Serafina and the Virtual Man (15 page)

“Sera?”

Sera’s eyes flew open, focused on the plastic bag full of broken photos clutched in Jilly’s arms.

“Can you reach him?” Jilly asked bluntly.

****

Sera looked exhausted. Jilly almost felt guilty for asking, but she couldn’t leave it there, and they’d never have a better chance of trying to reach Adam than here in the house where he’d died. Sera didn’t complain, just demanded coffee, and Jilly went off to rake in the Ewans’ kitchen.

When she came back with two huge designer cups full of strong coffee, Sera was sitting cross-legged on the sofa with Adam’s childhood photo in her hands, and the others, glass and wood shards and all, resting on her thighs. Her eyes were closed; her lips moved in silent plea.

Quietly, Jilly crossed the room and set down both cups. To her surprise, Sera reached up and took her hand, drawing her down on the sofa beside her. Jilly sat, staring at her friend in hope until Sera opened her eyes.

“Tell him I’m still looking,” Jilly blurted. “Tell him I won’t give up. Tell him I’ll remember.”

But Sera only squeezed her fingers and let her go. “I can’t, Jilly,” she said finally. “I can’t reach him. I’m sorry.”

Sera could reach most spirits. In fact, she tended to take it as a personal failure if she couldn’t, so Jilly tried to smile. The effort stopped her crumbling again. “It’s okay. Thanks for trying. It was just too sudden. I wanted to say good-bye.”

“You really liked him,” Sera observed.

Jilly nodded, fighting back the onrushing tears all over again. “First nonwanker in a long time,” she said with an effort at lightness.

“Plays a mean VR game?” Sera guessed.

“Well, he should do, since he writes them.” She swallowed convulsively, tried to explain without really explaining. After all, this was Sera. “I just felt—a connection. You know?”

Sera nodded, as though she did know. For the first time, Jilly really considered what connection lay between Sera and Blair, whom she’d once so thoroughly disapproved of. She wondered how much Sera would grieve now if someone stuck a stake in the vampire’s heart. She wondered if
she
would.

Stupid thoughts. Stupid emotions.

Jilly lay down on the other sofa and closed her eyes.
Think and plan through the pain until you fall asleep.
That was what she’d always done before…

It seemed only moments later that her eyes sprang open. Her heart leapt painfully in her breast.

“Fuck,” she said and stumbled off the sofa. She ran through the house, with sudden, definite purpose, making for the gallery steps. She was at the top before she heard Sera’s urgent voice calling after her.

“Jilly? What are you doing? Blair’s just told me the Ewans’ car is coming up the drive!”

“Stall them!” Jilly shouted over her shoulder and burst into the study. She keyed in the numbers to the lab pad, her heart throbbing like a rabbit’s. “Come
on
,” she muttered, waiting for the click before she tapped the rest of the numbers. Then the door slid open, and she was in.

“Shit,” she whispered, staring at the nearest computer. She’d been right. It was switched off. Adam’s program had gone with the power. Hastily, she hit the button, listening with half an ear for the arrival of the Ewans. Was that their car?

She threw herself into the computer chair, drumming her fingertips on the desk as the computer came back to life. Apart from anything else, if Dale had discovered it switched off, he might well have suspected they were in here.

The computer desktop came up. Jesus, how did she find the right files? The car engine outside switched off. Voices emerged. Dale’s and Petra’s.

Jilly clicked Recent and found three folders. Interesting—Dale had been in here between her visits. Had he seen Adam too? Why wouldn’t he tell them? Because he knew he was responsible for his partner’s death. This time, he deserved to be haunted. Hell, if he’d hired Killearn, he’d deserved that too and more.

“Sera?” came Dale’s voice.

Fuck, they were in. Fortunately, Sera didn’t seem to answer, and the footsteps went off into the bowels of the house in search of her.

Jilly opened all three folders, scanned the contents of each. Shit but Dale was a secretive bastard. All the files in every folder were identified only by numbers.

In the end, it was the pattern of the list she recognised. And only just in time. Sera’s voice shouted, “Jilly, are you finished up there?”

Jilly brought up the files, closed down the other two folders, and straightened. For an instant, she hesitated. She could step over the trigger point, see if he was back. She
needed
to. And if he was, she could confront Dale…

With a silly, unbelievable story and no evidence? Before Sera got paid?

Forcing herself, she backed toward the door, then, listening to the footsteps marching along the gallery, she hit the Close button and leapt toward the big desk just in time to be pretending to reattach the monitor to the computer when Dale strode into the room, Petra and Sera at his heels.

“Sorry,” Jilly said apologetically to the Ewans. “I wanted to get this completely cleaned up before you came home. Sera’ll have told you it made a bit of a mess.” She straightened and looked at Dale. “Do you want to check this lot’s still working? I’m afraid your printer’s mince. I don’t know about the laptop—it rattles a bit ominously.”

Shut up, Jilly, you’re talking too much…

Dale was giving the room a sharp once-over. Ignoring Jilly, he spoke directly to Sera. “You cornered it in here? This is where you destroyed it?”

Sera nodded. “We chased it up here from the sitting room. It was pretty violent, as you can see, but we managed to blast it in the end. It shouldn’t bother you anymore.”

“Please tell me it didn’t go into my lab? Through that door?”

“It tried,” Sera said, with cagey if literal truth. She shrugged. “Didn’t do it any good. Any reason it should have chosen this room for its last stand?”

“I couldn’t begin to guess,” Dale said tiredly. He rubbed his forehead. “If it’s really gone, that’s all I need to know.” He turned away, then glanced back at Sera. “Thank you.”

“No bother,” Sera said easily. “I’ll send you my invoice.” She and Jilly walked out of the room in front of Dale and Petra.

They collected their coats and bags, and Sera offered her hand to Dale. “Glad we could help, Mr. Ewan,” she said civilly. He took her hand, and on cue, Sera frowned as if a thought had struck her. “Just one thing. While I was struggling with it, the poltergeist seemed to be trying to implicate you in the death of your partner Genesis Adam.”

Sera’s other arm just brushed against Petra’s. Jilly knew what she was doing and blessed her for it. Dale was left with nothing to say except, “Of course I didn’t kill Adam.”

Sera’s gaze flickered apologetically to Petra, who said wryly, “Neither did I.”

Sera dropped Dale’s hand, grinning as if it was a great joke. “Poltergeists are notorious liars and not very bright. Appreciate your business. Good-bye, Mrs. Ewan.”

Jilly, unable to trust herself, opened the door and left ahead of Sera and Blair. Impatience ate into her bones, made her want to shout at Sera,
Hurry up!

She got into the passenger seat of Sera’s car and waited while Sera waved and strolled over, opened the door, and got in beside her. Carefully, she fitted the key into the ignition before glancing up at Jilly.

“They’re telling the truth. It wasn’t them. Neither of them killed Adam.”

****

He imagined he was floating or maybe even lying on something soft. A cloud, maybe. Didn’t his mother tell him that was where angels lived? But fuck, he was no angel. Maybe he was in the heaven he’d never really believed in. Which was good, wasn’t it? Better, at least, than the alternative.

Only he didn’t want to be there either. He wanted to be back in the game with JK, shooting gangsters by way of foreplay before retiring once more to bed with her. She was the sweetest lover he could remember, and he knew that wasn’t the game. JK was real. He’d intruded on her life, and she liked him well enough to be seduced. Although that probably
was
the game, he acknowledged ruefully. Despite her disappointment that they hadn’t had sex in the real world, he was pretty sure she wouldn’t have done it at all if she hadn’t known it was only VR. There was a lot of baggage to overcome there. Games were useful therapy.

And fucking good fun. He smiled on his cloud, visions of JK writhing and passionate in his arms as he pushed deliciously in and out of her, JK hand in hand with him, running naked through the lobby and diving under the roulette table. Dancing with him in a flimsy, floaty dress; in a shorter, slightly coarser dress with a funny little hat, the smell of wine and cigarette smoke in his nostrils—but no, that was another game, after they’d blown up the bridge over the Seine…

Which game to play next? Perhaps he should just sleep first—it was so comfortable just floating, not having to worry or think…

Exodus, where are you? Are you back?

Annoying interference. He needed to sleep.

Adam, are you there? Answer me!

JK. Why wouldn’t she let him sleep? They’d play again after…

Have you really gone for good?

Gone? Gone where? Where could he go except into another game? Another game with her. But they were in the middle of stuff, stuff he really didn’t want to think about and yet had to. Dale and Petra and the man he’d killed. And JK wouldn’t leave it alone. He’d seen to that without realizing the danger he’d put her in. Stupid, stupid…

With a supreme effort, he forced himself awake, shooting past all the games and into the network in search of the test lab. And suddenly it was there.
He
was there, gazing straight at Dale.

Chapter Fifteen

Dale stared at him, slack-jawed, as if mesmerised. Behind Dale, a computer monitor showed the open chat program with JK’s messages. Adam must have switched it on subconsciously when he sensed the contact, but he couldn’t really have done her a worse disservice. If Dale knew they’d been in touch…

“You,” Dale said hoarsely. “Is that really you? Adam?”

“Weird, isn’t it?” Adam agreed, far more nonchalantly than he felt.

“Is it…are you just the VR program from the database?”

“Just?”

A reluctant smile flickered across his old friend’s face. “All right, you’re good. You’re a fucking genius, we all know that.”

“So how’s it going? All ready for the launch?”

“Got a few issues. We miss you, to be honest.”

“Don’t like to be mean, Dale, but you should have thought of that when you were watching that psycho try to rip my heart out with a machete.”

Dale’s eyes widened. He swallowed, as well he might. “You remember that? How can you? Your database file dates from well before that.”

“All things are possible,” Adam drawled.

Dale, perhaps thinking of the poltergeist which Sera had, presumably, dispatched, nodded thoughtfully. But his eyes were sharp. “What else do you remember?”

“I remember strangling the psycho with his own medallion. I remember killing him, and then I remember being shot.”

“Would you believe we had burglars as well as the psycho that night?”

“Funnily enough, I would.”

Dale’s lips formed into an unhappy twist. But his eyes were veiled. Why had he never realised before that Dale hid so much? They’d been friends and partners for so long, it had never entered Adam’s head to distrust him, to even imagine any kind of betrayal. Even after their lives had drifted apart, Adam would have done anything for Dale, and not just because they shared their baby, Genesis Gaming.

It felt like a sharp claw around his heart.

“And now,” Dale said, “you can actually control your own VR program? It really was you who contacted me the other night?”

Adam quirked his lips. “Fancy a pint?”

“Fuck, you know I do.” Dale’s voice cracked as if he was genuinely upset. Or perhaps just worried. “But I can’t take this, Adam. You wouldn’t believe what we’ve just had to do to get rid of the bastard you killed. How can we cope with you living in the VR machine?”

“Might make your demos more exciting,” Adam observed. Placing his palms behind him on the bench, he lifted himself into a sitting position and regarded his old friend and partner steadily while his brain whirled and tried to find a way to prevent Dale simply switching him off.

A breath of laughter hissed between Dale’s teeth. More like the old Dale. “It would certainly get us attention. I’d do it too, as a tribute to you, if I thought you’d behave.”

Gently, Adam reached into himself into the network and sent the betraying monitor with JK’s messages to sleep. Turning the whole computer off would cause too much electronic activity that would just attract Dale’s attention. By whatever fortune, Dale seemed to have caught sight of him before he could see the computer.

“I might, for the sake of the new system. What’s your problem with it anyway?”

As if involuntarily, Dale took a step nearer him. “Getting it all to work together. Individually, all the parts work wonderfully. Stick it all together and it throws out the sort of glitches you wouldn’t believe.”

“Not surprised. None of the guys know what the others are doing.”

Dale’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been checking up.”

Adam spread his hands. “Hey, I’m only human. It’s my baby too.” Except Dale had stolen it from him, but neither of them brought that up. Adam swung his legs, saw Dale’s fascinated gaze follow the motion. “I can fix it up for you,” he said casually.

Dale’s gaze flew back up to his face. “You’d do that?”

“Sure, a few e-mails, a few instructions, and it’ll all be hunky-dory in a week. Or two. Gives you time to train a few guys in demonstrating the finer points of the game before launch day.”

Which would guarantee Adam two more weeks, at least. In which time, maybe he could come up with another extension plan. Or he’d at least have made JK safe…which kind of involved putting his old partner behind bars.

Dale’s mouth curved into a smile. There was regret there as well as a flare of hope in his eyes. Ever the opportunist, Dale would even use help he feared and distrusted. “Almost like old times,” he said wistfully.

“Almost,” Adam agreed.

****

By lunchtime, Jilly had discovered the record of Genesis Adam’s cremation in Sydney, spoken to the minister who’d performed the private ceremony, and located the phone number of the apparently solitary mourner, whose name, according to the minister, was Kat Francis.

Jilly called her too and gave the same spiel. “Hello, Ms. Francis? My name’s Jill Kerr, I’m a freelance technical journalist researching a feature on Genesis Adam. I understand you were a friend of his and wondered if you could spare me a few minutes.”

“Oh dear, no, I don’t think I want to talk to the press!” The accent was interesting. English with a definite Australian intonation.

“Don’t worry, Ms. Francis, it’s not that kind of article,” Jilly assured her. “It’s concentrating on his technical achievements and how his work changed the world of gaming and computers in general. Can I ask how you knew him?”

“Um, we were students together,” the woman said, flustered. “We went out together for a couple of months in our first year, stayed friends after that.”

Jilly asked a few more questions about his early signs of genius as a student, listened patiently to the answers, and then asked what she really wanted to know. “Did you find it odd to be the only person at the funeral of such a brilliant man?”

“Well, I would have done if I hadn’t known the circumstances.”

“Which were…?” Jilly prompted.

“Well, how he’d died over here, without any of his friends. Everything was handled by lawyers over here, representing his lawyers over there. And Dale didn’t want a media circus.”

Of course he didn’t. Some enterprising journalist might have dug up the fact that Adam had never left Scotland.

“So the funeral was never announced. Via the lawyers, Dale just organised a quiet, dignified cremation. I think it’s what Adam would’ve wanted.”

“So how did you hear about it? Did Adam contact you after he came to Australia?” That would be an interesting one, casting doubt on all Jilly’s theories.

“No, he didn’t,” Kat said, regretfully. “I only wish he had, but we’d lost touch after uni. He probably didn’t even know I’d come over here and got married. It was Dale who contacted me after Adam’s death, to ask me to go to the funeral. He said it bothered him that none of us would see him off, as it were. I agreed, so I went for all of us.”

She said it with considerable pride, and yet Dale had only sent her as a witness to the burial. Jilly was sure of that.

“Thanks,” Jilly said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“Hey, you won’t quote me, will you?” Kat said uneasily. “I had to hide from my husband that I went to the funeral. He’s a bit jealous of my past boyfriends.”

“I won’t publish your name,” Jilly said with perfect honesty. Though she didn’t promise not to pass it on to Alex McGowan when the time was right.

Putting down the phone, she suddenly saw her computer screen and stared at it, paralysed for several moments.

JK: Have you really gone for good?

Exodus is online

Exodus: I’m back for now. Everything ok?

JK: I think the poltergeist switched you off. It was hurling things at the computer before Sera blasted it, but it took me a while to realise it. I thought you’d gone with the poltergeist.

Exodus: Nah. Went to sleep for a bit, then I felt you summoning me, and when I came back, Dale was there.

JK: Shit. Did he see you?

Exodus: Sure. We had an interesting chat. I’m going to help him with the launch.

JK: That’s so bizarre.

Exodus: He needs me, so he’ll keep me switched onto the lab computer.

JK: I’ve got no excuse to go there anymore. The poltergeist is gone. They won’t summon us to exorcise you.

There was a pause, then:

Exodus: I think that’s as well. Dale mustn’t know you’re helping me, or you won’t be safe.

JK: It wasn’t Dale.

Exodus: ?

JK: Sera knows when people are lying. She asked them outright and they denied it. With such a clear-cut question, she’s one hundred percent right. Dale and Petra didn’t kill you.

Another pause.

Exodus: I want to hear that too much. Was it your brothers, then?

JK: I really don’t think so. Can yet another person have been in the house?

Exodus: Maybe. It doesn’t make any sense.

JK: Maybe it will when I’ve traced all the rumours about you and the false documents about your death.

He didn’t reply to that. Elspeth was talking on the phone in gentle tones of understanding and sympathy. On the other side of the room, Jack had his feet up on the desk, reading a book.

JK: Did we win?

Exodus: Of course we did. Got half the Chicago gangster population either dead or in prison, including your slimy and jealous lover. Next up is Capone himself.

JK: Shoot the bastard for me.

Exodus: Maybe you can come and shoot him yourself, once this is fixed.

JK: I’d like that.

Exodus: Sorry we didn’t reach the finale.

JK: What finale?

Exodus: You and me on the lab bench.

Jilly’s whole body flooded with heat. Would he see that through her webcam?

JK: You’re pretty insatiable for a dead man.

Exodus: [Emoticon with lecherous eyebrows]

Jilly glanced around the office again to make sure no one was paying her any attention.

JK: Maybe we’ll get to that too.

Exodus: I’ll look forward to that most of all.

****

Jilly cooked her dinner with the chat program on the laptop in the kitchen, while she and Adam shared some of their favourite music with each other. It was almost like having someone round for dinner, except she ate it alone as usual, in front of the computer, and the subject under discussion was the location of her guest’s body.

JK: Surely they wouldn’t have buried TWO bodies in their garden.

Exodus: It’s a big garden. Though not as big as the fields and woodland beyond.

JK: Shite. They wouldn’t have buried you out there, would they? It’s quiet, but I can’t imagine they’d risk being seen by a stray farmer or dog walker.

Exodus: Then you’re left with inside the house. Under it, maybe.

JK: Let’s look at the plans.

There was a wine cellar that Adam knew about—an unlikely place to stash dead bodies—with a lot of unopened space beyond.

JK: Is Dale handy with DIY building work? Because it’s not the sort of thing he’d want to pay labourers to do.

Exodus: Never known him get his hands dirty.

JK: Well, that’s another thing. Who would he get his hands this dirty for? If he didn’t kill you, why go to all this trouble to hide the body? Your body and Killearn’s. To say nothing of the elaborate trail to make you “die” on the other side of the world.

There was a pause. It seemed to go on a long time.

Exodus: Petra. Only Petra.

JK: Who didn’t kill you either… Is he really that devoted to her?

Exodus: You find that hard to believe?

JK: Well, she’s beautiful, just…lightweight.

Exodus: I wouldn’t say that. There’s more to her than meets the eye.

JK allowed that to be possible. Just because Petra had discounted her when they first met was no reason to regard her as a negligible human being. She hated when people did that to her, as they did all too often, because of the way she looked. Or perhaps the way she made herself look.

JK: Roxy said

The door buzzer interrupted. Jilly slid her hands off the keys in mid-sentence and went to see who was there.

“It’s Alex McGowan. Sera said you had something for me.”

“Come up,” Jilly invited and released the door catch. “Never off duty, are you?” she remarked as he clumped his way up the stairs.

“Nope. What have you got?”

“We think Genesis Adam’s death in Australia was faked. We think he died the same night as Killearn. Tea? Coffee?”

“Coffee, please. Got any evidence?”

While she made coffee, Jilly outlined what she had already, then went to the laptop, hastily minimizing her conversation with Adam—Alex had come a long way, but asking him to believe she was talking to a dead man via Internet chat was probably a step too far. Then she sat him down in the living room and showed him the photograph of Adam, which purported to show his descent into addiction. Then she let him read the e-mails she’d received from Roxy and some of Adam’s other friends.

“That’s not really evidence,” McGowan observed.

“True, but look at what I
can’t
find: a rehab booking, a plane ticket, any communication from him at all after August, except by third party. I can’t even find any trace of the doctor who signed the death certificate. No one else seems to have seen the body, except a neighbour who identified it and no longer lives in Sydney. I can’t find him anywhere. The police might have better luck, of course.”

McGowan stared at her for a long time. “This is high profile, Jilly. I could get my arse kicked from here to the Outer Hebrides.”

“It’s nice there,” Jilly cajoled. “Quiet. Plus think of the kudos if you crack this.”

“Aye, just think. I’ll be the man who sent Genesis Gaming down the tubes. One partner dead, murdered by the other.”

“Sera doesn’t think Ewan did it.”

“Then who the hell did?”

“Beats me. That’s what the boys in blue are for.” She regarded his smart, muted jacket and trousers. “Or at least the boys in grey with white shirts and red ties.”

He reached up and gave the tie an uncomfortable tug. Then he sighed. “Okay, I’ll look into it. Unofficially for now. I can call it tying up loose ends in the Killearn case.”

“Thanks, Alex.”