One of Us Is Dead

79 Sunday 16 October 2022

‘Twenty minutes late, but they’re taxiing now,’ Shannon said, turning up her nose at the smell of cigar smoke. It was particularly strong at the moment. Dense and cloying, and it was annoying her as she sat, perched at Rorke’s desk, barefoot, in a black roll-neck sweater and jeans, two computer screens open in front of her.

Paul Anthony, reclining on the sofa with a cigar, large whisky and his laptop, was concentrating on the image on his screen of the interior of a Pilatus PC-12 aircraft, the type James Taylor flew. He looked up with a frown. ‘Sorry, who’s taxiing?’

She shook her head in mock astonishment. ‘Hello? Duh! Julius Caesar? The Queen of Sheba?’

He raised a hand in the air as a signal of recognition. ‘Ah, yes, brilliant!’

‘I know. I am actually more than brilliant. I’m a genius!’

She was rewarded with a pained smile. ‘And so modest with it,’ he mocked.

‘When virtue and modesty enlighten her charms, the lustre of a beautiful woman is brighter than the stars of heaven, and the influence of her power it is in vain to resist.’

She grinned at his reaction. He was frowning. ‘Oscar Wilde also?’

‘A little bit before his time. Akhenaten.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Tutankhamun’s uncle.’

‘You had an affair with him, did you?’

She beamed. ‘Yep, I’m pretty sure I did, in a former life.’ She was on a roll today. She’d hacked the Barbados airport information and found the flight home to London that James Taylor was booked on. Interestingly, with a travelling companion, she’d told Paul. None other than Barnie Wallace’s widow. Which made everything just that little bit more dangerous still. Another dense cloud of smoke engulfed her.

‘That really stinks!’ Shannon said, waving smoke away.

‘My cigar?’

‘Yes, it’s foul.’

‘You’ve never complained before.’

‘Well I’m complaining now.’

He looked at her and she glared back. ‘Seriously, it stinks. It makes everything stink.’

‘I thought you liked it.’

‘There’s a lot of things you thought, that you got wrong, Rufus.’

‘Don’t call me that, it’s a dangerous habit to get into.’

‘Couldn’t you just send a warning to Taylor? I’m really worried about this.’

‘We’ve been through it a dozen times.’

‘Killing the professor, killing the innocent girlfriend in the car and now you’re about to kill James Taylor. And you thought I would be happy. I’ve told you before I didn’t sign up to that. And I didn’t sign up to being killed by passive smoke.’

He put the glass on the table, and the cigar in the ashtray, then jumped up and walked across to her, putting his arms around her. ‘I like that you don’t wear perfume,’ he murmured, seductively, in her ear. ‘Fiona always smelled like she had been dunked in the stuff.’

Shannon shook him away. ‘I’m concentrating.’

He peered at the screens. The right-hand one showed the interior of the cabin of a Boeing 777. Two seats were highlighted in red.

‘Is that them, all cosied up in Business?’

The left screen showed a flight path across the Atlantic from Barbados to London.

‘They’re due to land at 0641 tomorrow,’ she said. ‘But that’s subject to congestion at Heathrow — early morning’s the busiest time for inbound flights. Once we know the plane has landed I can calculate the time he’ll arrive back at his Worthing flat and get across there. He’s got a distinctive car, an old black MGB. I can cycle over there and hang around in the car park. I’ll follow him out, get in the lift with him, and’ — she held up a small piece of black electronic kit — ‘have sucked everything out of his phone by the time we get to his floor.’

‘I like your planning,’ he said.

‘I don’t like yours. And if you want to smoke any more of that stogie, do it outside.’

‘I’m meant to be invisible.’

She looked up at him and, suddenly, she saw something pathetic in him. He was for a moment like a whining schoolboy. ‘So take the dog for a walk and smoke all you like out there. It’s dark, no one’s going to see you.’

‘This isn’t the time for an argument, Shannon.’

‘You’re dead right. So we’re not going to argue. You’re taking the dog out. End of.’

Looking at her, as if unsure what to make of her mood, he drank a slug of the whisky, jammed the cigar in his mouth, grabbed his coat and Montmorency’s lead and stepped warily out into the darkness.