Serafina and the Virtual Man - By Marie Treanor Page 0,69
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?