The Fourth Season by Dorothy Johnston Read Free Book Online Page A

Katya’s blue school bag, looking ridiculously small, was slung across Ivan’s broad, vulnerable shoulder, and the bond between father and daughter was an elastic, lambent skin. Their expressions mirrored one another’s, and borrowed something in addition, from the hard, dry air of that extraordinary autumn, the sweat of battle, the need for fortitude and courage.
    Katya fetched the drawing she’d been keeping, and Ivan hugged her, exuberant with praise.
    Peter felt it too, the sudden turn in fortune, as he dumped his backpack and displayed his eggplant bruise, now more yellow and green than purple. When Ivan called it a ‘ushib’, Peter giggled the way he used to when he was a small boy and Ivan plucked a Russian word out of the air.
    Ivan cooked, while Peter sat at the kitchen table sighing over his homework, but pleased, I thought, to have something ordinary to sigh over. Ivan left the stove to explain a graph, and Peter had to stop him planting a finger covered in tomato paste in the middle of his book.
    After dinner, the three of them watched television, Kat curled in her father’s arms, Peter with his long legs tucked underneath him at their feet.
    I told myself I could put off phoning Derek, and that the four of us might come through this after all.

Six
    The proprietor of the first internet cafe I visited looked Middle-eastern, and spoke English with an accent. I decided to pay for a session first, and ask questions later, well aware that he could refuse to answer them.
    I logged on to my provider’s website, checked my mail and sent off a few messages, at the same time glancing round the cafe, noting how many booths there were—twenty-three, packed close together. The cafe was in the middle of Civic, open long hours. It had to be staffed by more than one person.
    I paid my two dollars, then said to the proprietor, ‘I’m wondering if you can help me.’ I handed him my business card. ‘An investigation I’m working on leads to one of your computers.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’ The man sounded hostile and on guard, and I told myself I should have worked out a more indirect approach. But it was too late for that now.
    I explained that, on 12 October last year, on a Thursday night from about nine o’clock, a hacker had been using one of his computers. He looked at me as though I’d asked him to recall his entire childhood and recite it back.
    When I asked if he ran the business on his own, the man replied that he and his brother managed it between them. He recovered and said testily that he couldn’t possibly remember who’d been in the cafe five months ago, and that no logs or histories of their customers were kept.
    The second cafe to which Ivan had traced the environment minister’s would-be hacker was much smaller, and actually in our neighbourhood. It wasn’t open such long hours as the one in Civic. The hacker, or hackers—I reminded myself that there could be more than one—had used the cafe on a Thursday night as well, a week later and at the same time.
    A woman in her sixties, with hair dyed black and lipstick practically the same colour, stood behind the counter. This time, I dispensed with any pretence at being a customer and showed her my card straight away. I’d rehearsed approaches in the car, and decided I did not have time to beat around the bush.
    Prepared for another brush-off, I nevertheless put more care into explaining what I wanted. The woman told me her name was Rita Thomas, and that she and her husband, Owen, managed the cafe between them. When I told her the date and time, she stared at me and went pale behind her make-up.
    â€˜I think you should speak to my husband,’ she said.
    . . .
    Owen Thomas—he introduced himself with a handshake that was damp but firm—was seriously overweight. He leant forward in his wheelchair, breathing in hoarse, uneven bursts. Extra chins and cheek