Lemoine had started strategising from the moment he had seen the body. He had put his arms around Mira not to console her, but to hold her still while he ran through various plays and counterplays in his mind, gaming out his opinions, bracketing the things he could not change (Darvish was dead; Shelley was tripping on acid that he, Lemoine, had given her) from the things that could possibly be altered or massaged (Darvish had been hit by the van; Shelley had been driving it), and when after a couple of seconds Mira had tried to extricate herself from his embrace, pushing away from his chest with her forearms, craning her neck to turn and look again at the corpse where it lay flung out and staring on the gravel drive, Lemoine had gripped her even tighter, murmuring, 'Trust me - don't look,' until she stopped struggling and began to cry. It was a bad situation. Darvish was still the legal owner of the property. He had been killed on his own driveway, on his own land, in front of his own house, by a trespasser blitzed out of her mind on an illegal drug that Lemoine had personally imported to the country, and the only reason he'd been walking up his driveway in the first place, alone and in the dark, was because Lemoine had changed the code on his front gate and hadn't let him know. And that wasn't all: in the shearing shed at the bottom of the hill were five other trespassers in the same blitzed-out condition, any one of whom might have seen Shelley drive away into the dark, any one of whom might have heard the Vanette collide with Darvish and then swerve and crash into the poplar at the driveway's edge, any one of whom might be about to appear, at any moment, to ask in psychedelic stupefaction what the hell was going on. Even if there was a way, somehow, of waiting out the collective acid trip, even if Lemoine could think up a reason to delay calling the police until the effect of the drug had subsided, even if the man's death could be made to seem purely like an accident, a misfortune for which nobody could be blamed, not Shelley, not Birnam Wood, and certainly not Lemoine, even then, there was no getting around the trespassing, there was no getting around the fact that the Birnam crew were squatting at the farm without the knowledge or permission of either Darvish or his wife. Their camp in the shearing shed was plainly long-established. Their many beds and plantings were proof in themselves of how long they had been living there, at Lemoine's invitation, with Lemoine's encouragement, and, as Mira's bank records could prove, on Lemoine's dollar. Once all of that got out, Lemoine thought, his mind turning fast, once Jill Darvish learned the circumstances of her husband's death, once she discovered all the ways in which Lemoine had deceived her, had deceived her husband, had caused his death, effectively, and for no better reason than out of malice and for sport, Lemoine could hardly expect that she would want to honour their agreement, proceeding with the sale and subdivision, making him her future next-door neighbour, for heaven's sake, by selling him the greater portion of the beloved acreage where she'd grown up! No: the millions that Lemoine had dangled would now seem offensive and obscene, a slight against the memory of her husband, an outrage against her. She wouldn't just back out of the sale, which was still well within her power; very probably, she would litigate against him. The case would be all over the news. They'd be in and out of courtrooms for years. It would be public; it would be poisonous; it would be louder than loud. And what would happen in the meantime to the extraction site in Korowai, and the mercenaries awaiting his instructions, and all their processing equipment, and the rare-earth motherlode itself? No, Lemoine thought again, shaking his head almost imperceptibly, his chin resting on Mira's hair. No: he couldn't risk Jill Darvish finding out the truth - which meant the truth was going to have to change.🏁

Submitted by qoiauve - 10/01/2025

Lemoine had started strategising from the moment he had seen the body. He had put his arms around Mira not to console her, but to hold her still while he ran through various plays and counterplays in his mind, gaming out his opinions, bracketing the things he could not change (Darvish was dead; Shelley was tripping on acid that he, Lemoine, had given her) from the things that could possibly be altered or massaged (Darvish had been hit by the van; Shelley had been driving it), and when after a couple of seconds Mira had tried to extricate herself from his embrace, pushing away from his chest with her forearms, craning her neck to turn and look again at the corpse where it lay flung out and staring on the gravel drive, Lemoine had gripped her even tighter, murmuring, 'Trust me - don't look,' until she stopped struggling and began to cry. It was a bad situation. Darvish was still the legal owner of the property. He had been killed on his own driveway, on his own land, in front of his own house, by a trespasser blitzed out of her mind on an illegal drug that Lemoine had personally imported to the country, and the only reason he'd been walking up his driveway in the first place, alone and in the dark, was because Lemoine had changed the code on his front gate and hadn't let him know. And that wasn't all: in the shearing shed at the bottom of the hill were five other trespassers in the same blitzed-out condition, any one of whom might have seen Shelley drive away into the dark, any one of whom might have heard the Vanette collide with Darvish and then swerve and crash into the poplar at the driveway's edge, any one of whom might be about to appear, at any moment, to ask in psychedelic stupefaction what the hell was going on. Even if there was a way, somehow, of waiting out the collective acid trip, even if Lemoine could think up a reason to delay calling the police until the effect of the drug had subsided, even if the man's death could be made to seem purely like an accident, a misfortune for which nobody could be blamed, not Shelley, not Birnam Wood, and certainly not Lemoine, even then, there was no getting around the trespassing, there was no getting around the fact that the Birnam crew were squatting at the farm without the knowledge or permission of either Darvish or his wife. Their camp in the shearing shed was plainly long-established. Their many beds and plantings were proof in themselves of how long they had been living there, at Lemoine's invitation, with Lemoine's encouragement, and, as Mira's bank records could prove, on Lemoine's dollar. Once all of that got out, Lemoine thought, his mind turning fast, once Jill Darvish learned the circumstances of her husband's death, once she discovered all the ways in which Lemoine had deceived her, had deceived her husband, had caused his death, effectively, and for no better reason than out of malice and for sport, Lemoine could hardly expect that she would want to honour their agreement, proceeding with the sale and subdivision, making him her future next-door neighbour, for heaven's sake, by selling him the greater portion of the beloved acreage where she'd grown up! No: the millions that Lemoine had dangled would now seem offensive and obscene, a slight against the memory of her husband, an outrage against her. She wouldn't just back out of the sale, which was still well within her power; very probably, she would litigate against him. The case would be all over the news. They'd be in and out of courtrooms for years. It would be public; it would be poisonous; it would be louder than loud. And what would happen in the meantime to the extraction site in Korowai, and the mercenaries awaiting his instructions, and all their processing equipment, and the rare-earth motherlode itself? No, Lemoine thought again, shaking his head almost imperceptibly, his chin resting on Mira's hair. No: he couldn't risk Jill Darvish finding out the truth - which meant the truth was going to have to change.🏁

Submitted by qoiauve - 10/01/2025