One of Us Is Dead

17 Tuesday 27 September 2022

Six degrees of separation. Maybe that was true before the internet existed, Paul Anthony thought, but not now. And certainly not since the dark web, which scythed a bypass through several of these degrees, for most of the connections you might need. You could get pretty much anything you wanted there, if you knew how and where to look, and had the currency, such as Bitcoins, to pay for it.

The most pressing thing he had been separated from these past few days was a particular lanyard and the equally vital key card attached to it.

Students, generally, were separated from stuff they wanted by a lack of cash. Certainly, he figured, Ryan Glazier must have been. Which was how, late on this Tuesday afternoon, beneath a darkening sky, he was wearing a blue and white University of Brighton lanyard attached to an electronic pass card bearing his own photograph in the top right corner, a bar code and the name of the student who had no doubt sold it to the source he had acquired it from. He guessed Ryan Glazier had received £500 for his card and would later request a replacement, claiming he had lost it. He himself had paid a not unreasonable markup, all things considered, of £5,000, inclusive of doctored photograph. Quality, on the dark web, came at a price that was always worth paying.

It was Welcome Week, or Freshers’, at the uni — the timing could not be more perfect. Definitely a good omen, portent, whatever! A huge influx of new students, some young, some mature, and all kinds of support staff. All of them milling around the uber-modern campus, in the late afternoon sun, wearing the university’s uniform — which was no uniform at all — just the lanyard and key card. Hardly anyone knew anyone, but if you had one of these hanging around your neck then you were a member, you were one of the gang. No one was going to challenge you, because you belonged here.

And he was feeling a big sense of belonging as he pedalled along in the cycle lane of the Lewes Road, approaching the imposing glass and steel edifice of the Cockcroft Building ahead to his left. To the casual passer-by it looked more like the high-rise headquarters of a multinational corporation than the computing sciences department of the city of Brighton and Hove’s university.

Dismounting from the serviceable second-hand bicycle he’d bought earlier today, he wheeled it up to a long, rammed bike rack beneath an artistically curved glass roof, and found a free slot. He padlocked it, not that he gave a flying toss if it got stolen, but just in case anyone was watching he wanted to ensure he did what any sensible university person would do. All part of blending in like a chameleon.

Just like he blended in with his clothes. And he honestly couldn’t have looked more like he belonged in a university setting if he’d tried. Then, with a big smile, he reminded himself that he had tried, so hard, as always. The Devil always skulked around inside the details.

Skinny jeans, beat-up trainers, a black fleece over an Iron Maiden T-shirt, reflective rucksack and bike helmet. And that lanyard and card — the passport to invisibility!

Paul Anthony, or to his customers Mr Oswald, the chameleon, the invisible, the Great Warrior, swapped over his helmet for a Chicago Bears baseball cap, removed a black and yellow voltage tester from his rucksack, and strapped it back on. Then he strode from the bike rack along the front facade of the Cockcroft Building. He felt confident. As ever his research was everything. It was the thoroughness of his research that had enabled him to operate his businesses for over ten years now without attracting unwelcome attention.

Well, almost. Apart from what euphemistically might be described as a close call. Kind of an Apart from that, Mrs Kennedy, how did you like Dallas? moment.

Which was why he’d been lying pretty damned low. And starting to get pretty damned bored. And restless.

His two businesses were highly lucrative, but operating them had given him something much more important, something money could not buy. He might have made massive profits, but what mattered more was the even bigger pleasure that what he did gave him. The sheer sense of satisfaction. The knowledge of just how much power he had. The way he deployed his brilliant skills and cunning mind to give him power over the life of anyone that he chose.

Although mostly it wasn’t actually his choice, it was someone else’s. And the victims — well, it had always been their fault. Not that he was ever going to split hairs over moral dilemmas. He slept well at night, comfortable in his own skin. At least, he had done up until that little bit of a close call. That little hiccup.

The police were getting smarter in their digital forensics. He’d only made a small mistake, but, as he knew, there was no such thing as a small mistake. It was a big screw-up. Because he’d got complacent.

He had always liked to joke about experts, telling people to beware of them, that it was the experts who always got complacent and made the screw-ups. Many of the world’s biggest air disasters had senior captains of the airline in the left seat of the cockpit when they’d happened. Most of the world’s leading avalanche experts had been killed in avalanches. It was usually the senior orthopaedic surgeon who amputated the wrong limb. And so on. Maybe one day he would write a book. It would be titled Beware of Experts.

And now he had joined their ranks. The expert contract killer who got complacent and made a mistake. A stupid, damned avoidable mistake. And the consequences had been enormous and near catastrophic — for him.

He’d recently thought about taking on an employee, an accomplice, to watch his back and ensure that mistake never happened again, but then dismissed it. There was an old police adage: Once a criminal has told one person, he’s told the world.

But that might just have changed. Now, with Shannon Kendall fully engaged in the 3D gun business, relieving him of some important tasks and driving sales. His soulmate. And once he had completed this job, they would be bound together for ever. Omertà, the Sicilians called it. The criminal code of silence.

And she had all the skills he needed to keep abreast of the technology that was advancing in ways he was struggling to keep up with. The technology that had tripped him up and hurled him flat on his face — as it were.

Ahead was a group of female students standing outside the sliding glass doors. Two of them were smoking and one was vaping. ‘Hi,’ he said pleasantly, as he approached them. ‘Can any of you tell me where I can find Professor Bill Llewellyn’s office?’

‘Oh him? Sure. Fifth floor, room five twenty-seven,’ one of them, a Goth, said insolently, without looking at him. She was holding a roll-up between her finger and thumb as if it was a dart.

He thanked her, held his card to the reader at the front entrance, and the glass doors slid open. He entered the vast atrium with a black and white floor that looked like a chessboard someone had tried to design while off their face on a psychotropic drug. Facing him was a large white-faced desk, with a Perspex wall and a row of bunting, and the words STUDENT INFORMATION DESK emblazoned in black. It was manned by a young woman busy helping a male student. There was a wide staircase, and corridors stretching away in both directions. From his recce earlier in the week, when he had simply followed two students in through the sliding doors and tried to get his bearings and to log the positions of any CCTV cameras, he knew where the lifts were, and that they required a pass card. But he preferred to take the stairs. The less people who saw him, the better.

Arriving on the fifth floor, he entered a long corridor, with a yellow wall on one side and windows giving a view across the sprawling Moulsecoomb housing estate on the other.

Unsure which direction to head in, he took a punt and turned left. He walked past a wall-mounted fire extinguisher and two drinking water fountains, then a long internal window onto a vast, empty room filled with rows and rows of computing equipment on flat worktops, each workstation delineated by a modern black stool on wheels.

Two women were approaching from the opposite direction. He stiffened as they both looked at him quizzically.

He had a brief moment of panic, then they passed, giving him a pleasant smile.

He reached 527. It had the same smart wooden door as all the other offices, but the windows were obscured with drawn blinds, giving the occupant total privacy. The name on the door plaque read: Professor Bill Llewellyn. Faculty of Artificial Intelligence.

He knocked. There was no answer. He glanced up and down the corridor and saw no sign of anyone. The lock was electronic, like most modern hotel locks — a black glass oval beneath the handle where you tapped your key card and waited for a green light.

He knocked again, louder this time, to be safe.

A moment later, he was startled by a voice coming from the other side. It was a strong Welsh accent and sounded irked. ‘Who is it?’

Putting on a gruff voice he called back, ‘Tech Support, come to check your broadband issue.’

‘What do you mean? I don’t have a broadband issue.’

‘It’s a line fault, Professor, we get automatic notification.’

He heard what sounded like breaking glass, followed by what might have been a curse, then the professor called out, ‘You’ll have to wait a moment.’

As the door opened, a good two minutes later, he saw the reason.