by Peter May
“I’ve been busy, Sherri.”
“We’ve had an offer for the house, Michael. The couple who were there the other day.”
Hope flared momentarily in his heart. “Tell me.”
“They’ve offered $2.6. But I think I can push them up another $100,000.”
Michael felt as if he were spinning backwards through space. There was to be no last minute reprieve. “It’s out of my hands, Sherri. The bank have valued it at $2.75 million. And they are going to be selling it without further reference to me.” There was a long silence, in which he could feel her anger transmitting itself across the ether.
“You signed a three-month, exclusive contract with me, Michael. I have spent a lot of money on photographs, promotional material, and advertising. Now it turns out you don’t really own the house at all. The bank does. You had no right to enter into that contract. I want compensation, do you understand? Expect to hear from my lawyers.”
Michael heard the phone slam down at the other end of the line. He took a deep breath and poured another glass of wine, and thought that maybe tonight he would need to open a second bottle.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It had been a long day. Michael had spent most of the afternoon at the home of a rape victim, photographing evidence. Blood and semen stains, a knife left behind by the attacker, the clear signs of a desperate struggle, that had taken place during an hour-long ordeal.
Although the perpetrator had been caught later in possession of items taken from his victim’s suburban villa, rape was never easy to prove. And so began the long process of putting together the evidence that would ensure a conviction. It was all the motivation Michael ever needed to be meticulous in the execution of his job.
One by one he slid the selected prints into their plastic sleeves and clipped them into a folder, then returned to his cubicle to print out labels for each of them.
He always paused for a moment when he sat down, to take in the framed picture of Mora that he had placed on his desk. She gazed back at him from a moment captured in the past to a future where she no longer existed, and to the lover who mourned her. He felt caught by her eyes, a look in them he had always recognised as love, a hunger for him. With Mora he had never felt so wanted or so loved. And now he felt abandoned. And there was something buried deep inside him that he had never quite managed to expunge. Something he had tried many times to rationalise. Something he knew was neither fair, nor worthy of him. Something very much like anger with her for leaving him like this.
“Hey, kiddo.”
He turned around as Janey slid into his cubicle and pulled up a seat beside him. She had a conspiratorial air about her, her face flushed a little with some secret excitement. She pushed her glasses back up her nose, peered over the cubicle wall to check if there was anyone nearby, then dropped down again and leaned toward him. She spoke in a stage whisper.
“Listen. That money in your account.”
“What about it?”
“It’s real.”
Michael looked at her, a dead stillness in him. “How can you possibly know that?”
She glanced over her shoulder and huddled even closer. “Listen, you’ve got to promise me you’ll tell nobody about this.”
“Janey…”
“Promise, Mike.”
“Okay, I promise.”
She smiled. “I have a part-time job.”
“Jesus, Janey, FSS will bump you if they find out.”
“Well, duh! Why do you think I’m swearing you to secrecy?”
“Doing what?”
“Working for Linden Lab.”
He looked at her in disbelief. “You’re kidding me. Why?”
She sighed. “Well, I guess I needed a reason to justify spending all those hours in SL. To myself, I mean.”
“Well, why do you?”
“Jesus, Mike, I’m lonely, you know? Last time anyone asked me out on a date was nearly two years ago. And I’m not getting any younger. I have friends in there, a social life, a reason to get out of bed in the morning.”
He looked at her with pity welling in his heart. She deserved better.
“Don’t look at me like that!”
“What’s the job?”
“I’m an inworld accounts assistant. I set up accounts for people and deal with any problems that arise. And for that, I have access to the database.”
“Hi, guys.” A secretary from the administrator’s office drifted by, clutching a handful of papers. Janey waited until she had gone.
“There was a six-month trial and assessment period before I got that access. I’m a trusted employee now.” She drew a long breath. “The point is, Mike, I was able to get in to have a look at your account and see where that money came from.”
“And?”
She shook her head. “Couldn’t tell. But here’s the thing…” She lowered her voice even further. “It’s real, Mike. No mistake, no doubt. That is three million real dollars sitting in your account. And you can bet that someone, somewhere is going to come looking for it sometime real soon.”
Michael could almost feel the blood draining from his face. Janey looked at him blankly for a moment, then he saw suspicion, followed by disbelief, dawning in her eyes, and he could no longer meet them.
“Michael, that money is still in your account, isn’t it?”
He felt the beginnings of panic. “Not exactly.”
“Well, either it is, or it isn’t.”
“It isn’t.” And then he added quickly, “But I can get it back.”
“Mike!” She raised her voice almost to a shout, then became suddenly self-conscious and grabbed his arm. Her voice dipped again to barely a hiss. “What have you done?”
“The bank was going to take the house, Janey, and give me way less than the value of the loan and the payment arrears. I was going to end up in serious debt.”
“You used that money to pay off your home loan?” Realisation washed over her like ice cold water.
“It’s just temporary. Like a loan from SL, till the house sells. Then I’ll pay it back.”
She stared at him in wide-eyed disbelief. “Jesus, Mike! Three million dollars! You’d better just pray that whoever it belongs to doesn’t want it back in a hurry.”
***
Michael picked up his car from the lot outside the Newport Beach Police Department, where it had soaked up the sun all day and still held its residual warmth. A cooling breeze was blowing now off the ocean, stirring the limp fronds of the palm trees that lined the road. The sky was turning puce in the west, where long strips of grey-pink cloud were gathering along the horizon. He sat holding the steering wheel with both hands and lowered his head on to his arms.
How could he have been so stupid!
He had done it on an impulse. In a moment of desperation, somehow convincing himself that the cash wasn’t real. It was money that existed only in a virtual world, after all. How could it be? Until the transfer had gone through, and his debit account had been credited with $3,183,637 very real dollars. And he had felt a strange chill run through him. But the deed had been done. Whatever action he had taken then, that money would forever have shown up as having been in his bank account. Even if he had paid it straight back into Second Life. There was an electronic, forensic trail that led directly from one to the other.
And so he had simply closed his eyes to the consequences, telling himself that he would pay it back when the house was sold, and then find some means of explaining it away to the taxman when he came knocking at the door.
He had felt, for just a few moments, exultant as he walked out of the bank. The house was his. No more home loan, no more arrears. Mr. Yuri had, for once, been speechless. It had almost been worth it for that alone.
He lifted his head and peered through the gathering gloom into an uncertain future. He had hoped to hold off on a sale until he could realise the full value of the property. But he knew now that he would have to push Sherri for as quick a sale as possible, even
if he didn’t get the full market value, and put that money back into the SL account. He sat clutching at straws. Maybe whoever owned it had no idea where it was. Maybe no one would ever come looking for it. He sighed, shaking his head at his own naivety. And maybe pigs would fly.
He pulled out of the parking lot, turning right into Santa Barbara Drive and then left on to Jamboree, before taking another left at the next set of lights and heading up into the sprawling Fashion Island shopping mall.
The parking lot opposite Circuit City shimmered under the streetlamps in the evening heat as he pulled into a slot, and as he crossed to the escalators and rode up to the main mall level the last light was leached out of the sky by the fall of night. There were already queues outside P. F. Chang’s China bistro. He pushed past the chattering crowds awaiting their table call, and into the California Pizza Kitchen, where they had his Cajun Pizza ready and waiting. It smelled mouth-wateringly delicious. Blackened chicken and spicy andouille sausage with a creole sauce, roasted red and yellow peppers and mozzarella cheese. But somehow tonight, he had no appetite for it, and knew it would sit on the kitchen counter getting cold as he opened another bottle of Mora’s wine and fretted about his stupidity.
As he came back down the escalators he saw, across the carpark, two shadowy figures at the door of his SUV. One of them appeared to be bending down to peer inside, while the other walked around the back and tried to lift the tailgate.
“Hey!” Chas shouted at the top of his voice, and he took the remaining stairs two at a time, nearly falling as he reached the foot of the escalator. He ran across the road, almost dropping his pizza as a car horn blasted and a vehicle swerved to avoid him in a screech of tyres. He ran between the potted palms and out across the asphalt. His SUV stood, where he had left it, all on its own between a set of angled white lines near the back of the lot. There was no one anywhere near it. He looked around, heart pumping, to see if he could spot the figures he had seen from the escalator. But there was nobody around. He turned as a car engine burst into life and its headlights laid down two conical beams across the tarmac. The vehicle pulled away, and Michael saw that its occupants were a young man and his girl eating ice creams and laughing.
He walked the rest of the way to his SUV and made a quick tour around it. There didn’t seem to be any damage. He unlocked it with his remote and slipped inside. He laid the pizza box on the passenger seat and let out a long sigh of relief, as a leather-gloved hand came around from behind his head and clamped itself over his mouth. Iron fingers almost crushed his jaw. He could smell the leather of the gloves, and he felt cold metal pressing into the side of his neck.
“Do not move a single, fucking muscle, you understand?” It wasn’t the low rasp of the voice in his ear that stopped him from moving. He was paralysed by pure, naked fear.
The shadow of another hand came around from behind, only this time it wasn’t leather he smelled. It was something medical. Something that made him think of hospitals. He only recognised it at the last moment. As a warm, damp, cloth was folded over his nose. Chloroform. Not very original, but very effective. He tried to hold his breath, tensing against the pressure of the hands from behind. But it wasn’t long before the weight pushing down on his chest caused him to gasp for air, and he choked, and coughed, and saw the world fade away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
He seemed to be tethered to something anchored at the bottom of the sea. He couldn’t breathe, or move, but had the sensation of floating, as if in water. It was impossible to open his eyes. And as oxygen starvation increased, the pressure in his chest became almost unbearable. He tried to draw breath through his mouth, but something was stopping it. And then, as he thought despair might steal away all reason, he found himself sucking air in through his nasal passages. Long, thin columns of it that he dragged down into his lungs, almost gagging from the effort.
And it was as if the tether had been cut. He went spiralling upwards through the water. Up and up, endlessly it seemed, until at long last he broke the surface. He breathed out, but still couldn’t draw air back through his mouth. He opened his eyes. Wide. But he couldn’t see anything. He could feel the physical pounding of his heart against his ribs. The sound of it filled his head. The rushing of blood filled his ears.
And slowly, as comprehension took hold, he realised that it was consciousness whose surface he had broken, not water. He was perfectly dry, apart from the sweat that ran in rivulets down his face. He could feel it dripping from his chin. He couldn’t see for the simple reason that it was dark. Profoundly dark. He was seated, his arms bound behind him, tied at the wrists to a chair. His ankles, too, were secured, cutting off circulation, biting into his flesh. He couldn’t open his mouth because there was something taped across it, holding it firmly shut.
As his breathing became more regular, and his heartbeat less frantic, he tried to listen. But he could hear nothing. Not a sound other than the rasping of his own breath. Although he had the very strong sense that he was not alone. A smell, perhaps. Something in the air. The heat emanating from another body.
And then suddenly he was blinded. Cold, white light sent pain spiking through his brain. He screwed up his eyes against it, turning his head away as much as his bindings would allow. Hands grabbed his head roughly from behind, and forced him to look forward again. As his pupils contracted, the scene before him began to take form, like something rezzing in Second Life. An office desk. Polished mahogany. A desk lamp, its shade swivelled toward him, so that he received the full, reflected glare of its naked bulb. A man sitting in an executive leather chair, leaning forward, forearms planted on the desktop, staring intently at Michael. There was something lying flat on the desk in front of him, but Michael couldn’t see what it was.
He tried to swallow, but his mouth and throat were so dry his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick and started to panic. The man nodded, and someone reached around to tear away the tape that sealed his mouth. He heard the sound of it ripping free of his flesh and the sharp sting of it as it tore hairs out of his skin. He gasped for air, and felt the threatened bile retreat to his stomach.
The man leaned forward into the light, so that Michael got a clear sight of him for the first time. He wore a plain dark suit, with a white shirt and red tie. He had ginger hair, gelled and scraped back across a broad skull. His skin was very pale, very un-Californian, and spattered with freckles. At a guess Michael would have put him at mid- to late-forties. But he was carrying a fair amount of weight and might have been older. He was clean-shaven, almost shiny-faced. His lips were exceptionally pale, and his green eyes were so cold that Michael could almost feel them on him like the tips of icy fingers.
Michael started to speak, but the man quickly raised a silencing finger to his lips. Then he waggled it backwards and forwards in front him. A tiny shake of his head.
“Just listen.”
Michael nodded.
“You are a thief, Mr. Kapinsky.”
Michael began to protest. But the man tilted his head to one side and raised a single eyebrow, and Michael shut up.
“You are a thief. And a liar. You stole more than three million dollars from our account, and if I’d let you, you would have denied it, wouldn’t you?”
Michael assumed, because this had been couched as a question, that he was expected to reply. “Yes. Because I didn’t steal it.”
“See? A thief, and a liar. Just like I said.” He raised his finger again to pre-empt any further attempt by Michael at denial. “We were most perplexed when that money suddenly disappeared from our Second Life account. Vanished without trace. You can imagine how we felt. Close to three and a quarter million is no trifling amount, Mr. Kapinsky. But just as well for us that human frailty is something we have always been able to exploit to our advantage. We are past masters in the art of bribery and corruption. In truth, it is such an easy path to tread. People are so…bribable. And…corrupt. So we had little trouble findi
ng someone in San Francisco who would take a look for us into the Linden Lab database to tell us what had happened. As you can probably understand, we were unwilling to go through official channels. The fewer questions asked the better.”
He leaned back a little now, folding his hands in front of him on the desk.
“And what did we find? We found that our account had been erased. No record of it ever existing. And our three million plus gone, as if simply vanished into thin air. Perplexing you might think. And you’d be right. We were very perplexed, and not a little vexed. But then our friend in San Francisco stumbled across an extraordinary coincidence. A sum of money corresponding exactly to our missing cash—right down to the last cent—had been paid into another account the same day that ours went missing.”
His face softened into what was almost a smile.
“Now, I don’t know about you, Mr. Kapinsky, but I’m not one who believes much in coincidence. No effect without cause.” He leaned into the light again, lowering his voice as if sharing a confidence. “But here’s the thing. Before we could even lift a finger to do anything about it, the money was gone again. And that account erased. Almost before our very eyes. Again, no record that it had ever existed, and so no name to hang it on. As you can imagine, we were more than perplexed by now.”
He stabbed a finger toward a ceiling hidden by the dark.
“But wait. Fortune favoured us yet again. Because guess what? That self-same exact amount turned up in yet another account. The same day the second one vanished. And do you know whose account that was, Mr. Kapinsky?” But he raised his hand. “No, don’t answer. We both know whose account it was. It was your account, Mr. Kapinsky.”
He sat back again.
“Very clever. I have to confess to a certain admiration. From a purely professional standpoint. But from a personal one, Mr. Kapinsky, I have to tell you that I am extremely pissed off. In fact, I can’t even begin to convey to you just how pissed off I am. But we’ll come to that. Many things we will come to, very soon. But first things first.”