The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “What is that meaning?” he asked.

  She smiled.

  WRONG ’EM BOYO

  A JOE GERAGHTY STORY

  Nick Quantrill

  * * *

  Three nights ago …

  “THERE YOU GO.” He counted them out for me. “Two shirts, company tie and, of course, your cap. That’s the full kit,” he said. I looked at the cap. The company badge stared back at me. Established 1974. I nodded to Tony Bagshaw, head of Bagshaw Security Limited. “You’re the boss,” I said to him.

  He went back to the paperwork at his desk. “Any more questions?”

  “No. It’s fine,” I said. I looked again at the cap, tried it on for size. It’d do the job. Sometimes you’ve got to take whatever’s on offer to pay the bills.

  “You’re not a private investigator now,” he said. “You start tomorrow.”

  Two nights ago …

  “You’re the new guy, then?”

  I nodded. I’d followed the directions Bagshaw had given me and found the control room. “I’m the new guy,” I said.

  “Grab a seat, then.”

  I put my cap on the table and sat down. “Joe,” I said, holding my hand out.

  He took it. “Bill.”

  I looked around the control room. It was dominated by a bank of CCTV screens showing the various angles and corners of the warehouse. Bill had a well-thumbed paperback and a mug on his desk. I could also see empty chocolate wrappers. “Busy night, then?” I asked him.

  “Pretty much the same as any other.”

  “Right.”

  He pointed to the kettle. “Make yourself at home, lad. Tea, white, one sugar for me.”

  “And that’s pretty much that,” Bill said to me. “The grand tour.”

  He’d shown me around the warehouse. It was essentially a large storeroom full of toys. As we’d walked back to our office space, we passed the half-built extension to the building. Several JCBs and diggers sat still for the night.

  “Company’s expanding, is it?” I said.

  Bill shrugged. “At least someone’s doing well at the moment.”

  “There’s always winners and losers,” I said. Bill sat back down at his desk. I filled in the log to show we’d made our hourly inspection. I ticked the box to say no problems and signed my name. I put the kettle on. Again. The usual tea for Bill and coffee for me. I needed the caffeine. Even though I’d carried out countless overnight surveillance jobs in the past, it was still a shock to the system. We settled down for another spell. Bill sighed and picked up his paperback. Showed it to me, told me it was a load of rubbish. The first Stieg Larsson novel.

  “The wife gave it to me,” he said.

  I told him I’d not read it. I had no interest, just continued to stare at the bank of CCTV images. The images were grainy, like watching a poor quality video cassette. I knew there were no other people on site. Nothing happened, nor should it. I picked up Bill’s newspaper and flicked through it. All I had to look forward to was the next circuit of the warehouse in another hour’s time. Time passed slowly. I tried to finish Bill’s crossword for him. Failed. His mobile rang. Bill took the call, said very little, but it was obvious he didn’t like what he was hearing. He ended the call.

  “I thought private mobiles were banned,” I said to him.

  He shrugged. “What Bagshaw doesn’t know isn’t going to hurt him.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I waited for Bill to break the silence. “The wife,” he eventually said. “She was a bit upset.”

  “I gathered.”

  “What does she expect, lad? If there isn’t any overtime, what can I do? It’s not my fault we’re losing contracts all over the place, is it?” He pointed at the CCTV screens. “Besides, who wants to spend every waking hour looking at them?” He took a breath. “Do you get out much?”

  “Not really.”

  “You can kiss goodbye to it, anyway. Might as well get used to the shit hours. I’ve been doing this since the trawler work finished.” He threw the pen he’d been doing his crossword with on to the desk. “Nearly thirty years.”

  Now …

  We were both on edge. We didn’t speak, just shared the odd grunted word, our eyes on the CCTV screens. We were supposed to patrol the site in pairs, but Bill didn’t want to move. I switched my mobile on, gave him my number and set off on the hourly circuit of the warehouse. Midnight. I wasn’t a jumpy sort of person, but tonight my torch was picking out shapes against the wall I knew weren’t really there. I moved slowly, trying not to make a sound. I walked into the new extension area, flashed the torch around. The JCBs and diggers were neatly lined up, ready for tomorrow’s work. Nothing doing. I adjusted my cap and walked back to the office. The circuit had taken me fifteen minutes. I found Bill curled up in a ball on the office floor, sobbing. I crouched down and straightened him up. His glasses were broken. I picked up the pieces and passed them back to him. I found a toilet roll and helped him wipe up the blood. I waited for his breathing to return to normal.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “They came.”

  One night ago …

  We worked until ten o’clock. There was time to make it to the pub before closing. Last chance before we started working nights. I passed him a pint of lager, sat down opposite him.

  “Cheers,” I said, drinking down a mouthful.

  Bill said nothing. Didn’t even touch his drink.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  He shuffled closer to me. “I’ve got a problem, Joe. A big fucking problem.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. I put my drink down. “Go on.”

  Bill picked up his drink. I watched as he drained half of it in one go. “I wanted to let you know I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

  Now …

  “You did well, Bill,” Bagshaw said. “I’m proud of you.”

  Bill looked at me, confused.

  Inodded back.

  “Thanks very much,” he eventually said.

  Once I’d settled Bill down, I’d made the call. Told Bagshaw what had happened.

  “Did you get a look at the men?” he asked Bill.

  Bill shook his head. “Balaclavas. I couldn’t see their faces.”

  Bagshaw turned to me. “Not much to go on, then.”

  “Seems not,” I said.

  “At least they didn’t get anything.”

  They hadn’t even gone into the warehouse.

  One night ago …

  “They had pictures of our Sharon in nightclubs. Pissed out of her head,” Bill said to me.

  “What did they say to you?”

  “They didn’t need to say much. They knew who she was. They knew where I worked. Told me how she could get into a lot of trouble behaving like that when she’s out and about. Especially if she got separated from her mates.”

  I watched Bill drink the rest of his pint. He drank it down in one go. “She’s only nineteen, Joe. A bairn. I can’t let it happen.”

  Now …

  I looked at Bill. Best part of thirty years’ service and it had come to this for him. Blackmailed by scrotes. I’d understood what Bagshaw had told me when he’d hired me. It wasn’t the warehouse full of toys thieves were interested in. They definitely weren’t worth all this effort. That was for the fly-by-night chancers with Transit vans. These people wanted the JCBs and diggers. They held their value and were easy to lose on building sites. If they were taken from here, Bagshaw Security was finished. And Bill was finished. Neither of them deserved that. Even if the insurance covered the loss, the blow to the company’s reputation would be fatal. That was why Bagshaw had called me. I took my cap and tie off, handed them back to him, ignoring Bill’s stare. I’d done my job. It was back to the office tomorrow and another job. “My invoice will be in the post,” I said. “At the price we agreed.”

  Bagshaw walked over to the CCTV screens. I stood up, walked behind him and quietly took the JCB keys out of my pocket. I’d been
a step ahead. Bill hadn’t been able to give them what they wanted. He’d taken a kicking because the keys had been missing. But at least he still had a job. Bill’s eyes widened. I winked at him. The police would catch the robbers eventually. It’s always wrong to cheat the trying man. Or in this case, men. And without Bagshaw realizing what had really happened, I replaced the keys on the hook and left.

  WHERE ARE ALL THE NAUGHTY PEOPLE?

  Reginald Hill

  * * *

  A LOT OF kids are scared of graveyards.

  Not me. I grew up in one.

  My dad, Harry Cresswell, was verger at St Cyprian’s on the north-east edge of Bradford. Once it had been a country parish but that was ages back. By the sixties it was all built up, a mix of council houses and owner-occupied semis, plus some older properties from the village days. We lived in one of them, Rose Cottage, right up against the churchyard wall. We didn’t have a proper garden, just a small cobbled yard out back, and out front a two-foot strip of earth where Mam tried to grow a few stunted roses to make sense of the name. A low retaining wall separated this from a narrow pavement that tracked the busy main road where traffic never stopped day or night.

  Nearest park was a mile away. But right next door to us there were four acres of open land, lots of grass and trees, no buildings, no roads, no traffic.

  St Cyprian’s graveyard.

  The wall in our backyard had a small door in it to make it easy for Dad to get to the church to do his duties. In the graveyard the door was screened by a bit of shrubbery. My mam liked to tell anyone who cared to listen that she was a Longbottom out of Murton near York, a farming family whose kids had grown up breathing good fresh air and enjoying the sight and smell of trees and grass. She wasn’t about to deprive her own child of the benefit just because of a few gravestones, so when I was a baby, she’d take me through the door in our yard and lay me on a rug to enjoy the sun while she got on with her knitting. She was a great knitter. If her hands didn’t have some other essential task to occupy them, they were always occupied by her needles. I’ve even seen her knitting on the move! And I’ve never had to buy a scarf or a pullover in my life.

  As I grew older and more mobile I began to explore a bit further. Mam and Dad were a bit worried at first, but Father Stamp said he’d rather see me enjoying myself there than running around the street in the traffic, and in Mam’s ears, Father Stamp’s voice was the voice of God.

  I should say that though St Cyprian’s was Church of England, it was what they called High, lots of incense and hyssop and such, and the vicar liked to be called Father. It used to confuse me a bit as a kid, what with God the Father, and Father Stamp, and Father Christmas, and my own dad, but I got used to it.

  And folk got used to me using the graveyard as my playground. I think them as didn’t like it were too scared of my mam to risk a confrontation. She could be really scary when she tried. For her part, she insisted I should always stay in the area between our bit of the wall and the side of the church, and not do anything naughty. Naughty in Mam’s vocabulary covered a wide range of misbehaviour. She used to read the News of the World and shake her head and say disapprovingly, “There’s a lot of naughty folk in this world. Well, they’ll have to pay for it in the next!” I assumed she meant bank robbers and such. But in my own case, I didn’t have to assume anything. I knew exactly what naughty meant – doing anything my mam told me not to do!

  My designated playground area was the oldest section of the graveyard. All the headstones here dated back a hundred years or more, and no one ever came to tend the graves or lay flowers on them. There were quite a few trees here too and it was hard to get a mowing machine in, so the grass grew long and lush and on the rare occasions someone did come round this side, I could easily drop out of sight till they’d gone. Occasionally I’d see Father Stamp but I didn’t hide from him because he’d always wave at me and smile, and sometimes he’d come and join me, and often he’d produce a bagful of mint humbugs and we’d sit next to each other on a tombstone, his arm round my shoulder, sucking away in companionable silence till suddenly he’d stand up, ruffle my hair and say he had to go and do something in the church.

  Once I’d started at school, I soon realized the new activities I was enjoying, like playing football or cowboys and Indians, you couldn’t do in a graveyard. Even Father Stamp wouldn’t have cared to see a whole gang of kids rampaging round his church, cheering and yelling. So I spent less time there, but I still liked to wander round by myself sometimes, playing solitary make-believe games, or just lying in the grass looking up at the sky till Mam yelled my name and I had to go in for my tea.

  Occasionally I’d have one or two of my special friends round at the house and to start with I took them through the door into my playground. I thought they’d be impressed I had all this space to roam around in, but instead they either said it was seriously weird, or they wanted to play daft games like pretending to be ghosts and jumping out on each other from behind the old gravestones. As well as being worried about the noise they were making, I found I was a bit put out that they weren’t showing more respect. Father Stamp had told me that I should never forget there were dead people lying under the ground. No need to be scared of them, he said, but I should try and remember this was their place as well as mine. So after a while I stopped taking my friends there. I was still very young but already old enough to realize it mattered at school how your classmates regarded you. I didn’t want to get known as daft Tommy Cresswell who likes to play with old bones in the graveyard.

  I was what they called a slow learner, taking longer than a lot of the others to get into reading and writing, but when, one day when I was about seven, it finally clicked, I took to it big. I read everything I could lay my hands on, so much so that Mam and Dad went from worrying about me not reading to worrying about me reading my brain into train oil, as Granny Longbottom used to say.

  I don’t know exactly when it was that I realized the graveyard was full of stuff to read! I’d seen there were words carved on the headstones, of course, but I never paid them much attention. I was more interested in the variety of shapes.

  Some of the headstones were rounded, some were pointed, and some were squared off. Quite a lot had crosses on top of them, some of the older ones leaned to one side like they were drunk, and a few lay flat out. The ones I liked best were the ones with statues and these I gave names to in my private games. My favourite was an angel with a shattered nose that I called Rocky after Rocky Marciano who was my dad’s great hero. Never got beaten, he’d say. I think he’d have called me Rocky rather than Tommy if Mam had let him.

  It was Rocky the angel that got me looking at the words. I was lying in the grass one evening staring up at him when the words carved at his feet came into focus.

  Sacred to the memory of David Oscar Winstanley

  taken in the 87th year of his life

  loving husband devoted father

  in virtue spotless in charity generous

  and a loyal servant of the General Post Office for

  forty-nine years

  He was probably a pretty important GPO official, but I imagined him as an ordinary postman, trudging the streets with his sackful of letters well into his eighties, and I was really impressed that he’d been so highly regarded that they’d given him an angel to keep watch over his grave and a full-blown testimonial. This is what started me paying attention to the inscriptions on other headstones. A few were in a funny language I couldn’t understand. Father Stamp told me it was Latin and sometimes he’d translate it for me. Mam was always telling me not to bother Father Stamp because he had so much to do in the parish. In the same breath she’d say I could learn a lot if I listened to him, he was such an educated man. When I wondered in my childish way how I could listen to him without bothering him, she told me not to be cheeky. Things have changed, but back then a wise kid quickly learned that in the adult world he was usually in the wrong!

  I quite liked Father Stamp and
I certainly liked his mint humbugs, but when it came to practical information about the graves, I turned to the men who dug them. There were two of them, Young Clem and Old Clem.

  I don’t know how old Old Clem was – certainly no older than my dad – but he “had a back” and seemed to spend most of his time standing by the side of a new grave, smoking his pipe, while Young Clem laboured with his spade down below. Nowadays they have machines to do the hard work in less than half an hour. Back then it took Young Clem the best part of a morning to excavate and square off a grave to his dad’s satisfaction. Occasionally Old Clem would seize the spade to demonstrate what ought to be done, but after he’d moved a couple of clods, he’d shake his head, rub his back, and return to his pipe. I heard Dad complaining to Mam more than once that Old Clem ought to be pensioned off, but he got no support from the vicar. Father Stamp just shook his head and said there was no question of getting rid of Old Clem. Mam said it showed what a true Christian gentleman Father Stamp was, and I should try to be less naughty and grow up like him. When I asked if that meant that Mam was naughty because she agreed with Dad that Old Clem should be sacked and Father Stamp didn’t, she clipped my ear and said she didn’t know where I got it from. I saw Dad grinning when she said that.

  Young Clem was my special friend. Nine or ten years older than me, he was a big lad, more than twice my size, and he always had a fag in his mouth, though that was OK in them days. Dad smoked twenty a day and even Mam had the occasional puff.

  Clem had been around all my life, helping his dad out when he were still a kid, then becoming his full-time assistant when he left school at sixteen. Like me he clearly thought of the graveyard as his own personal play park. Wandering around in the dusk one spring evening I heard a noise I didn’t recognize and dropped down in the long grass. After a bit, with the noise still going on, I reckoned I hadn’t been spotted so I crawled forward and peered round a headstone. Young Clem was lying there in the grass with a girl. At eight, I already had some vague notion there were things older lads liked to do with girls but I’d no real idea what it was all about except that simultaneously it had something to do with courting, which was all right, and something to do with being naughty, which wasn’t. We didn’t have sex education in Yorkshire in them days. Whatever it was, Young Clem and his girl were clearly enjoying it. I watched till I got bored then I crawled away. I had enough sense to know that I ought to keep out of the way when my friend was doing his naughty courting so whenever I glimpsed Clem in the graveyard with a girl I made myself scarce.