White Death by Daniel Blake

Author:Daniel Blake [Daniel Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-12-05T11:00:00+00:00

40

Inessa had won the race back to the hotel, so they were quits. The government would pick up the tab for dinner, Patrese said, as if it hadn’t been going to all along. Inessa went back to her sister’s place to change, and then met Patrese in the hotel restaurant.

They made a pact not to talk about the case, and instead spoke easily about themselves; the kind of mutual dance you get on a not-quite-date, when each side is trying to portray themselves in the best possible light while simultaneously trying to discern the other’s intentions. Yes, the chess parallel did occur to Patrese, and he stamped down on it. Too much thinking about Kwasi would make Patrese as insane as Kwasi was.

She was doing a PhD in comparative literature, she said. More precisely, and to give her doctorate its full and specific title: Russian Formalism, the interaction of math and physics theories with twentieth-century literature from a thematic and stylistic perspective: kitsch and camp aesthetics in post-Soviet Russia: the insect metaphor in literature and media studies. She liked maps, austere buildings and primary colors.

Before Harvard, she’d gone to Penn State, so she was inordinately impressed when Patrese told her he’d played in the Pitt–Penn State football match. College football was huge at both universities, and the guys who made the teams were revered across campus. Patrese told her what it felt like to run out at Beaver Stadium, Penn State’s home turf: the largest stadium in North America, and boy, did you feel it. Banks of people rising high and vertiginous in a tidal wave of blue and white, banging out their chant like an earthquake, shock waves round and round the stadium, the physical force of the sound battering against your chest.

Inessa took up the famous Penn State chant, clapping her hands.

‘We Are!’

‘Penn State!’

‘We Are!’

‘Penn State!’

The other diners glared at them. Inessa and Patrese collapsed with laughter.

They’d got to coffee, Patrese debating not so much whether to make a move as when, when his BlackBerry bleeped. He clicked on the message folder, and caught his breath.

One message. Sender: Kwasi King.

‘Problem?’ Inessa said.

‘Let you know in a moment.’

He read the e-mail twice: once fast, to get the gist, and then again more slowly. Americans don’t have much time for smart kids … It was us against the world … I have never had a friend in my life.

He handed Inessa the BlackBerry. Probably against the rules, showing an outsider evidence like this, but since they’d brought her in specifically to try to uncover Kwasi’s mentality, it seemed dumb not to show her communication from the man himself.

She read it in silence.

‘Sounds like him, sure enough,’ she said.

‘Why’s he sending it?’

‘To mess with your head.’

‘You don’t think he’s trying to explain himself?’

‘Maybe, a little. But messing with your head’s definitely higher on his list.’

It was a game to Kwasi, Patrese saw. Everything was a game.

‘Show me,’ he said abruptly.

‘Show you what?’

‘Show me chess. Play with me. Show me the attraction, show me why he’s obsessed with it.

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