“Good. Now, I want your personal word that he won’t bother me, or any of my current or former staff, again.”
“I can’t do that. A serious allegation has been made against you about the death of a young woman in your service. Josiah is an investigator; he felt duty-bound to look into that allegation.”
“A ludicrous allegation made by a known liar,” Tyler snapped. “Solange Alajika left my household years ago. Now, either report that allegation to the Home Secretary and see if he’ll authorise you to investigate this nonsense or drop it.” Tylersat back. “But you don’t have the evidence to go to the Home Secretary because none exists. This is all smoke and mirrors invented by that devious young man sitting over there to stop you from doing what you should be doing.”
“Which is?” Esther asked.
“Finding who killed Dacre. I doubt whether you’ll really have to search very hard for the person responsible for that, though. He’s doing everything in his power to make you look the other way.” Tyler glanced contemptuously at Alex. “I know him, Director Lomax. I know what a good liar he is. He’s deceived me more than once. More fool me, you might say, but he’s good – good enough to dupe even your best investigator.”
It wasn’t going well. Josiah could see Esther wavering. Tyler saw it, too, and went in for the kill.
“You don’t believe me? Look at this, then – is this the behaviour you’d expect of your most senior investigator?”
He nodded at his lawyer, and the holovid he’d shown Josiah the previous night of him holding Alex’s hand in the street filled the room. Esther shot a furious look at Josiah.
“I’m sure you have an explanation for this, Joe,” she snapped.
“He was upset. I was comforting him,” Josiah replied, but he knew it sounded feeble.
Tyler smiled, convinced he’d delivered a knock-out blow. “Return Alex to me and I’ll be on my way. You won’t hear from me again, and we’ll forget this whole sorry incident. However, if you continue down this path, I promise there will be repercussions – not just for Inquisitus but for you personally.”
Josiah saw the minute stiffening in Esther’s body language and wondered if Tyler had overplayed his hand. Esther was not a woman to threaten. It was guaranteed to piss her off, and a pissed-off Esther was not to be trifled with.
Tyler stood up, scenting blood. “Well, what’s it to be?”
“I’m just wondering why you were following my investigator and taking videos of him,” Esther mused.
Tyler looked taken aback.
“You could have simply sent your lawyers to me with the legal documents regarding Lytton. Why try to discredit Investigator Raine?”
“Because he invaded my house,” Tyler replied heatedly. “And when I called you to complain, nothing happened.”
At that moment, there was a knock on the door, and Reed came in.
“Do you have it?” Josiah asked.
“Yup.” Reed placed his holopad on Esther’s desk.
“What’s this?” Tyler demanded.
“Just a little something I want to show you.” Josiah smiled at him. “You might want to sit down for this. I wish I had popcorn – Alex told me how much you enjoy watching home movies with a big bowl of it.” He saw Tyler’s eyes narrow at that reference.
“Joe, what’s this about?” Esther demanded.
“I’ll show you. You see, a couple of years ago, my dog, Hattie, started having seizures. I was worried about leaving her alone in the house with nobody there.”
“Get to the point, Raine,” Tyler snapped. “We don’t have time to listen to stories about your dog.”
Josiah gave an urbane smile. “So, I asked Reed to set up Hattiecam for me, so I could check in on her when I was at work. As a joke, he placed an old-school camera in a stupid little statue of a dog he’d bought. He knew I’d hate it.”
Reed gave a little chuckle of acknowledgement.
“Now, I admit that I hold on to those I love for far too long. I never threw out Hattie’s lead, or collar, or basket… or the Hattiecam. See, Hattiecam records every twenty-four-hour period in my living room and then copies over it the next day. I wasn’t sure it still worked as I haven’t checked it in a long time,but Reed managed to resurrect the recording Hattiecam made of your visit to my house last night.”
Josiah nodded, and Reed clicked on the holopad. An image that was recognisably Josiah’s living room appeared in mid-air. Tyler said nothing but his face went dark. How ironic, Josiah thought, that a man who’d built an empire out of recording people in compromising positions had been caught out in the same way.
“I don’t like tech – I don’t own a smartwall or biokey entry system,” he said. “However, I’m sure you swept the house for recording devices when you broke in last night. And you must have felt pretty confident coming here today that your version of events couldn’t be contradicted. Unluckily for you, Hattiecam is far too low-tech to show up on any camera- or bug-seeking app.”
