Page 14

Chapter Eleven

OCTOBER 2095

Josiah

Josiah arrived at Elliot Dacre’s house a couple of minutes before 9a.m., bringing with him two cups of coffee for the uniformed police officers on guard outside. They’d been there all night, and he knew they’d be cold and tired.

They took the drinks gratefully, smiling at him with a reverence he knew was partly because of the ridiculous title he’d been given by the press.

He noticed them glancing at the cut on his jaw and then at each other. No doubt they thought he’d got into a fight with a suspect and were imagining some glorious new chapter in the annals of the indiehunter. If only they knew.

“Everything okay here?” he asked. They looked at each other uneasily. “Well? Is there a problem?”

“Not exactly… It’s just spooky, that’s all,” one of the men replied.

“Spooky? How?” Josiah had little patience for superstition.

“It’s those bloody light boxes, sir,” the other policeman said. “They’re flickering all the time. Sometimes we catch a glimpse of them and think someone’s in there. Investigator Reed told us not to touch anything in the house or else we’d have closed the curtains. We have to keep going in to check there isn’t an intruder, and it’s freaking us out. Is there anything you can do about it, sir?”

“I’ll see,” Josiah said curtly, lifting the crime scene tape and entering the house. There was nobody inside, which was a relief after yesterday’s frenetic activity.

He strode along the hallway, imagining the assailant walking the same path the previous day. Had Dacre opened the door to his own killer and chatted to them happily as he led them into the lounge? Or had the perp already been here – living, eating, and sleeping with Dacre as his much-loved, trusted, and pampered servant?

He entered the lounge. It was an overcast day, and even with the curtains open it felt gloomy inside. The holopics were the one sign of life, but they only served to punctuate the melancholy feeling in the room. Flickering away robotically, they seemed like hollow echoes of the past, the treasured life’s work of a dead man.

The large bloodstain had dried and darkened on the carpet. Josiah stood next to the sofa and closed his eyes, recalling the surprised look on Dacre’s face. The man hadn’t expected his death – whoever killed him probably hadn’t wasted any time explaining why.

Reed’s report said that nothing appeared to have been stolen, Dacre’s wallet being found on the coffee table with a well-stocked cash card in it, next to his holopad.

Josiah opened his eyes and immediately saw a flash of something moving to his left. He reached for his stun gun and then relaxed as he realised it was just the holopics. How could Dacre have tolerated all these restless images moving around his living room, even if they were his own work?

He examined them again. Now that he’d met Alexander, there was something even more unsettling about seeing him in so many of the holopics.

Elliot Dacre had loved both dressing and undressing his servant, displaying him in a variety of clothes and situations. Yet it felt to Josiah that no matter how often Dacre had tried to capture Alexander’s essence, he’d always failed. Maybe that was why he’d kept trying, and why he’d surrounded himself with all these images – as if by capturing Alexander in a hologram, he somehow gained control of the man himself. Yet his subject remained elusive – Josiah didn’t feel he was seeing the real Alexander Lytton at all.

He remembered one particularly striking study of Alexander, standing beneath a street lamp on a dark night with rain pouring down around him, a look of anguish in his usually impassive eyes.

Josiah glanced around the room, searching for it, wanting to see under the surface of the usually enigmatic indie again. He couldn’t find it, so he went around the room a second time, more methodically, but there was still no sign of it.

He tried a third time, looking behind the flickering images to see if any of the light boxes had been removed or turned off, but they were all there.

Had he imagined it? Surely not – that wasn’t like him. Or had someone sneaked in here last night, stolen it, and replaced it with another light box to hide the fact? The policemen standing guard outside had said they were distracted several times by the wavering lights – maybe on one of those occasions, the movement they’d seen had actually been a person?

Why steal the holopic, though? If the killer had wanted it, they could have taken its light box off the wall yesterday, after killing Dacre. What reason could there be for coming back and stealing it in the middle of the night, when the house was guarded?

He was distracted by a knock at the door. Heading into the hallway, he found one of the policemen with a diminutive lady in her sixties. She was wearing a black mac and headscarf, and clutching a plain white handkerchief.

“Ah, you must be Ms Boucher – I’m Josiah Raine, the senior investigator on this case.”

She took one look at him and dissolved into tears. He waited, impassively, until she pulled herself together.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and he detected a hint of a French accent in her voice. “It’s just… poor Mr Elliot.”

“You must have had quite a shock when you found him yesterday. Can you talk me through it? ”

“Yes, of course, but… he isn’t still there, is he?” she whispered, pausing in the hallway.

“No, please don’t worry about that. We took him away yesterday. Although I should warn you that there is a large blood stain on the floor.”

“Thank you. May I take your arm?”

He obliged, holding out his arm for her to hang on to. She was tiny, built like a little bird. Reed was right – she was hardly a promising suspect.

“How long have you been working for Mr Dacre?” he probed as they walked slowly along the hallway.

“A long time – fifteen years. He was a good man, Mr Raine, and a good boss. He treated me well.”

“I can hear you have a French accent?”

“ Oui. ” She smiled up at him. “I was born in France, during the Refugee War… my family fled when I was sixteen. We came to England, and I became an indentured servant – it saved my life.”

“Really?” Josiah raised a polite eyebrow. “How so?”

“In France, it was terrible. Fighting everywhere, so many people starving, even little children… but here I could work, and was clothed and fed. My houder was a sweet old lady who was good to me. I stayed with her until she died, and then, with the money she left me in her will, I was able to afford to live with my two sisters in a little flat near here. I’ve been a cleaner here ever since. England has been good to me, sir.”

“You were lucky,” Josiah grunted. “Not all former ISs speak so warmly of the system.”

She looked up at him sadly. “Maybe they should try living in a war zone and see which they prefer. I hear it’s better there now than when I was a child, but with the warlords still ruling in some areas, I would not like to go back.” She shuddered.

They paused in the lounge doorway, and she pressed her handkerchief over her mouth as she saw the stain on the floor.

“It was so dreadful, sir,” she whispered. “What a thing to find. What a terrible sight to see. ”

“Can you talk me through it? From the minute you arrived – did you notice anything strange? Anything out of place?”

“No, there was nothing. I saw nobody outside – nobody leaving, nothing suspicious at all. I wish I had, so I would have known not to go in… mon Dieu – that image will remain with me forever. Poor Mr Elliot.” She dabbed her eyes again. “I arrived at my usual time – ten-thirty a.m. I come every day at that time.”

“Was there enough to keep you occupied on a daily basis?” Josiah asked, glancing around the place. What could Dacre have possibly needed done every day?

“Oh, yes.” She smiled. “I cleaned, did the laundry, shopped, prepared lovely meals and left them in the fridge, ran errands. There was much to do. Mr Elliot was… how would you say… not an organised man.”

Josiah thought he sounded pampered. “What about Mr Dacre’s servant? Didn’t he do any of these household tasks?” What was the point of servants if they didn’t, he wondered.

She looked embarrassed. “No, no. Mr Elliot had other… tasks for his servant.”

It didn’t take a genius to work out what those other “tasks” might have been.

“I see. Was he here yesterday? The servant?”

“No.” She shook her head vigorously. “Christopher goes to the gym most mornings, although I sometimes saw him if Mr Elliot kept him behind, or wanted him to model for him that day, or if they were going to an event together – they went to so many. They were often on the news sites. I showed my sisters the pictures, so they could see who I worked for.” She smiled proudly.

“What was your impression of their relationship?” Josiah asked. “Did they get on? Or did they argue?”

She gave a helpless shrug. “Mr Elliot loved that boy so much. My maman used to say – there is no fool like an old fool, yes?”

“You don’t think Alexander – Christopher – returned his houder’s feelings?”

“No… although, with Christopher, it’s hard to tell.” She tapped the si de of her nose. “He is secretive, that one. I often wondered what is going on inside, that he has to hide it so. Still waters run deep, yes?”

“That’s interesting. Can you tell me more? What else did you observe about him?”

“He is a handsome young man, obviously, but…” She gave a darkly expressive shrug. “Handsome is as handsome does.”

Josiah did his best to suppress his irritation at the way she kept talking in proverbs. “So, you didn’t like him?”

“I don’t know. He was always very polite to me, never unkind, but… I couldn’t know him. I don’t know how to explain…”

“Never mind. I understand,” he assured her, glancing at the light boxes – Alexander was as elusive in person as he was in all the holopics.

“Mr Elliot adored him, of course.” Ms Boucher smiled sadly. “He doted on that young man, and certainly Christopher did everything his houder asked of him. He waited on Mr Elliot, and I never once heard him complain or argue. Sometimes…” She placed her hand over her mouth, looking embarrassed.

“Go on,” Josiah instructed. “Nothing you say will shock me.”

“Well, sometimes, I did find them in flagrante ,” she whispered, wrinkling her nose delicately. “Mr Elliot liked to sit on the sofa with his legs apart, and he would have Christopher…” She pointed down, a little blush suffusing her pale skin.

Josiah thought Dacre sounded extremely selfish to subject his housekeeper to such a private sight.

“Sometimes, Mr Elliot asked Christopher to be naked… to walk around unclothed, even though I was in the house.” She flushed again, and Josiah’s opinion of Dacre sank even lower.

“Did Christopher find that difficult, knowing you could see him?”

She shrugged. “He never said or acted so. As I said, he did everything Mr Elliot asked of him.”

“Did Mr Dacre ever abuse or harm him?” Josiah asked.

“No, but I think Christopher made him angry, sometimes, or maybe sad – perhaps both. Mr Elliot wanted to believe Christopher loved him. The only times I ever saw him lose his temper were when he thought that might not be true.”

“Did he beat Christopher? ”

She looked shocked. “No, no. He adored him.” She hesitated. “There were occasional slaps, but I did not see any beatings.”

“You say you’ve worked for Mr Dacre for fifteen years – does that mean you knew Mr Dacre’s husband, also called Christopher?” Josiah asked.

“Yes, I knew him. He was a good man, a little silly, maybe, but kind. Now, he did love Mr Elliot, and they were happy together. I thought no good could come of it when Mr Elliot brought the young servant home and said he was called Christopher, too. I knew that wasn’t really his name, although he answered to it all the same. Poor Mr Elliot – he missed his real Christopher so much that he tried to buy another one.”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way,” Josiah said. What the hell was Elliot Dacre thinking – buying an IS, giving him his dead husband’s name, dressing him up, and parading him around as if they were a real couple?

“I did not judge,” Ms Boucher said primly. “Mr Elliot had lost the love of his life. How can any of us judge when we do not know the depths of his pain and loneliness? You must not judge him, either, sir. You cannot know how sad he was to lose the man he loved so much.”

Josiah changed the subject. “Did you know that Mr Dacre changed his will a couple of days ago, so that Christopher would be set free in the event of his death?”

“No, but I’m not surprised,” she replied. “Something happened at the weekend. When I saw Mr Elliot on Monday morning he was upset, and Christopher was in bed, unwell, and not to be disturbed. Mr Elliot said he was going to speak to his solicitor. I don’t know what happened, but he seemed agitated.”

“I see. So, going back to yesterday morning – you arrived here at your usual time?”

“Yes – I came on the bus, as usual. The house let me in, and I put my coat on the hook out there.” She gestured to the hallway. “Then I called out to let Mr Elliot know I’d arrived. He didn’t reply, but that wasn’t unusual – he was often still in bed, or in the shower, or busy working in his study, when I arrived. So, I came in here… into the lounge… and I saw him, lying there, eyes wide open, and with all that blood…” She pressed her handkerchief over her mouth. “I screamed, and th en I ran back out of the front door. I called out in the street and one of the neighbours came, and then I phoned the police.”

That tallied precisely with what Reed had said – and the neighbour had confirmed it. The police had received a call at 10.36a.m., and Reed was looking into the CCTV of Ms Boucher’s bus route. If she’d arrived at the house at 10.30a.m., then, for her to be the killer, she would have had to have walked in, shot Dacre, and walked straight out again and made that call – and she didn’t have the look of somebody that cold-blooded. Of course, looks could be deceiving, but all the same, he didn’t think Ms Boucher was a likely suspect.

“Did you notice anything unusual about the house?” he asked. “Was anything disturbed, or not in its usual place?”

“No. It was all as it usually is, as far as I can recall.”

“What about the missing holopic?” he queried, waving at the walls.

“Sir?”

“The holopic of Christopher in the rain?”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember that one… Are you sure, sir? Where was it?”

Josiah looked around the room, trying to remember. He took out his holopad and pulled up the crime scene photos, but the holopics only registered as blurs of light.

“I think it was around here,” he said, pausing in front of the photo of Alexander in the snow.

“Maybe you have them mixed up – there are so many of them. I stopped looking at them a long time ago. I cursed having to dust all these light boxes.”

“I see. Well, thank you for your help. I’ll arrange for a duck to take you to Inquisitus in the next few days, so you can record a formal statement.”

He escorted her to the front door, then returned to the lounge and called Reed. “The housekeeper – Chantal Boucher – was she mentioned in Dacre’s will?”

Reed was silent for a few seconds while calling up the data and then replied, “Yeah – a minor bequest of three hundred and fifty thousand. Not enough to kill someone for, surely?”

“I suppose it depends on how badly you need the money. Check into her and find out. She used to be an IS, and her houder left her money in her will when she died – that might have put the idea into her head. Check out that houder, too – make sure that was a natural death.”

Reed snorted. “You surely don’t think our dear little Ms Boucher is some kind of deranged serial killer?”

“I don’t, but I want to rule it out.”

“Are you coming back now?”

“Yeah – I’ll be there soon.”

Josiah stood in front of the holopic of Alexander standing in the snow, with the icy waters of a lost zone behind him. The IS looked back, unmoving, for what felt like ages, and then he gave that unexpected blink that was so unnerving. Each time, Josiah knew it was coming, but each time he was startled. It was spooky.

“Who are you, Alexander Lytton?” he murmured. “Who are you really?”

Alexander gazed at him blankly, giving nothing away. Had he really been stupid enough to kill his houder the day after the man had signed a new will? Maybe Alexander couldn’t bear being Dacre’s IS a second longer. It might have been a pampered existence, but it had also been a humiliating one from what the housekeeper had said. Was yesterday the day it became too much, and Alexander Lytton had finally snapped?

Hologram Alexander blinked again, and Josiah jumped – then was annoyed with himself, because he’d known it was coming.

He turned off the master switch, and the images disappeared. He heaved a sigh of relief at the peaceful cream walls.

“Thank you, sir,” one of the policemen said as he left the house. “Those bloody holopics were driving us nuts.”

“You’re welcome. One last thing – are you absolutely sure nobody entered the house last night?”

“Yes, sir.” The two policemen exchanged glances. “We were on guard all night. Nobody could have gone in or out without us seeing them.”

“Okay. Right.”

“Is there a problem, sir? ”

“No. Not at all.” Josiah strode back to his duck, feeling unsettled. Maybe he was wrong about the absent holopic. All the same, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something both vital and obvious – and that somehow it related to those flickering images in Elliot Dacre’s living room.