A/n : Okay, something radically different from anything I have done before. For your information, this is based on a 6 episode telefantasy series which ran on the BBC during the Summer of 1992 called “Virtual Murder”. There is a link on my profile page which contains some information about the series.

If is possible you might remember this series – but probably not. If you are not British, you certainly won’t. So, why am I posting this?

Because I really, really, like the series. It’s a masterpiece. And, frankly, if no-one likes this but me, I don’t care!

So, if you are here, and don’t remember it, or have never heard of it, go back to my profile page and read up a bit about the TV series. This will establish some of the core features of the programme and the tone of the series – which I am trying to recreate in the fanfiction.

Note that this story really doesn’t have “chapters” as such – but I’ve posted what I’ve written so far as a single “section”. It’s a novella or short-story, but I’m putting it in sections to make it easier to work with.

Requiem For Mesmer

The murderer and the victim moved up the stairs together, moving in perfect physical symmetry and synch. Not so much close as one, they pushed open the door to the roof and walked distractedly to the edge of the building. The height was, frankly, enough and nothing more. Both of them recognised this, but only the victim had any emotional reaction to it. The murderer simply knew what he had and do – and did it.

The suicide jumped.

oOo

Professor Owen Griffiths made to drive his Hillman under the archway that lead to the car park of the city university – already wondering if his space would be filled by a powder-blue Mercedes – but never got quite that far. His mind was so on Samantha Valentine and her entirely sufferable self-possession that he barely had time to stamp on the brakes and avoid hitting the uniformed police officer standing in front of the orange cones across the archway.

“What the bloody Hell’s going on?” Griffiths asked belligerently, pushing off the wheel of the car and sliding himself back into the seat of the car from where he had slid forward. The officer walked around to his window.

“Can I help you, Sir?”

“Yes, you bloody can!” The professor pointed at the archway, through which little but a large white van could be seen – a large white van with orange and blue checks on the side, “That’s my departmental car park – you can bloody well let me in!”

“Sorry, Sir,” said the police officer, in a tone of voice that suggested anything but, “I’m afraid I can’t. The Inspector’s orders. You can park your car over the road.” He pointed. “And use the side entrance.” He made a curving motion with a blue-clad arm.

“What the devil?” asked Owen. He got no further, partly because he didn’t have anywhere else to go except Incredulity (Population: him) but mostly because the officer said;

“Inspector Cadogan will explain it all, Sir. He’s inside.”

Suddenly, the sun rose in Incredulity – leastways, Griffiths started seeing a lot of daylight. “Bloody Cornelius!” he muttered, slamming the car into reverse with a grinding of gears, “Him and his blasted pet detective!”

oOo

“I’ve a bone to pick with you, Inspector!” Owen began as he marched into the ante-room that served as Miss Phoebe Littlejohn’s office, singling out Cadogan for his ire, “How come your bloody police won’t let me into my own damn car park?” He cast his eyes around the room, seeing his secretary sitting very prim and proper behind her desk and Dr. John Cornelius and Samantha Valentine leaning casually against the wall.

Of course, Owen thought, it would be Cornelius and Valentine. If there was some sort of trouble on campus, some sort of hair-brained scheme in the university, or anything of any – he hated to say it – interest in the city it was a fair bet that you would find Cornelius and Valentine, if not at the bottom, at least near it and worming deeper.

And – regardless of whether they were chasing witches and bears and lions, oh my, this particular week, or not – he always invariably found i) John’s oddly-unfinished handsomeness and Samantha’s dilettante beauty in his office and ii) her bloody German car in his parking space.

Today, however, was to be different.

“Your space is full anyway," Samantha said casually. Owen stopped for a telling second – it would have been longer had it been any other woman in the leotard, legwarmers, training shoes and collection of sweatbands with a light day-pack high on her shoulders – but he was, if not expecting it, at least not unexpecting it. Ironically enough, for a man who did not know Samantha Valentine as well as Owen did (or better; i.e. Biblically), the telling second would have been longer owing to the simple fact she did wonderful things for keep-fit clothes.

Owen was not unaffected by Samantha’s charms, but she was such a part of the psychology department now that to imply she could affect it more than she usually did simply by wearing something flattering would be utterly crass. So, all he said was a trite, “Bloody woman, have you got the police wrapped around your finger like you have my staff now?" Sam shook her head, unpinning her red hair as she did. Flaming curls cascaded around her shoulders.

“No, my car is in the garage,” she said, and then added – unnecessarily, “I jogged in.” She shrugged the pack off her shoulders and pulled out a bottle of mineral water that cost what Owen had spent on his lunch.

“Some other bugger’s parked there, then?” asked Owen, exasperated. He turned accusing eyes on Cadogan.

“Not parked, per se.” There was an annoying element to Samantha – in the same way there is a ferrous element in most steel. Cadogan cleared his throat and spoke for the first time.

“Suicide, sir - or it looks like it at least,” he said. He pulled out a notebook – more out of habit than anything else as far as Owen was concerned, as he didn’t glance at it as he read from it. “A young man jumped off the top of the psychology building sometime in the night. Killed himself instantly. Security guard found him.”

An irrational surge of anger in Owen wanted him to blame it all on Cornelius. He managed to master it, and then began to think better of that as Sergeant Gummer entered the room from the main entrance. He nodded politely at Owen.

“Professor.” He turned to Cadogan, “Scene of crime officers have found a wallet on the dead man - he was a student here, name of Michael Roper.” With an effortless aplomb born of not expecting an answer, he raised his head and looked about. “Anyone know him?”

“Yes,” said John, “He was one of my students.” There was curiosity in his voice, puzzlement perhaps over the manner of death. There was too much joie de vivre in John’s life – a lot of it red-headed and rich – to allow for real grief. But the unexpected death was puzzling, disconcerting – at least initially. After that, it might become something else.

Sam raised a shapely eyebrow. “Your lectures can't be that boring, JC.” He crumpled the right side of his mouth at her in depreciation, feeling the weight of the moment touch him – which is perhaps what she had intended. Gummer seemed to notice John for the first time, despite having engaged him with a light nod earlier.

“Ah, Dr. Cornelius,” he said, “our business comes directly to your doorstep for once.”

It was early in the morning; earlyish, at least. By now, all John had normally got around to doing was unwrapping the mail or the female. “Well, I'd hardly call it my doorstep,” he began, “I don't live here.” Owen looked aghast.

“You mean to say you've never pulled an all-nighter and slept here, Cornelius? For shame, man! I'm disappointed in you, boyo - what sort of academic are you?” Sam turned to face her lover.

“Well, we never really got around to sleeping, did we, JC?” she said with an innocence that suggested butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth – but only because she would reflexively swallow.

Before even Miss Littlejohn could mutter a rebuke, mainly to herself, there was a knock at the door and a police officer entered. “Excuse me, Inspector, but there is a courier here – a package for a Miss Samantha Valentine?” Behind the young officer a man in brown overalls could be seen, a largish package in his hands and a clipboard under one arm.

Owen looked from the courier to Sam and back to the courier as Inspector Cadogan beckoned him in. “He doesn't live here, you don't even work here and you're getting your post delivered here now?” he asked, considering if a time-share cottage in Incredulity was enough. Sam signed for the package and shook her head.

“No,” she said, slitting it open and pulling out a garment bag, shoebox, sack of toiletries, a small coolbox and a Thermos flask, “just breakfast.” She hung the garment bag on the back of Owen’s door, unzipped the coolbox and pulled out a bowl, Variety pack of Special K, Tupperware box of strawberries and a small bottle of milk. She poured herself a coffee from the Thermos and sat down to her meal. “Get in shape,” she said after the first mouthful, “Loose the fat.”

oOo

Samantha gazed at her face with aesthetic abstraction born of the humility of the gifted – seeing nothing more than a series of complex, symmetrical, beautiful curves – put a final dab of powder on her cheek and snapped her compact shut. The mirror in the lid flipped down and away and her green eyes refocused on what her image had hidden; the other side of her.

“Well?” she asked John as she stepped lightly down the steps of the gymnasium block, her red hair shining with conditioners that contained more science than put man on the moon. John gave an expansive shrug.

"Cadogan wanted me to provide a profile of Michael, see if he was the sort to commit suicide."

Sam tripped lightly to his side and put her gloved hand on the inside of his offered forearm. "And?" she asked, kissing him fleetingly on the cheek. John's hands clenched and unclenched in frustration.

"He's not - not at all." He spread his hand and grabbed fingers one after the other as he made points. "No outbursts of inappropriate emotion. No sense of paranoia. Not introverted. No indications of depression. No signs of stress." He'd run out of fingers and Sam simply raised her hand and spread it next to his. He grabbed her fingers without even a pause. "No addictions. Not on any medication. Stable family life. Had lots of friends, and a girlfriend - Cadogan is interviewing her now." He stopped, almost out of breath, his right hand wrapped around Sam's right index finger. He smiled ruefully and span her into his arms, elegant as a dancer. Thoughtfulness crept back into his eyes, "No reason for suicide I can see."

There was something thrilling about John; lots of women noticed it, but only Sam recognised it for what it was. It wasn't his wealth - he had none - it wasn't his good looks - they were, at best, unconventional - and it certainly wasn't his manners; he was infamous for mercurial shifts in attitude and jumping from point to point, leaving those around him stranded in a morass of confusion. It was his mind - a perfectly balanced analytical engine that had room and to spare for humour, love, compassion, self-depreciation. When a problem was presented to him, a problem in his field - and, as he considered the whole human experience his field, that was most of them - his engagement was total, but an engagement that drew those around him along, helplessly willing and almost as excited as him. Being spun into her lover's arms on a sunny morning during a glorious English summer was an arousing delight, but the hydra-headed obsession in his eyes was better than anything, and merely a shadow of promises to come. "I know that look, JC," she grinned, "You suspect foul play."

He linked his hands in the small of her back and gazed off at a point above her head. "I always do, but there is no evidence for it." He stopped and looked at her, "At least, no positive evidence - all the evidence I have supporting anything but suicide is negative. And there are positive indications that it is a suicide; security guards say he entered the campus last night about three AM, signed into the psychology building alone, no signs of a struggle on the roof and a suicide note his girlfriend and I say is his handwriting."

She swivelled inside his grasp, pressing her back against his chest. She arched her neck back, stealing a kiss over her shoulder as she held his wrists. "So," she breathed into his mouth, "why do you suspect foul play?" She crossed her hands and pushed, spinning out of his embrace and twirled the two of them around with effortless grace. "Could the great JC perhaps - gasp, shock, horror - be wrong?" She pantomimed a faint, the back of her hand along her forehead, falling limp into his waiting arms.

John considered. "Well, there is a first time for everything . . ." he admitted.

"Not for that," Sam said, springing elegantly to her booted heels.