The Promise: The twisty new thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller, guaranteed to keep you up all night

‘I don’t know how many she actually hooked up with, but she was most active on one of the apps connected to Facebook. It’s a social game where you trade on your avatars, your profile photos, buy and raise each other’s value, like commodities. It’s all done online, like a stock exchange type thing. People from all over the world take part. Everyone owns someone and everyone is owned by some else. You can see her profile here.’ He pulled up a profile and some music started to play: ‘Where Have All The Cowboys Gone’. It was a hazy romantic visual of Erica, photos of her sitting on her bed, a little cleavage showing, a little pout, then a picture of her hugging her cat, the camera angled to make her eyes look bigger. The next photo was her holding her hands in a heart shape. Further down the screen was a little bio. Erica was looking for love, or at least some affection.

‘So how do we see who she was talking to on this thing?’ Imogen said.

‘Well it’s tricky because it’s not a UK-based organisation, but I have requested access to the other accounts that we know of. We should get access to Facebook within a couple of days. This one might take a bit longer, if they even decide to comply. But take a look here.’

Gary scrolled further down the screen and they could see messages posted on the page, her wall; some were obviously first messages from people she had not interacted with before. There were other messages though, fragments of conversations between ‘Nina’ and various people. Men from all over the country, all over the world. Gary clicked on some of the thumbnails that linked back to their walls; some had pictures of male models that had been adopted as their personas, some had candid pictures of lesser known actors that they were pretending were pictures of themselves. There were greetings from ‘Nina’ on their walls, too, all friendly, all very generic.

‘All these messages seem pretty innocuous though, would he be this obvious? Can you private message in this app?’ Imogen asked.

‘Yeah, once we gain access we will be able to see the personal messages, they’ll be on this wall here but in red. We can’t see them at the moment, they’re hidden. I’m working on it.’

‘I didn’t even know things like this existed. It’s weird,’ Adrian said.

‘It’s fun for some people. Not everyone is as good-looking as you,’ Gary said.

‘Are you on this app?’ Imogen asked, worried that Adrian had touched a nerve.

‘No, but I have been on games like this before,’ Gary said.

‘Why are they free? What’s the point of them?’

Gary pointed to the screen. ‘People buy gifts, the game developers get rich. Here, look, you can give gifts to the person whose profile it is. The majority of the gifts are free, and you can earn tokens to buy bigger gifts, but you can also buy the tokens: a hundred pounds for three hundred tokens.’

‘What kind of gifts?’

‘So here, for five tokens you can buy someone a daisy, but for a hundred tokens you can buy someone a ruby. Erica has several diamond rings on her profile. They have been given as gifts by admirers. Each one of those cost the person in question twenty pounds.’

‘But that’s just an image, not a real gift.’

‘Yeah, but the more expensive the gifts you get, the more valuable you seem as a commodity.’

‘Why the hell would anyone do that?’ Adrian said.

‘Social media romances can be intense, and these games are very competitive. It’s all about displaying how popular you are and how much you’re worth in the game.’

‘How much was Erica worth? What was her rank in the game?’ Imogen asked.

‘She was a middle-level player,’ Gary said, ‘which is actually pretty high. Imagine it in terms of a Hollywood hierarchy in the real world. She would be a supporting soap star, as opposed to an A-list movie star.’

‘I don’t really understand anything you just said,’ Adrian interjected.

‘I get it. I may or may not have been on something similar to this in the past. Briefly, mind,’ Imogen said.

‘Really?’ Adrian shot her a look and she scalded him with her eyes, hoping he would understand what she was trying to do. Adrian probably couldn’t understand what it was like for Gary, who was lovely but didn’t have the same confidence with women that Adrian did. She had witnessed Adrian’s effect on the opposite sex on several occasions, mystifying as it was, but Gary certainly had completely different experiences when it came to women.

Imogen noticed that each name had a country flag next to it; she assumed it was the user’s country of origin.

‘Is there any way to know where the people who visited are from, like exactly?’ she asked Gary.

‘Maybe, if she had a tracker set into the code. It’s pretty standard practice and easy enough to do. It looks like she was well into this game, her wall is quite artistic and stuff, a lot of specialised coding – it wouldn’t be unrealistic to assume she had a tracker built in. Once we get the other side of the account it should be easy enough to find out. Although you can fool the tracker by tricking it into thinking you are from somewhere else by using a VPN, but not everyone would even think to do that, so you never know.’

‘Can you track on all social media then?’ Imogen asked, unfamiliar with Gary’s capability or even which code the game developers used.

‘It’s much easier on these sites where you power your own HTML code and have access to customise themes and designs through the code itself. Not really as straightforward in apps that don’t give you that kind of access.’

‘And what’s this counter for?’ Imogen said.

‘It’s how many visits her page has received since she started on the game.’

‘Oh good, it’s over a hundred thousand,’ Imogen said sarcastically.

‘Looks like she’s been playing it for a couple of years. There’s also a chance that this isn’t her first account. There’s one thing for sure though.’

‘What’s that?’ Imogen said.

‘She definitely had a personal computer or laptop; there is no way she would have been able to maintain this level of involvement with just a phone. So, if you can find that, you will find out a lot more about her and who she interacted with. Nina Lawless has a big online presence. She was pretty obsessed with this game and, the way it works, it makes sense to have more than one profile, so a dummy account to interact with you to make you look more popular.’

‘Really? People do that?’

‘Yes, any one of these could be Erica’s profile as well. She might have wanted to make someone jealous, make fake money or tokens in the game to send herself gifts. Who knows?’

‘You understand all of this? I can’t get my head around it,’ Adrian said to Imogen, shaking his head.

‘Is there any indication of a possible suspect among the evidence we have so far?’ Imogen asked.

‘I think judging by the way her attacker has managed to avoid all cameras and stuff, we should work on the assumption that he lives quite close to here. At least in the UK. Once we get into the account I can look at her tracker if she has one. I think most people do,’ Gary said.

‘What if she doesn’t?’ Adrian asked.

‘How about we set up a profile for me?’ Imogen said, surprising herself. ‘Gary, you would have to be in control and keep an eye on it. But let’s assume the guy found her through that. If he knew where she was from, then it’s possible that he was specifically targeting someone from this area, someone close to him.’

‘Not a bad idea, I guess,’ Gary said.

‘You can try and connect with the people that she connected with. See if any of them raise any alarms,’ Imogen said to Gary, whose face lit up.

‘Ooh catfishing, my favourite,’ Gary said.

‘You worry me, mate,’ Adrian said.

‘Can you be a convincing girl though?’ Imogen asked Gary.

‘Can you?’ Adrian said to Imogen. Imogen thumped him in the arm, relieved to see the trace of a smile on his face.

‘This isn’t my first rodeo,’ Gary said. Adrian raised his eyebrow; Gary’s capacity to know things was genuinely impressive. He didn’t know where he found the time.

‘OK – make me a profile and I’ll send over some suitably cheesy photos,’ Imogen said. ‘Gary, can I borrow your cat?’

Gary laughed. ‘Um, sure? I can take the photos for you if you want? I’ll drop by your place with my camera.’

‘OK, great.’

Adrian was still staring at the website. ‘What I don’t get is why use fake photos? Like photos of models and stuff?’ he said.

‘Because some people collect other people for friendship, and some people collect styles of pictures.’ Gary clicked on a profile picture that was electric blue digital art; sure enough the rest of the wall was full of electric blue profile pictures interacting with the user. Almost like little cliques within the game.

‘You’ve got a handle on this though? You know how to play? You can get up to the same rank as her?’ Imogen said.

‘I can. I kind of love this sort of thing. I’ll let you know tomorrow how it’s going. Why are we using your photos though? Why not a fake?’

‘In case anyone wants to meet, or video chat or whatever.’

‘Try to make your pictures a bit naff, don’t look too hot or anything. Look normal and like a cat person,’ Adrian said.

‘What does a cat person look like?’ Gary said, that offended tone in his voice again. Was the bromance over? Adrian seemed to be getting on his nerves, or maybe it was something else.

‘I don’t think there’s any danger of me looking too hot,’ Imogen said.

‘Nonsense, Grey, you’re a solid nine.’ Adrian got up and walked out.

Chapter 15

‘I made dinner.’ Andrea stood up as Adrian walked into the kitchen. ‘It’s nothing special, just a beef stew.’

‘You didn’t have to do that.’

‘I wanted to. You’ve been so kind … after everything. You don’t have to stay out of our way you know. It’s your house.’

‘Where’s Tom?’ Adrian noticed the table was set for two and felt uneasy at the idea of trying to maintain a conversation with Andrea alone tonight. ‘I haven’t had much of a chance to speak to him lately.’

‘He’s sleeping over at Robin’s.’

‘How’s he getting on with the new school?’

‘Good. You know he always hated the private school anyway. Here, let me serve you.’

‘It’s OK, I’ll do it. Don’t worry.’ He pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. The turquoise stew pot stood in the centre; he had forgotten he even had it, it had belonged to his mother, one of the only things he had left from his childhood. It reminded him of the better times they had had together and so he couldn’t bring himself to give it away. He was pleased to see it. He had to admit, it was nice to have real food for once. His dinners mainly consisted of takeaways or frozen ready meals. ‘Did you work today?’

‘Yes of course I worked! The sales are on,’ she said defensively. Andrea worked in a local department store, front of shop in cosmetics.

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