And then it was my go, my legs turning to jelly as I walked up to the witness box. Ji caught my eye and gave me a nod of reassurance as I was asked to swear an oath on the Holy Bible. I was given the choice of a secular affirmation, but for some reason I sought comfort in my lapsed Christian faith.

  ‘I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,’ I said, worried that my faltering voice would betray me.

  I read out my witness statement, which I’d spent weeks preparing, and the coroner asked me various questions. My guiding principle, for what it’s worth, was not to tell any overt lies in anything that I wrote or said. Whether that was ‘the whole truth’ was not something I wished to dwell on. Unless the coroner specifically asked, it didn’t seem necessary, even under oath, for me to tell him about the secret film footage. Louis had made no mention of it and he was the only other person who knew of its existence.

  It was all going well until the coroner asked his final question.

  ‘As we’ve heard today, you were the last person to see him alive, Mr Pound. Would you say that Brandon was under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs?’

  ‘Yes, I would,’ I said, happy to steer the conversation into medical waters. ‘He was totally gone. You could see it in his eyes. Pupils dilated. Evidence of nystagmus too – rapid involuntary movements of the eyeballs.’

  ‘You’re a medical student?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Second year.’

  ‘So you know of what you speak.’ He smiled. ‘As you are aware, we’re not here to apportion blame for Brandon’s tragic death. I just wish to be clear on this important point. Because of his incapacitated state, you thought it was the safest course of action, as a medical student, to take him upstairs and lock him in the bathroom for a while.’

  ‘I did, yes. I decided it was best for everyone at the party. For him and for Clio, the student he was harassing. As I said in my statement, he was sitting on the floor when I left him, propped up against the wall, drifting in and out of consciousness.’ I recalled the fear in his eyes in the film footage. ‘I thought it was a safe place to leave him to recover. I would have checked on him again in a few minutes, but he…’

  My voice faltered.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Pound.’ The coroner nodded. ‘Is there anything else you wish to add that might be of interest or significance to the jury?’

  I didn’t wish to add anything. Instead, I looked across at the jury and then glanced to the back of the hall, where Ji was sitting. But it wasn’t Ji I saw, it was Clio. Was it really her? She was standing by the door, a scarf wrapped around her head that partially obscured her face.

  ‘Mr Pound?’

  I turned from Clio to the coroner. Why was she there?

  ‘Nothing else to add, sir.’

  And, mercifully, no interested parties or jury members wanted to ask me any questions either. After I’d sat down, I was desperate to find Clio and talk to her – I missed her terribly over the summer in Cornwall – but I also wanted to hear the other witness statements from people who’d been at the party, check that nothing would contradict the clear narrative that was emerging. I kept swivelling round to look for Clio, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. I started to doubt that she’d ever been in the hall. Why would she risk the coroner’s ire if she’d said that she couldn’t travel from France?

  Over the next hour, I relived the night of the party in more detail than I wanted to, but none of the other witnesses said anything to challenge my own account. The toxicologist who’d confirmed the presence of Ecstasy and LSD in Brandon’s body said that the levels of MDMA and the nature of the adulterants found in the Ecstasy sample matched the batch seized from the local dealer who’d been arrested. She also said that it was well known that the hallucinogenic properties of LSD sometimes convinced people that they could fly. ‘In extreme cases, it can distort their perception of reality to the point where they make misjudgements about their personal safety,’ she said. ‘It can also induce profound suicidal ideation. Jumping off buildings, out of windows – it’s rare but not uncommon.’

  ‘That went well,’ Ji said when the inquest broke for lunch.

  ‘Did you see her?’ I asked, frantically looking for Clio.

  ‘You OK?’ Ji said as I hurried outside and paced around, searching for her.

  I never found Clio. This afternoon, the coroner returned a verdict of drug-related misadventure. I’m in the clear.

  At least for twenty-four years I am.

  62

  Adam doesn’t want to dwell on how little time it’s taken for Ji to arrive from London. Not because his driver must have pushed 100 mph all the way, but because it means that this whole live-streaming business is serious. Ji’s not normally a man in a hurry.

  Ji’s driver rings Adam when they are fifteen minutes away and asks for directions. Adam is keen not to attract any attention to his hiding place in the woods, so he tells the driver to meet just up from what used to be a pub in the nearby hamlet. It’s a ten-minute walk from there back to the woods.

  Adam reaches the rendezvous point early and climbs over the wooden fence, waiting in the corner of a field. A flock of sheep huddle under a tree nearby, eyeing him suspiciously. There’s no traffic on the lane, but he’s not taking any chances. Five minutes later, at 9 p.m., a black Mercedes E-Class sweeps up the hill and stops. The driver opens the rear door and Ji steps out. At least, Adam assumes it’s Ji. He wasn’t quite sure how Ji, urban to the core, would dress for a cold night out on a hillside in Wiltshire – in recent years, he’s only ever seen him in a suit – but he wasn’t expecting full combat fatigues, a black balaclava and camouflage baseball cap. He looks like a character from one of his company’s third-person shooter games, except that he’s got a laptop bag slung over one shoulder, rather than a gun, and a small rucksack on his back.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Ji,’ Adam says, climbing over the fence to shake his hand. He glances again at his friend’s attire. ‘I feel… a little underdressed.’

  Ji ignores him and barks something in Mandarin to his driver. The car drives off.

  ‘We haven’t got long,’ Ji says, scanning the area. ‘Where can we see the house?’

  Ten minutes later, they are hunkered down on the edge of the woods, looking across to Tania’s parents’ property in the darkness below. The moon has only just risen, casting a faint light across the landscape. Tania has successfully managed to turn off the house’s outdoor security lights and it’s hard to make out its shape.

  Ji isn’t in the mood for small talk and Adam no longer finds his friend’s balaclava and fatigues funny. They’re chilling, another reminder of how dangerous Ji must think things have become. He hardly exchanged a word on the walk up there, except to say that he’d watched the live streaming in the car, until the baby monitor went off. Tania’s mum’s iPhone has dropped too, which just leaves an audio feed from her dad’s phone. It sounds like good news to Adam, but Ji isn’t celebrating.

  ‘There’s nothing else they could hack into?’ Adam asks, staring across at the house again. ‘The Wi-Fi will drop when they go to bed.’

  Ji pulls out his laptop. ‘It depends,’ he says. ‘Your father-in-law sounds like a man of many gadgets.’

  ‘But there are no images right now?’ Adam asks hopefully, trying to see what Ji is looking at on his laptop.

  ‘Not moving ones. Just a holding shot of you with a woman in her panties.’

  Ji angles the laptop for Adam to see. The screen has been dimmed to avoid attracting attention in the dark, but there’s Clio, in his kitchen, in all her glory.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Adam says, turning away, trying not to dwell on the memory. ‘We heard a drone earlier, about an hour ago,’ he adds, keen to change the subject.

  ‘That could be an issue,’ Ji says, tapping at the keyboard. ‘The bidding tailed off when the baby-monitor feed went down, but it looks like there’s more activity now.’

  Adam leans over again and Ji stops typing, his fingers hovering over the keyboard.

  ‘What is it?’ Adam asks, looking from Ji to the computer screen and back again.

  ‘The reserve’s just been met,’ Ji says, closing the laptop.

  Adam can feel his skin prickle, the hairs on his neck begin to rise, like Faustus when the clock struck midnight.

  O, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,

  Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.

  And yet it still doesn’t feel real, as if all this is happening to someone else, in a parallel universe.

  ‘What exactly does that mean?’ he asks, suddenly angry. ‘I’m here on a hillside with you. Tania’s safe with the kids and her parents down there, in relative darkness. Nobody’s watching any more. And I’m really struggling to understand how that world’ – he points to the laptop – ‘that fucked-up online world, is related to any of this.’ He gestures at the landscape around them.

  ‘Want a drink?’ Ji asks, pulling out a silver hip flask. ‘Talisker?’

  ‘Do I need it?’ Is it a final drink, like a last meal on death row?

  Ji hands him the flask. ‘According to my technical team, this site is well run,’ he says, tapping the closed laptop. ‘It has a lot of resources behind it, not your ordinary bunch of cyber terrorists. Which is why I’m here tonight, when I’m meant to be at The Marriage of Figaro with Phang Phang. I’m really worried, Adam. Worried for you. For your family.’

  Adam takes a swig, the whisky warming the back of his throat. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Have you read The Art of War by Sun Tzu?’

  Adam shakes his head, takes another slug of whisky and hands the flask back to Ji.

  ‘They teach it at Sandhurst,’ Ji says. ‘Tzu was a great Chinese military tactician. Born in 544, seven years after Confucius. He said many wise words, including these: “Appear strong when you are weak, weak when you are strong.”’

  ‘I don’t feel very strong right now,’ Adam says.

  ‘All the more reason to appear so.’

  Like a big person, as Tania would say.

  Ji pulls his rucksack onto his lap. ‘I brought us this,’ he says, lifting out an old Sony Handycam. ‘Nightshot – infrared vision.’

  ‘The one that sees through clothes,’ Adam says, remembering that Louis used an identical Handycam at uni.

  For the second time today, small seeds of doubt have taken root in his paranoid mind. First, the discovery that Louis might be using spyware that’s similar to Ji’s. And now the Handycam, the same model that Louis used to film women at that fateful party in his house.

  ‘I purchased it recently on eBay,’ Ji says.

  ‘For looking at women’s underwear?’

  Adam remembers now how excited the young student Ji had been when he came across the camera’s nightshot facility on rotten.com. There’s nothing suspicious about Louis having had one too. He’s just being paranoid.

  ‘What is this?’ Ji says, grinning for the first time this evening. ‘You take me for some kind of pervert?’

  Adam did once, when Ji was addicted to rotten.com. He’s changed a lot since uni. They both have.

  ‘As it happens, my team is creating a retro remake of a 1990s game,’ Ji continues. ‘I wanted to remind myself of the technology at the time.’

  ‘I’ll believe you,’ Adam says, watching as Ji turns on the camera and looks down at the house.

  The half moon has passed behind a cloud, throwing the valley into darkness. What seems like a second later, the property’s outdoor security lights come on.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asks.

  Ji doesn’t answer. Crispin must have opened the curtains, noticed the lights were off. Or someone’s outside and has triggered them.

  ‘What is it, Ji?’

  ‘Is that your father-in-law?’ he asks. ‘With a shotgun?’

  A shotgun? Is he looking for Adam?

  Ji passes over the Handycam. Adam takes it, his hand beginning to shake with cold and fear.

  ‘That’s him,’ he says, looking at Crispin through the infrared lens. He’s waving a shotgun in the air like a deranged farmer. ‘What the hell’s he doing?’

  Ji flicks open the laptop and logs into the site again.

  ‘We’re back live,’ Ji says. ‘And your father-in-law is centre stage.’

  Ji shows Adam the screen. It’s an aerial shot looking down on Crispin, who is standing on the lawn and pointing a gun up towards the camera.

  ‘There must be a drone out there.’

  ‘Why can’t we hear it?’ Adam asks, checking the wind. It’s coming from behind them, a gusting northerly. No wonder.

  ‘There’s no audio on the live stream, but it looks as if he’s shouting. And about to shoot down the drone.’

  ‘He’s a good shot,’ Adam says, remembering the one and only time Crispin took him shooting. It wasn’t really Adam’s thing. ‘Do you?’ Crispin had asked. ‘Do you shoot?’

  ‘I’m afraid they’re going to love this,’ Ji says. ‘A real-life, third-person shooter. And videos of drones being shot down? They tend to go viral.’

  The sound of a single shot echoes across the valley. Adam looks at the screen. There’s a dizzying image of spiralling trees as the drone spins and falls to the ground. But the onboard camera’s still operational, its lens pointing at an awkward angle from where it’s crashed into the undergrowth. The house is partly in view. They both watch as Crispin walks back inside.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Adam says. ‘He’s lost it.’

  ‘Everyone’s logging on,’ Ji says, still looking at the screen. ‘They’re already showing the shooting as a replay.’

  The screen is now split into two: a looped replay on one side, the live feed from the downed drone on the other. Adam watches the flash from Crispin’s gun and the spiralling footage. It’s dramatic, no question. Compelling viewing. If you’re into that kind of thing.

  ‘We’re in the endgame now,’ Ji says, glancing at his watch. ‘9.30 p.m.’

  ‘I need to ring Tania.’ Adam reaches for his burner phone. ‘She’s waiting for me to go back down.’

  ‘I must advise against that,’ Ji says, glancing across at him.

  ‘But I need to check that everyone’s OK. Crispin has a temper on him. If he’s blasting drones out of the night sky—’

  Ji shakes his head again. ‘I know this isn’t easy, Adam, but you mustn’t do anything that could let the viewers know you’re here.’

  Adam closes his eyes. This is all so wrong. He should be down there with his family, and yet that’s exactly where they want him to be.

  ‘We have no idea what other equipment they might have hacked in the house,’ Ji adds. ‘Do we know why he chose to shoot down the drone?’

  ‘I’m guessing he thought it belonged to a prying journalist. He hates journalists.’

  ‘He doesn’t know about the live streaming?’

  Adam shakes his head. ‘We didn’t want to worry them.’

  ‘In that case, we must sit it out. Either they will get bored or they’ll play a trump card.’

  63

  One hour later, at 10.30 p.m., the only shot on Ji’s screen is the skewed angle of the house from the crashed drone, and the image is beginning to break up. Low battery, according to Ji. The audio from Tania’s dad’s iPhone has dropped too. If it wasn’t for Ji’s continued sense of urgency, Adam might have begun to relax a little. It’s not late, but everyone seems to have gone to bed. There aren’t many online viewers now either. Tania is tucked up in the children’s room. Ji let him check his phone and she’d texted twice. Once to ask where he was; the second time to announce that she was going to bed. After a discussion, Ji let him text her back and explain what had happened, that the audience was dwindling, and why he was still not with them. That it’s safer if he remains out on the hillside, doesn’t get drawn onto the stage. She hasn’t replied.

  ‘Looks like the drone camera has finally died,’ Ji says, watching the flickering laptop screen.

  Adam is on the Handycam – they are taking it in turns to keep an eye on the house.

  ‘And they’ve stopped showing the crash replays.’ Ji glances up at the night sky, patting his arms for warmth. ‘“The day is for honest men, the night for thieves,”’ he says.

  Adam smiles. ‘Confucius?’

  ‘Euripides.’

  ‘You still having lessons from that tutor in Shenzhen?’ Adam asks. Ji’s growing reservoir of sayings never ceases to surprise him.

  ‘That was a long time ago. These days I’m the one giving the lessons.’

  ‘Seriously?’ In truth, it doesn’t surprise Adam. Ji speaks better English than he does these days, drawing on an extensive vocabulary as well as a deep well of quotations, of course.

  ‘Some of my English programmers have a lot to learn about their own language. They’re very naive. Uneducated. So I send a company email every Friday, with my quote of the week. Mostly they are English ones, occasionally Chinese. Sometimes Greek. I try to avoid feelgood bromides. Last week’s was from The Art of War, actually. “In the midst of chaos, there’s always opportunity.”’

  Another gust of suspicion blows through his thoughts. ‘They’re lucky to have such a well-read boss,’ Adam says. Ji is an old friend, on his side. Always has been.

  ‘I think they see me as a father figure,’ Ji says. ‘We’re not that old, are we? You and I, Adam?’

  ‘Would you like to be a father?’ Adam asks. If Tania were there, she’d have nudged him, stopped him from being so insensitive.

  Ji smiles awkwardly. ‘We’ve tried. No dice.’

  ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.’ He regrets the question already, his earlier suspicion.

  ‘OK, no problem,’ Ji says, taking a swig from the hip flask. It’s the one linguistic tic left over from his university days.