I had already drawn the uncomfortable conclusion that this man, too, was known to me before I lost my memory. He had been there with Stephomi and I in Paris, and he knew that I understood Latin and Italian and he had my address in Budapest. I very much hoped that we had been on bad terms, for I hated the thought that I had kept such vile company. When I took the camera down from the wall to replay the video, I half feared that the man might have seen the camera and somehow disabled it, or that there would be just blank, unexplained snow filling the screen. But the camera had not been tampered with and after watching it I did indeed have the identity of the note sender.
But I couldn’t believe it. I must have watched and re-watched the tape at least a dozen times to be sure that I was not somehow imagining it. Even when I was quite certain what the camera showed, I still thought that there might be a mistake or another explanation somehow. That it couldn’t possibly be what it seemed.
The only thing to be done was to confront him. And it seemed so unlikely and incredible that if he had told me he hadn’t done it then I think I would have believed him over the evidence of my own eyes. But when I went round to Casey’s apartment that evening and told her I needed to speak to Toby, and that it couldn’t wait until the morning, she went and got him up and brought him into the kitchen and I could see by the guilt in his eyes as soon as I held out the note that the camera had not lied and that it had indeed been Toby March who had been putting these threatening things under my door.
I knew that Toby couldn’t possibly have written the notes himself. Not unless he could read and write in ancient Latin. No, the deliverer and the sender must be different people altogether. Toby could be nothing more than an agent. Whoever the perpetrator of this scheme was, he had managed to find out who my neighbours were and had somehow bribed Toby to deliver these notes in secret. I remembered back to when I had received the first note a month ago, and had chased the fleeing footsteps down to the lobby where I had seen Toby loitering by the door before Casey found him and they left the building together. It was clear now why Toby had always seemed so nervous at the sight of me, and had been so uncomfortable in my company. It had never occurred to me that the nine-year-old might somehow be involved in all this — that the one responsible could be wretched enough to involve a child in this sordid mess.
‘Can you understand what these say?’ I asked, holding up the first note as well as the one I had received that evening.
Toby shook his head silently. Although my eyes were fixed on Toby, I could also see Casey out of the corner of my eye, gazing curiously at the notes, clearly puzzled as to what this had to do with her younger brother. She obviously could not read Italian either, for if she had understood the neatly printed messages, I am sure she would have been more visibly concerned.
‘Why have you been putting them under my door?’ I asked.
Casey turned sharply to her brother. ‘I most certainly hope you haven’t been putting anything under Gabriel’s door, Toby!’
The boy stood there, hesitating, glancing anxiously at his sister then back at me and then at his feet, shuffling nervously where he stood.
I felt I couldn’t bear the tense agony of waiting for him to tell me what he knew. My thoughts flew around chaotically, accusing everyone in turn: perhaps Stephomi had bribed Toby. Perhaps these things were his doing. Perhaps he was the unseen puppet master. Then again, perhaps there was no human agent at all. Perhaps the references to the dreaded Ninth Circle had come from some other thing’s realm altogether. Perhaps it had been the burning demon himself who had convinced Toby to be the deliveryman of these ominous portents. To my shame, my suspicions even rested briefly on Casey, but I quickly rejected this. I would not… could not believe that she had anything to do with this. I couldn’t bear it any longer. The cold and fearful suspicions against all those around me; the distrusting of friends; the total, blind ignorance of the unseen agendas gathering around me. I felt if I didn’t find out the identity of this contemptible, cowardly tormenter… this wretched, disgusting excuse for a human being… then I would surely go mad right there on the spot.
‘Please, Toby,’ I said, desperately, barely managing to resist the urge to shake him, ‘please tell me who gave you those notes to deliver.’
The boy bit his lip, brown eyes troubled, before at last giving me the answer: ‘You did.’
My thoughts collapsed in on themselves, leaving in their wake a deafeningly loud silence as I stood there staring at the kid.
‘Are you sure?’ I croaked at last.
‘There are some more in my bedroom,’ Toby said uncertainly. ‘You said I had to put them under the door on the sixth of every month starting from October, and that you mustn’t see me doing it or the deal would be off.’
‘Deal?’ I repeated blankly.
‘Start from the beginning,’ Casey ordered. ‘When did Gabriel ask you to do this?’
‘I dunno exactly when,’ Toby replied. ‘Some time in July. He said that if I delivered these notes when he said, without being seen, then he’d give me a thousand dollars.’
‘He said what?’ Casey repeated, looking horrified.
‘And a thousand more when he found out I was the sender.’
‘You mean I anticipated discovering your identity?’ I asked, staring at him.
Toby shrugged.
‘Toby, how could you accept money from a stranger? And that much? Where is it now? How have you been hiding it from me?’
‘It’s under my mattress,’ Toby said, slightly sulkily, obviously realising that he was going to be in trouble over this.
‘Go and fetch it right now,’ Casey ordered.
‘But Casey, you said we needed more money and-’
‘Toby! Fetch the money now. I won’t ask you again.’
With a scowl, Toby turned and stalked to his room.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, turning to her after her brother had gone off. ‘I… I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t remember any of it.’
Casey flashed me a brief, worried smile. ‘It’s okay. We’ll get to the bottom of it.’
When Toby returned, he was holding two black bags. The larger of the two he handed to his sister, who tipped the contents out onto the kitchen table and gasped involuntarily at the stacks of crisp, new dollar bills that piled up before us. There certainly looked like there was a thousand dollars’ worth there. Thrusting the money back into the bag, Casey handed it over to me.
‘You’d better take this.’
‘But, if I promised, Toby-’ I began, but Casey shook her head and cut me off.
‘Look, I don’t want to offend you, Gabriel, but we don’t know where that money came from. It… it could be stolen.’
I nodded bleakly and glanced apologetically at Toby. ‘I can give you the same in florints,’ I began, but again Casey rejected the offer firmly.
‘Toby should know better than ever to take money in the first place,’ she said. ‘You’re helping me out while I’m not working. I think you’re doing more than enough for us already. What’s in the other bag, Toby?’
‘Gabriel said he wouldn’t remember asking me to do this and, er.. he wasn’t sure how long it would take for him to work it out, so he gave me copies and said to give whatever was left back to him when he found out. And you wanted this back too,’ Toby said, drawing a computer disc in a plastic case from the second bag.
The other A4 pages Toby gave me all carried copies of the two messages I had already received. There were five copies of each message, making ten pages altogether. I must have been overly cautious, for there was no way that the anonymous letter sending would have gone on for ten months without my finding out who the sender was. It had been obvious and easy enough to fix a surveillance camera above the apartment door.
I gazed at the computer disc in its protective plastic packaging, clasped between my thumb and forefinger. It had been a complete dead end. As soon as the programme loaded up, I was presented with a black screen with one small central box requiring a password. There was only room for eight digits, and I had already spent hours and hours typing in all manner of words in an effort to crack the code. I was on the verge of losing my temper with it. Why bother to go to all the trouble of hiding the disc in such a manner if it wasn’t important? What the bloody hell was the point of a disc I couldn’t access?
Had I really been trying to torment myself with those notes? What kind of twisted and depraved man had I
