Soul Fire (11 page)

‘Zoe, please. Keeping this to yourself is making you ill. You can trust me. I promise.’

She shakes her head. ‘A trouble shared is a trouble halved? No. You’re wrong, Alice. You don’t want to end up like me. Accept that your sister’s gone. Move on. While
that’s still an option.’ And she pulls the hood up over her head again, stands up, and almost knocks over her empty glass as she pushes past the table.

I try to follow her, but there’s a hand on my arm.

‘Alice, my best friend in all the world. Are you having a good time?’ Cara’s drunk.

‘I’m not feeling very good.’

‘You want to go
already
?’

‘You don’t have to come with me, don’t worry. I just need some time to think.’

‘Oh, Alice, you’ve spent the last ten months thinking about what happened. What is there left to think about?’

I could give her a long list: murders and mirages, dead people who live forever, living people obsessed with the dead.

The party guests are swaying and singing. This isn’t the right place for me to be now. My head’s full of unformed theories and fears that I can’t share with anyone, and it
makes me feel so lonely.

‘I’ll get a cab. Mum gave me the money.’

Cara tries to smile. ‘No. No, don’t worry. Let’s split. I’ve seen what I came to see!’ And she glances over at Ade.

‘What about Matt? You’ve been flirting with him for hours.’

She turns and smiles at him. He mimes holding a glass, offering her another drink. ‘He’s cute. But Ade is so much more interesting. Next stop, Barcelona!’

‘Barcelona? You can’t go with them, Cara.’

‘Who says? Mum won’t mind. I’ll tell her I’m thinking of doing Spanish at uni.’

Someone turns the music up. Ade is on the dance floor, doing salsa moves. I wouldn’t have expected that of him. I thought he was sensitive, introverted, like Tim, or Lewis.

Lewis
.

He’s the one person I trust to listen without pushing me further than I want to go.

‘Cara . . . If I wanted to leave but not actually go home yet . . .’ I leave the question unasked.

She smiles at me. ‘Alice Forster, what
are
you plotting?’

I shrug. ‘I was thinking of dropping in on Lewis.’

For a moment, she doesn’t respond. Then she laughs. ‘Oh! I knew you two were perfect for each other. No wonder you weren’t interested in those boys tonight.’

‘No, it’s not like
that
. . . ’

But she’s not listening. ‘Remember. I told you that you’d find someone who’d convince you there was more to life than moping around. Lewis could be that
someone.’

It’s simpler to agree with her, even though I hate lying. ‘You never know. I’ll text him and then is it OK if I call Mum, and tell her I’m staying over with you?’

‘Sure. You’ve been
my
alibi often enough. Just promise me one thing . . .’

‘Mmm?’

‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’ And then Cara starts to cackle like an old lady, because
that
doesn’t rule anything out at all.

Lewis doesn’t sound remotely surprised when I call and ask if I can come over. Maybe he’s always getting midnight calls from damsels in cyber-distress.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ he says, as he opens the door. ‘I wasn’t expecting company.’

But the flat isn’t messy. All the candles are lit, and there are spotlights under the plants, which makes them look fairytale green. Though some things don’t change: there’s
the usual collection of Diet Coke cans in the bin under his long desk, plus a row of empty coffee cups.

‘Burning the midnight oil?’

‘Not on Burning Truths. But only because there’s nothing going on there tonight.’

Because whoever’s behind it was at the party
, I think, but I don’t say so, because it might sound paranoid.

‘So what are you having, Alice? Wine? Beer?’

‘I think I’ve had too much already. Cara’s been trying to lead me astray.

He raises his eyebrows. ‘Hmm. Not sure I approve of that. You’re not even seventeen, yet, right? Not till . . .’ and he stops. No one can think of my birthday without also
thinking of Meggie’s last hours.

‘Thanks for the advice, Granddad,’ I say, to cut through the tension. ‘Could you spare a Diet Coke? That is, if there’s any left.’

‘Pretty much all there is in my fridge.’ He goes into the kitchen area and opens the fridge door. ‘Other millionaires have shelf after shelf of champagne. I have low-calorie
caffeinated drinks.’ He hands me a can.

‘A millionaire. Is that what you are?’

He blushes. ‘It’s just what I tell girls to impress them.’

I blush back. ‘The party was crap, anyway. Ade and Sahara invited me. And now they want me to go to Spain with them, too. To Barcelona, for some midsummer firework fiesta. It’ll be
not long after the anniver— After my birthday.’

‘It’ll be nice weather, I bet. It’ll probably still be snowing here.’

‘I don’t know if I’ll go, to be honest. They’re a bit full on. Hey, unless you fancy coming along, too?’

I don’t know why I just said that. I sound embarrassingly needy, as though I’m scared to do anything without him at my side.

Lewis doesn’t say anything else, but goes to the microwave and puts something inside. Within a few seconds, explosive pops fill the silence. ‘You’ll join me in some supper?
Corn counts as one of my five a day.’

‘According to who?’

‘Me.’

I laugh. ‘And I guess when you drink Cherry Coke, that counts as a fruit, right?’

‘I like your logic, Ali. So you didn’t fancy going home yet. What shall we do instead?’

I want to go onto Burning Truths myself, and the Beach, to see if I can make more sense of what happened at the party. But it’d be seriously rude to come over here only to ask Lewis to go
to bed while I go online. ‘Tell me what you’ve been working on, Lewis.’

‘Why, have you got insomnia?’

‘No. I’m simply interested in what you get up to when you’re not cracking international mysteries.’

He’s weighing up whether I’m joking. ‘Well, OK, if you
really
want to know.’ He goes to the desk, pulls up a second chair.

‘This is the day job.’ Lewis points to the first screen, which shows a constantly changing set of figures. ‘Routine maintenance. Virus diagnosis. Yawn. But it pays the rent on
this place and finances this . . .’ he points to the middle screen, which has five or six different windows showing news pages and live chat, ‘which is the fun stuff. Experiments.
Hacker baiting. One day I’ll design a trap that won’t just stop the bastards getting into your computer, it’ll root them out, too.’

‘Aren’t hackers . . . kind of cool?’

‘The ones you see on the news. The ones hacking into the Pentagon to point out security flaws, they can be cool. But most of the others are criminals. They exploit people. I hate the idea
that the web ends up dangerous. It shouldn’t. It’s about democracy.’

‘You sound really passionate about it.’

He nods. ‘Sure am. And not just because if I crack this, I’ll end up richer than Zuckerberg. It’s why I like puzzles like your Burning Truths site. The answers aren’t
always about fancy code. They’re about psychology, about . . . Alice?’

I lean in closer to the screen.

‘I know you think I’m a geek, but it’s a bit off to ignore your host while they’re telling you about their life’s mission, don’t you think?’

I sigh. ‘Sorry. I just got distracted by something.’

‘My handsome face, obviously.’

‘No! Not that it isn’t handsome, but . . .’ I point at the screen. In the top right-hand corner, there’s a page headlined
Breaking News from the Hackosphere
, with
news items scrolling underneath.

He turns, too. ‘
New North Korean Crackdown on Civil Rights Challenged by Uni Hacker
?’ he reads aloud. ‘Yes, he’s a good guy. They’re doing great work out
there.’

‘Not that story.
That
one.’ And I point to the headline that caught my attention:

Kidnappers of Tragic Teen Gretchen Found Guilty in Berlin: Sentenced to Life

He scowls. ‘Oh. That. Hmm. Very depressing case. Her dad was some high-up in the German government, Erik Fischer. Poacher turned gamekeeper, used to try to guess what the hackers would do
next. But he got too good at it.’

Gretchen Fischer
. It is her. Javier’s new best friend.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It was meant to be classified, but geeks are terrible gossips. Fischer built a program that can get into pretty much anything. Starts off as multiple clumsy hacking attempts, like a
million houseflies, but while the anti-virus systems are swatting them off, Phase Two kicks in. It’s a classic Trojan Horse, but so elegant. They call it Fischer’s Ghostnet.’

‘But what did that have to do with
Gretchen
?’

‘She was kidnapped for the program, not money. Ghostnet would have been the prize that kept on giving. It’s intelligent, you see. Learns from its mistakes. With something like that
you could blackmail governments: pay up, or we mess with your hospitals, your defences, your nuclear power stations.’ He clicks on the link.

The first thing to load is a school picture of Gretchen; on the giant screen, it’s larger than life size. I feel a shock of recognition, even though the Gretchen I know doesn’t look
quite like this one. On the Beach, her hair is more blonde than red and her eyes bluer, her features more delicate, her skin less freckled. But there’s an innocence in the real
Gretchen’s wide smile. She doesn’t know what’s coming. How could she?

‘Poor kid. The police found her alive, in the derelict recording studio where they’d been holding her. But they’d . . . cut her. First her hair, to prove to her father that
they had her. Then worse. She died in hospital. Blood poisoning.’

Below Gretchen’s photo, there are defiant mug shots of three men with harsh faces.

Lewis scans the story. ‘One Russian, one German, one Czech. The German claims he was coerced, that he tried to persuade the others to release her. His evidence meant the trial was over in
a day. It didn’t help him, though. They all got life.’ Lewis shakes his head. ‘I don’t believe in capital punishment but what they did to her . . . An eye for an eye begins
to make sense.’

There’s a last image at the bottom of the page, of an older man with freckles in a butterfly pattern across his cheeks, like Gretchen’s. He has hippie-length salt-and-pepper hair,
and wears a collarless suit jacket. But what I notice most is the sadness in his hooded grey eyes.

‘Her dad?’

‘Yes.’ Lewis touches the screen, and the photo comes to life.

‘This is no happy ending,’ Gretchen’s father says, in perfect English. ‘Nothing can bring her back. She suffered terribly. But even in hospital, she fought. My daughter
was special, worth a thousand, a
million
, of those cowards, those killers.

‘But at least now we know what happened. They failed to break her and they failed to get what they wanted. Their conviction is not enough, but at least it is a kind of justice.’

‘Justice.’ I whisper the word as Mr Fischer’s image freezes again.

If Gretchen has justice, then tonight she may also find her freedom. But what will that mean for Javier? I don’t know if he can cope with losing another friend.

I
have
to be there for him.

Lewis must be immune to caffeine because pretty soon his eyelids start to droop. He offers me his bed, says he’ll take the sofa.

‘No. You don’t have to be a gentleman. I’d prefer to sleep in here, so long as I can go online, too. I’m still getting serious withdrawal symptoms because of the bloody
internet ban.’

He knows better than to argue. I wait till he’s closed the door to his bedroom before I log on.

My email loads super-fast, and as I click on the link to the Beach, the huge screen fills with colour. On the horizon, the sky glows apricot, shot through with deep pink stripes, like memories
of sun rays. In the last week, I’ve got used to arriving later than this, once the place is in darkness and the only light is from Chinese lanterns and the beach bar. But this time I’ve
made it just in time for sunset.

I spot them almost immediately. Gretchen is sitting on the sand with Javier. She’s got a pen and is drawing patterns on his hand, the way junior school kids do. Suns, moons, stars. His
skin is dark next to hers.

‘Hi, guys,’ I say, sitting down.

I half expect them to scowl at the interruption, but instead Gretchen leans over to kiss me on both cheeks, her lips skimming my face. Her skin feels feverish. ‘How is Planet Earth,
Alice?’

‘Complicated,’ I say.

‘You should never leave Soul Beach,’ Javier says. ‘Things are always
so
simple here.’ Whereas when you are living, well, whatever you do, there are always
consequences.

Gretchen smiles at me. ‘Ignore Mr Sharp. You seem weary, Alice. But now you’re here, you have nothing to worry about. I insist you relax with us. Watch the sun go down.’

There’s something odd about her voice. Can she sense what’s going to happen?

‘The view of the sunset is best from the chiringuito bar, of course,’ Javier says, ‘and even better with a drink.’

We scramble up from the sand, which is gritty between my toes. How come it feels so much more real than the stripped floorboards that are actually under my feet? Gretchen and Javier pull me up,
taking one hand each, and again, I notice that she seems to be burning up. Is this what it’s like when a Guest is about to leave?

No sign of Meggie or Danny tonight. But that’s OK. I must focus on Gretchen.

The bar is quiet, though the handful of Guests still nudge each other when they see me, perhaps hoping I might be able to help them. Weird. Since Triti went, I’ve almost come to believe my
own publicity – that I’m all-powerful. Yet if Gretchen goes tonight, it will have been nothing to do with me.

We sit at the table nearest the sea. Within seconds, Sam has brought a tray over with three deep-orange tequila sunrises. ‘I know you can’t drink it,’ she says putting one in
front of me, ‘but you can enjoy the view, and I’m sure they’ll finish it for you.’