Game Theory (14 page)

Inside the house it was worse. One guy was sprawled just inside the door. He had on leather jeans, a leather jacket and one black glove. His eyes were nearly closed, but I could see a narrow sliver of white beneath his lids. I didn't bother trying to wake him.
The place was trashed. The marble floors were covered in dirt and other things I didn't want to identify. One tile was cracked. How could you crack a marble tile? What force does that require? I poked my head around the living-room door. A few people were dancing, bodies jerking like they'd been connected to the mains electricity. One couple shuffled around a patch of carpet, their heads on each other's shoulder, keeping each other upright. The furniture had been pushed back. A lamp had fallen but no one had bothered to right it and its globe still burned. I followed the sound of voices to the back of the house and into the garden. The pool was full of bodies, most of them naked. I think I spotted a couple screwing on a lounger, but I looked only long enough to make sure one of them wasn't Summerlee. I tried to be similarly efficient with the bodies in the pool. She wasn't there.

I finally found her upstairs in one of the bedrooms. She was sprawled over a bed, her top rucked up exposing a wide expanse of belly and a glimpse of a white, soiled bra. Spider was curled up on the floor next to her. I stepped over him and shook her by the shoulder but she didn't respond.

‘Hey, Summer,' I said. ‘Come on, wake up.'

She shifted then, but only to turn over on her side. She grunted and I saw a trail of spittle leaking from the side of her mouth. I turned her on to her back. She made a growl of annoyance.

‘Summer!' I shouted. I slapped her face, but only gently. The bedroom was like the rest of the house. It was filthy. Things had been dropped on the floor – most of her clothes by the look of
it – and left exactly where they fell. The bedside table was littered with junk, an overflowing ashtray, a packet of cigarettes, a lighter, and a plastic bag full of what could only be cannabis. A bong lay next to Spider's outstretched hand. I went into the ensuite and wished I hadn't. There were black things growing on the bathroom walls and the toilet seat hung askew. I emptied a black plastic cup that held a toothbrush, but I would have bet it hadn't been used in weeks. Then I filled the cup with water from the cold tap and carried it back into the bedroom. Summerlee was exactly where I'd left her. She was snoring. I poured the water over her face. That got a reaction. She sat up instantly.

‘Fuck off,' she said, but her eyes didn't focus. ‘Fuck off, willya?'

‘Summer,' I said. ‘It's me. Jamie. I need you to wake up.'

She rubbed at her face and screwed up her eyes. Her hands were grimy.

‘Jamie? What the fuck you doing here?' She coughed, leaned over and pulled a cigarette from the pack, lit it with the lighter. Then she coughed again.

‘You need to come home, Summer. It's an emergency.'

She blew smoke into my face, but I don't think it was deliberate.

‘Can't now, Jamie. I'm fucked up. I'm seriously fucked up.'

‘Then you'll have to get un-fucked up,' I said. ‘It's Phoebe. She's missing.'

It took far too long to get Summerlee to pay proper attention and even longer for her to comprehend what I had said. When she did, her face twisted as if an agonising pain had struck between
her eyes. She tried to say something but then staggered into the ensuite. I heard the shower running. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at Spider's crumpled body. He didn't look better unconscious than he did normally. He was wearing a red singlet and his right arm was tattooed up to the shoulder and across the side of his neck. There was the normal stuff – dragons and other creatures designed to identify you as someone with a wild personality. But there was also a grinning skull and an impossibly large-breasted girl wearing only a pair of panties. I really wanted to kick the bastard in the nuts but instead I opened the wardrobe and rummaged around for some of Summer's clothes. I came up with a pair of jeans and a plain black top. I cracked open the bathroom door and shoved them inside.

‘Two minutes, Summer,' I yelled. There was a muffled reply. At least she was capable of replying. I rang for a taxi. Another ten minutes. I figured I would need that long to get my sister down the stairs and out into the open. When she came out of the bathroom, six minutes later, she was almost normal. Her hair was sodden and she either didn't feel she had the time to dry it or couldn't be bothered. But she was also without make-up for one of the first times in living memory. It transformed her face, made her seem years younger. It almost took my breath away. She seemed innocent, like the girl I remembered, the other girl I'd lost. I could see Phoebe in her eyes.

The party carried on without her. If anyone recognised her as we walked through the hallway to the front door, no one let on.
Most would have been incapable of recognising anyone. The guy with the one glove was exactly where I'd left him.

‘Who are these people?' I asked.

‘Fuck knows,' said Summer. ‘People. Who cares?' She left without looking back. The taxi was waiting for us.

I had to go through it all again with Summer when we got back to the house.
Now I felt like I was reciting a script that no longer seemed even faintly realistic.

Dad had obviously made further inroads into the whisky bottle. His words were slightly slurred. ‘I rang that cop, Dixon,' he said. ‘He told me they were following leads, but had nothing to report at this stage. “Following leads”! Sitting around eating doughnuts, more like. At least we got those photographs up. While they were “following leads”, your mum and I were actually doing something.'

This wasn't the time to tell Dad that it was not a pissing contest. And he was right. My parents
had
done something. I'd just lost her, and that took no effort at all.

Summerlee said very little, and I didn't know whether that was because there wasn't much to be said or because she was still screwed up by the weed and other shit in her bloodstream. At one point she hugged Mum. She sat next to her on the couch and put an arm around her shoulder, whispered something into her ear. Mum just nodded. I went to sit by them, but Dad took my arm and led me back to the kitchen.

‘You think she's been kidnapped?' he said. ‘Because I do.'

I shrugged. It wasn't the time to say anything. Dad would have considered the alternatives, just as I had. The whisky was simply a way of diverting that train of thought, maybe trying to derail it. He pointed towards the front room, towards my sister.

‘That money is a curse,' he said. ‘I thought it before but now I know it. I reckon I'd come to terms with the thought of it killing Summerlee, sooner or later. Sooner would be my guess. But I will not have it kill my other daughter. Why doesn't that phone ring?'

But it didn't. The silence wore us down, made the hours longer. At some point, around two in the morning, I went to the bathroom. I needed to piss and I was feeling nauseous again. Phoebe's bedroom was next to the bathroom, but her door was closed and I was grateful. I looked into the bathroom mirror. What looked back was something old, haunted and defeated.

When my phone rang, I had to scrabble to get it out of my pocket and nearly dropped it. I glanced at the screen. Caller unknown.

‘Hello?' I said.

There was a pause. The voice, when it came, was bizarre, robotic. I remember thinking briefly that maybe someone from school was having fun with a synthesiser, testing it out. It reminded me of that Stephen Hawking monotone, each word enunciated clearly yet devoid of emotion. It wasn't even possible to detect a gender.

‘I have your sister. Listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you . . .'

‘I can't talk to you right now,' I said. ‘I'm busy. Ring me back in an hour.'

I hung up. And then I turned my phone off, just so I couldn't be tempted. Finally, I bent over the toilet bowl and threw up.

CHAPTER 14

I knelt on the bathroom floor, my hands gripping the side of the toilet bowl.
I'd had nothing to eat, so there was nothing to throw up, apart from a few thick strings of mucus. I wiped my mouth with the side of my hand.

What had I done? What was I thinking? I was
busy
? Fuck's sake. I was light-headed and I had to concentrate to stop the toilet bowl from floating to the right of my vision. My thoughts floated as well, drifting, mixing, difficult to separate. Game theory. It was classic game theory. Don't think about what you
must
do, think about what the other person
might
do. Someone who takes a child knows they are in control; they rely upon the balance of power being firmly on their side. How does it go?

Please don't hurt her.

I will do anything you say.

Whatever you want, just don't hurt her.

I was altering the balance of power. I was refusing to acknowledge that this was how the rules worked. There were two players in this game and it's my mind against yours. You think you hold all the cards, but you don't. Stew on that for an hour, fucker.

I knew, of course I knew, that this was a gamble and I was dicing with Phoebe's life.

Actually, I hadn't thought that when I got the call. I had simply reacted, the words spilling from my mouth directly from my unconscious, where I must have been mulling over the situation from a game theory perspective and finding possible strategies. But what if he was so angry he'd hurt Phoebe, just to teach
me
a lesson? Cut off a finger and send it through the post? Want to play games, fucker? Want to fight with both hands tied behind your back? Bring it on.

I clung to the toilet bowl and tried to keep my world from shifting.

I realised I was assuming it was a man. Was that an automatic response because statistics tell us it is men who commit crimes, that less than ten per cent of convicted criminals are women? Was a woman emotionally incapable of kidnapping a little girl? I imagined not, but I didn't know and why would someone change their voice so that it was gender-neutral unless she was female? Then again, maybe a man would want me to be thinking along those lines . . .

I shook my head and tried to focus. He, she, whoever, might hurt Phoebe, but I didn't think it would happen like that, not then, staring at the blank whiteness of the porcelain.
This guy is organised. He plans. He knows our routines, he took out a security camera, he got Phoebe from a supermarket, past cameras and guards, without anyone seeing. Wouldn't that be easier for a woman? Don't think about that now. Deal with what I know or can reasonably surmise. He is meticulous. He has my mobile number. How did he get that? From Phoebe? Would she give that up willingly? Can't think about that either. This has to be about money and nothing else. Phoebe is an asset to him and there's no point damaging an asset because then the price goes down. He's demonstrated he is intelligent. An intelligent person doesn't give way to anger, because it's not profitable.

Among all the flotsam swirling in my mind, it was this piece of logic I held onto; without it I would drown.

I glanced at my watch. About five minutes since I'd received the call. Why had I said an hour? Wouldn't fifteen minutes have been enough? No, I decided. It wouldn't. An hour was right. I got to my feet, though I had to steady myself with a hand on the cistern. Whether I was right or wrong, I had to follow this through. But there were people downstairs who deserved the information in my head. I couldn't keep all of this to myself. But even then, I was thinking game theory. They were players but that didn't mean they had to know everything.

The scene in the front room hadn't altered much. Mum still
sat. Summerlee had fallen asleep, or passed out. Dad paced. I disrupted the tableau.

‘I just got a call,' I said. ‘The person who took Phoebe.'

For a second or two there was a stunned silence. Maybe Summerlee picked up on the sudden charge in the atmosphere because she opened an eye and struggled to straighten herself. Then it was verbal mayhem.

‘Is she all right?'

‘What did he say?'

‘Oh my God.'

‘Did you talk to her? Is she okay?'

I held up a hand.

‘He . . . she . . . didn't say anything. Just that he had Phoebe. He or she's ringing back in fifty minutes.'

‘You couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman?' Dad said.

‘The voice was disguised. I think he or she must be running it through a computer program. Kind of a vague North American accent, but androgynous. Could be anyone.'

‘We should call the police.' This was Mum.

‘No police,' I said. ‘He said no police. He will only talk to me. No one else listening. He said that he would know if anyone else was listening in.' My mind had suddenly cleared and the lies tripped off my tongue. Would anyone notice the discrepancy between my first statement and the qualifications I was now making?
He only said he had Phoebe. He didn't say anything else
. Apart, it seemed, from plenty. But no one noticed. Mum and Dad were too drunk
on hope and Summerlee was probably just too drunk. I held my mobile phone in my hands and trusted no one would notice it was turned off. Mum gave me instructions, as I knew she would. What she really wanted was to be the one doing the talking on the phone, but if that wasn't possible she'd go for the next best thing and jerk my strings, to give herself some semblance of control.

‘Insist on talking to Phoebe,' she said. ‘Don't even engage with him until you've established she's safe and unharmed. Listen out for background noise. Anything that might give an indication of where he might be. You know, the sound of a train or a plane or something.' It occurred to me that Mum had watched more thrillers than I'd realised, but I didn't say anything. Just nodded. ‘When he talks about money, don't try to negotiate. Just agree to his demands whatever they are. There will be ways to trace the money later.' Maybe her head was full of exploding bags of cash that painted red dye onto the perpetrators, or serial numbers that could be traced or GPS devices hidden in the lining of a suitcase. I nodded.