The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “Don’t forget to feed the swans.”

  Perhaps they’d see him as takeaway. That amused me hugely. Truth to tell, nobody amuses me like me own self. You could call it......killer comedy. I poured a another wee dram of Jay then went to brew some coffee. One of my passions is real coffee. Real Colombian beans, and the aroma alone gets me amped. Took a while as all real art does. When it’s brewed just right, with the Jay as outrider, I feel almost human.

  Well, at least an Irish one, which allows huge flexibility.

  Once I’d eased the cricks out of my body, I stood, pushed the sofa.

  It didn’t move.

  Terrific.

  I leaned under it, found the switch and hit it. The sofa moved as easy as the River Corrib, without the poisonous face. Beneath it the wood floor appeared seamless.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Lifted the third panel with the glass shard. All intact.

  Money.

  Mobile phones.

  Coke.

  Taser.

  Weapons.

  I took a thousand euro, the taser, a few grams of coke and my old reliable Glock, a leather band wound tight around the butt for controlled grip. Tested it, primed and ready to go. Added two clips of ammo in case. Put the rest back in place then positioned the sofa, resecured it with the lock and heard the click as it engaged. I laid out a few lines of coke and snorted them fast. The icy trickle down my throat was near-instant and I could feel the clear focus building behind my eyes.

  My bookshelves are laden with books.

  All poetry.

  No true crime or serial killer shite.

  I know my game and, better, I know my act.

  My early days in the asylum, one of those interviewing me had read all the relevant books.

  Me too.

  He asked: “As a child, did you ever torture or kill small animals?”

  Gimme a fucking break, the most basic question.

  I said:

  “I love animals, why would I hurt them?”

  Then the freaking classic.

  “Did you ever set fires and receive sexual gratification as a result?”

  God almighty.

  I said:

  “But we had central heating.”

  He’d caught on to my mind-fucking and didn’t like it.

  Not one bit.

  Asked in icy tone:

  “Does killing give you sexual release?”

  I stared at him, said:

  “You’re a wee bit obsessed with sex and violence. Have you spoken to anyone about that?”

  He lost it then.

  “I know what you are.”

  “Pray tell?”

  He took a deep sigh, said:

  “You are a narcissistic psychopath, and highly dangerous.”

  I looked at his name tag. Now he had my attention. I said:

  “Dr Williams, I don’t understand those big words.”

  <>

  4 A.M., WHEN THE WALLS ARE THINNER

  Alison Littlewood

  S

  tumpy Ellis told a lot of stories about how he lost his thumb, and they always seemed to involve violence, and grinding, and eyes. I was the only one who heard the real story, and I never would have told. Stumpy had a temper, and a man with a temper in prison is like a powder keg in a room full of lit matches.

  He had a shine in his eyes, Stumpy Ellis: a cold, dangerous kind of shine. It was like seeing a flat, wide sky in there, a grey sky, although the sun was shining in the yard when he stuck out his hand - the one with only half a thumb - and asked if I had a smoke. I looked at those eyes and took a cigarette from my pocket, without seeing what he had to trade. If I’d learned one thing inside, it was when to resist and when to bend.

  He muttered around the cig in his mouth, to my back.

  “Payment.”

  I turned and waved his words away: no problem.

  “I always pay,” he said. “I always pay and I always expect to be paid. Sit down.”

  I felt stiffness working up my back and into my knuckles, but he sat down himself, so I sat next to him and smelled the burning in his lungs.

  “I’ll tell you a story,” he said. “As payment.”

  I waited.

  He thrust out his hand in front of me, palm down, but I didn’t jump. Another thing I learned in prison: it doesn’t pay to be jumpy.

  “See that?” he said, and I grunted. His left thumb was missing from the first knuckle to the tip, leaving a thick, blunt, flexible mound.

  “Want to know how I did that?”

  I grunted again.

  “There was a guy thought he could cross me,” said Stumpy. “We worked together for a while. Building jobs, mainly. I’d get the business in, he’d mobilize the troops. Whoever was hiring us, they paid me, and I paid him. Only this one time, he came to me, he said, ‘Ellis - help me out. I need something extra.’”

  He glanced at me, so I nodded.

  “He took the money and the next time I see him, he’s coming out of the jeweller’s, and he sees me and he turns red-faced. And I knew, you know? You don’t fool Stumpy Ellis. Not when it comes to his missus.

  “A picture, my missus.” He breathed out a long, jagged breath of smoke as he laughed. “Blonde. Tits out here. Legs up here.” He stared off into the distance, pulling hard on the cigarette.

  “I didn’t follow him, didn’t need to. Told him I was off to see about a job, something out of town. And then I doubled round and went home. Knew as soon as I got there. Window was open, and this laughing floating out.”

  I nodded, wondering why he would tell this story, why it didn’t bother him what his wife had done.

  “She had him on his back when I got there. Her arse stuck up in the air.” He sucked noisily on the cigarette. “Know what I mean?”

  I nodded.

  “Got the shock of her life when I shoved her off the bed. Took half of it with her, and her looking all wide-eyed and surprised, trying to tell me she didn’t do nothing, with his blood running down her chin.”

  He laughed, but I didn’t.

  “So he was there, practically begging, so I start punching, and she’s digging in the cabinet and comes at me with the gun.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “My gun. My own gun. Keep it for - special occasions, you know? And she’s holding it with her hands, shaking everywhere, and screaming, and then she points it in the air, only she’s still shaking, and then she squeezes too hard and she fires it. And the only person more surprised than her is me, cause half my thumb’s gone, and there’s blood everywhere. All over the sheets, all over me, and all over the little prick who started it all. And I figure, she’s my missus, and what sort of a man hits his missus? So I turns round to him, my old mate, and he’s laughing at me. ‘See that?’ he says, and his voice is high as a girl’s. ‘See that?’ And he keeps looking at me and laughing.”

  He stubbed out the cigarette, then spread his hand and stared at his thumb. “Put his eye out,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I said, I put his eye out.” He hooked his thumb and mimed gouging. “Didn’t even feel it. My thumb all covered in blood, and half missing, and I didn’t even feel it. Seems it wanted it, you see. My thumb knew what it wanted and it took it.”

  He looked up. “Fucker never looked at my wife again.” He spluttered laughter and nudged me in the ribs.

  I laughed. It wasn’t funny, but I laughed anyway.

  He nudged me again. “See him?” He indicated an older man, thin, with white hair. He walked in a wide circle around the yard, his eyes fixed on the ground. “Librarian,” Stumpy said, and chuckled. “If you want to know anything, ask a librarian. He’s the one’ll get you out of here.”

  “What?” I said.

  “What?” he says. “Escape, that’s what. That’s the man’ll show you how. Just climb right out.” He g
ave a dry laugh. “Climb right out.”

  I waited for him to say something else, but he shook himself.

  “Another story,” he said, and stood. “You’ll have to pay me for that one. You’ll have to pay me good.” And he walked off without saying anything else, swaggering his way across the yard just as the guard called time.

  ~ * ~

  I knew Stumpy hadn’t told me the real story about his thumb, and I didn’t care. What he’d said about escape, though; it stuck in my mind, and that was dangerous. Curiosity could get you killed in prison as well as anywhere else.

  I didn’t approach Stumpy again, but when I got my lunch I saw an empty seat by the librarian, and I took it. If Stumpy knew something, he was a middleman. I didn’t deal with middlemen.

  I nodded to the white-haired man next to me. “Si Jameson,” I said to him in a low voice. “Short for Simon.” He glanced at me, looked away, and said nothing.

  “Hear you’re the librarian,” I said, but he went on grinding something over and over in his teeth.

  “If you want to know anything, ask a ...” I began again, but he stood, pushing his chair back so hard it rocked on two legs before slamming down behind him. He picked up his tray and was gone.

  It took a moment for the sound of eating to resume, the scrape of cutlery, the low buzz of conversation. I didn’t realize Stumpy had sat down on the other side of me until I heard his voice.

  “He won’t give it up, that one,” he said. “You can’t just introduce yourself to the librarian.”

  I almost laughed, then remembered the flat metal shine in Stumpy’s eyes, and swallowed it down.

  “You have to earn it,” he said. “It don’t come cheap.”

  “What does he want?”

  “Ah,” Stumpy said, smiling around a mouthful of sausage and mash. “Not like that. Smokes and money - they won’t cut it. You have to do something for him.”

  “What?” I said, although the real question, the one I was thinking, was “Why?” He was nothing but an old man who spent his days sorting battered paperbacks.

  “Nothing you can do for him, not in here. On the outside, though. Once you get out.”

  Stumpy sat back in his seat and pushed his tray back with a scrape. “Old scores,” he said. “You might have noticed, but in here old scores go around and around. They don’t break up and they don’t fade. Just go round and round in a man’s head, never getting any smaller. Looking for payment. And him, he’ll never get out. He’s a lifer, like you.”

  “Why doesn’t he just climb out?” I said, and smiled.

  Stumpy grinned. “He’ll never leave, not that one. He likes it here. He’s fed, he’s watered. Says he’d be happy to stay here for ever, only he’s scared someone would notice eventually.”

  I snorted. I guess the shine in Stumpy’s eyes didn’t seem so dangerous when he wasn’t looking straight at me. And I had been wrong to ask, wrong even to think about getting out. Some people shouldn’t think about some things, and I was one of them. I’d forgotten that, all for one stir-crazy psycho and an old man - the joke was on me, that’s all.

  But Stumpy was off again. He waved a hand and the whole table turned to listen. “But anyway,” he said. “Did I ever tell you the story of how I lost my thumb?”

  There were groans, splutters, and laughter. He began, some story about how he’d had the tip of his thumb removed because it was easier to grind out a man’s eye that way, because it was shorter, squatter, stronger. And I knew that this wasn’t the real story either, but I also knew something else: if anyone got to hear that story, the real story, it was going to be me.

  I didn’t say anything, though. I just sat and ate and listened, because prison was like that. You learned when it was time to wait. You did a lot of waiting: I guess you got a feel for it.

  ~ * ~

  I left Stumpy alone after that, but I always had cigarettes in my pocket, so I was ready the next time he put his hand out in the yard and asked me for a smoke.

  “Never leave home without them,” I said, and passed one over.

  “You don’t even smoke,” he said, “but I’ll help you out, don’t you worry. You don’t even have to pay me.” He scraped a match on the ground and lit the cig, shielding it against the breeze, which blew occasional spits of rain in our faces.

  I was about to walk away when he gestured towards something. “He’s never short,” he said.

  I turned and saw the librarian sitting on the ground nearby. His knees were drawn up under his chin, his posture that of a younger man. His eyes were a pale, piercing blue.

  Then I saw him reach out with one hand and he did something with his fingers. I couldn’t quite see what it was: some kind of twist, some kind of flurry, and I lost sight of his hand for a split second. Then it was back and the librarian put a cigarette to his lips. It was lit, and battered-looking, half-smoked.

  “Never lacks for anything, that one,” Stumpy said. “Just reaches out and takes it.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t see how he’d done it, and I didn’t know what to say.

  “Climb right out,” said Stumpy. “That’s what he says, only I don’t quite have it yet. But one day I will. They’ll wake up and I’ll be gone.” He turned to me, eyes agleam. “I’ll show you,” he said. “You’ll be there. You can listen, anyway, and you’ll know I’ve done it. I’m moving cell.”

  I raised my eyebrows and he nodded. “Guard owes me a favour. I’m moving tonight.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “About climbing out. You got a plan?”

  He shook his head, narrowing his eyes against the smoke of his cigarette. “Don’t need a plan,” he said. “I’ve got a book. His book.” He nodded towards the librarian. “And I made a promise. Gotta score to settle.”

  There was something about the way he looked. “Is it true?” I asked. “Are you going?”

  He shook himself. “Everything I tell you is true,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you how I lost my thumb?” And he was away, waving the stub of his cigarette in the air, his eyes flat and grey and staring off into the distance, focused on nothing. He told me how he’d lost his thumb when he ground it so deep into a man’s eye it severed against the skull. The man had been screwing his wife, who was tall and brunette and had tits Stumpy paid a year’s salary for.

  When Stumpy pulled his thumb out of the man’s eye he left the tip behind, protruding from the socket, all the evidence the pigs needed to put him away.

  ~ * ~

  That afternoon I lay on my bunk, staring at the ceiling. I wasn’t sharing the cell but had taken the top bunk, so the ceiling was close. I listened to the quiet from below and the noise from the corridor, the banging, half-shouts, the footsteps.

  I heard it when Stumpy moved into the cell next to mine. He was talking to the guards, loud and cheery and familiar. Setting things down, doors sliding and slamming. Then, after it had gone quiet for a while, I heard his voice at my door.

  “Come in?” he said.

  “Be my guest.”

  The cells weren’t locked and he came in, his walk quiet and steady. His jauntiness had gone. I sat up on the bunk, and when I saw his face, I jumped down. “Smoke?” I offered.

  He waved his hand. “Not this time. This one’s on the house.” He turned and his eyes looked pale, the shine in them absent, leaving them watery and somehow naked.

  “I - I thought someone should know,” he said. “I’m going, later. Tonight. I thought you should know.” He pushed something into my hand. It was a crumpled photograph of a woman. She looked about forty, her hair mousy, clothes nondescript. She had a good smile and laughter lines around her eyes and no kind of tits at all.

  “My wife,” he said. “That’s my wife.” He looked down and I saw that his eyes were full of tears.

  “I got her a gardener,” he said. “I got her a house and a big garden, and she was always going on about it, so I got her a gardener. But she kept saying ho
w she wanted this gazebo, a love seat she said ...” He paused. “A love seat, and I couldn’t expect a gardener to build it, she said. I was the builder, and she wanted me to do it.

  “So I did. I got this - this - gazebo. A stupid word for a stupid thing. It was just a frame that wouldn’t even keep the rain off, and a bench. Big enough for two, she said. She said...”