‘When did Josh and Edie fix up their meeting, do you know?’ asked Robin.
‘The day before the attacks. The eleventh. Edie rang Josh at North Grove.’
‘She rang him?’ said Strike.
‘Yes,’ said Katya. ‘He told me he’d been trying to talk to her about it for two weeks and she kept hanging up, but then she called him and said, “Fine, let’s have this out and you can bring this so-called proof as well.”’
‘Josh took this call at North Grove, did he?’
‘That’s right,’ said Katya.
‘Did they arrange the time and meeting place on that same call?’
‘Yes,’ said Katya.
‘Whose idea was it to meet in the cemetery?’
‘Edie’s. Josh told me she said something like “I want you to look me in the face, in the place where it all started, and tell me you honestly believe I could have been planning to – to fuck you over five years ago”.’
‘Meaning, when the game appeared online?’ asked Robin.
‘Exactly,’ said Katya.
‘Did they fix a specific spot in the cemetery?’
‘Yes,’ said Katya, her voice shaking again. ‘At the place where they first had all the ideas, a hidden place among the graves. It’s in a part of the cemetery you’re only supposed to enter as part of a guided tour, but they knew a place you could sneak in. Very naughty,’ she added faintly.
‘Where did Edie call Josh from, d’you know?’ asked Robin.
‘No, I don’t, but she was living in Finchley at the time, with her new boyfriend, Phillip Ormond.’ She looked at Strike. ‘You said you’re meeting him—’
‘After this, yes,’ said Strike.
‘Were Josh and Edie together when the attacks happened,’ Robin asked, ‘or—?’
‘No, not together,’ said Katya. ‘Josh was – he was late. The police think Edie was killed before Josh was attacked. She was found at the place they’d agreed to meet. They think the killer then went after Josh, doubled round behind him as he approached the spot and tasered him.
‘They found Josh first. Somebody goes round ringing a bell every evening at six, making sure everybody’s left the cemetery before they lock the gates. The man found Josh lying just off the path. He thought Josh was dead, then realised he was trying to talk. And the man realised Josh was saying somebody else might have been attacked, so he raised the alarm and people went looking. It took them a while for them to – to find her, because she was in a place that was off the path. She’d been – it happened just the same way as Josh. Tasered from behind and stabbed with the same kind of knife. They say it was a big one. Like a machete. They think she’d have died instantly. She was stabbed in the back, right through her hear—’
Suddenly shaking with barely repressed sobs, Katya tried to stem her tears and streaming nose with her now almost useless wad of tissues.
‘I’m – I’m sorry – need more –’
She got up and stumbled to the door. It took her two slaps of the electric button to make it open. They heard a bar of Gus’s cello before the sound was cut off again.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Inigo darkly, and both Strike and Robin looked around at him. Inigo’s hands were shaking so hard his fruit tea now slopped, as Robin had feared, onto his jeans. ‘Middle-aged woman, mixing herself up with a bunch of kids, thinking she’s helping them. Feeling important. Giving free advice. Ego boost… and here we are,’ as though the inevitable and foreseeable consequence of helping a pair of animators deal with new-found fame was that they should be stabbed in a graveyard. The door opened again and Katya reappeared, blotchy of face, with a fresh load of tissues clutched in her hand.
When she’d sat back down, Strike said:
‘Could we go back to Bram? What gave Josh the idea he was Anomie, d’you know?’
‘Yes,’ said Katya, her voice now croaky. ‘When Josh and Edie were living at North Grove, they found out Bram had drilled a hole in their bedroom wall and was watching them through it.’
‘He drilled a hole in the wall?’ repeated Robin.
‘Bram’s a bit… He’s an odd boy,’ said Katya. ‘Very big for his age and I think he might have, um, ADHD or something. There are tools in the sculpting workshop and he just helps himself and his parents don’t – don’t seem to mind. He hung around Josh and Edie a lot when they were both living there, and – well – one doesn’t like to criticise anyone’s parenting. I like Nils and Mariam very much, but they do rather let Bram run wild, and I know Nils has signed him up for social media he oughtn’t to be on, because he’s too young, but Nils, um – well, he’s Dutch,’ said Katya, as though this explained everything, ‘and he doesn’t believe in age restrictions and things, and anyway, he told me Bram would find a way to get on Twitter in any case, so better that he does it with his parents’ permission.’
‘Josh surely didn’t think Bram had created the game?’ said Strike. ‘Bram would only have been, what – seven, eight? – when Anomie started it?’
‘No, he didn’t think Bram made the game, exactly,’ said Katya. ‘Josh’s theory—’
‘You have to understand,’ said Inigo, speaking at the same time as his wife, and although he hadn’t raised his voice, she gave way to him, ‘that Mr Blay smokes a good deal of weed, which accounts—’
‘Inigo, that’s not f—’
‘—not only for the almost biblical number of floods and the fires he leaves in his wake—’
‘It was just an idea he had, because—’
‘—but for a degree of irrationality—’
‘But it was as though Anomie was literally listening in on Josh and Edie’s conversations, he knew things so quickly!’
‘But as Mr Strike has already spotted, not that it takes any great intelligence to do so,’ said Inigo, ‘an eight-year-old boy could hardly have—’
‘Well, I was just trying to explain that bit!’ said Katya, goaded into a weak show of spirit, and she turned back to Strike. ‘Josh thought Bram might be working with an older fan he’d met online, who’d made the game – because there’s another person involved, someone who calls themselves Morehouse. So Josh’s idea was that Bram was eavesdropping on his and Edie’s creative discussions and sending all their ideas to Morehouse, and that Morehouse created the actual game, whereas Bram operated the Twitter account, putting all Edie and Josh’s private information online.’
‘Did Josh ever talk to Bram, or to Bram’s parents, about his suspicions?’ asked Strike.
‘Oh, no,’ said Katya. ‘Josh is very fond of Nils and Mariam, he wouldn’t want to upset them. I know Edie was furious about the spyhole and she wanted to tell Mariam, but Josh talked her out of it. Josh blocked up the hole and said Bram wouldn’t dare make another one, and I don’t think he did. But Edie refused to stay at North Grove after that.’
‘Is that when they split up?’ Robin asked.
‘No, they were still together,’ said Katya, ‘but things weren’t going terribly well between them. Edie wasn’t happy that Josh didn’t want to move out with her, but, you see, North Grove felt like a safe place for him. He was surrounded by friends. I was still going there for my art classes. He did move out eventually, but that was after he and Edie split up. He bought himself a very nice flat in Millfield Lane, just on the Heath.’