One of Us Is Dead

45 Tuesday 4 October 2022

So, OK, it wasn’t the screaming front-page splash Paul Anthony had been hoping for, it was buried away on page 9 of the Argus, but at least there were several column inches and a photograph.

Accompanying the article was a head-and-shoulders photograph of Professor Bill Llewellyn in a mortar board and black gown.

He settled down to read the short piece. According to the post-mortem, Llewellyn had died from anaphylactic shock after being stung by a wasp. The highly respected professor knew he was dangerously allergic to wasp stings and always kept an EpiPen in his office, but despite having used it, he was pronounced dead on arrival at the Royal Sussex County Hospital yesterday morning.

The article ticked all the boxes. And what mattered most of all was that the professor was dead and there was, seemingly, no hint of suspicion about his death.

Shannon should be more than pleased! He would invite her to dinner tonight to celebrate. And to suggest that they were now bound together by a deadly secret.

He messaged her, suggesting dinner at Tosca in Shoreham, again. He liked the food there and especially the long narrow layout. It was a restaurant where it would not be easy to recognize someone, particularly at his regular table in the rear, and in Shoreham, a few miles west of Brighton, it was less likely he would be spotted by anyone who might have once known him.

She messaged back almost instantly. ‘Sounds good.’

Clearly, she hadn’t yet read or heard the news, unless she was just being discreet. He would tell her later, and then they would celebrate with a glass of Champagne. Or two. Maybe more.

Meanwhile, he had business to attend to.

Three handguns to print, and James Taylor and Dermot Quince Bryson’s deaths to arrange. Bryson had made the mistake — not dissimilar to himself, Paul Anthony reflected — of marrying an utterly ruthless woman and then dumping her in favour of a younger model.

In one of those bizarre — happy — coincidences that no one could have made up, Shannon had reported that Dermot Bryson reached out quite independently, wanting to buy an untraceable 3D printed handgun. Paul Anthony prided himself on his research, he liked to know everything he possibly could about his victims. Dermot Bryson could not have made it easier for him. Loud, misogynist, racist, homophobic, arrogant and massively boastful, he’d made a point, on the first occasion they’d met online, of showing him the £300,000 Richard Mille wristwatch he wore. And only a few minutes into that first meeting Bryson had tried to buy into his business.

It was going to be a real pleasure arranging his accidental death. But one thing Paul Anthony had learned, and something that had become a strict rule, was never to rush a job. When an approach was made to him over the dark web to kill someone in a hurry, he advised them to try elsewhere.

Masterpieces were seldom painted in twenty-four hours. And he prided himself that the tragic accidental deaths of his clients were all masterpieces.

Dermot Bryson’s death would truly be one.

Paul Anthony was going to deploy a method of killing he had first read of in a comic when he had been eight years old — something that had captured his imagination, as well as setting him with a challenge he could not resist.

It was Dermot Bryson’s passion for fast cars that made him the ideal subject — or should that be muse?

Muse.

He liked that word. All his victims were his muses. Oh yes! Barnie had been one. And now James Taylor was on the cards to be another. What was that Agatha Christie novel? And Then There Were None.

Boo hoo.

Fiona’s words yesterday afternoon had been echoing in his mind.

‘You don’t need to think about it, Rufus. You know exactly what you have to do.’

Of the three of them at school, James Taylor had always been the straight bat. Barnie was the wild card — he’d always considered him a harmless loser, until the day he’d turned up at his front door, desperate and threatening blackmail.

He tried to focus, but the spectre of James Taylor descended again, clouding his mood and fogging his thoughts. He tore abstractedly at the skin of his right thumb with his teeth. Fiona had been right yesterday, of course she had been, just as she always was, and that hurt.

He shouldn’t have gone to the funeral. But it had been such fun!

And, thinking it through, he wondered how much danger, actually, could Taylor be? He was a very different character to Barnie. Barnie had been a desperate man. Somehow — and he never thought he would have had the brains — Barnie had tracked him down, just a couple of months ago, through a dealer in classic Porsche cars. A company called Paragon, through which Paul Anthony had bought several of his prized collection in his former life. He had been unable to resist visiting them a year ago, partly to test out his change of appearance — and it had worked. No one, not even the boss, Mark Sumpter, had recognized him.

But, somehow, Barnie had found him through that slender connection. He’d turned up again recently at his Kemp Town apartment one morning, desperate for money and threatening to blackmail him. It turned out that Barnie had been following him for some months and taken a ton of pictures of him, all smugly uploaded to the Cloud.

Barnie would settle, he told Paul Anthony, for £50k, promising that would be the end of it.

But he knew Barnie too well. The man was a weasel and that would never have been the end of it. The only end of it would be the day Barnie was inside a coffin. And, if he was honest with himself, that was part of the reason he had taken the risk of going to his funeral. To see for himself that the little shit was in that box, and wasn’t coming back out.

He’d not expected so many other mourners to be there. Who the fuck was going to mourn that loser, Barnie Wallace? Were most of them, other than Taylor and a handful of close relatives, there for the same reason as him? To celebrate? He was reminded suddenly of the story he’d heard about the funeral of Hollywood legend and tyrant Harry Kohn, the founder of Columbia Pictures: that the reason so many people had turned up was to make sure he was really dead.

Taylor was a different animal.

With Barnie, he knew right away what he wanted — paying off. Barnie was always coming up with money-making schemes at school, none of which worked. But Taylor had never been motivated by money, right back in their early schooldays. He was the decent one of the Three Musketeers, the honourable one, almost the goody-two-shoes. So what on earth was he doing going and interrogating Fiona?

The last time he’d met him, some years ago, he was an easyJet pilot, respectable, married with a young son, seemingly set up for life. They hadn’t seen each other for several years. Jamesy gave him a great eulogy at his funeral. So what was his interest now in digging around into something that was no concern of his?

Because he had recognized him in church?

How?

Maybe Fiona was right.

One thing was certain. There was no way he was going to risk Taylor exposing him. If his old school friend continued to bugger about, asking questions, telling people, like he’d told Fiona, that he’d seen Rufus Rorke at a funeral, he would kill him. James might think they’d once been good friends but the truth was he’d never actually cared that much for him. He’d actually always liked loser Barnie more than Taylor. He’d been almost sorry to have despatched Barnie. He really wouldn’t feel any emotion at all if he had to kill goody-two-shoes Taylor.

One of the tasks he would give to Shannon would be to find out everything she could about him. Strengths and weaknesses. And the best way to kill him — making it appear an accident, of course. In fact, the way James was acting at the moment, making him look stupid to Fiona, killing him would be a pleasure.

He was a private pilot these days. Small planes crashed frequently. Pilot error, mechanical error, whatever. If he got any nosier, it would be goodnight, Jamesy. Wouldn’t be too hard to arrange.

But, in the meantime, Taylor was a sideshow. He needed to focus on the current main event. And suddenly, he felt hungry. The thought of killing Taylor, he realized, had given him an appetite for breakfast.

That had to be a sign.