I PAUSE PLAYBACK to make notes, having realized I haven’t made any more formal entries into the file since the one about him looking at the curtain. I’m losing my emotional distance. It feels like I’m trying to sketch a drop of water while holding back a bursting dam. I go back and identify time stamps for each bullet point, knowing all the while that I’m putting off watching the rest as much as I’m being diligent.
The shape of Selina’s drugged body can just be made out in the light thrown from the doorway to the rest of the suite. She went to sleep hoping she could find something to bring Alejandro back the following day, only to wake up and see all that blood, all that violence, in a beautiful room they had shared. No wonder she was hysterical. “Tia, connect me to PC Riley.”
“How can I help, sir?”
“Riley, check with SOCO that they’ve finished with Miss Klein’s belongings, and if they have, make sure they’re brought down to her new room. Tell her she can dress and pack to return to the States, but I need to see her before she can leave. I’ll be coming to see her in the next hour or so.”
“Yes, sir.”
I close the channel. I know SOCO will have finished with her stuff—none of her clothes or belongings were in the main room—but I didn’t want Riley rushing up there in his enthusiasm and pissing Alex off by encroaching on his territory. Hopefully Selina will start to feel a little better when she gets her things back. I’ll sign off permission for her to leave once I’ve broken the news about Theo to her and gotten her to sign a cast-iron nondisclosure agreement.
“Resume playback.”
Alejandro closes the door to the bedroom, goes back to the desk and opens the drawer. He pulls out a piece of the letter paper the SOCO told me about along with the complimentary fountain pen, the one we found with Theo’s body at the cottage.
He writes slowly and carefully, pausing often. Sometimes it looks like it’s to find the right words; sometimes it looks like he’s trying not to weep again. The movement of the pen across the paper is obscured by an ornamental vase filled with silk flowers, so there’s no hope of trying to render a three-dimensional reconstruction from the footage and thereby discover what he wrote. It’s not always reliable anyway, with handwriting being such an individual thing.
He fills one side, turns over and finishes a few minutes later. I daren’t speed up the footage for fear of missing some subtle detail or noise from elsewhere in the suite. The sound of the scratching of the nib across the paper knots muscles in my neck. I try to pull back, making a couple of notes and observations, but it’s like fiddling with a cuff while waiting for a public execution: something tiny and ridiculous in the face of impending horror.
Alejandro screws the lid of the pen back on and lays it beside the letter. He spins the chair until he is at a forty-five-degree angle from the desk and stares intently at the cream carpet, so still and introverted that if I didn’t know better, I’d think he was reading something displayed by a chip. His hands are shaking. Mine are too.
Finally, he stands, nodding to himself. Is he still making up his mind? He picks up the other chair near the desk, the one that was on its side in the center of the room when I last saw it in the VR mock-up of the scene, and moves it to beneath the ceiling rose.
I look away, my throat constricting again, a pressure building behind my eyes. I recall my father sitting on the bed in my dorm at the Circle, hunched over with his back to the door, Alejandro sitting next to him with a hand on his shoulder. Even as young as eight I knew I was about to walk into a room where something significant was happening, so my feet stopped and I stayed still and silent, unseen.
“I wanted to die.” My father’s voice was clogged with phlegm and unshed tears. “I wanted to but I was too scared. That’s the only reason.”
“No, not the only reason.” Alejandro’s voice was so deep, so strong in comparison.
“I didn’t stay alive for Carlos.” My father’s voice cracked, unable to stay steady beneath the onslaught of emotion. “I didn’t even think about him most days. I’m a terrible person! A terrible father!”
He broke down, leaning into Alejandro, who put his arm around him. “The healing starts here and now, for both of you,” Alejandro said. “And don’t be afraid. You’ll never feel that way again.”
“But how do you know that?”
“Because you have left the place without hope behind you. You don’t live in that place anymore. You say you were too scared to kill yourself. I don’t think that was the only reason you’re here now.”
“I don’t believe in God, Alejandro. I told you that.”
Alejandro laughs, squeezes my father with that easy physical confidence he had then. “You’re still here because some part of you held on. Even though you were hurting, even though you couldn’t conceive of an end to that pain, you. Held. On.”
“Did you come close? Before? When Atlas left you behind?”
“Yes,” Alejandro replied, a new, darker tone beneath his voice. “I thought it was all over. I couldn’t see a way forward. But I could never kill myself. I have a contract with God. And I know you don’t believe, but I do.”
“I wish I did,” my father said, sitting back up again to blow his nose. How disgusting I found him then! “I don’t believe in anything. No. That’s not true. I believe in you, Alejandro.”
“And now I have a contract with you,” Alejandro said, pressing a hand over his own heart. “Here. I will never let you down.”
And my father broke down again and Alejandro held him like a child, and I watched from the doorway, wanting to be held like that too, hating my father for making me feel that way. When Alejandro noticed me, my father still sobbing into his chest, he held out a hand to me and I stared at it, wanting so much to take it yet unable to move my feet. Come and put your hand in mine, the look in his eyes said. Let me give you a place to feel safe again.
“Carlos!” The sharpness in my father’s voice made me jump and look away from the pools of Alejandro’s eyes. “What are you doing spying from doorways!”
I ran as Alejandro’s hand dropped onto the bed, and my father apologized for having such a broken child.
I look back at the screen and try to reconcile the memory of that man, the rock for so many people, with the one I see unhooking the curtain cord. I want to ask him about those contracts he held, written indelibly in his heart and theirs, and why he is destroying them. Is all that love not enough? Is devotion inadequate? What couldn’t they give him in the end? Was his ego such that it created some sort of emotional sinkhole, all that love pouring into him, only to be sucked away by some invisible cavern beneath the surface, in his soul?
I take a breath to shout at him, to plead, and then I am looking away again, gripping the arm of the chair as the chaos inside me reaches a peak and then the training kicks in. The recalibration machine did its work, all those times before Dee taught me how to avoid it, and it feels like a rubber band inside me is stretched to its fullest extent and then snaps me back, away from the roiling mess of emotion, like a leash pulling back a slavering hound.
I swallow down the lump in my throat and look at the time stamp in the corner of the screen.
I will learn the details.
“Ten thirty-eight, victim detaches curtain cord from hook and places on chair in center of room.”
I will work the case.
“Ten thirty-nine, victim pulls off shoes and places next to desk, paired, in location as recorded and confirmed by the primary SOCO.”
I will identify the . . .
“Ten forty. Victim fashions noose from curtain cord and secures to light fixture. Tests the knot.”
. . . the murderer.
“Ten forty-one. Victim stands on the chair.”
I have never found a puzzle I couldn’t solve.
“Victim pulls on noose to test strength of light fixture.”
This is . . . This is no . . .
“Why are you doing this?” I am on my feet, shouting at the man who is already dead as he puts the noose around his neck.
“Please provide more detail,” Tia says.
“Dios perdóname. Envía la carta,” Alejandro says, and kicks the chair away.
I drop back into my seat as he drops from the noose and something inside me breaks. I double over and clutch my stomach at the sound of a momentary choked gasp from the screen. The sound of plaster cracking, of fabric rustling with the frantic, jerking movement of his body, and I can’t hold it back any longer. The cry that bursts out of me is so loud, so alien to me that a part of my mind steps out from itself to listen and wonder at the sound I’m making, and then there is nothing but a torrent of rage-filled grief.
—
“WOULD you like me to open a channel to your psych supervisor?”
When I look up I see that the footage has been paused. I look at the clock but the second hand has stopped moving. Everything has been paused. Tia must be working out whether to boot me back into my body.
“No.”
“MyPhys reports increased levels of cortisol and your neurochemical—”
“Just leave it, Tia.”
“Are you in distress?”
I take a deep breath, hoping that as my body does the same on the bed in my hotel room, my efforts to calm myself here will have an effect. “I’m okay. I don’t need to speak to my psych supervisor. This . . . this footage is difficult to watch, that’s all.”
“Is your ability to continue with this case impaired?”
That jolts me into sitting straighter, the threat of that black mark rearing once more. “No. It’s not. I’m okay now.”
“Would you like me to resume the footage from the last time stamp detailed in your notes?”
I push myself back farther into the chair, having nearly slid off it. “Yes, thank you, Tia,” I say in the calmest voice I can muster, trying my best to ignore the desperate urge to terminate this immersion and run away. Not that I’d be able to go anywhere. I can’t run from my own chipped brain.
I call up my v-keyboard, needing something to justify looking away from the images of the screen in case this immersion comes under judicial review. I need to lock this shit away deep inside myself. If I fuck up and my loss of control comes up in a case audit, I could be looking at another five, if not ten, years added to my contract. There is a moment that feels like a yawning chasm inside of me, in which I face the possibility that I’ll never be free, that I’ll die under contract never having felt freedom again. Dying before I’ve had a chance to wake up one morning and decide what I want to do, to pull something out of the soil that I’ve grown myself, to eat without having to accept that the decision to buy one meal is also the decision to remain an owned asset for even longer. Focusing on the footage is easier than facing that.
Alejandro’s body swings back and forth. The room is silent except for a steady patter dripping onto the carpet from the bottom of his trouser leg. I don’t look at his face. Instead I note the time of death and look at the note and pen on that room’s desk as I wait for Theo to arrive.
“Envía la carta,” he said. “Send the letter.” But to whom? Selina is asleep and there is no one else in the room. Does he mean the letter on his desk? He doesn’t have an APA to instruct and there’s no evidence that he is recording himself with a portable unit. What does it mean?
Two and a half minutes after his death, there’s the sound of the lock tumbling in the door to the suite. It opens and closes swiftly and so quietly I doubt it has been locked again. Expecting Theo, I am amazed to see a woman enter the room wearing a black, tight-fitting cap that covers all of her hair, a hotel bathrobe over silk pajamas and soft-soled slippers covered with a plastic bag similar to what the SOCOs provided for me. She’s petite, probably not much over five and a half feet tall, with light brown skin.
She makes no attempt to cut him down and resuscitate him; she just stands there for a moment, looking annoyed. Then she heads toward the bedroom door and is out of shot until the door opening on the bedroom cam reveals her entering the room. She stands at the end of the bed for a few seconds, then lifts the cover to reveal one of Selina’s feet. She blows softly on the sole, and when Selina doesn’t move, risks touching one of her toes. Once she has pinched one and seen that Selina is actually unconscious, rather than asleep, the woman leaves the room again and shuts the door. When she doesn’t come back into shot I assume she has paused there for some reason.
“Tia, identify the woman wearing the hat.”
“Jessica Arlington.”
Arlington’s bio floats over the dark half of the screen. South American visiting Norope on a tourist visa. Checked into the hotel the day after Alejandro arrived and checked out twenty-six hours after his death, with permission of the local police, once she relinquished permission to track her movements via her chip, on the proviso she doesn’t leave the British Isles. They should have kept everyone at the damn hotel here until I arrived, even the ones that were chipped!
“Where is she now?”
There is a pause. “Arlington’s last recorded Noropean location is Heathrow Airport, yesterday afternoon, three-oh-five p.m. Her destination was—”
“Hang on. She wasn’t supposed to leave the fucking country! Who authorized that?”
“I’m sorry. I am not at liberty to disclose that information to you.”
That suggests someone very high up in the MoJ. She comes back into shot again, crossing the room at the very edge to stand a little way away from Alejandro, staring at his face in a way that chills my very core. Then her head moves as her gaze tracks downward and I realize she’s filming him with her retinal cam. Is she some sort of spy? A sicko filming something for her own twisted pleasure, or to be sold for an obscene amount of money? The Americans don’t want anyone to know Alejandro committed suicide. Did she know that and make a remarkably fast decision to blackmail them?
No. It’s all too ridiculous.
A sound of a door opening down the corridor and footsteps running toward the Diamond Suite makes her pad silently and calmly into the bathroom, going out of shot once more. The door to the suite bangs open and there’s a horrified cry off screen.
“Oh God, no! Alejandro! No, no, no!”
Theo runs over to him, wearing only a hotel dressing gown, grabs his legs and tries to lift Alejandro to take the weight off the noose, without success. Panting as if he’s running a marathon, Theo checks for a pulse and then staggers back, shaking his head. “Selina!” he calls, and then barges into the bedroom to shake her roughly—the position of his hands corresponding with the bruises I saw—and then let her drop back onto the pillow, oblivious.
He abandons her, going back into the main room to stare at Alejandro as he literally pulls at his hair with distress. He starts scanning the room for something and notices the note on the table. As he reads, he pales and starts to cry, shaking his head and muttering denials. He flips it over to read to the end, sits heavily in the chair and bawls into his hands.
There’s no sign of the woman in the bathroom making an escape. Theo wipes his face with a sleeve and stands. “I can’t let . . .” he says, his voice drifting off as he looks at the body again. “You fucking bastard!” Theo shouts. He grabs Alejandro’s room key from the desk where he left it and runs from the room.
I make notes, keeping the emotions at bay with the need to observe and record details that may seem like nothing now but could be everything later. But even as I type I know there is nothing in this footage that will convince Milsom that a murder case even exists anymore. The only hope I have of being able to pursue anything after my five hours are up is getting enough on the mystery woman to convince the gov-corp that there is more than just a suicide here.
“Tia, is there anything in the local node data about where Arlington was between ten thirty p.m. and eleven p.m. on Sunday night?”
“According to the data from her chip, she was in her room from ten p.m. to eight fifteen a.m. the following morning.”
She must be the one who doctored the local node data to hide the movements in and out of the Diamond Suite that night. And she’s good, because anything less than that would have been uncovered by the AI analysis. Only the most capable digital criminals can trick the AIs.
She doesn’t leave the bathroom for the next five minutes, apart from a brief trip to check on Selina’s unconscious state. I can only assume she’s waiting for instructions—I can’t think of any reason she would stay there. Unless she is waiting for someone else to arrive.
Arlington is back in the bathroom before Theo returns with the ax from the log. He rights the chair and stands on it to cut Alejandro down with the blade, taking the weight of the body on his shoulder to lower it to the ground reverently. Dropping the ax as he steps down from the chair, Theo sinks to his knees and takes Alejandro into his arms, weeping into his chest as his head and arms flop back, slack with death. The sound of his pain is horrendous. It has invisible claws that reach into me, hoping to drag its twin emotion from inside me. I swallow a few times, look away from the screen to make more notes, thinking about how to present my report in a vain attempt to keep enough of me removed and my emotions in check.
When the worst has passed, Theo lays Alejandro down again. He stands, looks around and heads toward the remote control he’s spotted on the sideboard. He’s changed his mind before he even picks it up, looking back at Alejandro and biting his thumbnail like a child who has discovered something awful and doesn’t know who to tell. He jerks, as if remembering something. Using a tissue fished from his pocket, he plucks out the room-key fob and wipes his prints from it before laying it on the desk.
He goes back to the ax and picks it up. He stares at Alejandro for what seems to be an interminable length of time, emotions flitting across his face like clouds on a windy day, always changing and threatening to burst before passing just as quickly. “I can’t let . . .” he mutters. “I can’t. They can’t think that . . .”
He swipes the letter and pen from the desk and stuffs both into his pocket. Every few seconds he shakes his head, the horror of the situation pulling him taut between warring impulses.
Theo turns and stands over Alejandro’s body. “You said you would never leave us.” His face distorts into something disgusting, something bestial. “You said you would never leave me behind.”
The first blow of the ax makes me physically jump. I look away, making frantic notes, speculating about Theo’s mental state and his desire to hide the suicide from others complicated by his sense of betrayal. My words are distant, impersonal, a barricade I cower behind as carnage unfolds on the screen. Each blow is accompanied by a sickening thud and squelch that makes my stomach heave, forcing me to suck in deep breaths through my nose in the hope that my body in the hotel room won’t vomit. Theo’s crying is periodically strangled by effort, until it just stops partway through. I look up to see him as pale as a death shroud, spattered with blood, nodding to himself. “This is actually brilliant,” he whispers. “You’ve been murdered. They’ll never know, Alejandro. I won’t tell them—I promise.”
Something inside him has broken. He completes the grotesque task in silence. When it is done, the rug and carpet soaked with blood and him looking like the murderer in the story he’s concocting, he pulls the noose from the neck in a direction that should be impossible. He staggers back, knocking the chair over again. He sees a partial footprint caused by a misplaced step and rubs the bottom of his foot with his sleeve and then the print itself to make it into an unreadable smudge.
He hobbles away, taking care to keep on the ball of his right foot so no residual blood wiped from his heel will touch the carpet.
Without looking back, he goes out of shot and the door shuts properly behind him. The room looks exactly as I recall it from the recorder data.
Arlington emerges from the bathroom and stands just inside the doorway for a few moments, taking it all in. Then she picks her way around the edge of the room, taking care not to touch anything and not to tread in any of the bloodied areas. She goes around the far side of the desk, heading toward one of the arms, I think. She crouches down, pulling a small pouch from her pocket, her back and dressing gown obscuring whatever she does with Alejandro’s remains. I make a note that something was done and suggest DNA theft as the most likely act. Just as carefully, she edges around the room and leaves. I make a note of the time stamp and have Tia play the rest of the footage at four times normal speed. I sit back and stare at that room, at the back of Alejandro’s head and the shining slick of blood as something dies within me too.