A muscle twitched in Nicole’s father’s jaw.
‘What’s your ex’s name?’ said Strike, reaching for a pen.
‘Marcus,’ said Nicole. ‘Marcus Barrett.’
‘Are you still in touch with him?’ asked Robin. ‘Have you got a phone number?’
‘Yeah – but you’re not going to be horrible to him, are you? Because I honestly can’t imagine Marcus—’
‘Give them his damn number,’ said Nicole’s father shortly.
‘Dad,’ said Nicole, looking sideways at her father, ‘come on. Don’t be like that.’
Mr Crystal looked as though he intended to be ‘like that’ for a very long time.
‘Marcus could’ve been hacked,’ said Nicole, looking back at Strike and Robin. ‘It happened to a friend of mine: they got pictures off the cloud – mind you, her password was so easy to guess. I honestly can’t see Marcus intentionally putting a picture of me online – we’re still friends! He’s a really nice guy.’
‘Which of you ended the relationship?’ asked Strike.
‘I did,’ said Nicole, ‘but he was sweet about it. We’re in different cities and we’re still young. He’s dating someone else now.’
‘Does Marcus have flatmates?’ asked Robin, who was trying to think who else, plausibly, could have accessed the photograph.
‘He shares a flat with his sister. She’s four years older than he is and she’s lovely. Why would Darcy want to show everyone my tits?’
Nicole laughed. Her mother said quietly,
‘Nic, this isn’t funny.’
‘Oh, come on, it is a bit,’ said Nicole, who seemed totally unfazed by the fact that everyone on this call had seen her half-naked. When neither of her parents smiled, she said with a shrug, ‘Look, I’m an artist. I’m not as uptight about nudity as you are.’
‘It’s not a question of being uptight,’ said her father, staring fixedly at the screen rather than at his daughter. ‘The point is that when you give men these kinds of pictures you’ve effectively given them a means of blackmailing you, or shaming you—’
‘But I’m not ashamed,’ said Nicole, and Robin believed her. ‘I look pretty hot in that picture. It’s not like it’s an open-leg—’
‘Nicole,’ said both her parents, in exactly the same tone.
‘So, to be clear,’ said Strike. ‘To the best of your knowledge, the only person who’s ever seen this picture is Marcus Barrett, correct?’
‘Yep,’ said Nicole. ‘Unless he showed it to a friend, I s’pose, but I don’t think he would.’
‘You said you sent him pictures, plural,’ said Strike.
‘I did, yeah,’ said Nicole.
‘Has this picture, or any of the others, ever turned up anywhere you weren’t expecting it to?’
‘No,’ said Nicole.
‘Were the other photographs similar to this one?’
‘More or less,’ said Nicole. ‘I think there was one full nude.’
Nicole’s mother put her face briefly in her hands.
‘What?’ said Nicole impatiently. ‘He was surrounded by a bunch of sexy drama students, I had to give him something to – you know – think about.’
She burst into peals of laughter again.
‘Sorry,’ she said through her giggles. ‘I just – this has all been a bit of a shock. I never expected to be talking to private detectives because someone’s been catfishing with my pictures.’
‘Catfishing?’ repeated her father.
‘You know, Dad ,’ said Nicole. ‘Pretending to be me to get some action.’
‘So,’ said Strike, ‘to be clear: you’ve never been inside Drek’s Game?’
‘No, never,’ said Nicole.
‘And you’ve never interacted with a man online who called himself Morehouse?’
‘No, never,’ repeated Nicole.
‘And you’ve never spoken to, messaged, or had any contact with a Dr Vikas Bhardwaj?’
Nicole opened her mouth to reply, then hesitated.
‘Actually… wait,’ she said, now frowning. ‘I… Wait there.’
She got up and walked out of view, her parents looking anxiously after her. Now Strike and Robin spotted Barclay sitting silently in a distant armchair. Someone had made him a mug of tea.
Nicole returned with her mobile in her hand.
‘There’s a guy following me on Twitter,’ she said as she sat back down between her parents. ‘He keeps liking my tweets, but I don’t know him… he’s called something like Vikas… hang on…’
For nearly a minute she searched her Twitter followers.
‘Is that him?’ she said at last, turning her mobile screen to face the camera.
‘Yes,’ said Strike, looking at Vikas’s picture. ‘That’s him. Did you ever message him, or have any direct—?’
‘No,’ said Nicole, ‘I just noticed him liking all my tweets and I didn’t really understand why he was following me. He’s a scientist, isn’t he?’ she said, turning the mobile back to examine Vikas’s account.
‘He was,’ said Strike. ‘He’s dead.’
‘What?’ said Nicole and her father simultaneously. The girl no longer looked amused.
‘He was murdered,’ said Strike, ‘in Cambridge, last—’
‘Not the astrophysicist?’ said Nicole’s father, aghast. ‘The one in the wheelchair?’
‘Exactly,’ said Strike.
A lengthy pause followed, the three Crystals staring into the camera, horrified.
‘Oh my God,’ said Nicole at last.
‘We’d very much like to talk to Marcus,’ said Strike. ‘Could you give us his number?’
‘I… don’t think I should give you his number without asking him first,’ she said, now looking as tense as her parents.
‘Nicole…’ began her father.
‘I’m not just dropping all this on him without any warning. He’s a friend of mine, Dad!’
‘It really would be better if you didn’t call him first,’ said Strike, but Robin could have told him that nothing he said would change Nicole’s mind.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ said the art student, staring into the camera, ‘there’s no way Marcus had anything to do with – with any of this. He just wouldn’t. I ’m not giving you his number without telling him what it’s about, he’d never do that to me. I won’t,’ she told her father, who’d opened his mouth to speak. She turned back to Strike and Robin.
‘I’ll tell Marcus to call you, OK? Once I’ve spoken to him.’
They had no choice but to accept this. After thanking the Crystals for their time, Strike bade them a good morning. When they’d vanished from the screen, Strike and Robin were left staring at each other.
‘Shit,’ said Robin.
‘Well… yeah,’ said Strike.
98
Leering at each other,
Brother with queer brother;
Signalling each other,
Brother with sly brother.
There being little else he could do while trapped in his attic with an ice pack permanently pressed to his stump, Strike allocated to himself the task of looking into Marcus Barrett online. Though still slightly groggy due to the tramadol, he succeeded in identifying Barrett’s Instagram account, because the young man had used his full name, and posted many pictures of rehearsals and a smattering of selfies taken outside the RADA building. Barrett was a handsome young man, black-haired and dark-eyed, with the kind of features Strike imagined a romantic novelist might call chiselled.