feeling.
Stop Anomie
Robin waited on tenterhooks.
Do you know who did it? Do the police?
Penny Peacock
Not yet.
Stop Anomie
There was a pause of around a minute. Robin was about to type again when she saw the three dots, and after another minute a far longer message from Rachel appeared.
I’m so scared. I’ve been crying non-stop. My mum thinks I’m depressed, she wants to take me to the doctor, but I can’t tell her what’s really going on. Do you think it was someone from the Halvening? Vikas wanted to kick LordDrek and Vilepechora out of the game because he was convinced they were Halvening. Maybe they killed him in revenge. Maybe he found out who they really are, he could have done, he was really clever, and he called the police? I saw all those arrests on the news today and I’ve been sitting here reading all the news reports and reading what people think on Twitter. I thought the police might say the Halvening killed Vikas, but they haven’t.
Penny Peacock
I don’t know much more than you do right now, but I do want to stop anyone else getting hurt.
Stop Anomie
But the Halvening have all been arrested.
Penny Peacock
Robin began to type, but at the same time three dots appeared, so she stopped and waited for Rachel’s new message.
You think Anomie did it
Penny Peacock
Robin hesitated, wondering how best to proceed.
Not necessarily, although the last time I was in the game, Anomie was behaving quite strangely for someone whose friend’s just been murdered.
Stop Anomie
Strange, how?
Penny Peacock
Very cold and matter-of-fact. It didn’t seem natural.
Stop Anomie
The longest pause yet ensued, but then the three dots reappeared, and another long message from Rachel followed shortly afterwards:
this is like a nightmare. I keep remembering something really weird Vilepechora said ages ago. it was when Morehouse came on the mod channel to tell Vile and LordDrek to get out of the game. They denied being Halvening and then Vile said for a joke that Anomie murdered Edie and used Bitcoin to buy the knife and the taser. Vile said Anomie knew all about that kind of dark web stuff. I never saw Anomie talking about cryptocurrency but now I’m thinking maybe she and Vilepechora discussed it on a private channel. I got really angry about them all talking like that about my aunt getting killed, like it was funny, and I left the channel. But ever since I saw what happened to Vikas I’ve just been going round and round in my head, because Anomie was always joking that she’d stabbed Josh and Edie. And it could have been a girl who’s done it all, because Josh and Edie were tasered first so they couldn’t fight back, and Vikas couldn’t have fought back from his wheelchair could he?