<A new private channel has opened>
<10 April 2015 23.37>
<Hartella invites Morehouse>
Hartella: Morehouse, hun,don’t do this, please.
Hartella: there’s no way LordDrek’s Halvening!
Hartella: please don’t tell Anomie that I know this, because I’ve broken rule 14, but LordDrek’s black!
Hartella: so how can he be a white supremacist?!
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Hartella: Morehouse?
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<Hartella has left the channel>
<Private channel has closed>
<A new private channel has opened>
<10 April 2015 23.41>
<LordDrek invites Vilepechora>
<Vilepechora has joined the channel>
LordDrek: SHUT THE FUCK UP NOW
LordDrek: I’m not fkn kidding
LordDrek: tell me the truth: have yhou been talking to Anomie about Bitcoin?
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Vilepechora: yeah, a bit
LordDrek: you stupid arsehole
LordDrek: what did I say to you when we started this job? we’re just a pair of poxy nerds who’re obsessed with a fucking cartoon
LordDrek: what else have you been giving him instructions on?
Vilepechora: nothing
LordDrek: well we do not need that prick Morehouse going to the pigs about us
LordDrek: so shut the fuck up and follow my lead
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LordDrek: if I find out you’ve been swinging your dick in here telling Anomie how to buy stuff untraceably
Vilepechora: I haven’t
LordDrek: you’d better fucking not have done
Vilepechora: I haven’t
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LordDrek: I’ll see you tomorrow at Mum and Dad’s
LordDrek: and we’ll talk more there
<LordDrek has left the channel>
<Vilepechora has left the channel>
<Private channel has closed>
<A new private channel has opened>
<10 April 2015 23.46>
<Paperwhite invites Morehouse>
Paperwhite: you’re my fkn hero
<Morehouse has joined the channel>
Paperwhite: it’s only what the rest of us have been too scared to say.
Morehouse: It’s them or me and Anomie needs me a fuck sight more than he needs them.
Morehouse: He couldn’t have done any of this without me. His coding’s shit.
Morehouse: I’m mad enough right now to tell you who he is.
Paperwhite: don’t
Paperwhite: you’d hate yourself afterwards
Paperwhite: he’s still your friend
Morehouse: is he?
Paperwhite: you told me you were really close
Morehouse: not recently
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Morehouse: sometimes I think he did it
Paperwhite: did what?
Morehouse: What d’you think?
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Paperwhite: come off it
Paperwhite: that’s crazy
Paperwhite: why would he?
Morehouse: literally all he cares about is Drek’s Game
Morehouse: being in charge of the game and being a leader of the fandom out on Twitter
Paperwhite: that’s not a motive
Morehouse: not to a normal person
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Morehouse: ok forget I said that
Morehouse: I’m just feeling really weird about him lately
Morehouse: how’s your mum?
Paperwhite: ok
Paperwhite: she’s had three chemo sessions
Paperwhite: her hair’s starting to fall out
Paperwhite: but as long as it works
Morehouse: yeah. Everything crossed
Paperwhite: xxx
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Paperwhite: listen, I know this will sound insecure af
Paperwhite: but you’re not having chats with Fiendy1 I don’t know about, are u?
Morehouse: no of course not. Why are you asking?
Paperwhite: It was just what Anomie said on the mod channel The ‘cosy little chat’ thing.
Paperwhite: Like if you were bi it wouldn’t matter to me
Morehouse: I’m not bi, I’m straight and I haven’t spoken to Fiendy1 on a private channel for over a year
Paperwhite: ok! only from things people have said in here, it sounds though Fiendy1 used to like you
Morehouse: He definitely didn’t, not that way.
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Paperwhite: I want to ask you something else but I’m scared you’ll freak out
Morehouse: ask
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Paperwhite: are you disabled?
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Morehouse: why are you asking me that?
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Paperwhite: Mouse, it wouldn’t matter at all to me if you were
Morehouse: what made you think I was?
Paperwhite: well it was just something Fiendy1 once said
<Morehouse has left the channel>
32
And all our observations ran
On Art and Letters,
Life and Man. Proudly we sat, we two, on high,
Throned in our Objectivity;
Scarce friends, not lovers (each avers),
But sexless, safe Philosophers.
In the five days that passed before Strike and Robin next saw each other, they communicated only by text and email. It was by the latter that Strike told Robin the agency had taken on another job: of finding something to the discredit of Jago Ross, which could be used against him to prevent Strike being dragged into the Rosses’ divorce case. As Strike didn’t tell Robin why Jago might suspect him and Charlotte of conducting an affair, Robin was given fresh fodder for painful speculation, and in spite of her recent admission to herself that she might just be in love with her business partner, she’d never felt more sympathy for the women who, in Ilsa’s words, he pissed off. Ordinarily she’d have called him to discuss the fresh detail of the case Ryan Murphy had given her by phone – the strange behaviour of Edie’s Ledwell phone, which had travelled out of Highgate Cemetery to the vicinity of a pond on Hampstead Heath after its owner’s death – but she chose instead to pass on the information by return email.