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Wilkinson was still typing, but now he was frowning slightly.
‘So you had cybersex with her that evening.’
‘Yes.’
‘Just the once?’
I almost laughed.
‘Of course.’
He looked up at me, not really smiling.
‘Jason, I don’t know anything about this kind of thing.’
And, although he said it in a neutral voice – deliberately neutral – I could tell that it was a loaded sentence.
‘You generally only tend to do it once,’ I explained.
He started typing again, his voice more normal.
‘Did you meet her again?’
‘Yes.’
‘On-line?’
‘Yes.’
The excitement, fluttering in my stomach as the train pulled into the station at Schio. The people milling around. My fingertips were pressed on the glass, with a phantom hand touching them from the outside and a slight reflection of my peering face almost cheek-to-cheek with me. Looking for that white dress in the crowd.
‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘It was always on-line.’
He tapped a key.
‘How many times did you meet her?’
I thought about it.
‘I couldn’t say for sure. Maybe eight or nine times, over a period of about… I don’t know. Two months?’ I shook my head. ‘But I’m not sure.’
‘You didn’t keep track?’
‘No.’
A few more keystrokes.
‘And did you continue to have cybersex with her throughout that time?’
A loaded question – again – fired like a blank.
I said, ‘A couple of times, maybe.’
‘So, yes?’
‘I suppose so. Yes. But not always.’
‘Sometimes you just talked?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s right. Just like in any other relationship. Sometimes we just talked.’
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Wilkinson tapped in a few more lines of text, recording the strange fact that – from time to time – two people had actually managed to talk without having sex. I shifted in my seat a little. He looked up, then, catching my movement.
‘You okay? You comfortable?’
‘I’m fine, yeah.’
‘You want a coffee?’
Of course I wanted a coffee. But not as much as I wanted to be out of here.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, thanks.’
‘Okay. You know – this is just routine.’ Suddenly, he leaned back in his chair and seemed more relaxed.
‘Your name was on her computer: a bunch of old transcripts and stuff. She’d erased a load of it, but some were still left. Not just you, by the way.’ He leaned forwards again. ‘A whole load of guys. She was on the internet a lot, huh?’
I shrugged.
‘I don’t know. Not that I know of.’
He just nodded, dismissing it.
‘She was on the internet a lot. Look, are you sure you don’t want a coffee? I mean, I want a coffee. Do you want a coffee? I’m going, anyway.’
‘In that case, sure,’ I said. ‘Black, no sugar.’
‘Virgin coffee.’ Wilkinson stood up. ‘That’s the way I have it, too. I don’t like people fucking with my coffee.’
‘Lol,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘I’m laughing out loud.’ I gave him a smile. ‘That’s all.’
‘Okay.’ He turned around, nodding to himself. ‘Laughing out loud. That’s very clever. That’s a computer thing, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, that’s very clever.’
He returned five minutes later with two coffees. While he was away, I tried to get my thoughts together. Claire was dead, and I didn’t know whether I felt much about that or not. I mean – she’d always seemed like a sweet girl, but when it came down to it, I’d hardly known her. She’d been there for me at a difficult time: that’s all. And because Wilkinson hadn’t told me anything about it, it seemed somehow less real – as though it wouldn’t have actually happened until I’d heard all of the grim details. Maybe I was just numbed from all the stuff I’d seen on the internet. Murder? Give me photographs and tape recordings, or don’t expect me to feel anything.
But that wasn’t true.
By the time he returned, the only thing I’d really figured out was that I wanted to go home and forget about this. Forget all about Claire, as bad as that was, and prepare myself for tomorrow. The police didn’t mean shit to me. They didn’t figure in the cycle of my life at all these days.
‘Here you go.’ Wilkinson passed me the coffee, taking his seat again. ‘It’s hot, be careful, etcetera. Now, where were we?’
It wasn’t directed at me. I turned the cup around on the table between my fingers, and waited for him to catch his place, trying to remain calm and patient.
‘So, all of this – this was all before your girlfriend disappeared?’
‘Yes.’
‘Amy?’
