‘Plus it’s multiplayer only, Sarge. Which means you’re always playing against real humans so practising against the computer is out of the question.’
‘So you have to play with other people? Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And the other game? Team Fortress 2?’
‘Completely different. TF2 is way too anarchic for someone as hard core as Kinsey. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek.’
‘So why would he play it so often?’
‘Good question.’ Golding’s gaze had returned to the Steam page. ‘This must have to do with the company he’s been keeping.’
The notion of company was intriguing. So far, according to dozens of accounts, Kinsey was the near-perfect definition of a loner. On the face of it, all the guys in Saturday’s winning quad had been his buddies, but the closer you questioned them the more obvious it became that Kinsey had bought their friendship, or perhaps just their company. So how come he’d spent most nights banged up in cyberspace with a bunch of gamers? Were relationships simpler this way? No messy stuff like having to talk face to face, or having to cope with the million tiny aggravations that came with having real mates?
Golding was still engrossed in the printouts from Kinsey’s Steam page.
‘I need to have a proper look at this.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re going to ask me whether he had a special friend. And the way Steam works, the answer is yes.’
‘So who is he?’
‘This guy.’
Suttle followed his pointing finger. Somehow he’d missed the name on the bottom left of the page. He reached for a pen and ringed it carefully. ShattAr. Then he looked up.
‘So this guy has to be a mate of Kinsey’s? Is that what we’re saying?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So how do we find out his real name?’
Suttle’s question hung in the air. What he dreaded was having to go to one of the companies that controlled the servers. Most of them were in the States and in his experience even a routine enquiry could take months to process.
Golding, it turned out, had another idea.
‘We join the games, Sarge. We play Counterstrike and TF2. And we pretend to be Jalf Rezi.’
‘We? I think not. You mean you.’
‘Sure.’ He was grinning. ‘My pleasure.’
Suttle phoned Nandy from his own office. He caught the Det-Supt emerging from a meeting. A million detectives, he said, had been looking for a head to fit the body at the Bodmin scene of crime and so far they’d got nowhere. He’d like to chalk this up to a superior breed of criminal but his instincts told him it was pure luck. Nandy hated factors like luck. Luck, in his view, had no role to play in a properly run investigation.
‘You’re going to give me a name?’
‘Sorry, sir?’
‘For Kinsey?’
‘I’m afraid not. Not yet.’
Suttle briefly explained about Kinsey’s passion for video games. He needed D/C Golding’s help just a little while longer. He’d have asked D/I Houghton for the go-ahead but she wasn’t picking up.
‘She’s gone to Brittany,’ Nandy said. ‘She’s looking for the head.’
‘Did she mention Kinsey’s bank statements and those phone billings before she went?’
‘Yes. It’ll be a couple of days yet. Are you sure you need them? The banks are charging us the earth.’
Suttle confirmed he’d need the records for the Coroner’s file. Nandy wanted to know how long he’d be hanging on to Golding.
‘Couple of days, sir. Max.’
There was a long silence. Suttle was wondering about the ethics of a police officer impersonating someone else online. Then Nandy was back on the phone.
‘Two days it is, son. Consider yourself lucky.’
Lizzie picked up a copy of the Exmouth Journal at lunchtime. She’d wheeled Grace down to the village store and only caught the headline on her way out. She stopped beside the rack of newspapers. The story occupied the entire front page. Beneath the headline — MURDER SQUAD PROBE MARINA DEATH — was a colour photo of a bunch of guys in a pub. She recognised the biggest at once, Tom Pendrick. Kinsey, according to the paper, was the little guy centre stage.
Lizzie bought the paper and took it home. The handyman she’d found had finished with the window, hammering the metal frame back into line and reseating the hinges. It was a snug fit now and Lizzie told herself it would resist all intruders. The residue of last night had stayed with her, but she saw no point in letting it spoil the sunshine. The last forty-eight hours had taught her a great deal about her marriage, but the lessons she knew she must draw were still unclear. For the time being, boxed in, she’d simply have to bide her time.
Kinsey’s death had spilled onto page 2 of the paper. A reporter looking for another angle had put a call through to the secretary of the rowing club. She’d confirmed that everyone was deeply shocked by what had happened and were discussing what the club might organise in the way of a tribute. Jake Kinsey, she said, had been more than generous in his support for local rowing.
Lizzie went back to the front page, wondering how she’d be dealing with a story like this if she was back in the newsroom. She knew for a fact that the police were treating Kinsey’s death as suspicious and all the chatter she’d overheard in the boat and on the beach suggested that the club’s benefactor had been far from popular. One of the girls had called him The Passenger. Another had said he was creepy. Tonight, maybe, she’d find out more.
Suttle was contemplating a sandwich when he took the call from Exmouth Quays. As the last man standing in Constantine’s abandoned stockade, all inquiries to the central control room were being routed to him.
Suttle bent to the phone and introduced himself. It was a woman’s voice. He didn’t understand why she was shouting.
‘That Kinsey man,’ she bellowed. ‘He’d no right. Absolutely no right.’
‘No right to do what?’
‘To act the way he did. This is enslavement pure and simple. He simply didn’t care. No man should be allowed to do that.’ She paused. ‘Did you get my letter about Prince William?’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t.’
‘His life is under threat. I have the documents, the proof. You should come and see them.’ Another pause. ‘Are you a monarchist, by any chance?’
‘No.’
‘Neither am I. Do come round. Number 31.’
‘Where?’
‘Regatta Court. The name’s Peggy Brims. My mother was half-French.’
The phone went dead. Suttle did a reverse number search to check the address. Peggy Brims, 31 Regatta Court. He turned to his PC. A couple of keystrokes took him into the Operational Information System. He needed a couple of checks before he could decide whether to turn this woman’s call into an action.
He waited for a moment or two then keyed in her name and postcode. It turned out she had an entire file of her own. It stretched back more than eighteen months, call after call alerting the forces of law and order to a long list of imminent threats. She’d been worried sick about gunrunning in Cuba, about the activities of a gangster called Marc Puyrol in Marseilles, about a bunch of goths in Whitby who were trying to set fire to a hotel on the harbourside.
In every case these pleas for action had been dismissed as crank calls. This woman had form as well as money. She spent most of her waking life dreaming up fictions to keep the police on their toes. But then Suttle’s eye was caught by another entry. Back last summer she’d reported a local woman speeding out to sea on a borrowed jet ski. It was Peggy Brims’ settled view that this woman had been rendezvousing with one of the huge oil tankers anchored out in Lyme Bay. She’d doubtless returned with thousands of pounds’ worth of cocaine or heroin or something equally noxious, determined to corrupt and subvert the nation’s youth.
In her choice of language and the sheer force of her indignation, there was absolutely nothing to distinguish this call from any of the others. Except that she’d been right. HMCR had been running an intel operation in the bay for months. And a couple of weeks later, partly thanks to her contribution, arrests had been made. There were difficulties producing her as a witness in court because of her looniness, but the fact remained that she kept her eyes open and had — for once — lifted the phone in genuine anger.