Pete had set his laptop up in Erasmus’s office. Behind him the Mersey frothed and foamed, and the sun caused mini rainbows to appear to float just above the surface of the waves. The sight of the river and the reduced alcohol in his bloodstream was making Erasmus start to feel almost normal.
‘Rough night? You look like dog shit.’
You could always rely on your friends to bring you down to earth. Pete, as ever, was dressed immaculately: a crisp white polo shirt under a maroon Fred Perry cardigan and blue Levis.
‘Planning on going down to Brighton to fight with some rockers?’ replied Erasmus.
Pete laughed at this old joke between them.
‘Check this out. Meet Charlie and her new BFF.’
He navigated to the fictional Charlie’s Facebook page. She had 320 friends, 319 of which were purchased, the 320th, and newest, was Rebecca.
‘BFF? Where do you get these sayings?’
‘I have three daughters remember. “BFF” means Best Friend For ever, or more usually until the end of the school day. Trust me, it’s a jungle out there.’
‘So Rebecca is her friend. What do we know?’
‘Well, we now get access to Rebecca’s Facebook page. I’ve had the pleasure of looking through that and what I can tell you is that Rebecca likes a lot of shit music that is fairly depressing, she likes taking close-up pictures of shit like salad bowls and posting them as “art”, and she has an unfeasibly large amount of friends, most of whom she has never met. In short, a pretty normal teenage girl.’
Erasmus sat on the desk. He had hoped for more.
‘But don’t look so disappointed, my scruffy friend. You haven’t asked me how Charlie and Rebecca became friends.’
Pete told Erasmus about posting the tickets for the gig on the forum. He’d had fifty-two replies and Rebecca had been among them. Of course, Charlie had picked her to receive the tickets and they had struck up an Instant Message conversation about Phantom Lust. Pete had been run ragged as he navigated the Phantom Lust website and Google to deal with such conversational gambits as, ‘What do you think of Trey’s new haircut?’ but he had succeeded to the extent that by the end of the conversation he had Rebecca’s email address and they were Facebook friends.
‘The tickets are electronic, she has to print them out, so I have to email them to her. Don’t you see?’
Erasmus, a technophobe, didn’t see.
‘Tell me.’
‘I can include a piece of software called a key stroke programme with the attachment. When she opens the attachment it will infect her computer and from then on we can see everything she does from here.’
Pete tapped his laptop.
‘Jesus, it seems unethical.’
Pete grinned.
‘And illegal!’
‘I need to speak to Karen before we do this,’ said Erasmus.
Pete looked disappointed.
‘Of course. By the way, are we getting paid for this job?’
‘Pro bono. The Jennings case is paying the bills,’ said Erasmus over his shoulder as he headed into his office for a nap.