Dead at First Sight Read online

  ‘A good question,’ the headmaster replied. ‘It isn’t, it’s a democracy.’ He looked bemused. ‘I suspect Bruno is too young to understand the difference.’

  Grace reflected for a while, saying nothing. He just hoped Ted Hartwell was right.

  He wasn’t sure.

  18

  Wednesday 26 September

  Roy Grace and Cleo stopped for a meal at a country pub and restaurant on their way home, the Ginger Fox. Seated at a corner table, he got a gin and tonic and Cleo an elderflower cordial, then they glanced at the menus.

  When they had ordered – a starter of scallops with black pudding for Roy and lentil soup for Cleo, followed by roast cod for him and plaice for Cleo, and a large glass of Albarino for him – they began to discuss what Ted Hartwell had told them about Bruno.

  ‘Is it normal for a ten-year-old to have ambitions to be a dictator?’ Cleo asked him. ‘I mean, did you have ambitions of world domination at his age?’

  A basket of bread arrived. ‘I’m not sure what clear ambitions I had, but certainly not that, no!’

  ‘We know so little about the first ten years of his life, don’t we?’ she said.

  He shrugged, tipping some oil then balsamic into a bowl. ‘Virtually nothing.’ He broke off a piece of bread, dipped it in the bowl and ate it, hungrily. ‘I suppose—’ He shrugged. ‘We haven’t really talked seriously with him. We put him in a nice school and hoped for the best – that he would make friends and settle in. It’s not happening, is it?’

  ‘No.’ She twirled her glass in her hands. ‘I’ve tried to talk to him, but apart from the time he talked to our neighbour about his Porsche, I’ve hardly seen him engage with anyone, let alone people of his own age. He doesn’t seem interested in making friends – when he went to the football with your colleague Jason and Stan, it didn’t go well. We have to sit down and have a heart-to-heart with him. About his issues at school, about food – his likes and dislikes – and about, you know, just everyday life with us. He seems to like Noah and Humphrey, but that’s about all. He’s never had a father – at least from what we know. Maybe you can get through to him?’

  Roy dipped another piece of bread into some olive oil. ‘Sure, I’ll try. I think we need to make a plan. Let’s start with my trying to make a real effort with him. See how that goes?’

  ‘Yep. He’s got your genes in him, Roy. You have good person genes. Maybe you can mine those out of him.’

  Their starters arrived, along with Roy’s glass of wine. He realized, to his surprise, that he had finished his gin and tonic. And by the time they’d eaten their starters, he’d finished his glass of wine also. He ordered another.

  ‘We’ll prove him to be a nice kid,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll do everything I can to work on him – or rather, with him.’

  ‘I know you will.’

  When his second Albarino arrived, they clinked glasses. ‘To Bruno,’ he said. Cleo gave him a strange, hopeful look.

  19

  Wednesday 26 September

  ‘Toby, darling, you really do look quite dishy – for a fifty-eight-year-old, anyhow!’ Paul Sibley ribbed his husband. He was seated at the kitchen table glancing through the images of him that Suzy Driver had found on her internet search and emailed him.

  ‘I can’t believe the bastards made me fifty-eight!’ Toby Seward, wearing his kitchen apron bearing the legend My sausage is on fire!, was keeping a weather eye on the water heating in the saucepan. He took a sip of his glass of wine. ‘Fifty-eight – I mean, how dare they? It’s outrageous, they’ve added ten years to my age!’

  ‘Eleven, darling, actually – Norbert!’

  ‘Yep, well, my birthday’s next week so it will be then, Mr Pedantic.’

  Paul poured himself another glass of wine from the bottle in the fridge and lit a cigarette. ‘I do have to say, you look pretty good for your age.’

  ‘Not funny!’

  Paul clicked on the keyboard to bring up the profile photograph of Suzy Driver from the dating site. He studied the fifty-five-year-old for a few moments. ‘Not bad, not bad at all for her age. Nice hair, attractive face! You know, I really ought to be jealous. All these lovely ladies fawning over you, craving your body. Eleven of them, no less.’ He sighed. ‘Well, I’ve got to admit they all have something in common!’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘They have good taste.’

  Toby blew him a kiss.

  As steam started to rise from the pan, Toby’s phone pinged with a text. Almost simultaneously, the laptop pinged, signalling an email. The text was from Suzy Driver.

  Sent it!

  He took the pan off the heat, hurried to the table and clicked to open the attachment. Both of them watched the screen. An image appeared.

  Toby.

  With his handsome, tanned features and short, salt-and-pepper hair he looked every inch the charmer. Then they heard a cultured, very correct female voice that Toby recognized instantly as Suzy Driver.

  ‘Hello, Norbert, very nice to talk to you face to face, finally!’

  The image of his face became a spider’s web of cracks, then froze. Toby watched, fascinated, as in a staccato voice that was very definitely not his own, with an accent he couldn’t place, the man replied, ‘My darling, you look even more beautiful than in all your photographs. Wow, I must be the luckiest man on the planet!’

  ‘You look very nice, too,’ she replied.

  Animated again, his head moving, his lips formed a smile. Then the screen froze, once more breaking into cracked, jagged segments.

  ‘I apologize, my love. There seems to be a problem with the internet, I’m having to connect through my mobile phone.’

  ‘That’s OK, it’s been nice to meet at last!’

  Paul stabbed the pause button and turned to Toby. ‘This is not your voice – it’s not you speaking.’

  Toby was staring in shock. ‘No, it isn’t.’

  For the next twenty minutes, riveted, they watched the conversation, which became increasingly personal and fruity. Throughout, with the image constantly freezing or fragmenting, there had only been a couple of moments of actual lip-sync. In both, Toby Seward – or rather his avatar – had said, very sincerely, ‘I love you’.

  The same words he had used to the other ten women he was also flirting with, Suzy added in the accompanying text. Except, she explained, he wasn’t a Norwegian geologist. He was a nineteen-year-old student in Ghana. A ‘Sakawa Boy’. She urged Toby to look up ‘Sakawa Boys’ on the internet.

  He googled the name and the two of them spent the next half-hour in complete astonishment.

  ‘Well,’ Paul said. ‘I’ve heard of conmen, but this is like nothing, ever!’

  What they were watching was little short of a university in Ghana for internet scammers. One pupil said, to camera, ‘We are just taking back from the West what belongs to us.’

  The Sakawa students were all from poor, underprivileged backgrounds. Sakawa was a mix of religious juju and modern internet technology. They were taught, in structured classes, the art of online fraud as well as arcane African rituals – which included animal sacrifice – to have a voodoo effect on their victims, ensuring the success of each fraud, of which there was a wide variety.

  The majority involved preying on vulnerable, unsuspecting targets in the Western world, such as those placing lonely-hearts ads, as well as bank scams on the elderly and just about anyone else. The money they were making was beyond what would have once been these young men’s wildest dreams. Now, on the financial and emotional ruins of lives in the Western world, they were buying mansions for their families, the latest designer clothes, and driving around in flash new Range Rovers, BMWs, Mercedes and Ferraris.

  ‘Unbelievable!’ Toby said.

  ‘But can you blame them?’ Paul replied.

  ‘What do you mean? You think it’s OK what they are doing?’

  ‘I do, actually.’ He lit another cigarette.

  ‘How can you say that? It’s outrageous.’

  ‘It’s outrageous how successive European countries raped their nation from the fifteenth century onwards, with England ultimately being the worst offender. This is their payback and good for them!’

  ‘I can’t believe what you’re saying.’

  ‘Read your history, darling.’

  ‘That was governments, not innocent members of the public. How can that possibly justify these horrible scams today?’

  ‘The British Empire spent five hundred years plundering the world. Is it any wonder it’s such a mess today? Get real. I’m actually finding it quite amusing.’

  Toby looked at him. ‘I’m not sure someone who’s just been conned out of their life savings would agree.’

  ‘Mmmm, maybe not. Some of them are quite fit, though,’ his husband said. ‘Maybe we should have a holiday there?’

  ‘Do you want a nice dinner tonight?’ Toby said, then pointed at the saucepan. ‘Or do you want me to tip that over your head?’

  20

  Thursday 27 September

  Electric gates opened in front of the Range Rover. Wrought iron, black, with gold spikes, between two pillars topped with stone acorns. The car drove through and up a long tree-lined avenue of a drive designed to impress. It didn’t impress Tooth.

  The incline increased sharply as they approached a turreted granite mansion in the style of a French chateau. A vista opened up to the left of the Atlantic Ocean and a lighthouse on a rock at the end of a causeway.

  ‘Some view!’ the driver said. ‘Got great views everywhere on this island.’

  Tooth said nothing.

  Mr Barrey, who was his current employer, had summoned him. This was Mr Barrey’s place. Good for him. Mr Barrey was a rich man, with the same kind of taste in showy grandeur as many rich men who had hired him in the past. One day Mr Barrey would have the honour of being one of the richest men in the graveyard of his choice. The showiest mausoleum. Black marble, carved angels and cherubs, that kind of shit. If Mr Barrey annoyed him, he could help speed up that process.

  A shaven-headed bodyguard, all in black, with the physique of a walk-in safe and the charm of a mortuary slab, led them inside, followed by the driver. Tooth didn’t care for the suits of armour in the hallway, nor the fine art on the walls, as he was led through the house.

  Another bodyguard stood outside double doors, with a bulge in the left breast of his collarless jacket where his piece was. Tooth could have taken it off him in seconds, leaving both this one and his driver lying on the floor with broken spines, but he reminded himself that he needed the shitty money this job was paying – and the temporary refuge Mr Barrey had provided for him in Munich.

  The one with the piece spoke to him in a foreign accent he couldn’t place. ‘When I take you inside, you do not look at Mr Barrey. Understand? No one is permitted to look at Mr Barrey. Nor do you look at the men in there with him. You do not look their faces. None of them. Yes?’

  ‘Kind of them to spare me the sight because they’re all so ugly, is that what you’re saying?’ Tooth retorted.

  The man did not react.

  But Tooth was only half jesting. He had done his research on his employer, which had not been hard – it never was. Steve Barrey had a badly disfigured face, despite two decades of regular plastic reconstructive surgery. His press release was that it had happened in a helicopter crash, but Tooth knew the truth. It was a revenge sulphuric acid attack by a Romanian lover who had found him in bed with her best friend.

  ‘So where do I look?’ he questioned.

  ‘At the floor. If you look up, you dead.’

  Tooth bristled. He allowed himself to be frisked by the gorilla guarding the doors, then led through into a room which was dimly lit, with blinds drawn. He heard the doors close behind him. The room smelled of smoke and all he could see, from his peripheral vision, was the tiny red glow of a cigarette in the far distance. He continued looking down, as he was bidden. Anger festered inside him. He thought about lighting up himself, but he needed to keep his hands free.

  ‘So, my disobedient friend, Mr Tooth,’ a man with an English accent said in a voice that was utterly devoid of charm. ‘It is very good to finally meet you.’

  Tooth did not reply.

  The man he presumed was Steve Barrey continued. ‘Mr Tooth, you are not in any position to negotiate terms with me. You know that you cannot return to your home in the Turks and Caicos without being arrested. You cannot return to the United States without either the FBI arresting you or the members of a crime family seizing you for what you did to your last employer there. And you are not exactly flavour of the month with the police in England.’

  ‘But you want me to go there,’ he answered, testily.

  ‘Of course, because you know it so well, Mr Tooth. You are an excellent choice for the task. But first explain to me, why did you disobey my orders and fail to protect Lena Welch and warn off the Ghanaians?’

  ‘I did not disobey your orders,’ he said flatly, attempting to wriggle out of the truth that for the first time in his career he had failed in his mission. ‘I was given wrong information. No one told me Copeland would have his shitbag accomplice, Ogwang, with him. Maybe you should choose your intelligence sources better in future.’

  Barrey roared with laughter. When it subsided, Tooth saw a flare of light. Barrey had lit another cigarette. ‘Of course. You are such a scary man, Mr Tooth. On your next job for me, Mrs Suzy Driver in Brighton, you will protect her from my former partner, Jules de Copeland, and his sidekick, Dunstan Ogwang. That’s all. End of. Do you understand? You protect her in any way you need. But try not to kill these two. With the police there, killing people in England is never a good idea, as I think you have found out previously, no?’

  Tooth risked a glance up. It wasn’t much of a risk, in reality. He had one bodyguard behind him, two in front of him and Mr Barrey behind his desk. He didn’t like being here.

  ‘You are trying to look at me, are you not, Mr Tooth? You are curious to see my face. Do you not know about curiosity and the cat?’

  Tooth felt the tension in the room. All his time as a sniper in the US military, where he’d had to remain hidden for days at a time, had taught him awareness of the slightest movement around him. He could feel the flunkey coming closer behind him. Saw the two in front taking an almost invisible step towards him.

  He did not like that.

  The gorilla was right behind him now and that was really not good. He focused, tuning out everything except his three potential enemies, two in front, one behind. What he was about to do would not endear him to his employer, but he really didn’t care.

  If he had been a scorpion he’d have denied them the pleasure of his company, he thought, by simply exiting the world with a flick of his tail. Instead he had other choices, and only one suited his current mood. He focused hard and fast. One, inches behind him. Two, a couple of yards in front.

  Surprise was an element that had always served him well.

  He arched his neck back, delivering a fierce reverse headbutt to the man’s face, striking him in the nose, hearing the crunch. He sensed him reeling back, giving him enough space to fire out a powerful reverse kick to the man’s liver, which sent him crashing to the floor in spasm. Then for good measure, with a quick glance, he brutally stamped on his head, knocking him unconscious.

  As the two men guarding Barrey advanced towards him, Tooth ducked under a clumsily swung punch and put one guard in a choke hold, using him as a human shield against the punches being thrown by his colleague. As he felt the man he was choking go limp, he dropped him to the floor, leaving him one-on-one with the remaining guard. With clinical precision, Tooth threw out a violent low leg-kick and heard the faintly audible crack of snapping knee ligaments. As the guard fell to the floor, shrieking in pain, Tooth delivered a bludgeoning blow to the temple with his elbow.

  Then, with the three guards out of it, he looked at the shadow of his employer. Or rather, at the shadow of the barrel of the Sig Sauer handgun his employer was holding.

  ‘Nice gun, Mr Barrey,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you shoot me?’

  Barrey said nothing.

  Tooth opened up his arms, presenting his small frame as the biggest target he could make himself into.

  Barrey switched on his desk lamp, turning it towards Tooth, then illuminating the three unconscious men on the floor. ‘What the hell have you done?’

  ‘You want a detailed medical report or just the press release?’

  ‘I would happily shoot you,’ Barrey said. ‘But, for the moment, you are useful to me.’

  ‘I know that. You hired me on my reputation, because you knew I’d get the job done. But your bad intelligence is making everything a lot more complicated than you’d told me. That’s why I feel a renegotiation of terms is due.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You see, Mr Barrey, I don’t care if you shoot me. But I know you won’t because your scuzzy empire is already starting to fall apart at the seams due to your bad choice of business partner. Didn’t your mother – if you have one – ever tell you that you judge a man by his shoes? If you don’t mind me saying, this Copeland guy was a bad choice, man! And, you know, some of your victims are not stupid people. All over the globe they are doing Google searches and rumbling the scams. You don’t want to be found out, with all the millions you are raking in, do you? All those men and women who are salivating over you around the globe. Or over who they think is you or one of your dozens of phoney images. All those alter egos you have, male and female. The twenty-eight-year-old Colombian fashion model. The thirty-seven-year-old blonde sports trainer. The fifty-eight-year-old seismic shipping guy, soon to be a multimillionaire. The sixty-two-year-old former US Marine.’ Tooth lunged forward and twisted the desk lamp until the beam shone directly onto Barrey’s ravaged face.

  Barrey wore a Stetson tipped low. Wisps of fair hair protruded from either side of it. His eyes were bloodshot and his facial skin was all contorted into ridges and troughs, like a partially stretched and deflated balloon. He barely had any lips. His body was large, bordering on obese. He continued holding the gun, but the threat had gone.