Soul Fire

we can talk. He opens up his own laptop straight away.
    ‘Did it work?’
    Lewis looks up at me. ‘What?’
    ‘The Denial of Service thingy.’
    He nods. ‘Of course. Can I show you something else?’
    ‘If it’s a piano-playing kitten on YouTube then I’m not in the mood.’
    Lewis smiles. ‘I’ve been looking at the stuff I downloaded from Zoe’s first laptop. There’s some interesting information.’
    He turns his laptop round to face me. There’s a list of hundreds, maybe thousands of files: emails, logs, documents.
    ‘Am I meant to be looking at anything specific?’
    He turns it round again. ‘Well, it’s all potentially useful. This here is the background to Burning Truths: the domain registration, the hosting. But the most interesting stuff is
between Tim and Zoe. He keeps talking about an “insurance policy”. At first I thought it was life insurance or something, and it made me wonder if Meggie had had a policy he benefited
from somehow.’
    ‘She never took out that kind of policy, Lewis. She was only twenty years old.’
    ‘I realised that pretty fast. It’s not a policy. It’s the photographs Zoe told you about, the ones Tim hid in the locker. I did download some of them off her hard drive, but
only the ones she’d already uploaded, or was about to upload.’
    ‘ About to upload? New ones? What do those show?’
    He frowns. ‘Do you really want to see them now? It’s been such an awful twenty-four hours, I thought they could wait till we got home. They’re just a couple more odd close-ups
of your sister, but I don’t want to upset you anymore . . .’ Lewis looks up at me.
    ‘Now. Please.’
    ‘OK, let me call them up on my laptop. They’re fairly heavily encrypted – I thought that was a good idea in view of what’s happened – so you’ll have to give
me a few minutes.’ He starts tapping. ‘Anyway, I think the other pictures, the thousands she told you about, must be on the other laptop.’ He pats the messenger bag that
he’s keeping tucked under his shoulder.
    ‘Have you cracked the security on it yet?’
    ‘Give me a chance, Ali. I need to try that at home. But there’s plenty to keep me busy in the rest of the emails. Zoe set up the site without Tim knowing, and when he found out, he
was cross. He asked her to close it down, but she kept insisting it would protect them both.’
    I shudder. Tim’s dead. Zoe’s in a coma. She couldn’t have been more wrong. ‘Do you think it did the opposite? Incited someone?’
    Lewis frowns. ‘Impossible to be sure. I did look at the visitor stats for the site. Hardly anyone knew about it. There’s you – I can tell your location. There’s me
– I’ve hidden my location, but the times fit. And then there are several different locations in Greenwich.’
    ‘Zoe lived in Greenwich, though, before she moved here.’
    ‘True. So one is likely to be her. Another of the visitors is obviously Tim going online to look at the site, the emails he sent to Zoe tie in exactly with when he went online. But
there’s another regular visitor somewhere near the university . . .’ he hesitates.
    ‘ Where near the university?’
    ‘I don’t want to freak you out, but I think it’s the halls of residence.’
    I stare at him. ‘Where Sahara still lives.’
    Lewis nods. ‘It doesn’t automatically mean . . .’ he doesn’t finish the sentence.
    The airport’s lights seem to dim and it feels as though the temperature’s dropped by ten degrees.
    ‘Are you OK, Ali? Maybe I shouldn’t have told you now, not after all the other shocks.’
    ‘I’m pleased you did.’
    ‘Let me get you a coffee. And something sweet,’ he says, standing up. Then he adds, ‘I’ll only be over there by the cafe´. Not far.’
    ‘Lewis. Can I go online from your laptop here?’
    He looks at me. ‘That was a fast recovery.’
    ‘There’s something I need to do before we board the plane.’ Or somewhere I need to go – the only place I can ever feel safe.

52
    The actions of trying to log on to Soul Beach are automatic now, which is just as well, as all I can think about is Sahara. What I think she’s done. Why she did it.
    Whether she’ll try to do it again.
    ‘Florrie, where have you been?’
    My sister is standing on the shoreline. Her eyes are puffy.
    ‘Away, Meggie. I’m sorry. I’m back now, though.’
    The airport fades away. My bare feet tingle thanks to the hot sand, and an intense warmth spreads through me like a