Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Sam drew me aside. “What do you know about her?” I shook my head. “Or about what happened?” I shrugged.

  “I waited for you before asking questions,” I said.

  Sam looked at her watch.

  “Do you have to be somewhere?”

  “I called this in on my way. Some uniforms should be here soon.” She knelt beside Nicole’s “table”. “I’m Sam,” she said.

  “That’s a boy’s name.”

  “My father wanted a boy. He didn’t realize that girls are better.”

  That pleased the child, who acknowledged it by taking a giant mouthful of the toast, as if no mere boy could eat so much at one time. She choked a little but got it down.

  Sam said, “I need you to tell me what happened here, Nicole.”

  “Men came and wanted money. Wolfgang wouldn’t give it to them so they looked everywhere for it. Then they took him away.”

  “Wolfgang?” Sam asked.

  “He owns the house,” I said.

  “The men broke everything,” Nicole said. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Who else was here?”

  “Two of the mothers.” Nicole thought. “Tara and . . . I can’t remember her name.”

  “They were staying here?” Sam asked.

  “We all stay here.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Our husbands and boyfriends aren’t good ones. They hit us.” Her face wrinkled. “Not me. But Mom. Harvey does that.”

  “Is Harvey your dad?”

  “No.” Her frown suggested that the less she had to do with Harvey the happier she’d be.

  “How many women are staying here?” Sam asked.

  Nicole counted on her fingers. “Seven.”

  “And children?”

  “Only me and a couple of babies.”

  “Where are they all now?” Sam asked.

  “Tara and the other one ran away when the men came. Two others . . . Janine and Stephanie . . . They came back later but they left. I think it was because their kids were about to get out of school.” She thought. “That’s Harry after the prince of England ’cause he’s got red hair, and Chloe.”

  “They go to school?” Sam said. “I thought you said only babies stayed here.”

  “Harry’s six and Chloe is seven. They’re such babies.”

  “And,” Sam said, “where is your mother, Nicole?”

  After toughing it out for a moment, Nicole’s face puckered up. She began to cry. “I don’t know. She left this morning and said I should wait here.”

  “And you haven’t seen her or heard from her?”

  “I told her I should have my own phone.”

  “Why aren’t you at school?”

  “The one I go to is too far away. Mom said we’d get a new one soon.”

  “She wasn’t here when the men came?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where she went? To work, maybe?”

  “She used to work at Denny’s but then Harvey found her. I don’t know if she found another job yet.” Another pucker. “But she always comes back at night. I wait here for her.” She looked up at Sam. “Do you think Harvey found her again?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said quietly, “but I’ll try to find out. So Harvey wasn’t one of the men who took Wolfgang away?”

  “I don’t know. They had masks on.”

  “What kind of masks?”

  “All over their faces, with holes for the eyes.”

  “Did you recognize any of the men?”

  She shook her head.

  I said, “Do you know Harvey’s last name?”

  “Peterson, I think.”

  “Does Harvey know you and your mother live here now?”

  “I don’t think so. But we’ve only been here . . .” She thought. “Three nights. But even if Harvey comes Wolfgang promised he won’t get in.”

  “How does he make sure of that?”

  “He locks the door and he’s the only one who answers it.” The face puckered again. “But when the men came, they just pushed him out of the way. Wolfgang shouted for everyone to run and he jumped on one of the men, on his back.”

  “You must have been scared, Nicole,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “But you didn’t leave with the other women?”

  “Mom said to wait here.”

  There was noise at the front of the house. We turned to look and saw two cops coming in through the aforementioned – but absent – door.

  Sam put her arm around Nicole and took control.

  I took flight.

  6

  I headed back to the hospital. The answers to most of my questions were knocking around somewhere in Wolfgang’s head. Wolfgang, the half-alien formerly known as LeBron James, Wolfgang, the half-alien born in Santa Claus, Indiana, under the name of Curtis Nelson.

  I did know some things.

  As I drove I thought about what Nicole had told us and I wondered what kind of place Wolfgang was running. The Wolfgang I’d known didn’t seem a first-choice candidate for defender against angry terrorists, or boyfriends. He wasn’t big – just an average kind of guy. And when I knew him he didn’t even have secure locks on his doors.

  However, at that time he’d lived alone. Now he lived with seven women and three children. Maybe other things had changed too.

  Once inside the hospital I was waylaid in the crowded waiting room. The rain hadn’t stopped and people continued to flood into Emergency. However, I said magic words. I asked for Nurse Matty by name. Moments later she appeared before me.

  “You’re back,” she said.

  “Your powers of observation continue to dazzle.”

  “I thought this Wolfgang guy wasn’t a friend.”

  “He’s not. However, I’ve just been to his house where the cops are sifting through the wreckage of all the furniture.”

  She leaned forward with her eyes wide open. “Wreckage?”

  “There was also a ten-year-old girl hiding there who doesn’t know where her mother is.”

  “This is Wolfgang’s . . . girlfriend?”

  “Unlikely, but he’s the only person I can think of who might have an idea what’s up with mom. And if he’s anywhere close to conversation-enabled, I need to see him.”

  Nurse Matty tilted her head. “So, does that make you a cop?”

  “No. But my daughter is.”

  She blinked a couple of time. “Does anything you say make sense?”

  “I’ve been asked that before.”

  “I’m going to take you to see him anyway.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But you’ve got to promise not to stab him. We’ve sewn him up enough for one day. We found a fourth cut – in his shoulder from the back. Did I tell you that before?”

  “Not where it was.”

  She turned and we walked. “He’s in a recovery room.”

  “Not intensive care then?”

  “He should be fine. Only one of the abdominal wounds was deep. There were perforations in his liver and pancreas, but not big ones. The shoulder will give him trouble for a long time, but your Wolfgang is a very lucky boy.”

  “I wonder if he sees it that way yet.” After a couple of turns, I said, “Were the four wounds all with different knives? Could they tell?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They didn’t find he has two hearts by any chance, did they?”

  She stopped abruptly and looked at me. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Don’t mind me.”

  “That he loves you but he loves somebody else too?”

  “I know nothing whatever about his love life, if any.”

  “I don’t know if he’s going to make much sense yet,” she said, “so you should be a perfect pair.”

  “This whole situation doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

  “No?”

  “Like, why did he come to me?”

  Outside some drawn curtains, Matty said, “Remember,
people take different lengths of time to come around after a general anaesthetic.” She opened a gap in the curtains and I went in.

  7

  Wolfgang was not looking his best. The side of his head was bandaged – though I hadn’t heard about a head injury – and there were enough drips and tubes and machines to make Baron Münchhausen envious.

  But he responded to the noise of my arrival and he moved to sit up while I pulled a chair close. “Mr Albert Samson,” he said. “Greetings.”

  “Mr Wolfgang . . . would that be Mozart?”

  “It would.” Not too spaced-out to smile.

  “How’s it going?”

  “I’ve felt better. But we heal quickly.”

  “You told me that before. Do you remember?”

  He thought. He didn’t remember.

  “Have you healed enough to answer some questions?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Your house is a wreck.”

  “That’s not a question.”

  “Why are seven women and three children living with you?”

  “Not living.”

  “They have – had – beds. They come home to your place after they finish work. What do you call it?”

  “Visiting.”

  “Silly me.”

  “It wasn’t my plan.”

  “Women, some with children, just started appearing at your door?”

  “It began with one. I was walking around and I found this woman leaning against a fence. She’d been beaten up.”

  “You found her?”

  “About two miles from my house – in fact a little closer to yours than mine.”

  “So you dialled 911?”

  “She didn’t want me to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Do you know anything about the psychology of battered women?”

  “Do you?”

  “I’ve been reading up on it. Anyhow, I brought her home. I got her a bed. The idea was that she could stay for a few days, until she felt better.”

  “When was this?”

  “Second week in October.”

  “And is she still visiting you?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And she happened to have some buddies who also got beaten up?”

  “I guess. Or some kind of word started spreading around. Women, and children . . .”

  “But there are shelters in the city, Wolfgang. Organized places with much better facilities than just having beds scattered around an open space, all sharing one bathroom.”

  “And one kitchen . . . I know. Dayspring, the Julian Center . . . I have a list and I tell them. And some have gone to them. But a lot don’t want to.”

  “They all stayed on?”

  “A lot have gone back to where they came from.” He shook his head sadly.

  I said, “Back in September you talked about doing something for ‘invisible’ people.”

  “This wasn’t what I meant. I want to do something to help people with problems. But now all I do is squeeze more beds in and try to keep them all from squabbling. I hate raised voices.”

  He paused. I just waited. Any group of people crowded in together isn’t going to last as happy families. The Big Brother television shows made fortunes on that principle.

  Wolfgang said, “I don’t want my house to be a refuge for anyone but me. And I’m sure the neighbours don’t like it. But if people are in trouble, how can I say no to them?”

  “Practice makes perfect,” I said.

  “But the best part . . .” He smiled with some life in his eyes.

  “What?”

  “Sometimes they hold my father’s handprint and they say it makes them feel better.”

  I knew all about the “handprint”, supposedly left by his extraterrestrial father. In the real world it was a piece of limestone with some grooves in it that looked like the fossilized veins of a leaf.

  “They feel ‘better’?”

  “It calms them. They say it makes them more positive about life and the future. Sometimes we sit in a circle and pass it around.”

  “The psychological equivalent of homeopathy?”

  “They tell me they feel something. I feel something. Maybe if you’d hold it you’d feel something too.”

  “I guarantee I’d feel whatever a guy giving me a safe place to sleep and food to eat wanted me to feel.”

  He tilted his head with a world-weary smile.

  I said, “I didn’t see the stone in the wreckage.”

  “It wasn’t out. I keep it in a safe place.”

  “So the police in your house won’t be in danger of feeling better by stumbling across it.”

  “Police?”

  “You were cut up. Your house is a wreck. What do you expect?”

  “I guess.”

  “Wolfgang, what happened? You were stabbed four times, maybe with as many as four different knives. Did everyone want a piece? Like when the Brutus gang hit Julius Caesar?”

  “They weren’t trying to kill me. They were trying to get me to tell them where I keep my money.”

  “What happened?”

  “Four men came to the door wearing masks. I wouldn’t let them in, but they broke the door down and grabbed me and said they wanted money.”

  “So it was money rather than being connected to the women you were sheltering?”

  “Yes and no.” He smiled.

  “Will I get a straight answer if I whack that bandaged shoulder with a saline drip bag?”

  He didn’t like the sound of that.

  “When I asked you before, you said it was terrorists.”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s what you told me,” I said.

  “They had terrorists’ masks.”

  “I only heard ‘terrorists’. So we’re talking about their masks, not them?”

  He nodded.

  “Because I didn’t hear the apostrophe, the city of Indianapolis is on a rainbow alert.”

  “They just wanted money. For some reason they thought I keep enough money around the place to be worth robbing me.”

  “Do you keep a lot of money around?”

  “You never know when you’re going to need cash. Especially with a lot of mouths to feed.”

  “And beds to buy.” He nodded. “How many women have stayed in your house since October?”

  “Maybe twenty. Twenty-five.”

  “Do you keep records?”

  “Of what?”

  “Well, like their full names and Social Security numbers.”

  “I’m extraterrestrial, not anal.”

  “And do you get a lot of men coming to the door?”

  “A few. Husbands and boyfriends. A violent girlfriend once too. Not often.”

  “So what happened when the four guys in terrorists’ masks demanded your money?”

  “I wouldn’t give it to them.”

  “Why not?”

  He smiled. “Guess?”

  I stood up and threatened his shoulder. But as he winced I put it together. “You keep your money in the same place as the handprint?”

  “Yes.” A smile.

  “So you got yourself cut to pieces because you were protecting that damned chunk of rock.”

  “Whoever told them about the money might have told them how much the handprint means to me. I couldn’t bear to lose it.”

  So he’d rather die. I guess I just don’t understand extraterrestrials . . . “They wanted money. You wouldn’t give it to them. What happened then?”

  “They showed me the knives but when I still wouldn’t do it the leader cut me – not deep, but enough to draw blood. There were a couple of women in the house and that set them off screaming and they ran. The men started cutting up mattresses and couches and everything they could see that might have money in it. But eventually the leader said they should take me with them, so they bundled me into a car.”

  “Right there, in front of your house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wh
at kind of car was it?”

  “Quite large. Quite old. Light green or maybe light blue.”

  Not a description to conjure up a car with, but the kind of neighbourhood Wolfgang lived in would probably provide the police plenty of witnesses.

  “Where did they take you?”

  “They just drove around.”

  “And continued to cut you in the car?”

  “They didn’t know what else to do. But then . . .”

  “What?”

  “They gave up. The shoulder was bleeding so much the driver complained about the car upholstery and how they’d never be able to clean the DNA off it. He said he didn’t want to burn his car and they started arguing with each other.”

  “Obviously a gang of master criminals.”

  “So they dumped me out, behind the Murphy building and I recognized it.”

  The old Murphy five and dime was across Virginia Avenue from my office. That was one question answered.

  “So you came to me,” I said.

  “I didn’t have a phone. They took the stuff in my pockets.”

  “What was in them?”

  “The usual things. Keys, wallet, phone.”

  “Much money?”

  “A couple of hundred.”

  “The police are going to want to hear in detail what these guys said, anything you can remember about the car, and maybe names of the women staying with you.”

  “You don’t want those things?”

  “Are you hiring me?”

  “Well, no. But I thought . . .”

  “The cops probably won’t have much trouble tracking down your assailants. And when they find them they’ll have the advantage of the power of arrest.”

  “I see.”

  Which made me wonder something. “Wolfgang, could the guys who attacked you have been neighbours of yours?”

  “Neighbours?” A deep frown.

  “From families who don’t like the idea of your opening your house to waifs and strays.”

  “Well . . .” He thought about it. “I don’t know who they were.”

  “Did they say anything about your moving somewhere else, say?”

  He shook his head. “It seemed to be all about the money. I’ve had some problems with my neighbours but I can’t imagine . . .”

  “Okay,” I said. Though there seemed to be quite a lot he couldn’t imagine, at one time or another. Why people didn’t just accept him as an extraterrestrial, for instance. “I do want something else.”