The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 7

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “So what’s the plan?” Donna asked.

  “It’s already under way. I got my film rights director to call him back. She has the Roedean accent and very sexy it sounds. I told her to play the caution card. Said she needed to be certain Lionel isn’t married. He jumped right in and said he’s a widower and would welcome the opportunity to prove it. They’re meeting for a walk on the Downs at Beachy Head followed by a meal at the pub.”

  “Your rights director?”

  “No, silly. She was just the voice on the phone. He’ll meet Georgie and get the shock of his life. All you and I have to do is be there to take care of the remains.”

  Donna caught her breath. “I can’t be a party to murder.”

  “My sense of humour, darling. Georgie won’t do anything permanent. He’ll rough him up a bit and put the fear of God in him. Then we step up and get our money back.”

  Maggie drove them to Eastbourne on the day of the rendezvous. She took the zigzag from Holywell and parked in a lay-by with a good view of the grass rise. From here you wouldn’t know there was a sheer drop. But if you ventured up the slope you’d see the Seven Sisters, the chalk cliffs reaching right away to Cuckmere Haven. It was late on a fine, gusty afternoon. Georgie and the hapless Lionel were expected to reach here about five-thirty.

  “Coffee or champagne?”

  “You are well prepared,” Donna said. “Coffee, I think. I want a clear head when we meet up with him.”

  Maggie poured some from a flask. “We’ll save the champers for later.”

  Donna smiled. “I just hope it stops him in his tracks. I don’t want other women getting caught like we did. I felt so angry with myself for being taken in. I got very depressed. When I came up here I was on the point of suicide.”

  “That’s no attitude. Don’t ever let them grind you down.”

  “I’m not very experienced with men.”

  “Well, at least you persuaded the bastard to marry you, darling. You can’t be a total amateur. Me, I was conned every which way. Slept with him, handed him my money, accepted his proposal.”

  “Proposal? He proposed to you? Actually promised to marry you?”

  “The whole shebang. Down on one knee. We were engaged. He bought the ring, I’ll say that for him. A large diamond and two sapphires. He knew he had to chip in something to get what he wanted. What did it cost him? – a couple of grand at most, compared to the sixty he got off me.”

  “I had no idea it got that far.”

  “He’d have married me if I hadn’t caught him out. Bigamy wouldn’t have troubled our Lionel.”

  Donna was increasingly concerned about what she was hearing. “But you didn’t catch him out. When I first phoned, you called him your boyfriend. I had to persuade you that he was a conman.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, ducky,” Maggie said with a harder edge to her voice. “I knew all about Lionel before you showed up. I had him checked out. It’s easy enough to get hold of a marriage certificate, and when he gave me the guff about the flying accident I checked for a death certificate as well, and there wasn’t one, so I knew he was lying. He was stupid enough to tell me about the memorial bench before I even saw it. I went to the council and made sure it was bloody Lionel who paid to have it put there. He handed them the plaque and a wad of cash. What a con. He could go on using that seat as his calling card every time he started up with a new woman.”

  “If you knew all that, why didn’t you act before? Why are you doing this with me?” Donna said.

  “Do you really want to know?” Maggie said. She reached for the champagne bottle and turned it in her hands as if to demonstrate good faith. “It’s because you would have found out. Some day his body is going to be washed up. The sea always gives up its dead. Then the police are going to come asking questions and you’ll lead them straight to me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Get with it, Donna dear. Lionel is history.”

  She felt the hairs rise on her neck. “You killed him?”

  “The evening he brought me up here to look at the stupid bench. I waited till we got here and then told him what an arsehole he was. Do you know, he still tried to con me? He walked to the cliff edge and said he would throw himself off if I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t stand his hypocrisy, so I gave him a push. Simple as that.”

  Donna covered her mouth.

  “The tide was in,” Maggie said in a matter-of-fact way, “so I suppose the body was carried out to sea.”

  “This is dreadful,” Donna said. She herself had felt hatred for Lionel and wanted revenge, but she had never dreamed of killing him. “What I can’t understand is why we’re here now – why you went through this charade of advertising for him, trying to find him – when you knew he was dead.”

  “If you were listening, sweetie, I just told you. You knew too much even before I gave you the full story. You’re certain to shop me when the police come along.”

  It was getting dark in the car, but Donna noticed a movement of Maggie’s right hand. She had gripped the champagne bottle by the neck.

  Donna felt for the door handle and shoved it open. She half-fell, trying to get out. Maggie got out the other side and dashed round. Donna tried to run, but Maggie grabbed her coat. The last thing Donna saw was the bottle being swung at her head.

  The impact was massive.

  She fell against the car and slid to the ground. She’d lost all sensation. She couldn’t even raise her arms to protect herself.

  She acted dead, eyes closed, body limp. It wasn’t difficult.

  One of her eyes was jerked open by Maggie’s finger. She had the presence to stare ahead.

  Then she felt Maggie’s hands under her back, lifting. She was hauled back into the car seat. The door slammed shut. She was too dazed to do anything.

  Maggie was back at the wheel, closing the other door. The engine started up. The car bumped in ways it shouldn’t have done. It was being driven across the turf, and she guessed what was happening. Maggie was driving her right up to the cliff edge to push her over.

  The car stopped.

  I can’t let this happen, she told herself. I wanted to die once, but not any more.

  She heard Maggie get out again. She opened her eyes. The key was in the ignition, but she hadn’t the strength to move across and take the controls. She had to shut her eyes again and surrender to Maggie dragging her off the seat.

  First her back thumped on the chalk at the cliff edge, then her head.

  Flashes streaked across her retina. She took a deep breath of cold air, trying to hold on to consciousness.

  She felt Maggie’s hands take a grip under her armpits to force her over the edge.

  With an effort born of desperation she turned and grabbed one of Maggie’s ankles with both hands and held on. If she was going, then her killer would go with her.

  Maggie shouted, “Bitch!” and kicked her repeatedly with the free leg. Donna knew she had to hold on.

  Each kick was like a dagger-thrust in her kidneys.

  I can’t take this, she told herself.

  The agony became unbearable. She let go.

  The sudden removal of the clamp on Maggie’s leg must have affected her balance. Donna felt the full force of Maggie’s weight across her body followed by a scream, a long, despairing and diminishing scream.

  Donna dragged herself away from the crumbling edge and then flopped on the turf again. Almost another half hour passed before she was able to stagger to the phone box and ask for help.

  When she told her story to the police, she kept it simple. She wasn’t capable of telling it all. She’d been brought here on the pretext of meeting someone and then attacked with a bottle and almost forced over the edge. Her attacker had tripped and gone over.

  Even the next day, when she made a full statement for their records, she omitted some of the details. She decided not to tell them she’d been at the point of suicide when she discovered that bench. She
let them believe she’d come on a sentimental journey to remember her childhood. It didn’t affect their investigation.

  Maggie’s body was recovered the same day. Lionel, elusive to the end, was washed up at Hastings by a storm the following October.

  He left only debts. Donna had expected nothing and was not discouraged. Since her escape she valued her life and looked forward.

  And the bench? You won’t find it at Beachy Head.

  CHICAGO

  Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  IT TOOK JACK Cogan five days to hunt me down. I don’t know why because I was where anyone with half a brain would expect me to be. In my office. At the back table in Finnegan’s, drinking New York sours and watching some old film on the screen. You know the kind; girl meets boy, boy gets killed, girl saves every cent to bring him back to life, boy goes off with someone else . . .

  Finnegan had turned down the lights; instantly lowering the ceiling and sending the wall into shadow. The place smelt of cigar smoke, whisky and cologne. The way you would expect a Chicago speakeasy to smell.

  The bar stools held memories of those who’d already left. Little Pete, who overflowed everything except a four-seater settee; a whore I knew from somewhere else; a couple of soldiers; and a man who spent half an hour watching me before glancing away when I caught his stare.

  He left shortly afterwards.

  Maybe he had another appointment, and maybe pulling back my jacket to reveal a Colt 45 in my belt made him decide to leave me alone. That’s what I thought at the time. When Jack Cogan came blustering into Finnegan’s with his shoulders rolling and his belly jutting proudly, I knew the watcher had been one of Jack’s sneaks.

  “Take a seat,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Cogan. “I just did.”

  Leaning forward, he let his jacket drop open.

  “Sweet rig,” I said, looking at his double holster “Where d’you get it. Wal-Mart?”

  Jack Cogan scowled. “From Lucky himself.”

  That was Lucky Luciano XI, unless it was Lucky Luciano X. They had a high attrition rate in that family. Since gang positions became hereditary, we’d seen some weird shit in this godforsaken city; like thirteen-year-old capos running whole districts and a seven-year-old pimp managing a stable of hookers without knowing what the punters were buying.

  “You’re a hard man to find.”

  “Can’t have been looking hard enough.”

  Jack was broad and barrel-chested, running to fat. At the moment his chest was larger than his gut, but it was only a matter of time. He tipped his head to one side, inviting me to explain.

  “It’s been a bad year. This is the only bar where I’m not banned.” Glancing at the door, I noticed three plain-clothes officers. They weren’t clients for sure. They owned all their own teeth, wore clean clothes and were sober. One of those was possible, two at a stretch . . .

  But all three?

  “I’m touched,” I said. “You brought backup.”

  Jack Cogan flushed.

  You can probably tell, the police captain and I go way back. In fact, we go back so far that I can remember when he was thin and he can remember when I was rich, successful and kept the key that wound up his boss.

  “Al . . .” he said, and his use of my first name killed my grin faster than a gun ever could. “I need to know. Where were you between two and three o’clock this morning?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  “Listen to me . . .”

  “Mean it,” I said. “Had my memory wipe this morning. Last three days. Shit, I guess. Must have been, or I wouldn’t have bothered to wipe them.” Pulling an envelope from my pocket, I pushed it across.

  You would think it was poisonous from the way Jack Cogan hesitated to touch it. Although it might have been the colour, which was purple.

  “Classy,” he said.

  A young woman I couldn’t remember told me she didn’t want to see me again. She told me this in childlike writing with tear splotches crinkling the page. So I guess we’d gone from romance to break up in fewer than three days. Impressive, even by my standards.

  “You’re in trouble.” Jack Cogan was saying.

  “Guess I am,” I said. “If her brothers or father ever catch up with me.”

  “No,” said Cogan. “I mean you’re in real trouble.”

  “And you’re bringing me in?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Felt I owed you that.” The captain nodded at my screen. “Watched any news recently?” His sigh answered his own question. “Guess not, or you wouldn’t be sitting round here drinking those.”

  Without asking, he leant over and flicked channels.

  My face stared back at me. Only it was me as I might have been; if I were sober and my hair was clean and I’d bothered to shave any time in the last week. This version of me wore a pin-stripped suit, with a fancy waistcoat and patent leather shoes. He was carrying a tommy gun, the traditional mark of a recognized gang boss. The gun looked old, but it wasn’t. Not really. My grandfather had it made the day he moved up from consigliere to capo.

  “You might want to turn up the sound.”

  I did as Jack suggested, and discovered what part of me already knew. The other Jonny Falcone XI had checked out with a shot to the head.

  “Professional,” said the presenter.

  A thin woman came on to talk about Chicago traditions and that particular MO. She talked about stuff that hadn’t happened as well. Gut shots, blindings, slashes to the throat, tongues ripped out, testicles removed and sewn into the mouth; nothing everybody hadn’t heard three hundred times before.

  Round here the bosses appointed the mayor, and they helped choose the governor, and the governor helps choose the president. It was the system that had been in place since the president realized only the bosses could make prohibition stick, because only they had a cast-iron gold-plated reason for wanting it to stick. It was what made them rich.

  “So,” said the presenter. “You’re saying this is capo a capo, right?”

  The woman hesitated. “It’s what that particular MO would suggest, but there’s another rumour . . .”

  “What’s all this got to do with me?” I demanded.

  Something like sympathy showed in Jack Cogan’s eyes. “We need you down the station,” he said.

  “We’ve got your fingerprints,” said the man. “Your DNA and your ugly face on tape. All you got to do is sign.” Picking up a rubber hose, he slashed me across the lip and grinned when pain forced its way between my teeth.

  He and his companion had me naked and tied to a chair, with blood filling my mouth and three of my teeth shining like cheap ivory on the cell floor. I’d already watched myself limp down a corridor onscreen, slowly open a door and slip through it. Exactly 180 seconds later came the sound of a shot, exactly fifteen seconds after that I limped back through the door, shut it quietly behind me and shuffled my way downstairs. I came out of the wipe with one knee broken. Don’t know how it happened any more than anything else that happened in those three days.

  “You listening?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m listening.”

  He hit me again anyway; swung the hose with enthusiasm, to make me listen harder. I knew him from my old life. While the other enforcer looked like the kid of someone I used to know.

  Probably was. As I said, all gang jobs are hereditary.

  One point troubled me though. I’d expected Jack Cogan to do the dirty work and here I was with a couple of high-level enforcers doing it themselves. Made no sense. At least, not to me.

  “Why not leave this to Jack?” I asked.

  For a moment, I thought the two men were going to tell me they asked the questions. But the man with the rubber hose grabbed a chair, flipped it round and straddled it, pushing his face close to mine. “Only three people it can be,” he said. “Freddy, Machine Gun or you. Now my boss knows it’s not him. And Mickey’s boss knows it’s not him. So that just leaves you . . .”

  Digging int
o his pocket, he extracted a pair of pliers, a switchblade, a lighter and something that looked like cotton thread, and laid the first three on the table. In the time it took me to realize the fourth was not cotton; he’s wrapped it round my ear and tugged.

  “Fuck . . .”

  Then he reached for my other ear. “Come on, Jonny,” he said. It was a day for people calling me by my first name. “You know how it goes. We slice off your ears. We sever your fingers. We crush your toes and then we crush your balls. Assuming you’re too stupid to have signed before then.”

  The other enforcer snorted.

  “So,” he said. “Agree to sign and we’ll get you a doctor. It’s late, we’re all tired, and we all know you’re going to confess eventually.”

  The judge had a face like a sucked lemon or maybe she was constipated. Either way, she twisted her lips and shuffled in her seat; every moue of distaste and twitch of discomfort captured on camera. And there were numerous cameras, journalists and members of the public. The demand for seats for my trial had been so great the city had been forced to hold a lottery.

  Now, I am sure there are prosecution lawyers who are polite, intelligent, quietly spoken and understated. The small man who stalked out into the well of the court was not one of them. Glancing around him, Mr Dalkin stopped when his eyes reached the jury box and he gazed at each juror sympathetically. I don’t know why he didn’t just confess, his expression said. I don’t know why you’re being put through this. And then he turned to me.

  “Tell me,” he demanded. “Why you refused to take a lie detector test.”

  “I didn’t.”

  Mr Dalkin rolled his eyes at the jury and turned to where I stood behind bulletproof glass. “Then why are the results of that test not entered with the court?”

  I shrugged.

  “You don’t have an answer?”

  “I took the test,” I told him. “But the results prove nothing.”

  “How is that possible?” he said. “How can they not show anything?”

  “Because I had a memory wipe the morning after the murder.”

  He grinned wolfishly and flicked his gaze towards the judge, to check that she was paying attention. She was, leaning slightly forward to catch his reply. “Are you telling me that’s a coincidence?” he said. “That you just happened to have a memory wipe that morning?”