One of Us Is Dead

8 Friday 23 September 2022

Paul Anthony, Shannon had come to realize over the past year, was a man of habit, and some of those habits a little unfathomable. Such as why, when he lived in Kemp Town, to the east of Brighton, a mecca for eateries, did he prefer to dine in the same restaurant, Tosca, several miles by car to the west of the city, and always at the same corner table, with his back to all the other diners.

Tonight she arrived fifteen minutes late and sat down opposite him, with her back to the river, without saying a word, looking and feeling really pissed off and flustered. She gulped down most of the glass of wine he’d poured for her.

‘You OK, babes?’ he asked.

‘Not really, Paul, no.’

‘What’s the matter?’

She pulled out a sheet of newspaper from her handbag, turned it to face him and pointed at the headline. ‘Have you seen this?’

It was a page of the Daily Mail.

3D PRINTED GUN SERIOUSLY WOUNDS SCHOOLBOY

Beneath was a photograph of the gun, which had been seized by the police. Beneath that was the story of a 3D printed handgun, a facsimile of a Glock pistol, that had got into the hands of a fourteen-year-old boy, who had used it to shoot a fifteen-year-old in a suspected Hoxton gang turf war. According to the article, the bullet had missed the boy’s heart by the narrowest of margins. The article then went on to point out just how easy it was for anyone with the right equipment and technical know-how to create such a weapon through the latest advances in 3D printing technology.

‘Wow!’ Paul Anthony said, looking animated. ‘That’s one of ours — I can tell from the colour combination.’

‘You look excited, Paul. This is awful. A kid has been shot and might have been killed. And you are excited? Don’t you feel any responsibility?’

‘No. No I don’t. You know exactly what I feel about this. These people will get guns somehow. It’s not our business what they do with them.’

She was silent. She did know what he felt about this. But that didn’t make it any better.

‘Babes, listen,’ he replied. ‘You don’t know these kids, they’re just gangland scumbags, county lines drug dealers or whatever, just vermin. Why do you care?’

He gave her a really strange look that she’d not seen before. And she saw something in him that she’d not seen before, this previously tough, confident guy squirming, almost weaselly. She felt as if all her trust in him had spilled out of a bottle onto the floor. Had she badly misjudged him?

As if sensing this, he said, ‘Babes, listen, I love you more than anything. It’s you and me versus the world, that’s what being in love means. We’re good together, we’re strong, we get that we’re in a morally questionable business, but, hey, we’re in it with our eyes open. Love is like a wagon-train circle. We make that circle and we sit inside it — with the rest of the world outside. Understand?’

She frowned. ‘Yes, but—’

‘You make me so happy, I’ve never felt like this in all my life. It’s like — you make me complete.’

‘I love you too, Paul. I just find it hard to be a part of this sometimes. Like now.’

He filled her glass, then drained his, picked up the bottle — their second — or maybe their third — to refill his, and it was empty. He put it down. ‘Well, you’re kind of in it now, hun, it’s a bit late to be preachy. That horse has bolted. Just think of all the money we’re making — much of it, credit to you.’

She smiled, uneasily. ‘Maybe I need to stop reading the news.’

‘No more news!’ Paul said. ‘Good plan! OK. Let’s change the subject. Tell me some more about you before we met. Your uni days, what were they like?’

He was feeling a little smashed now but it didn’t stop him reaching for the complimentary amaretto they’d each been given after they’d finished their meal.

‘Really? What do you want to know? I wasn’t all that happy.’ She was trying to buy herself a bit of time to think more clearly and decide how to answer him. Should she tell him tonight? The glasses of wine she had lost count of were making her reckless. She told Paul about her course and about the university.

‘So in your third year you were told by your professor, Bill Llewellyn, that you were on track for a First — but then you quit the university and had to come back and retake a year later? I’m trying to make sense of that. Why?’

The booze had really gone to her head, and she was feeling quite drunk now.

‘What’s up? Did something happen?’ he pressed.

She was silent for some moments, thinking. There was something about this evening and the drink that made her feel that she could speak up and confide in him.

She said the four words she had not said to anyone else, ever.

‘Professor Llewellyn raped me.’