I drank, waited. Klinger put the corkscrew down, pretended to be looking in the fridge, wiped his eyes with a knuckle.
‘Don’t know why I’m saying all this,’ he said. ‘Not the vaguest idea. To a total stranger. That’s probably why. I don’t think I’ve ever said that to anyone. You’re a good listener, Frank. It is Frank? Names just come and go.’
‘Frank. So Ellen taught them at home?’
‘Yes. Then Cassie had to do it. They didn’t need much maths teaching, taught themselves after a while. Len bought them a computer, pretty new then computers, and the twins were off, writing programs, all that stuff I don’t understand. Obsessed by it.’
He came back with the bottle, not too steady now. ‘That’s also from Len,’ he said. ‘Obsession. The man didn’t have interests, he had obsessions.’ I held out my glass and he poured. ‘Good to have company. Get used to being on your own but it’s not good for you. Not for men. Women, they seem to handle it better. Unfair, really. Another bloody mystery.’
‘What did the twins do when they finished school?’ I said.
He sniffed. ‘Nothing. Same as before. Stayed at home and played with the computers. Made money out of it by then though.’
‘Money? How?’
‘Games. They write games. Is that what you say? Write games?’
I had a big swig of wine, felt acid rise in my gullet, felt the muscles of my back and shoulders tighten.
‘Write, yes, that’s what you say,’ I said. ‘They write games?’
‘They make up these computer games. Beats me how you do things like that with numbers. Anyway, they do. Make quite a bit.
Not surprising, they’re good at making up things. Even when they were little, they were always making up things, putting on plays, getting dressed up.’
‘They write commercial computer games?’
‘Somebody bought the games. I suppose they still write them. I’ve lost touch since, it’s been a while, six or seven years. Can it be that long?’
Klinger fixed me with an inquiring look, as if I knew the answer to his question.
‘Lennox died in 1988, didn’t he?’ I said.
‘Died? Killed himself. You could see it coming from the day Cassie disappeared. I went around there once afterwards but I didn’t have anything to say to them. Victor would only speak to Keith and Eric, and Keith never said much, sits and looks at you with this smile. And the place is like a shrine to Cassie. She was everything to them. Not just a sister, everything. They worshipped her.’
‘Who’s Eric?’
‘He was a labourer on a house we built out in Coldstream, didn’t have any family, and Len took to him, brought him home and there he stayed. Like a slave, really, didn’t get paid, board and lodging, did all the work, built mad underground bunkers, fixed cars, anything. He’s a bit simple. Good with his hands though, fix anything, any machine. And he can cook, God knows where he learned that. Fancy things too.’ He shrugged. ‘He loved Len, the children. Happy slave though. Like a Labrador.’
He sniffed, looked into his glass. ‘Cassie stayed here for a while when she was in her second year at uni. Had to get away from home, she was being smothered by them. But Len kept turning up, taking her back. She was scared of him.’
Klinger took a sip of wine, his sips were getting smaller. stared out of the window, blinking, not seeing anything he liked.
The day had turned, night in the wings, shadows on the golf course now, golfers walking behind their giant elongated shapes. From this height, the bunkers were half-dark, sinister hooded eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said, and there was something different in his voice, ‘she was scared of him. Very scared. Scared of the twins too later on, when they were grown up. It became a very strange family, Len and Cassie and the twins and Eric. Very strange. Cassie was like the mother, no girl should have that sort of burden placed on her. Unnatural. The whole thing was unnatural.’
I waited. Klinger wanted to say more, moved his lips twice, licked his lips, fought off the desire to speak.
Finally, he said, with a small smile, pride in the smile, ‘And she still went to school every day, driven by Eric, got good marks. Amazing, an amazing person. Could take up burdens and put them aside, come back to them. Like her mother. One never ceases to wonder at the strength of some people.’
He stood up, now distinctly unsteady. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long day for me. Frank. Show you out. It is Frank, isn’t it? Didn’t get anywhere, from your point of view. Come again, we’ll have another session, talk architecture. Aalto was my hero, I had a model of his church, do you know the church? Imatra? Lovely building. Len smashed it to bits one day, in one of his rages.’
I went ahead, down the steel spiral staircase, fearing for his safety behind me, down towards the client entrance at the bottom. Outside the door, a brick-paved path led to the side gate.
We stood in the stairwell.
‘Thank you for talking to me, Dave,’ I said.
His eyes were thin, body swaying.
‘Dave, no one’s ever called me that. I wished at school, never mind, I don’t mind being called Dave. At all. I like that. Dave.’
We shook hands. He held on to my hand, didn’t want to let go, looked into my eyes.
‘She’s mine, you know,’ he said. ‘Cassie. She’s ours. Mine and Ellen’s. Untainted by the vile Guinane blood.’
40
‘They write computer games,’ I said. ‘They earn a living from producing computer games.’
I was back in Orlovsky’s computer room, sitting in the armchair.
‘That’s very interesting,’ said Orlovsky, ‘and it supplies a complete and satisfactory explanation for Keith Guinane’s interest in voice systems. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect him to be interested in. It doesn’t necessarily connect them with the Carsons.’
‘Alice Carson said that one day someone put on a computer game for a child and it had a tune repeated over and over.’
I remembered the way her hands had moved from the arms of her chair into her lap, that I could see that she was clenching one hand with the other by the tension in her neck and shoulders.
‘Yes,’ said Orlovsky.
‘She said she felt sick and scared. She couldn’t bear it and had to leave the room. That she vomited.’
‘She also said she’d never heard the tune before,’ Orlovsky said, deadpan.
‘It triggered a memory, something she’d closed out.’
‘I thought repressed memory was a load of bullshit.’
‘Who knows? I’m repressing a lot of memories. They come out in my dreams. What about you? How can we find a game written by the Guinanes?’
‘Frank, this is a waste of time. Accept coincidence. Think about it. Finding Guinane and Carson are both in SeineNet is like finding them both in the telephone directory. How many zillion names do you think are in SeineNet?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘it isn’t coincidence. It can’t be.’
‘Anthea Wyllie, that’s where you should be looking. Have you reminded the cops about her?’
‘Yes. How can we find the game?’
He sighed. ‘I don’t know, there’ll be a fucking list of game authors somewhere, I suppose. Make some coffee. Do you know how to make espresso coffee? Is that part of officer training?’
‘If need be I can make a stimulating drink from a parasitic plant that attaches itself to mangrove roots.’
‘Costa Rican beans will be fine.’
I was in the kitchen watching the coffee drip into the glass jug when my mobile rang. Vella.
‘I should’ve called you before,’ he said. ‘The girl was dead at least thirty-six hours.’
Thirty-six hours? I’d made the demand for the photograph at lunchtime the day before I went to the station…
‘The picture?’
‘Manipulated. Taken with a digital camera. Two pictures brought together. One of her alive holding up the newspaper. Then they changed the newspaper, put another one in its place. They were expecting you to ask for proof. So they took the picture before they killed her.’