Her Nightly Embrace Read online

  EIGHTEEN

  Delia met with Rexton in the hospital weeks before her show and convinced him to agree to appear as a guest. There she presented him with all the evidence we had gathered, of him orchestrating the campaign against her, his sock-puppet accounts all over social media, the flash mob organized by his fans, the attacks from his army of trolls.

  Bang to rights.

  He had been blissfully unaware of the counter-campaign we had waged on Delia’s behalf, since he didn’t frequent the message boards where they discussed what they did to her. He didn’t know that they had been gradually dropping off with only a few impotent hangers-on left. He was still in the dark about how everything had come to pass. When he tried to file a complaint with his publishers, they told him that they never employed anyone named Julia even as an intern, and I didn’t exist as a member of the editorial department.

  The afternoon it aired, everyone at the office stopped to watch Delia, where she did her show on cyberbullying. Disgraced novelist George Rexton was her guest. His jaw was still wired shut, so he could only sit there and grunt whenever she asked him a question. She insisted on the show going ahead rather than wait for him to fully recover. He was, in her words, the embodiment of where cyberbullies could end up.

  Roger and David were back from Cape Town. Cheryl had been updating them on the case via email, sparing no detail. Roger sat down and watched Delia’s show with the rest of us to witness the fruits of our labors.

  The papers had been running stories of Rexton’s suicide note and his subsequent hospitalization. “Fall of a Novelist” was the common consensus. Marcie had leaked Rexton’s history as a troll and cyberbully to some choice reporters, and they ran with it, writing profiles of a deeply dysfunctional and disturbed man. His publisher was forced to make a statement to distance themselves from him. Even Jonah Vankin, the tabloid journalist whom Clive had hit with the car months ago on the Holcomb Case, started a blog and got a decent number of hits for running tidbits about Rexton’s behavior. He even wrote about the rumors of two men in black claiming to be from a nonexistent division of the police force showing up to beat up some of the commenters.

  Olivia turned to Ken and Clive.

  “Guess what, chaps, you’re urban legends now!”

  Ken and Clive grinned and gave her the thumbs-up.

  Delia was the only one who had the whole scoop, since she had hired us to dig it all up, not to mention mold and create the current story. On the surface, her show appeared to be going for the redemptive tale of the author who behaved extremely badly and attacked her, but she forgave him and offered him a chance at penance. We all knew this was the capstone of her revenge. She ran the video of him panicking at the erasure of his novel from his computer, listed his sins to his face and the nation in meticulous, agonizing detail, all the while he couldn’t swear or rant or answer back because his jaw was wired shut. This was her payback, to utterly humiliate him on national television and completely demolish him and his image forevermore. A man who wrote books of unreconstructed macho fantasies had been exposed as an impotent misogynist and fantasist, and his sales figures were plummeting by the day. As the architect of the counterattack against him, Delia had learned well from The Art of War, indeed. Indra, the god of war and thunder, showed up in the office, enjoying the final battle being waged on Delia’s show. I tried not to look at him as he watched and applauded.

  “You broke his jaw, did you?” Roger said.

  “I didn’t plan it. It just happened.”

  “Delia loved it,” Marcie said. “The best punch line she could have paid for. It didn’t even occur to her to ask for it.”

  “That’s our Ravi.” Roger beamed. “Always comes up with that extra touch.”

  I got a bonus. For punching a man. I gave that blood money to Mrs. Dhewan to cover another installment of my mother’s debt. I gave it to her nephew Nandan, didn’t stay to chat.

  “Is it always like this at the firm?” Julia asked as we headed home one night after the office.

  “More or less,” I said. “Though usually with a lot less punching. Still want to work there?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t even hesitate. “I feel like I’m learning something about the way the world works.”

  “That was how I got hooked myself.”

  “And I think I need to keep an eye on you,” she said. “You’re more fragile than I thought.”

  A week later, I took a day off while Julia was being trained in procedural methods by Ken, Clive, and Benjamin. It was my turn to sit with Dad while he got his treatment. Nothing to fill the void of the drip-drip-drip of the intravenous feed running into my father’s arm except talk.

  “You know how you used to tell me about mahatmas?” I said. “To be righteous and do good wherever possible? And I asked what if it wasn’t possible to do good?”

  “I said then try not to do any harm,” he said.

  “And what if it’s a bit late for that?”

  “If you get to that point, at least take responsibility for the harm you cause. Own it.”

  “You know,” I said, “I think Mum and Sanjita fight over that damned wedding to cope with your condition. What better way to distract themselves from the fear and stress than to row over and over again about the nuptials.”

  “Ironic,” Dad said. “Considering it’s supposed to be a joyous occasion. Oh, you know the women in our family are highly strung. Let them have their drama. It’s their way of expressing love. I just hope I live long enough to attend your sister’s wedding.”

  “Honestly, Dad, you’ve always been a moody sod, but now you’re getting downright morbid.”

  “Ha! Wait a few more months for the chemicals to pollute my liver. You’ll see just how morbid a man can get.”

  “Not funny, Dad.”

  The silence again. And that need to fill it. With what, I dreaded to think.

  “Have you begun seeing things again?” Dad asked.

  “How did you know?”

  “Your mother said you started taking your medication again.”

  Even on drugs, my father missed nothing.

  “Perhaps we are a story the gods tell each other to make sense of the universe,” he said.

  “As long as they just watch, I’ll try to live with it,” I said.

  “The pills aren’t helping, are they?”

  “If they did, the gods would go away.”

  “Let me offer another view. Perhaps you were always meant to see gods. It’s the nature of shamans.”

  “Dad, you can’t be serious.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well—we’re supposed to be rational and scientific. That’s outright mysticism.”

  “Or it’s a genetically inherited mental condition. You could continue to see it like that. Your uncle Pradeep had it, too.”

  “Isn’t that what killed him?”

  “Alcohol killed him. We should have understood better. He was self-medicating. He thought that seeing the gods had ruined his life. When you were a child, you saw them with him. That’s why we were worried you would become like him.”

  “I don’t remember that part of my childhood.”

  “Pradeep treated it like he was playing a game with you. You were too young to know the difference and too young to remember. Your mother and I never forgot.”

  “I thought I only started seeing the gods when I gave up the religious studies and had my breakdown.”

  “Oh, no. That was just the visions coming back for the first time since your childhood.”

  “So I’m not going mad so much as this is just how I am?”

  “Well, are the gods telling you to murder people and do terrible things to their corpses?”

  “No, thank God. They’re very much in character as the gods we know. They’re still figures of morality. Sometimes I also see little signs and portents for what’s going to happen next. Maybe it’s an expression of my intuition or anticipation of events. As for the gods, they mainly stand there
observing . . . though they wear modern clothes and they have mobile phones. I think they’re tweeting to each other about me.”

  My father laughed. I realized just how surreal it sounded to say that out loud and started laughing, too. It was good to have a laugh with my dad again.

  “We’re going to get through this, Dad.”

  “And we’re going to help you get through this, too, Ravi,” he said, patting my hand. “Now, what’s on your mind?”

  “I think I just had what psychiatrists call a ‘breakthrough.’ What you just told me just filled a gap I didn’t know I had, and I understand something about my life that I hadn’t before.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” said Dad. “You might just be losing your mind after all.”

  ONE

  Once again: “Ravi, here’s a client I’d like you to meet.”

  This was Mark’s case, he who racked up more international travel than the rest of us. The clients were a Pakistani couple. Mr. and Mrs. Ibrahim. Punjabi. Mr. Ibrahim ran the Ibrahim Timber Company, with offices in London and Kabul. Multimillionaire. Of course he was. Roger only had rich clients.

  “Our daughter has run away. We need you to find her and bring her back.”

  Obviously, Roger and Mark brought me into the room to reassure Mr. and Mrs. Ibrahim, as long as they weren’t told I was not Pakistani. It irritated me when people assumed we were all the same. I couldn’t even be bothered to explain that India and Pakistan were two different cultures. For one thing, Pakistanis are usually Muslims.

  Anyway, Shazia was twenty-one years old. Just graduated university with a degree in mathematics. A studious, thoughtful, dutiful daughter.

  “She is naïve to the ways of the world,” Mr. Ibrahim said. “She has fallen in with a bad crowd.”

  “Did she take her passport with her?”

  “It was missing when we searched her desk, so it’s possible she has left the country.”

  “I hate to bring it up,” I said, “but is it possible she might have gone to join a terrorist group?”

  “We pray that hasn’t happened,” Mrs. Ibrahim said. “No, I know that hasn’t happened. We warned her about Islamist propaganda, about being groomed.”

  “We need her back,” Mr. Ibrahim said. “We’ve already arranged for her to get married. That is of utmost importance to our family.”

  And there it was. We had a deadline.

  “Had Shazia met her intended husband?”

  “Of course,” Mr. Ibrahim said. “They were compatible. Most compatible.”

  “Is he aware she’s run away?”

  “We will have to tell him.”

  “I’d like to speak to him, as well, see if he might know where she’s gone.”

  “We will have to tell him and his father that Shazia has run off because of pre-wedding jitters. And once she comes to her senses, everything will be on schedule.”

  Why did that sound like it wasn’t true? I wondered.

  Roger assured the Ibrahims we would do everything we could to find Shazia and bring her back for the wedding. Mr. Ibrahim seemed more anxious than his wife, and I had the feeling it was more about making the wedding date than about her safety or well-being. There was something about Mrs. Ibrahim’s demeanor that made me wonder. She seemed oddly calm, beyond stoic. Roger laid on the charm and walked them out. Mark and I went back to our desks and set to work.

  Dad was doing well. The gods had been quiet for the last three weeks, only lingering in the corner of my eye from time to time, just out of focus. I had reduced my dosage of the pills since things were peaceful. Julia was getting on-the-job training from everyone at the firm. Roger had her shadow Marcie, since he thought she would work best with Marcie’s clients. Ken and Clive took her to the gym to teach her self-defense. Benjamin gave her the walk-through on the tech we used and the best social engineering sleights of hand. Olivia taught her computer security protocols and basic cheats and hacks. Olivia was actually better at teaching social engineering methods than Benjamin was. A posh finishing school accent was worth its weight in gold in the spying and private investigations business. Julia even shadowed me on a few of my cases, basic stuff like passing as a couple, or when I needed someone female to pose as a customer or potential client in a business. Julia was actually in demand whenever Mark, Ken, and Clive needed a pretty face to distract people.

  My first year at Golden Sentinels was coming to as end, and all in all, I felt I was getting the hang of things.

  “I really hope Shazia hasn’t gone off to join a terrorist group,” I said. “That’d take it out of our hands. We’ll have to contact the police, MI6, and that lot.”

  “Nah,” Mark said. “I have a good feeling about this one. I reckon our girl might be much more sensible than that. She probably did a runner for very good reasons.”

  “Like what, not wanting to get married?”

  “Not wanting to marry this particular chap.”

  The chap in question was Samir Langhani, a couple of years older than Shazia. Son of Nabeel Langhani, one of the biggest arms dealers in Pakistan. He had been under investigation by the United Nations and Interpol for years, having sold arms to several rogue states, though there was no proof he sold to terrorist groups. Samir showed no signs of working for Daddy. He was known more for gallivanting around London and Europe as a playboy. Stories involving girls and wild parties were legendary.

  “Sounds like dear old Dad put his foot down and insisted Samir finally settle down with nice girl from a good family,” I said.

  “With the added benefit of the families forming a financial power block,” Olivia said. “Mr. Ibrahim stood to use some of Mr. Langhani’s connections to secure some contracts for his international timber business, and Mr. Langhani might use Mr. Ibrahim to attain some degree of legitimacy.”

  “So not exactly a love match?” I said.

  “How many arranged marriages are?” Benjamin asked.

  “I grew up around marriages as business and financial transactions,” Olivia said. “This is as old as commerce.”

  “It’s all a bit medieval, isn’t it?” Julia said. “Are you going to have to go through a matchmaker for an Indian wife, too?”

  “Thankfully, no. I put my foot down with my folks. Besides, I’ve got you.”

  I was reminded then that my sister, Sanjita, had gone off and found Vivek on her own to head off the family trying to use a matchmaker to find her a husband. Well, more accurately, they’d been going out for years, so when Mum started bringing up marriage and some of the aunts starting threatening to stick their noses in, Sanji declared she would like to marry Vivek. Not exactly a tale of wild passion and romance, but there you go.

  Mr. Ibrahim had frozen Shazia’s credit cards and bank account when she ran off, so she had very limited financial options. He hoped this would drive her to come home, but so far, no dice.

  My desk phone rang. The electronic ring sounded odd, unlike the usual ring we had.

  “Never neglect your laundry,” the voice on the other end declared. It was oddly melodic, almost sing-song.

  “Sorry?”

  “Always pay attention to the laundry, my son.” I couldn’t quite tell if it was a man or a woman. “Therein lies the important details.”

  “Who are you calling?” Marcie asked.

  “What?” I said.

  “You just picked up your phone.”

  “Oh, er, I had an idea, then decided against it.”

  I put down the phone.

  Shit.

  So the gods had started talking to me now. What was this all about? I think that was Kali. What did she care about my laundry? My mum did my washing for me every weekend.

  Damn. Just when I thought the gods were leaving me alone. It was time to pop a pill.

  TWO

  Mark and I drove out to the Ibrahims’ mansion in West Kensington to take a look at what Shazia’s home life was like. The place was tastefully decorated with elephant sculptures carved out of wood
and South Asian art.

  Shazia’s room, however, was a treasure trove of clues to her tastes and personality.

  “Our girl’s a geek,” Mark declared, delighted. “I like her already.”

  Aside from her textbooks, her bookshelf was lined with science fiction and fantasy novels. She had a flat-screen TV and DVD player in her room, and her DVD collection consisted of box sets for Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and an assortment of anime. She was a huge Sailor Moon fan; both the manga and remastered DVDs occupied a place on her shelf that was practically an altar.

  “How do you recognize all that stuff, anyway?” Mark asked.

  “My students were into it, so I would hear about it all the time back when I was teaching.”

  I didn’t think she’d gone to join any terrorists. A girl who loved escapist genre fantasies that celebrated freedom and tolerance would have an imagination that had been vaccinated against the narrow, restrictive, and repressed nihilism of jihadist ideology. Her parents would be relieved to hear that.

  She’d taken her computer with her. If she kept a diary, she must have taken it with her, as well. Maybe she wrote it on her computer. It might be a lifeline to keeping in touch with friends she trusted. And perhaps she didn’t want her parents to look at her computer and find out what she was really up to, including running off without warning. She had also taken her smartphone with her, probably so her parents couldn’t see what was on it or use her contacts list, but she’d kept it switched off since she disappeared. Too bad, but we knew her email address, and Olivia could do something with that.

  Back at the office, Olivia ran a search for Shazia’s name and email address to see what kind of websites she might have visited. Mark and I did the obvious, of course, which was to find her social media profiles.

  Shazia was a fairly typical twentysomething and not quite the reserved, strictly watched, repressed Muslim kid her parents had raised. She had a Twitter feed, a Facebook page, and an Instagram account. We may not have had her phone or computer, but Olivia easily unearthed her accounts and also the websites that she visited regularly over the last four, five years, as well as her online purchases, mainly geek fan stuff. She followed and was followed back not just by her family and cousins, but she also had friends outside of Asian and Muslim circles. She was part of a few anime fan groups and would meet them at conventions and get-togethers, always with her mother as chaperone to keep things on the up-and-up.