*
For all that I found killing Lee to be the most painstaking of the lot, the aftermath was delightful. If the waiting around in posh bars and enduring the sight of naked strangers degrading themselves was a trial, the newspaper coverage of his death more than made up for it. News broke on Monday morning, just as I headed into work. ‘Tycoon’s brother dies in sex game gone wrong’ splashed the Daily Mail. ‘Kinky Artemis found dead in sex dungeon’ was the Mirror’s preferred angle. Even the Guardian couldn’t resist, though their headline needed work. ‘Businessman’s brother dies in accident’ buried the lede a little I thought. Still, I appreciated the word accident, which all the papers seemed to emphasise. Quick work from the Artemis family PR there, calling it a tragic accident and vainly attempting to muddy the waters as to why this billionaire’s brother was found dead at a sex club in Mile End. ‘It’s so inexplicable,’ said one unnamed family friend, ‘Lee was a happily married man and loved nothing more than weekends in the countryside with close friends. I can only imagine that he was still grieving the devastating death of his son Andrew. We can never know what such a loss can do to a person.’ Nicely done, I thought. You can’t say anything too critical once someone has invoked a dead kid, can you?
The media coverage trundled on for a few days, but the family machine was in gear, shutting down anyone likely to speak, and the coroner’s report didn’t give them much else to go on. I did feel a pang of regret for not dressing up the scene a little more. An orange in the mouth, or a choice pair of stilettos would’ve given the press a few more inches of coverage, but I’d let sense prevail on balance. No need to get cocky with it. I wanted him dead, and I wanted him dead in a way that would be hastily glossed over. I found myself thinking of Lara a lot over the next few weeks. I wondered whether she was secretly, or perhaps not so secretly, relieved. The loss of her son would have been immense. But the loss of a philandering manchild husband who treated her callously for decades probably felt like a gift. Perhaps now she could detach herself fully from the Artemis family and fulfil the potential she had before she came into contact with them all. I was imagining a future for her, which was strange for me, given that she was still on my list. But the more I turned it over in my mind, the more I lost any heart for it. In many ways, she seemed like as much of a victim as my mother, her life swallowed up by a selfish and thoughtless man who cared little for her happiness if it didn’t involve his own. And more practically, there would doubtless be an iron-clad prenup involved, exempting her from any claim to Simon’s fortune, which meant that I wouldn’t have to worry too much about losing out on my final bonus.
My decision was made on the day of the funeral, a private affair which ended up being a total free-for-all, with minor celebrities, a few fashion faces, and a host of burly businessmen all turning up to the Church of St Peter in Kensington to be seen paying their respects. I don’t know how much respect there actually was in the congregation, but that wasn’t the point for these people. I’d read about it in the morning paper, had taken a long lunch break – saying I had a dentist appointment – and hopped on the Tube to see whether I’d be able to get in. It was too easy really, the silent men in black polo-necks standing outside with earpieces didn’t question a young woman smartly dressed in black who walked in with purpose behind a woman wearing a full fur coat and diamonds that even Joan Collins would’ve found gaudy.
I sat at the back, of course, and studied the programme with my head bowed as the guests poured in. From time to time I looked around, spotting Janine and Bryony at the front. Bryony was looking at her phone as surreptitiously as possible, while Janine talked to a grey-haired man wearing a blue pinstripe suit to her left. When she turned around and saw what her daughter was doing, she grabbed the phone off her and put it in her bag, saying something to Bryony, her mouth pursed hard. Janine was magnificent. Her hair was blow-dried so perfectly that it barely moved as she turned her head, the glossy caramel highlights tucked behind ears which held enormous emerald gobstoppers. She was wearing a cream silk blouse, which I couldn’t see enough of to judge, and her nails were painted a deep red. The money she spent was on full display, in a way that she evidently thought was subtle yet unmissable. But her clothes only told one part of the story. Even from the back of the church, I could see the work of the surgeon’s knife all over her face. The nose-job was OK, a procedure done many years ago when the gold standard was to remove any suggestion of character and leave just a girlish tip. But there was nothing else subtle here, her skin was pulled taut over the cheekbones, which made her eyes look small and angry. Her mouth had been puffed up so that it was always slightly open. And her skin had a waxy sheen, as though she were wearing a mask of her face over her face. The whole effect was to make her look grotesque. A face which only looked normal if everyone else you knew also looked like that. So I guess living in Monaco worked well for Janine. But under the light streaming in through the lovely ancient windows in the church, she just looked faintly frightening.