Serafina and the Virtual Man

CHAPTER Five



Before she communicated again with the mysterious person pretending to be Genesis Adam, Jilly did a little more Internet research, aka hacking, until she discovered the Australian death certificate and documents relating to Genesis Adam’s emigration—which hadn’t, in fact, had time to be approved. He’d only been granted permission for a long stay. She also found out where he’d lived in Edinburgh and discovered his home was now on the market. On impulse, she called the estate agent and got an immediate appointment to view.

“Tell Sera I’ll be back by lunchtime,” she called over her shoulder as she left Serafina’s.

It wasn’t far to walk to Adam’s home, which turned out to be the top-floor flat of an impressive building in Drummond Place.

“It’s a fabulous apartment,” the estate agent gushed, her smile professional and well lipsticked. Her name was Emma. “So spacious and all the original features intact.”

The entrance hall itself was almost as big as Jilly’s entire home. The decorative ceilings were hugely high, with beautiful, ornate cornicing, the floors of lovely, polished dark wood, although large rugs the size of carpets added warmth and colour. Jilly’s eagle eye picked out a few frayed edges in those rugs, a couple of worn patches, and for no other reason that she could think of, the massive, gracious flat began to feel like a home.

The huge rooms hadn’t been cleared out. There were even pictures hanging on the walls: a couple of Highland landscapes that looked as old as the building; a modern portrait of an interesting-looking girl who looked vaguely familiar, with a guitar in her lap; a vivid Edinburgh scene that seemed to push at you from the wall. The pictures didn’t seem to be in any particular style, just bought on impulse, perhaps.

“Nice furniture,” Jilly observed, walking across the main front room, which the estate agent called the drawing room.

“Antique pieces,” Emma said lovingly. “They are available by separate negotiation if you’re interested.”

“Won’t the owner be taking them with him?” Jilly asked innocently.

“Hardly. Mr. Adam sadly passed away.”

“Oh dear.” Jilly trailed her hand along a carved wooden bookcase. It was stuffed with a chaotic collection of classic literature, technical books, and commercial fiction, plus a few books on military history and some political biographies. Genesis Adam’s taste, apparently, had been eclectic. For the first time that Jilly could recall, she wished she was like Sera and could pick up vibes from touching. “Well, if I was his heir, I wouldn’t sell it.”

“Me neither. But Mr. Ewan has entirely different tastes.”

Jilly blinked. “Dale Ewan is his heir?”

“Oh yes. Do you know him?” Emma looked surprised. Jilly supposed her accent was wrong.

“Slightly.” Jilly walked around the comfortable leather sofa to the baby grand piano and touched one ivory key. It gave an exquisite tinkle.

“Needs tuning,” Emma observed.

Bloody doesn’t. Jilly glanced at the huge flat-screen television, the expensive wall-mounted speaker system, and walked on to discover the rest of the house.

It was like the complete opposite of Ewan’s home. Here, Genesis Adam’s interests surrounded her. Books, music, CDs and DVDs, and a massive collection of computer games for all possible platforms. In one room there was a collection of consoles and another television. There were books and chess sets all over the house, and in one room, a war-games table with a battle set out. Around the walls of this room hung antique weapons: a few swords, including a huge claymore, a mace, and a set of curved sabres.

There was even a small gym with scary-looking equipment. Jilly moved hastily on.

The master bedroom had a particularly large bookcase running along one wall, the books as chaotically arranged here as in the drawing room. The bed was huge and sleigh-shaped, the furniture dark wood, very male and unpretentious, however expensive. She could almost see him in here, the stranger who’d accosted her in Ewan’s secret study, lying on the bed, gazing at her with that slightly quizzical smile. He was naked. And now that she’d seen his gym, he had some very nice muscles in his upper arms, his chest and stomach...

Jilly felt a blush spreading through her body and hastily left the room to examine the bathrooms and the kitchen, which was another surprise. It looked like a used kitchen, not a boy-kitchen at all: a large, range-style cooker dominated one wall; there were knife marks ground into the worktops, and one long shelf was lined with well-thumbed cookery books with food crusted onto them.

“Did he live here alone?” Jilly asked.

“Lacks a woman’s touch, doesn’t it?” Emma said, running one disapproving finger along the knife marks on the worktop.

“I like it.”

Emma brightened. “It is a gorgeous flat, isn’t it? And you haven’t seen the best bit yet. There’s a huge attic upstairs!”

The attic was reached by a spiral stair. It was completely floored, and windows had been installed with clear views of the sky. But it was empty. No furniture, no junk, nothing except a lot of power points.

“Such a versatile space,” Emma enthused.

This was his work area, Jilly realised. But his computer, all his computers, presumably, plus all the other equipment he used, had been removed. And as she walked back downstairs and took a last glance around the rest of the flat, she realised something else: he’d never meant to come home from Australia, and yet he’d left all this stuff behind.

“So what do you think?” Emma asked brightly.

“I’m definitely interested,” Jilly said. “Very interested indeed.” Unfortunately not in buying it. The price on the schedule was more than she’d earn in her whole life. For the first time ever, she regretted that.

****



On impulse, Jilly caught a bus along to the West End and walked round to the registered address of Genesis Gaming. They had another sales office in London, but the Edinburgh premises were where the serious work was done. Since it was heading for midday, Jilly strolled up and down as if waiting for someone. A smartly dressed woman came out of the Genesis doorway and walked away with swift purpose. Jilly let her go. A few moments later, a bunch of four young men emerged, deep in conversation, and meandered in the general direction of the pub across the square. Jilly followed them.

She had time to wonder, as she slid onto a bar stool and ordered an orange juice and a toastie, if she was wasting her time here. But it seemed important to know who Genesis Adam really was, if there was any way Exodus could really be his spirit. His home had given her a fascinating glimpse of who he’d been, and now she wanted more detail. Who better to learn from than always critical employees?

The employees on her radar were sitting at the table behind her, discussing a mixture of jokes, office gossip, and technical issues.

“Even if you’re right,” one of them said—a curly-haired youth in a loud shirt and no tie— “there’s still no way this will be ready by March. The demo would be crap because it wouldn’t do half the things it’s capable of.”

“And all the so-called launch would do is give competitors the heads-up to rush something out first,” another said gloomily into his pint.

“Don’t be so pessimistic!” another exclaimed. “It’s always like this before a launch—seems like chaos and the deadlines impossible, but it always comes together in time. Trust me.”

“No point in trusting you,” the curly youth said rudely. “We all know it was Adam who drove the launches, and he isn’t here anymore.”

“No, but there are people who learned from him. And Dale’s in today.”

Shite, Jilly thought, glancing toward the door. She really didn’t want to be seen skulking so close to his office as if she was checking up on him. Which she supposed she was, indirectly…

Behind her was a brief, speaking silence, and she had to prevent herself quite forcefully from turning to see their expressions. Then someone launched into another technical problem, and they all joined in.

Jilly nodded thanks to the barman for her toastie and bit into it. Eventually, the curly youth came up to the bar to order another round of drinks—all soft ones, she noticed. No lunchtime drunks on the Genesis staff. Even the gloomy man with the pint of beer had stuck at one.

As he waited for his order, Jilly waited to be noticed. She knew from experience she would be. The youth was too shy to do more than look, although he gazed for too long, allowing Jilly to turn her head and catch his gaze. She nodded in a friendly way, and he gave a hesitant answering smile.

Allowing a hint of apology into her voice, Jilly said, “Don’t suppose you work at Genesis, do you?”

The young man’s eyebrows flew up. “Actually, yes. Why?”

“Trying to pluck up the courage to go in and leave my CV,” Jilly confided. “I thought the personal approach might help.”

“I’m sure it would,” the youth said a little too fervently, with a quick, admiring glance over her person before his gaze returned a little guiltily to her face.

“Do you know if they’re taking on new people?” Jilly asked.

“Probably will be in the spring, if everything goes according to plan.”

“Yes?” Jilly allowed her expression to perk into hope. “Then I’ll definitely give it a go. Is it a good place to work? Do you enjoy it?”

“Sure,” Curly said, his shoulders straightening. Clearly he was flattered to be spoken to for so long, not least because his colleagues were now blatantly watching and listening as he got the opportunity to impart his wisdom. “Good money, cutting-edge technology, decent management.”

“Still?” Jilly said eagerly. “A friend of mine said things had gone downhill since one of the partners died.”

“No, no,” Curly assured her, although she had the impression his enthusiasm had less to do with truth than his desire to make sure she still applied for a job. “Adam was brilliant, but everything still ticks along pretty well.”

“He was a genius,” Jilly observed.

Curly grinned. “Bloody was,” he agreed. “But never so almighty that he couldn’t muck in and get the work done. Pleasure to work for Adam—wasn’t it, boys?”

Jilly turned on her stool to take in the “boys,” who were all nodding with enthusiasm. The gloomy man even raised his nearly empty pint in a silent toast.

“Sounds too good to be true,” Jilly observed, with just a hint of scepticism.

“Oh no,” said the optimistic one. “You didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. Laziness pissed him off. And stupidity.”

“I expect that happened more toward the end,” Jilly said sympathetically.

“Why would it?” the gloomy one pounced with a hint of aggression.

Jilly met his gaze with boldness, wondering how far he’d go in Adam’s defence. “I heard he went downhill. It was in the papers.”

“The papers talk shite,” Curly said.

“You mean he still came into the office every day?”

“Well, no, but then he never did that. Sometimes he worked for days on end at home, especially when he had a new idea.”

“So he was always fine with you guys, right up until he sold out?”

“‘Course he was. Didn’t see him much from around May, but he kept in touch by e-mail.”

Jilly frowned. “So why did he sell out, then? I always thought it was because of the—er—downhill thing.”

“No,” the gloomy man said. Curly paid the barman and began to ferry the drinks from the bar to the table. And Jilly realised she’d get no more out of them on that score. There was loyalty to the company, but she sensed there was a deeper loyalty to their dead boss that seemed to have more to do with affection. Their very silence said they missed him.

For some reason, she was glad of that. And yet it didn’t help her.

She drained her orange juice and slid off the stool. “Well, thanks for that, guys. I’m going to give them my CV and see what happens. See you around, I hope.”

****



So how, Jilly wondered as she walked back to Serafina’s, did Genesis Adam degenerate so quickly from the man who owned that flat, the brilliant developer of the wild and wacky imagination who inspired affection and loyalty in his employees, and man of many enthusiastic interests, to the drink-and-drugs soaked wreck who’d sold out to his partner and left the country to die? Unspeakably sad.

It was time to do that side of the research, but she wasn’t looking forward to it.

Sera was in the inner office with a client when she returned. Jilly merely grunted in response to Elspeth’s and Jack’s greetings and went to put the kettle on. Deep in thought, she made three cups of instant coffee, plonked one on Elspeth’s desk, said, “Oi!” to Jack by way of announcing its availability and took her own to her own desk, where the laptop awaited her.

Sighing, she sat down and became aware that both Elspeth and Jack were staring at her.

“Thank you, Jilly,” Elspeth said faintly.

F*ck, is that really the first time I’ve made her coffee? How grumpy an old bat am I? Shite, she was twenty-nine years old; maybe she could afford to start being at least pleasant to a few people, people she didn’t actively dislike.

If I died tomorrow, or even in six months’ time, how would I be remembered? If at all...

Aware that these dark, uneasy thoughts were encouraged by her inexplicable sadness over Adam’s decline and death, she shook them off and set to work.

Adam’s end was documented in the newspapers and a couple of the big gaming magazines. In true British-tabloid style, his fall was given far more coverage than his success. Only now was there a clear picture of him, and Jilly’s heart gave a funny little lurch as she zoomed in on it.

Here was the man who’d accosted her in Ewan’s house. That much was clear, even though the photo was shot in a dark Edinburgh street, and Adam looked thin, gaunt, and unwell. There were swollen dark shadows under his eyes, several days’ stubble around his jaw, and even in the poor light, his clothes—jeans and a sloppy sweatshirt—looked none too fresh. She couldn’t make out his expression. The photographer’s flash was reflected in his eyes, so he just looked permanently surprised. It had been taken in May last year, shortly after rumours of his rapid decline had begun.

There were various other stories, including a statement issued to the press in June by Adam himself, that he was seeking help for drink and drug addiction. By August, he’d sold out to Ewan and was in Australia, reportedly clean and talking of a new gaming venture. In October, he’d died of a heroin overdose, complicated by the cocktail of substances already in his stomach.

The man who’d lived in that warm, beautiful flat with all those books and CDs and an exquisite piano.

Had he even played the piano? There was nothing to tell her. The vast majority of information on him was from the last few months as he went so rapidly downhill. Why? Why did a man sink so suddenly from curious, interested genius to drug-addled saddo?

Somewhere, in the mass of stuff she’d just read, Ewan had said that the pressure had got to Adam. That he’d been too curious to try the dangerous as well as the fun, and like many before him had been unable to get out of the cycle. There were quotes from a few celebrities, including, among other well-known rock musicians, the glamorous Roxy May, expressing surprise and sadness at his demise. Friend of rock stars. Well, there was a hint.

Jilly glared at the screen, trying to work out why she felt so angry about the whole thing. Human tragedies like this happened every day, in every walk of life. Look at her own f*cked-up family.

On second thoughts, don’t.

Besides, none of this explained what she’d seen in Ewan’s secret test lab. Or how it related to the poltergeist.

Impatiently, Jilly called up the chat program and pinged Exodus.

He answered almost at once with a “Hey.”

And suddenly she was flummoxed. Where the hell did she start? Before she could even decide, he was typing. And stunned her all over again.

Exodus: What’s wrong?

JK: You!

Exodus: No, you look sad.

Jilly’s hands slid off the keyboard. She stared at the screen, listened to the blood singing in her ears, then glanced wildly round the office for visitors—none—and scanned the street outside. The few people around were all moving and in a hurry. There was a sandwich shop across the street, but she doubted you could see into Serafina’s from there. Not without the right equipment.

The computer pinged.

Exodus: I’ve freaked you. Sorry. Your webcam isn’t on but for some reason I can see you through it.

JK: Bollocks.

JK: All right. What colour are the streaks in my hair?

Exodus: I can’t see any streaks. It all looks blonde to me.

Jilly swallowed, and began what she should have done in the first place—tracing him.

JK: Why are you pretending to be Adam?

Exodus: I’m not. Is that why you’re sad?

JK: He was a brilliant man and he’s dead. What kind of a creep gets his jollies from crawling into a dead man’s shoes? So you can imagine the glory? Or do you just like winding people up?

Exodus: Someone’s winding Dale up. And Petra. Playing tricks. He thinks it’s me.

JK: No, he doesn’t. He knows you’re dead.

Exodus: Then he thinks I’m haunting him.

JK: You seem to be haunting both of us. Or is that stalking?

Exodus: I’m sorry. You seem to be my only connection. And you have a kind face.

JK: KIND??

Exodus: You’re laughing. But behind the mask, you’re kind.

JK: Even my best friends wouldn’t agree with you there. So you’re stalking me because I’m kind?

Exodus: No, I’m stalking you because you have an amazing computer system that you might just be able to use to work out what the hell’s going on.

So far, her amazing computer system had worked out that he was in the Lothian area and was narrowing it to the south.

JK: That’s true. What do you think is going on?

Exodus: OK, don’t laugh, but I think I’m in the new VR.

JK: You’re a computer program? I thought you were Genesis Adam.

Exodus: Don’t take the piss. I WAS Adam. What’s left of me is in the new VR system that I was showing Dale the night I died.

JK: In Australia…

Exodus: In Scotland. Dale’s house, where I was shot.

JK: OK, I’ll bite. Who shot you?

Exodus: I don’t know. I didn’t see. It came from behind and I fell. But there was someone else in the house, someone other than Dale and Petra and me.

Yes, that would have been my criminal brothers, before you law-abiding guys got the guns out…

JK: And this unknown person shot you?

Exodus: Maybe.

JK: Well, take heart, you got better and went to Australia.

Exodus: Australia, yes… Why did I go there?

JK: You tell me.

The trace had narrowed him down to an area south of Edinburgh, toward the Borders. The area that included the Ewans’ house. Was he manipulating this? Could he?

Exodus: Was I demonstrating the new system? Dale would’ve been better at that.

JK: He certainly would since you’d sold out to him several months before.

That kept him away from the keyboard for some time, although fortunately he was still online for the trace to home in on. And it was looking increasingly like the Ewans’ residence.

Exodus: No.

JK: Google yourself. You were quick enough to find the stories about the break-in.

Exodus: This is weird.

JK: No kidding.

Exodus: Who are you anyway? What were you doing at Dale’s?

JK: Who do you think I am?

Exodus: Do you work for the company?

JK: Genesis? I wish.

Exodus: Then you are a techie. A bit of a hacker.

JK: Oi!

The insult was in the “bit of a hacker,” not in the crime.

Exodus: Dabbled myself at school, before I discovered game making. Are you hacking Dale?

JK: Would you mind if I was?

Exodus: Don’t know. Depends why and for what. Do you work for someone? I don’t even know your name.

No, and you’re not going to.

JK: I work for a psychic who’s going to rid Dale of his poltergeist.

There was a small pause.

Exodus: Is your employer responsible for the poltergeist?

JK: Do you mean, is she taking the piss? No. She does stuff like this. She’s genuine. Mostly.

Exodus: You believe “stuff like this” is possible? The paranormal? Poltergeists? Ghosts?

JK: I grew up with Sera MacBride. I know it is.

Exodus: Then I really could be a ghost?

For some reason, that froze her fingers on the keys. It just came over as so genuine, so…lost, and trying not to be.

JK: You COULD. Although I’ve never come across one that hacked into my computer before.

Exodus: I didn’t hack. You put me here by downloading some of my VR file from Dale’s computer.

Whoa! Jilly flopped back in her seat. She felt like clutching her head. She’d been sidetracked from doing any more than the briefest scan of those files on her memory stick, but right now, she couldn’t think of a better reason, or any other reason, why he would know this.

She leaned forward again, fingers back on the keys.

JK: Are you Dale’s poltergeist?

Exodus: Don’t be daft.

Jilly let out a breath of laughter. She didn’t know why it was funny, but in the circumstances it just was.

Exodus: You have a beautiful smile. You should do it more often.

JK: Nobody smiles at a stalker. Bastard.

Exodus: Hey, calm down!

Jilly broke the connection, breathing deeply. After a moment, she grabbed some tape from her desk drawer and stuck it over the built-in webcam.

Sera came out of her office, conducting a client to the front door. From her face, Jilly knew it was a serious case.

“Tomorrow at ten,” Sera said to Elspeth for the appointment book.

Jilly said, “Got time to fit in a visit to the Ewans?”

“I need them to go away first.”

“No, I think their poltergeist is Genesis Adam. I think he left some of his messed-uppedness there when he went to Australia, and it’s got all muddled up now with VR.”

Sera blinked and lowered her hip on the edge of Jilly’s desk. “That’s a hell of a theory.”

“I know.” Jilly sighed. “But something bloody weird is going on there, and it started the night of the break-in.”

Sera stood up. “All right, let’s go and pick their brains. We might even persuade them to bugger off this time.”