Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  She passed him the photo back.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve not seen her. Why are you asking me?”

  “I found your address.”

  “Oh. I don’t know why that would be.” She looked like she was considering saying something, but then changed her mind.

  They stood in silence for a moment, him not knowing what to say, and her seeming embarrassed.

  “Do you want to come in?”

  He thought she looked sorry for him.

  “I can make you a coffee?”

  His mind was buzzing. Scratching. He could hear a distant cry.

  His mobile rang.

  “Sorry, I’d better . . .” He clicked it open. Listened. His stomach lurched. “Really? You’re sure? Yes – that’s the number plate. Thanks.”

  The woman was staring at him. “Your wife?”

  “They’ve found her car. It’s in a car park, about ten miles from here.”

  She sighed.

  “Thank you, for your time. I’d better go.”

  He hurried back to his car and drove away.

  I feel pity for that man, McNiece. I get a sense that he would have made a decent dad. Better than my boyfriend Martin. When I rang to tell him I was pregnant, he asked if it was yet another false alarm. If I was lying to him again. There was a quiver in his voice, and I sensed a gleam of hope. I knew he would come back. He told me to ring him when the baby was born, to organize a blood test. I’m not sure what to do.

  I think I need a walk, to get some air inside my lungs. I may go to the shops. I am out of everything, apart from jars of baby food. I hadn’t realized you couldn’t feed those straightaway. I have eaten several jars myself. I wasn’t keen on the steak and kidney mush, but rather liked the raspberry pudding. I think Adam would have liked that too.

  Helen McNiece had everything prepared. She’d read books, gone to her classes, bought a breast pump and bottles to sterilize. She was ready to be a mum.

  I phoned her up and said I wanted to buy the smallest pup. His name was Peregrine Montague the Third, but went by the name of Monty. I prefer to stick to Dog. I said I had a transport problem, so I couldn’t get across. Helen offered to drive him over, so I gave her my address. I assumed she’d be alone, as her husband worked all day. I had already decided on where to take her car, with an easy bus route back.

  It seemed to go to plan. She arrived, I led her through to the back room, and she put the puppy into the tartan basket that I’d bought as a way of showing interest. I had envisioned making her a cup of tea, but the distraction wasn’t needed. She was so engrossed in the little pup, its punched-in face making her oooh and aaah, whispering to him that he would be very happy. That he had a lovely home.

  She was kneeling down, her swollen belly almost resting on her thighs. She put her arm out as I approached, expecting me to help her up. I focused on her silver necklace as I ran the knife across her throat. Pushed her head back with my other hand, and red spurted upwards, hitting my face and spraying spots into my mouth.

  Her wide eyes staring.

  The pup yapping.

  Yelping.

  I had sterilized my instruments.

  Caedo. I cut. Caedere. To slaughter. Cecidi. I slaughtered.

  I cut.

  I cut.

  I cut.

  * * *

  He was waiting at some traffic lights, foot hovering over the accelerator. They’d found her car. Not her. Her car. That was a start.

  And then it came to him. The actress was called Glenn Close. That was the exact thought that had popped into his head when he saw the woman in his kitchen. She was a fat Glenn Close.

  The light turned green. A car horn pipped behind him.

  She had lied. She knew his wife. She had been there in his kitchen.

  He had to turn.

  He had to go back.

  He switched the stereo off as he drove, he wanted to concentrate, and he needed to work out what to say. If Helen was there, why was she there, why had she left?

  “Please be there.”

  Her car was in a car park ten miles away.

  “I love you.”

  As he approached Atherton Road a woman’s shape got his attention. It was her again, walking away from the house. He hoped she hadn’t seen him. Her head was down, she probably hadn’t.

  He parked opposite number 47, looked up the street as he crossed the road. Saw the back of the woman’s coat as she reached the corner. He flicked the catch on the side gate and walked along the length of the house to the back door. He tested the handle, and was surprised to find it open.

  “Helen?”

  He stepped inside.

  “Are you there?”

  He heard a whimper. Scratching.

  “Hello?”

  He recognized the sound and walked towards it, past a closed door on his left. He peered into the front room. Empty. The whimpering grew louder as he walked upstairs. The scratching became more frantic.

  “Helen? It’s me.”

  Ian pushed the door open, to be met by the sight of a hungry pug. He had never been so happy to see a pug before. He scooped him in his arms; felt a fast heart beat against him, echoing his own.

  The pink carpet was littered with little shits, spread like slugs across the floor. Ian covered his mouth. Helen wasn’t there.

  He walked along the upper hallway, past the bathroom, towards a closed door at the end. His stomach flipped when he saw the cot inside, a happy mobile tinkling above it.

  The pup was whining. There was no noise in the cot.

  Ian felt hot sick rising in his throat as he looked down. He dropped the dog; it scurried out and ran downstairs.

  He couldn’t tell if the baby was a boy, but guessed so from the outfit. Saw tiny fingers curled together, making fists. The light caught cobwebs of fine blonde hair on his bare head. A fly buzzed round his face, landing on his cheek. His lips were blue, as if painted with a wash of colour. His skin was mottled, his face translucent on one side, but darker on the other.

  Another fly flew from the dead baby’s mouth.

  Ian retched, was sick into his hand.

  He couldn’t look again, but had to.

  He needed to see if the baby looked like him.

  Ian slowly walked downstairs, head spinning, almost drunk. The pup was scratching at another door, whining to get in. He knew something was wrong.

  The buzz of flies immediately hit him as the door pushed open. The room was filled with them, black snow flying through dank air.

  He saw Helen’s shoes. Her feet. Her legs. He felt his own give way as he saw the shape of her. It was as though she had exploded. Flaps of skin folded out from where her belly used to be, leaving a cavernous hole inside.

  “No. No. No . . .”

  Ian closed his eyes, sank his head into his hands, but the image was still there.

  “No. No. No.”

  His knees were stained dark crimson from her blood.

  “No. No.”

  The pup was barking loudly. It had heard the front door open.

  “No. No.”

  Footsteps behind him. He looked up and saw the woman’s face. A flash of leather as she pulled a dog lead round his throat. Pulled it tighter. Tighter.

  He didn’t have the hope to struggle. He could feel hot pressure building in his eyes, and focused on his wife beside him. On that dark gash, like a ruby-coloured scarf across her neck.

  The leather pulled harder against his throat, breath squeezing out of him as he tipped backwards to the floor. Looking up at the cream Artex ceiling, covered in a swarm of spots.

  Flies.

  Black flies.

  Black.

  There was a man parked outside in a blue car. He is now in the dining room. I am glad that this is over. I can keep my Adam safe. You cannot underestimate a woman’s need to love.

  My father used to say I was the kind of person who wouldn’t get noticed unless I made a fuss. No one ever asks me how I am, or what I’m doing. A
nd I am glad of that.

  In a few days’ time the clampers will come. They will tow that car away.

  Anything Can Happen

  Christopher Fowler

  Killing someone is no big deal. Did it, got told off, so what?

  I was on the number 75 bus coming home from school. It’s not a long journey, just six stops through Blackheath, South London. I could have walked. The bus was crowded because I had to get off near a train station, and it was rush hour.

  There was an old guy with wispy white hair in a navy-blue raincoat, standing right in front of me. A bunch of small kids behind. The driver opened the doors before the bus had completely come to a stop. The kids behind pushed forward and I was forced into the old man’s back. He was thrown off balance, wobbled, missed the step, fell out of the bus and landed face-smack on the pavement. Old bones, really hard, whappity-crack.

  A London Transport cop saw the whole thing and ran over. I heard her say that the old man was dead. The kids pissed off, leaving me. Some old bag shouted that it was my fault. The LT cop tried to grab me and I started complaining, so she got nasty and I kicked her. Dumb move.

  They couldn’t question me there because we were blocking the station entrance. The next thing I knew, two more cops had arrived along with an ambulance, and I was chucked against a wall and then bundled into a white van. I looked back through the window and saw the old guy. His nose was pushed all the way in. No blood, which was odd. A medic was lying with his head on the guy’s chest. Then we turned a corner and I was taken to Blackheath Police Station to be interviewed.

  I was left in a corridor that smelled of chips, sick and disinfectant for two hours while they tried to find my folks. The Amazing Invisible Sister was supposed to be at school, but I knew she had bunked off with some of her single-cell girlfriends to go to the mall.

  I asked the desk sergeant for something to read and he looked at me as if I was mad. Cops don’t half swear a lot. A policewoman handed me a warm 7 Up and even brought a packet of cheese biscuits. Finally I was taken to a gloomy cream-coloured room with a barred window and asked to write down what had happened.

  I talked to a detective sergeant, then my mother turned up. She kept saying things like “I rilly rilly don’t have time for problems like this in my life right now, Christian.” The police let me go home with her, but only after we had both signed a load of paperwork. The policewoman typed with two fingers and didn’t know how to work her computer.

  I figured I would either be found:

  A: Innocent

  B: Guilty of Manslaughter (that means unlawfully killing without the intent to kill. It can be Voluntary like getting into a fight, or Involuntary like driving too fast and crashing into someone)

  C: Guilty of Second Degree murder (that’s death resulting from an assault where you mean to hurt the other person but not kill them)

  D: Guilty of First Degree murder (where you deliberately kill someone)

  I know about this stuff because my mum’s addicted to cop shows.

  Come on, I bet you’re thinking A. But you don’t have all the evidence, because I didn’t tell you everything. In fact, I missed out one very important detail.

  The old man I knocked off the bus was already dead, but I didn’t find out he was dead until later.

  That night I watched a really ancient film called Dawn of the Dead. My best friend Track brought over the DVD and we ran it in my room (Track had switched the sleeve of the DVD box with a Spiderman film so her dad wouldn’t know she’d swiped it).

  The movie wasn’t scary because it was in old-school muddy-vision and was really cheap and badly acted. It’s about what happens when the dead come back to life and are still wandering about looking for people to eat. The living shut themselves in a bunker and spend the whole time arguing with each other, but there was a good bit at the end were the bad guy got torn in half and told the zombies to choke on his innards.

  It turned out the story had already started coming true. All over the country, all over the world. It spread very quickly, a thousand times faster than the last avian flu epidemic. I was online right through the whole thing, and the speed was amazing. It was all over the networking sites I visited. You’ve never seen so much panicky unfriending going on, like they could catch it over the internet.

  In films the Deads come out of their graves and stump around in waist-high mist with their arms stretched out like sleepwalkers. And they moved about more slowly than Mr Sangjhavi down the road, who has something wrong with his legs. Even my sister could have outrun them, and she won’t even get off the sofa to change TV channels when the cat’s asleep on the remote. In a few of the Living Dead remakes the Deads shift really fast, but that seems kind of silly because their muscles would actually be all dried up, and they’d have to move slowly. Basic biology, duh.

  Compared to the real thing, the Deads in films aren’t accurate in other ways. Think about it; when gravediggers bury someone, the coffin is sealed and put in a hole that’s packed with earth and stamped flat. So we’re talking about a hundred pounds of dirt to push up, assuming that you could get the lid of the box open in the first place, which you wouldn’t be able to do. There’s not enough depth in most coffins to use your arms as levers and the lid is usually screwed down.

  The truth is, nobody came out of the ground. When the Dead came back to life it was only the ones who had died in hospitals and morgues or their own homes who could get up. If any others were lying around above ground, like in funeral parlours, I guess they rose up too. And how could you tell they were Living Dead and not just, you know, someone’s gran?

  At first there weren’t any to see on the streets. When they did finally appear, they didn’t walk around with their arms raised like sleepwalkers. Their hands hung limply at their sides and they didn’t move about much, although they did sometimes bump into things and fall over. But they weren’t funny, like in Shaun of the Dead. I’ve seen every living-dead movie and TV show going now, and I’m kind of an expert. And the main thing is – they were just kind of sad and smelly. The main difference from the films is that they didn’t try to eat people’s brains. If you think about it logically, how could they? They were Deads, and that means brain dead. They only had the vaguest memory of their old habits, which didn’t include eating other people’s brains. Eating a brain isn’t going to restore your own. That’s like saying if you eat part of a cow you’ll grow four stomachs. I did see one eating a Pot Noodle, though.

  The trouble with the real Deads was that they weren’t from horror films. They weren’t creepy, just boring. Some of them could do really base-level stuff they remembered from when they were alive, like reading the Daily Mail, queuing in WHSmith for a Galaxy bar or humming old songs. Most of them could put their clothes on because that’s something you do every day of your life. But you couldn’t train them any more than you can train really stupid insects or our biology teacher’s dog. You could point up in the air and they would follow your finger but then they’d stay like that for hours, like chickens expecting rain. And it’s because they were Deads, end of story. I mean, after you’re one of the Deads you don’t understand jokes or follow complicated Swedish detective shows on TV, and the only way you can play football is by being one of the goalposts.

  My encounter with the dead bus passenger had prepared me for all of this. I’d had first-hand experience of what the Deads were like after they came back to life. But part of me still didn’t believe it was possible. It felt like we’d slipped into an alternative universe, one where an unbeating heart and a blank mind wasn’t quite enough to keep people from rising up and walking around. I mean, half the kids in my class act like they’re Deads anyway. Teachers ask them questions and they just stare back as if someone just spoke to them in Italian or something. Maybe the living and the Deads had more in common than I thought.

  What was really weird during that first week, though, was the reaction of the adults. They didn’t think about how or why the Deads returned t
o life, they didn’t run around waving their arms and screaming their heads off in panic like they do whenever there’s a petrol strike. They just looked embarrassed and kept out of the way, and waited for the government to tell them what to do. Actually, my nan blamed the immigrants, but she blames the immigrants for everything, and “political correctness gone mad”.

  The news crept out very slowly. I watched TV late that night in my bedroom, and the Sky newsreader reported from outside a hospital morgue about a patient who had been found wandering about in the corridors. Doctors had run tests and said he had no heartbeat. The newsreader looked like she didn’t believe a word of what she was having to read out. She kept patting her hair and looking off to the side of the screen, whispering, “Are we still on?”

  Then it cut back to the studio and some ecology guy who looked like he’d just got out of bed said it might be to do with global warming, and I thought As If, I mean, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out there’s no link between the ozone layer and the reanimation of dead tissue. It’s like saying PlayStation games give you rabies or something. Get a grip.

  I kept hoping they would cut to footage of the Deads lumbering along roads and bashing into walls and generally looking thick. I rang Track and told her to turn on the TV but her dog stepmother answered and told me off for calling after 9 p.m. I watched TV all over the weekend and looked at all the newspapers, but found nothing more reported.

  The day I bumped into the old guy on the bus was the day I connected with the Deads. The police told my mother that the old man had passed away several hours earlier, and nobody was going to press charges, but I should watch where I was going in future. No wonder they all looked so confused as we left the station. Looking back at the day I committed “murder”, it wasn’t especially creepy or weird, just something that happened from time to time, like my dad bashing his wing mirrors when he’s trying to park at Sainsbury’s.