‘I am sympathetic,’ said Strike. ‘Why d’you think I just threatened to rip Ashcroft’s dick off?’
It had taken them thirty minutes to calm Zoe’s grief about Ashcroft’s hasty departure, and then to explain how hotels worked, because she’d never stayed in one before. However, she was so frightened that Anomie was going to come and find her that she was finally persuaded nobody would throw her out of the Z Hotel for not looking like Robin and had even accepted Robin’s hug of reassurance at the top of the station steps.
‘She’ll ring Ashcroft the moment she’s got reception again,’ said Robin.
‘If he knows what’s good for him, he won’t answer,’ said Strike. ‘Ever again.’
‘You realise, if he’s Anomie—’
‘He isn’t,’ said Strike. ‘I’ve just ruled him out. Well, ninety per cent.’
‘How?’ said Robin, taken aback.
‘I’ll explain after you tell me what happened upstairs.’
‘It’s all on here.’
Robin took her mobile out of her bag, located the recording and pressed play.
Strike listened, stony-faced, as Zoe said Anomie was going to ‘Ledwell and Blay’ the two detectives. When they reached a silence broken only by the tapping of laptop keys, Robin said,
‘So that’s me going into the game. There were two channels open, and Paperwhite – she was totally different. She said Morehouse had been a slimy creep and she was well shot of him. And then, after a little while, I noticed it: Anomie and Paperwhite don’t type at the same time, and when I pointed that out, across the two channels, I was immediately banned. I’m certain they’re—’
‘—the same person,’ said Strike. He leaned forwards and pressed pause. ‘Shit. Of fucking course: Paperwhite was created to keep an eye on Morehouse. Find out what he was thinking, whether he was considering leaving—’
‘—and to try and keep him there,’ said Robin, ‘because Vikas had grown up since he helped make the game, hadn’t he? He was getting more and more successful in the real world, and Anomie would’ve known he’d be almost impossible to replace. I’ve just seen Anomie having a real go at the new moderator, BorkledDrek, who clearly isn’t up to the job.
‘Paperwhite arrived in Drek’s Game around the time Vikas and Rachel had their falling-out. I don’t think that was coincidence. Rachel says Anomie was possessive of Vikas, that they didn’t like him and Rachel getting close. Paperwhite was a perfect way of luring Vikas away from Rachel for good.’
‘With a bunch of stolen nudes, which Anomie also flashed around at the other men,’ said Strike, thinking rapidly. ‘What are the odds Oliver Peach was lured to Comic Con on the vague understanding a gorgeous redhead was going to be there to help him locate Anomie?’
He pressed play again.
At the point where Zoe claimed that she’d initiated the sexual relationship with Tim Ashcroft, Strike muttered ‘piece of shit,’ but when Zoe said the words ‘It’s Nils,’ he said loudly, ‘What the fuck?’
‘Shh. Listen,’ said Robin, pointing at the mobile, from which her own voice now issued.
‘Why d’you think it’s Nils?’
‘Loads of things. I got a shock the first time I saw the window at North Grove. It’s got the word “anomie” on it, so that evening, on the mod channel, I said, “You’ll never guess, I saw a window with “anomie” on it today, isn’t that funny?” or something, and Anomie private-channelled me as soon as I said it, and he said, “Don’t ever mention that window again, or I’ll ban you. You don’t mention it to anyone.” He were really weird about it.’
‘Did Anomie mention North Grove?’
‘No, but I had a feeling he knew where the window was, and I started to think he must’ve been there, and maybe that’s where he got the idea for the name.
‘Then one day Nils talked to me about anomie and he explained what it meant. He were telling me you’ve got to have, like, a purpose in your work and you’ve got to make sure you stay connected to other people, and about how a commune’s the best way to live, because you can’t suffer anomie if you’re living in a commune, and how I should move out of here and go live at North Grove. Mariam was backing him up. I thought they were being nice. I didn’t go, though, because Tim didn’t want me to. He said we couldn’t be private there.
‘Then one day I heard Nils and Pez talking about Edie, and I were listening in, because I was always hoping she might come round North Grove one day, and I’d meet her.
‘But they were both being really nasty about her… I thought they’d be proud to know her, after what she did, but they weren’t. Pez were talking about this comic book idea he and Edie were working on, before Josh moved in. Pez said Edie would probably sue him now, if he finished it and put it out on his own, because some of the ideas were hers. It were about a time-travelling undertaker, proper dark, travelling in coffins. I thought it were a cool idea. I bet it was all her ideas, it sounded like her kind of story. I bet Pez just drew a few pictures for it.
‘And then Nils started slagging Edie off and I’d never heard him like that before. He were angry, really angry. Like, Nils doesn’t get angry much. He said she’d never mentioned him in a single interview, after he gave her a free place to live and space to make The Ink Black Heart, and that she took everything and gave nothing back. He made it sound like if it hadn’t been for him, she’d never have been successful, and he were saying she kind of flirted with him to get what she wanted out of him. And he were saying Edie never even mentioned his art or anything, or bothered to turn up at his last show.
‘And when I were listening to Nils, I thought, that’s exactly how Anomie talks about Edie, because one night, not long after I joined the game, Anomie were saying what a bitch Edie were for slagging off the game, when he were keeping the fandom interested and doing her a favour. And then he told me Edie had come on to him, like, in real life, but kind of dumped him when she started making money.
‘Anomie were drunk when he said that, he told me he’d been drinking. He said he’d had a bad day.’
‘Why was it bad?’
‘He didn’t tell me – he never says much about his real life. But then, next morning, after he told me all that about Edie, he opened another private channel with me and he said, “You forget what I said last night, if you want to stay in the game.” So I never told anyone, because I loved the game so much, back then. I had friends in there – Fiendy1 and Buffypaws – I mean, before you – I used to talk to the other Buffypaws a lot.
‘But after I heard Nils talking about Edie, I didn’t like him as much any more. And I started noticing how much he were on the computer. He does the odd bit of art, but he don’t finish many pieces.’
‘Did you ever see him playing the game?’
‘No, but someone there had, someone at North Grove, because I saw it on the internet history one time, after I started thinking Anomie might be Nils. I went looking. D’you think that was wrong?’
‘No, Zoe, I think it was smart.’
‘And then, when Josh come to stay at North Grove, that month before they were attacked, Nils were suggesting ideas to him for the cartoon. I heard him doing it a couple of times, and that’s just like Anomie as well, because he were always slagging off the cartoon – and I never understood that, because he were mad about it really – but Anomie were always saying he could do a far better job than Edie.