Page 18 of The Killer’s Mark

Esmerée stopped sniggering.

Chapter 11

‘Esmerée’s a ghost?’ Poe said.

‘She is,’ Bradshaw replied.

‘Well, lucky for us we have Nigel the paranormal investigator in the next office. Shall I go and fetch him?’

‘I don’t mean a literal ghost, Poe. There is no afterlife. The light at the end of the tunnel that people claim to see when they nearly die is nothing more than the loss of peripheral vision as the eyesight fades. And the ecstatic experience they feel is easily explained. The sympathetic nervous system – the system responsible for arousal and excitement – and the parasympathetic system, the system responsible for readying the body for sleep, are incompatible. The turning-on of one shuts down the other. But during death, neither system shuts down. They both stay on. You are both excited and calm. In other words, visions of an afterlife are likely chemical and neurological events that take place during death. And although the collection of atoms of which we are all composed do get repurposed when we die, and will echo through space until the end of time, that is not the same as consciousness. In other words, ghosts are a load of phoney-baloney.’

‘You understand any of that, Poe?’ Esmerée asked after a beat.

‘I never do,’ Poe replied.

‘What I mean is, I am one of the most skilled people in the world at tracking down people on the internet, and I can find no trace whatsoever of Esmerée. She doesn’t exist. Therefore, she is a figurative ghost.’

‘I can assure you, Esmerée does exist, Tilly,’ Poe said. ‘Look, she’s scowling like a spider monkey.’

‘I’m sitting right next to you.’

‘I’m sorry, Esmerée, but your identity doesn’t exist,’ Bradshaw said. She paused. Looked uncomfortable. ‘And neither does your mother’s,’ she added.

‘But … but it must.’

Poe studied her. Could see no sign of deception.

‘If Tilly can’t find you on the internet, it means you aren’t on the internet,’ he said. ‘And that isn’t supposed to be possible. Not in today’s surveillance-happy culture.’ He thought it through. Esmerée Blue was an unusual name combination. Distinctive. Océane Blue even more so. ‘I take it you’ve never gone by a different name?’

Esmerée shook her head. Suddenly miserable. ‘I’ve always been me.’

‘Which means it’s your mother who has the ghost identity. When she had you, you were assimilated into her analogue world.’

‘Like the Borg,’ Bradshaw said.

‘Exactly like the Borg,’ Poe said, not having a clue what Bradshaw was on about.

‘Great, not only did my mother abandon me, now I don’t officially exist.’

Bradshaw reached over and patted Esmerée on the head. ‘Don’t worry, Esmerée; Poe will find out who you really are.’

‘How? If my mom doesn’t exist, there’s nothing to find.’

‘By doing what he usually does – upsetting people until they try to kill him.’

Poe nodded. He’d never intended it to work out that way, but he seemed to have a knack for provoking extreme responses. ‘Now if you’ll both excuse me, I have some porn to watch.’

‘Pervert,’ Esmerée said.

Chapter 12

Poe had never really watched porn. Which wasn’t the same as never having seen porn. As a squaddie in Germany, there was always someone showing a blue movie in the barracks. It was unavoidable. But he’d never been the type of man who hunted it out. Talked about it. Thought about it. Other than John Holmes – who he knew of because of his involvement in the infamous Wonderland murders – he wasn’t familiar with any porn stars from the 1970s and 80s.

He was glad he’d grown up when he had. Because now, porn was everywhere. It didn’t matter how old you were, if you had an internet connection you could view the most depraved filth humans could think of doing to each other. After he’d qualified as a detective with Cumbria Police, his first posting was to the high-tech crime unit. Every new detective started in the high-tech crime unit. It was the only way they could staff it. If you did something stupid like volunteer, people whispered behind your back for the rest of your career. The computer boffins would search the stuff that CID had seized, and the detectives would watch and classify it. Some of it was enough to turn a horny man celibate. Vile.

By comparison, the stuff Malloy had been watching, and by default trying to force Esmerée to watch, was tame. He seemed to be into middle-aged women having sex with well-endowed men. Sometimes he watched MFF threesomes. Male-female-female. Never the other way around. Never MMF. None of the stuff Poe had viewed so far would have ended up in court. More importantly, there were no women with tattoos on the soles of their feet.

He finished one film, a twenty-minute clip involving a woman needing her stepson’s help in choosing lingerie before one thing inevitably led to another. Subtle. He was just about to click on the next one when there was a knock on his office door. His brow furrowed. He’d asked not to be disturbed.