Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “Maybe one for the Ulica?” I said.

  She laughed.

  “Fantastic use of Polish. You’re a regular polyglot. I’m guessing you’re an English teacher?”

  “Surprisingly not,” I said. “Do I look like one?”

  “Well.” She took in my worn leather jacket, scuffed Doc Martens boots and frayed jeans. “You certainly don’t look like a businessman.”

  “Which means?”

  “Hack?”

  “Bingo!”

  “So, do you work for one of those shitty rags that dig out all the sleazy tales about Poland and sell them to the English tabloids for shock-horror stories?”

  “No,” I said. Although I did do that sometimes. “I’m freelance but mostly I work for EuroBuilder Magazine.”

  I gave her a sweaty business card.

  “Heard of it?”

  “Yes, of course. My asshole husband has a lot of property in this city so he buys it and reads all of those fascinating articles about warehouses and shopping malls.”

  “All my own work,” I said. “Well, some of it.”

  She looked at the card. “Luke Case. That’s a cool-sounding name.”

  “Not that cool,” I said. “At school, my nickname was head.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you do,” I sniggered.

  Jola stared blankly at me.

  “Never mind. So?” I said, gesturing toward the bar.

  “Oh, why the hell not?”

  I ordered another whisky for me and a gin and tonic for Jola.

  “Gin makes you sin,” I said as I put the drinks on the table.

  “Oh, I don’t need a drink for sinning,” she said.

  Sean had disappeared and we were the only customers in the bar.

  I put some money in the ancient jukebox, sat down and asked her where she was from.

  Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott sang about someone with a “Bad Reputation”. Something that always attracted me to a woman, of course.

  Jola sipped her drink and seemed to hold on to the table to steady herself.

  “Your home town?” I said.

  “Well,” she said, knocking back her drink in one. And then her words staggered out like drunks at closing time. “I’m from the industrial wastelands of the east,” she said, playing with a lighter with a picture of a matador on it. “Bialystok. Heard of it?”

  “Amazingly, I have.” She looked as if she didn’t believe me. “It’s true. I had a friend from there. He showed me a photograph of a big Soviet tank in the town centre that was painted a very camp pink.”

  “That’s the one,” she said. “Not the most exciting place. A real ‘one-whore-town’, as they say. So, as soon as I could, I got out of there fast.”

  “And you came here to Warsaw?”

  She shook her head.

  “No. First, I headed off to Chicago for a couple of years. And then to London. Which is where I met my wonderful husband.”

  “Where in London?”

  “Ealing? Know it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I worked there for six months back in the eighties, looking for the streets that are paved with gold. Still looking, mind you.”

  “Well, there’s a golden shopping mall here in Warsaw, as I’m sure you know, but the streets are as grey and cold as anywhere else.”

  Jola took out a Marlboro from a battered pack and I lit it with one of my Embassy Regal.

  “What line of work are you in?” I said.

  “I manage a bar. Robert, my husband, is the owner. The Emerald Isle? It’s over in the Esperanto district. Do you know it?” said Jola.

  I nodded.

  “Another one of Poland’s authentically Irish pubs,” I said.

  Jola laughed. “Well, there are pubs in Ireland selling Polish beer and food, so, why not?”

  “Why not, indeed.”

  I shifted in my chair.

  “Is it fun?” I asked.

  “The pub or the marriage?”

  “Both.”

  “They serve their purpose.”

  “Which is?”

  She rubbed her fingers and thumb together.

  “I suppose marriage to Robert was what you would call a marriage of convenience,” said Jola. “Though it’s not so convenient, these days.”

  “Better to regret something you’ve done than something you haven’t done,” I said.

  “Indeed.”

  Leaning close to me, Jola put a hand on my shoulder and looked me up and down, like she was deciding on whether or not to buy a second-hand car.

  “You’ll do,” she said, dragging me out of the bar by my tie and through a metal door that was marked “Private”.

  I looked over at Rory, who was lighting a cigar, took a glance and ignored us. I got the impression that he’d seen this sort of thing many times before.

  Jola locked the door behind her and switched on a strip light that flickered and buzzed before it blanched the tiny room, which was stacked with crates of Johnny Walker and metal beer barrels. On the wall was a dartboard with a poster of Stalin hanging over it. Three darts perfectly placed between his eyes. I sat down on one of the crates.

  “Won’t Rory mind?” I said, as Jola pulled down her knickers and took off her black leather skirt.

  “Not a chance,” she said. “Robert ripped him off in a big business deal a while back. He despises my husband so much he lets me get away with murder.”

  Before I could take off my jeans, she pulled out my dick and slowly masturbated me before she slid herself on top of me. I pushed a hand under her sweater and tweaked a nipple.

  “Well, everything but that,” she gasped. “So far.”

  At some point during the night I woke up in my own bed, soaked in a cold sweat, with no recollection of getting there. Jola, naked, was smoking and gazing out of the bedroom window. The tip of her cigarette glowed bright red and then quickly faded to black. I closed my eyes and let the sea of sleep enfold me.

  In the morning, slivers of sun sliced through the blinds and slashed across my eyes, stinging like a knife blade. After a moment, I focused and looked around the room. Jola was gone.

  Days bled into weeks and then months. I visited Tatiana with the same regularity but increasingly less enthusiasm. Sometimes we just talked until the early hours. She told me of her lesbian lover with the violent husband. And how they were saving enough money to get out of Warsaw. She fell asleep and I left.

  A warm spring dusk was struggling to break free of winter as I left her apartment block in a daze which, for once, wasn’t due to the booze. I’d been drifting through the weeks like a phantom, with thoughts of Jola haunting me. For whatever reason, I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I knew I had to see her again.

  As I walked along the deserted street a massive figure suddenly stepped out of the shadows and in front of me. He was a real behemoth, with a shaved head and wearing a black leather jacket. His gigantic fist grasped a knuckle-duster that slammed into me and sent me sprawling backwards until I smashed into a kebab shop window, setting off a burglar alarm.

  I sank to the ground, blood oozing from my burst lip, as the giant shouted and screamed at me. My head was spinning and my limited Polish was never too good but I recognized one word that he said before storming off down the street. Tatiana.

  A small group of old women wearing mohair berets surrounded me, speaking too quickly for me to understand.

  I struggled to my feet and did the best thing I could think of to do. I went to the twenty-four-hour pub.

  Nursing a beer and a shot of vodka, I phoned Tatiana and explained my predicament.

  “It’s Bronek,” she said. “My former client. He’s getting crazier. He started following me. Watching my clients. He’s got it into his head that you are going to marry me and take me away to England.”

  I drifted out of her conversation and thought that maybe it was better to be hung for a sheep than a lamb. Hanging up, I ordered another shot of vodka.

>   The Emerald Isle was far from emerald. The walls were painted garishly red. The furniture pitch black. The atmosphere grey.

  John Martyn’s version of “Glory Box” whispered through the sound system as Robert Nowak, well dressed and overweight, with what seemed like a constantly constipated expression, drank whisky and played chess with a statuesque Indian girl.

  A small group of fashion students sat sharing two beers, occasionally topping the glasses up with the contents of a bottle of supermarket vodka, while keeping a furtive eye on Robert.

  I sat by the window drinking my second Warka Strong. I briefly turned my gaze outside to where the morning rain poured down in sheets and the wet pavement reflected a nearby kebab shop’s flickering neon sign. Police sirens screeched through the roaring wind.

  Jola came down a staircase at the side of the bar and briefly paused when she saw me. She helped herself to a drink and headed outside with a pack of cigarettes in her hand. She stood under a grubby umbrella smoking as if it was the last cigarette on earth.

  I waited a few moments and joined her. Turning my collar to the rain, I sat in a grubby white plastic chair and lit up.

  “You shouldn’t have come here, you know? Robert is a very jealous man,” she said, lighting a second cigarette, not looking at me.

  “Does he know about us? About that night?”

  “Of course not. But he has his suspicions. All sorts of suspicions. Especially when he’s snorting cocaine from morning to night.”

  “I . . . just wanted to see you again. I thought you might want to go out somewhere, sometime.”

  She turned slightly and looked at me. Closed her eyes. Smiled.

  “Oh, why the hell not?” she said.

  I grinned like a schoolboy.

  “When?”

  “We can meet tomorrow night, if you want. Somewhere out of the way, though?”

  I thought for a moment.

  “What about my place?”

  “Cut to the chase, eh?”

  I smiled.

  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” I said.

  The night was like a thunderstorm of drinking, smoking, sex and conversation. In the early hours, we lay on my bed in the wan light listening to an old mix tape that I’d brought with me.

  Gandalf’s version of “How Can We Hang On to a Dream” eased into a Bobby Womack song and Jola turned and looked me in the eye.

  “You know,” she said. “Life with Robert is like a living death these days. I really do want to get away. Escape. I’ve managed to save some money but it’s not enough. Anyway . . .”

  And in the space of that short pause, the thought of running away with Jola was like the lone, beautiful whore in a rundown brothel, teasing and tempting.

  I said. “Can’t you divorce him?”

  “Ha! He’s a Catholic. He’d never let me divorce him. He’d never let me leave him,” she said, stroking the bruises on her neck.

  As a mild spring trudged on into a scalding hot summer, our meetings became more frequent and dangerous thoughts hovered over us like a hawk ready to strike its prey.

  And before long, thought congealed into action.

  The plan was simple enough. We were to wait until New Year’s Eve, and when Robert was as drunk as a skunk, Jola would drug his drink with some cheap cocaine and take him to bed when he passed out. And she would smother him with a pillow until he was dead. Then, after clearing the safe at the Emerald Isle, and Robert’s bank account, Jola and I would head off out of Poland, towards Spain, or who knows where.

  The hope was that during New Year’s Day, people would think that Robert was sleeping off the previous night’s indulgence, giving us plenty of time to head out of the country. And when he was found, the police would put it down to a drug overdose. Simple? As simple as Chinese algebra.

  It started to snow and fireworks filled the sky as I headed through an alleyway and into the Emerald Isle. The place was stuffed with drunken, overdressed people celebrating the New Year.

  Robert was clearly already drunk, holding court to a group of no-necked skinheads. Jola was already on her way upstairs to the safe.

  The fire exit was propped open with a fire extinguisher and I eased my way through.

  I took out a cigarette and lit up. Feeling all too confident.

  And then a familiar behemoth stood in front of me. And this time, he seemed to growl.

  Robert indifferently smoked a large cigar, his bleary eyes glaring at me.

  “So, you are the one Bronek was telling me about, eh? The kurwa that is stealing my Ukrainian whore from me. Eh?”

  Robert and Bronek stood either side of me. Grinning. Putting on knuckle-dusters.

  “My brother Bronek can be very protective about our property,” said Robert, “and he has taken far too much interest in little Tatiana. But that is his right as my brother. So, it really wouldn’t do for us to let you take her away, would it?”

  I couldn’t agree or disagree. I couldn’t say a thing and I couldn’t move. I’d taken a beating and I was slumped in the oak and leather armchair like an insect trapped in amber. It was all I could do to wipe the glass from my eyes and ignore the burning before the brothers raised their fists and the world turned red.

  The hospital stank of antiseptic. Not that it bothered me that much. The morphine was working, and the last few days I’d been feeling stronger. Able to move around. And to check my emails on my iPhone. The usual crap, of course. Spam. Jokes.

  And one from Tatiana. A photo of her on a beach. With Jola. Thanking me for creating a diversion and allowing them to get away. And hoping that I get well soon.

  I lay back on the small bed, closed my eyes and let the sea of self-loathing enfold me. And then I slept.

  Shame

  Ros Asquith

  It started with a roll of the dice. What had made Sam choose a number that landed him freezing in a ditch, deafened by a helicopter’s roar? Everything had been going just fine, just so fine.

  Not that it was supposed to go fine for him. No folks and no prospects were never a fine thing for a boy, nor a girl neither. True, the girls he knew succumbed, depressed, cut themselves up. The boys got to cut up other people and that was bigger trouble. But Sam was always going to be different. Yes indeed. Gifted, that was Sam. He could beat his head teacher at chess, and him just seven years old! The kid’s a prodigy. How often had he heard those words?

  Shame. It’s a crying shame. Then more phone calls would be made, the same old, same old. Murmurings about paperwork and funding. And he’d hear the words gifted and shame.

  He’d got quite a bit of kindness, no doubt about that. But never from the same person, or not for long. Dave and Karen were the best. He’d been there two whole years, seemed longer, too, in a good way. As if all his happiness had been condensed, bottled in those two years – a bottle he could still drink from. Karen and Dave had got him great haircuts and trainers with lights on and they read him stories at night. He remembered not letting on to them that he could read – he was only four years old back then – so they would go on reading to him. He’d thought maybe the reason he had to leave was because he’d lied about his reading. But later, by the time he’d moved around a bit, he reckoned it was because Karen had had twins. It sometimes worked, he now knew, for foster parents to have their own newborn babies. But twins. That meant foster kids had to move on, more than likely. He could remember Karen crying when he left, and Dave had said they’d always keep in touch and to remember he was a great kid, the best. And Karen definitely sent him a card when he was seven. He knew that, because he still had it. For a great boy who is seven, it said. And she’d written “All our love” inside. But by the time you’ve been moved about a bit, a few more fosterings that didn’t work out, and you’re ten years old, at a children’s home, you’re past your sell-by date for adoption. Even fostering’s tougher by then. It’s only natural to want a sweet young kid and at ten Sam was way too tall to look sweet.

  Who else could he reme
mber? Who could he possibly call who would believe him now? The whirr of the helicopter blades scythed into his brain . . .

  Well he could surely remember someone? Not the tall thin man at the children’s home who always wore a grey suit, who kept asking boys to search his pockets for sweets. But one of his pockets wasn’t lined, it was just a hole cut in the side of the grey trousers, so your hand went . . . Sam wasn’t keen to think of him. Nor that distracted lady who’d kept promising to get him on a music course. She’d thought music would come naturally to Sam, she thought drumming and jazz would keep him out of trouble. He’d accepted the casual racism; liking Mozart was something he kept even from other kids.

  As Sam flicked through his memories the kind, anxious faces blurred into one another. And the not-so-kind. He could feel the wind of the blades.

  For a boy for whom nothing good was going to happen, a lot had happened to Sam. First, he had got exam results his schoolteachers only dreamed of. Then a scholarship to a Great University. He had, surely, beaten the odds. The “freezing negative” dealt out to Hardy’s Obscure Jude had been conquered by Sam. He lived in a time when native wit and application were recognized. Britain was a meritocracy now. And he would graduate in law and make it better still. For Sam, learning to curb his temper, turning every negative thought into a positive, had become a way of being.

  He had left behind the peeling corridors, the curses and graffiti. He had risen above it. Another face from his past solidified. Rise above it, Sam. Ed had stuck by Sam after the third set of foster parents dropped out. He’d seen him every week for nearly eighteen months. Sam knew he was a mentor, now. But back then he’d thought of Ed as a friend. It was continuity that counted, said Ed. He wrote to Sam, too, twice, after he got a better job. He wanted to keep in touch, he really did.

  And then Sam had rolled the dice. That’s what kids did in the children’s home, whenever they played dares. It was a habit that stuck with Sam and he’d argued in his Oxford interview that it might be the best way for a jury to judge some cases, the law being as loaded as it was and juries being so often at a loss. He’d thought the dons would like that. Quirky. Original.