Then he rang the firm and asked how quickly they could install the security cameras they had quoted on. He was told it would be about ten days. John told them if they could do it tomorrow, he would order it now. After keeping him on hold for a couple of minutes he was told they would be along at nine o’clock the next morning to install them.
When he had hung up, he then typed out an email to Kalle Almtorp at the Swedish embassy in Kuala Lumpur.
Kalle, hope you had a good Christmas and New Year – no snow, I guess??
In December you emailed that your contact at the FBI says they now have a lead in their search for these Disciples of the Third Millennium. I’m asking because a potentially worrying situation has arisen here and I need to know just how concerned I should be about it. Any further information you could let me have, as a matter of great urgency, would be much appreciated.
Love to Anna and the kids.
Halsningar!
John
He sent the email then went upstairs to the box room, where Luke and Phoebe were sitting on the floor in front of their computer. They must have heard him coming, he thought, because he saw the screen flicker as he entered the room, as if they had hurriedly switched from whatever they had been looking at to something innocuous.
‘Hi!’ he said.
Neither of them looked at him.
More loudly now, he said, ‘Luke! Phoebe! Hallo!’
Both turned their heads very slowly, in unison, and said, ‘Hello.’ Then they stared at him, for some moments, smiling, as if they were reacting as they were expected to.
Cold air eddied through his veins. They looked too neat and tidy, too immaculate. Phoebe wore a bottle-green tracksuit and white trainers; Luke wore a navy roll-neck jumper, neatly pressed jeans, spotless trainers. Neither had a hair out of place. For a moment he had the impression he was looking at robots, not at real people, not at his children. It made him want to back out of the room, but instead he persevered, trying to put into practice what Dr Michaelides had just told them they should do.
As nonchalantly and cheerily as he could, he knelt down and presented his cheek first to Luke, then to Phoebe. Both of them drew their faces sharply back, in turn.
‘No kiss for Daddy?’
‘Kissing leads to sex,’ Luke said, dismissively turning back to the screen.
‘What? What did you say, Luke?’ John asked, astonished, all kinds of alarm bells suddenly ringing, wondering, hoping, desperately hoping that he had misheard his son. But moments later, Phoebe confirmed that he hadn’t.
‘We don’t kiss,’ Phoebe said haughtily. ‘We don’t want to be abused.’ Then she, too, turned back to the screen.
‘Hey,’ John said, floundering for a reply. ‘Hey, you listen to me-’ He stared at the shiny casing of the computer, at the keyboard, at the mouse, at the multi-coloured mouse pad, his nostrils filled with the sour reek of plastic. He felt numb.
Beyond numb.
Luke moved the mouse and John saw the cursor sweep up the screen and stop on a square. He double-clicked and the square opened, like a miniature window, to reveal a flashing sequence of numbers.
John stood up, went to the wall, and pulled out the plug. Both children looked up at him without even a hint of surprise on their faces. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘What is this talk about abuse? Where’s this from? The internet?’
Neither of them said anything.
‘Is that what you think about your mummy and I? That we’re going to abuse you? Because it’s not a very funny joke.’
Both of them stood up and walked out of the room.
‘Luke! Phoebe!’ John said, barely controlling his anger. ‘Come back, I’m talking to you!’
He burst out of the door after them and yelled at them. ‘LUKE! PHOEBE! COME BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!’
Continuing to ignore him, they went downstairs.
He started after them, then stopped. How was he supposed to deal with this? It was like dealing with moody teenagers. Is that what they were?
He was really trembling badly now, his brain misty with anger. He just wanted to grab hold of them, shake them, shake the little bastards until the truth fell out of them. But Sheila Michaelides had told them that confrontation with the twins would just drive them further into their shells – exactly like teenagers, he thought.
Oh sure, easy to say, Dr Michaelides – but how the hell are we supposed to avoid getting angry when they say something like this?
Remembering for a moment his reason for coming upstairs, he went into his bedroom, took the two keys that were hidden underneath his handkerchiefs, then opened his wardrobe, pushed his suits and shirts over to one side, the hangers clacking, to reveal the steel gun cabinet he’d had fixed into the wall. Then he unlocked the door and lifted out the heavy shotgun that nestled inside.
It was a Russian-made twelve-bore, which he had bought, second-hand, after a three-month wait for the licence, at the same time as they had put in the other security measures here. He had never used the gun, and Naomi had disapproved strongly at the time. Nonetheless, he had always felt better at night for knowing it was there.
It seemed heavier than he had remembered; the stock was warm, the barrels as cold as ice. He broke it open, admiring for an instant the finely engineered movement, and squinted down the shiny insides of the barrels. As he closed it again, he heard the reassuring click. Then, raising the gun, peering across the pinhead sight and down the top of the barrels, he pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Safety catch! he remembered. He slid it off, pointed the gun at the window, gripped tightly and squeezed first the right trigger, then the left one, hearing the sharp click each time.
Kneeling, he pushed the gun under the bed, far enough in so that it was out of sight. Next he took the box of ammunition from the cabinet, broke it open and put four cartridges in the drawer in his bedside table. Then he put the box back in the cabinet, locked it, and put the keys back in place beneath his handkerchiefs.
He sat on the bed for some moments, thinking what else he could do, what other precautions he could take, and all the time hoping to hell he was just overreacting, that this American had been innocent. In all likelihood they were worrying about nothing. Hell, his mother-in-law had never been to the States, she didn’t like to fly, so she could have mistaken his accent.
He went downstairs to the kitchen where Naomi was making a late snack lunch for them all and Luke and Phoebe were sitting at the kitchen table
Leaning against the Aga for warmth, he said to his mother-in-law, ‘Anne, this man who came to the door – he was definitely American?’
‘Very definitely.’ She was emphatic.
John thought for a moment. ‘You said he was looking for an address – he was lost or something?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘John, it is pretty confusing around here, first time you come. I got lost, too. You’re not very well signposted.’
‘I don’t think he was lost,’ Phoebe said sharply, without looking away from the television.
There was a brief silence. ‘Did you see this man, Phoebe?’ Naomi asked.
‘You don’t have to see someone to know they’re not lost,’ Phoebe said scornfully.
‘So why do you think he wasn’t lost, Phoebe?’ John asked.
Still without moving her eyes from the television, Phoebe flapped away his question with her hand. ‘We’re watching the show, please stop interrupting.’
John and Naomi exchanged a glance. He saw his mother-in-law smiling at her impertinence.
Insolence.
He should have slapped Phoebe down for it, so should Naomi, but it was still a major achievement to get the children to speak at all, still a novelty to hear them.
‘It was a farm he was looking for?’ John said.
‘I think that’s what he said. And – oh yes – feed!’
‘Feed?’
‘Agricultural feed – he was selling agricultural feed!’ Then her brow furrowed. ‘Although I have to say he really didn’t look a terribly rural type.’