One of Us Is Dead

13 Monday 26 September 2022

Paul lived with his black Labrador, Montmorency, in a sixth-floor penthouse duplex on the top two floors of a handsome nineteenth-century Regency terrace house in the Kemp Town district of Brighton. It was leased to him as Mr Paul Anthony, which was the name the world outside of the dark web knew him by, these days.

He owned a second property in the city, a row of ten lock-up garages behind an industrial estate near Shoreham Harbour. He’d bought the lot anonymously, through a lawyer and a shell company, eighteen months ago and referred to them privately as his office. He only used four of the garages. One, his actual office, where he kept his computers, servers and his burner phones; one used as a workshop, where he kept his 3D printing apparatus; one he had converted into an emergency hideout bathroom and bedroom; and the other for concealing his car — a grey, five-year-old Honda Jazz, the kind of car nobody would notice, the automotive equivalent of a man in a hi-vis jacket holding a clipboard.

He owned the other six garages purely to guard his privacy. He didn’t want neighbours.

The name he used as his alias on the dark web was Mr Oswald. This amused him. It was taken from the man who allegedly shot dead President John F. Kennedy. It was good to have a name that people remembered — well, for the right reasons, anyhow. And it had led to several referrals. Quality ones.

He was all about quality. Aristotle said, Quality is not an act, it is a habit. That was his motto. And quality began with his residence, which he kept spotless.

The subtle alterations to his appearance were quality too. His hair transplant. Before his disappearance he had been going bald. Now he had a thick head of dark brown hair. It had been a top-quality transplant. His goatee and new specs made him look a changed, perfectly groomed man versus his rugged old looks.

His dog was quality too. A pedigree Labrador retriever. He’d named him from a book he’d read as a kid and had enjoyed, called Three Men in a Boat. It had actually been three men and a dog called Montmorency.

Montmorency had a grandmother who had been a winner in class at Crufts. He was docile, streetwise, in the sense that after elaborate training, he would never let his master cross a main road other than on a green light. Paul Anthony could understand why Labrador retrievers like Montmorency made such good guide dogs for the blind. And there were occasions when he employed Montmorency’s services for just that. He kept a harness, an exaggeratedly large pair of dark sunglasses, and a white stick in a closet close to the front door. Out of sight of visitors. Not that he had many visitors.

There was nothing actually wrong with his eyesight. And on fine days, like this one, he had a majestic view out across the Channel to the hazy white spindles of the Rampion wind farm, some fifteen miles to the south, like a spectral town rising out of the sea. He had another equally grand view to the west of the Palace Pier, less than a mile away, and a somewhat less attractive view, unless it had been his thing (which naked bottoms, limp appendages and hard pebbles really weren’t), of the nudist beach a few hundred yards to the east.

He would miss this view when he moved, which he would be doing soon. You could only hide in plain sight in one place for so long. But all the time he was in England he would have to keep on the move. At some point, he would quietly slip away to one of his bolt-holes abroad with Shannon. His apartment in Puerto Banús or his house on Mykonos. He would do that the moment he felt they were in danger. And he was starting to feel that now, owing to Barnie’s meddling. Thanks, pal.

For the past two years he had lived alone with his dog, anonymous and invisible. He was more than comfortable in his own company, and he liked that he and Shannon lived separately, for now, at least. They could link up for work and for pleasure when it suited him. But meeting and falling in love with her had given him back desires he had forgotten existed, and she was proving very, very useful to his business. He had felt for a long time after his death that he had too much baggage, too much history, and too much to risk to share his life with anyone.

But Shannon was different. Damaged goods, like himself, in some ways, and he trusted her. And he had a plan to make sure of that. To win her eternal trust. Not that he necessarily wanted to co-habit with her all the time.

Living on his own had its compensations. The first of which was being able to smoke a cigar indoors without anyone complaining — especially his wife — former wife — estranged wife — non-wife? Whatever.

He missed the boys though. The twins. They’d be eight now. They would never know him and, likewise, he would never see them growing up, and that made him sad. Well, a little sad. He knew guys from the squash club and the golf club who went all doolally over their kids. He’d never really felt that way but he did love them.

Well, OK, just occasionally he did miss them. He did have a yearning to see them more than from a distance, through binoculars, on their school playing fields, when they were playing football or rugby or cricket matches. Financially they were fine — well, actually, way more than fine. Their mother was a very wealthy lady. The boys would want for nothing. He’d seen to that. Conscience clear. He knew where to find his boys if he ever wanted to. He could always check up on them — again, if he wanted to.

And why would he want to when he had all this freedom? To do whatever the hell he wanted, he kidded himself.

Paul Anthony wrinkled his eyes. He smiled. He was doing exactly what he wanted to do. And part of that right now was smoking this cigar.

Montmorency seemed to like the smell and snuggled up to him on the sofa whenever he lit up. God, how Fiona used to moan about it stinking out the house the next morning and making his clothes smell.

The second compensation was being able to slob about all day in his silk dressing gown without having to shave or get dressed if he didn’t feel like it. And the third was having breakfast in proper French cafe style — an almond croissant, an exquisite double espresso from beans he had ground, freshly obtained each day from a local specialist purveyor here in Kemp Town, and a fine Armagnac, in a perfect small round breakfast-sized glass, like he’d seen contented-looking old men drinking from in France. Just a nip. Just enough to take the edge off the day.

Just enough to raise his glass in his daily toast to whoever it was who said: I feel sorry for people who don’t drink, because when they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.

And could it get much better than starting his day with a long walk with Montmorency, then sitting out on this terrace, with a forty-year-old Dartigalongue Armagnac, accompanied by a very fine thirty-year-old Cohiba Coronas Especiales cigar, the morning’s newspapers and his dog at his side? Particularly when it was such a fine summer day in so many ways?

Being dead definitely had its compensations.

Although perhaps not for his next victim, Dermot Quince Bryson. The man, who Shannon had already ‘met’ and sold a 3D printed handgun to, was an even bigger asshole than his name suggested. But it wasn’t just the thought of the pleasure of killing him nor the glorious late September sunshine that was putting him in such a good mood. It was the challenge Shannon Kendall had — perhaps inadvertently — set him.

He was rising to that challenge, one with a lot of upside. It would buy him the eternal loyalty of his attractive, super-smart accomplice and soulmate. He’d spent much of the weekend thinking, planning, and poking around the dark web for the tools he needed.

He took another sip of his brandy, pulled out the local newspaper, the Argus, from under the fresh copy of The Times. He always liked to begin with the local news. But, as he stared at the front page, his mood instantly clouded over.

He put the cigar down in the ashtray he’d stolen some years ago from the Hermitage hotel in Monaco.

Shit! What? What the fuck?????

He read the words beneath with rising fury, the rage growing inside him with every word.

Nice of them to big up Barnie up by calling him an actor, he thought acidly. That role was about the only television part he’d ever had, in a short-lived career as a mostly resting actor. Although of course, at school, all three of them, the Three Musketeers, had been part of the school thespian group. Barnie was a pretty wooden performer. James Taylor had some talent, for sure, and had once played a very convincing Polonius in Hamlet. And he himself always loved performing, being someone other than himself. Dressing up. He knew he was particularly talented at playing female roles, his favourite being Becky Sharpe in Vanity Fair. But he could be anyone, anyone at all. That was the beauty of being dead.

He read on.

That was fine, Mr Oswald had thought when he’d originally read this news.

A simple mistake over mushrooms had been his intention and, he thought, pretty much the perfect murder. No one would pay it much attention. Barnie had been an internet chef at the time of his death. A pretty dumb chef. Just a tragic accident. Nothing to trouble the local plod, and all nicely teed-up for a coroner’s verdict of death by misadventure. End of story.

Until this stupid sodding woman.

You cretin, Susie Pfeiffer!

Reading on, he learned that Susie Pfeiffer, fifty-seven, Ladies Captain of the Dyke Golf Club, had picked what she thought were edible field mushrooms on a round of golf, and had later cooked them for supper for her and her husband, along with two poached eggs each. Within hours, both of them had been taken ill. Her husband had subsequently died and she was in hospital with acute kidney failure.

And now some nosy parker of a copper, a Detective Superintendent Grace, had told an Argus reporter the police were investigating both deaths. If that stupid golfer hadn’t died, no one would have paid Barnie Wallace’s death any attention at all. Sodding Susie Pfeiffer was putting his very clever plan in jeopardy.

And just to add fuel to the fire, the editor of the Argus, someone called Arron Hendy, had launched an appeal to all foragers in the county of Sussex to bring any mushrooms that they believed to be edible along to the Argus offices to be inspected by a mycologist called Merilee Williams. Prompted by these two deaths, Merilee Williams would be giving a lecture this coming Thursday in the Friends Meeting House, Ship Street, on mushroom taxonomy, biology, ecology and the medicinal or culinary uses of different mushroom species.

Barnie Wallace had been an asshole. Worse than that, a greedy asshole. And a desperate one.

Desperate people were always dangerous.

It had been necessary to dispense with Barnie; besides, he wasn’t going to be any big loss to the world. It wasn’t exactly like killing Einstein or Bill Gates or any of the other select few who had actually added value to the sum total of humanity. Barnie was a twat, he’d been a living twat and now he was a dead twat.

End of.

Or it should have been.

He stood up in utter blind fury, banging his fists together, and yelled, out at the sea, at the top of his voice, ‘Susie Pfeiffer you moron, you stupid stupid stupid MORON!’ Then he banged his fist so hard on the table his coffee cup fell over and broke.

Jesus. Calm down.

Calm down.

He tried. Took several deep breaths, eight in through his nose and eight out through his mouth, as his therapist had told him. Then focused his mind, hard. Had he pushed his luck too far attending Barnie’s funeral? He thought it would be exhilarating to be among the mourners and no one knowing he was there. He hadn’t imagined anyone would have recognized him. No one would have been looking out for him — why would they? Who would be looking out for a dead man?

James Taylor?

Had James recognized him? No way he could have been sure it was him, no way at all. But, he reminded himself...

Be aware of your weaknesses.

It was his mantra. Every morning as he stared in the mirror, brushing his teeth, he would repeat this over and over for the boring two minutes his electric toothbrush took to complete its cycles.

And he knew his biggest weakness was being unable to control his temper. But Barnie had so much pissed him off. That pathetic loser. How had Barnie tracked him down after his quite magnificent and convincing funeral? Then figured he could blackmail him for big money?

Barnie had had to go.

James Taylor was someone he was grateful to. Jamesy had given him a sensational eulogy. Tears shed all around the church, and no one had spotted him, sitting near the back. Well, no way anyone would have done — he was attired all in black in widow’s weeds, and a black veil. And that had been fun. Hey, how many people got to attend their own funeral?

But then he’d been really pissed off by Barnie poking his nose in.

Don’t you start sniffing around too, James Taylor. You have one credit, thanks to your eulogy. Use it wisely. You won’t get a second one. Dead men can be very angry and very dangerous.

Suddenly, the Nest app on his phone chimed, and he looked at it. A figure, slightly distorted in the wide-angle camera lens, stood at the front door, downstairs, holding a package.

‘Hello?’ he answered.

‘Package for Mr Oswald?’

He smiled. It would be one of several items he had ordered off sites on the dark web. Items that might help make Shannon Kendall even more beholden to him.

Not bothering with the painfully slow lift, he bounded down the long, steep staircase with a big smile on his face. His morning was back on track.