I said, to no one really: ‘I don’t understand, a villain’s shotgun usually works better than that,’ and McGruder answered: ‘It’s not much use without shells, though.’ He took two out of his pocket and threw them at a far corner of the room. Our folk had come in by now and were taking Klara McGruder away, also Hawes with cuffs on him, between two officers. There were tears in Hawes’s eyes and he was shaking.
I said to McGruder: ‘When did you get those shells off him?’
‘We were very uptight waiting in here,’ said McGruder, ‘also Hawes started getting nasty with me, particularly once he started drinking, that took his fear of me away, especially since he was the only one of us that was armed. But what really bothered him was that he didn’t know if I knew that he’d been screwing her before – while I was away on my trips, I mean. I did know, of course,’ he added, nodding. ‘I always know these things, always find them out. Well, so Pat was drinking, and my old boiler was drinking – nothing for me, you know me, just Coke, there, you can see the cans, I never touch alcohol. So, when the two of them were well pissed, sitting together on the divan there, he said to me, I fancy your old woman, Billy, so I said, go ahead, we’re all mates, aren’t we, have a go, feel free, no charge, Klara means nothing to me. You can watch if you like, he says, we don’t mind, do we, Klara, and I said, all right, I’ll do that, then, it’ll be something to do till the law gets here, won’t it? Well, it cost him dear, that charver did. I meant it to. He had to take his clothes off and put his gun down to have it. He had his work cut out to get it up and all, he was that pissed. So when they were finished they both had a nice little bit of kip. I unloaded the gun and that was it, he never thought to check it again.’
‘Supposing he had?’ I said.
‘Well, it wasn’t loaded any more, was it?’ he said. ‘Besides, I’ve always got this.’ The razor was out in his palm again.
‘You might as well have taken the gun right off him while he was asleep,’ said Foden. He paid no attention to the razor.
‘Why bother?’ McGruder said. ‘Pointing a gun at a geezer the whole time, it’s tiring. Besides, he might have tried to have a go – he was pissed enough – and then I might have shot him. Been a shame to do that – might have screwed our deal up. Anyway,’ he added, ‘I thought it was a right giggle to play it the way I did. You never sussed there was nothing in the gun, Pat never sussed it – nobody did. No one ever bunks up with Billy McGruder’s women,’ he said, his eyes empty. ‘Not even when he’s finished with them.’
‘You could have let us off the hook a lot earlier,’ I said. ‘I don’t like that, I don’t like it at all.’
‘Well, I don’t like the law either,’ he said. ‘Besides, you’re both all in one piece, aren’t you, what are you moaning about?’
‘Watch your mouth,’ said Foden, ‘or I’ll take both hands and shut it for you.’
‘Well, I was enjoying myself,’ said McGruder, ‘let’s just put it that way.’ He sat down with the briefcase on his knees. ‘And now I’m going to enjoy myself some more,’ he said, and snapped up the latches. ‘Ah, isn’t that lovely?’ he whispered when he saw the notes. He started to count it. When he had finished he said: ‘That’s correct, it’s all there.’ He picked up a twenty-pound note, kissed it, put the note back in the case and shut it. ‘Money?’ he said gently. ‘Best thing there is. Better than a woman, does just what you tell it and it never talks back – you can take it anywhere.’
Foden gave him the envelope with his nice new British passport in it. McGruder opened the envelope and took the passport out. ‘It’s like Christmas,’ he said, ‘isn’t it?’ He opened the passport. ‘Angell,’ he read aloud. ‘Frederick William Angell, company director. Now isn’t that nice! Angell, Mr Freddie Angell, life and soul of the old bistro. Yes, now that’s a really nice name, that is; I can just fancy going round calling myself that.’
After a moment, though, his face darkened and he said: ‘I suppose no one was being deliberate over that name, were they?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘yes, I was. I thought it was about time somebody else cracked a joke around here.’
Derek Raymond’s
Factory Series
“No one claiming interest in literature truly written from the edge of human experience, no one wondering at the limits of the crime novel and of literature itself, can overlook these extraordinary books.”
—JAMES SALLIS
He Died with His Eyes Open
978-1-935554-57-8
An unflinching yet deeply compassionate portrait of Margaret Thatcher’s London—plagued by poverty and perversion—and an unnamed police Sergeant from the Unexplained Deaths department who may be the only one who cares about the “people who don’t matter and who never did.”
“Raymond is a master …”
—NEW YORK TIMES
The Devil’s Home on Leave
978-1-935554-58-5
The unnamed Sergeant stands up to both mobsters and his superiors while engaged in a harrowing game of cat-and-mouse with a psychopath who seems to have ties to the highest levels of the British government.
“Superb … an English Chandler.”
—DAILY MAIL (LONDON)
How the Dead Live
978-1-935554-59-2
With growing desperation and enraged compassion, the nameless Sergeant fights to uncover a murderer—not by following analytical procedure, but by understanding why crimes are committed.
“Powerful and mesmerizing … With spare, often lyrical prose, Raymond digs beneath society’s civilized veneer to expose the inner rot.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
I Was Dora Suarez
978-1-935554-60-8
Gentle Dora Suarez was already dying of AIDS. So why kill her? As the Sergeant digs deeper into a diary she left behind, the fourth book in the series becomes a study of human exploitation and institutional corruption, and the valiant effort to persist against it.
“Everything about I Was Dora Suarez shrieks of the joy and pain of going too far.”
—MARILYN STASIO, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Dead Man Upright
978-1-61219-062-4
In the fifth, final, and most psychologically probing book in the series—unavailable for 20 years—the nameless Sergeant attempts not to solve a crime, but to keep one from happening.
“Hellishly bleak and moving.”
—NEW STATESMAN
MELVILLE INTERNATIONAL CRIME
Kismet
Jakob Arjouni
978-1-935554-23-3
Happy Birthday, Turk!
Jakob Arjouni
978-1-935554-20-2
More Beer
Jakob Arjouni
978-1-935554-43-1
One Man, One Murder
Jakob Arjouni
978-1-935554-54-7
The Craigslist Murders
Brenda Cullerton
978-1-61219-019-8
Death and the Penguin
Andrey Kurkov
978-1-935554-55-4
Penguin Lost
Andrey Kurkov
978-1-935554-56-1
The Case of the General’s Thumb
Andrey Kurkov
978-1-61219-060-0
Nairobi Heat
Mukoma Wa Ngugi
978-1-935554-64-6
Cut Throat Dog
Joshua Sobol
978-1-935554-21-9
Brenner and God
Wolf Haas
978-1-61219-113-3
He Died with His Eyes Open
Derek Raymond
978-1-935554-57-8
The Devil’s Home on Leave
Derek Raymond
978-1-935554-58-5
How the Dead Live
Derek Raymond
978-1-935554-59-2
I Was Dora Suarez
Derek Raymond
978-1-935554-60-8
Dead Man Upright
Derek Ra
ymond
978-1-61219-062-4
The Angst-Ridden Executive
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
978-1-61219-038-9
Murder in the Central Committee
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
978-1-61219-036-5
The Buenos Aires Quintet
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
978-1-61219-034-1
Off Side
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
978-1-61219-115-7
Southern Seas
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
978-1-61219-117-1
The Devil's Home on Leave (Factory 2) Page 22