The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

by Maxim Jakubowski

  I had to lean back against the door and grip my arms hard to stop myself from shaking. Right from the first, there had been something about him that had made me squirm, made me crawl; something that had made it impossible for me to say no. The loans asked for so casually and never returned; the three in the morning phone calls after the club was closed, when he would come to me with cigarette smoke in his hair, brandy on his breath and another woman’s perfume on his skin, and still I could never turn him away.

  But then, without warning, he disappeared. Minorca, some said, Porta Ventura. Cyprus. Spain. Money he owed, gambling debts that had been gambled again and lost - something shady, dangerous, underhand. Of course, he had gone off before, weeks, months sometimes. But this seemed more definite, complete.

  I floundered, came close to falling apart. It took an overdose and months of psychotherapy, but with help, I put myself back together, bit by bit.

  It wasn’t going to happen again.

  I called Harry and left a message on his machine: one or two things, I said, in need of your attention. The wardrobe, the chest of drawers.

  When he arrived, I was busy in the kitchen; a wave and a few quick words and, tool bag over his shoulder, he was on his way up to the bedroom. When I followed, some little time later, my feet were quiet on the stairs.

  He was standing at the open wardrobe, running his hand along the silk of a black slip dress I’d bought from Ghost, eyes closed.

  I touched my fingers to his back and that was all it took.

  There was a scar, embossed like a lightning flash, across his chest; another, puckered like a closing rose, high on his thigh.

  “Harry?”

  Sweaty, the surprise still lingering in his eyes, he touched my breast with the tip of each of his fingers, the ball of his thumb.

  After he’d gone, I bathed, changed the linen on the bed, saw to my face and hair and wondered how I would spend the rest of the day till, as promised, he returned. A little light shopping, lunch, perhaps an afternoon movie, a quiet stroll.

  He was there at the door at eight o’clock sharp, freshly shaved, a clean shirt. Before kissing me he hesitated, as if I might have changed my mind, filed it away under Big Mistake. And when I kissed him back I could feel something shift within him, a deliverance from some small fear or doubt.

  We made love and then we talked - I talked, in the main, and he listened. Marie had been right. Though as this night gradually became a second and a third and he felt more at ease, at home, he let slip bits and pieces of his life. How his wife had told him she was leaving him in an email because she was too scared to tell him face to face. That had been when he was on his second tour of Northern Ireland, in Belfast. She was living in Guildford now, remarried; he saw the two boys quite often, though less often than he’d have liked. The eldest was away at university in Stirling, studying animal biology, the youngest was hoping to take up the law. Bright kids, he said, take after their mother. If either of them had gone into the army, she’d threatened to slit her wrists.

  We started to fall into a routine: Fridays and Saturdays he would spend the evening, stay the night. If ever he came round mid-week, he would go home and sleep in his own bed so as to make an early start. The ring from his finger had disappeared to be replaced by a pale band of skin.

  When finally I told him about Victor, the way he had made me feel, powerless, used, as if I had no will, no skin, there was something in his face I hadn’t seen before. Something that made his body tense and his hands tighten into fists.

  “People like that,” he said, “they don’t deserve to live.”

  ~ * ~

  Victor sent me texts, left messages on my phone, to none of which I replied. He didn’t like to be ignored. When finally he came round, it was not much after one in the morning, early for him. Possibly he’d been watching the house to see if Harry were there, I don’t know. I opened the door partway and held it fast.

  “What’s the matter?” I said. “Lost your way?”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “All right, you have. Now you can go.”

  He was wearing a new suit, expensive, six or seven hundred at least; his face still tanned from his time abroad, eyes small and dark and rarely still. The same old smile slipped into place with practised ease.

  “It’s been a long time,” he said.

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Liar.” His tongue showed for an instant, lizard-like, between thin lips.

  “Goodnight, Victor.”

  I leaned against the door to push it closed and he pushed back. Whether he meant it to or not, the edge of it caught me hard in the face, just alongside the eye, and I stumbled to my knees.

  “Careful,” Victor said, shutting the door behind him. “You could get hurt.”

  He touched his finger to the well of blood and drew it down, slowly, across my cheek.

  When he left, an hour later, all I could do was curl myself into a ball, cover my head and wish for sleep.

  That was how Harry found me next morning, a surprise call on his way to work.

  “This was Victor? He did this?”

  Gingerly, I touched the side of my face. “It was an accident... sort of an accident. I don’t think it was meant.”

  “Then how ...?”

  “Last night, he was here. I was trying to stop him from coming in.”

  “He forced his way into the house, that’s what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Suppose?”

  “Well, yes, then. Yes.”

  “And forced himself upon you?”

  I turned my head away.

  “He raped you.”

  “No.”

  “Then what else would you call it?”

  I had begun to shake.

  “I’ll kill him, so help me, I will.”

  “Harry, don’t, please. Don’t say that.”

  “Just tell me where I can find him.”

  “Harry, no.”

  “You want this to happen again? Keep happening?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then tell me. And I’ll put a stop to it once and for all.”

  I didn’t tell him, not then. Not right away. The last thing I wanted was for him to go off angry and emotional, acting impulsively, without properly thinking it through. That he could kill a man, I had little doubt; he had killed men before, after all; men he didn’t know, men at close range, men he couldn’t - didn’t - see. It was what he’d been trained to do. He could kill a man, I was sure, with his bare hands. Those hands.

  “The Concord,” I said. “You know, that place out towards the estuary. That’s where he spends a lot of time. Victor. If you still did want to see him. Talk to him. He’d listen to you.”

  It was the next evening, the two of us propped up on pillows after making love; Harry’s head resting on my shoulder, my fingers combing through his hair.

  “What if he doesn’t?” Harry said.

  “Hmm?”

  “What if he doesn’t listen?”

  I reached down and kissed the palm of his hand. “Maybe the club’s not the best place to talk. Somewhere quieter might be better. Where he’s less likely to make a fuss. The park, perhaps. Up river. Where they’re filling in the old gravel pit. Somewhere like that.”

  “He’d never come.”

  “He might if he thought I was going to be there.”

  I didn’t say anything more about it; neither did he. Several more days passed. A week. Then ...

  “I’m meeting him this evening. Later. Where you said.”

  “You’re sure?”

  His arms slid around me and I pressed my face against his chest.

  “Don’t trust him,” I said. “Don’t turn your back.”

  I didn’t see him again that night, nor for several nights after. I texted him to make sure he was all right and he was. Just busy. See you soon as I can.
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  When he did come round there was some bruising I noticed, now fading, to the back of his hand; his knuckles were grazed. An accident, I thought, while working, a chisel that had slipped, a length of timber that had leaped back at his face.

  “You saw him?”

  “Yes, I saw him.”

  He didn’t tell me what had happened, what had been said. The only time I asked, weeks later, he said, “You just don’t want to know.”

  Victor Sedalis had disappeared again, into thin air. Nobody asked questions, bothered to report him missing. After all, he’d done it before. Cyprus, this time, that was the story. Limassol, somewhere. Gambling debts he couldn’t pay, the interest rising, compounding day by day.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” said the barman at the Concord, “if this time he’s gone for good.”

  I continued to see a little of Harry, but after that it was never quite the same. The last I heard, he’d upped sticks and started a little boatbuilding business down near Southampton. One of his sons lives near there while he’s studying for his doctorate. Biotechnology? Something like that?

  At first there was the odd postcard or two, but Harry’s not much of a one for writing and, I suppose, neither am I.

  I did think about moving myself, got as far as putting the house on the market, but in the end I stayed. Too late to dig myself up, perhaps, too much effort, transplanting myself, at this stage of my life. And, besides, I like it here. Where I know. It suits me. My little lunches with Marie. The tennis club. I can just about hold my end up at doubles, much to my surprise. And on a sunny day like today, I’ll sometimes take a stroll down along the river to the country park. A few dog walkers, kids kicking a ball; quite often, weekdays, I’ve got the place to myself. Not that I mind. I feel safe there, secure. The ground, fresh and firm beneath my feet.

  ~ * ~

  My thanks to Amy Rigby and Bill Demain, whose song, ‘Keep It To Yourself’, as sung by Amy, provided the initial idea for this story.

  http://amyrigby.com/

  <>

  ~ * ~

  THE INVISIBLE GUNMAN

  Keith McCarthy

  I

  t was 7.50 on a warm May evening in 1976 and Max and I were running late. Dad had invited us for a meal at 7.30 and he did not normally like to be kept waiting. The reasons we were late were many and varied; firstly, I had been kept at the surgery by the mother of a small boy who had stuck a wodge of masticated chewing gum up his nose that would not come back down (when I inserted a pair of forceps so far up there, I fully expected to see his eyes being pulled back into his sockets), and Max - a vet by trade - had been overrun by an outbreak of diarrhoea and vomiting in a local kennels; then the car had refused to start for ten minutes because I managed to flood the engine.

  Dad had told us to come round the back because he was planning a barbecue. I had feigned enthusiasm for this idea but had suggested that he should avoid doing pork or chicken. I thought I’d done this tactfully but clearly not for he had asked at once and rather sharply, “Why not?”

  I groped for the correct form of words. “Because chicken and pork don’t barbecue particularly well.” Actually, on Dad’s barbecue, no meats did particularly well, but at least you were relatively safe with lamb or beef that had fourth-degree burns on the surface yet still, miraculously, a beating heart within. Similar cooking conditions when applied to chicken or pork were apt to lead to terminal food poisoning.

  “I’ve never found that,” he pointed out.

  “How about sticking to beefburgers?”

  “Horrible, pre-digested pap. Wouldn’t feed them to my dog.”

  I tried the last gambit in my arsenal. “I know that Max likes lamb... “

  A pause. “Does she?”

  “Loves it.”

  “Oh, well...I’ll see what I can do, then.” In the eyes of Lance Elliot Senior, retired general practitioner, Max Christy could do no wrong. Accordingly, I was hoping for an evening meal that, if not destined for gastronomic legend, would not at least see Max and me spending the next forty-eight hours threatening to overwhelm the sewers of Thornton Heath.

  I hurriedly opened the wooden door by the side of the garage that led down a narrow pathway to the back garden. I would judge that I had the door open about six inches when it happened. There was a heavy thud, and simultaneously the door was pushed violently back into a closed position while I found my right eye about two inches from the metal-tipped point of an arrow that protruded through a small explosion of splinters from the door. I jumped back, colliding with Max who squealed then fell over.

  I said, “Bloody hell!” while Max said, “Ow!”

  As I turned around to help her back up, the garden door opened and the heavily beard-encrusted face of my father looked out. “What’s all the fuss?”

  It took a moment to straighten Max out, who also had a few questions to ask me - like why I had decided to assault her - so it was not immediately that I turned to my aged parent. In this interlude he had pulled the arrow out of the door and was examining it. “What in the name of all that’s good and holy are you doing?” I demanded.

  I knew his expression well. It was a perfect blend of innocence and reproach, and it asked me where I had learned to speak to my elder and better in such a way, because it certainly hadn’t been from him. “Practising.”

  “Practising? Practising what? Trying to kill me?”

  “No, of course not. Practising archery.”

  There would once have been a time when this reply would have left me not only short of things to say but also short of breath to say them with. But no longer; I knew him too well. My father collected new hobbies like small boys collect pictures of first-division footballers, only he tired of them considerably more quickly. Over the last year he had taken up campanology, astronomy, carpentry, metalwork, juggling and karate; admittedly, the last he had been forced to give up after two days when he broke his fifth metacarpal trying to chop firewood with his bare hands, but all the rest had arrived with a rush of enthusiasm, stayed for a few weeks, then dwindled to indifference in the space of perhaps five days.

  “You were aiming at the door to your garden,” I pointed out.

  “Of course I was,” he said, his voice betraying doubt that I was using my brain about the matter. “That’s where I pinned the target.” He gestured behind us and we turned to see a large paper archery target peppered with holes - none in the bull - on the inside of the garden gate. “The pathway down the side of the garage makes a nice shooting gallery.”

  “But you knew we were coming in that way.”

  He frowned. “So? Oh, don’t worry,” he said airily. “I wouldn’t have fired the arrow if the door had been any more open than it was.”

  I didn’t believe that for one moment but knew better than to argue the point, so tried another one. “As it was, the bloody thing went through the wood and nearly got me in the eye.”

  “I know,” he said with real enthusiasm. “Very impressive, you’ll have to agree. And all with a home-made bow. Come over here and look at it.”

  He toddled off and all Max and I could do was proffer each other a despairing smile and follow him. I have never been able to decide whether my father is a madman pretending sanity, or a sane man pretending madness. He was standing just in front of his homemade, oil-drum barbecue from which the distinct odour of burning meat was rising. He was cradling his bow with the kind of love that is normally only seen in mothers with their first-born. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  It was, I have to admit, a fairly impressive item; about five foot long and an inch in diameter at the middle, it was highly polished and had a handle made of a crepe bandage wound tightly round. Just below this there was some sort of thin bolt protruding forwards, on the end of which was welded a five-pound kitchen weight. Just above the handle was a slight notch on the left-hand edge.

  “I made it myself.” My father said this in the tone of voice th
at dared you not to be impressed. Max complied with, “Wonderful craftsmanship, Dr Elliot. You’re clearly very talented.” I merely said, “Mmm....”

  “I got this book on archery out of the library and I suddenly thought what a brilliant idea to make my own longbow.”

  “Have you killed anyone yet?”

  He took offence. “What do you mean by that?”