Best British Crime 6 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  “Dammit, Sullivan, he even denied the baby was his!”

  “I, er, meant afterwards. The last few years.”

  Oh. “Too busy,” I said, and then, in another burst of unaccustomed frankness (I blame the Chianti), I admitted that no one had ever asked me. “Men aren’t exactly tripping over themselves to put a ring on an unmarried mother’s finger.”

  Instead they think of us as easy, which is why I took up judo and why I make Susan go to classes every Tuesday.

  “What about you?” I asked, calming down over the coffee. “Are you married?”

  “Nope.” He shrugged. “Engaged once, but she didn’t like the hours I kept and married a nine-to-five accountant. Then again.” He grinned. “It might have been because I’m so damned ugly.”

  Not handsome, that’s for sure. Craggy/rugged/lived-in, call it what you will, that face was never going to end up on an advertising poster. But ugly . . .?

  “We’d better go,” he said. “The restaurant is closing.”

  Was it? I hadn’t realized we’d been sitting there so long, and though I can’t remember how we ended up going from trattoria to cinema, I have vague recollections of someone saying something about Cary Grant, which led to the fact that North by Northwest was playing at the Odeon, which in turn led to there being just enough time to catch the matinee before I met my daughter after tap class.

  I knew full well what Sullivan was playing at. Softening me up, winning me over, drawing me into his confidence. It wouldn’t work, I didn’t care. It was the first time I’d been to the pictures in a decade. I’d forgotten what popcorn tasted like. It tasted bloody good.

  * * * *

  October turned to November. Sunshine turned to rain. The nights began to draw in really fast. From time to time, like twice a week, Sullivan would drop by my office to discuss the Belle Vue murder - or at least vent his frustration at the lack of leads and progress - and invariably we’d end up having lunch or taking in a film. Ben-Hur. Rio Bravo. Some Like It Hot with Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe.

  “I just wish I could find a motive,” he would say, spiking his fingers through that dark, unruly mop. “The door was locked, there was no key on the inside, and commercial reps in motor oil can’t break their own necks, that’s for sure.”

  “Not and lock the door afterwards,” I’d agree, and trust me, I did feel sympathy. Needless to say, had I believed that holding back that photograph prevented him from bringing the perpetrator to justice, I’d have mailed it to him - anonymously, of course. Okay, he’d know it was me (even though I’d have denied it with my dying breath), but there was still the possibility, however remote, that someone else had snapped the dead man in that hotel bedroom. But I’d studied that picture over and over. It was just a dead man in a hotel bedroom, end of story.

  “He’d stayed at the Belle Vue several times, that’s the silly part.”

  The first time Sullivan kissed me was during the chariot race in Ben-Hur, and if anyone ever tells you that’s exciting, believe you me, it was nothing compared to the thrill of that kiss. I decided there and then that I liked being softened up, won over, drawn into a policeman’s confidence. Torture me all you like, Officer, I still won’t tell.

  “I guess he made enemies in Brighton -”

  “Motor oil is a dangerous business,” I grinned.

  “But legitimate,” he said. “I checked, and he had genuine appointments in Brighton on every occasion that he stayed at the Belle Vue, even though the company he worked for didn’t spring for their uncompromising rates.”

  That was odd, I thought. Usually reps stayed at fleapits and charged the higher allowance to make a bob or two, not the other way around. I was about to point this out, even though I’m sure Sullivan was way ahead of me, but then he leaned over the table and kissed me full on the mouth and in public, and it went straight out of my head. I had other things to worry about.

  “My daughter has a crush on her road-safety officer,” I said. Lately we’d taken to having lunch on Saturdays, when Susan went to Josie’s. “She thinks he’s handsome, clever, funny, a real scream—”

  “That doesn’t sound like a crush.” The gravel in his throat churned up in laughter. “It sounds to me like she’s found a friend, but in any case, where’s the harm? She’s nine.”

  “Hero worship? Nothing.” I downed half a glass of wine in a single swallow. “Providing she grows out of it.”

  And there it was again, too much damned Chianti, because suddenly I was blurting out my own stupidity at falling in love with an older, married man—

  “Whoa.” His hand covered mine and half the table. “Why do you keep blaming yourself? The bastard knew exactly what he was doing, Lois. He’s the one who preyed on your youth and innocence. He’s the one who led you on, lied to you, and cheated. And Lois, he’s the one who bailed when you got pregnant.”

  I’d never really thought of it like that, any more than I’d imagined Stephen Rolands as a child molester, who ought to be locked up and the damn key thrown away for good. If Sullivan ever got his hands on him, so help him, he said, Rolands would need a bloody plastic surgeon. What odds the bastard was still doing it today?

  “Is he still teaching?”

  “Long Road Secondary Modern, but—”

  “But nothing. You said yourself, you’d only just turned seventeen, but times have changed in ten years, Lois. Rock and roll has taken over, Teddy boys are in, girls are wearing make-up, looking older. I’ll bet you a pound to a penny Rolands is targeting fifteen-year-olds or younger.”

  I wanted to do something, say something, be really grown up about this business of scales dropping from the eyes. Instead I burst into tears.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll stop him,” Sullivan said softly. “He won’t ruin any more lives, you have my word.”

  “It’s not that,” I blubbed. In fact, it wasn’t even the thought of Susan’s father rotting in jail - nothing half so noble.

  The thing is, right up till that moment, I’d genuinely believed that I was special.

  * * * *

  It’s surprising how businesslike you become when there are no illusions left. How detached you feel snapping adulterous husbands with mistresses/call girls/rent boys and in places most decent people couldn’t imagine, or how disconnected you become furnishing cast-iron proof of wives with gambling addictions, drug addictions, lovers, or just a love affair with the bottle. After all, who was I to judge what constitutes an unfit mother? I only needed to take one look in the mirror.

  As a result, shades of grey no longer figured in my life. My job was to secure Susan’s future, and whereas before, when it came to runaway children, my heart was torn between finding them and reporting their whereabouts to their parents, I simply reminded myself that if I hadn’t intended to return them, I shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. Black and white worked well. With the cheque from Mrs Cuthbertson’s solicitor, for instance, I could send Susan on a foreign-exchange visit, maybe two. Her life would never be like mine.

  So Guy Fawkes Night came and went. We roasted potatoes in the bonfire, let off rockets from a milk bottle, tied Catherine wheels to the next-door neighbour’s shed, and frightened his dog with our jumping jacks. Susan took up ice skating and fell in love with horses, and since cases didn’t come in any faster, I found myself with more time on my hands than I’d ever known.

  That’s what comes from being too efficient.

  Which is why I was sitting at my desk one Wednesday afternoon, poring over the photograph of Stanley Hall’s dead body.

  Someone broke his neck with one clean snap, Sullivan told me, shortly after the results of the postmortem had come through. That, to me, suggested someone who’d been in the army. You can’t kill that cleanly and that swiftly without training and (I’m sad to say) without practice. Then there was the trunk. Commercial representatives in motor oil don’t lug around huge amounts of samples. There are no demonstration models to tuck away in cases. For one night’s stay,
he wouldn’t need much in the way of change of clothing, and as a lowly rep aged twenty-six from a council house in London’s notorious East End, he was unlikely to be sporting a tuxedo.

  I made myself a cup of tea and dunked a ginger nut. Why the Belle Vue, either? I’d never met Stanley Hall and maybe it was unfair to judge, but somehow I wasn’t getting the impression that this was his own special personal treat. That blue check suit was more at home on a bookie’s runner than at Brighton’s top hotel. If Hall was pampering himself on the sly, subsidizing the room rate out of his own pocket, surely he’d have treated himself to more apposite attire? Or at least, like me, rented something suitable? Questions, questions, questions. I could see why Sullivan was so frustrated. The difference was, he had a dozen other cases to work on, while I had nothing to distract me except a bit of filing and maybe window cleaning. (It’s Christmas that widens the gulf in marriages to the point of irrevocability. Not the run-up).

  More tea. More ginger nuts. And I guess it’s all that osso bucco and fettuccine, but I noticed the other day that my hips have got some shape at last, and those poached eggs on my chest no longer need so much cotton wool inside their bra. And I thought of Stanley Hall. His body still not released for burial. What his poor mother must be going through—

  * * * *

  “Sullivan, it’s me. Well, no, it’s not me, of course, it’s the security manager. That’s who killed Stanley Hall.”

  “Lois, slow down. You’re running all your words into one.”

  “Then listen faster, Sullivan. Why didn’t Stanley Hall check out on time?”

  “Because he was dead, darling.”

  “Yes, but why didn’t someone go and check? He was supposed to have vacated the room by 9:30 in the morning, yet the “Do Not Disturb” sign was still hanging on the doorknob after lunch. Someone either told Housekeeping that this was fine—”

  “She says cleaning two-twenty-three wasn’t on her list.”

  “Exactly. Or, if you’d only let me get a word in edgeways, someone deleted that room number from her roster. And the only other person who has access to the housekeeper’s room is the manager of security!”

  After eight years in the PI business, I know hotels inside out.

  “The very first thing that struck me about him was his military bearing,” I continued firmly, before he could interrupt again. “I can’t be sure, but you check his army records and if he didn’t serve in Korea and have experience of one-to-one combat, I’ll eat my brand-new pedal pushers.”

  “Please don’t, you look unendurably sexy in them.” I could hear his pencil scratching down the line. “So assuming you’re right, that’s taken care of means and opportunity. How about a motive?”

  “Don’t CID ever talk to ordinary people?”

  All it needed was a few discreet enquiries of the staff at the Belle Vue - and okay, I admit it, a few discreet ten-pound notes as well - to drag out the fact that three or four times in the past year, some of their clients had been robbed.

  “The desk clerk confirmed - incidentally, I’m expecting Her Majesty’s police force to reimburse me for these expenses - but anyway, he confirmed that these robberies coincided with every one of Stanley Hall’s visits.”

  That’s why that loud check suit didn’t matter. He never intended leaving the room. It was the security manager who had both keys and access. He who stole money, jewels, various other valuables.

  “Just a few bits here and there, and never enough to justify the Belle Vue’s guests calling the police, but enough to launch an in-house investigation.”

  In which their upright, vetted, army veteran was hardly going to investigate himself.

  “Stanley Hall was the fence?”

  “If you’ve ever been to the East End, Sullivan . . .”

  I didn’t tell him this was where I was born, or that, council house or not, my family still disowned me, not just for being an unmarried mother, but for being a PI to boot. The shame is just too much to bear.

  “That’s why he needed such a large trunk, and I’ll bet that’s why he was killed.”

  “He started to get greedy?”

  It would have been the perfect murder, had it not been for me and the Cuthbertsons’ divorce. Because having calmly hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door he’d locked behind him, the security manager was waiting until the mid-afternoon lull before removing his accomplice’s body, and in the victim’s own trunk, too. No wonder he’d arrived so quickly on the murder scene. No wonder he’d looked so bloody grim. But equally ... I stared into the telephone. If it hadn’t been for me hanging on to evidence, he could have got away with it. I tried to console myself with the fact that at least now Mrs Hall could bury her son in time for Christmas. Tried is the operative word.

  “By the way, Sullivan, one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Did you just call me darling?”

  * * * *

  Susan was wheeling her bike down the hall on her way to Josie’s when I heard her call out, “Hello, Mr Sullivan.”

  I blinked. I hadn’t associated him with either ice skating or pony rides.

  “Hello, Susan.” He tapped her on the head with a rolled-up page of foolscap. “Still practising what I taught you?”

  She laughed, in a happy, friendly, offhandedly familiar sort of way before bursting into song in the front doorway.

  “You look over your shoulder

  Before you stick your right arm out.

  When it’s clear, then you manoeuvre ...”

  She was still Hound-Dogging away as the door slammed in her wake, and if she leaves that scarf behind one more time, I’ll throttle her with the bloody thing.

  “You’re the road-safety officer?”

  It was the first time he’d come to the flat, and I’d reckoned on Susan being gone by eleven-thirty. She’s usually pretty prompt. Else I dock her pocket money.

  “That’s me. Handsome, funny, clever . . . and what was that other thing again?”

  “Old,” I snapped. “And you could at least have the decency to look sheepish.”

  “Why? Susan and I hit it off straightaway, it’s how I knew who you were, remember? You’re all she talks about, you know.”

  “Really?” It takes pathetically little to make a mother’s heart swell.

  “Uh-huh.” His nose wrinkled. “Until Rusty the pony came along, anyway.”

  It’s only a small flat and he seemed to fill up most of it. “Here,” he said, handing me the sheet. “I thought you’d like a copy of the security manager’s confession.” He glanced at me from the corner of his eye as he made us both a cup of coffee. “Are you sure you didn’t write it for him? It’s almost word for word what you told me.”

  I was so busy reading that it took me a few minutes to realize how quickly he’d made himself at home. Or how right it felt.

  “Female intuition,” I said glibly.

  “And a good memory,” he said, concentrating surprisingly hard on stirring coffee that contained neither milk nor sugar. “The size of that trunk? The colour and design of his suit? Neck at right angles to the body? One might almost say photographic.”

  In a book, I’d have had the grace to blush. In real life, I stared him out.

  “A word of advice, though, Lois.” When he leaned back in the chair, I heard it creak. Then again, it could have been a low chuckle in the back of his throat. “Next time, either tuck the roll into the inside of your stocking or wear a less figure-hugging skirt. By the way, happy birthday,” he said, tossing a box across the table.

  No point in asking who had told him. “What is it?”

  “What does it look like?”

  It looked like a diamond solitaire. “A reward from the Belle Vue?”

  “Are you kidding? Those people won’t even give their fleas away.” His craggy face grew serious. “Lois, please say you’re not going to make me go down on one knee.”

  I dropped the box. We banged heads picking it up.


  “You’re asking me to marry you?”

  “Why not?” He ran his hand over his jaw. “I get free housing through my job, which would save you rent on this place, for a start. Then it’s not like Susan and I don’t get on.” If I had a daddy, I’d like him to be like the road-safety man. “And . . . well . . .”

  “Well what?” This time I was determined he would do it.

  “And I love you.”

  I loved him too, but I was holding that one up my sleeve. “I won’t change what I do, Sullivan. I’ll still be Hepburn Investigations with seedy divorces and even seedier clients.”

  “It never occurred to me that you would change, Lois, and I don’t want you to. Not ever.”