Hello.
who is this
‘When did you last check that, Jonny?’
‘Three minutes ago.’
We all stand around the computer, looking at the newwords. Someone’s at the other end of the line. My skin tingles with the weird modern horror of being surveyed remotely.
Jonny keys in some tentative words:Friends of Davy. Who is this?
A second later, jerky type starts appearing on the screen:colleague of Davy. Good bloke. Shame what happened to him
‘Jonny, can you track this? Work out where it’s coming from?’
‘No. Sorry.’
‘Can I type?’ Em takes Jonny’s seat.
Did you kill him?
The response comes:He killed himself
Em:??
Making an appt with police like that. Silly bastard. Should have guessed I’d find out. Which one of you is typing now? Probably one of the foreign girls right?We watch, not saying anything, as the words crawl across the screen.Or the tall black guy? Or the skinny white boy?
‘Double-ungood,’ murmurs Jonny.
Id tell you to back off. But bit late for that. My associate will find you. Big guy. No hair.
Em types:Where do we meet him?
Dont worry. Hell find you
She has one last attempt:We didn’t kill Davy. We don’t know what he was doing. We just want out. What can we do to make that happen?
No reply.
37
We shut the laptop, put some tea on, and sit in silence for a bit, all creeped out by the encounter with Davy’s inbox friend. Eventually Elle pipes up.
‘This is like a nightmare.’
‘Yes,’ says Em. ‘But we have to keep going.’
‘Why? Can’t we just go overseas?’
I surprise myself, and the others, by saying: ‘No. We’ve come this far. We’ve managed it without being arrested or caught. We can work it out. And when wearearrested, we’ll hopefully have a decent set of answers which we can swap for …’
‘Our freedom?’
‘Certainly a reduced sentence.’
‘Terrific,’ says Em. ‘So we need to find out about Davy’slast con, the one that appears to have killed him. There’s no paper trail, there’s no evidence, there’s nothing except these addresses. What do you suggest?’
I wiggle my fingers. ‘My turn to do the thing I’m good at.’
