Read Follow Me for Free Online Page B

picture. The screen went black, a white line scrolling painfully slowly across it.
Come on. Come on.
The photo appeared. Enlarged. She let out a yelp, clamping her hand to her mouth. It was Alun Mardling. Or what was left of him. His neck cut, his head lolling forward onto the keyboard. Blood.
    How’d the picture get online? Who’d taken it? The account had no followers. It was only following one person: Alun Mardling. The name of the account was Apollyon. @Apollyon. The bio said:
    Trick or treat? Everywhere.
    ‘No.’ She was going to be sick.
    The man in a suit opposite looked at her, rustling his paper. Instinctively she clutched the phone to her chest. She had to get help. Nasreen. She had to get hold of Nasreen.
    ‘This train is for Bank. The next station is Westferry,’ the pre-recorded electronic female voice boomed into the carriage.
    Freddie lurched up as the train came to a stop, hitting the door button with her free hand. Don’t vomit. Saliva pooled in her mouth. Recent calls > Nasreen > Call. Voicemail.
    ‘Nas, it’s Freddie. There’s a…’ She looked up at the commuters bottlenecking in front of her, a small child, in a duffel coat and knitted bobble hat, clung to her mum’s hand. She couldn’t say the words in front of an innocent kid. ‘…Something on Twitter. It’s urgent. Call me.’
    She looked at the profile picture of @Apollyon again. It was definitely Mardling. Definitely the crime scene. She stumbled down the stairs and steadied herself against the ticket machine.
Keep swallowing. Keep breathing.
There, next to Mardling’s hand, on his Ikea desk, was a knife. Dripping with blood.
    What had Nas said?
No weapon. Someone took it with them.
    She had to get hold of her. She tried again: her phone went straight to voicemail. She nearly screamed. She took a screenshot of the image and texted it to Nas, typing: Call me.
    The murderer could be anyone. Once, at the Southbank centre, she’d tweeted and watched her post appear on the phone of the stranger sat in front of her. All the people she let into her world. You could feel like you knew them, but you didn’t. It was so easy for people to catfish – to pretend to be someone else online. @Apollyon could be anyone. What if the killer had been in the same carriage as her? What if they’d seen her open their tweet? A man came toward her. His face ghostly, his eyes two black holes in his face. She flinched. He passed and continued up the stairs. She was acting crazy. Why would the murderer be here on the train? She pulled her coat tight and walked with her head down.
    Besides, she didn’t know what a real criminal would look like. Her head was full of pap shots of penitent American celebs in orange jumpsuits. Justin Bieber’s grinning mugshot that launched a thousand gifs. Lindsay Lohan up for a DUI. Britney’s meltdown. But they weren’t serious felons. The 277 came toward her. She ran for it. Jumping on between the hissing open doors, Freddie swiped her Oyster card and scanned the other passengers. A woman in a hijab, a tiny child with curly dark hair in a buggy in front of her. An old man with a walking stick. A woman wearing large pink Sony headphones, staring out the window. Could any of these people be killers? Surely not. Normal people don’t go around slitting people’s throats.
    What about the model Paige Klinger? Could she have butchered Alun Mardling? She Googled Apollyon.
Greek for the destroyer. In Hebrew, Abaddon, meaning the land of the dead. Apollyon appears in the Bible as a place of destruction.
Not your average idiot troll name. Who murders someone and posts a photo of it online? The bus climbed toward Dalston, swung over canals, past shops, their shutters opening like eyes. What did it mean? Freddie watched as the dark blue clouds of the night transitioned into apocalyptic shades of orange, pink and red.
The destroyer. The avenging angel. Troll hunter.
The Revelation.
This was one hell of a story.
    Nasreen, still at the