Miriam glances at the clock. He’s not coming, she thinks. For the first time.
A shiver of premonition runs through her. Something has happened.
She debates with herself, unsure if she is overstepping her boundaries…and then she takes out her phone.
Jenny had once told Gabe that his most annoying habit (of which he had plenty, apparently) was his inability to take advice. To listen to reason. His path could be peppered with warning signs and strung with barbed wire, but he would still only believe that the pool was toxic and infested with sharks by jumping in himself. Head first.
She was right, as she was about most things. If she were here now, Gabe might have told her that her most annoying habit (of which there were a few) was always being right about him.
He missed that. He missed a lot of things about Jenny. Not in the same way that he missed Izzy. The pain was different. It wasn’t an all-encompassing black hole that obliterated the light from his life. It was more of a dull throb.
That sounded harsh. But it was true. The brutal fact was that losing a wife or partner and losing a child were different. He would have sacrificed himself for Izzy, and he knew Jenny would have done the same. The less palatable truth, the one that nobody liked to admit was, if it came to it, they would have sacrificed each other for their daughter. Jenny would have pushed him in front of a bus without a second thought if it meant saving Izzy’s life. And that was fine. That was good. That was how it should be.
It wasn’t that they didn’t love each other. Once, they had loved each other furiously, relentlessly. But passionate love always dims. It has to. Like anything else, love must evolve. To survive, it needs to smolder, not rage. But you still need to tend it, to keep it throwing out warmth. Be too neglectful, for too long, and the fire goes out completely, leaving you raking through the ashes, searching for that spark you once had.
They had both been neglectful. The last remaining bit of warmth had almost faded and he knew that they were both fruitlessly throwing on sticks in the vain hope it might reignite. That catch-all cliché—he loved Jenny, but he was no longer in love with her.
It wasn’t Jenny’s face he saw when he woke screaming in the middle of the night. It was Izzy’s. Sometimes—often—he felt guilty about that. And yet, he was pretty sure if Jenny were here right now, she would say, I should bloody well hope so.
She would also have told him not to consider what he was considering.
Don’t go near this shit. Forget you ever heard about it.
But then, warning signs, barbed wire, sharks…
After he had left the Samaritan, he had driven straight back to Newton Green Services, sat down in the coffee shop and pulled out his laptop. This time, there was no sign of the kind-faced waitress. Probably just as well. He didn’t really want her appearing at his shoulder and seeing what he was doing. He had deliberately positioned himself in a different seat, tucked right into a far corner. Fortunately, the coffee shop was pretty empty. Just one middle-aged couple and a stocky young man with a shaven head in a fluorescent police jacket. Traffic cop, thought Gabe, although usually, like socks, they came in pairs. Perhaps the other one had got lost in the wash.
He turned his attention to his laptop. He had considered downloading a Tor browser before but never had the nerve. It felt a bit too much like opening Pandora’s box. Plus, he wasn’t exactly tech savvy. The instructions he had downloaded made it seem simple. (If this were a film, he would probably have whacked a few keys and had instant access to the White House security files.) As it was, it took him a good half an hour of disabling and enabling functions on his laptop before he eventually had the browser set up.
He stared at the screen. Welcome to Tor Browser.
Now what? He tried typing in “the Other People” but, predictably, it yielded no results. You didn’t just browse the Dark Web, he reminded himself. You needed to know what you were looking for. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He didn’t even know if he was looking in the right place or just wasting his time.
He could almost hear Jenny muttering smugly, Told you so.
Feeling frustrated, he took out the notebook and the Bible. The fusty, damp smell rising from the pages clogged his throat and the underlined passages seemed to mock him. He wondered again why Sticker Man had underlined those particular ones.
And then the thought struck him, barreling into his brain with the force of a small juggernaut.
You didn’t just browse the Dark Web. Often the Web addresses were just random letters and numbers.
And how did you remember random letters and numbers? You needed a system. One that someone else wouldn’t understand, should they stumble on it. He unfolded his napkin. He walked back up to the counter and asked the barista if he could borrow his ballpoint. The barista gave him an odd look but obliged.
Gabe sat back down. He jotted down the four Bible references on his napkin.
Exodus 21: 23–25
Leviticus 24: 17–21
Deuteronomy 19: 18–21
Deuteronomy 32: 43
Okay. Most obvious. The first letters of each of the testaments. He typed into his laptop: http://ELDD.onion
No joy.
He tried again but, this time, added the first numbers: http://ELDD21241932.onion
Nothing.
He felt his optimism begin to drain away. There could be any number of combinations, and he didn’t even know if his theory was right. Maybe Sticker Man just really liked those quotes. Maybe it had nothing to do with the website.
Still, one more go: http://E21L24D19D32.onion
He hit return. A blue line appeared at the top of his screen. It trundled along and, when it reached the end, a page popped up.
“Shit.”
Or maybe “Holy shit.” He hadn’t actually believed it would work. He stared at the innocuous home page. Plain white letters on a black background. A little like a chalkboard.
Below the website name, in smaller writing, was a box that read “Enter Password.”
He looked at the line references. Worth a try.
2325172118213243
He hit enter. Another page flashed up.
Welcome to The Other People
We know about pain. We know about loss. We know about injustice.
We share the pain…with those who deserve it.
Beneath this little mission statement were three links:
Chat. Request. FAQ.