Cyber Cinderella (28 page)

“Sorry about that. Then what?”

“‘Well,’ I say to bored stupid girl, ‘if you don’t give out addresses, then why have I received mountains of junk mail since registering the domain name with you?’”

“But she’d just say how can you prove it’s them giving out your details and not a credit card company or some other list. You can’t pin it on them.”

“Which is exactly what she did say. But then I said, ‘I know it must be your company because I made a mistake in the post-code I gave you and this mistake has been replicated in all the junk mail I’ve received ever since. Ergo, it must be you that’s making money out of creating mailing lists.’”

“Cunning. But also a long shot.”

“I know. This wasn’t the first route I tried taking to try to find out who registered the site. I did call the company in the States, I tried the Post Office again...”

I smiled. “So what happened when you told stupid bored woman about the mistake in the postcode?”

“Of course she said, ‘What’s the postcode you gave us,’ to which I said, ‘You tell me the one you’ve got,’ and this ping-ponged for a while until I eventually bullied, or bored, her into submission. She cracked just to get me off the phone. I was demanding to speak to her manager by this point as well as throwing some crap at her about privacy laws and data protection. Just as I was about to give up she told me the postcode that they held for the domain name izobel-brannigan dot co dot uk and I scribbled it down.”

I looked at the postcode. A letter, two numbers, another number and two letters, six characters that could answer the question that had dominated my life for the last month and a half. “Thank you.”

“That’s all right. Do you believe me now?”

I did, I believed him utterly. I doubted that I had ever doubted him. Yet I also believed that we would never find out who was really behind the site. And I couldn’t shake off that residual anger I had felt toward him when I thought he was the perp. “How do we know that it’s not a false postcode?” I asked.

“It’s a real postcode all right, but whether it’s our site person’s real postcode is another matter.”

“And they didn’t give you an address? How can you tell what exact address this is other than somewhere in W Fourteen?”

“Izobel, will you never learn the power of the Internet?”

“I know it all too well.”

“The Post Office has a site and if you input the postcode, it will give you the address, or should I say addresses, that correspond to it. Unlike America or the Continent, where the zip code covers a huge area, British postcodes are absurdly specific. A letter will arrive if you just put the house number and the postcode on the envelope. You don’t even need to put the town or name or anything. It’s amazing really.”

“Indeed. So what’s the address of this one then?”

“It gives us only about fifteen buildings on one street, some single-occupancy, others divided into flats.”

“Quite a lot of people then,” I said ungratefully. “At least thirty or so.”

“True.” He pulled out a printed page from the Internet with a page of the London
A to Z
on it, with one section of a street highlighted in pink. “Does this mean anything to you? Do you know anyone who lives around there?”

I shook my head. “Sorry.”

“And the photo I sent you didn’t mean anything?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Hooded top, not a lot else. Could be Frank.”

“Who’s Frank?”

“He’s taken over from you as our most likely candidate. He’s an ex of mine who wears a hoodie and I told him I was learning Chinese. And I know he remembered that fact as he made some sarky comment about me being fluent in Mandarin later.” I knocked back my beer to catch up with Ivan. “But I’m not learning Chinese. Then today there was this stuff on the site about how I’m a keen student of Chinese.”

“I saw that. I was impressed.”

“But I’m not learning it.”

“Too busy reading
Hello!
and
Heat
?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. And researching some courses I’m thinking of doing.”

“So that’s it, this ex of yours must be guilty as nobody else thinks you’re a Mandarin speaker. Or,” he exclaimed, “he’s in league with whoever is behind the site.”

“There’s a team of them?”

“Could be.” We were silenced by the image of a factory full of Izobel obsessives.

“Or, he happened to mention that I speak Chinese to the site perp. He just
knows
the site perp rather than
is
site perp.”

“Only one way to find out. Why don’t we confront your boyfriend?”

“Ex. I’m not sure. He doesn’t live at the address you’ve got. And it just seems so unlikely.”

“And yet when I turn out to have been at the same party as you months ago, that’s damning evidence?”

I was about to point out that he was also a geek who admitted to having followed me around the office for months, but refrained. “I’ve learned from that mistake, Ivan, and I am loath to jump to conclusions just because everything seems to add up. This time we’ve got to be sure. I don’t want to blow it. Let’s see what happens if we go to West Fourteen first.”

“So let’s go after work tonight. Westward ho.”

“Who are you calling a ho?” We laughed disproportionately at my feeble quip. “But we can’t. Not after work.”

“Why not? Got a hot date?”

“No. What do we know about the site perp?”

“That they’re not me, that they’re weird, that they take photos of you…”

“And when do they take those photos of me?”

“I don’t know. Whenever.”

“No, not whenever, that’s just it. Let’s think about this. There are photos of me at the supermarket on a Saturday, there are ones in the evening after work and ones at lunchtime. But there aren’t any during the day, there are none of me heading out to meetings, none of me during that three days I had off last week.”

“And your point being?”

“I think site perp’s got a job. A proper job. He doesn’t stalk me full-time, just outside office hours. He’s a boring nine-to-fiver just like the rest of us.”

“Not like me. I work flexible hours. What about your friend Frank?”

I thought. “He’s flexible too. Has a certain number of hours teaching and then the rest of the time is in the library and can do what he wants. But then I don’t think he’s taken the photographs as he’s in a couple of them.”

“So the photographer has a nine-to-five job, but not the per-petrator, this Frank character?”

My head hurt. “Unless it’s not Frank at all.”

“Make up your mind, Izobel.”

“Look, I’m sure the person who follows me has a regular job. In which case, we can’t go after work as then they could follow us following them and we wouldn’t have the benefit of surprising them, would we?”

“So?”

“We have to go now. After lunch. That way we’ve got an afternoon to check out all the addresses and try to pick up some clues, see if any of the names on the doorbells mean anything to me. And then we can wait for them to get back from their normal job at six.”

“Presuming they come straight home.”

“I’m guessing site photographer doesn’t have a lot else to do. Their only hobby seems to be following me and once they see that I’m not in the office, then hopefully they’ll come straight home.”

“And we just leave this Frank character alone.”

“For the moment, yes.”

“You seem to be treating him a lot more generously than you did me.”

“I’m so sorry, Ivan.” We looked at each other properly. I stared at his mouth. I wanted to kiss him and I wanted to find out who was behind the site. But I wanted to find out who was behind the site first. The site’s mystery was George-era, the site solved could be Ivan-era. My love life was all too bound up with izobelbrannigan.com to be able to move on with Ivan. I looked around. “The photographer’s probably watching us now.”

“And what would the caption to this be?”

I pulled a face. “Izobel enjoys beer and conversation with an unknown man. Exclamation mark.”

“Come on, you can do better than that,” he said. He stroked his chin and I stroked mine, giving silent thanks to the antibiotics that had cleared up my infected stubble burn. I felt a twitching between my thighs and cursed my weakness. Mustn’t get distracted.

“We should go,” I said. “Are you free this afternoon? I could go back to the office in case we’re being trailed and then nip out the back way to the Underground. To schlep over to Shepherd’s Bush. Schlepherd’s Bush as it were.”

“I’m free, but you’re not. As my own boss, I’m often generously giving myself time off. But you work a nine-to-five, remember? Even if it is in PR. And even if it is a Friday afternoon.”

“Sod that. This is more important.”

“Come on, Izobel, you can’t just bunk off work. You’ll get in trouble.” He grimaced.

“What? You know something, don’t you?” I asked.

“I so shouldn’t tell you this.”

“You’ve got to.”

“Tracy’s been asking me if she can get a reduction on our costs if there are less employees at PR O’Create. And she was also asking me if I’d ever been involved with a dismissal based on an employee spending too much time on non-work-related Internet sites.”

“Shit.”

“And you can be sacked for that, you know. However, I told her that all her employees spend time on non-work-related Internet sites so it was going to be difficult to prove in the case of just one. Not to mention all the time she spends on home-furnishing sites and cheap designer outlets.”

I giggled. “Can I have that in writing?”

“Now that would be unprofessional.”

“But so useful if she wants to sack me on the grounds of using the Internet on non-work-related business.”

“I don’t think she’s going to sack you. I don’t know, but she’d have to give you a verbal warning…” “Has done.” “And then a written one and endless assessments. And that would take months and I got the impression she wanted to get rid of this employee more efficiently. She doesn’t like you.” “I don’t like her. Do you think she feels threatened by me?” “Maybe. I reckon you might be at risk of being made redundant with a payoff. She did talk about having to reduce headcount, having lost a couple of accounts.” I smiled. “And you think me bunking off work may make this a more likely prospect?” “I’m afraid so.” “Let’s do it.”

Chapter Eighteen

A
Friday afternoon off work, the thrilling joy of it. Even as I sat in the gloom of public transport, I gave off little telepathic V-signs toward Tracy.

Ivan strap-hung over me as we burrowed westward on the Underground. He’d given up his seat to a grateful old lady. If it was done for my benefit, it worked. I compared him favorably to the discourteous George. We smiled at each other occasionally, but mostly studied the adverts for cheap car insurance and air con systems.

The train seemed to stop between every station. It would lurch us into one another and then pull us apart. It was a very long journey.

“Who do you think we’re going to find?”

“Don’t know. Do you think we will find someone?”

“Don’t know.”

By the time we arrived, I was enervated by anticipation, both for what we might find and for Ivan. We slunk up the escalator into the mass of people around the area that was incongruously known as the Green.

“Flats round here are really expensive,” I said, loking round at the fast-food chicken joints and twenty-four-hour bagel shop.

“Prices in London really are ridiculous.”

“Absolutely ridiculous. I feel so sorry for first-time buyers.”

Our ruminations on the capital’s favorite topic continued as Ivan led the way to a row of buildings in a section of a street in a corner of Shepherd’s Bush. I’d never noticed how empty residential areas were on a working day. Chichi bits of London were always inexplicably full at three in the afternoon and you wondered how all these people had the time and the money to be lounging round hip bars in the middle of the day. Unemployment signified extremes of wealth and poverty depending on where you found the people lounging. An area like this, one that lay at the suburban fringes of fashion, was as empty as the faces of those left there. It had the air of a Continental city in August, with the few remaining inhabitants wishing they were somewhere else.

“It’s half past three,” I said.

“And?”

“I reckon we’ve got at least two hours before we need to start hiding somewhere to avoid him coming back. If he does come back.” I looked at the house numbers and at the street opposite. “In that restaurant,” I said, pointing to the sort of generic French bistro only found in local neighborhoods and sitcoms.

“Perfect. Let’s go investigate.”

At number twelve, the first house in our area, “Johnston” was out to work, as was “Smith” in the basement. “Jerry and Dave” were similarly unavailable for comment. I rang the doorbell to the middle flat of the next building. We had no luck with the simply named “Flat One,” nor with “The Goons” on the ground floor. I rang the doorbell of the middle flat.

“Hello, I’m from a market research company.” I winced and Ivan winked at me. “And we’re doing a survey about routines of those not working regular office hours.” I could hear a baby crying in the background. “Would you mind answering a few questions?” She buzzed us in. Ivan and I looked at each other in surprise, but darted into the communal hallway. We rifled through the junk mail and curry house flyers that blocked our path, to find out the names of the other inhabitants, but still none of the names meant anything to me.

A woman in jeans and a crisp shirt answered the door. Her top was White-Out white, a fact made surprising by the small baby snuggled up to it. Ivan passed me his envelope folder and I got out a piece of paper and angled it away from our respondent so she couldn’t see that it was empty of questions.

Her name was Serena Whittaker, she was twenty-eight and she lived with her husband in flat three, number fourteen, a flat filled with expensive things made by indigenous peoples and sold in West London boutiques. Her cream sofa was as yet unsoiled by her three-month-old baby.

“Question one,” I said brightly. “Why are you at home on a normal working day?”