The House Guest by Mark Edwards(61)

‘One of my researchers managed to track down an old neighbour of Gabriel’s, from when they were kids,’ she said. ‘This guy lives in Alaska now so he should be safe. Probably. This guy’s tough, anyway. The type who knows how to react if a bear comes running at you. His mom used to be friends with Gabriel’s mom too, so he’s received a trickle of news about him over the years. The type moms love dishing out: So-and-so’s son is doing great. Why can’t you be more like him?’ A chuckle.

‘What did you find out?’ I asked.

‘So, Gabriel was born in ’76 in Raleigh, North Carolina. Grew up in the ’burbs. Parents divorced when he was nine, and dad did a vanishing act. According to my source – or more accurately, his mom – Dearman Senior was something of an asshole. A con man. Always coming up with some get-rich-quick scheme or other, none of which worked. But he identified pretty early on that computers were going to be the future, so he bought Gabriel a Commodore 64 when he was six or seven, and a book teaching him how to code.’

‘It’s a familiar story,’ I said.

‘Yep. All these tech geeks started out like this, didn’t they? Apparently, Gabriel wasn’t just into computers. He was a bookworm. Learned to read when he was three, was gobbling up Shakespeare when he was eight and actually understanding it. My source said Gabriel was into drama too. Always trying to get the teachers at their elementary school to put on Shakespeare plays. He told everyone he was going to be a famous playwright when he grew up, though in the interview I found with him online he said he’d always wanted to be a movie director. So I guess that ambition changed at some point. He also said in this interview that he’s a huge movie buff still, that he has a massive cinema at home and that he buys all the new movies when they come out. Like, all of them. He’s building his own massive library.’

‘So he would have seen The Immaculate,’ I said.

‘That Ruth’s movie? Yep. I think we can safely assume that.’

I remembered telling Ruth, when I saw the film, that it was going to attract the attention of casting directors and producers. I’d had no idea that it would also attract the attention of someone like Gabriel Dearman. But if this was indeed the case, I could understand it. Ruth’s performance was so powerful, so hypnotic, that I could see how it would have captivated his attention. A rich man, with secret power, used to getting what he wanted, frustrated by the things money couldn’t buy.

Deciding he wanted Ruth to be part of what he’d created.

‘What else did your source say?’ I asked.

Wanda cleared her throat. ‘By the time they got to junior high, Gabriel was designing computer games. Good games. He used to copy them on to cassette and sell them at school. My source remembers one called Tempest in which you were the ruler of this island and had to control all these characters, make them do what you wanted.’

‘Just like in the play.’

‘Yep.’

‘The play Ruth was in when Mona met her.’

Which had come first, I wondered? Had Mona encountered Ruth on the cruise and told Gabriel about her – this hot young actress who was appearing in a play he was obsessed with? Or had he seen the movie first, then discovered Ruth was going to be appearing in his favourite play? He would have seen it as a sign, surely. And then sent Mona to make contact with her.

It could have been either scenario.

Wanda went on. ‘Apparently, Gabriel’s computer-game enterprise ended when some bigger, tougher kids tried to muscle in, insisted that he had to pay them for protection and a sixty per cent cut of what he was making. He refused, and these kids beat the crap out of him. He ended up in the hospital, needed eye surgery. These kids all blamed each other and the cops could never prove which one of them had done it, plus they had rich parents who could afford good lawyers so they got away with it.’ She paused. ‘All those kids are dead now. They died over a five-year period. A series of accidents.’

I let this sink in. ‘What happened next?’

‘This is where it grows more murky. Gabriel moved to a new school so my source lost direct contact with him. But his mom told him later that Gabriel had gone to Columbia to study psychology, which was a big surprise to everyone. They thought he’d do computer science or maybe even drama.’

‘He wanted to learn how people tick,’ I said. ‘So he could manipulate them. Control them. Just like Prospero.’

In The Tempest, Prospero rules the island he has been exiled to along with his daughter, Miranda. He causes the shipwreck and uses sorcery, and a spirit called Ariel, to monitor and direct the actions of the other characters.

‘You think he’s modelled himself on this fictional character?’ Wanda asked. ‘You’re a playwright too, aren’t you? It sounds like the kind of interpretation you’d come up with.’

‘True.’

‘All I know is that, for a few years after that, Gabriel disappeared. My source doesn’t know what happened to him and I haven’t come across anything online yet. But the article I found told me that he began to build up his portfolio of stocks and shares in dot-coms and other tech companies in the early 2000s. He was an early investor in this start-up that Google bought for a billion. Then he invested in property too. He’s seriously rich. Seriously, seriously rich.’

I wondered if he’d also bankrolled Mona’s businesses. Maybe even helped her buy the house in Williamsburg. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Mona’s family were rich, weren’t they? Maybe she’d loaned him money for his first investments. That made sense.