One of Us Is Dead

44 Tuesday 4 October 2022

James Taylor had been thinking about Debbie constantly since their lunch on Saturday. She was under his skin in a way no one had been since those early days when he’d first met Marianne and had been smitten with her.

He felt the same about Debbie now. But he was also unable to stop thinking about Rufus, and what Debbie had said. Could Rufus have killed Barnie?

His apartment was on the seventh floor of a modern complex in the Bayside in Worthing. He had views to the east of the coastline of Brighton and Hove, and straight ahead across the English Channel to the geometric layout of the Rampion wind farm.

Right now he was focused on a layout of his own on the bed in the spare room. His flat lay — his running kit for the Chicago Marathon next Sunday. He had only been in this apartment for two months, and the sea views, especially on this glorious day, continually distracted him. To the east he could see the whole of the Brighton coastline and the cliffs of the Seven Sisters beyond. And as he stared once again out at the wind farm, to the south, he had no idea he shared this same view with Paul Anthony, just eleven miles east of him along the coast.

The weather forecast for Chicago was, unhelpfully, anything from eight degrees to the mid to high twenties. It might be sunny, it might be raining. It would probably be windy. One of the forecasts he’d looked at online had even predicted sleet. He looked down at his orange running cap, his top — a sleeveless vest — and his lightweight shorts, his socks, his state-of-the-art trainers that had received a rave review in the latest edition of Runner’s World, and his supply of nutrition gels. And finally, reluctantly, at his body-worn water supply, which he had just read was banned in US marathons as a terrorist risk ever since the Boston bombings. He was going to have to leave it behind.

He smiled wryly. During his days as an easyJet pilot, airport security had been one of the banes of his life. He remembered one occasion, a decade or so ago, when a particularly jobsworth security officer at Gatwick had removed a metal fork from his carry-on bag and confiscated it. He’d had a stand-up row with the man, shouting did he really think if he was going to attack someone in his own plane he would use this small fork rather than the heavy-duty axe that was part of the equipment in his cockpit?

He glanced at his Garmin sports watch. He would need to leave here in two hours to arrive at Heathrow in good time for his 15.35 flight. Four days there would give him just about enough time to adjust to the time zone. Chicago was six hours behind UK time. Rule of thumb was it took a day for each hour to get over jetlag. But, from his years of experience flying long-haul for easyJet, he reckoned it took four days, max. For sure, if you were in the better-quality air at the front end of the aeroplane, which was why he was flying Business Class today, as always.

And after Chicago, he was off to a few days of luxury at Barbados’s best hotel, Sandy Lane — courtesy of his boss. Not that he would be spending all his days there sunning his tum — he was a man on a mission. A very specific mission.