Page 65 of Crocodile Tears

Reed’s report said that nothing appeared to have been stolen, Dacre’s wallet being found on the coffee table with a well-stocked cash card in it, next to his holopad.

Josiah opened his eyes and immediately saw a flash of something moving to his left. He reached for his stun gun and then relaxed as he realised it was just the holopics. How could Dacre have tolerated all these restless images moving around his living room, even if they were his own work?

He examined them again. Now that he’d met Alexander, there was something even more unsettling about seeing him in so many of the holopics.

Elliot Dacre had loved both dressing and undressing his servant, displaying him in a variety of clothes and situations. Yet it felt to Josiah that no matter how often Dacre had tried to capture Alexander’s essence, he’d always failed. Maybe that was why he’d kept trying, and why he’d surrounded himself with all these images – as if by capturingAlexander in a hologram, he somehow gained control of the man himself. Yet his subject remained elusive – Josiah didn’t feel he was seeing the real Alexander Lytton at all.

He remembered one particularly striking study of Alexander, standing beneath a street lamp on a dark night with rain pouring down around him, a look of anguish in his usually impassive eyes.

Josiah glanced around the room, searching for it, wanting to see under the surface of the usually enigmatic indie again. He couldn’t find it, so he went around the room a second time, more methodically, but there was still no sign of it.

He tried a third time, looking behind the flickering images to see if any of the light boxes had been removed or turned off, but they were all there.

Had he imagined it? Surely not – that wasn’t like him. Or had someone sneaked in here last night, stolen it, and replaced it with another light box to hide the fact? The policemen standing guard outside had said they were distracted several times by the wavering lights – maybe on one of those occasions, the movement they’d seen had actually been a person?

Why steal the holopic, though? If the killer had wanted it, they could have taken its light box off the wall yesterday, after killing Dacre. What reason could there be for coming back and stealing it in the middle of the night, when the house was guarded?

He was distracted by a knock at the door. Heading into the hallway, he found one of the policemen with a diminutive lady in her sixties. She was wearing a black mac and headscarf, and clutching a plain white handkerchief.

“Ah, you must be Ms Boucher – I’m Josiah Raine, the senior investigator on this case.”

She took one look at him and dissolved into tears. He waited, impassively, until she pulled herself together.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and he detected a hint of a French accent in her voice. “It’s just… poor Mr Elliot.”

“You must have had quite a shock when you found him yesterday. Can you talk me through it?”

“Yes, of course, but… he isn’t still there, is he?” she whispered, pausing in the hallway.

“No, please don’t worry about that. We took him away yesterday. Although I should warn you that there is a large blood stain on the floor.”

“Thank you. May I take your arm?”

He obliged, holding out his arm for her to hang on to. She was tiny, built like a little bird. Reed was right – she was hardly a promising suspect.

“How long have you been working for Mr Dacre?” he probed as they walked slowly along the hallway.

“A long time – fifteen years. He was a good man, Mr Raine, and a good boss. He treated me well.”

“I can hear you have a French accent?”

“Oui.” She smiled up at him. “I was born in France, during the Refugee War… my family fled when I was sixteen. We came to England, and I became an indentured servant – it saved my life.”

“Really?” Josiah raised a polite eyebrow. “How so?”

“In France, it was terrible. Fighting everywhere, so many people starving, even little children… but here I could work, and was clothed and fed. My houder was a sweet old lady who was good to me. I stayed with her until she died, and then, with the money she left me in her will, I was able to afford to live with my two sisters in a little flat near here. I’ve been a cleaner here ever since. England has been good to me, sir.”

“You were lucky,” Josiah grunted. “Not all former ISs speak so warmly of the system.”

She looked up at him sadly. “Maybe they should try living in a war zone and see which they prefer. I hear it’s better there now than when I was a child, but with the warlords still ruling in some areas, I would not like to go back.” She shuddered.

They paused in the lounge doorway, and she pressed her handkerchief over her mouth as she saw the stain on the floor.

“It was so dreadful, sir,” she whispered. “What a thing to find. What a terrible sight to see.”

“Can you talk me through it? From the minute you arrived – did you notice anything strange? Anything out of place?”

“No, there was nothing. I saw nobody outside – nobody leaving, nothing suspicious at all. I wish I had, so I would have known not to go in…mon Dieu– that image will remain with me forever. Poor Mr Elliot.” She dabbed her eyes again. “I arrived at my usual time – ten-thirty a.m. I come every day at that time.”

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