The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Just plain Lettice and Dora Huggins – ex-high class hookers, ex-brothel madams, ex-pickpockets, – drunk rollers and – petty criminals – had moved up in the world.

  Sheehan leaned against the Daimler in the private enclosure at Fairyhouse and watched Ireland’s rich and famous swarm around his new employers like bluebottles around diamond-encrusted shit. Gobshites. He had to admire the Italian pair though. Their scam was a good one. From what he’d observed today they were selling certificates of part ownership in thoroughbred horses. 50,000 euros a share. The women had the right patter, references from top names in the horseracing world, the backing of Lord This and Duke That. Most of all they were fluently talking the language of the greedy bastards drooling all over them. The language of cold, hard cash.

  “A 25 percent to 30 percent return in 3 months,” the Countess was saying in her clipped, lightly accented tones, as she tapped out strings of numbers on the slim laptop computer on the table in front of her. “Guaranteed. The stud fees on their own are worth a fortune in income. Why, the Duke of Chalfont was able to restore the family seat in a year from his returns. 200,000 euros, Mr Kavanagh? Certainly. Just give me your bank account details and we’ll effect the transaction immediately.”

  These rich tossers might not be able to recognize a hoor with the clap when they saw one, but Sheehan certainly did. He’d made a fair packet from this sort of scam himself until he’d gone to jail for it. His was on a smaller scale of course, but Sheehan recognized the signs. He’d sold dodgy TV advertising (he’d even got a film student friend to film a couple of fake adverts – and they’d made a porno while they were at it; Sheehan was rather proud of his starring role – OK, it was a short fuckin’ fillum and it was all wobbly cameras and badly dubbed sound, but they’d got the money shot and that was the main thing). He’d guaranteed his investors a 30 percent return every 60 days. And, of course, he’d made sure to deliver to the first few investors. They spread the word and all the other suckers signed up. Needless to say, the other suckers never got their promised returns. Or their capital back as it happened. It was risky, and you had to have balls to pull it off. For a while Sheehan had managed to juggle those balls in the air as he robbed Peter to pay Paul, but eventually the whole thing had collapsed like a drunken sailor, and Sheehan hadn’t managed to disappear before the Gardai came a-calling.

  Sheehan narrowed his eyes and ground out his cigarette under the heel of his boot. He was decked out in his new green and gold uniform – knife-edge creases in the trousers, gold buttons shining, black boots polished to within an inch of their life. He was hot, uncomfortable and he’d nearly lamped the auld bitch one when she gave him the uniform. Green and gold? He was a Unionist all the way. Green and feckin’ gold? If it hadn’t been for that insult he might have stuck with his original plan of heisting the diamonds. Now he was going to make this job really worth his while. Sheehan had a grudging admiration for the auld wans. But it wasn’t going to stop him relieving them of some of the cash. It would be like taking candy from a baby.

  “Well, Dora, how much have we made?” Letty put her feet up on the rented Georgian table in the drawing room, popped the cork of a magnum of Dom Perignon and opened a packet of pork scratchings.

  Dora entered the final few numbers into the laptop. “Just short of 4 million euros. Not too shabby.” She opened one of the miniature bottles of Tia Maria that she’d stolen off the trolley on the EasyJet flight over from Luton the week before, clinked it against the bottle of champagne in Letty’s hand and knocked it back.

  “Piece of piss, Dora. Piece of piss.” Two enormous trunks were open at Letty’s feet, each of them half full of clothes. “I checked the flight to Rio. We need to be at the airport in an hour or so. Sheehan should be back in a few minutes to drive us.”

  “And here I am, ladies.” Sheehan lounged in the doorway, a smile on his thin lips.

  Letty dragged herself back into Countess mode, removed her feet from the table and gently placed the half empty champagne bottle down, burping in a ladylike manner as she did so. “Ah, Sheehan, please could you take these trunks to the car.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. I think you and I and Dora here need to have a nice wee chat, about an equitable sharing of the proceeds of your day at the races. It’s only fair after all.”

  He moved to where Dora had been sitting and turned the laptop round to face him. “4 million euros, eh? And what are two auld bitches like yerselves going to do with 4 million euros? A nice old peoples’ home should set you back a couple of thousand at the most. I might let you have 10,000 or so, just so you can keep yourselves in Rich Tea Biscuits.”

  Letty jumped up from the sofa and took a couple of tottering steps towards him. Sheehan picked up the plane tickets lying next to the laptop and laughed, as Letty and Dora stared at him wide-eyed and open-mouthed, dewlaps quivering in unison.

  “And yez think yez are heading off to Argentina with your ill-gotten gains?”

  “Brazil,” muttered Letty, as she regained her composure, hefted the half empty magnum of champagne, and swung it at the back of his head with as much vigour as she’d once used to whip politicians and High Court judges into submission in her previous career. “Rio de Janeiro is in Brazil, you stupid fucking little twat.” She dropped the champagne bottle onto Sheehan’s rat-like face as he lay on the floor staring blankly upwards. As the bottle smashed his nose Letty said “That’ll teach you, you little wanker,” and wiped her hands on her skirt.

  Colm O’Neil knocked on the door of the Georgian Townhouse, his home-made collecting tin in hand. If he’d chosen to use his IT degree wisely he could have had a future. But he didn’t like to get up in the morning so, instead, he’d printed out some imposing looking business cards and brochures for a charity proclaiming itself “The Holy Sisters of Perpetual Misery” and spent his afternoons fleecing Dublin’s tourists and residents alike of the odd 20 euros. Just enough to get himself a wee carry-out from the offy and a couple of ounces of the finest cannabis from his dealer in Gardiner Street.

  An elderly lady opened the door and looked at him calmly, a smaller woman fluttering behind her like a stressed-out moth. Quickly sizing them up – the well-cut suits, the jewels adorning their necks and fingers, the general aura of wealth, Colm decided to go for broke. “Howya ladies. I’m collecting for The Holy Sisters, and wondered if you’d be after sparing 50 euros for a good cause?” He rattled his tin to tempt them.

  “Certainly young man, do come in.” The non-fluttering woman opened the door wider and he stepped into the hall. Two huge old-fashioned trunks and several smaller bags were in the hallway, coats draped over them. “You’ve just caught us on our way out. We’re waiting for a taxi to take us to the airport.” The woman looked at him appraisingly for a long moment and then rummaged in her handbag. Pulling out a large wallet she gave him a hundred euros. “A fine strapping young chap like you – I wonder if you’d do us a small favor. Would you take these two trunks here to the dump? We just . . . don’t have the time. And although they’re on wheels they’re terribly heavy and my sister and I are not as young as we used to be. It’s just some old papers and old clothes that we don’t want.”

  Colm practically snatched off her hand to get to the 100 euro note. “Sure, and whyever not.”

  “I just need to put a couple more things in.” The woman disappeared into a room to the left, came out a couple of minutes later and slid a fat envelope into a compartment at the side of one of the trunks.

  Colm lifted the handle of the brown trunk. She was right. It was heavy. Maybe he should ask for 200 euros. Still, there might be something inside worth having – he didn’t want to appear too greedy. “Have a lovely trip ladies. And thank you. The Sisters of Perpetual Misery will bless you.”

  Letty and Dora sat in Business Class with their feet up, watching Ocean’s Eleven on the screen in front of them as they sipped their champagne on the flight to Rio.

  Dora smiled happily. “Letty, that nice young m
an is going to open the trunks, isn’t he, dear?”

  “Of course he is Dora. He won’t be able to resist.”

  “What do you think he’ll do when he finds those nicely packaged portions of Mr Sheehan?”

  “I have absolutely no idea. But hopefully the 10,000 euros I also put in the trunk will offset the horrible shock.” Letty studied George Clooney on the screen as he scammed the Las Vegas casino out of a fortune. “Dora, do you know if they have casinos in Rio?”

  SHERLOCK HOLMES

  AND THE TITANIC SWINDLE

  Len Deighton

  It was handwritten in a bold, attractive and well-formed writing style, on a cream-coloured heavy paper. There was a small crease on the corner but there was no sign of fading and the colour was the same on both front and back. Held to the light, this single sheet revealed a watermark of a floral design that I did not recognize. The upper edge of the sheet was slightly rough as if it might have been torn from a writing pad, but it may have been because the paper was handmade. Most significantly, the writing varied in ink density. The sentences started in a strong dark greyish-blue and then faded slightly as happens when writing with an old-fashioned pen frequently dipped into a bottle of ink.

  Sherlock Holmes and the Titanic Swindle

  It was a raw and foggy night in early December when Holmes and I sat either side of a blazing fire in our sitting room in Baker Street. Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard was there. He was likely to call in on us of an evening, and Sherlock Holmes always welcomed him, as he liked to hear the latest news from police headquarters. On this particular evening Lestrade puffed at his cigar and was uncustomarily quiet. “It’s this terrible disaster,” said Lestrade, shaking his head sadly.

  “ Some fine old families will be mourning still,” I said.

  “There are fears abroad that this failure of an unsinkable vessel could deliver a crippling blow to our whole shipbuilding industry,” said Holmes. “I can reveal that I have already been in contact with the captain, the helmsman and several others who were on watch at the time. I am presenting my spiritual research to the directors of the White Star Line. There remain many unanswered questions.”

  “Surely not?” said Lestrade. “ The Titanic struck an iceberg, was ripped open and sank. How can there be a mystery concerning it?”

  “The Titanic, was it?” said Holmes. He waited a long time before continuing. “There is not one article; not one piece of flotsam or jetsam bearing the name Titanic.” He watched our faces and then answered the tacit question. “ ‘White Star Line’ yes, but not one item with the word Titanic.”

  He held up his hand to still our questions. “ To other matters,” he said.

  “And where’s the rest of it?” I asked.

  “In his father’s bank or in a private Swiss vault or in a tower of his auntie’s Bavarian castle,” said Percy.

  “Is that what’s he’s like?”

  “Strong London accent; almost like an Aussie, carefully trimmed black beard; brown corduroy suit; pompous, assertive; aggressive almost.”

  “Could be any one of our authors,” I said.

  “My authors are respectful,” said Percy.

  “Because you send the aggressive ones to me.”

  “And they are the ones that make the money,” said Percy. “Ever since that piece in The Bookseller, they all want you to be their editor, you know that. Fiction writers do anyway.”

  I read the sheet of paper again and said nothing.

  “So what do you think?” said Percy after looking around the room. “Bloody untidy; your office.” He had removed a pile of books in order to sit in the soft leather chair I put authors into when I have bad news for them. One leg was resting across the other to display a red cashmere sock and handmade Oxford shoe. Percy always looked like a page from a fashion magazine even on days like today, when the rain was thrashing against the windows, and the sky was so dark that all the office lights were turned on.

  “Is it a parody or what?” I said. “It has the same plodding style that I remember from all Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes yarns.”

  “Is that a recommendation? Do you mean it’s genuine?”

  “We have quite a big list, and it will be too late for the new catalogue, no matter how fast we move. I think we should stay out of this. Send him one of your sad rejection letters.”

  “Send him where? To HarperCollins? To Random House?”

  “Why did he pick us?” I asked.

  “He wanted to bring it to the last independent publisher in London, he said.”

  “You didn’t tell me he was a philanthropist.”

  “Now, now, Carl. Don’t let your nasty Teutonic streak show.”

  “It’s been a long day,” I said. Percy’s Teutonic joke, a reference to my Christian name, had worn thin.

  “And you’ve had your regular kick-boxing lesson from Princess Diana all afternoon.”

  “Her agent told her our contract will have to be renegotiated.”

  “More money. She can go to Hell and take Footsteps to Heaven with her.”

  “We did rather well with her last Sharon du Parr,” I reminded him. “And she has a new agent now: Freckles. Her other agent was not commercial enough for her. New agents, Percy, always want to flex their muscles.”

  “Her last agent was a man,” said Percy who was high enough in the command structure to be in on the deals. “Sensible enough to keep her feet on the ground.”

  “Was he? I never met him.”

  “Blonde lady bomber pilots and female secret agents toting machine guns. The artwork on her last dust-jacket haunts me. I don’t know why we publish that crap.”

  “You don’t?” I enjoyed winding him up. “She loved the dust-jacket. She wanted us to make it into a poster.”

  “That wretched Freckles? Has she really started her own agency? Good grief.”

  “I think we might be dealing with her for more of our lady writers before long. She wrote an amusing article in The Author. She said men authors always got paid twice as much as women authors and she was going to fight for them. And you’d better not call her Freckles to her face, Percy.”

  “Let’s get back to this Sherlock Holmes story,” said Percy. He put a finger on to his starched shirt cuff to sneak a look at his gold Rolex. “You want me to tell him to get stuffed? He’s demanding some ‘token’ money down before we see the rest of it.”

  “That’s just to keep us on the hook,” I told him.

  “So I’ll tell him we’re not interested?”

  “Not in as many words, Percy. You don’t want to make headlines as the publisher who turned down a Sherlock Holmes story that has been locked away undiscovered for a hundred years.”

  He wetted his lips and then sighed. “Make up your mind, Carl.”

  “Everyone loves Sherlock Holmes,” I said. “If it’s the real thing this will make news. Not trade news; big international headline news and TV.”

  “The paper looks old,” he picked it up and looked at it and smelled it. “But is it Conan Doyle’s writing?”

  “Well, I don’t imagine he would bring us an autograph edition; he may have copied it out.”

  “You’d think he’d put it on a computer or something.”

  “Not very secure, computers, Percy. Put something like that on the hard drive and it’s only a couple of keystrokes away from going on to the Internet. And into the Public Domain, as you lawyers say. Your – what did you say his name was? – seems to be a careful chap.”

  “He says he wants a definite answer, and cash on the table, by the fifteenth of the month.”

  “The fifteenth? Next week?”

  “He’s out of the country till then; a business trip he said.”

  “Writers all say that; they have a guilt complex about holidays.”

  I was very busy over the next few days. One of our best line-editors had gone sick with what they suspected was chickenpox. Her daughter phoned us to say her mother might need hospital treatment. She w
as having blood tests. I knew that would mean a week or more out of action. The worst of it was that she lived in deepest, darkest Cornwall and there was a tall pile of typescripts sitting on her shelf. I couldn’t find time to go down there, and Percy was frightened he might catch chickenpox. Finally we decided to wait and see what the medical tests showed. And Percy found an urgent need to visit one of our writers in Ireland. As usual, this meant a diligent exploration of the local pubs and Percy running at half speed for several following days.

  Once back in action, Percy took his single sheet of handwritten Sherlock Holmes all around the building, swearing them all to secrecy, as he had before showing it to me. By Thursday he must have run out of people to consult for he came back to talk to me again.

  “That young fellow who does the computer stuff in accounts had a good suggestion.”

  “About Sherlock Holmes?”

  “He said we must insist on having a sheet from the original, and then have the paper examined and tested in a laboratory to see how old it was.”

  “No great problem getting your hands on sheets of old paper, Percy. We could probably find some in the store room, or the slush pile, if we rooted around long enough.”

  “And I thought of that too, Carl. I’m not a complete fool. It might be better to get one of these computer people to compare the syntax against other stories.” I suppose I did not light up in the expected fashion. “Verbs, adjectives, the length of the sentences and so on. That ‘customarily’, for instance. Was that a word Doyle ever used?”

  “It wouldn’t be conclusive. We shouldn’t assume that this fellow, What’s-his-name, is an untutored oaf. If he’s a forger he will have looked at the stories: verbs, adjectives and the length of sentences.”