Page 74 of The Quarterlands (Dark Water #4)
A few days later, Josiah drove over to The Orchard after work. Alex opened the door, greeting him awkwardly. Josiah wasn’t sure they’d ever return to the easy companionship they’d once shared. They’d hurt each other too much.
“Has something happened?” Alex asked anxiously.
“Nothing new, no.”
“So, you haven’t heard from Byrne?”
“No. I’ll tell you as soon as I hear anything.” Josiah had kept him up to date with all the latest developments, but he understood that Alex’s entire future rested on the outcome of the judge’s decision on whether the blackmail footage was admissible in court. Of course he was anxious.
“Can I come in?” Josiah lifted his rucksack. “I have something for you – for all of you.”
Alex showed Josiah to the living room, where Charles and Noah were both reading.
“Joe! What a pleasant surprise.” Noah waved him into the room.
“Forgive the intrusion. I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome,” Josiah said uncertainly.
“Not at all. You did what you felt had to be done, and I, for one, am grateful,” Noah said firmly. “It feels like we can finally move on now as a family.”
Charles, downcast and gloomy, looked as if he might not share his father’s view, but ever affable, he managed a faint smile of welcome.
“We found something in the material Jabir took from Tyler’s hacienda,” Josiah explained. “And, well… I thought you should have it.”
He took the light box from his rucksack, flicked it on, and Isobel Lytton suddenly appeared in the room, looking so real it was as if she was there.
Alex gave a stifled gasp of recognition.
He’d clearly seen this hologram before. Isobel looked up, seemed to see them, and her face broke into a smile.
She walked across the room towards them, still smiling…
and then stopped, frozen in place in that last frame .
He looked at Noah to find him staring at his wife, one hand reaching out as if to touch her. Charles was openly sobbing, his shoulders heaving.
“I know she wasn’t perfect,” Noah said softly. “But we did all love her very much. Thank you, Joe. This means the world to us.”
He shuffled forward, took Josiah’s hand, and shook it warmly. “Will you stay for dinner?” he asked. “Alex tells me you like hachée.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, not that,” Alex said beseechingly, and they all laughed.
It felt strange to spend the evening with them.
They were very welcoming, but Josiah had the feeling he was intruding all the same.
They were slowly healing, these broken and battered men, all of them battle-scarred in some way, and he felt like an outsider.
It was bittersweet. He was glad that Alex had his family back, but it made him all the more aware that there was nobody waiting for him back at home.
Not Alex, not Peter, not even Hattie. When all this was over, if he was free, then he’d do something about that. It was time.
“Past time,” he could almost hear Peter say. “Waaaay past time, Joe.”
A few days later, he and Alex arrived in the courtroom again as the judge reconvened. Josiah was braced for what would come. Even if they won, it was surely inevitable that Tyler would throw him under the bus and reveal the truth about the indiehunter.
Alex had come without Charles and Noah this time, for two very good reasons.
In the wake of Charles’s bombshell, his presence tended to turn everything into a media scrum, but also because if the blackmail footage was shown in court, Alex had every reason not to want his brother and father to see it.
Josiah looked at Byrne as he entered the court, but she refused to make eye contact. Was that a good sign? She’d always played her cards very close to her chest, even with him.
Josiah glanced at Tyler. He was as stiff and upright as ever, but then Tyler was a man who’d never look defeated, even if he was on the ropes. Was he? Had the judge agreed that the blackmail footage could be shown to the jury ?
There was silence, an expectant hum, and then Byrne stepped forward.
“New evidence has come to light that has a significant bearing on this case,” she said.
“You may remember the testimony of Mr Martin Bagshaw, the director of the IS agency. He said, under oath, that he’d never had sexual relations with Alexander Lytton, so those liaisons couldn’t have been taped and used by Mr Tyler to blackmail him into changing the IS database and substituting false information about Solange Alajika.
Well, we invite the court to examine this . ”
The court smartwall system displayed a nanovid, the image crystal clear. Martin Bagshaw came into view, holding Alex close. They were alone in a bedroom.
“You’re just a poor, misunderstood boy in need of a kind daddy,” Bagshaw said.
“Yes,” Alex replied.
“Yes, Daddy,” Martin corrected.
Alex suddenly looked up, straight at everyone in the court, and rolled his eyes. “Yes, Daddy,” he said, in a tone of barely concealed contempt.
“That’s good. Now, do you know what Daddy has for you?” Martin asked, nuzzling his neck.
Alex shook his head.
“It’s a lovely present, just for you. It’s a big lollipop for you to suck and enjoy.”
Byrne paused the footage. “There is much more, of a very explicit nature, which the jury will be allowed to examine privately. We’ve had independent experts verify that this is real footage, not deep-faked or AI-generated.
They’ve been subjected to the most rigorous truth-marking tests using the latest and best technology.
The prosecution has also had a chance for their experts to verify them.
All the experts agree that they are genuine. ”
There was a profoundly shocked silence as everyone in the courtroom processed the implication of her words.
“Understandably, there is no footage of the night of November third 2088, although I have no doubt those events were recorded and subsequently destroyed. However, we do have considerable footage of Solange Alajika, the woman who, according to the defence, worked as a designer at Tyler Tech.”
A nanovid flashed up on the court smartwall, and Alex gasped as Solange appeared. But instead of reaching for Josiah’s hand, he reached for Ted’s, who was sitting on the other side of him. Josiah felt the pang of loss, but he had nobody to blame but himself.
This nanovid showed Solange in a bedroom with a view over Ghost Eye City in the background. A man was undressing her, and she was gazing out over the city wistfully. Byrne stopped it before it became too explicit.
“Just as a counterpoint to that, I’d like to show you this footage of Solange Alajika that we obtained from the film crew following Charles Lytton at Alexander’s graduation.
” A new nanovid of Solange appeared on the courtroom smartwall.
She was several years younger and full of vitality as she danced happily with a bunch of other young people.
Josiah glanced at Alex to find him transfixed by the nanovid, blinking away tears.
“This is Solange,” Byrne said fiercely. “Not the woman who George Tyler paid to pretend to be her. This is the real Solange Alajika, and she isn’t here because Mr Tyler killed her.
It wasn’t a premeditated murder. I have no doubt that he didn’t mean to kill her, but Mr Tyler is a man given to violent rages, and her death was the inevitable consequence of his actions that night. ”
Tyler’s jaw was clenched so tight it looked as if it might snap, but otherwise, his face was expressionless.
There was no pandemonium this time. No uproar.
It seemed as if the circus of the past several weeks was finally over, as everyone in that room watched Solange smiling and dancing in front of them.
A woman was dead, and her killer had twisted the story and manipulated an entire nation in order to evade justice.
The trial was over then, in all but name.
It limped on a little longer to a chastened audience and a grim-faced jury.
Josiah braced himself because he knew George Tyler.
He’d go down fighting. He expected Tyler’s dossier on the Kathleen Line to be sent to the media, at the very least, and was on tenterhooks, waiting for it… but it never happened.
As the jury filed in to give their verdict, only then did Alex slip his hand into his.
The foreman, a weary-looking, middle-aged woman wearing a sensible cardigan, stepped forward.
Surely even Tyler couldn’t get out of this, could he?
Josiah feared, even now, that the jury could have been bought off. That was Tyler’s style.
The foreman was asked to give the jury’s verdict, and she spoke up, loud and clear. “Guilty.”
There was no sense of jubilation. In fact, nobody reacted at all.
Alex’s hand, resting in his, gave a little squeeze, and that was it.
Even Tyler stood completely still, his body stiff but straight, taking it on the chin.
There was an odd kind of dignity to the man that Josiah couldn’t help but admire.
As Tyler was taken down to the cells to await sentencing, Alex turned to him with a thousand questions.
“Will he go to prison? Or be sold into servitude?” Then, in a quieter voice, “What will happen to me now?”
“He won’t be sold. Anyone found guilty of rape, GBH, manslaughter, or murder – any violent crime – goes to prison,” Josiah told him.
“As for what happens to you: nothing, for now. You still, technically, belong to Tyler, or at least to Tyler Tech, but there’s no way that you’ll be sent back there given what the court has seen.
However…” He paused, sighing. “That doesn’t mean you’ll go free, Alex.
There’s a whole system at work here. Tyler Tech might be missing their CEO, but they’re still within their rights to demand that you be sold and the company recompensed.
Tyler might be about to go to prison, but he can still give orders to his company and expect them to be obeyed.
It might not seem fair, but it’s the law. “
“Is that what will happen?”