had been a real man with a family and friends, ambitions, projects. He was more than just “not Adam.” Her throat closed up.
****
The car Blair had heard before anyone else turned out to be the pathologist. While she examined the body, the detectives accompanied Sera, Jilly, and Blair back to the warmth of the house and demanded a blow-by-blow account of everything that had happened.
They sat on the sofas in the big entrance hall in front of the glass wall and tried to explain, leaving out Jilly’s expedition to the secret lab. What would they make of her trip to Paris in 1942?
“So this poltergeist led you to the body?” DC Vernon said to Sera with blatant disbelief.
“No, not really,” Sera replied patiently. “I was chasing it round the house until I got fed up and sat on the floor for a rest. Then I felt that the body had been dragged that way.”
“You felt it,” Vernon repeated.
“Yep. I’m afraid I do. I see things like that. So I followed the ‘feeling,’ tracked it to the garden. And then we dug it up.”
“What else did you see?” Alex asked curiously.
Sera’s gaze turned to him. “I saw someone being strangled.”
Jilly stared at her. Strangled? Not shot?
“Was it this guy?” Alex asked, jerking his head toward the back of the house.
“I think so,” Sera answered. “It feels like him, but he’s pretty unrecognisable. I can’t be sure.”
“Really?” said Vernon without troubling to veil his sarcasm.
Maybe the poor bugger was strangled first and then shot to finish him off.
“Do you know who he was?” Jilly asked. They’d left it to the police to go through his pockets.
“Nothing to identify him. Yet.”
When the front door burst open, Jilly jumped with the shock. White-faced, bewildered, Ewan and Petra all but fell into the house.
“Sera? There’s police all over the place,” Dale exclaimed. “What the hell’s going on?”
Sera stood up and went to them, touched both their arms at once. “I’m sorry. We found a body and had to call the police.”
Petra flung herself against Dale, hiding her face in his shoulder. Dale’s arm went around her at once, and Sera stepped discreetly back.
“A body?” Dale said in stunned tones. “A human body? In our garden? Who?”
“I think he was your poltergeist,” Sera said.
Petra turned her head enough to reveal one eye. “Is it gone, then?”
“Not necessarily,” Sera said with caution, “but I would hope so.”
****
It was midnight before Jilly got home. Tossing the Dave-maligned coat on the sofa, and kicking off her filthy high-heeled shoes, she immediately crouched down on her usual cushion on the floor and got out the laptop. She opened it and switched it on, drumming her fingers impatiently while it booted up. She clicked on chat and invited Exodus.
JK: It isn’t you. The body was someone else.
She waited, but there was no response. And yet, according to the program, Exodus was online. Where the hell was he? Back in Paris?
She supposed he might as well be. What else could he do to pass the time when he only existed in a program? Shit, how was that even possible?
She got up, made herself a cup of tea and some scrambled egg on toast—it was too late for anything heavier, and besides, she’d no energy and less interest in cooking right now. She returned to the computer, but there was still no response from Exodus. While she ate, she stared aggressively at the screen. After a while, she peeled the tape off the webcam. Still, he didn’t reply.
She typed, “Where are you?” Then, “Speak to me, you bastard.”
Nothing happened. Slowly, Jilly pulled herself up onto the sofa. Maybe he was just a different kind of wanker. Maybe her kiss had disappointed him. Maybe he just hadn’t liked it. Or her. Though he’d certainly seemed to at the time…so far as she could tell. And there was the rub—she didn’t exactly have much experience at this sort of thing.
So not the point!
Why didn’t he answer?
Jilly dragged her hand through her hair—and froze halfway.
What if he’d gone after all? Somehow, he had to be connected to the poltergeist, even if it wasn’t actually him. What if the discovery of the body had got rid of him as well as it?
Although Sera hadn’t been convinced discovering the body was enough. According to her, the poltergeist seemed to want retribution. But then, according to Sera, poltergeists were pretty mindless forms made up only of negative emotion. What if this one was more? What if this one wasn’t