The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “No, you won’t,” I said.

  “Try me.”

  “I don’t have to.” I shook my head, walked towards the door.

  “What makes you so sure, thief?”

  I turned, looked at the confused, angry old man sitting in the detritus of his lonely delusions. “Because, Buzz,” I slowly explained, “you’d have to give the police a signed statement. As, indeed, would I, wherein I’d detail exactly what has happened here tonight. There’d most like be some sort of court case. You’d be called as a witness; forced to swear on a Bible as to your name. Then it’d all come out, wouldn’t it, Buzz? That you weren’t who you claimed to be? That you were really an odd little bloke who needed a ground-floor flat and help from the Social Services.”

  He stared back, blank-faced.

  “Put it this way, Buzz. You shop me, and we’re both going down...”

  ~ * ~

  I got to do a fair bit of reading in the next eight months, spent so much time reading about space and space travel that the other lags on the wing got to calling me Buzz, a name I was happy with, though I never let on precisely why.

  The court case lasted for three days, and to be fair, in a slow news week, attracted a few columns in the tabloids. I guess it was simply the absurdity of it all. I’m not going to tell you his real name, but rest assured he wasn’t an astronaut, which came as a bit of a disappointment, in a weird sort of way. His eyes never met mine as he gave evidence, and at no time during the trial did he ever mention any of the crazy moon stuff. He came out as a decent old star-gazing vigilante, photographing misdeeds from up on high - and I came out with eight months.

  Rambling Ian came to visit, told me the case had attracted enough attention to warrant Social Services moving in on the old guy and “re-accommodating” him. Apparently a crowd had gathered to see the huge telescope being winched back down the side of the building, clapping and cheering. Buzz, he told me, had simply watched, tears in his eyes.

  A few months later, I made the usual right noises to the panel, and left Her Maj’s Pleasure a cosmologically enlightened man. Sure, I was going to be a thief again, always would, we all have to live, don’t we? We’re all stardust, after all.

  True to form, the Probation set me up in a cosy little dump just south of the river. Three days later, returning from a midnight sortie, I found a note slipped under the doorway:

  You walked south for four minutes. Turned right, stayed outside number 27 for twelve minutes until the owners returned. You hid in a bush as they went inside. I’m just wondering if you needed a former employee of NASA’s mission control to help guide your mission status in a safer and more profitable way? Between us, we could reach for the moon.

  Opening the front door, I scanned the horizon, looking past disused warehouses and over the river towards a distant tower block, its top-floor lights blazing.

  I nodded, bowed - and I swear something winked back.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  HE DID NOT ALWAYS SEE HER

  Claire Seeber

  J

  eff helped Olivia choose the February book, steering her heavily towards Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. There were a few inward groans when Olivia had mumbled her idea at the last meeting. The group preferred modern books: they often enjoyed the Daily Mail’s selection, or the ones that chat show couple chose. But actually, they all agreed at the meeting, Shelley had hit on something with the creation of the monster. It was hard to imagine it being written by a woman. And, of course, they were most happy to be at Olivia’s house with Jeff on hand, so charmingly attentive.

  When the women left that evening, tapping out into the cold, clear night beneath the few stars visible in Chiswick’s busy skies, Olivia loaded the dishwasher, wiped all the worktops down, and went up to bed. Jacqueline had lingered; was taking a particularly long time to finish the oily Chardonnay Jeff had so thoughtfully provided, still simpering with spectacular adoration at his jokes. Olivia didn’t worry that they’d think her rude for slipping off; her husband would be happy to see Jacqueline out.

  Upstairs Olivia peeped in at her daughter, cleaned her teeth and then checked her son. Her heart turned over to see he’d slipped his thumb into his mouth, a habit long fought. His hair was slightly damp and his face flushed. Olivia turned the radiator down and gently tried to disengage his thumb, checking quickly over her shoulder. By the time Jeff had managed to steer an equally flushed Jacqueline out towards her enormous car, Olivia was asleep. He didn’t want to have to, but Jeff woke her anyway. He was off on business for ten days early the next morning.

  ~ * ~

  If you keep still for long enough, do you cease to exist? Olivia wondered as she stared out of the kitchen window. The late snow was melting slowly on the small green lawn until the patch looked rather like the Pacer mints she used to steal from Woolworths as a child. Absently Olivia rinsed the last plate until it shone, gazing at the pathetic leaning ball of raisin eyes and carrots that had once been a snowman, the radio beside her rattling with a phone-in about women being ignored in the bedroom.

  ‘If he doesn’t see me as I want to be seen, do I not exist?’ moaned a well-spoken academic-type called Miriam. ‘Do I simply not count in his eyes?’

  The presenter murmured sympathetically and moved on swiftly.

  Olivia felt a sudden urge to scream loudly. Instead she staunched the hot tap, sealing off the heat that aggravated the deep welts on her left hand. She stared down at the marks, labels of her own weakness. Her youngest wandered in, treading neat muddy footprints across the spotless floor.

  ‘Can I have some crisps?’ she asked, but she was already rifling through the cupboard where they lived, her auburn ponytail sleek against her back.

  ‘Can you see me?’ Olivia asked her daughter curiously.

  ‘Dur!’ her daughter replied, rustling plastic. ‘I’m not blind, Mum, you know. I don’t have a white stick.’ She chose a packet of prawn cocktail and wandered off again. They were ridiculously pink, Olivia observed vaguely, wiping down the sink. Prawns weren’t naturally that pink, were they?

  He came home early, before Olivia had a chance to clean the mud off the back step. ‘Hello,’ she said nervously. ‘Good trip?’ He checked the kitchen in silence. She held her breath; she thought she’d got away with it - then he opened the back door to check. He looked at her just once, his handsome face inscrutable. In silence, he went upstairs; in silence he came down again, out of his shirt and tie now, wearing a blue tracksuit with white stripes down the side that showed off his tall frame nicely but was frankly horrible in Olivia’s eyes. He wasn’t the young boy she’d fancied from afar in the refectory any more; he’d taken up running recently to fight his paunch. She wondered if he thought the stripes would make him go faster. Not that she would offer such a frivolous opinion these days.

  Olivia had cleaned the mud up now but it was too late, she knew. She also knew that if she crouched in the corner she only enflamed his rage, enflamed it ‘til it bubbled; he saw her rather like a dog, cowering from its master. Well, she was a dog, to him.

  ‘Bitch,’ he would snarl, his face contorted until he was positively ugly. So instead she chose to stay still when she recognized the signs.

  Now she lay flat on the gleaming kitchen floor. She lay flat but her head felt fuzzy.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he scoffed, opening the fridge and helping himself to a pork pie. It was very sturdy and compact, Olivia noted from her horizontal position. A small, tight structure of pastry, meat and fat.

  ‘I thought I’d save you the bother,’ she answered her husband quietly. She could see dirt, some old cat hairs, a bit of fluff stuck in strange yellow muck on the skirting-board. Luckily he never got this low.

  Her eldest walked into the room and stopped when he saw her. ‘Have you hurt your back again, Mummy?’ he asked, but his eyes were anxious. He moved towards her.

  ‘It’s a bit sore, sweetie, yes. Y
ou go on now,’ she forced a smile. ‘Get on with your maths. I’ll be up in a minute.’

  Her husband laughed mirthlessly, throwing his head back, spraying tiny fragments of pork pie across the sparkling worktop.

  ‘Your mother’s a daft bint,’ he spluttered to his son, eventually recovering himself. When he laughed, his tracksuit top rode up, showing the top of wiry dark red pubic hair. Olivia felt quite nauseous. ‘Did you know that, Dan? A daft fucking bint.’

  ‘You shouldn’t call her that,’ her eldest muttered, his eyes steadfastly on the floor.

  Her husband stopped laughing. He stared at his son.

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t,’ Dan said, a little louder now, his pale face flushing with the effort of challenging his father. ‘It’s horrible.’ He looked up this time, directly at the older man.

  ‘Get out, Dan,’ Olivia said quickly, scrambling to her feet. She knew what came next.

  As her husband made a lunge for Dan, the remnants of the pork pie smashing on to the shining tiles, Olivia thrust herself in front of her ten-year-old son. ‘Go,’ she shouted at him. With a stifled sob, he went.

  ~ * ~

  After the beating, a hot-eyed Olivia struggled to hold back the tears - but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Long gone were the days when he held her and cried himself, begging for forgiveness. Long long gone.

  She had found that if she kept very still he did not always see her. Over time, a long and weary time that eventually amounted to most of her adult life, Olivia realized that this was likely to be her safest option. Not necessarily her salvation, but the best bet laced on a short string of bad ones.

  ~ * ~

  She leant against the worktop trying to quell her shaking; eventually she asked her husband, ‘If I leave you, what would you do?’

  He regarded her calmly. He picked a bit of pork out of his teeth and spat it on the floor. ‘Him, for a start,’ he gestured with his head at the door their son had left through. He smirked at her, then trod the pork pie carefully into the small cracks between the terracotta tiles. ‘Little shit.’

  On his way out of the room he picked up the copy of Frankenstein stacked neatly with the cookbooks.

  ‘And this was quite obviously written by her husband,’ he snapped, ‘stupid bitch’. He chucked the paperback at Olivia’s head; she didn’t duck quite in time. Then he scooped up the phone to call his great friend Bert. ‘Booked the course, you hound?’ Jeff barked with laughter at the response, and slammed the door behind him.

  Olivia stared down at the squashed pork pie, his words reverberating round her throbbing head. Him, for a start. The pork pie reminded her of her wedding breakfast, the time when love and hope meant more than empty promises. He hadn’t hit her until a few weeks after the honeymoon. Until they were on the other side of the world; settling in Jakarta for his work. Until she made the wrong rice for his dinner; until she had no one familiar to turn to and no money of her own. Until she could only wander tearfully on the beach, stepping over the coconut leaf offerings outside each Hindu home and wondering what she’d done; already sick and pregnant in the humid nights with her beloved son.

  ~ * ~

  When the book club arrived for their next meeting at Olivia’s house, they were surprised that Jeff was out. He was always there, welcoming them, pouring the wine, joshing them gently in the way they loved, flattering them and making them think if only. He took so much more interest than any of their husbands; in fact, sometimes he even suggested the books that Olivia picked to read.

  ‘Lucky Olivia,’ they’d sigh. ‘Such devotion. Such a family man. And still so handsome too.’ Olivia would smile wanly and deep down they’d think stupid cow, she doesn’t deserve him, such a cold woman, so difficult to get close to, so thin and brittle. But they put up with her for Jeff. Lovely man.

  This cold March night, Olivia had served up a proper treat. Bowls of glistening green olives, sparkling wine, thick pate and creamy Brie, a plate of crusty home-made-looking pork pies beside dark red tulips as the centrepiece. Olivia seemed different too. She had some colour in her cheeks for once; she didn’t look quite so thin and she’d cut her hair to a sleek and shiny bob that hung just above her shoulders. If you looked closely you might have seen the small scar that marked her forehead, the exact shape of a book corner, but her new fringe hid it well.

  ‘I thought Jeff loved your long hair?’ Cathy asked quizzically.

  ‘He did.’ Olivia took a big sip of her Prosecco. ‘But I hated it. So I had it cut right off.’

  ‘And where is he?’ Cathy asked girlishly, looking through the open door into the hall as if Jeff might step in at any moment. ‘I quite miss him now he’s not here.’

  ‘Do you?’ Olivia smiled shyly. ‘I find it very - quiet now he’s away on business.’

  ‘And where’s he gone, the naughty man?’ asked Jacqueline with a pained fuchsia smile, secretly ruing the two hours she’d spent that afternoon in Hair Flair having her thin hair bouffed.

  ‘Back to Indonesia; they couldn’t do without him, they found. He really is a telecommunications expert, it seems.’ Olivia drained her wine. ‘He might be gone some time.’ She picked up the plate of golden pastry with a steady hand, the little handmade leaves on top of each pie curling in the soft electric light, and offered it around. ‘Pork pie, anyone?’

  <>

  ~ * ~

  METHOD MURDER

  Simon Brett

  A

  s an actor, Kenny Mountford yearned to be taken seriously. Since finishing at drama school, he’d done all right. A bit of theatre work, but mostly television, which was good news because it paid better. However, a continuous round of small parts in The Bill, Heartbeat and Midsomer Murders had left him, by the time he reached his early thirties, with a deep sense of dissatisfaction. It wasn’t celebrity that he craved, it was respectability. He wanted to be able to hold his head high amongst other actors when the discussion moved on to the issues of the “truth” and “integrity” of their profession.

  And really that meant doing more theatre. For the more obscure and impenetrable the theatre work, the higher the integrity of the actors involved. This meant, in effect, working with one of a small list of trendy directors, directors who didn’t pander to the public by making their work accessible or simply entertaining. So Kenny Mountford set out to meet and ingratiate himself with such a director.

  It was a good time for him to make the move. A stint playing the barman on a successful sitcom had bolstered his income to the point that he had paid off the mortgage on his Notting Hill house. And, besides, his live-in actress girlfriend Lesley-Jane Walden was not only a nice bit of arm candy to satisfy the gossip columns, she was also making a good whack as the latest femme fatale in a long-running soap opera. Her hunger for celebrity was currently satisfied, they weren’t in need of money, so Kenny Mountford was in a position where he could afford to pursue art for art’s sake.

  The latest enfant terrible of British theatre was a director called Charlie Fenton. Like many of his breed, he had a great contempt for the written word, rejecting texts by playwrights in favour of improvisation. In the many television and newspaper interviews he gave, he regularly pontificated about “the straitjacket of conformity” and derided “the crowd-pleasing lack of originality demonstrated by the constant revival of classic theatre texts”. One somewhat sceptical interviewer had asked if this meant Charlie Fenton considered one of his improvised pieces to be better than a play by Shakespeare and, though hotly denying the suggestion, the director made it fairly clear that that actually was his view.

  What Charlie Fenton was most famous for was his in-depth approach to characterization. Though claiming to have developed his own system, he owed more than he cared to admit to the pioneering work in New York of Lee Strasberg, the originator of the “Method”. This was a style of acting which aimed for greater authenticity, and its exponents had included Meryl Streep, Paul Newman, Robert de N
iro and even, surprisingly, Marilyn Monroe. Rather than building up a character from the outside and assembling a collection of mannerisms, a “Method actor” would try so to immerse himself in the identity of the person he was playing that he virtually became that person.

  So if an actor were playing a milkman in a Charlie Fenton production, the director would send the poor unfortunate off to spend three months delivering milk. Someone with the role of a Muslim terrorist would be obliged to convert to Islam. An actress playing a prostitute would have to turn tricks in the streets around King’s Cross (and almost definitely service Charlie Fenton too, so that he could check she was doing it properly). And one poor unfortunate had once spent three months in a basement blindfolded and chained to a radiator for a proposed production about hostage-taking. (It would only have been three weeks, but Charlie Fenton omitted to inform the actor when he abandoned the idea.)