Dead at First Sight

61 Tuesday 9 October

Jules de Copeland drove away from Gatwick Airport in a new car, a small Kia, hired under a different name and card, from a different rental firm, Avis.

He was thinking about his vanished colleague. What a complete fool.

Jeopardizing their entire lucrative operation. Jesus.

His anger preoccupied him. Distracted him. Made him totally forget, as it had this past hour and a half, to properly check his mirrors.

Even if he had, he would have been unlikely to spot the headlights of the little VW Polo that followed him some distance back, staying several cars behind.

The Seekers were playing on the radio, ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’.

Oh yes I will. You, man, are history.

But all the same, he fretted. Kofi could give the whole game away if he was caught, and talked.

Hopefully, like himself, he’d been smart enough to get away.

Thirty minutes later, back in Brighton, he turned off the busy Dyke Road Avenue thoroughfare and down a short distance to leafy, secluded Withdean Road. He drove past the entrances to several houses, then halted at wrought-iron gates set between brick pillars and lowered the window to let the duty security guard in the control room see his face.

A twelve-foot-high, fortress-like brick wall protected the grounds and mansion beyond from prying eyes. The place served both as his residence and the headquarters of the JDC dating agency.

As the gates opened, he assured himself that Kofi would be there, in the private cinema, watching one of the crappy Netflix true-crime dramas he was addicted to.

He wasn’t.

He wasn’t in any of the toilets either.

Nor was he in his bedroom. The only occupant was the soul of the human skull sitting on a bookshelf. Kofi told him he’d stolen it from a grave, for his Sakawa fetish rituals. He could believe what he wanted, Copeland was fine with that, but he didn’t go for all that stuff himself.

He didn’t even like standing here alone in the room with the skull. It gave him the heebie-jeebies. Brought back too many memories, too many bad memories of too many skulls. Too many dead people. He had been a proud teenage warrior back then but he wasn’t proud of his past any more. When you were a kid you believed what older people told you. It was easy to be brainwashed. He’d moved on from all that killing and mutilating, all that bullshit ideology fighting for a cause. All the futility. Kofi hadn’t. Yeah, at times you had to be violent because that was the only thing some people understood. Kofi still got his rocks off being violent, but not himself, not any more. Now he got his bangs from seeing money in his bank accounts. Kerrrrrchinggg! The cash register ringing it all up in his head.

The day he reinvented himself several years ago as businessman Mr Jules de Copeland, open to do business between Ghana and the gullible Western world, with all its rich pickings to be had, was the day his life had changed. From his humble beginnings he was now a rich man, and getting richer all the time. Or at least he had been until tonight. Kofi had been a good and loyal lieutenant, but now, if he had been arrested — God forbid — he had to find a way to cut loose, fast.

He was a family man now, with his sweet wife, Ama, and a six-month-old son, Bobo, living in their farmhouse a short distance from Munich. He missed them and wanted to be back with them, soon. Please God Kofi wasn’t going to mess all his plans up.

Down the end of a long corridor, in the large phone room, were six of his operatives whom he had brought over from Ghana, via Munich, for cultural training in UK ways. All were busily engaged emailing, FaceTiming or phoning ‘loved ones’. Three males, three females, earning more each month here than they could have done in a lifetime back home.

But no Kofi.

Why had that stupid idiot gone back into the house? They’d already frightened the crap out of Seward — he would have been putty in their hands.

He sat down at his private workstation at the back of the room, elevated on a dais so it gave him a commanding view of his team. A bank of monitors in front of him enabled him to watch or listen in to any conversation any of his employees was having with a ‘loved one’ they’d met online.

He selected No. 5. Sisi Tawney. She was twenty-three, pretty.

He’d invested in a course of online elocution lessons for her, as he had with all his team.

Sisi’s identity was Monique Dupres. Resident of Esher, Surrey. Widowed, tragically, at fifty-four when her late husband, a born-again middle-aged biker, was killed in a motorcycle accident, leaving huge debts. Looking to start her life over. And she had now found Mr Right.

Sisi was doing nicely. She had her hooks into a man called Guy Relph, a sixty-nine-year-old widower, eager to help his beloved in any way he could. He’d already transferred over £50,000 to help her clear her debts and keep her home. She was now playing him for a further £50,000 and it was going well.

The money was piling up!

Jules next hooked into his total star player, Esi Jabbar.

Esi had sucked in a seventy-nine-year-old widow who was besotted with him, or rather, the image she believed was him. A thirty-year-old black hunk he’d lifted from a past World’s Strongest Man competitors’ list.

She’d loaned him £28,000, and was now engaged with her bank, seeing if she could find a way to get an equity release on the last £100,000 of value in her house.

She was totally smitten with him, she told him. He was totally smitten with her, he’d replied.

As Jules logged on to his own workstation, a new email came in, which stood out amongst the dross and made him immediately focus. It was from his best prospect, a woman called Lynda Merrill. She was fifty-nine and attractive, with a sparkle in her eyes. He liked her. They’d been communicating for four months now, under the identity he was using of Richie Griffiths, a handsome silver-haired man, the film producer.

She’d already paid over several small amounts, and now she was in the process of liquidating £450,000 to send him, to buy out his ex-wife’s share of their home.

Or so she thought.

He sent the email then put her momentarily out of his mind. He needed to find Kofi. Pulling an unused burner phone from a carefully labelled selection in his desk drawer, he set it on ‘number withheld’ and dialled his lieutenant’s current phone. It rang. Once, twice, three times. Four times. Just as he thought it was going to voicemail, it picked up.

‘Hello?’ A male voice he did not recognize.

He hesitated in panic, wondering whether to hang up. Instead he asked, ‘Who is this speaking?’

‘Sussex Police. Who are you?’

He terminated the call instantly. His hand was shaking. He switched the phone off, and in his panic, stamped on it several times, crushing it, trying to destroy it.

His brain was racing. Could they trace the call? It was one of a bunch of burners he had bought in different stores around the Brighton area in the past months. And he’d withheld the number.

The bigger worry was why the police were answering Kofi’s phone. Had the idiot dropped it, or — more likely — had he been arrested — and if so, what would he tell them? They’d long rehearsed the scenario of either of them being arrested. They both carried false identification with nothing to link them together. They had their cover story: they were travelling independently, tourists, come to visit England, the same as thousands of other visitors to Brighton.

But the British police were smart. Even if the jackass didn’t squeal, how long would it take the police to make the connections?

One statement from Toby Seward?

He thought about the £450,000. A big prize.

If he could get that quickly, then he could bail out, back to Germany or — even better — take Ama and Bobo home to the safety of Ghana, and screw Kofi. He could stew in his own mess.

Feeling a bit better, he went up to his room and began packing. Fortunately he had an emergency Plan B. A safe house he’d never told Kofi about. For just such a situation as this.

It was going to be fine.

Jules de Copeland was unaware of the car that had followed him back here from Gatwick Airport. The Polo was now parked a short distance along from the gates of this house, on the other side of the street, with an unobstructed view of the entrance.

He was unaware, too, of its occupant. A man trained by the US military in patience. A man who could go without food or water or sleep for days and still function sharply. A man who had learned to sit as motionless as a twig on a tree, for as many days as it took to do the job.

A man who had his car radio tuned in to Radio Sussex and was listening to it.

Who had just heard a newsflash about a suspected homophobic attack.

Who was waiting to kill him.