Best British Crime 6 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  “An improvised plot is sometimes a messy one, Mister Plankton.”

  “Improvised?”

  “But the murderer had neglected the fact that an early train would leave Paddock Wood for Maidstone bearing John Carker away from the scene. However, it left Mister Dombey on the platform both as suspect and witness.”

  “Mister Dombey? Indeed, there is only one person in this tale that would then be the culprit other than John Carker . . . no, no ... I cannot believe it. It means that it could only be Paul Dombey himself who pushed James Carker to his death.”

  Captain Ryder leant back with narrowed eyes.

  “On the contrary, sir. There was one other person who had the opportunity. Who arranged this entire charade, who actually helped James Carker embezzle and bank the money, using his business connection with Dombey and Son? Indeed, that person’s connection with Monsieur Solliec, the correspondent of Agence Havas, allowed him to pick up the intelligence as to the fact that John Carker was meeting the boat at Dover. There was only one person here in London who had access to the information and who James Carker had mailed that he was coming to settle with him and this person was able to stage the meeting at Paddock Wood. I do not have to tell you who that person is, sir.”

  Mr Josiah Plankton was sitting back with a dreamy look on his face, nodding slightly. He was smiling but there was an expression of vindictive passion on his features.

  “You had gone to Maidstone because, for obvious reasons, you did not want to be identified at Paddock Wood,” went on Captain Ryder grimly. “You probably waited until well after midnight and perhaps walked or more likely rode the ten miles to the Forester’s Arms. You had not realized that John Carker would take the first morning train to Maidstone, a local milk delivery train. And when you reached the inn, you observed some movement. There was Paul Dombey on the station platform. Then came James Carker. You took your opportunity and after the deed was done you vanished into the darkness. You return to Maidstone and arriving there in time for breakfast as if out for an early morning walk. And when you emerged from the hotel . . . that was then you fell in with the superintendent of police. Perhaps that had not been part of your plan, to be forced to go as Paul Dombey’s lawyer to the scene of your crime. Yet it was all quite clever. Too clever. But there were too many coincidences to make it believable.”

  Mr Josiah Plankton did not answer.

  In his mind’s eye he saw the onrushing black engine with its red warning lights, the shriek of its whistle and pounding roar of its wheels; saw the figure in front of him, soundlessly shrieking against the noise of the great engine, as, like some rag doll, the body was caught up, whirled away upon a jagged mill, struck limb from limb and cast into mutilated fragments in the air. He smiled as he remembered the blood soaked ashes spread across the tracks. How he hated the idea of having to share the wealth with a man like James Carker. But now he was rich. Now he did not have to share those riches with anyone.

  He was still smiling absently when Captain Ryder rose, moved to the door and beckoned in the two uniform constables who had been waiting patiently outside.

  <>

  * * * *

  UN BON REPAS DOIT

  COMMENCER PAR LA FAIM . . .

  Stella Duffy

  The journey from London to Paris is easy. Too easy. I need more time, to think, prepare, get ready. Security, supposed to be so important now, these days, ways, places, is lax to the point of ease. I love it, welcome the apparent ease. I believe in fate, in those big red buses lined up to knock us over, in your number being up, the calling in of one’s very own pleasure boat. I do not believe that taking off our shoes at airports will save us. I show my ticket and my passport, walk through to the train, and get off at the Gare du Nord. Too easy. Too fast.

  Less than three hours after leaving London I walk straight into a picket line. It seems the French staff are less fond of the lax security than I. Or perhaps they just don’t like the nonessential immigrants they say Eurostar is employing. I accept the badly copied leaflet thrust into my hand and put it in my pocket. Bienvenue en France.

  I can’t face the Metro. Not yet, this early, it is not yet mid-morning. In real life I would choose to be asleep, safe in bed -not always achieved, but it would be my choice. I like my Metro in the afternoon and evening, a warm ride that promises a drink at the other end, a meal maybe, lights. In the morning it is too full of workers and students, those interminable French students, segueing from lycée to university with no change of clothes between. Ten years of the same manners, same behaviour day in day out, week after week of congregating in loud groups on footpaths where they smoke and laugh, and then suddenly they’re in the world and somehow those ugly duckling student girls are born again as impossibly elegant Parisiennes, fine and tidy and so very boring in their classic outfits. French and Italian women, groomed to identical perfection and not an original outfit among them. So much more interesting naked. Round the picket line, out into the street. Road works, illegal taxi drivers offering their insane prices to American tourists doing London (theatre), Paris (art), Rome (Pope). The Grand Tour as dictated by the History Channel.

  I cross the street in front of the station, head down, heading down towards the river. There is something about traversing a map from north to south that feels like going downhill, even without the gentle slope from here to the water. Where I’m headed it certainly feels like going downhill. I don’t want to look at this city, not now. I see gutters running with water, Paris prides itself on clean streets, on washing every morning, a whore’s lick of running cold to sluice out the detritus. Two young women with their hands held out sit at the edge of businessmen’s feet, rattling coins in McDonalds cups. I try to pass but their insistence holds me, I say I don’t speak French, they beg again in English. I insist I don’t speak that either, they offer German, Italian and Spanish. I have no more words in which to plead either ignorance or parsimony, I scavenge in three pockets before giving them a dollar. It’s my only defence against their European polyglossary.

  Still too early. Still too soon.

  Paris is small. The centre of Paris I mean. Like every other city with a stage-set centre, there are all those very many suburbs, the ones Gigi never saw, where cars burn and mothers weep and it is not heaven accepting gratitude for little girls. It is not heaven I am thanking now. I continue my walking meditation, past innumerable Vietnamese restaurants, and countless small patisseries where pain au chocolat and croissants dry slowly on the plates of high glass counters, and bars serve beers to Antipodean travellers who really cannot believe this city and call home to tell loved ones readying for bed about the pleasures of a beer in a cafe at ten in the morning. That glass pyramid can wait, this is art, this is the life.

  It is a life. Another one.

  There are no secrets. This isn’t that kind of story. Nothing to work out. I can explain everything, will explain everything. But not yet. There are things to do and it must be done in order and the thing is, the thing is, we always had lunch first. She and I. She said it was proper, correct. That French thing, their reverence for food, an attitude the rest of the world outwardly respects and secretly despises. It’s just food for God’s sake, why must they make such a fuss? The linen the glass the crockery the menu the waiters with their insistence on pouring and placing and setting and getting it all right. Pattern, form, nothing deviating, nothing turning away, nothing new. Like the groomed women and the elegant men and the clean, clipped lapdogs. Nothing to surprise. So perhaps more than a reverence for just food, a reverence for reverence, reverence for form. Female form, polite form, good form, true to form. Formidable. Hah. Polyglot that.

  (So strange. I can walk down the street, give money to a beggar, I can make a play on word form. I am able to buy a train ticket, sit in a bar, order wine and slowly drink the glass as if nothing has happened, as if life just goes on. Even when I know how very abruptly it can stop.)

  So. Lunch. Dinner. From the Old French disner, or
iginal meaning: breakfast, then lunch, now dinner. Because any attempt to dine, at whatever time of day, will of course break the fast that has gone before, whatever time period that fast encapsulated, night, morning or afternoon. Whenever I broke my fast with her, for her, she insisted we dine first.

  Some time ago I spent a weekend with friends in London. At their apartment, their flat, my London friends talk about words. The English are very good at discussing words, it lessens their power, words as landmines, easily triggered, makes them readable, understandable. Stable. My friends discussed lunch or dinner, dinner or tea. If the difference were a north/south divide or a class construct. In London they talk about north and south of the river, here it is left and right. The faux-bohemian sinister and the smooth, the neat, the adroit. I prefer north and south, it’s harder to get lost. Apparently they’ve found her. Marie-Claude. Found her body. It’s why I’m here.

  When I tear my eyes from the gutters and the beggars and the street corners designed to frame a new picture with every stone edge, I look to high chimneys. I am not keen to see shop doors and windows, avenues and vistas, not yet. There is something I need to see first. One thing. I can manage right up and far down, to the far sides, I have the opposite of tunnel vision. There is graffiti, very high, on tall chimneys and cracked walls where one building has been leaning too long on another. This is not what they mean when they talk about a proper view, a scene in every Parisian glance, but it’s diverting enough. I am eager to be diverted. I take a left turn and a right one and another left, still closer to the river, nearer the water, but a narrow road uphill now, heading east, there are more people on the street, or less space for them to walk, they touch me sometimes, their clothes, coats, swinging arms. I do not want to be touched, not like this anyway, not dressed, covered, hidden. It will all be open soon.

  These side streets, those to the left and the right, east and west, are not so pretty as the views the tourists adore. She and I sat together once, in the restaurant, and listened to an old Australian couple discuss the difference between London and Paris. The woman said Paris was so much prettier, the French had done very well not to put the ugly modern beside the old beautiful. Her husband agreed. And then he said, in a tone calculated to reach the walls of stone, that the French had capitulated during the war. That is why their city was not bombed, why Paris was prettier than London. Though he agreed, the weather was better too, which helped no end. The afternoon progressed, the Australian man drank more wine, and he went on to eat every course the waiters placed before him. I cannot begin to think how much of the waiters’ saliva he must also have enjoyed.

  The street I find myself in now is not that pretty. It is poor and messy. Here they sell kebabs and Turkish slippers and cigarettes, and the bread in these shops was not freshly baked on the premises first thing this morning, and the fruit has not been raised lovingly in a farmer’s field with only sunshine and rain to help it on its way, there are no artisans here. But this is Paris too, regardless of how few tourists see these sights. Marie-Claude showed me these streets, brought me here to explain that there were worlds where no one cared if the Pyramid was appropriate or not, that the walls around Rodin’s garden were too high for locals to climb, that even one euro for a good, fresh, warm croissant is too much for too many. She insisted she knew these streets well and they knew her and that what I read as amused tolerance in the faces of the half-strangers she greeted was friendship and acceptance to her. It may well have been. She is not here now for me to compare the look in her eyes against theirs and I do not have the courage to lock eyes with these men. These shopkeepers are all men. I have thought about this many times. Where are the women shopkeepers? Can they really all be at home with so many children and so much housework and such a lot to do that they do not want to run their own family business, stand alongside their loved one, work hand in hand? Or perhaps they do not have the skill to sell all this stuff? These lighters and batteries that will die in a day. These shoes made by God knows how many small children in how many village factories. Perhaps it is simply that women are better with fruit and vegetables, the items that were once, more recently, living. Maybe this is why the women run market stalls while their husbands and sons and fathers run shops. Or perhaps the women are afraid of bricks and mortar, always ready to pick up their goods and run.

  She did not like to run, Marie-Claude, said it made her too hot, sticky. Sticky was not good. Cool and calm and smooth and tidy and groomed and perfect. These things were good, right, correct. To be that way, held in, neat, arranged, arrayed, that was appropriate, proper. Propre. Which is clean. And it is also own, as in one’s own. Thing, possession, person. One word, two meanings. So many ambiguous words. Yes. No. The things that can be read into any phrase. And accent makes a difference of course, culture, upbringing. We often fail to understand those we grew up with, our brothers and sisters, mistaking their yes for no, truth for lies, despair for hope. How much harder to understand total strangers, when they stand at shop doors, form a picket line, love you, leave you, cheat, lie, misbehave.

  It was the drugs of course. It always is. She simply couldn’t say no, non, nyet, nein, ne. That’s what I hate about all those heroin chic films - one of the many things I hate about all those heroin chic films - how they always make the users look so dirty. Messy. Unkempt. She, as I have explained, was the opposite. Our media, those stupid cop shows and the angry young men films made by angrier (but so much duller, and often older than they admit) young men, has convinced us that the drugs make you ugly, your hair lank, eyes glazed, skin grey. Which could not be further from the truth in her case, her metabolism loved it, thrived on it. Yes, she might not have been able to keep going at this rate for more than another decade, she’d have had to slow down eventually, but careful, planned use, clean equipment and good veins, hungry lungs, open mouth, eager nose - her body loved it all. Loved all her body. I did. He did. They did. She did. We did. Maybe you did. I don’t know, it doesn’t matter, this is my side of the story. Yes. Yes. In my own time, taking your time to explain. I apologise, I know you value your time . . .

  I do not mean explain as in excuse. I mean as in reason. There are always reasons.

  There was the habit of course, the way ex-smokers regret the loss of a packet to open, cellophane to rip off, mouth to hold, match to strike. I know she liked the accoutrements, the little bit of this and little bit of that, the choice of vein, the pick of needles - in her job she had the pick of needles - the choice of drug too of course. For up or down or round and round.

  Here it is. He was her husband, is her husband, and I her lover. Then he found out, talked to me, told me some of her other truths, and now she is dead. That’s why I’m here, to help with the confirmation. She is drowned, was drowned, has been drowned. Which makes sense. She adored her bath, Marie-Claude, sadistic marquise in soothing warm. The bathroom was her shrine. It was the right place to do it, to stop, in the shrine to herself and her form and her desire. Always her desire. Not for her the current vogue for minimalist white, cool and plain. She chose the palest pale apricots and soft barely-there peaches and tiniest hints of warm flesh to tint her warm room, the warmer shades coloured her own skin tones better. Only very tiny babies look good in white, she once said, it suits their newborn blue, the veins that are not yet filled out with warm blood, blue and white and the clean absence of colour suit only a learner heart, lungs in practice. The rest of us need warmth on our skin, colour in our light. Cold winter mornings were her hardest time. Although that must have been hard too, the night last week, a warm evening and her face held under the water, nose and grasping mouth under the water, until her lungs exploded and she breathed a mermaid’s breath just once.

  There is a plan here. I have followed it to the letter. His letter.

  I go to her restaurant, our restaurant, their restaurant. I ask for her table. The waiter, clearly a part-timer, one I have not seen before, raises an eyebrow, the maitre d’, just turning from seating a couple of reg
ulars, sees me, hurries over. Pushes the foolish young man aside, takes both my hands in his, takes my jacket, takes my arm, takes me. He is so very sorry. I must be tired. Here, here is my seat, here is her table, there are tears in his eyes. They will feed me he says, it will be their pleasure, they are so sorry. I expect they are. She was here almost every day. Not always with me. Of course the staff here are sorry.

  I eat my meal. Three courses. I do not need to order, the patron himself tells the waiter to say that this is his recommendation, I agree. The patron does not come to speak with me, not yet, not now. He has work to do, and so do I. And anyway, he and I should not be seen together, not yet. Wine. Water. Coffee. Armagnac. She thought it was very foreign of me to ask for a liqueur with my coffee. The kind of thing only tourists or old ladies might do. Apparently it was inelegant, childish. I did it despite her disapproval. I do it to spite her now, despite her now.

  A classic French meal, in a classic Paris restaurant. Sun shining through the mottled glass windows, lead light yellow and green and red. A businessman dines alone across from me. He too has three courses and wine and coffee, and will go to the office after his three-hour break and work steadily until dark. A wealthy tourist couple argue over the menu, which is entirely in French, it makes no concession to their cash, demands they rack their misspent youth for lost words. To my right a young couple, run from their work for half an hour here and an hour in bed, then back to run the world. To my left a middle-aged gay couple and their sleeping dog. This is civilized Paris, the dog is as welcome as the homosexuals. Everyone should eat well, taste is all. I could sit here all afternoon and stare around me. I could never go to my next appointment. I have no choice. It is fortunate that the young man who places the burning plate in front of me with a low “attention Madame” annoys me, draws me back to this place, this time, to what happens next. He annoys me in two ways. One, as he too clearly stated, I am Madame, not Mademoiselle. He could have been kinder, generosity is always welcome. Two, I didn’t think it was just the plate he was suggesting needed care. This I understand as well. Those that fed her knew her. There are many things of which I must be careful.