Erebos (46 page)

Nick had photographed the man's car, and now Rashid was photographing his office. Presumably he wanted to get shots from the side as well, because he turned left, with the camera still at the ready.

Nick was waiting for him to appear again, but nothing happened. Nick peered uneasily out of his entrance. If he followed Rashid he might run straight into him. He didn't want to risk it. He waited another five minutes, told himself he was an idiot and left. Even if Rashid had got away from him, his results from this morning were quite respectable.

‘I hope you have a good reason for dragging me out of bed in the middle of the night.' Victor was standing at the door in his Snoopy dressing gown, yawning, with eyes that were only half open.

‘I'll make you some tea,' Nick said. ‘And then we'll talk.'

‘You sound like my ex-girlfriend.' Victor wandered blearily into the kitchen and leaned against the fridge. ‘Incidentally, I fought until four-thirty this morning, around the temple. I've got golden armour now, which goes very nicely with my violet lizard skin.'

Nick turned on the electric jug and put tea leaves in a strainer. ‘Does the name Soft Suspense mean anything to you?'

‘Sure,' Victor yawned. ‘Never outdone on the fun. They did The Damned of the Night, First Shot and Peregrine, among other things. Good games, all of them.'

‘They have their offices near Blackfriars. In Bridewell Place.'

‘Aha.' Victor frowned. ‘Sorry, but I'm not sure what you're getting at.'

Nick told him about his photography assignment, about the Jaguar and the man it belonged to. ‘That was the only thing during my whole time as a player that had anything to do with Blackfriars. That's why I went there this morning and waited at the car park. The man turned up, I followed him, and you can guess where he was headed.'

‘The Soft Suspense office.' Victor's frown deepened. ‘The penny still hasn't dropped for me. I'm certain that Soft Suspense didn't develop Erebos. I would have heard about it; there would have been reports in the media ages ago. The gaming world would have been licking their lips waiting for it.'

‘What else do you know about the company?'

‘Nothing, really. I only know their games. And I know that they swallowed a few smaller software development companies, which is typical in the industry. Their business is doing well. That's all.' Nick poured the boiling water over the tea leaves thoughtfully, breathing in the aroma that wafted up.

‘There must be some connection between the company and Erebos. One of my classmates was at Bridewell Place as well, taking photos of the building.'

‘Really? Was he following the Jaguar guy too?' Victor gave his head a good hard shake. ‘It's got me stumped. My brain isn't working yet. It needs more sleep.'

‘But now we've finally got a lead. I have to find out who the man is.'

‘Yes, that would be good,' Victor murmured and closed his eyes.

For the time being Nick abandoned the idea of teasing sensible statements out of him. He carted him to one of the sofas, poured tea into him and scraped together his last remaining coins to buy breakfast for them both.

While he was waiting in the queue at the bakery he couldn't resist sending Emily a text.

Got amazing news. @ Cromer St, wish u were here.

When he returned, a pale but very alert Victor was waiting for him. ‘I can't eat anything right now.'

‘Why?'

‘While you were at the shops I was Googling. You're not going to believe this.'

He waited until Nick had put down his croissants and dragged him to the laptop. ‘There. Take a look at that.'

The Soft Suspense website; a new game called Blood of Gods was advertised on their home page. The gods didn't look Greek though; they looked metallic. Nothing about the graphics resembled Erebos.

‘And?'

Victor put a hand on Nick's shoulder. ‘That's only the home page. Go to the news items.' Nick clicked on ‘News' and read:

Soft Suspense is delighted with its record sales for Peregrine. The game sold over 600,000 copies in the first month after its release.

Below that was a photo of the Jaguar-driver posing in a leather office chair and smiling into the camera. Yesss! Nick thought. My lead was right. Then he saw the photo caption. He exchanged a look with Victor.

‘No, can't be.'

‘Yes it is. You've struck gold. Aladdin's treasure. Damn it, Nick, we have to warn him.'

‘Yes. You're right.' Nick studied the face in the photo that was smiling noncommittally, but his eyes kept returning to the words underneath the picture.

‘We have put all our resources and creativity into Peregrine and are delighted that our game has been so well received,' said Managing Director of Soft Suspense, Andrew Ortolan.

A bird. Yeah, right. ‘We should have done more research,' Nick muttered. ‘Then we would have found him a lot earlier.'

‘Or maybe not. There are loads of people with that name. Well okay, not loads, but a few.'

Andrew Ortolan smiled impassively in the photo.

Had Erebos only been created in order to . . . destroy him, as the messenger had said? Why? How should they warn him? And above all, about what, exactly?

‘I'll do it,' Victor said, and dialled the number that he'd found on the company's home page.

‘Yes? Hello? I'd like to speak to Mr Ortolan please. Yes, please put me through.'

Pause.

‘My name is Victor Lansky,' Victor said, obviously to somebody else. ‘No, he's not expecting my call.'

Nick didn't catch what the secretary said, but he heard her high, disapproving voice.

‘As you wish,' Victor persevered. ‘I'm from the press, and there is something important I need to tell Mr Ortolan.'

Another shrill, rapid secretary-type answer.

‘Please listen to me,' Victor said with deliberate patience, ‘I'm sure your boss will want to hear what I have to say. No, there's no message. Sorry? Lansky. L-A-N-S-K-Y. Yes, he can ring me back. And he should hurry up about it!'

He hung up and snorted. ‘Of course he won't ring. The cow in reception didn't even ask my number.'

‘Perhaps she saw it on the display?'

‘Hardly.' Victor fished himself a chocolate croissant out of the bag. ‘Private number. Nothing shows up.'

Nick thought for a moment and pressed the redial button. ‘Good morning, I would like to speak to Mr Ortolan.'

‘I'll put you through to his executive secretary.'

There was the sound of saxophones until someone answered again at the other end.

‘Andrew Ortolan's office, Anne Wisbourn speaking.' It was the unpleasant voice from a moment ago.

‘Er, hello. My name is Nick Dunmore and I need to speak to Mr Ortolan. Urgently. It's a matter of life and death.'

‘Pardon?'

‘Life and death! I'm serious!' Nick's mouth was dry. How was he going to be able to explain the situation to Ortolan without him thinking he was loony?

Nick heard rustling and muffled voices – the secretary presumably had her hand over the receiver. Then there was a noise as if something had snapped, the voices became clear again and a man bellowed into the phone: ‘I'll get these calls traced! This is telephone terrorism! I'll find out what you criminals are up to, and then they'll put you behind bars! That was my last warning, understand?' Crash. The receiver was hung up.

Nick's heart was hammering as if he'd run the hundred metres.

‘He thought I was threatening him.'

‘So I heard. He was certainly loud enough.'

It wasn't hard to add two and two together. ‘I bet he's had a few scary phone calls of late.'

‘Yes, from Emily for example,' Victor said.

Not much was said during their shared breakfast. Each of them dwelt on their own thoughts. Nick's revolved around the options that were left to him. He could go to Blackfriars again and hammer on Ortolan's office door until he listened to him.

But we don't know why Erebos hates him so much. There must be a reason.

‘Victor? You know the computer scene well, huh?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘Can you explain it? In some way that would make sense?'

‘Not at all. I'm completely in the dark. I think we need to find out more about Mr Ortolan.'

When Emily arrived, earlier than expected, they still hadn't got any further. They knew that Ortolan was a member of the Wimbledon Park Golf Club, that he sometimes organised charity dinners for UNICEF and rarely gave interviews.

Emily, who was still completely fired up by the discovery of Ortolan's true identity, approached the search with fresh vigour. ‘Perhaps it's not personal. Perhaps it doesn't have anything to do with the man himself, but with the company.' She turned the laptop to face her and entered ‘Soft Suspense' in Google.

‘It will be a wild goose chase,' Victor prophesied. ‘By the time you've churned through all the game reviews and eBay auctions, it'll be Christmas.'

‘You're right.' Emily narrowed her eyes to slits. She submitted ‘Ortolan enemies' and found a whole lot of information about Peregrine falcons that ate songbirds. ‘Damn . . . Okay then, we'll try something else.'

The search terms ‘Soft Suspense' and ‘victim' mainly returned game descriptions for Peregrine, the company name together with ‘competition' returned various pieces of economic data about the game industry.

Emily swore in an unladylike fashion. ‘It's all double-dutch to me. If it's a competitor who's doing this to get rid of Soft Suspense, we'll never figure it out.' She brooded over the list of different games companies. ‘Perhaps the company did something wrong,' she said, and did a new search: ‘Crime Soft Suspense'. This time the list of results wasn't long – only four pages. The first links were about the fact that bootleg copies were a crime and that Soft Suspense had recently improved copy protection on its games. Emily kept on scrolling and clicking. She paused at a court report that was two years old.

. . . was found guilty of fraud and theft and sentenced to six years' imprisonment. The game, which apparently incorporates revolutionary new technology, is produced by the company Soft Suspense, whose . . .

Emily clicked on the link. It was an archived story from the
Independent
. Nick and Emily only had to read the first lines to know that they needn't look any further. It was right here on the screen in black and white, and worse than Nick could ever have imagined.

Games developer sentenced

After two years the court case over copyright ownership of the Elysium computer game has finally ended in a judgement. Larry McVay, owner and Managing Director of London software development company Vay Too Far, was found guilty of fraud and theft and sentenced to six years' imprisonment. The game, which apparently incorporates revolutionary new technology, is produced by the company Soft Suspense, whose Managing Director Andrew Ortolan welcomed the judgement. ‘The game represents years of work and millions of pounds,' said Ortolan. ‘That's not something you can simply allow someone to steal from you.'

McVay had maintained since the beginning of the case that it was he who had programmed Elysium and that it had been stolen from him by Soft Suspense. However he was never able to produce the appropriate evidence to support his claim. He explained this with allegations of theft, bribery and tampering by Soft Suspense. Managing Director Ortolan denied all allegations. ‘We are an utterly respectable company, not a criminal organisation, and are happy that this has been recognised. This is simply someone trying to turn the tables on us without having a scrap of proof.' McVay announced that he intended to exhaust all legal avenues, and that he ‘was not going to give up'.

Nick opened his mouth, but not a single word came out. He looked at Emily, who was pale, her lips pressed tightly together.

Victor, on the other hand, who had been reading as well, clapped his hands. ‘Well well! Emily, you have an excellent nose – like Sherlock Holmes and Philip Marlowe rolled into one. Fantastic.'

Nick's thoughts were in chaos. Could he be sure that Larry McVay was Adrian's father? He simply couldn't believe that it was a coincidence.

‘What is it?' Victor asked in astonishment. ‘You're not saying anything. And we've made a giant step forward. This Larry McVay could be a piece of the puzzle. At any rate, he lost a court case against Ortolan. He's bound to be mad at him. Perhaps he knows something about Erebos. We should talk to him.'

Nick struggled to regain his voice. ‘That's not going to be possible. He killed himself.'

They put Victor in the picture, telling him about Adrian and his strange behaviour over the last few weeks.

‘He was constantly asking what the story was with the DVDs, and then later, when he knew that it was a game, he practically begged me to stop.' Nick still didn't understand why. The game at the centre of the court case hadn't been called Erebos, it had been called Elysium. ‘Joy, Thou beauteous spark divine, Daughter of Elysium', Nick recalled grimly.

Victor grabbed the laptop and read the article through again. ‘I think I remember the case now. The interesting thing about it was that neither party wanted to explain exactly what was so extraordinary about the game. They both held their ground, like dogs fighting over a bone. But the game still hasn't been released.'

While Victor immersed himself further in his reading, Nick and Emily discussed what else they could do.

‘We have to talk to Adrian.' Emily gave a deep sigh. ‘He's an unbelievably nice guy. We had a long talk recently; he's mature for his age, and intelligent.'

‘Let's talk to him,' Nick agreed. He was remembering what Adrian had said to him a while ago: that he wasn't allowed to take the DVD, but needed to know what was on it. In some remote corner of Nick's brain that suddenly made sense, but he couldn't say how. He would be completely open with Adrian. Tell him everything he wanted to know, and in return . . .