Page 145 of Crocodile Tears

As he was led away, all he could hear was his brother sobbing brokenly behind him.

Chapter Twenty-Five

OCTOBER 2095

Josiah

Alexander’s personal trainer, D’Angelo Clarke, was a muscular guy in his mid-thirties.

“Yeah, Chris was here that morning,” he told Josiah over a fruit smoothie in the gym’s café.

“His name is Alexander,” Josiah corrected.

It bothered him that all these people called Alexander by the name forced on him by his houder. It denied him his identity on a fundamental level, as if the real Alexander Lytton didn’t even exist. Maybe he didn’t. Elliot Dacre had bought a pretty party boy to parade around to his friends, do drugs with, have sex with, and act as his muse. From what Josiah could tell, Alexander had done a good job of being “Christopher” for the past few years.

“I keep seeing that on the news, but I knew him as Chris.” D’Angelo shrugged.

“Hadn’t you heard of Alexander Lytton? He was quite notorious.”

“Yeah, but all that shit went down years ago. He was introduced to me as Christopher. His face was a bit familiar, but I didn’t know he was that Lytton bloke with the famous brother.”

Which was reasonable enough. For the first few years of his servitudeAlexander had disappeared off the radar, and the media’s attention span was short.

Since Dacre had acquired his contract three years ago, he’d been to various celebrity events and appeared in dozens of holopics, but always as Christopher Dacre. Most people wouldn’t have connected the dots.

“Did you ever meet Elliot Dacre?” he asked.

“A few times, yeah. He hired me in the first place – he wanted the best for Chris, and that’s me.” D’Angelo grinned. “Sometimes he’d drop Chris off or pick him up. But mostly Chris came here alone.”

“What was your impression of Alexander?”

“He was okay. Didn’t say much, but he was easy to train. He did everything I said – no bitching, y’know? If I told him to do some exercises or stretches between sessions, he always did ’em, which is kinda weird.” D’Angelo shrugged.

“Why is it weird?”

“I dunno. I s’pose cos I never felt he liked any of it, y’know? He totally listened to me, but not because he had personal goals he wanted to achieve, or because he liked the exercise. Seemed to be just because his houder wanted him ripped – so he got himself ripped.”

“Did you set him the yoga exercises?”

D’Angelo gave him a blank look. “Yoga? He never mentioned doin’ no yoga, man.”

“Every morning, apparently.”

“Never said nothin’ to me about it.”

“So, you didn’t teach him that?”

“Nope. Ain’t my thing.”

“Okay. Let’s talk about the day of the murder: Was Alexander agitated or upset when he came to his training session?”

“Nah. He was exactly the same as always – respectful, quiet, and—” D’Angelo stopped abruptly and leaned in close, speaking in a low voice. “Y’know, I never really took to the guy. He was hard to get to know. He was polite and spoke nice, and I often thought I should have liked him more, but I didn’t.”

“Any reason why?”

D’Angelo paused, considering that. “I specialise in training up ISsfor wealthy clients, and mostly they’re total shits. Nearly all of them are Quarter-rats – you know, Quarrie scum.”

“I know what it means,” said Josiah curtly.

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