Dead at First Sight

45 Tuesday 9 October

They were aware. Very aware.

Only too aware.

‘Like, you should be aware, too, Toby Seward-sounds-like-Sewage,’ Jules de Copeland muttered back at the radio. ‘You know, going live on air and saying this shit.’ Tossing his cigarette butt out of his window, he glanced at his colleague in the passenger seat. Ogwang was playing a game on his phone, concentrating intently. ‘Right?’

‘Yeah.’

Ogwang glanced at his watch. His large, shiny, £15,000 Breitling Navitimer that was his pride and joy. And more swanky than Copeland’s smaller Vacheron Constantin.

The wipers squeak-clonked in front of them, shovelling away the pelting rain. ‘You’re not even listening to me, man. Local radio, that’s where you find what’s going on. That and the local paper, right? They’re your eyes and ears, yeah?’ Copeland pointed to his own eyes, then ears.

A gusting sou’westerly straight off the English Channel rocked the car. Copeland had rented the little black Hyundai deliberately, figuring they would look less conspicuous than in something bigger and flashier. But with his hulking frame making him look like he had been shoehorned into the small vehicle, his penchant for shiny clothes and his sidekick an angry bonsai version of himself, they were about as inconspicuous as two sharks in a toddler’s paddling pool.

Ogwang had recently picked up urban street language and had taken to using it. ‘I’m hearing you, bro, got you mega. Mr Toby Seward, OK, right? This dude’s dangerous. We should teach him a lesson.’

‘Like, not to go on radio and shoot off his big fat mouth?’

Ogwang stuck his tongue out, pinched the end of it between his forefinger and thumb, then made a chopping motion with his free hand. He looked at Copeland expectantly.

Copeland turned left away from Hove seafront as the lights changed, without replying. They headed up Grand Avenue, past tall apartment blocks. ‘Lotta rich people in them apartments,’ he said. ‘Lotta older folks, widows, widowers. Looking for love. Rich pickings, here, Eastbourne, Worthing. Rich and lonely, looking for love. This is the place to be.’

He was completely unaware of the small, grey Polo, four cars back, that steadfastly followed them.

‘Where we going, bro?’ Ogwang clicked his cheap lighter and moments later the interior of the car filled with ganja smoke. He glanced at his watch again, admiringly. He’d had it for over two years, but it still gave him a thrill.

‘Yeah? Well, I’ll tell you where we’re not going. Prison.’ Mimicking his friend’s street accent he said, ‘Now put that weed out before we gets our asses busted and we gone have to ’splain what we doing here.’

They were returning to base, their gated mansion on Brighton’s leafy, secluded Withdean Road, from a shopping trip. Ogwang took another drag on the joint, inhaled deeply and removed it from his mouth. He held it in front of his face, staring at it, as if weighing up his options. Copeland closed them off for him. He snatched it and tossed it out of the window.

‘That was good shit, man!’ Ogwang protested.

‘You get good shit by staying out of prison, dumbfuck. I made that bitch in Munich look like a suicide, until you gone crazy and cut her tongue off. Now here we have a suicide, they not gonna prove nothing.’

‘Gotta leave warnings,’ Ogwang said. ‘See? Gotta leave them, bro, else they talk. Gotta stop this Tony Sewage man talking. Dissing our agency.’

‘So we go frighten him, right?’

‘Right.’

‘But that’s all. We don’t hurt him, we don’t want the police coming for us.’

Ogwang slipped his hand inside his parka and closed his fingers around the wooden handle of his sheathed machete. He pulled it out a few inches and felt the cold steel of the blade. He sharpened it every day of his life, keeping the edge like a razor.

‘You hearing me?’ Copeland said. ‘I don’t think you’re hearing me.’

Ogwang tested the sharpness of his blade again and said nothing.