Stranded

by Val McDermid

  By the time I got out, things had changed. The banks and building societies had wised up and sharpened up their act and the only people trying to rob them were amateurs and fucking eejits.

  Luckily, I’d met Tommy inside. Honest to God, it was like it was written in the fucking stars. I knew all about robbing and burgling, and Tommy knew all there was to know about antiques. What he also knew was that half the museums and stately homes of England – not to mention our neighbours in Europe – had alarm systems that were an embarrassment.

  I put together a dream team, and Tommy set up the fencing operation, and we were in business. We raped so many private collections I lost count. The MO was simple. We’d spend the summer on research trips. We’d case each place once. Then we’d go back three weeks later to case it again, leaving enough time for the security vids to be wiped of our previous visit. We’d figure out the weak points and draw up the plans. Then we’d wait till the winter, when most of them were closed up for the season, with nothing more than a skeleton staff.

  We’d pick a cold, wet, miserable night, preferably with a bit of wind. That way, any noise we made got swallowed up in the weather. Then we’d go in, seven-pound sledges straight through the vulnerable door or window, straight to the cabinets that held the stuff we’d identified as worth nicking. Here’s a tip, by the way. Even if they’ve got toughened glass in the cases, chances are it’s still only got a wooden frame. Smack that on the corner with a three-pound club hammer and the whole thing falls to bits and you’re in.

  Mostly, we were off the estate and miles away before the local bizzies even rolled up. Nobody ever got hurt, except in the pocket.

  They were the best years of my life. Better than sex, that moment when you’re in, you do the business and you’re out again. The rush is purer than you’ll ever get from any drug. Not that I know about that from personal experience, because I’ve never done drugs and I never will. I hate drug dealers more than I hate coppers. I’ve removed my fair share of them from my patch over the years. Now they know not to come peddling their shit on my streets. But a couple of the guys I work with, they like their Charlie or whizz when they’re not working, and they swear that they’ve never had a high like they get when they’re doing the business.

  We did some crackers. A museum in France where they’d spent two million quid on their state-of-the-art security system. They had a grand opening do where they were shouting their mouths off about how their museum was burglarproof. We did it that very night. We rigged up pulleys from the building across the street, wound ourselves across like we were the SAS and went straight in through the skylight. They said we got away with stuff worth half a million quid. Not that we made anything like that off it. I think I cleared fifteen-K that night, after expenses. Still, who dares wins, eh?

  We only ever took stuff we already knew we had a market for. Well, mostly. One time, I fell in love with this Rembrandt. I just loved that picture. It was a selfportrait, and just looking at it, you knew the geezer like he was one of your mates. It was hanging on this Duke’s wall, right next to the cases of silver we’d earmarked. On the night, on the spur of the moment, I lifted the Rembrandt an’ all.

  Tommy went fucking ape. He said we’d never shift that, that we’d never find a buyer. I told him I didn’t give a shit, it wasn’t for sale anyway. He thought I’d completely lost the plot when I said I was taking it home.

  I had it on the bedroom wall for six months. But it wasn’t right. A council house in Wythenshawe just doesn’t go with a Rembrandt. So one night, I wrapped it up in a tarpaulin and left it in a field next to the Duke’s gaff. I rang the local radio station phone-in from a call box and told them where they could find the Rembrandt. I hated giving it up, mind you, and I wouldn’t have done if I’d have had a nicer house.

  But that’s not the sort of tale you can tell a personnel manager, is it?

  ‘And why are you seeking a change of employment, Mr Finnieston?’

  Well, it’s down to Kim, innit?

  I’ve known Kimmy since we were at school together. She was a looker then, and time hasn’t taken that away from her. I always fancied her, but never got round to asking her out. By the time I was back in circulation after my first stretch, she’d taken up with Danny McGann, and before I worked up the bottle to make a move, bingo, they were married.

  I ran into her again about a year ago. She was on a girls’ night out in Rothwell’s, a gaggle of daft women acting like they were still teenagers. Just seeing her made me feel like a teenager an’ all. I sent a bottle of champagne over to their table, and of course Kimmy came over to thank me for it. She always had good manners.

  Any road, it turned out her and Danny weren’t exactly happy families any more. He was working away a lot, leaving her with the two girls, which wasn’t exactly a piece of cake. Mind you, she’s done well for herself. She’s got a really good job, managing a travel agency. A lot of responsibility and a lot of respect from her bosses. We started seeing each other, and I felt like I’d come up on the lottery.

  The only drawback is that after a few months, she tells me she can’t be doing with the villainy. She’s got a proposition for me. If I go straight, she’ll kick Danny into touch and move in with me.

  So that’s why I’m trying to figure out a way to make an honest living. You can see that convincing a bunch of suits they should give me a job would be difficult. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Finnieston, but I’m afraid you don’t quite fit our present requirements.’

  The only way anybody’s ever going to give me a job is if I monster them into it, and somehow I don’t think the straight world works like that. You can’t go around personnel offices saying, ‘I know where you live. So gizza job or the Labrador gets it.’

  This is where I’m up to when I meet my mate Chrissie for a drink. You wouldn’t think it to look at her, but Chrissie writes them hardasnails cop dramas for the telly. She looks more like one of them bleeding-heart social workers, with her wholemeal jumpers and jeans. But Chrissie’s dead sound, her and her girlfriend both. The girlfriend’s a brief, but in spite of that, she’s straight. That’s probably because she doesn’t do criminal stuff, just divorces and child custody and all that bollocks.

  So I’m having a pint with Chrissie in one of them trendy bars in Chorlton, all wooden floors and hard chairs and fifty different beers, none of them ones you’ve ever heard of except Guinness. And I’m telling her about my little problem. Halfway down the second pint, she gets that look in her eyes, the dreamy one that tells me something I’ve said has set the wheels in motion inside her head. Usually, I see the results six months later on the telly. I love that. Sitting down with Kimmy and going, ‘See that? I told Chrissie about that scam. Course, she’s softened it up a bit, but it’s my tale.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Chrissie says.

  ‘What? You’re going to write a series about some poor fucker trying to go straight?’ I say.

  ‘No, a job. Well, sort of a job.’ She knocks back the rest of her pint and grabs her coat. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll get back to you. Stay lucky.’ And she’s off, leaving me surrounded by the wellmeaning like the last covered wagon hemmed in by the Apaches.

  A week goes by, with me trying to talk my way into setting up a little business doing one-day hall sales. But everybody I approach thinks I’m up to something. They can’t believe I want to do anything the straight way, so all I get offered is fifty kinds of bent gear. I am sick as a pig by the time I get the call from Chrissie.

  This time, we meet round her house. Me, Chrissie and the girlfriend, Sarah the solicitor. We settled down with our bottles of Belgian pop and Sarah kicks off. ‘How would you like to work on a freelance basis for a consortium of solicitors?’ she asks.

  I can’t help myself. I just burst out laughing. ‘Do what?’ I go.

  ‘Just hear me out. I spend a lot of my time dealing with w
omen who are being screwed over by the men in their life. Some of them have been battered, some of them have been emotionally abused, some of them are being harassed by their exes. Sometimes, it’s just that they’re trying to get a square deal for themselves and their kids, only the bloke knows how to play the system and they end up with nothing while he laughs all the way to the bank. For most of these women, the law either can’t sort it out or it won’t. I even had a case where two coppers called to a domestic gave evidence in court against the woman, saying she was completely out of control and irrational and all the bloke was doing was exerting reasonable force to protect himself.’

  ‘Bastards,’ I say. ‘So what’s this got to do with me?’

  ‘People doing my job get really frustrated,’ Sarah says. ‘There’s a bunch of us get together for a drink now and again, and we’ve been talking for a long time about how we’ve stopped believing the law has all the answers. Most of these blokes are bullies and cowards. Their women wouldn’t see them for dust if they had anybody to stand up for them. So what we’re proposing is that we’d pay you to sort these bastards out.’

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. A brief offering me readies to go round and heavy the kind of toerags I’d gladly sort out as a favour? There has to be a catch. ‘You’re not telling me the Legal Aid would pay for that, are you?’ I say.

  Sarah grins. ‘Behave, Terry. I’m talking a strictly unofficial arrangement. I thought you could go and explain the error of their ways to these blokes. Introduce them to your baseball bat. Tell them if they don’t behave, you’ll be visiting them again in a less friendly mode. Tell them that they’ll be getting a bill for incidental legal expenses incurred on their partners’ behalf and if they don’t come up with the cash pronto monto, you’ll be coming round to make a collection. I’m sure they’ll respond very positively to your approaches.’

  ‘You want me to go round and teach them a lesson?’ I’m still convinced this is a wind-up.

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘And you’ll pay me?’

  ‘We thought a basic rate of two hundred and fifty pounds a job. Plus bonuses in cases where the divorce settlement proved suitably substantial. A bit like a lawyer’s contingency fee. No win, no fee.’

  I can’t quite get my head round this idea. ‘So it would work how? You’d bell me and tell me where to do the business?’

  Sarah shakes her head. ‘It would all go through Chrissie. She’ll give you the details, then she’ll bill the legal firms for miscellaneous services, and pass the fees on to you. After this meeting, we’ll never talk about this again face to face. And you’ll never have contact with the solicitors you’d be acting for. Chrissie’s the cut-out on both sides.’

  ‘What do you think, Tel?’ Chrissie asks, eager as a virgin in the back seat.

  ‘You could tell Kimmy you were doing process serving,’ Sarah chips in.

  That’s the clincher. So I say OK.

  That was six months ago. Now I’m on Chrissie’s books as her research assistant. I pay tax and National Insurance, which was a bit of a facer for the social security, who could not get their heads round the idea of me as a proper citizen. I do two or three jobs a week, and everything’s sweet. Sarah’s sorting out Kimmy’s divorce, and we’re getting married as soon as all that’s sorted.

  I tell you, this is the life. I’m doing the right thing and I get paid for it. If I’d known going straight could be this much fun, I’d have done it years ago.

  A Wife in a Million

  The woman strolled through the supermarket, choosing a few items for her basket. As she reached the display of sauces and pickles, a muscle in her jaw tightened. She looked around, willing herself to appear casual. No one watched. Swiftly she took a jar of tomato pickle from her large leather handbag and placed it on the shelf. She moved on to the frozen meat section.

  A few minutes later, she passed down the same aisle and paused. She repeated the exercise, this time adding two more jars to the shelf. As she walked on to the checkout, she felt tension slide from her body, leaving her light-headed.

  She stood in the queue, anonymous among the morning shoppers, another neat woman in a well-cut winter coat, a faint smile on her face and a strangely unfocused look in her pale blue eyes.

  Sarah Graham was sprawled on the sofa reading the Situations Vacant in the Burnalder Evening News when she heard the car pull up the drive. Sighing, she dropped the paper and went through to the kitchen. By the time she had pulled the cork from a bottle of elderflower wine and poured two glasses, the front door had opened and closed. Sarah stood, glasses in hand, facing the kitchen door.

  Detective Sergeant Maggie Staniforth came into the kitchen, took the proffered glass and kissed Sarah perfunctorily. She walked into the living-room and slumped in a chair, calling over her shoulder, ‘And what kind of day have you had?’

  Sarah followed her through and shrugged. ‘Another shitty day in paradise. You don’t want to hear my catalogue of boredom.’

  ‘You never bore me. And besides, it does me good to be reminded that there’s a life outside crime.’

  ‘I got up about nine, by which time you’d probably arrested half a dozen villains. I whizzed through the Guardian job ads, and went down the library to check out the other papers. After lunch I cleaned the bedroom, did a bit of ironing and polished the dining-room furniture. Then down to the newsagent’s for the evening paper. A thrill a minute. And you? Solved the crime of the century?’

  Maggie winced. ‘Nothing so exciting. Bit of breaking and entering, bit of paperwork on the rape case at the blues club. It’s due in court next week.’

  ‘At least you get paid for it.’

  ‘Something will come up soon, love.’

  ‘And meanwhile I go on being your kept woman.’

  Maggie said nothing. There was nothing to say. The two of them had been together since they fell head over heels in love at university eleven years before. Things had been fine while they were both concentrating on climbing their career ladders. But Sarah’s career in personnel management had hit a brick wall when the company that employed her had collapsed nine months previously. That crisis had opened a wound in their relationship that was rapidly festering. Now Maggie was often afraid to speak for fear of provoking another bitter exchange. She drank her wine in silence.

  ‘No titbits to amuse me, then?’ Sarah demanded. ‘No funny little tales from the underbelly?’

  ‘One that might interest you,’ Maggie said tentatively. ‘Notice a story in the News last night about a woman taken to the General with suspected food poisoning?’

  ‘I saw it. I read every inch of that paper. It fills an hour.’

  ‘Well, she’s died. The news came in just as I was leaving. And there have apparently been another two families affected. The funny thing is that there doesn’t seem to be a common source. Jim Bryant from casualty was telling me about it.’

  Sarah pulled a face. ‘Sure you can face my spaghetti carbonara tonight?’

  The telephone cut across Maggie’s smile. She quickly crossed the room and picked it up on the third ring. ‘DS Staniforth speaking . . . Hi, Bill.’ She listened intently. ‘Good God!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ll be with you in ten minutes. OK?’ She stood holding the phone. ‘Sarah . . . that woman we were just talking about. It wasn’t food poisoning. It was a massive dose of arsenic and two of the other socalled food poisoning cases have died. They suspect arsenic there too. I’ve got to go and meet Bill at the hospital.’

  ‘You’d better get a move on, then. Shall I save you some food?’

  ‘No point. And don’t wait up, I’ll be late.’ Maggie crossed to Sarah and gave her a brief hug. She hurried out of the room. Seconds later, the front door slammed.

  The fluorescent strips made the kitchen look bright but cold. The woman opened one of the fitted cu
pboards and took a jar of greyishwhite powder from the very back of the shelf.

  She picked up a filleting knife whose edge was honed to a wicked sharpness. She slid it delicately under the flap of a cardboard pack of blancmange powder. She did the same to five other packets. Then she carefully opened the inner paper envelopes. Into each she mixed a tablespoonful of the powder from the jar.

  Under the light, the grey strands in her auburn hair glinted. Painstakingly, she folded the inner packets closed again and with a drop of glue she resealed the cardboard packages. She put them all in a shopping bag and carried it into the rear porch.

  She replaced the jar in the cupboard and went through to the living-room where the television blared. She looked strangely triumphant.

  It was after three when Maggie Staniforth closed the front door behind her. As she hung up her sheepskin, she noticed lines of strain round her eyes in the hall mirror. Sarah appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘I know you’re probably too tired to feel hungry, but I’ve made some soup if you want it,’ she said.

  ‘You shouldn’t have stayed up. It’s late.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing else to do. After all, there’s plenty of opportunity for me to catch up on my sleep.’

  Please God, not now, thought Maggie. As if the job isn’t hard enough without coming home to hassles from Sarah.