Vintage Crime

by Martin Edwards

  “He not here for hours. Now is safe.”

  I nodded, meaning it as thanks. Then I took the stairs to the fifth floor, and the General’s suite.

  The hallway was empty, Rubello’s guards nowhere in sight. As Maria had said, they watched his back and not his rooms. I knocked on the door. No answer. If there had been, I’d have fainted on the spot. I looked over my shoulder to see the top of Maria’s head, a few stairs down the well, then used skeleton keys to open the door, my heart pounding louder than any overhead fan. The room was cool. It faced the bay, and the balcony doors were open, the curtains fluffing in the breeze. Noises drifted upwards: gossip from the bar, and distant music.

  I stepped to the phone, but could not unscrew the mouthpiece.

  It was something from a dream – the gate that comes no closer, no matter how fast you run; the corridor that stretches endlessly ahead. No matter how hard I twisted, the mouthpiece remained immovable. Downstairs, disassembling the phone had been the work of seconds; here, it felt like one of Hercules’ tasks. From the patio, conversation drifted: I heard laughter and singing. The laughter might have been aimed at me.

  But I had hours. There was surely somewhere else I could place the transmitter. The trouble was, I had been given no alternative instructions; no standby location. The bug was small, but not invisible. I could fix it beneath a table, but it might be found by a maid other than Maria. And would not overhear both sides of a telephone conversation.

  After what can’t have been more than ten minutes, but felt as many weeks, I cursed my luck and gave up. But there were still the General’s papers to look for. I was halfway to the desk when I heard voices from the hallway. I think my heart stopped at that moment. Before it could start again, I did the only sensible thing of my life. I dropped the transmitter on the floor, and with my foot nudged it under the bed.

  The door opened.

  This is my report. I have covered the background. There are things that happened you do not need to know.

  Up close, the General is uglier than he appears in photographs. His face is pockmarked and cratered; ruined by adolescent inflammation. When he speaks, it is at a higher pitch than might be expected.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “The door was unlocked,” I stammered.

  “No. My door is always locked. Did Maria let you in?”

  He knew about Maria.

  I shook my head. Nodded. Shook my head.

  “So. You come for a favour, yes?”

  I had no other answer. “Yes.”

  “You are tourist. For my people, I do many favours. What favour can I do a tourist?”

  “I am a writer,” I said. “A journalist.”

  “You have no press card. You are not registered as journalist. Your visa, it says tourist.”

  I nodded again, dumbly.

  “I notice you in lobby, you see. I ask about your papers.”

  “I plan to become a journalist,” I amended. “I hope to sell a story soon.”

  “But you do not belong to newspaper.”

  “No,” I said.

  “I see.” He considered the matter. “They call this word freelance?”

  It was a glimmer of light in the darkest of rooms. I groped towards it. “That’s what they call it, yes. Freelance. I hope to write a story and sell it to a newspaper. And then I will be a journalist.”

  “I see. And so you come to my room.”

  “I…I was hoping for an interview.”

  “We have many journalists here. Many stay at this hotel. You want interview? I give interview every week.”

  I said, “You give the same interview every week.”

  He smiled at that.

  “I was hoping for something a little more…”

  My mouth was dry. Vocabulary failed me. This man had tortured prisoners to death.

  He said, “Something little more private.”

  “…Yes.”

  “Something little more intimate.”

  “…Yes.”

  “So you become famous journalist. First to interview man who will be next President of little island paradise.”

  I said, “Yes.”

  He nodded. He unbuttoned his jacket. Through the window behind me, laughter and song drifted.

  “So,” he said. “I do you this favour. What you do in return?”

  Without waiting for a reply, he picked up the phone I had been unable to master. “No calls,” he said.

  Some men use sex as power. I don’t need to tell you that.

  Perhaps the worst of it was, I could not pretend to be there against my will. If the General knew I was a spy, he wouldn’t waste time on a trial. He would have put a bullet in my head, and had me carted through the lobby in a basket. When your men loot villages on your word, the disposal of a body is a domestic trifle. His type or not.

  And besides, besides, besides – even if my wants had aligned with his, he was not the man I would have chosen to enjoy them with. He takes his pleasures as roughly as he treats the island he would rule. He expects his commands to be fulfilled instantly. And there is no apparent limit to the degradation he inflicts.

  Sometimes I see them leaving in the morning. They look as if daylight will strike them dead.

  That night, as we both know, Chief of Police Andrea Nabar seized power in a bloodless coup. No shooting, no explosions – a polite signing over of power by a dimwit long stupefied by Presidential responsibility. I stumbled from Rubello’s suite at five; by six, the General was under arrest. His “No calls” was more than a suggestion to the switchboard – long practice had established it as code for total privacy. The armed guards on the stairwell brooked no interruption. The first inkling they had of regime change was the new Presidential guard arriving, with heavy artillery.

  And we both know too that what happened to me was deliberate. It was no accident I was chosen for this mission doomed to fail; no accident I was the General’s type. And no accident he returned early from the casino that night. Maria was not simply our asset; she would hardly have been suffered to continue working (indeed, living) if she were. She was also the General’s pander. Intelligence assets, like whores, indulge more than one master. Some while after she glued his telephone’s mouthpiece to its receiver, she had told Rubello I was there. That she had done both on your orders did not interfere with his lusts.

  Rubello was well and truly occupied while the island’s future slipped into his rival’s hands.

  And me? Once able to do so without obvious pain, I took a flight home. To write this, my first and last report.

  What should I have expected, working for a service whose practice is deception?

  May you, and all who work for you, rot in hell.

  The Head of Section laid the report on the desk and paused for a moment. Then she sighed, picked up a pen, and initialled James Daisy’s report.

  And that was all she wrote.

  Biographies

  Robert Barnard (1936–2013) had a distinguished career as an academic before he became a full-time writer. His first crime novel, Death of an Old Goat, was written while he was Professor of English at the University of Tromsø in Norway, the world’s most northerly university. Under the name of Bernard Bastable he also wrote novels featuring Mozart as a detective. He regarded Agatha Christie as his ideal crime writer and published an appreciation of her work, A Talent to Deceive, as well as a book on Dickens and a history of English literature. He received the CWA Diamond Dagger Award in 2003.

  Simon Brett OBE is the author of over one hundred books and many plays for radio and the theatre. He has published four series of detective novels (the Charles Paris, Mrs. Pargeter, Fethering, and Blotto & Twinks mysteries) as well as stand-alone novels such as A Shock to the System, which was adapted into a film with Michael Caine in the lead.

  J
ohn Dickson Carr (1906–77) is widely regarded as the most gifted of all exponents of the locked room mystery. A native of Pennsylvania, he relocated to Britain after marrying an Englishwoman, and pursued a career as a detective novelist with a taste for the baroque. His first great detective, the French examining magistrate Henri Bencolin, was succeeded by Dr. Gideon Fell, a rumbustious character modelled on G.K. Chesterton, whom Carr much admired. As Carter Dickson, he wrote primarily about Sir Henry Merrivale, a baronet and barrister who shared Fell’s penchant for solving baffling impossible crimes. Carr also created Colonel March, and a television series, Colonel March of Scotland Yard, ran from 1955-56, with Boris Karloff cast as March.

  Liza Cody is an artist trained at the Royal Academy Schools of Art as well as a crime novelist. Dupe, her first novel, won the John Creasey Memorial Dagger, and launched a series about the female private investigator Anna Lee, which was televised with Imogen Stubbs in the lead role. She has also published the Bucket Nut Trilogy featuring professional wrestler Eva Wylie, as well as stand-alone novels such as Rift, Gimme More, Ballad of a Dead Nobody, and Miss Terry. She has won a CWA Silver Dagger, an Anthony award, and a Marlowe in Germany.

  Mat Coward writes crime fiction, SF, humour and children’s fiction. He is also the gardening columnist on the Morning Star newspaper. His short stories have been nominated for the Edgar and shortlisted for the Dagger, published on four continents, translated into several languages, and broadcast on BBC Radio. Over the years he has also published novels, books about radio comedy, and collections of funny press cuttings, and written columns for dozens of magazines and newspapers.

  Marjorie Eccles is the author of a series of thirteen contemporary novels about Inspector Gil Mayo; the stories were adapted for television by the BBC in 2006 with the actor and impressionist Alistair McGowan cast as Mayo. A prolific short story writer, she has won the Agatha award, and currently writes crime novels set in the first half of the twentieth century.

  Martin Edwards is the latest recipient of the CWA Diamond Dagger. His new novel, Mortmain Hall, is a sequel to Gallows Court, which was both shortlisted for the 2019 eDunnit award for best crime novel, and longlisted for the CWA Sapere Books Historical Dagger. He was honoured with the CWA Dagger in the Library for his body of work and has received the Edgar, Agatha, H.R.F. Keating and Poirot awards, two Macavity awards, the CWA Margery Allingham Short Story Prize, and the CWA Short Story Dagger. He is consultant to the British Library’s Crime Classics, a former chair of the CWA, and current President of the Detection Club.

  Kate Ellis’s first novel, The Merchant House, launched the long-running DI Wesley Peterson series set in Devon. She has also written five crime novels featuring another cop, Joe Plantagenet, set in a fictionalised version of York, and a trilogy set in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, as well as many short stories. She won the CWA Dagger in the Library in 2019. The Devil’s Priest is a stand-alone historical mystery set in Liverpool.

  Anthea Fraser’s first professional publications were short stories. Her first novel was published in 1970, and she wrote books with paranormal themes and romantic suspense stories before turning to crime fiction. She has created two mystery novel series, the first featuring DCI David Webb, and the second featuring Rona Parish, a biographer and journalist. She has also published novels under the pseudonym Vanessa Graham.

  Celia Fremlin (1914–2009) was born in Kent and educated at Berkhamsted School for Girls and Somerville College, Oxford, where she read classics and philosophy. During the Second World War she worked for the Mass Observation project, an experience that resulted in her first published book, War Factory, which recorded the experiences and attitudes of women war workers in a radar equipment factory outside Malmesbury, Wiltshire. Her first published novel of suspense was The Hours Before Dawn, which won the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe award for best crime novel in 1960. Over the next 35 years she published a further eighteen titles, including three collections of stories.

  Frances Fyfield worked as a solicitor for the Crown Prosecution Service, thus ‘learning a bit about murder at second hand’. Later, writing became her vocation, although the law and its ramifications have influenced many of her novels. Her Helen West books have been adapted for television, and she is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4. Her non-series novel Blood from Stone won the CWA Gold Dagger.

  Michael Gilbert (1912–2006) received the CWA Diamond Dagger in 1994 and was made a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. His experience as a prisoner of war in Italy provided background material for Death in Captivity, one of the finest British “impossible crime” stories of the post-war era, and filmed as Danger Within. By the time of its appearance, Gilbert was well-established as a partner in a prestigious law firm, and had also made a name for himself as an author of considerable talent. His urbanity is reflected in the smooth, readable prose of his whodunits, thrillers, spy stories, legal mysteries, and police stories. He was equally adept at writing novels, stage plays, radio plays, and television scripts.

  Paula Gosling is American, but moved to England in the 1960s. A former copywriter, she received the John Creasey Memorial Dagger for her debut, A Running Duck (which has been filmed twice, once as Cobra, starring Sylvester Stallone), and the Gold Dagger for her first Jack Stryker novel, Monkey Puzzle. She is also the author of the Luke Abbott and Blackwater Bay series, and of several stand-alones.

  Lesley Grant-Adamson gave up her job as a feature writer on the Guardian to write fiction. Her first novel, Patterns in the Dust, was shortlisted for the CWA’s John Creasey Memorial Dagger for first crime novels. Like several of her early novels, it featured newspaper folk and their ailing industry. She has written further crime novels of various types, and her wide experience of writing crime fiction led to a commission for a book in the Teach Yourself series, Writing Crime and Suspense Fiction, subsequently updated as Writing Crime Fiction.

  Mick Herron is a novelist and short story writer whose books include the Sarah Tucker/Zoë Boehm series and the stand-alone novel Reconstruction. He is the author of the acclaimed Jackson Lamb series, the second of which, Dead Lions, won the Gold Dagger. His novels have regularly appeared on award shortlists and Spook Street won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Last Laugh Award.

  H.R.F. Keating (1926–2011) published five stand-alone novels before introducing the Indian policeman Inspector Ghote in The Perfect Murder, which won the Gold Dagger. The Ghote series continued for over forty years. Another novel set in India, The Murder of the Maharajah, also won the Gold Dagger, and Keating received the Diamond Dagger in 1996 in recognition of his lifetime achievements in the genre. He was also a leading critic and commentator, whose books include Writing Crime Fiction and studies of Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes.

  Bill Knox (1928–99) was a Scottish author, journalist and broadcaster, best known for his crime novels and for presenting the long-running STV series Crimedesk. He began writing crime novels in the 1950s and often wrote under pen-names such as Michael Kirk, Robert MacLeod and Noah Webster, especially for the American market. He published over fifty crime novels, notably the Thane and Moss series. His final novel, The Lazarus Widow, was unfinished at the time of his death, and was completed by Martin Edwards.

  Michael Zinn Lewin is an American-born author perhaps best known for his series about the private detective Albert Samson, based in Indianapolis. Lewin himself grew up in Indianapolis, but has lived in England for more than forty years. Much of his fiction continues to be set in Indianapolis, including a secondary series about the cop Leroy Powder. A series set in Bath, England, features the Lunghis, who run their detective agency as a family business.

  Peter Lovesey had already published a successful book about athletics when he won a competition with his first crime fiction novel, Wobble to Death, which launched a series about the Victorian detective Sergeant Cribb. Since then, his many books and short stories have won or bee
n shortlisted for nearly all the major prizes in the international crime writing world. He was awarded the CWA Diamond Dagger in 2000 and is also a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America.

  Susan Moody’s first crime novel, Penny Black, was published in 1984, the first in a series of seven books featuring amateur sleuth Penny Wanawake. She has written a number of suspense thrillers, and in 1993 introduced a series of crime novels with a new central character, Cassandra Swann. Misselthwaite was shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists’ Association Award in ١٩٩٥, while The Colour of Hope, the story of a family struggling to cope with the loss of their daughter in a boating accident, was written under the name Susan Madison, as is her most recent title, Touching the Sky.

  Julian Symons (1912–94) was an eminent crime writer and critic of the genre as well as a biographer, poet, editor, and social and military historian. His early detective novels were relatively orthodox, but he soon became dissatisfied with the conventions of the classic form and began in the early 1950s to develop the British psychological crime novel. He received the Gold Dagger for The Colour of Murder and an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for The Progress of a Crime. In 1990 he received the CWA Diamond Dagger in recognition of his outstanding career in the genre, and he was also a Grand Master of the MWA. He wrote an influential history of the genre, Bloody Murder.

  Andrew Taylor’s crime novels include a series about William Dougal, starting with Caroline Miniscule, which won the John Creasey Memorial Dagger, the Roth Trilogy, which was televised as Fallen Angel, the Lydmouth series, stand-alone novels such as The American Boy, and much else besides. He has won the Historical Dagger three times and in 2009 won the Diamond Dagger, as well as earning awards in Sweden and the US.

  Sources

  Money is Honey by Michael Gilbert