Hodges does see. He flips back to the first page of his legal pad and circles one of his earliest notes: COMPUTER SAVVY (UNDER 50?)

‘When you click in, you get the usual choice – ENTER USERNAME or REGISTER NOW. Since I didn’t have a username, I clicked REGISTER NOW and got one. If you want to talk with me under the Blue Umbrella, I’m tyrone40. Next, there’s a questionnaire you fill out – age, sex, interests, things like that – and then you have to punch in your credit card number. It’s thirty bucks a month. I did it because I have faith in your powers of reimbursement.’

‘Your faith will be rewarded, my son.’

‘The computer thinks it over for ninety seconds or so – the Blue Umbrella spins and the screen says SORTING. Then you get a list of people with interests similar to yours. You just bang on a few and pretty soon you’re chatting up a storm.’

‘Could people use this to exchange porn? I know the descriptor says you can’t, but—’

‘You could use it to exchange fantasies, but no pix. Although I could see how weirdos – child abusers, crush freaks, that kind of thing – could use the Blue Umbrella to direct like-minded friends to sites where outlaw images are available.’

Hodges starts to ask what crush freaks are, then decides he doesn’t want to know.

‘Mostly just innocent chat, then.’

‘Well …’

‘Well what?’

‘I can see how crazies might use it to exchange badass info. Like how to build bombs and stuff.’

‘Let’s say I already have a username. What happens then?’

‘Do you?’ The excitement is back in Jerome’s voice.

‘Let’s say I do.’

‘That would depend on whether you just made it up or if you got it from someone who wants to chat with you. Like he gave it to you on the phone or in an email.’

Hodges grins. Jerome, a true child of his times, has never considered the possibility that information could be conveyed by such a nineteenth-century vehicle as a letter.

‘Say you got it from someone else,’ Jerome goes on. ‘Like from the guy who stole that lady’s car. Like maybe he wants to talk to you about what he did.’

He waits. Hodges says nothing, but he is all admiration.

After a few seconds of silence, Jerome says, ‘Can’t blame a guy for trying. Anyway, you go on and enter the username.’

‘When do I pay my thirty bucks?’

‘You don’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because someone’s already paid it for you.’ Jerome sounds sober now. Dead serious. ‘Probably don’t need to tell you to be careful, but I will, anyway. Because if you already have a username, this guy’s waiting for you.’

17

Brady stops on his way home to get them supper (subs from Little Chef tonight), but his mother is gorked out on the couch. The TV is showing another of those reality things, a program that pimps a bunch of good-looking young women to a hunky bachelor who looks like he might have the IQ of a floor lamp. Brady sees Ma has already eaten – sort of. On the coffee table is a half-empty bottle of Smirnoff’s and two cans of NutraSlim. High tea in hell, he thinks, but at least she’s dressed: jeans and a City College sweatshirt.

On the off-chance, he unwraps her sandwich and wafts it back and forth beneath her nose, but she only snorts and turns her head away. He decides to eat that one himself and put the other one in his private fridge. When he comes back from the garage, the hunky bachelor is asking one of his potential fuck-toys (a blonde, of course) if she likes to cook breakfast. The blonde’s simpering reply: ‘Do you like something hot in the morning?’

Holding the plate with his sandwich on it, he regards his mother. He knows it’s possible he’ll come home some evening and find her dead. He could even help her along, just pick up one of the throw pillows and settle it over her face. It wouldn’t be the first time murder was committed in this house. If he did that, would his life be better or worse?

His fear – unarticulated by his conscious mind but swimming around beneath – is that nothing would change.

He goes downstairs, voice-commanding the lights and computers. He sits in front of Number Three and goes on Debbie’s Blue Umbrella, sure that by now the fat ex-cop will have taken the bait.

There’s nothing.

He smacks his fist into his palm, feeling a dull throb at his temples that is the sure harbinger of a headache, a migraine that’s apt to keep him awake half the night. Aspirin doesn’t touch those headaches when they come. He calls them the Little Witches, only sometimes the Little Witches are big. He knows there are pills that are supposed to relieve headaches like that – he’s researched them on the Net – but you can’t get them without a prescription, and Brady is terrified of doctors. What if one of them discovered he was suffering from a brain tumor? A glioblastoma, which Wikipedia says is the worst? What if that’s why he killed the people at the job fair?

Don’t be stupid, a glio would have killed you months ago.

Okay, but suppose the doctor said his migraines were a sign of mental illness? Paranoid schizophrenia, something like that? Brady accepts that he is mentally ill, of course he is, normal people don’t drive into crowds of people or consider taking out the President of the United States in a suicide attack. Normal people don’t kill their little brothers. Normal men don’t pause outside their mothers’ doors, wondering if they’re naked.

But abnormal men don’t like other people to know they’re abnormal.

He shuts off his computer and wanders aimlessly around his control room. He picks up Thing Two, then puts it down again. Even this isn’t original, he’s discovered; car thieves have been using gadgets like this for years. He hasn’t dared to use it since the last time he used it on Mrs Trelawney’s Mercedes, but maybe it’s time to bring good old Thing Two out of retirement – it’s amazing what people leave in their cars. Using Thing Two is a little dangerous, but not very. Not if he’s careful, and Brady can be very careful.

Fucking ex-cop, why hasn’t he taken the bait?

Brady rubs his temples.

18

Hodges hasn’t taken the bait because he understands the stakes: pot limit. If he writes the wrong message, he’ll never hear from Mr Mercedes again. On the other hand, if he does what he’s sure Mr Mercedes expects – coy and clumsy efforts to discover who the guy is – the conniving sonofabitch will run rings around him.

The question to be answered before he starts is simple: who is going to be the fish in this relationship, and who is going to be the fisherman?

He has to write something, because the Blue Umbrella is all he has. He can call on none of his old police resources. The letters Mr Mercedes wrote to Olivia Trelawney and Hodges himself are worthless without a suspect. Besides, a letter is just a letter, while computer chat is …

‘A dialogue,’ he says.

Only he needs a lure. The tastiest lure imaginable. He can pretend he’s suicidal, it wouldn’t be hard, because until very recently he has been. He’s sure that meditations on the attractiveness of death would keep Mr Mercedes talking for a while, but for how long before the guy realized he was being played? This is no hopped-up moke who believes the police really are going to give him a million dollars and a 747 that will fly him to El Salvador. Mr Mercedes is a very intelligent person who happens to be crazy.

Hodges draws his legal pad onto his lap and turns to a fresh page. Halfway down he writes half a dozen words in large capitals:

I HAVE TO WIND HIM UP.

He puts a box around this, places the legal pad in the case file he has started, and closes the thickening folder. He sits a moment longer, looking at the screensaver photo of his daughter, who is no longer five and no longer thinks he’s God.

‘Good night, Allie.’

He turns off his computer and goes to bed. He doesn’t expect to sleep, but he does.