Serafina and the Virtual Man

CHAPTER Ten



Jilly was damned if she’d let her father interfere with her morning’s plans. She just hoped Sera didn’t break any of his bones, because the bag of shite was quite capable of pressing charges. Of course, they both knew how to talk him out of that one, but Jilly really didn’t want to waste her time on it.

Finding a couple of pounds in the pocket of Sera’s coat, she caught a bus up to the Scotsman Hotel, and since the receptionist there smiled so brightly at her, she asked for Roxy. The receptionist looked slightly flummoxed.

“Do you have an appointment with Miss May?” she asked at last.

“No, but she’ll be glad to see me,” Jilly lied. Roxy was here incognito. No one was meant to be aware of her presence. Therefore, the receptionist would reason, hopefully, that Jilly must be Roxy’s friend to be in the know.

“One moment,” the receptionist said and bustled over to the back office.

Oh well, reception had only ever been a courtesy. Jilly already knew the room number. She turned smartly and skipped off up the stairs.

Converted from the old Scotsman newspaper office, the hotel was not an easy layout to grasp, but it didn’t take Jilly long to track down the right room. She knocked briskly and hoped her quarry had the decency to be in.

She had. Roxy opened the door with a flourish, a glass in her other hand.

“Hello,” said Jilly, brushing past her. “Remember me?”

“Sure,” Roxy said after a pregnant moment. “Won’t you come in?”

“Sorry,” Jilly said without much sincerity. “I skipped past reception; don’t want the staff to come upon me skulking outside your room.”

Roxy let the door go, and it slid to an expensively silent close. “I can understand that. Er—why were you skulking outside my room?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Roxy frowned. “How did you know I was here? Did Dale and Petra tell you?”

Jilly opened her mouth to lie, then changed her mind and sat down on the opulent sofa. “No. I hacked the hotel register.”

To her surprise, Roxy’s lips twitched. “Wow. You really did want to talk to me. What about?”

Jilly took a deep breath but held the other woman’s gaze. “Genesis Adam.”

“Are you a journalist?”

“No. I work for a psychic who’s trying to exorcise a poltergeist from the Ewans’ house.”

“Shit,” Roxy said, turning away toward the open-bar cupboard. “I’m going to need another drink for this. Want one?”

Jilly never drank during the day. Not with her mother’s example. Or Elspeth’s, although the receptionist had been good as gold about the demon drink recently. But right now, she felt she needed one, and besides, people talked more with a drinking companion.

“Go on, then,” she said and watched Roxy slosh whisky into two glasses.

“Salute,” Roxy said, passing one glass to Jilly and sitting down beside her.

“You’re Italian?” Jilly asked.

“Half Italian, half Irish. Suppose I picked the wrong half to toast in whisky.” She raised the glass to her lips and regarded Jilly over the top while she drank. She lowered the glass. “I probably won’t tell you anything, but what do you want to know and why?”

Jilly liked her. Which gave her a nasty pain somewhere in the pit of her stomach. She could imagine Adam with this woman. They’d have made a striking and eccentric couple.

Jilly swirled the amber liquid around the glass, watching the colours change in the light. “I don’t know if you believe in this stuff or not, but we think the Ewans’ poltergeist is somehow mixed up with Adam. I want to know how as well as why.”

“Bizarre,” Roxy murmured, still gazing at her.

Jilly took a sip of the whisky—smooth and smoky on her tongue, burning its way down her throat. Then, because she had to start somewhere, she blurted, “When did you last see Adam?”

“Nearly a year ago. March. When he dumped me.”

Jilly’s mouth fell open. “He dumped you?”

Roxy smiled lopsidedly. “Thank you for being so surprised.”

Jilly flushed and tried to pull herself together. Why did the idea make her so happy? It wasn’t as if it made Jilly or even Adam himself any different. “Can I ask why you split up?”

Roxy hesitated, sipped her whisky, then: “He was right,” she said abruptly. “I loved him to bits, and he was fond of me, but we weren’t going anywhere. We had nothing together that was more important than what we did apart, if you see what I mean. I was touring all the time, and he’d go off into development mode for weeks at a time so he might as well have been touring too.” Her lips twisted. “The tour times didn’t necessarily coincide.”

“So…you grew apart,” Jilly said slowly. No big bust-up, no falling out over drink and drugs. “Did you live with him?”

“God, no. Adam was impossible to live with. Bloody good fun, though.” She blinked rapidly and took another sip of whisky.

“Did you ever do drugs with him?”

Roxy regarded her quizzically. “Are you sure you’re not a journalist? Are you recording this?”

“No and no,” Jilly said, taking off her coat and setting her phone on the low table in front of the sofa by way of proof. “So, did you?”

“Once or twice, but he never took anything stronger than cannabis. We got drunk together more often, but even that was a rarity. Adam didn’t like to cloud his mind. He liked it sharp.” She smiled faintly. “Some people don’t need narcotics to boost their imagination. He had it already. In spades.” Her eyes came back into focus, large and miserable. “Which is why it’s so awful he sank into that trap in the end.”

“Were you in touch with him at all after March?”

“E-mailed a few times at first. But he was insanely busy on his new project, and I was working on the new album and then the American tour… I’ve wondered since then if I should have stayed. You see, it was after I arranged the American tour that he decided we should split up as a couple and just be friends. Maybe he needed someone to be there, and I couldn’t see that…”

Jilly’s throat closed up. After a moment, she managed to say, “Did he ever give you that impression?”

“That he needed me or anyone else? No. He didn’t even need Dale. Anyone could have run the business, made a success out of the games Adam came up with. But he never wavered from Dale.”

“Then they were close?”

“Yes, in the old days. Before Petra.”

“He didn’t like Petra?”

Roxy shrugged. “He liked her, all right. More than I did, to be honest. And no, not just because she’s easy on the male eye. Adam always looked beneath the surface and usually found something pleasant the rest of us were too lazy to look for. In everyone, I mean, not just women who fancied him.”

Jilly felt her eyes widening again. Perhaps it was the whisky, but she no longer cared. “Petra fancied him?”

“Well, Dale’s all right, you know. Nice guy, but put him beside Adam and he just doesn’t shine.” She curled her lip. “I’m biased, of course.”

“Did she go out with Adam? Before she married Dale?”

“No, and they didn’t have an affair either, to my knowledge. Doesn’t mean she didn’t look.”

I’d have looked too, Jilly thought wistfully. But he’d never have seen her, not if there was anyone else.

Jilly set her glass on the table. “Did he ever talk to you about Australia? About emigrating?”

“Never.”

“Was he ever…violent?”

Roxy stared at her. “Violent? You mean did he hit me? No, of course he bloody didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” Jilly assured her. “I mean, did he get into fights? Was he an aggressive man?”

“No. He’d stand up for himself or a friend, wouldn’t let anyone push him around, but he never went around thumping people. He was pretty good-natured, in fact.”

“Then…you couldn’t imagine him ever…killing someone?”

Roxy drew in her breath. “All right, what’s this about?”

“The police think he murdered a hit man called James Killearn. We dug his body up in the Ewans’ garden last night.”

“Whoa.” Roxy flopped back on the sofa. “You’re making this up.”

“I wish. Did you ever meet James Killearn?”

“Not to my knowledge. What did he look like?”

“I have no idea. He’d been in the soil for five months when we met.”

“F*ck,” said Roxy, “you’re really not making this up, are you?”

“No. Are there any circumstances you can think of that might have caused Adam to kill someone?”

Roxy actually thought about it, tried to drink from her empty glass, and thought some more. “Maybe if this guy was trying to kill him or whoever he was with. He’d definitely have weighed in to stop it. But I can’t imagine him deliberately killing anyone.”

But then Roxy couldn’t imagine him taking drugs or getting drunk on a regular basis either.

“When did you last hear from him?” Jilly asked.

“July, I think. Maybe early August. Why?”

“How did he seem?”

“Busy. Excited.”

“Different?”

She frowned. “Not really, no. Just…Adam.”

They’d been lovers for years off and on, according to Dale. Wouldn’t Roxy have noticed his rapid descent into addiction? Even by e-mail? Or had he deliberately hidden that from her, in shame?

Jilly lifted her glass again. “Did you know there were already rumours circulating that he was spiralling downhill into drink and drugs? That he checked into a rehab clinic?”

Roxy shook her head. “No,” she said, low. “I was in America. Someone from home said something once. I assumed either she was being catty or it was the British gutter press at it again. Never thought about it at all until I heard he was dead.”

“Were you surprised when he moved to Australia?”

“I was surprised to hear about it. I didn’t know he’d done it… You get so wrapped up, you know?” She raised her eyes to Jilly. “I didn’t even know he’d sold out to Dale. That’s the one that really knocked me flat. Why the hell did he do that? Dale couldn’t develop his new project, not without Adam.”

“I think Adam had all but finished developing it. Dale only has to sell it.”

“Easy-peasy,” Roxy murmured. “And if it’s everything Adam said it was, Dale can retire forever.”

Jilly nodded slowly. “Is that what Dale wants?”

Roxy shrugged. “They’re both pretty high maintenance. Petra likes yachts off the Riviera and homes all over Europe and America. Dale likes to be lavish on his entertainment. Or did before I went away. I guess Adam’s death hit him hard. Anyway, the bottom line is, Genesis does very well and made them both rich, but Dale and Petra live well beyond their means. Even that house”—Roxy waved one arm in a generally southern direction—”cost an arm and a leg.”

“You must know the Ewans pretty well too.”

Roxy eyed her with suspicion. “Ask.”

Jilly’s lip twitched. “Could you imagine Dale killing anyone? Killearn for example?”

Roxy opened her mouth, then paused and smiled. “No,” she said. “I couldn’t.” She stood up. “Another drink?”

“No, thanks. I have to go.” Jilly grabbed up her phone and her coat. “Thanks for being so helpful.”

“Not sure how any of that helps with your poltergeist.”

“Neither am I,” Jilly said ruefully. “But I’ll let you know, if you like.”

“Yeah. Do that.”

Jilly paused at the door, twisting the handle. “Roxy?”

The singer looked over from the drinks cabinet.

“Don’t sit drinking in your hotel room at eleven o’clock in the morning,” Jilly said in a rush. “You’re not that sad.”

“F*cking am,” Roxy whispered. She tried to smile.

“F*cking aren’t,” Jilly said. “So don’t dull the brilliance. He loved your music. It’s all over his house. Make some more.”

****



By the time Jilly sat on the bus heading back to Serafina’s, the question was nagging at her. Why was Roxy’s music all over his house? Why had he not taken her CDs and his other music with him to Australia? Why had he left her portrait when it had meant enough to keep it on his wall after they’d split up? A complete break? Or hadn’t he cared for anything anymore?

Or had Jilly been right last night when she’d imagined that Sera had found Adam’s grave, when the possibility had struck her that he’d never gone to Australia at all?

****



“Sera back yet?” Jilly asked, hanging the borrowed coat on the stand.

Jack, who’d reclaimed his computer but was busily writing by hand, merely shook his head.

“She shouldn’t be long,” Elspeth contributed.

Elspeth had been in the office when she’d run out. Jilly could pretend that had never happened. Or she could be up-front. She looked Elspeth in the eye. “Did she get rid of my dad?”

“Utterly,” Elspeth said, her gaze steady.

“Good,” Jilly said defiantly.

“I think so,” Elspeth agreed.

Jilly let her mouth relax into smile, and Elspeth gave her a small one in return. Jilly felt an overwhelming rush of gratitude, of sheer emotion, because it seemed as if her allies had just doubled. And because she realised that Elspeth, apparently so prim and conservative —if you ignored the vodka—was an ally worth having.

She turned hastily to her desk and woke the laptop, which was still open on her desk where she’d left it.

Exodus: Where do you think I am? A man has to sleep after beating up the Nazis.

Her heart seemed to explode. He was back.

****



“But that isn’t possible,” Sera argued. She glanced around Elspeth, Jilly, Jack, and Blair, all sitting, lounging, slouching, and sprawling around the large table in her office. “Is it?”

“That I can talk to the spirit of Genesis Adam in a VR game? No,” Jilly agreed. For some reason, her heart sank at the disbelief of her friend. She so needed this to be real, for reasons she didn’t even want to think about. “But it happens all the same.”

Unexpectedly, Jack said, “I don’t see why it should be more impossible than any of the other crap around here. Only three months ago, Sera, you told me there were no such things as vampires, although you’d been talking to dead people all your life. And now…” He waved one expressive hand at Blair, who stood up to give an ironic bow before sprawling back into the chair that looked far too small for him. He was wearing biker’s leathers, which was how he got around in the hours of daylight, and even Jilly had to admit he looked good in them: big and sexy and dangerous.

Sera frowned from Jack to Blair.

Elspeth said, “What other explanations are there? We can discount the possibility that Jilly’s lying. So either she’s mistaken—which I doubt; someone’s tricking her—possible but unlikely in the circumstances; or it’s just as she says.”

“Also,” Jack added, “why shouldn’t a spirit enter a computer program? Is it really so very different to writing on a blackboard or hurling things around a house, or even just standing at the end of someone’s bed?”

Sera nodded slowly. “So… I don’t know everything…but I do know you, Jilly. Can we all enter this program?”

Jilly shrugged. “I don’t see why not. I’ll ask him. The other thing is, I think there was some kind of cover-up. I think he was killed in that house, the night of the break-in, which was probably the night Killearn was killed. I think the paper trail to Australia was planted to remove suspicion. I don’t even think there was any drink or drugs or rehab. Roxy said he was never very interested in these things before, and she sent me a load of names, friends and colleagues of Adam who never saw him stoned or even very pissed after his student days.”

“And the newspaper reports?”

“Hearsay. Unattributed sources. Even the pictures like this one…” Jilly laid the flattened laptop on the table to show the picture of the wasted-looking Adam in the dark Edinburgh street. “Look at the box of shopping he’s carrying. I enhanced it.” She zoomed in on the box of groceries. “Bread, something wrapped that might be prepackaged meat, frozen veg, eggs, butter, coffee, milk, loads of juice. No alcohol, not so much as a can of beer. He went to the corner shop, not some opium den!”

“He could have been on his way home from the opium den,” Jack pointed out reasonably. “With the munchies.”

Jilly blinked at him. “Sometimes you surprise me. And it’s a fair point. Have another glance at the picture. Okay, he looks rough. He needs to change his clothes and shave and sleep for twenty-four hours. But come on, guys, don’t you know any geeks? Or students who pull all-nighters to get their work in on time? Or game players who’re too into the game to go to bed?”

“Hmm,” Sera said thoughtfully, pulling the tablet closer to her. Jack nodded as if allowing Jilly the point.

She pushed it home. “Everyone who knew Adam says that when he was in the middle of developing something big, he’d disappear for weeks on end. No one saw him. He shut himself in his office and worked day and night, only paused very erratically for sleep when his brain shut down. He forgot to eat sometimes for a whole day. This was one focused nerd, with a revolutionary idea that he was making work. No way was he addicted to drink and drugs, because in that state he just wouldn’t have been able to produce the system currently in Dale’s testing lab.”

Jilly sat back in triumph.

“Maybe he did the work earlier?” Elspeth offered.

“Some, maybe,” Jilly agreed. “You can’t bring concepts like these to life overnight. But everyone agrees his big breakthrough, his big push came between March and August, when no one was checking up on him. Dale, his colleagues, his friends all knew he was in geek-cave mode and left him alone. He’d split up with Roxy, who was in America anyway. No one saw him to deny the rumours of his drug addiction. But his friends laughed at tabloid reports like these. Until he died, of course. He told no one he was going to Australia—except, apparently, the newspapers. Never told anyone he was selling out to Dale either. Both stunned his friends. Both were announced to the press via unattributed sources: so-called friends, ‘those close to him.’”

“You’re saying all this could happen without Adam even noticing?” Sera said in amazement.

“Yes,” Jilly said flatly. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. He wouldn’t have noticed an earthquake until he had his system ready to show to Dale. That was in August, after which he apparently sold off his fabulous idea with his share of the company, emigrated, and died of a drug overdose.”

Sera frowned. “Unlikely, put like that.”

“Even more unlikely if he died in August. Everyone was told he’d gone to Australia, recovering from his addiction. No one heard from him after August, not even Roxy.”

They stared at Jilly. Jilly stared back.

“I’m almost buying it,” Jack said carefully. “But what about the legal documents? What about Adam’s solicitor? He must have had one, and you can’t forge death certificates.”

“Actually, with the right money, you probably can. Or buy a dodgy doctor for the purpose. And as it happens, Dale and Adam shared the same law firm. Adam’s lawyer didn’t know Adam planned to sell out, but was presented with the signed documents all in order. He knew the addiction stories. Basically, he’d no reason to question it or investigate.”

Jilly leaned forward to grab her laptop back. “And that’s the point of this whole thing. No one had any reason to question any of it until it was too late to bother. It’s all too easy to leave a basic paper or digital trail that’s just enough.”

Sera eyed her with fascination. “Have you chased it any further? Can you prove any of this?”

“I know what I can’t find. And that’s any record of his registration at a rehab clinic in the UK. Or any proof that he was ever in Australia, beyond a one-night paid-for-in-advance hotel reservation at a hotel in Sydney. There’s no proof that he ever took it up. And a house in Sydney that he’s meant to have owned, where he died, according to the death certificate. I’ve got an Aussie friend investigating that, but I’m pretty sure we’ll find no one ever saw him there and that the house was sold after his apparent death in October.”

“That’s crazy,” Elspeth murmured. Her gaze lifted from the table to Jilly. “And utterly wrong! Who would have done all this?”

“His killer,” Jilly said steadily. The words seemed to freeze her own blood. “And unless we find there were other people in the house, that’s beginning to look like his old pal Dale.”

Sera shifted in her seat, swung it back on two legs. “So Dale hired Killearn to take Adam out so he could own the whole company and its new toy without splitting the profits? Only Adam killed Killearn. And Dale had to kill Adam himself?”

“Looks that way,” Jilly said in a hard voice.

“Then where is Adam’s body?” Sera wondered.

Jilly raised her brows. “I’m hoping you can tell me that.”

Sera opened her mouth with clearly blistering intent, then closed it again and fished in her pocket for her phone. Along with everyone else, Jilly watched in silence while Sera found the number she wanted.

“Hello, Mrs. Ewan? Hi, it’s Sera. I take it the police told you they’ve identified the body and his killer?”

Petra’s voice drifted out of the loudspeaker, sounding panicked. “They think we knew about it, that we must have covered up what Adam did.”

“Well, they have to wonder,” Sera soothed. “It’s their job. But Adam knew your house and grounds well, didn’t he?”

“Yes, of course he did.”

“Bet he even stayed overnight in the old days, before you guys grew apart.”

“True,” Petra said eagerly. “I think he even had a key still.”

“Where did he sleep when he stayed over?” Sera asked. “Which room?”

“One of the spare rooms upstairs.”

“Which one?”

“The one you saw,” Petra said. “The one that was trashed.”

Sera smiled at the phone. “Well, that explains the particular fury of the attack. Tell me, have you cleared that up yet?”

“There isn’t any point until you get rid of the damned thing,” Petra said with brittle accusation. “It’ll only do it again. It was up last night, hurling the rubble about again.”

“Can we come and take another look? I’m going to bring a powerful colleague of mine this time. I think we can get rid of it for good tonight.”