Erotic Refugees (31 page)

“
I wouldn't doubt it. She
knows I'll be here this week. I told her I made you lie for me, if
it's any help.”

“
Probably not,” Rob said
as he appeared carrying two fat mugs. “She'll be like a badger
biting' a boot, she won't end that phone call until she hears a
bone crack.”

Karen took the tea that was
offered. “You'll survive. We're paying our own bills now so there's
not much she can do, besides the guilt.” She tasted her tea. “So,
not a bad place you have. I just wonder where you were planning to
put me, back when you said I could live here.”

Rob sat down on a chair that
was mostly hidden under a pile of shirts. “Oh I was just planning
to shack up with my neighbour so ye'd have the whole place to
yourself.”

Karen scratched her ear.
“Seriously?”

“
Of bloody course not!
There's a fold-out bed I went and bought specially. Dragged it
across town, so I did.”

“
My hero. So what's the
plan for today, some sightseeing?”

“
Sights, is it? Ye saw
plenty sights on the way over, that'll have to do until tomorrow.
Eoin's coming here later, and it's down to work. Twelve days isn't
much time, and we have the whole bloody party to fix too.” He
handed her a sheet of paper. “Here, Eoin's summary of our progress.
As ye can see, we're pretty much on schedule. The beta testers have
been working like mad things.”

Karen scanned the list. “You
know them all, these beta testers? I mean, there's no chance of a
leak, like that girl who messed it up last time? You sure there's
no way she could find out and hurt us again?”

“
Shite Karen, yer worse
than Eoin now!” Rob's raised his voice without really meaning to.
“Course she doesn't, I haven't seen her in months, and I don't plan
to either. So drop it, yeah?”

“
Well forgive me for
asking. It's just I am doing quite a bit of work for this, and I
don't want some disgruntled ex of yours scuttling the boat, do
I?”

“
Well she won't.” Rob
shoved a biscuit at her. “And to be honest I'd prefer we didn't
talk about Kajsa.”

Karen ignored the biscuit and
leaned closer, studying her brother in a way he found very
uncomfortable. Then her face broke into a smile.

“
No way Rob! You're way
into her, aren't you? This Kajsa's completely boiling your
spuds!”

“
Course I'm bloody not,
what are ye on about?”

Karen crossed one
black-and-white striped leg over the other and gave him the full
benefit of her eye-liner gaze.

“
Rob, I could probably
count the number of times you lied to me on two hands. You were
always shite at it. Even when you thought you'd gotten away with
it, I still knew. So just drop the whole uh-I-dunno and tell your
sister what she's after, like a good lad.”

Rob fished a packet of
cigarettes from his shirt pocket and shoved one in his mouth. He
picked up the lighter and turned it over in his hands, staring at
it while the cigarette hung there unlit.

“
All right then. Not that
it'll help, but fine.”

He told her the whole sordid
story—the late-night messages, the lunchtime sex, his fear of being
seen with her, the gnawing guilt and the running away. He ended his
tale with the time he saw her and Some Guy in the local shop and
what that had done to his already swirly head. Karen sighed when he
was finished and patted him on the hand.

“
The poor boy. He doesn't
realise how much he likes the girl until she's thrown him out for
being an arsehole.”

Rob nodded. He felt
ridiculously relieved to have actually told somebody. “Well, when
it comes down to it, it was probably the right thing to do, wasn't
it? Not much point if the girl's going to smash all yer hard work
by telling her bloody brother all yer secrets.”

“
Agreed,” Karen said. She
raised a finger. “However. You don't know for sure it was Kajsa, do
you?”

“
Of course it was bloody
her, who else could it be?”

“
I'm just saying you're
not a hundred percent. I mean, have you checked this brother of
hers on Facebook? Maybe somebody else you know has a connection to
him.”

“
My old job blocked
Facebook,” Rob said with a sour look. “So I never really got into
it. And anyway, why would I want to? I wouldn't look at hundreds of
bloody baby photos in real life, so why would I do it
online?”

“
No Rob, you're missing
the point. Facebook is for checking out who's single, and who's
into who. You know, cyber-stalking, on a massive scale!”

Rob looked doubtful. He nodded
towards the kitchen. “So show me then. Work your magic on Kajsa and
I'll believe you.”

They relocated to Rob's
workplace in the kitchen and Karen watched as he logged in. She
turned to him with a look of deep amusement.

“
Rob, seriously … you
have fifteen friends? Fifteen? And you worked on the web for how
many years?”

“
Less grief and more
work from you, thanks. Now show me what to do here. Should I start
with Kajsa? I don't have her as a friend. Maybe I can find her.
Let’s see, where do I write…”

“
Oh here, for God's sake,
give me that chair. What's her full name?”

“
Kajsa Jemte.” He spelled
it out and Karen typed it in. “This is her? Okay, we can't see her
wall so we don't know if that guy is posting to it. And we can't
see if she's listed as single as not. She's cute though. Sexy
lips.”

“
Mmm,” Rob
said.

“
But we can see her
friends list. Here, this must be her brother, Linus Jemte, so we go
to him and have a look. Whoa, six hundred friends? Tosser, nobody
has that many friends. Anything above two-fifty and you're just
taking the piss. Anyway let's have a poke around in his friends and
see what we find, shall we?”

She scrolled through the list
and Rob watched until his eyes started to glaze over with boredom.
Then, about halfway down, his hand shot out.

“
Wait, go back, the one
before. Yeah there, that one.”

He leaned closed to the screen
and squinted at the photo.

“
Bloody hell, it
is.”

Karen pulled her chair closer.
“Who is it bro?”

Rob sat back in his chair, his
thoughts swirling. “That one there, Helena Svanqvist. I kind of saw
her for a month or two, right before Kajsa. Works at the Bishop's
Arms and still won't talk to me. But that's just too bloody weird.
I mean, everybody can't just know everybody else like that. It's a
big city, it's too bloody convenient…”

“
Well think bro. How did
you meet Kajsa?”

Rob thought about it and his
eyes grew wide as something occurred to him. “Oh crap”. He lit his
cigarette. “I remember now. Linus had a birthday bash last summer,
at the bar. Helena had fixed it for him, and I was kind of seeing
her at the time so I went along. Kajsa was there and I got talking
to her. I got her number, and well, you know…”

“
Alright,” Karen said.
“Progress! So you met Kajsa through Helena? You’re telling me that
you put this Helena in the position of losing her boyfriend to
somebody she knew?”

“
I suppose. I wasn't
really her boyfriend though—”

“
Well damn it, it doesn't
matter how it really was! If she thought you were her boyfriend
then that's what you were. No wonder the girl's so pissed at
you.”

“
Oh shite.” A thought
occurred to Rob. His mouth gaped and the cigarette dangled from his
lip. “We've been talkin' about our projects in the Bishop's Arms,
and Helena’s been there too, listenin' to every word. She wouldn't
though. Would she?”

“
She might. The question
is which of your two jilted women is feeding your secrets to this
guy Linus? Is Kajsa or Helena the bad egg?”

Rob thought about it. “There's
one easy way to find out. We sit around the Bishop's Arms and talk
about when and where the party is, so Helena can't miss it. And we
mention Diamond Date a lot, and loud. Make it really obvious. And
then, if they come after us to stop us, we'll know it was her,
won't we?”

“
Brilliant,” Karen said.
“A plan that results in them coming after us. I love it. Although …
if you have been shooting your mouth off in the pub, Helena should
already know all this, right? And therefore this Linus will also
know. And if he does then he'll contact you somehow. Assuming he
cares at all.”

“
Of course he bloody
cares,” Rob said. “We're planning to make money off his site and
eventually nick some of his advertisers. I'd care a lot if I was
him.”

“
Then that's the plan. Do
nothing, see what happens, and keep an eye out for any undesirables
turning up at the launch party. Simple!”

“
As plans go, it's fairly
fuckin' lightweight.”

“
Well bro, you are
welcome to fix your own mess by whatever means come to mind. I know
a good psychic, for example.”

Rob gave her a resigned look.
She was right, there wasn't much else they could do now, just hope
for the best and get on with it.

”
And now,” Karen said as
she rubbed her hands together, “we get to work. If we make any
progress, then maybe you could show me some of the town later. Some
famous sights, like.”

”
Well,” Rob said,
“Malone's is a bit of a tourist destination. I’m sure I’ve seen it
on a few postcards. And the cheeseburger plate is very
scenic.”

“
Sounds reasonable. Now
shove over and let's get to work, shall we?”

Rob stood on the corner of the
little park across the road from Kajsa's building. He could see a
light on in her flat, but he wasn't sure if that meant anyone was
home. There was no shadow passing the window, no flicker of a TV.
And even if she was home, maybe she was there with somebody? Maybe
even Some Guy?

Rob felt he had to see her and
it wasn't just the five pints he’d knocked back with Karen that had
convinced him of that. He simply felt a need to apologise to her.
For what, he wasn't exactly sure. Suspecting a person of something
in their absence didn't really require an apology. Or maybe he
didn't really want to apologise at all but only find out who’d
really been leaking their ideas to Diamond Date. But, if that was
the case, then why did he feel so stupidly guilty?

Rob realised there was only one
way to find out if she was in. He found her home number in his
mobile and, with an unfamiliar pressure building in his chest,
pressed dial and held his breath. It went buu-baa-beep in a rising
tone a few times, after which a robot Swedish voice came on to
inform him the number was no longer in service.

Rob jabbed the red button with
an irritated grunt. He could try her mobile but … no. It was a bad
idea. This all was. He shoved his phone in his pocket and stared up
at the window, watching for the slightest flicker of movement. It
took him five minutes to realise it wasn’t going to happen. So he
folded up his collar, pulled on his gloves and headed for home,
with one thought foremost in his mind.

He just hated it when Karen was
right about stuff.

Chapter
33

Eoin was very good at pool. He
found this surprised people although he didn't really understand
why. There hadn't been a great deal to do while growing up in a
medium-sized Irish town in the eighties. There were pirate videos
to rent, and arcade games to play, and adventure game-books to
cheat your way through. If you were a bit hard, you could also try
your hand at drinking or hanging around corners, but Eoin and his
friends weren’t hard and those things weren't an option.

Pool had been their way to be
tough. You could earn huge respect through your skill at bouncing
balls off cushions and putting them in holes. Not that the respect
garnered from losers and bar flies was hugely important to have,
but respect was respect and you took it where you could get it.

“
Yer a total bastard,”
Rob said in disbelief as Eoin tapped in the black for the third
time in a row. “The first two I thought, nah, he's just lucky, but
now I'm sure of it. What are ye, a shark? A secret shark dressed up
as a … a tuna?”

Eoin shoved in the coins and
hummed to himself as the balls clattered out again. He arranged
them in the triangle which he then lifted off and spun deftly
between his fingers. He stood back. “Your break.”

“
Fine,” Rob said. He was
grim with concentration as he lined up and moved the cue back and
forth a few times. He walloped the white and watched in amazement
as it glanced off the side of the pack, sending only a few balls
rolling, and ended up in an easy spot in the middle of the
table.

“
Don't worry,” Eoin said
as he strolled around to find the best position. “I always get
worse after the third beer or so.”

“
Ye've only had the one,”
Rob observed.

“
True,” Eoin said. He
clobbered the number twelve against the side cushion and turned
away to grab his beer. The ball bounced, tricked across the table
and dropped into the middle pocket while Eoin still had his back to
it.

“
Oh,” he said with a look
of fake surprise when he turned around. He chalked his cue and blew
at the tip. “Me again, it seems.”

Rob sat on his stool with a
heavy sigh and grabbed his pint. “Well, I hope the launch goes
better than this bloody game.”