The Assistant

by S. K. Tremayne

  And there he is. Tall and familiar. He speaks.

  ‘You fucking bitch. I saw what you did. You murdered her.’

  46

  Tabitha

  Sitting at the kitchen counter, with her daily, minuscule glass of wine, as the wintry dusk descended on the garden beyond, Tabitha stared at the clock on Arlo’s microwave.

  It was wrong again. It was always going wrong, that clock. It constantly irked her, and she corrected it about twice a week. The strange thing was that Arlo – fastidious, logical Arlo, who got annoyed if his antique cufflinks weren’t arranged by size – wasn’t as irritated by it as her.

  Where was he anyway? He’d said he would be back by now. She wondered if she should start cooking for them. But surely it was too early. Yet she liked it: the cooking. She spent more and more time in this kitchen. Cooking food she didn’t want.

  Perhaps it was just displacement activity. So she didn’t have to think about Jo. That phone call had been so painful. Admitting her terrible lie. And the accusation against Arlo?

  Her phone rang. Interrupting her troubled thoughts. The phone was a number she didn’t instantly recognize.

  ‘Hello? Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Simon. Simon Todd. Sorry for bugging you at home. Am I interrupting?’

  Tabitha paused, frowned, confused.

  ‘No. It’s fine.’

  ‘And the pregnancy – I heard you were, um, expecting?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Tabitha stared out at the gloom of the darkening garden, the bleak and thorny rosebushes, the patches of grass showing through the recent, temporary thaw. Why was Simon Todd calling? He never called to chat. It had to be Jo.

  ‘Simon, what is it? Is it Jo, yes?’

  ‘Yeah …’ his voice dropped lower, like he was scared of being overheard. ‘It’s Jo. Who else. You heard about Janet?’

  ‘Of course. So awful. I guess it was always a risk, with Janet, with that pacemaker. But poor Jo.’

  ‘Have you spoken to her, to Jo?’

  Simon was gabbling. Tabitha was suffused by guilt.

  ‘Well, I tried, but she’s, uhm, angry with me. We’ve had a row. It’s difficult. But yes … I tried.’ Tabitha attempted not to think about Arlo. How he would react when he discovered what Jo knew? About Xander? ‘But what can you say, Simon, in these circumstances. What can you do? It’s all so terribly sad. And it comes on top of everything else – this ongoing nightmare—’

  Simon interrupted, emphatically:

  ‘You mean her mad shit? The messages.’

  ‘Yes. I mean these vile emails, the extraordinary meltdown on Twitter! Losing her job! She was practically national news. I was down there at Delancey the other day, and she was pretty far gone … and yet, Simon, what can we do? She’s becoming her father. It’s awful. And now this, with her mum.’

  ‘Well, that’s it,’ Simon said, still using that strained, whispered tone. ‘That’s exactly it. The emails. The WhatsApp messages. The evil Twitter stuff. I’ve been doing some sleuthing, you see, and I reckon she didn’t send them, didn’t write them. Didn’t tweet them. She isn’t lying. She’s been hacked.’

  Tabitha felt a physical shock.

  ‘Sorry, Simon? How? Why?’

  ‘Like I said. She’s been hacked.’

  ‘But how can you possibly know?’

  His answer was anxious, but firm. ‘Because she literally couldn’t have. A while ago, I checked through the messages. One of them – one email she sent to Fitz – the timing was impossible. It was sent when she was having dinner with me, with her phone on mute, and she never touched the phone.’

  Tabitha frowned.

  ‘What about … special software? You can time and delay emails.’

  ‘Nah, I checked that too. I know this stuff. I work in IT. This is my job. Tabitha, she didn’t send these messages. So I’m beginning to think Jo has been right all along: she’s not paranoid. She’s not schizo like her dad. Someone is really doing all this to her. Torturing her. Her Assistants really are messing with her life.’

  Tabitha felt herself floundering, in the confusion. And sadness. And a new sense of alarm.

  ‘You mean the Assistants are actually talking to her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the phone, and the TV? And the Twitter account. The whole grisly thing. It’s all fake? Some kind of attack?’

  ‘Yep. That’s it. I genuinely think someone, with some enormous grudge against her, wants her utterly ruined, wants her to go mad, or top herself. But: who hates her that much, Tabs? Who wants her in a mental health unit, or under a bus? Who benefits?’

  Tabitha stared at her empty wineglass, wanting another, knowing it was impossible.

  ‘You installed the Assistants, Simon. Can’t you go round and check? She’s your ex. And she’s lost her mum.’

  ‘It’s so tricky! Polly is totally on my case. I know that sounds crap, but … But there it is. If Pol found out I had any contact, my marriage would be over. I’m even calling you from a mate’s phone, so she won’t know.’ A nervous pause. ‘I did try sending Jo a few texts a couple of weeks ago, and I sent an email about her mum the other day, saying how sorry I was, but I think they were blocked, in fact I think whoever has control of her technology is stopping her getting most emails and texts. Further isolating her. They have that much control over her life. Over everything she does. It’s bloody frightening. I am genuinely frightened for her.’ He paused, then added, ‘And here’s one more thing, as it happens, I do have one suspect in mind. After a fashion.’

  Polly felt something ominous approaching. Surely he wasn’t about to accuse Arlo? Yet she could see why he might. She’d begun to have her own doubts, sometimes. Growing doubts.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Liam.’

  ‘Who?’

  Simon repeated.

  ‘Remember that actor guy, Liam. The one she was sexting. Fucked up our marriage. For a while after we split I was checking him out online. He had a Facebook account, he was on Instagram, he sent the odd tweet, I guess I was jealous, so I followed him for a while. Pathetic but there we are.’

  Tabitha’s mind raced ahead.

  ‘You mean it’s him: coz he got jealous? Yes, that makes a kind of sense. She dumped him online, never slept with him, and then he turned on her. He’s some kind of nutter? Stalker? Right?’

  ‘Nope,’ Simon said. ‘The opposite of a stalker. You see, I haven’t checked him for ages but the other day I had another look: and he has disappeared from the Net. All evidence of him, all those images, any reference, the LinkedIn account, it’s like they never existed, no one has ever actually heard of him. Or met him. How freaking weird is that? She was sexting a ghost.’

  The truth was coming so fast it was a blur, Tabitha tried to focus.

  ‘So he didn’t even exist?’

  ‘Well, he did exist in some form. I used face-recognition software. All the photos of him were stolen from some random guy’s Facebook page, a totally different bloke, banker, lives in America, never been to Britain. I checked and checked. So someone took the photos and invented a backstory and created this character, Liam Goodchild. But then whoever created him back then has recently made him vanish from the Net. Entirely.’ Simon hesitated, then went on, ‘And that, as anyone in tech knows, is extremely bloody hard. It could only be done by someone very high up in tech companies, or by a real expert, someone with knowledge of the top-level stuff. AI. The cutting-edge shit.’

  Tabitha was almost speechless. She let Simon talk, fast and hard.

  ‘Anyway: all that’s for another day. First thing: we gotta save Jo. Can’t you go and see her, Tabs, see her and stay with her? She’s your friend, it’s your flat. And this must be done fast. She’s a serious suicide risk.’

  Tabitha winced. And I made that suicide risk worse.

  The guilt was intense; she tried to explain herself.

  ‘OK, all right. I will try, Si, I mean, I might try … But the trouble is we have, as I said, k
ind of fallen out. She won’t listen to me. We have problems uh too, you know, and – and – and – Arlo can be difficult.’

  Tabitha felt increasingly wretched with every word. She was so evidently lying. And she had no clue what to do. And her helplessness was nothing to do with Arlo. She’d burned her bridges to Jo, with the terrible lie about Jamie Trewin. It was impossible to retract. Their friendship was probably over.

  Simon sighed, quite tersely, even angrily. As if he expected this disappointment. And then he said,

  ‘I guess I could write her a fucking letter, like, y’know, an actual old-fashioned letter? Reassuring her, or warning her? But would she even bother opening it? No. I reckon …’ His voice dropped even lower, ‘I reckon someone needs to go and see her, Tabs. And, y’know, maybe it is my job. Her ex-husband. God help us. Perhaps I need to see her, take the risk. And hope Polly doesn’t find out. Because somebody has to help her, Tabitha. She’s being attacked, and she has no one else on her side.’

  ‘Well,’ Tabitha said, feeling the sting of guilt, even self-hatred. ‘If you do go, that’s great, and please – uh – please give her my love, all my love and my sympathies. Let me know what happens, as soon as.’

  Simon said a curt Yes, and rang off. He was obviously dismayed by Tabitha’s feebleness. Her cowardice. And why not. But he was also sincerely and honestly worried. Someone was trying to destroy Jo Ferguson.

  But who? As Simon put it: who would benefit from this? Her total destruction?

  Tabitha remembered what Arlo had said about Simon. That he was leading research into voice mimicry. It crossed her mind for a moment that, throughout this entire phone call, she might not have been talking to Simon. Perhaps he was faking his own voice. Dragging her deeper into this bizarre and dangerous puzzle.

  But why would he do that?

  Shadows loomed from every side. The idea of cloned voices made Tabitha queasy, but not as queasy as this conversation she had just had. Liam the actor was like some kind of ghost. It was all becoming too much, way over the top, it was all too strange, and chilling. Tabitha Ashbury had the horrible and sudden feeling she was a humble actor in a play she did not understand: and someone else, someone much, much cleverer, was writing the script. A script written in a language which she could not even read. Or maybe she was a player in a very high-stakes card game: where everyone was bluffing.

  Tabitha gazed through the glass doors, leading out onto the old, walled garden. The inevitable snow was settling, hard and fast now. Erasing everything with white, for the hundredth time. Transforming the world, yet again.

  47

  Jo

  I look at my brother. His suntanned face. The lines of age beginning to show. A weary flight from LA, to bury Mum. Why is he raging at me?

  ‘Why the fuck are you shouting at me, Will? I had nothing to do with Mum dying. I was at home.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. Look I know you despise me for what you think I did to you, the Caleb thing, but I didn’t, my computers have been hacked. Everything has been hacked – please, please believe me.’

  His arms are crossed. His face is set firm. I try to make peace:

  ‘You just got here, Will, you must be tired, let me start on this and you get some sleep, and we can talk tomorrow, and—’

  ‘No!’ He is growling. ‘I haven’t just arrived. I got here this morning. Let myself in, we must have missed each other. I’ve left my stuff with a friend, staying with a friend in Battersea.’

  He’s already been here? To Mum’s house? What is he talking about?

  Will walks away, towards the dining room. I follow. He stands by the shelf where my mum kept her laptop. She used it for photos, and family, and Facebook; she used Facebook way more than me. As parents do.

  Wordless, Will opens up the laptop. It immediately flashes to Mum’s Facebook page. He clicks on the messenger tab, which fills the screen. And then he simply points:

  ‘I presume,’ he says, with a kind of infinite coldness, a coldness that will never go away, ‘that you are going to deny this, as well?’

  I stare at the screen.

  There is a final message on the messenger column. It is from me to Mum. I only have to read the first few sentences before I feel the tears, these stupid tears, choking my throat:

  You were the worst mother. Just the worst. So fucking boring. So fucking utterly boring. On and on and on about nothing. No wonder Daddy killed himself. We all hated you, me and Will, we still hate you, THAT’s why we never visit you, never call. Did you bore Daddy to death, is that why he went mad—

  There is more of it. Several evil and revolting paragraphs. I slam the laptop shut but it is too late. The words are branded onto my naked, twitching skin. For all the world to see.

  Will speaks with suppressed rage. ‘You sent that message at eight thirty a.m. to Mum. She read it, judging by her computer log, at nine a.m. She died within the hour.’ He steps away from me, his face curled into a grimace of puzzled loathing.

  ‘What kind of monster are you, Jo? First you try and destroy my family, the happiness of your brother, your nephew, your own people. Now this. You basically kill your own mother?’

  I am running. I am running fast. Running from his words, running out of the room, running for the door. I didn’t do this, didn’t send it, but my brother won’t believe me, not after all that’s happened. And I cannot bear his righteous anger.

  ‘Go on,’ I can hear him shout, as I yank the outside door to the gasping cold of the wintry suburb. ‘Go on, go on, run away.’

  If only I could.

  48

  Jo

  Sometimes the numbness of grief and guilt can be an advantage? Perhaps it is designed that way. An evolved response to otherwise unbearable pain. How else would I have got through the last few days? My mother’s funeral. The loathing of my brother. My total isolation at the service. The staring and contemptuous glances from the other mourners.

  I have shielded myself with a kind of uncaring anger, and a cocoon of confusion and fear. So I am the mad daughter, so what. So I am the one who did that stuff on Twitter? Who cares – it’s not true. Yet that’s what everyone thinks I am, because that is what someone has turned me into.

  Bastard.

  The rage boils. I won’t let them finish me off. Yet I don’t know how to stop them. How can you fight such an elusive enemy? It’s like stabbing at phantoms. Punching at smoke. Every suspect dissolves when I investigate; some, like, Liam turn out never to have existed in the first place.

  And my predicament is so strange I cannot go to anyone and explain. And they wouldn’t give me the time of day anyway. I can imagine the incredulous faces as I state my case. You think you might have predicted the future, and you once thought you possibly saw ghosts?

  No wonder no one believes me – apart from a mad homeless guy.

  I am alone. Waiting for the final assault. Standing in my living room, absently eating an apple.

  I drop the core on my living room table. My flat becomes squalid, as I sink slowly into the mire. Google tells me the last but fiercest blizzard of the winter is coming, and I welcome it. Blast the last of the world away. I want a winter storm so fierce it levels the city of London, so all that is left is the Shard, glittering above the icebound wastes. These days when I anxiously walk up snowy Primrose Hill in the bitter winds – looking this way, that way, just in case – London feels primordial, a centre of ritual: like they built the Shard first, some strange 20,000-year-old obelisk of silver, probably a site of human sacrifice, and then over time the vast, wintry, sub-Arctic city grew around the mighty totem pole.

  I think cruel thoughts these days. I probably think too many thoughts. I need to focus on the fight. That book, The Collected Poems. How did I do it? How did I know what was going to happen to me? Maybe there is some further explanation: inside those pages.

  My deductions are interrupted. By a knock on the internal door.

  I hesitate: heart racing away, as e
ver, as ever.

  ‘Who is it?’ I say, through the door.

  An answer comes, slightly nervous:

  ‘Tom. From downstairs?’

  Relief tingles. It is only my new neighbour, one of the tenants installed by Fitz to Watch Over Me. He is a youngish man, pleasant, he and his girlfriend only moved in a few days ago. I’ve been so out of it, so distracted, I barely noticed their arrival. We swapped numbers when they arrived, but that was it.

  I rather pity them, they didn’t know they were moving into THAT house, with the madwoman upstairs.

  Briskly, I open the door.

  ‘Hi, Jo.’

  ‘Hello, Tom. What do you want?’

  I am striving to be normal. Tom is trying to smile.

  ‘Well, Jo, uh, this is a bit weird, but I’ve got a call for you.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  He shrugs. ‘Says he’s called Simon, Your ex? Says it’s urgent.’

  Simon is calling me, on my neighbour’s phone?

  A kind of excitement infuses me. Maybe it is simply the fact that I am being called by someone I know, who isn’t Tabitha. Someone who could possibly feel sympathy. Anyone.

  I take the phone from Tom. His parting smile is friendly but mystified.

  ‘Tap on the door downstairs and give me the phone when you’re done,’ he tells me, before he disappears.

  Simon does not mess around. Doesn’t say sorry about Mum. Just speaks, low and fast.

  ‘Jo. Listen to me very carefully.’

  ‘I don’t understand. How did you get Tom’s number?’

  ‘Does it matter? I rang Fitz. Listen, Jo, we haven’t got time.’

  ‘What?’

  He rushes on. ‘I know what is happening to you. I know you are being hacked. I know about the Assistants. Are you in your flat right now?’

  ‘Yes. At the door. Tom just gave me his phone.’

  ‘I used his phone because all yours are unreliable.’

  I can’t help a feeble, weakened sense of jubilation. Amidst the misery, I AM BELIEVED.

  ‘Jo, don’t say anything out loud, just go get a coat and hat and scarf and meet me by the fountain in the Inner Circle, Regent’s Park. Right now.’