The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 7

by Maxim Jakubowski

  You will perhaps understand my feelings when, on reaching the hotel, my wife removed her coat to display a scarlet dress that made her look – this is no exaggeration – like a Piccadilly tart. I was mortified, but there was nothing to be done other than make the best of things.

  After my speech, I lost sight of her for a couple of hours, and when I next saw her, she was fawning (there is no other word for it) on the Chairman, her eyes glazed, her conversation gin-slurred. When she thanked him for the hospitality she had to make three attempts to pronounce the word, and by way of finale she recounted to four of the directors a joke in which the words cock and tail figured as part of the punchline.

  The really infuriating thing is that until that night I had known – absolutely and surely known! – that I was in line to step up into the shoes of my retiring colleague. I had been passed over quite a number of times in the past (I make this statement without the least shred of resentment, but people in offices can be very manipulative and the place was as full of intrigue as a Tudor court), but this time the word had definitely gone out that I was in line for his job. Departmental head, no less!

  And what happened? After my wife’s shameless display at the retirement cocktail party they announced the vacancy was to be given to a jumped-up young upstart, a pipsqueak of a boy barely out of his twenties! I think I am entitled to have been upset about it. I think anyone would have been upset. Upset, did I say? Dammit, I was wracked with fury and a black and bitter bile scalded through my entire body. I thought – you lost that promotion for me, you bitch, but one day, my fine madam, one day . . .

  Nevertheless, I still looked forward to that year’s Christmas party. I had always counted the evening as something of a special event, so before we left, I poured two glasses of the claret I kept for our modest festivities, setting hers down on the low table by her chair. She did not drink it at once – that was unusual in itself and it should have alerted me, but it did not. I remember she got up to find my woollen scarf at my request, and then, having brought it for me, asked me to go upstairs for her evening bag. She knows I hate entering her over-scented, pink-flounced bedroom, but she sometimes tries to tempt me into it. I have learned to foil her over the years: the room makes my skin crawl and her physical importunities on those occasions make me feel positively ill. It was not always so, you understand. I fancy I have been as gallant as any man in my time.

  So, the evening bag collected as hastily as possible, I sat down with my wine although it was not as good as it should be. There was a slight bitter taste – it reminded me of the almond icing on the Christmas cake in its tin – and I remember thinking I must certainly complain to the wine shop. I set down the glass, and then there was confusion – a dreadful wrenching pain and the feeling of plummeting down in a fast-moving lift . . . Bright lights and a long tunnel . . .

  And then, you see, I found myself here, outside the big elegant mansion with the doorman inviting me in . . .

  It was instantly obvious what had happened. The sly bitch had switched the glasses while I was getting her evening bag. She realized what I was doing – perhaps she saw me stir the prussic acid into her glass while she pretended to find my scarf, or perhaps she had simply decided to be rid of me anyway. But whichever it was, I drank from her glass and I died instead. The cheating, double-faced vixen actually killed me!

  It seems this house is some sort of judgment place, for the doorman came back into the room a few moments ago and said, “Murderers’ judgments” very loudly, exactly as if he was the lift-man at a department store saying, “Ladies’ underwear”.

  Are these oddly-assorted people all murderers then? That saintly-looking old gentleman in the good suit, that kitten-faced girl who might have posed for a pre-Raphaelite painting? That middle-aged female who looks as if she would not have an interest beyond baking and knitting patterns . . .?

  Having listened to fragments of their talk, I fear they are.

  “. . . and, do you know, if it had not been for the wretched office junior coming in at just that moment, I would have got away with it . . . But the stupid girl must go screaming off to Mr Bunstable in Accounts, and I ended in being convicted on the evidence of a seventeen-year-old child and the bought-ledger clerk . . . Twenty years I was given . . .”

  “Twenty years is nothing, old chap. I got Life – and that was in the days when Life meant Life . . .”

  “. . . entirely the auditor’s own fault to my way of thinking – if he hadn’t pried into that very small discrepancy in the clients’ account, I shouldn’t have needed to put the rat poison in his afternoon tea to shut him up . . .”

  “. . . I always made it a rule to use good old-fashioned Lysol or Jeyes’ Fluid to get all the blood off the knitting needle and they never got me, never even suspected . . . But that man over there by the door, he very stupidly cut costs: a cheap, supermarket-brand cleaner was what he used, and of course it simply wasn’t thorough enough and he ended his days in Wandsworth . . .”

  “. . . my dear, you should never have used your own kitchen knife, they were bound to trace it back to you . . . An axe, that’s what I always used, on the premise that you can put the killing down to a passing homicidal maniac – what? Oh, nonsense, there’s always a homicidal maniac somewhere – I’ve counted six of them here tonight as it happens – matter of fact I’ve just had a glass of wine with a couple of them . . . Charming fellows . . .”

  Well, whatever they may be, these people, charming or not, I’m not one of them. I’m not a murderer. This is all a colossal mistake, and I have absolutely no business being here because I did not kill my wife. I suppose a purist might argue that I had the intention to kill her, but as far as I know, no one has yet been punished for that, although I believe the Roman Catholic Church regards the intention as almost tantamount to the actual deed—

  And that’s another grievance! I may not actually have attended church service absolutely every Sunday, but I never missed Easter or Christmas. As a matter of fact, I rather enjoy the music one gets in a church. (Once I said this to my wife – hoping it might promote an interesting discussion, you know – but she only shrieked with laughter, asked if I was taking to religion, and recounted a coarse story about a vicar.)

  But I have been a lifelong member of the Church of England and I should have thought as such I would have been taken to a more select division. However, there may be a chance to point this out later. Presumably there will be some kind of overseer here.

  It’s unfortunate that for the moment I seem to be shut up with these people – with whom I have absolutely nothing in common. And all the while that bitch is alive in the world, flaunting her body, drinking sickly pink rubbish from champagne flutes. Taking lovers by the dozen, I shouldn’t wonder, and living high on the hog from the insurance policies . . . Yes, that last one’s a very painful thorn in the flesh, although I hadn’t better use that expression when they come to talk to me, since any mention of thorns in the flesh may be considered something of a bêtise here. They’ll have long memories, I daresay.

  But I shall explain it all presently, of course. There’s bound to be some kind of procedure for mistakes. I shall stand no nonsense from anyone, either. I did not kill my wife, and I’m damned if I’m going to be branded as a murderer.

  I’m damned if I am . . .

  TAKE DEATH EASY

  Peter Turnbull

  Monday

  In which in the sultry month of August in the golden Vale of York, a loathsome man with a loathsome machine makes a loathsome find, and a woman fulfilled becomes a woman haunted.

  HIS NEW TOY, she thought, said it all. And it said the end, after ten years it was the end, as, eventually, she knew it would be. No more hiding from it, or from him. It astounded Sandra Schofield that it had taken her ten years to “see” her husband, to see that she had been worshipping a myth. They had met at university, both students of English literature. She had immersed herself in her course, entered into the spirit of it, and had obtain
ed a great enrichment from it and had been awarded a lower second. She could have got a 2:1 her tutor said, but her old problem of tending to write unfinished sentences had been her downfall, so a 2:2 it had to be. Gary Schofield who liked being called “Gaz” as he had been in primary school, also on the same course, had been awarded a First. She assumed that he had had the same attitude to the course as she, and whilst she had taken a modest 2:2, he on the other hand had taken an impressive First and you don’t get better than that. She could only respect him. She respected him further when with his First he went to teach in an inner city school, while she had gone to teach in a traditional genteel girls’ grammar school where the pupils want to learn and school discipline is not an issue. The truth emerged slowly, and two children and ten years later it was inescapable. It emerged because of a comment here, an attitude there, and its emergence was hindered by her initial refusal to believe what she was hearing. It was for example his boast, his boast, that their second year Shakespeare paper consisted of questions on either King Lear or Julius Caesar, and that Lear being a minefield when it came to examinations, and Caesar being a simple play by comparison, he had gone in knowing nothing at all about Lear, had not even read Lear that year, but had depended solely on his knowledge of Caesar, of which he knew so much. She on the other hand had familiarized herself with both plays, read both, read all the critics on both. She had taken the lesser degree. And that’s how he had done it; examination technique, not as she had thought, academic brilliance. Not cheating by any means, but there was something cynical and exploitative about it. When she realized that, Sandra Schofield realized that after all her husband just would not thrill to three words, or even three lines of Shakespeare. And the throwaway remark by which she learned why he had taken a job in the inner city school: inner city schools are not expected to produce good results anyway, so there’s less pressure on the teaching staff. So while she stayed up until midnight marking the homework of her pupils who were going to become doctors and lawyers, he spent the evening in front of the television or in the pub in the village because inner city children don’t do homework. Set as much homework as you like, it won’t get done. After ten years to settle in the harsh North of England out of devotion to her new husband who would not leave Yorkshire, she realized that her husband was a lazy, cynical, self-centred, emotionally immature individual. She grew to find him loathsome. And his new toy said it all.

  A metal detector.

  She had always found such devices loathsome. Men walking across fields, sweeping the thing from side to side before them; scavenging. If they were birds, they’d be vultures. And here he was still wanting to be called “Gaz” as he had been when six years old, tearing off the wrapping of his new toy, with six weeks of uninterrupted school holidays to play with it in. And while his wife and children wanted attention, and despite his complaining about the tightness of the household budget, he’d flashed his credit card and had indulged himself. It was then that Sandra Schofield “saw” her husband, and when she did, her home in Dorset beckoned, and beckoned warmly.

  Gary “Gaz” Schofield, insensitive to his wife’s coldness, to her ever-increasing emotional distance, not even noticing that she was rummaging in the cupboard where their suitcases were kept, announced that he was going out for the day, but he’d be back for dinner. Without waiting for her reply, he left the house, metal detector, instruction manual and small spade in hand, and walked to where his gleaming car stood in the driveway.

  He drove to the countryside east of York, to the area of Roman roads and ancient settlements. It was a hot day, flat field of golden corn or yellow oil seed lay about him, a distant horizon, a vast blue sky. He drove off the main road onto a “B” road, and from the “B” road he turned up an unmarked track on which he parked the car. From the track he walked up a path to a small wood, one of many small woods which serve to break up the landscape in the Vale of York. As he approached the wood, detector in hand, he saw a sign nailed to a tree at the edge of the wood “Private Wood – Keep Out”. He smiled. That sign he thought would serve to keep many people out and so with luck, he’d be the first metal detector owner to use his device in this location.

  He stepped into the shade of the wood, in which many flies swarmed, and saw that the wood with its smooth mossy floor leant itself well to detecting. He put on the headphones, switched on the machine and began to criss-cross the wood, sweeping the machine widely before him. At first he found nothing, but he kept on sweeping because like all who pursue the hobby, he knew that the next sweep could bring about the earthenware pot of coins that had been buried in order to prevent the Romans from looting them, or another such similar discovery: such discoveries being made from time to time in the soil of England.

  Then his headphones buzzed. He took them off and laid down the detector, and began to dig with the small spade. About a foot down he came across a metal torch, about twenty years old. He went down further and came across a rucksack also of a design which he recalled being popular about twenty years ago, an aluminium frame on a Terylene sack, still red in colour. Digging further, he struck a hard object, but not metal. He scraped the soil away. He saw it was a skull.

  A human skull.

  Harriet Cooper was a tortured woman. A haunted, tortured woman, and she knew the torture now would be endless. She would take it to her grave. If she was by herself she would have gone to the police and confessed, but she had a husband to consider, a man of standing, the scandal would ruin him and he knew nothing of what had happened all those years earlier, before they had met. And she had teenage children, both settled in school, both wanting to become doctors like their father.

  The memory, when it returned, came in pieces. It came suddenly, the first bit, sewing a patch on her son’s jeans: the night in the wood, the hole, the smell of freshly turned soil, the scent of summer vegetation, sharpened because of the recent shower of rain . . . then all she could do was sit there, wondering whether she had remembered a dream. Two days later she had accepted that it was no dream, but that she really had once helped to bury a body.

  And the body was that of Norbert Parkes. Poor Norbert, little Norbert, university life for him was not a good experience, just another rejection in a life which had been a series of rejections . . . then two days later, the memory of the murder itself. Miles swinging the pick axe handle down on Norbert’s head from behind . . . and the sound of a woman screaming, then realizing that she had been the only woman present. And what was it that Miles had said as he looked down on the body . . . what was it? Oh, yes, “Take death easy, Norbert, take death easy”.

  Then at the moment if either she or Cameron had picked up the phone, called the police, it would have been alright, not for Norbert, not for Miles, but for them, she and Cameron, because they had no idea what Miles was going to do, even Miles didn’t seem to premeditate it. That’s what it seemed like. Miles just couldn’t contain his contempt for Norbert any longer, and then Norbert’s head sticking up above the back of the chair, Miles just happened to be walking past with a pick axe handle in his hand . . . everything conspired at one to make Norbert’s head an irresistible target.

  But Miles had a way of controlling people and before she knew what she was doing, she was helping Miles and Cameron bundle Norbert’s little body into the back of Cameron’s old Land Rover to carry it to where Miles knew was a private wood. And there they buried him, possessions and all, cheap, inexpensive possessions. Then they had returned to Miles’ parents house and collected the rest of Norbert’s possessions, his bus ticket, his cheap sleeping bag, the small pile of coins on the bedside cabinet. And when they had finished, Norbert Parkes had never been in the house.

  The very next day Miles’ parents had returned from their holiday in Jamaica and thanked Miles and his two university friends for “sitting” the house for them, and hoped that the “three of you” had had a pleasant two weeks in “our house”. After lunch that day, she and Cameron had driven back to York in total silence. A
t York Station she had gotten out of the Land Rover without a word being spoken or without a backward glance. And that had been the last she had seen of Cameron McKay or Miles Trewlawney.

  She and Miles and Cameron were all now in their early forties. She, until she recovered the memory, had been a fulfilled and privileged woman, and all three had remained in the vale. McKay Electronics was Cameron’s contribution to the micro technology boom, and Trewlawney, Wells and Isles was a feared firm of solicitors, and had acted for one of her husband’s patients when he had tried, unsuccessfully, to sue for medical negligence. The headed notepaper described Miles Trewlawney as one of the “senior partners”.

  She began to return to the wood. When they had left the wood that day dawn had broken and they had sat, the three of them side by side in a stunned silence, in Cameron’s Land Rover. She remembered the journey back to the Trewlawney house, white painted, standing in its own grounds, and so twenty years later, she had little difficulty retracing the route to the vicinity of the wood. The next step was to visit each small wood and copse in the location until she found one marked “Private Wood – Keep Out” which she found with ease. In the wood she located the spot where Norbert had been buried. She began to re-visit the wood, near twice weekly, drawn by some horrific fascination, drawn as she had read all murderers are to the scene of their crime, over and over again. But that Monday, blisteringly hot, the first Monday in August, the wood was different. Not standing in isolation as usual with no activity about it, it had now become a focus of much activity.