One of Us Is Dead

28 Sunday 2 October 2022

Fiona Davies had texted Taylor her What3Words address. He followed the directions on his phone, suction-cup clamped to his MG’s windscreen, along a labyrinth of narrow rural lanes close to the village of Bolney, some fourteen miles north of Brighton.

The final countdown started: 100 metres... 60 metres. Then wrought-iron gates appeared on his right. He turned in and braked to a halt in front of them, and was looking for an intercom when the gates opened. He drove along a tarmac driveway lined with laurel bushes on both sides for several hundred yards, then curving right, before seeing the spectacular, angular, black and white half-timbered facade of an L-shaped Tudor mansion. A silver Bentley Bentayga SUV was parked on the forecourt, which was paved in grey brick, and there were almost impossibly wide steps leading up to an equally impossibly grand front door, with massive gargoyles on either side.

He parked close to the Bentley, and as he climbed out the front door opened and Fiona emerged. He’d last seen her at Rufus’s ‘funeral’, and she hadn’t changed. Just like her impossibly grand home, impossibly imposing front steps and impossibly grand front door, she was almost impossibly beautiful. And impossibly posh.

Long fair hair, classic English-rose face, lace-collared blouse, wide leather belt, classy jeans and suede Cuban-heeled cowboy boots. She was accompanied by three yapping Pomeranians.

It could have all been a movie set. Except, Taylor knew, this was all real. This was Rufus Rorke country. The world he had carefully created. To impress. But who?

‘Very cool wheels, James!’ she said, her accent as cut-glass as it gets. ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an MGB GT in black before.’

‘It’s a very rare colour,’ he said, a little proudly. ‘They had to be specially ordered back in the 1970s. Are you into cars?’

‘Well, I suppose vicariously, through Rufus. He built up quite a collection — mostly of rare Porsches.’

‘Very nice. What do you have?’

She raised a hand in the air. ‘I’m not that great on their names — some very early 356s, an ex Le Mans racer, an LMP1, I think it is — oh and one that sounds like a sewing-machine manufacturer — Singer.’

Taylor raised his eyebrows. ‘A Singer? Awesome.’

‘If you have time I’ll show you.’ He knelt to stroke one of the dogs, which immediately bared its teeth at him and gave a warning growl.

‘Nero!’ she admonished. Then turning to Taylor she said, ‘Don’t worry — they’re just very protective.’

A few minutes later, Taylor was seated on a soft chintz sofa, in a grand drawing room filled with ornate, gilded Louis XIV side tables and cabinets. There was a fine view out across a lake, with a Grecian temple folly beyond. He noticed a very faint, ingrained smell of cigarette smoke, above the strong fragrance of her perfume, and saw a clean ashtray on the side table next to her. He sipped his Earl Grey tea, which had been served by a uniformed maid, and took a bite of his chocolate Bath Oliver biscuit. The three tiny dogs sat close to their mistress’s feet. She glanced at her watch. ‘I will need to shoot in an hour, to collect Robert and George.’

‘That’s fine, I’m grateful for your time.’

The room was immaculate, straight off the page of a photoshoot in Country Life. A CSI would have struggled to find any traces of two small boys ever having set foot in here, he thought.

‘So, James, what was it you wanted to talk about?’

Taylor wasn’t normally fazed by grand displays of wealth. His employer Tommy Towne lived in a mansion that he’d paid over £20 million for, filled with art that must have cost the same again. Just like the art in this room he was in now. But there was something about this very beautiful and self-aggrandized woman, sitting defensively, arms crossed, that was throwing him off his stride.

‘I don’t want to rake up any sad memories,’ he said. ‘But I wonder if I could ask you about the night Rufus disappeared?’

She gave him a strange look that felt almost hostile. ‘What exactly is going on?’

Taylor thought hard and carefully before replying. ‘I don’t quite know how best to frame this, Fiona, but there are people saying that Rufus is still alive.’

Her reaction was instant and emphatic. ‘What? For God’s sake! I was with him — and, yes, lots of people have said our marriage was rocky, and I’m not denying that. Rufus was a serial adulterer and I nearly kicked him out several times, but in the end I didn’t for one simple reason. I did love the bastard.’ She shrugged. ‘And, I guess, for the sake of our kids. On that night he went overboard he’d been troubled for many weeks and had started drinking heavily — which wasn’t him at all. He had his vices but booze wasn’t one of them. Not in the sense of being a drunk. That day, or rather night, he was in a mental state that had really worried me — I’d never seen him like it. He was — like — trying to drink himself into oblivion.’

She fell silent for some moments. Then she said, ‘And the stupid bastard succeeded. End of.’ She glared at Taylor.

‘You don’t think there is any possibility he might still be alive, Fiona?’ he asked.

‘Do you think Adolf Hitler is still alive, James? John F. Kennedy? Martin Luther King? Are you one of these wacko conspiracy theorists?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not.’

‘So what makes you think Rufus is still alive?’

‘Because I saw him.’

‘Saw him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me you’re not serious?’

‘I’m serious, Fiona.’ Taylor looked at her levelly. Trying to read her face. ‘Are you certain he’s dead?’

‘What kind of a question is that? How could you have seen him? He went overboard from a yacht, in the middle of the night, in the Caribbean, witnessed by a crew member. We searched for him for hours. A fisherman found remains of his jacket with bite marks from a shark on it. He’s dead, James, he’s been dead for over two years. We had his funeral, for God’s sake!’

Taylor let it ride that it was a no-body funeral.

‘Where did you imagine you saw him, exactly?’ she asked.

‘It was ten days ago, at a funeral. One of our mates from school — Barnie Wallace.’

She gave him an odd look. ‘Barnie Wallace, did you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘One of your Three Musketeers at Brighton College?’

He nodded. ‘Yep, that’s him. Barnie, myself and Rufus. We were the Three Musketeers.’

She was silent for some moments, then she said, ‘Barnie turned up here about a month before Rufus died.’

‘He did? Why? For what reason?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea. As far as I knew, Rufus hadn’t seen him in years. I remember they went into Rufus’s study and after a while I heard shouting. Now I think about it, that was around the time Rufus began drinking.’

‘After Barnie’s visit?’

‘I can’t remember exactly.’ She frowned. ‘Maybe. I’d never seen Rufus so angry after Barnie left. He told me that Barnie was desperate for money and had asked him for a loan — a very big loan.’

‘Presumably he didn’t give him that loan?’

She shook her head. ‘Rufus told me after what a loser he thought Barnie was.’

‘There had always been friction between them. Even at school Barnie was a little jealous of Rufus.’

‘So Barnie’s dead — very young. How did he die?’

Taylor told her.

She looked shocked. ‘What a horrible thing. I’ve heard mushroom poisoning is agonizing. Poor guy, what a ghastly thing to happen.’

‘Yes,’ he said flatly.

Fiona was pensive for a moment then she said, ‘OK, so you think you saw him — Rufus?’

‘I don’t think I saw him. I know I saw him.’

‘How can you possibly know you saw him?’

‘Look, I don’t want to open up a can of worms, Fiona. Obviously I know the whole tragic story of him going overboard.’

She gave him a sad smile. ‘And you gave a very beautiful eulogy at Rufus’s funeral. You summed him up exactly — he’d have been proud.’

He smiled. ‘Thank you. There’s one thing I’ve never asked you — when were you made aware he’d gone overboard?’

‘It was some while after — an hour or so, I think. I hadn’t been sleeping well and took a prescription med. I was woken up around 2 a.m. to be told Rufus had fallen off the boat and we’d turned around and were looking for him. It was quite a heavy sea and the captain told me that it wasn’t going to be easy to find him.’

‘Were there any other boats around?’

She shook her head, then hesitated. ‘I’m not sure but I think one of the crew said they’d seen the lights of a fishing boat and they tried to radio it to help in the search, but couldn’t get a response.’

‘I don’t want to sound insensitive, but did you have any doubts at all that he had fallen overboard?’

‘None,’ she said emphatically. ‘There was a member of the crew — called Lance something, a double-barrelled name — who’d been standing near him and heard the splash, and raised the alarm. And then there was that fisherman in Barbados who’d found part of...’ She hesitated again, her voice cracking.

Taylor waited patiently.

She was crying. ‘Found part of his jacket.’ She sniffed and dabbed her eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I understand.’

‘There was a pen in the jacket pocket I’d given him, a Mont Blanc. Oh Jesus.’ She began crying again.

Taylor sat in silence until she had calmed down. ‘Let me tell you something about Rufus when we were at school. He was a big prankster. Did you ever see any of that?’

She nodded. ‘Oh yes, he loved playing pranks on people. And dressing up — we always hosted a fancy dress New Year’s Eve party every year, I’m surprised he never invited you.’

‘We’d all drifted apart, gone our separate ways.’ He smiled sympathetically.

‘Were you sober when you saw Rufus?’ she asked after a moment of easy silence.

‘It was around midday.’

‘There’s no way, James. No way you could have.’

He believed she was telling the truth. He didn’t think anyone could act the distress in her face. ‘Did Rufus have a brother — like a twin — even a long-lost one?’

‘No,’ she said adamantly. ‘So tell me exactly what you saw and where?’

He told her what had transpired in the church. When he had finished she shook her head. ‘So you really didn’t get a close look at his face, did you?’

‘I saw enough.’

She sipped some of her tea then put the cup down. ‘I can tell you one thing, James. If Rufus is, somehow, still alive, he would have contacted me. He adored the boys, there’s no way he’s been around for two years and not made contact. That’s my proof that he’s dead, if I needed it.’

Taylor nodded. Through the window he saw a large bird — a heron, he thought. It swooped down on the lake and then rose off the water with a fish in its beak, its wings flapping slowly and gracefully. She saw it too. ‘That bloody bird — steals all our beautiful fish. I’ll tell you something, if Rufus were alive and here, he’d bloody well shoot it, protected species or not.’

He nodded politely. ‘Fiona, do you remember the name of the fisherman in Barbados who found the remains of Rufus’s jacket?’

‘Yes, John I think it was — but it might have been Jim.’ She thought for a moment. ‘No, it was definitely John.’

‘Do you know his last name?’

‘Baker.’ She spelled it out. ‘He’s a bit of a local character, I got the impression.’

‘And you believed his story.’

‘Why wouldn’t I have? He didn’t have any reason to lie — and he could have kept the pen, which was worth quite a bit of money, but he did the decent thing and took it along with the remains of the jacket to the police.’

As Taylor drove away from the house he was thinking pretty hard. Fiona Davies hadn’t seen or heard from Rufus, that much he was reasonably sure of.

It was the remains of Rorke’s jacket that struck him as the weak link. A fragment of cloth several miles offshore, in a vast, rough ocean. What were the chances of a fisherman netting that? One in a million? Billion? Trillion?

Had nobody asked that question?