The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8

by Maxim Jakubowski

  I reckoned you left the job, took a quick teacher-training course somewhere, then got the job here. But, like I say, it was only a theory. I could have been wildly wrong. So I decided to do what Hamlet does, and devise a test (another conscience-pricker) to see if I was right. Here’s what I did …

  First, I texted you back on Cheryl’s phone. You remember that one, Sir? The one where she asked to meet you that very night, at The Wellington Arms? That was me, not her. But less than a minute later, the phone buzzed in my hands with your reply, something about having to be really careful, it was quite a public place.

  And I was giggling now, as I replied, insisting we must meet, that I was worried, had something to tell you that I might need to see a doctor about. I remember having to stop myself from laughing when I pressed Send.

  Next, I deleted the messages and dropped the phone down the toilet. Now, even if Cheryl and her mates did find it, the thing wouldn’t work. You wouldn’t be able to secretly text her before the meeting in The Wellington. You were most likely going to show up, and she had no idea about it. Quite a scheme, eh? I think even Hamlet would have been proud of me, don’t you, Sir?

  It’s a good play, Hamlet, and has often been interpreted in many different ways. It seems to me that the central question – does he fake his madness to get revenge on those who’ve betrayed him? – is almost impossible to answer. Perhaps Shakespeare was trying to say that all revenge is a form of madness, as it can consume our minds if we’re not careful.

  I think Dad’s the sanest man I know. Yes, he did a stupid thing and got caught, and now he’s being punished for it. But he’s never talked of revenge – even though I reckon he’d probably want to get that CCTV operator who spent too long looking at young girls getting drunk, rather than catching Dad’s accomplice on the night of the robbery. The police never found any fingerprints or anything, but the fact is that Dad couldn’t have done it on his own. Someone else must have helped him, been inside the warehouse, handing him the boxes of stuff to load into the van, just out of shot of the properly sighted camera. But when the police went through the tapes, Dad was the only person on them. Doesn’t seem very fair, does it, Sir? My dad in prison, and the other man going free because you didn’t do your job properly?

  Chances are, Sir, you never made the connection between me and Dad. Judy Harris, I mean, it’s not as if it’s a very uncommon surname, is it? Sort of invisible to you, aren’t I? The swotty kid who complains about the others, tells tales on them; the easy one to ridicule. The plain one, the one that doesn’t wear makeup, giggle at you as you pass by in the corridor. Just invisible old Judy Harris, gives in her work on time, does all the homework, tries her best. Strange how life can turn out, isn’t it, Sir.

  Back to my conscience-pricker. Having arranged for you to be in The Wellington, I decided that Mum and Uncle Tony needed a little more culture in their lives. I went to the shopping precinct on the way home, bought myself a copy of the Hamlet DVD, told them both that after tea, I thought it would be a really nice idea if we all sat down and watched it together. Well, of course, Uncle Tony – already a little drunk at this point – raised a few objections, said he didn’t mind watching Mel Gibson stuff, Mad Max and the like, but he was buggered if he was going to sit down and watch a “load of Shakespeare shit all night”. (See, another quotation, that’s two so far; doing right well, aren’t I, Sir?)

  Anyway, I made a bit of a fuss, and eventually Mum decided to smooth things over and asked Uncle Tony really nicely if he’d do this one thing. I said it’d make us all feel more like a proper family, and Uncle Tony sort of made a throaty noise, shrugged, and gave way, saying he’d give it half an hour, and if it was bollocks, then he’d leave it.

  So, Sir, just after half-seven that night, I put Hamlet on our DVD player. Imagine that – a bit of real culture in our grotty house. Amazing, eh? And then I did what Hamlet does, watched my mother and my uncle real close as the story unravelled …

  It didn’t take long, say twenty minutes at the most, and that’s even with all the old language to cope with. Mum and Uncle Tony soon got the gist of it – the betrayal of Hamlet’s father – and began sort of shifting uncomfortably and giving these sideways looks at each other. Honestly, Sir, it worked a treat.

  Uncle Tony started coming out with all this stuff about Mel Gibson going “poofy”, and that he was much better in Braveheart and the Lethal Weapon films. I just knew he was begging for an excuse to leave what was becoming more and more embarrassing for him. So at that point I decided to tell him about you, Sir. Not the Cheryl Bassington stuff, or even the way you were so mean to me; no, instead I told him about the other stuff.

  Yeah, I know, I lied. But just a white one, really. And Hamlet himself does that, doesn’t he, when he tells poor Ophelia that he doesn’t really love her any more? I told Uncle Tony that when I was in town buying the DVD a strange bloke had come up to me asking me my name and where I lived, and when I told him, he asked me if Tony Watts lived with us. When I said he did, the man told me he wanted to speak to him about “the favour” he’d done my Uncle Tony with the security cameras, and that as far as he was concerned he thought that Tony Watts owed him, big-style, and that he’d be waiting in The Wellington at 8.30 to “sort it all out”.

  Well, my Uncle Tony being the sort of bloke he is, you don’t have to try too hard to imagine his reaction. He was well angry, and began swearing and cursing, telling me I should have told him much earlier, asking for a description of you, then grabbing his coat and storming off, slamming the front door behind him so loudly that the walls shook. Mum looked right ashen, turned the DVD off, and told me to get straight upstairs to my room, that she thought I’d caused enough upset for one night. Uncle Tony didn’t come home that night.

  That was two weeks ago, and you’ve been off school ever since, haven’t you, Sir? At Thursday morning’s full-school assembly, the Head told us that you’d been attacked the previous night, and were staying away to recover. Two broken ribs and a fractured jaw, the local paper said, with a couple of witnesses saying you’d been beaten up by a Tony Watts (unemployed) in the car park of The Wellington Arms. Police, apparently, are still trying to find a motive, but I’m sure with a little “help” they’ll have a clearer picture of why he did that cruel thing to you.

  Uncle Tony’s on remand, as we can’t afford the bail, so he’ll be inside till the court case, which should be really interesting. The police have already interviewed my mum about Uncle Tony, but they haven’t got to me yet. I’m not sure whether to tell them what I know, or to keep quiet about it. I’ll write to Dad and ask him what he thinks I should do.

  Our substitute teacher isn’t very good, but she’s told us to finish these assignments and the school will send them to you to mark while you recover. I’m sure that when you read this, Sir, you’ll realize why you were attacked that night, together with how much I know about you that you’d rather other people didn’t.

  In conclusion, I say that whether Hamlet was faking his madness is irrelevant. How sane are any of us, anyway? And isn’t the very idea of faking madness a bit bad in the first place? Maybe you should know, Sir, the amount of faking you’ve done in the last few years.

  I look forward to receiving my A for this essay. After all, I really did my homework on you.

  NO THANKS, PLEASE

  Declan Burke

  HEADS TURNED, HALF-CURIOUS, then full-faced in horror. A man started towards her, one hand out as if reaching to catch a low driven ball, but she walked on, turning up off the river under the arch at Christchurch and on down Patrick Street.

  A condom in the gutter with a used teabag inside. A Labrador puppy cocking a leg at its reflection in a puddle. Italian names on car tyres. Each new thing reminded her why she was looking in these places for the first time. Not to avoid the shame she would see mirrored in their eyes or the degradation she might glimpse in some angled shop window. It simply hurt too much to roll her right eye up against the bruising. So she k
ept her head down and her shoulders hunched, arms loosely folded to cradle her ribs.

  Now her feet began to hurt. At first the pain was a sharp pinching where the stiff leather folded across the knuckles of her small toes but soon it became a chafing and melted down in a raw burn. She realized the blisters had burst but she did not stop. She thought that if she stopped walking she would fall down and die. This was who she was now: a woman who might die if she ever stopped walking.

  She tried to remember her name.

  He rattled the paper in folding it, then slammed the pen down. This was his quiet time, mid-afternoon, a time for the crossword, a smoke. He crossed the apartment in two strides and jammed a forefinger against the red button.

  “Yes?”

  But all he heard was the intercom hiss and a low, rasping breathing. “Look,” he said. “If I have to go down there … ” Then he heard the faint, choked-off sob.

  “Janey?” His stomach churned. “Janey? Is that you?”

  The sob broke.

  He didn’t open the door wide enough and slammed his shoulder on the frame on the way through.

  He ministered to her cuts and bruises using paper tissues and Dettol. But it was awkward, leaning in from so far away. She would flinch back even before he touched her.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Janey. I just want to—”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  She had bawled at first, raw and honking until the whiskeys seeped through. Then she had whimpered, shoulders shaking with rage and fear and the tremors of a pure adrenaline charge. Now she seemed blank and dry, like old cardboard. “I just,” she said, “I … ”

  He waited for her to finish but she only winced and hunched forward, arms folded below her chest.

  “Janey, I really think we should get you to ER. Those ribs should be—”

  “It’s too late now.” She nodded at the empty glass. “It’s the first thing they’ll ask, was I drinking.”

  “But I gave you the whiskey, to calm you down. I’ll be your—”

  “Jay? James?”

  “What?”

  “Can you run me a bath? Can you do that for me? A warm bath?”

  “But shouldn’t you wait until after you get …?”

  But she was rocking herself, features flinty and set against the world at an impossible angle. He put the paper tissues on the arm of the chair and left the room.

  When she said, “I’ll need you to help me get undressed,” he could almost taste the loathing that coated her tongue.

  “Of course,” he said. “Whatever. Janey, just ask. Anything you want.”

  She nodded, staring at a fixed point between the coffee table and who she used to be.

  “You can stay here, no worries,” he went on. “He won’t get in here.” He ground his teeth. “He can fucking try, but he’ll be leaving backwards, in three fucking body bags.”

  She made a sucking sound, ran her tongue between her teeth and her split upper lip. “Jay? Did you leave the bath running?”

  “Fuck.”

  He mopped the floor with dirty towels, poured in a handful of fizzy salts. Called her from the bathroom door and watched her lurch down the hallway like an ageing monster. She turned her back to him and he eased her T-shirt up over her shoulders, unhooked her bra, slid her denims over her hips and down past her knees. He experienced the frisson he had been dreading but when it was past he was unable to say if it had been the expected sexual rush or a profound reaction to engaging with the most vulnerable intimacy he had ever known.

  The abrasion on her back ran from one shoulder blade almost to her kidneys. It looked as if he had attacked her with a wire-wool scrub. He quivered, felt his jaws lock in place.

  “I’ll be right next door, Janey,” he said, retreating. “If there’s anything, just shout.”

  “It hurts when I talk.”

  He closed the door as gently as he knew how and backed away down the hall wondering what his next move should be. The grating of the key was a kick in the gut.

  He slipped out to the small Spar on Patrick Street. A pizza, garlic bread, a bottle of vodka, a carton of orange juice, some Panadol. At the checkout a stout middle-aged woman leaned across the counter to the young bottle-blonde till-jockey. He edged closer until they could no longer ignore him. The older woman turned and drew herself up.

  “Can we help you?” she asked. Dry pink powder grouted the corners of her mouth.

  “My friend was beaten up,” he said, nodding at the armful of groceries. “She’s a woman,” he explained. “Her husband beat her up.”

  Their eyes glazed over, tiny pools freezing fast.

  “She’s taking a bath,” he added, as if that might help them thaw.

  “You left her alone?” the bottle-blonde said.

  “She locked the door.”

  “You shouldn’t have left her alone,” the stout woman said. “God love her.” Her hand was a hummingbird as she blessed herself, bringing her forehead down to meet the fingers, the wicker carrier-bag heavy on her elbow. “How bad?” she said.

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  The stout woman stood back to allow him to put the armful of groceries on the counter. “Now hush,” she said. “That’s no way to talk.”

  “How?” the bottle-blonde said, waving the pizza at the side of the till until she heard the beep of barcode recognition. He stared at her. “How are you going to kill him?” she said, picking up the orange juice.

  “Now, Tricia,” the stout woman said.

  “I’m going to eat his fucking throat out,” he said.

  The bottle-blonde bagged his groceries and put out her hand. “Don’t just say it,” she said. She rang up the transaction, returned his change. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  She ate steadily, without interest or appetite, and he despised himself for having to look away from the loose gaping of the bathrobe. She took two more painkillers and sipped her vodka-orange and stared vacantly at the TV.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to ring the cops?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “And you definitely don’t want to go to the hospital.”

  She nodded again, weary.

  “Are you going to stay here tonight?”

  “No.” The word deader than stone.

  “You’re going back?”

  She nodded.

  “Jesus, Janey … ” Her eyes flickered away from the screen and came to rest on his. “If he’s done it once he’ll do it again. Go back now and you’re telling him it’s OK. You’re giving him the right, Janey.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a bit simplistic?”

  “What’s so complicated about being kicked in the head?”

  She waited. “This is about me,” she said quietly.

  “It’s you I’m trying to help.”

  Her eyes flickered back to the screen.

  “At least let me ring Caroline,” he said. “What’s her number?”

  “She’s minding the girls,” she said. She drained her vodka-orange and stood up slowly.

  “At least they weren’t around to see it,” he said, and just like that, as if she had suddenly seen it through her daughters’ eyes, a thin orangey vomit spewed.

  “At least,” he said, re-hooking her bra, “let me come in with you. Just so he knows you’re not alone.”

  “So he knows there’s someone like him, just ready to go.”

  “Fuck sakes, Janey … ”

  “You can come in,” she said. “If you can admit that you need to come in for you, then you can come in.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m only doing it for me. So my conscience is clear. Happy?”

  “No,” she said. She walked to the car barefoot.

  He drove up past the canal, out through Donnybrook, taking the N11 all the way to Foxrock. He vaguely remembered the estate from the house-warming party. When they pulled in to the kerb she stared into the setting sun, face immobile below the sunglasses he’d given
her.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said.

  “See the icebergs?” she said.

  “What?”

  She nodded, and he turned to look. Light wisps of orange-tinged cirrus hung suspended above the sun. And it was true: three small, hard, glittering clouds had the appearance of icebergs floating in a patch of light blue sky. “How would that happen?” she said. “What are they?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  She couldn’t reach up far enough to open the front door and so she handed him the key. They walked through the downstairs, then checked upstairs, but he wasn’t home. She didn’t want him to wait.

  “Not here,” he said. “But I’m going to wait down the road. And when he comes home, I’m coming back in. Someone needs to tell him what’s what.”

  “And what’s that?” she said. They were standing in the hall, the front door ajar.

  “This isn’t about you,” he said. “It’s about him.”

  “It’s about you,” she said.

  “He has to learn. I’m only going to warn him.”

  She bit her lip and looked down. “It wasn’t Sean,” she whispered.

  He frowned. “Then who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You were jumped?”

  “Jay,” she pleaded, “trust me.”

  But he was adamant, insisting. She backed away into the corner behind the door and when he took a step towards her the words tumbled out as if they might fend him off. Job. Lost. Mortgage. Sean. Friend. Company.

  “No fooling around, though,” she said. She sounded dull, a sleepwalker. “That was the deal. Just company. For the races at Leopardstown. Just drinks and company.”