by Philip Kerr
“Now, I am not a technical person. One of the smaller paradoxes of my life is that I spend so much time using a computer and yet understand nothing at all of how one works. Of course, I have become used to this level of quotidian ignorance. And, like most people who own a laptop computer, I can live with it. Or at least I thought I could.”
Cynthia Ekman read aloud from the on-screen journal with an obvious pride in her late husband’s slightly pompous prose. I hadn’t the least fucking clue what “nocent” meant and I was someone who’d been to law school.
“No, what I find perplexing,” she said, continuing to read, “is that I am quite unable to find any one of these e-mails on my computer. Let’s call them the Mr. Phelps e-mails, for they seem programmed to self-destruct just as soon as they have been read, almost in the manner of the taped message that used to precede the titles in the sixties television show Mission: Impossible. Jim Phelps, the stone-faced leader of the MI force of con men and safecrackers, would play a cassette tape that would then dissolve in a cloud of smoke, as if a hidden vial of acid had erased the secret message forever. It was always the best moment in the entire show, if only because it was always the easiest part to understand.
“These e-mails are not viruses, for they seem to have the very opposite effect to the idea of computer malware, which is to run in secret without being shut down or deleted by the user or administrator of the computer system. Trojans, for example. No, my Mr. Phelps e-mails arrive in my in-box, and stay there only until the moment I have read them or until they have remained unread in my in-box for a set number of hours. Indeed, as an experiment, I left a couple of these e-mails unread and both of them had disappeared like snow within twenty-four hours.
“So far there have been at least a dozen of these Mr. Phelps e-mails. Naturally, they are anonymous. The words vary but the content is essentially the same: the e-mails are short jeremiads of sustained invective that denounce me and prophecy my imminent death. At first I ignored them. And yet their curious behavior led me to decide that I should share their existence with someone. Obviously, this couldn’t be Cynthia. (It’s an isolated spot where we live, on the edge of Tarrytown, and when I travel to New York to see Adele, Cynthia is alone out here; it would not be good for her state of mind to believe that once again her life or mine was under threat.) And since Adele knows everything about computers—she is a recent graduate of MIT’s EECS and one of the resident chic geeks at work (quite what she sees in me, I have no idea)—I decided to tell her about them.”
Mrs. Ekman’s voice seemed to falter a little at this, the first mention of her husband’s lover, Adele; and thinking to pay her back for jerking my collar so violently earlier on, I cleared my throat and said: “Adele. I assume this is the woman with whom your husband was romantically involved.”
“He was fucking her.”
“Had he been—seeing her for very long?”
“I really don’t know. I’ve only just found out about it myself. From reading this journal, that is. I suspect she was just another little unpaid whore hackette looking to get on in the dwindling world of print journalism. But like I said before, Agent Martins, perhaps it would also be best if you saved any questions you might have until I’ve finished reading.”
“Oh, sure, I remember you saying that. But in the FBI we’re trained to think for ourselves and ask questions when we see fit, not when we have someone’s permission to do so. We’re not as patient as people imagine we are. Do you know Adele’s surname?”
“No, I don’t know it. But I imagine it wouldn’t be too difficult to find out who she is.”
“No. I guess not.”
“Can I continue with this particular entry?” She shot me a bitter little smile. “Please? I’m nearly finished. There are two more after this one.”
“Adele lives in a nice condo on Eleventh Avenue, just around the corner from the office. She was intrigued when—we were in bed at the time—I told her about the Mr. Phelps e-mails and, her professional interest piqued, she insisted on my turning on my laptop so that she could take a look for herself. But naturally, there was nothing to see in my in-box and I do believe she half thought I was imagining the whole thing. Sweetly, Adele offered to monitor my e-mails for me, in the hope of identifying one of the Mr. Phelps e-mails herself, but that would mean giving her my password and, as much as I’m fond of her, I don’t quite trust her enough to let her through the front door of my life like this.”
Mrs. Ekman paused.
“That’s the end of the first entry,” she said. “The first relevant entry, that is.”
Mrs. Ekman finished the glass of wine she’d been drinking and poured herself another.
“Interesting,” said Helen. “I haven’t ever heard of self-destructing e-mails.”
“Me neither,” I confessed.
Mrs. Ekman shrugged dismissively. “If that’s what they were,” she said.
“Do you think they might have been something else?” I asked.
“Well, I’m not a computer expert,” she said. “But it strikes me that Adele was. This little whore he was seeing; she knew about computers, right? If you’re looking for who might be behind this whole thing, you could do worse than look at her. She could easily have had access to his laptop. Like I already told you, Peter wasn’t exactly clever about keeping his password a secret. She could have installed something on Peter’s computer without his knowing anything about it. Something that could have erased e-mails selectively.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s possible,” I said. “But what’s her motive for doing such a thing?”
“Peter was famous. Influential. There’s no end of help he could have been to someone just starting out in the world of journalism, like her. So maybe she cooked the scheme up to scare him and put him in her power.”
It sounded like lunacy, but I nodded anyway, and so did Helen.
Cynthia Ekman shrugged. “Then again, if he had decided not to promote her career, then maybe she might have been bitter. And, maybe, she thought to teach him a lesson. I don’t know.”
“You’ve got more maybe there than Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Mrs. Ekman,” I said.
“Was he scared?” asked Helen. “By these Mr. Phelps e-mails?”
“Perhaps the simplest answer to that question is just to read the next entries in the journal,” said Mrs. Ekman. “This first one was written on a Monday, exactly a week before he died. May I?”
I stifled a yawn. The Mr. Phelps e-mails were interesting and I was looking forward to describing them to the lab guys at the office; but hearing Ekman’s journal read aloud reminded me of what I’d always thought about the man: that he was a bit of a flosser—like a woman with a great badonkadonk who walks along the street and gives her shapely behind an extra wiggle just to drive some street-corner homeys crazy.
“Go right ahead, ma’am.”
“More on my strange Mr. Phelps e-mails. In the beginning these were just generally threatening: ‘Almighty God has judged you and found you wanting and you will soon die a horrible death at the hands of God’s number one angel and be condemned to hell eternal.’ That kind of thing. But now it seems that I have a rendezvous with death at the end of the month. Like a visit from the rent collector. My time allowed is just seven days from now. Which is good, I think, because at least after a week has elapsed and I’m still standing then perhaps these e-mails will disappear for good.
“Adele thinks I should go to the police, but cops don’t like it when you can’t give them evidence. Adele has looked for some trace of these e-mails on my computer and come up with nothing. And I can’t see the police being able to find what she cannot. Of course, this latest twist—the prediction of my death—is just best practice for the people trying to scare me. Good close-up magicians make predictions based on choices they have already forced on their spectators, just as in tribal societies the witch doctor always lets h
is victim know well beforehand that he’s going to be a victim. It’s simple voodoo logic. Thankfully, I’m not all that gullible. And I’ve been threatened before. Nothing came of it the last time; and more than likely nothing will come of it this time. Perhaps the best defense against threats to one’s own person is, quite simply, an assertive life. So, with apologies to Sam Beckett, I must go on . . . I’ll go on.
“Tuesday. Beset with uncertainty. And the curious sensation that I am not alone. Especially when I am alone. Cyn has gone back to London for a while, to work on her new book. Leaving me here, haunted by the most grotesque conceits. A couple of times these fancies found me touring the garden with a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Of course, I found nothing. Not even a footprint. All the same I think I would have been quite relieved to have found an assassin hiding in the shrubbery instead of nothing at all. Because it doesn’t quite feel like nothing at all. And that’s the problem. I have an imagination like any other man and it’s easy to see a murderer or a demon in every shadowy corner. Especially here, in the faux-creepy village of Sleepy Hollow. Even as I write this, the clock ticks on the mantelpiece with an uncanny loudness, marking every second between here and next Monday night, as if my life were nearing the end of its measured time. Ridiculous, I know. Things are not so bad in the daytime, but of course, the darkness brings one’s imagination truly alive, sharpening the rest of the senses the way blindness is said to improve the hearing so that every noise, every movement, every smell takes on a new and sinister meaning. Everything conspires to leave me feeling unsettled and out of joint in a place where I am normally so comfortable and at peace.
“Quite unnerved by my own company—this has never happened before—I called Adele and took the train into the city and had lunch with her at Michael’s. There were lots of people I knew and the atmosphere was so metropolitan and sensibly Gothamish that all thoughts of death threats were quite dispelled. Probably I’ve been drinking too much. And possibly the drink interferes with the steroids I’ve been taking for my emphysema. Not to mention the Xanax I’ve been taking. And the Viagra, of course. After a delicious lunch, it was back to Adele’s apartment for sex. Stayed the night. Oddly, the sex was brilliant, which makes me think that my problems aren’t physiological but mental; and with my mind distracted, my body just reacted to her the way it’s supposed to.
“Friday. Returned to Tarrytown for the weekend, without a thought for Mr. Phelps and the threatening e-mails. My relaxed state of mind lasted only until about halfway through the train journey, when my car emptied at Irvington and I was left to finish the journey alone. What is it that Hughes Mearns wrote? ‘Last night I saw upon the stair, / A little man who wasn’t there. / He wasn’t there again today. / Oh, how I wish he’d go away.’ Well, it was like that walking home from the train station. I could have sworn I was followed, but every time I looked around to see who it was, the road was empty. A couple of times I stopped and found myself addressing thin air, challenging whoever was there to come forward and identify himself. But worst of all was that night. I switched out the light in my bedroom and distinctly heard the sound of someone else breathing. It might have been me, yes. But I don’t think so. Anyway that was the last time the light went off. And since then, the entire house has stayed lit up like a Christmas tree. I guess this makes me an easy target for anyone with a sniper’s rifle, but I can’t help myself. The fear of the less probable seems to override my fear of the more likely. ’Twas ever thus, perhaps. But to quote Horatio, what I have seen or perhaps not seen, ‘is wondrous strange.’
“Sunday. Today I know I heard something that wasn’t there. Possibly saw it, too. In the garden. And then in the house. Half a dozen times I started to call the police and then stopped myself. They would only think I’m crazy. Of course, it’s quite possible I am going mad. Cyn’s always suggesting as much and I can’t say I blame her. That’s half the reason she went to Europe—to get away from me. Of course, in Hamlet everyone thinks the prince is mad, and it’s a better play if we think that, too. I always think that it’s Shakespeare’s play that informs The Turn of the Screw. There’s not much difference between Hamlet and the governess. How does James himself put it? ‘The strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy.’ Lately that could be a description of my own everyday life. The strange and the sinister and the normal and the easy. It’s the juxtaposition of the two that makes for something really creepy.
“Saturday. I am thinking I will spend the night in the panic room. I am almost embarrassed to admit this; after all, it was for Cyn’s benefit that we had the panic room installed, not mine. I must be a wuss. I am a wuss. (It’s not Beckett, but it’ll do.)”
Mrs. Ekman paused for a long moment before she added haltingly, “And that was his last entry before he was found dead here in the panic room.”
“Did you think your husband was crazy, Mrs. Ekman?” asked Helen.
“All husbands are crazy,” she said. “But a man would have to be fucking mad to remain single, don’t you think? Considering what a wife is prepared to do for him.” She shrugged. “I really don’t know, Agent Monaco. Helen.”
“Did your husband take drugs?” I asked. “Recreational drugs.”
“He used to take them. When I first knew him, he was addicted to cocaine.”
“I’m just trying to establish if some of his paranoia was caused by drink. Or by medication, perhaps. He suffered from emphysema, didn’t he? What was he taking for that?”
“Steroids, mostly. Xanax. That was for the anxiety caused by not being able to get his breath. Pure oxygen. You saw the nebulizer.”
“Well, it can’t have helped him mixing alcohol with those, can it? And whatever else he might have been taking. Viagra? Of course, emphysema means you don’t get enough oxygen, which can cause hallucinations. But if one night you’re alone and you finish the bottle on your own, then maybe you get hold of your cylinder and you take too much pure oxygen; and because your lungs aren’t working properly, then you can’t breathe off the excess carbon dioxide that this quickly produces. Now, that also causes hallucinations, doesn’t it?”
I knew I was on safe ground here. One of my grandparents had died from smoking-related emphysema.
“Yes, what you say is certainly possible,” admitted Mrs. Ekman. “On the other hand, if you pay attention to the tone of that first journal entry, I think you’ll agree that he seems quite rational. I do believe that the Mr. Phelps e-mails were quite real.”
She shook her head and closed the laptop.
“But if you think all that, Agent Martins, then it puzzles me what the heck you’re doing here.”
“It’s our job to be skeptical,” I said. “Until we see some evidence that proves otherwise. But that is what we’re looking for here despite what I said just now. I was just playing devil’s advocate. I can see now that having a copy of the journal on a flash drive wouldn’t be ideal. So, if we may, we’d like to borrow your husband’s laptop and have the FBI’s own computer forensics laboratory in Houston take a look at it and see if they can find anything on it that your husband’s friend, Adele, could not. It’ll be returned to you just as soon as possible. Undamaged. And everything that’s on it will be treated with complete respect and in confidence. What they’ll do is make a complete mirror-image copy of everything on the laptop’s memory and hard drive, and then use that to work on. We can get it couriered back to you in a day or two.”
Mrs. Ekman hugged the laptop to her breast for a moment as if it were Ekman himself.
“You’ll never know it’s even happened,” said Helen. “Our people are really careful. You can trust them. I give you my word on that.”
Mrs. Ekman seemed to think about it for another moment and nodded. “I guess that’ll be all right.”
She handed Helen the laptop. “The password is Balliol. That’s B-A-L-L-I-O-L.”
Helen put Peter Ekman�
�s laptop in her briefcase. It was a Briggs & Riley, with more sleeves than a hippie’s record collection.
“I have a question,” said Mrs. Ekman. “You guys are from the Houston FBI, right? Peter was never in Houston in his life. Which can only mean you think there’s some connection between what happened to him and something that happened in Texas, right? You still haven’t explained how you people are involved in the first place.”
“There’s a possibility of a connection with another incident,” I said vaguely. “Only I’m not at liberty to comment on that right now.”
Mrs. Ekman shrugged. “I guess we’re used to that in this country: the FBI holding out on us.”
“We’re not holding out on you, Mrs. Ekman,” insisted Helen, who disliked any implication that the FBI was anything like the CIA. “It’s just that we don’t yet have anything concrete to tell you. I give you my word that just as soon as we do, I’ll tell you about it.”
“And you’ll be sure to speak to this little bitch he was screwing, won’t you?”
“Just as soon as we’re back in Manhattan,” I said.
We thanked Mrs. Ekman for her cooperation and then went out to the car. Dusk had turned the sky a fiery, almost hellish, color, as if a volcano had erupted half a world away. The bats Ekman had written about in his diary were very much in evidence now, flitting silently through the squeaky twilight like the stuff that nightmares are made of. My skin crawled a little at the sight, and as we drove away from the house, I told Helen that it was easy to see why Peter Ekman had had an affair.
“Oh, really?” she said. “Why is that?”
“From what I’ve heard about Ekman, he was much too metropolitan for a place like this.” I shrugged. “Thoreau or Emerson he wasn’t.”
Helen nodded. “It is kind of elemental, isn’t it? Out here it’s easier to believe in the devil than in God.”
