‘Gary has some news on the social media front, but Erica was conspicuously absent from all the usual haunts. He wants us to go see him.’
Adrian stood up and rubbed his eyes. She guessed he had been here all night watching all those tapes, and probably slept at his desk. Worrying about Adrian was definitely a good way to distract her from her own problems. They made their way to Gary’s office.
‘How are you holding up? You look tired,’ Imogen said.
‘Home is crazy. It’s hard. Andrea is acting like the wife I never had and it’s just so overwhelming, I never get any time to …’ he trailed off.
‘Is she looking for her own place?’
‘No, she’s in major denial about what’s going on. We’re headed for a big conversation. I don’t want to, but I just need some space.’
‘You can’t have your ex living with you, especially with you guys’ history.’
‘I can’t kick her out, Grey.’
‘Well if you ever need a break, you’re welcome at mine,’ she offered.
As they arrived at the tech lab, Gary shot Imogen a look, a question in his eyes: is Adrian OK?
She shrugged almost imperceptibly in response. As good as can be expected.
‘Welcome! Can I get you some coffee?’ Gary asked. ‘I bought my own machine, one of the ones with the little capsules. Don’t tell everyone though.’
‘Just had one thanks. But you’ll be getting a lot more visits from me in the future,’ Imogen said.
‘Why do you think I got the machine?’ he said, grinning.
‘So, what do you have? Did you find out anything new about her? Was her relationship with her sister as solid as it seemed?’ Adrian asked, skipping past the small talk.
‘Sarah Lawson gave me access to their personal emails and texts and as far as I can see the sisters were very close. No big arguments, just the occasional passive-aggressive advice. As far as Sarah Lawson goes, she wasn’t aware of any social media accounts Erica had and it’s definitely trickier without her laptop to see what websites she was using, but we contacted her ISP and got a full history.’
‘And?’ Imogen said impatiently.
‘She had a Facebook account under a different name. All her own pictures, but the name is Nina Lawless. I searched Nina Lawless and found several profiles on various free social messenger and dating sites. She wasn’t stupid though, there was no indication of where she lived from her online photos. You would be surprised how many people post pictures that show their house, street name, all sorts.’
‘She was hooking up with people?’ Imogen said.
‘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
