Best British Crime 6 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  Anthony looked at his watch: five o’clock. Not late enough, on the whole, to justify the darkness of the sky. He wanted a pint but he stayed on by the window, watching the rain. He saw now that it fell on a policeman on a horse. The copper wore one of those big capes that covered not only his own body, but much of the horse’s. They were both in it together, stoically receiving the rain at the corner of the Square.

  Anthony turned back towards the chair and picked up the manuscript. He had been thinking he might write his book from the point of view of Mayer. He imagined that Mayer had originally regarded Price in the same way that he himself did: with appalled fascination. But the trouble with this plan was that Mayer had been found battered to death in the West End (just on the borders of Mayfair, in fact) in 1907, three years before the end of the story of Price. Obviously, Price had done it. Anthony was sure of that, and he would make the case in his novel.

  He walked through the empty Reading Room, and through the double doors, where he saw Peter at the book desk. He found that he was relieved to see him.

  “Thanks for that, Peter,” he said, handing back the document.

  “What was it?” asked Peter.

  “Oh, just . . . Descriptions of how he broke into various jewellery shops.”

  “Charming,” Peter said, and he laughed.

  Collecting his coat, which was the last one left in the cloakroom, Anthony thought: he wouldn’t laugh if he knew anything about Price. There was nothing funny about him. He was no gentleman thief, and the robberies had sometimes lead to violence. Newspaper cuttings mentioned one associate of Price’s who had been found murdered - a known receiver of stolen goods. Price had missed a court appearance to attend the man’s funeral, which was ironic in several ways. For a start, he’d killed the man. Anthony was certain of that, and the killing would make a scene for his novel.

  Anthony walked out into the Square. The policeman had gone, and the place was deserted, the rain coming down on the trees alone. They were - what? - twenty times taller than a man. Seemed unreasonable somehow. They were rocking in the warm wind that was blowing through the rain, looking restless.

  Anthony left the Square by the first available street, but that was all right because it led to one of the best pubs in Mayfair. He walked quickly along the street of distinguished, reserved buildings, moving in the opposite direction to the water flowing along the gutter. All other pedestrians seemed to have retreated in the face of his advance. Anthony took his mobile phone out of his pocket. He pressed the “on” switch and white light seeped between the number keys, but there was a worrying, restless little display on the screen: dots in a line groping after something, like an ellipsis. It was a new phone and he’d not seen this before. Then the display went all still and sullen, and the message read: “No signal.” Was it to do with the rain?

  The pub, The Unicorn, glowed in the rain like a little blue lantern, cosily framed by antiquarian bookshops. With the bulge at the front, and the flagpole that came out over the doorway, it looked sea-going somehow. Opposite was a block of flats: Horace Mansions. Anthony had earmarked Horace Mansions for when he became successful. It was Edwardian, which was his period.

  A century away was a perfect distance of time: distant enough to be strange, near enough to be comprehensible. Anthony had set all of his thrillers in that period, and this was why he would be able to do justice to an Edwardian maverick like Price. Also he spoke the lingo: Anthony knew that the Edwardians called a jacket a coat (a coat in the modern sense was a “top-coat”); a weekend, to the Edwardians, was a “week-end”; and when they were tired they were “all-in”. Anthony aimed always to wear a suit like Edwardian men; he wore boots rather than shoes, wrote with a fountain pen. He would in time become a full, flamboyant Edwardian dandy rather than the muted dandy he was at present.

  There were three or four people inside the pub, all turned away from him. A clock ticked. Anthony liked the fact that there was no piped music in The Unicorn, but that clock was loud and couldn’t be turned down. And there was no barman to be seen. Anthony was joined at the bar by one of the silent customers. The pub was all buckled wood, as though the ceiling was too heavy, pressing down. There didn’t seem to be much air.

  The man next to him wore a black suit, and it was muddy - mud splashes up the trouser legs. Mud in Mayfair. Anthony nodded at him nonetheless, and he didn’t nod back. His eyes were a very pale blue in the thin red face; his hair was black and pulled back with grease or oil that smelled like lemon, but another smell came off him at the same time: a bitter smell of a small room in which a dozen people have been smoking cigars around the clock. But the man now took cigarettes out of his pocket. He kept them in a tin. Anthony had once thought of doing that, but he’d stopped smoking a year ago. The Unicorn, actually, was a non-smoking pub. The man opened his mouth to put in the cigarette, and it went into a mass of blackness - no teeth.

  Anthony didn’t have to put up with this; there were plenty of other pubs in Mayfair. He walked through the open door of The Unicorn, and straight into a new noise: spattering rain in the gathering darkness, and a metallic rumbling and grating. He noticed a countrified smell, which was almost pleasant, until he looked down and saw that he was standing in horse manure. Had the police horse been this way? He looked over the road, and the block of flats was being dismantled. They had started dismantling the block of flats within the past five minutes. No, on the contrary: scaffolding, a tarpaulin sheet, lanterns, a wheelbarrow dangling from a pulley . . . the block of flats was being built. Anthony both knew, and didn’t know, what was happening, He felt that he was about throw up. He looked up at the sky, searching for an aeroplane - there were always jets above Mayfair - or the helicopter growling away. But the sky was clear, apart from the falling rain, and the drifting smoke. Who was having a fire? On the rooftops all around, chimneys were smoking. Hundreds of chimneys were smoking.

  The man from the pub was behind him, and there were two others with him. The man from the pub was talking fast, the blackness coming and going as he opened and closed his mouth. Anthony couldn’t make out the words. Was it English? Anthony thought to himself: I have been caught in a landslide, and removed to another place. The rain fell more softly now, but it seemed to be the same rain; it made him wet in much the same way as before, and even though he knew he was in terrible trouble, Anthony was trying to take comfort from this as one of the men - not Price - approached him and spoke out in a voice of the kind you didn’t hear much any more. He was unquestionably addressing Anthony. “Paul,” he said, “. . . come here Paul. The governor wants a word.”

  <>

  * * * *

  POPPING ROUND TO THE POST

  Peter Lovesey

  Nathan was the one I liked interviewing best. You wanted to believe him, his stories were so engaging. He had this persuasive, upbeat manner, sitting forward and fixing me with his soft blue eyes. Nothing about him suggested violence. “I don’t know why you keep asking me about a murder. I don’t know anything about a murder. I was just popping round to the post. It’s no distance. Ten minutes, maybe. Up Steven Street and then right into Melrose Avenue.”

  “Popping round to the post?”

  “Listen up, doc. I just told you.”

  “Did you have any letters with you at the time?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  “The reason I ask,” I said, “is that when people go to the post they generally want to post something.”

  He smiled. “Good one. Like it.” These memory lapses are a feature of the condition. Nathan didn’t appreciate that if a letter had been posted and delivered it would help corroborate his version of events.

  Then he went into what I think of as his storyteller mode, one hand cupping his chin while the other unfolded between us as if he were a conjurer producing a coin. “Do you want to hear what happened?”

  I nodded.

  “There was I,” he said, “walking up the street.”

  “Steven Stre
et?”

  “Yes.”

  “On the right side or the left?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  According to Morgan, the detective inspector, number twenty-nine, the murder house, was on the left about a third of the way along. “I’m asking, that’s all.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t need to cross, would I?” Nathan said. “So I was on the left, and when I got to Melrose—”

  “Hold on,” I said. “We haven’t left Steven Street yet.”

  “I have,” he said. “I’m telling you what happened in Melrose.”

  “Did you notice anything in Steven Street?”

  “No. Why should I?”

  “Somebody told me about an incident there.”

  “You’re on about that again, are you? I keep telling you I know nothing about a murder.”

  “Go on, then.”

  “You’ll never guess what I saw when I got to Melrose.”

  That was guaranteed. His trips to the post were always impossible to predict. “Tell me, Nathan.”

  “Three elephants.”

  “In Melrose?” Melrose Avenue is a small suburban back street. “What were they doing?”

  He grinned. “Swinging their trunks. Flapping their ears.”

  “I mean, what were they doing in Melrose Avenue?”

  He had me on a string now and he was enjoying himself. “What do you think?”

  “I’m stumped. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “They were walking in a line.”

  “What, on their own?”

  He gave me a look that suggested I was the one in need of psychotherapy. “They had a keeper with them, obviously.”

  “Trained elephants?”

  Now he sighed at my ignorance. “Melrose Avenue isn’t the African bush. Some little travelling circus was performing in the park and they were part of the procession.”

  “But if it was a circus procession, Nathan, it would go up the High Street where all the shoppers could see it.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “Then what were the elephants doing in Melrose?”

  “Subsidence.”

  I waited for more.

  “You know where they laid the cable for the television in the High Street? They didn’t fill it in properly. A crack appeared right across the middle. They didn’t want the elephants making it worse, so they diverted them around Melrose. The rest of the procession wasn’t so heavy - the marching band and the clowns and the bareback rider. They were allowed up the High Street.”

  The story had a disarming logic, like so many of Nathan’s. On a previous trip to the post he’d spotted Johnny Depp trimming a privet hedge in somebody’s front garden. Johnny Depp as a jobbing gardener. Nathan had asked some questions and some joker had told him they were rehearsing a scene for a film about English suburban life. He’d suggested I go round there myself and try to get in the film as an extra. I had to tell him I’m content with my career.

  “It was a diversion, you see. Road closed to heavy vehicles and elephants.”

  Talk about diversions. We’d already diverted some way from the double murder in Steven Street. “What I’d really like to know from you, Nathan, is why you came home that afternoon wearing a suit that didn’t fit you.”

  This prompted a chuckle. “That’s a longer story.”

  “I thought it might be. I need to hear it, please.”

  He spread his hands as if he was addressing a larger audience. “There were these three elephants.”

  “You told me about them already.”

  “Ah, but I was anticipating. When I first spotted the elephants I didn’t know what they were doing in Melrose. I thought about asking the keeper. I’m not afraid of speaking to strangers. On the whole, people like it when you approach them. But the keeper was in charge of the animals, so I didn’t distract him. I could hear the sound of the band coming from the High Street and I guessed there was a connection. I stepped out to the end of Melrose.”

  “Where the postbox is.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “When you started out, you were popping round to the post.”

  “Now you’ve interrupted my train of thought. You know what my memory is like.”

  “You were going towards the sound of the band.”

  He smiled. “And I looked up, and I saw balloons in the sky. Lots of colours, all floating upwards. They fill them with some sort of gas.”

  “Helium.”

  “Thank you. They must have been advertising the circus. Once I got to the end of Melrose Avenue I saw a woman with two children and each of them had a balloon and there was writing on them - the balloons, I mean, not the children. I couldn’t see the wording exactly, but I guessed it must have been about the circus.”

  “Very likely.” In my job, patience isn’t just a virtue, it’s a necessity.

  “You may think so,” Nathan said, and he held up his forefinger to emphasize the point. “But this is the strange thing. I was almost at the end of Melrose and I looked up again to see if the balloons in the sky were still in sight and quite by chance I noticed that a yellow one was caught in the branches of a willow tree. Perhaps you know that tree. It isn’t in the street. It’s actually in someone’s garden overhanging the street. Well, I decided to try and set this balloon free. It was just out of reach, but by climbing on the wall I could get to it easily. That’s what I did. And when I got my hands on the balloon and got it down I saw that the writing on the side had nothing to do with the circus. It said Happy Birthday, Susie.”

  Inwardly, I was squirming. I know how these stories progress. Nathan once found a brooch on his way to the post and took it to the police station and was invited to put on a Mickey Mouse mask and join an identity parade and say “Empty the drawer and hand it across or I’ll blow your brains out.” And that led on to a whole different adventure. “Did you do anything about it?”

  “About what?”

  “The happy-birthday balloon.”

  “I had to, now I had it in my hands. I thought perhaps it belonged to the people in the house, so I knocked on the door. They said it wasn’t theirs, but they’d noticed some yellow balloons a couple of days ago tied to the gatepost of a house in Steven Street.”

  “Steven Street?” My interest quickened. “What number?”

  “Can’t remember. These people - the people in Melrose with the willow tree - were a bit surprised because they thought the house belonged to an elderly couple. Old people don’t have balloons on their birthdays, do they?”

  “So you tried the house in Steven Street,” I said, giving the narrative a strong shove.

  “I did, and they were at home and really appreciated my thoughtfulness. All their other balloons had got loose and were blown away, so this was the only one left. I asked if the old lady was called Susie, thinking I’d wish her a happy birthday. She was not. She was called something totally unlike Susie. I think it was Agatha or Augusta. Or it may have been Antonia.”

  “Doesn’t matter, Nathan. Go on.”

  “They invited me in to meet Susie. They said she’d just had her seventh birthday and - would you believe it? - she was a dog. One of the smallest I’ve ever seen, with large ears and big, bulgy eyes.”

  “Chihuahua.”

  “No, Susie. Definitely Susie. The surprising thing was that this tiny pooch had a room to herself, with scatter cushions and squeaky toys and a little television that was playing Lassie Come Home. But the minute she set eyes on me she started barking. Then she ran out, straight past me, fast as anything. The back door of the house was open and she got out. The old man panicked a bit and said Susie wasn’t allowed in the garden without her lead. She was so small that they were afraid of losing her through a gap in the fence. I felt responsible for frightening her, so I ran into the garden after her, trying to keep her in sight. I watched her dash away across the lawn. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice there was a goldfish pond in my way. I stepped into
it, slipped, and landed facedown in the water.”

  “Things certainly happen to you, Nathan.”

  He took this as a compliment and grinned. “The good thing was that Susie came running back to see what had happened and the old lady picked her up. I was soaking and covered in slime and duckweed, so they told me I couldn’t possibly walk through the streets like that. The old man found me a suit to wear. He said it didn’t fit him anymore and I could keep it.”

  “All right,” I said, seizing an opportunity to interrupt the flow. “You’ve answered my question. Now I know why you were wearing a suit the wrong size.”

  He shrugged again. He seemed to have forgotten where this had started.

  It was a good moment to stop the video and take a break.