OxCrimes

by Peter Florence

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So maybe that’s why he’s jumped up the ladder? People have been giving him byes.’

  ‘Aye, could be,’ McCann said, not at all interested.

  Relief sunk over Donald like chloroform and again he chastised himself for the importance he had given to something so silly as the squash ladder.

  The relief lasted until Wednesday when he bumped into Millin coming out of the university bookshop. Millin informed him that Sinya had demolished him and that he, Sinya, was now number five on the ladder.

  ‘What’s he like?’ Donald asked, trying not to sound frantic or panicked.

  ‘Oh he’s good. Going to give you a pretty tough game.’

  ‘What’s he like?’ Donald insisted.

  ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist. He’s Pakistani. I suppose forty, perhaps older, it’s hard to tell with them. He’s fast and my God that serve, those returns. It’s a nightmare. You give him any opportunity and he destroys you. Our match was over in half an hour.’

  Donald went home that night in a state of distress. He barely talked to Susan and he couldn’t concentrate on his proofs for the Dalrimple book.

  From his upstairs study he stared at the boats in Carrickfergus marina and the grey castle beyond. The boat hallyards were muzzled by the wind, the granite castle walls kept their own counsel.

  Could it be that the squash ladder was perhaps the one thing that gave him any satisfaction, any sense of accomplishment, in what was really a rather pathetic, little, nondescript life?

  Not the teaching, not the writing, not even Susan.

  And now, inevitably, he was going to face his nemesis. It was a melodramatic thought but he couldn’t shake it.

  A few days later the phone rang in his office. With a sense of dread he picked up the receiver. Naturally it was Sinya. He had beaten Fenton and Dunleavy and he would like to play Donald whenever it was convenient.

  His voice was pleasant enough, foreign but not very foreign and gentle. Aye that’s how they get you, Donald thought. Softly softly. Lull you and then go for the jugular. Bastards. Well he wouldn’t let them. He wouldn’t take this lying down. This was his league, his campus. Who did this guy think he was for Christ’s sake? He’d been going easy on these chumps, he could take them all with one hand behind his back. This guy was no different. Try to spook me? See about that. He realised that during this prolonged internal soliloquy Sinya had been waiting for a reply on the other end of the phone.

  ‘This afternoon’s fine with me. 1 p.m.’ he said quickly, hung up and attempted to bury himself in work until just before the match.

  He arrived early but Sinya was already there, changed, waiting for him. They shook hands. Sinya was tall, bearded, good looking. He had a very charming way about him. He smiled easily and was polite. He asked Donald how he was and inquired about Donald’s new (bought yesterday) super light, super strong, carbon fibre, state of the art, Khan Slazinger Pro, racket.

  Sinya won the spin, served, and launched a tremendous dying serve that Donald barely returned, but of course Sinya was already at the front wall waiting to volley Donald’s weak backhand. Donald, anticipating a crushing return, ran to the back right of the court, but Sinya placed a perfect drop shot in the left front corner, flat footing Donald and winning the point. Sinya won the next four points and then missed one. On Donald’s serve Sinya volleyed the ball back so fast Donald didn’t even see it until it was too late.

  The whole match went that way, Donald’s play grew worse and forty-five minutes later it was all over. Donald had managed to take a game but Sinya had well beaten him 9–5, 9–4, 7–9, 9–1. Shell shocked he let Sinya prattle on about this and that and then watched with horror as Sinya stopped at the notice board outside the court and had the cheek to take out Donald’s name from the top of the ladder and substitute his own. Couldn’t the bastard even have the decency to wait until he was showering?

  He drove home and after four hours of silence Susan got it out of him and of course he agreed that it was only a stupid game and it meant nothing. The next day he went to the court with his new racket and practised serves and drop shots for an hour and called Sinya and asked him for a rematch.

  The rematch was on a Friday and this time Sinya took him in straight sets. He realised with horror that Sinya had given him the game he’d won last time as a courtesy, just as he had condescendingly done with the lesser players in his bouts.

  They walked back to car park and Sinya stopped at the repulsive Volkswagen Microbus Donald had seen egged by the rag week students.

  ‘Do you want a lift?’ Sinya asked. ‘You’re in Carrick aren’t you? I drive all the way to Larne so it would be easy to drop you.’

  The fact that Sinya lived in Larne, one of the grimmest towns in Ulster, gave Donald no comfort in the silent ride home.

  Sinya’s reign at the top began and seemed unbreakable. He was miles ahead of all the players. In fact if he’d been younger he could well have been an international. Weeks went by and Donald played him on and off with little effect. On a weekend game with Fenton, Donald unexpectedly lost, and after another fortnight he was only at number four on the ladder.

  Despite the repeated assurances of his wife, his friends and even, on one humiliating occasion, the university’s psychological counsellor, that it was only a senseless cardboard list of names, he felt that his work, his health, his libido and his mental outlook all were suffering terribly as he slipped down the ladder.

  Christmas came and went, term ended and began again.

  McCann was no comfort but he found himself spending a lot of time with him in Lavery’s or the Bot enjoying increasingly frequent liquid lunches.

  At the gym he noticed now that Peter Finn was cool to him at the door. On a miserable Tuesday morning he played a man called Jennings, lost in straight games and found that he was now last on the ladder. He almost relished this final embarrassment. Now there was no place lower to go.

  He slipped upstairs to the cafeteria, called Susan and asked if she could get a lift back to Carrick with one of her friends. He sat, nursing a coffee, watching the sky darken and the lights come on street by street, Sandy Row, the Shankill, the Falls, the illumination moving north to the old shipyards and then down around the university and the City Hospital. In Belfast tonight there would be violence and love and passion and death. People in the hospital would be passing away from cancer, accidents, heart disease and in other wards dozens of babies were being born. New lives for old.

  ‘It really isn’t that important you know, old man,’ he said to himself.

  ‘What isn’t important?’

  He turned. It was Mr Jones, his student from last term’s course on the Elizabethans. He was holding a book called Automotive Engineering Mistakes.

  ‘Oh, I was just talking to myself. Join me. Have a seat. What on earth are you reading?’

  Jones sat. ‘It’s about design faults in cars. Not just the Ford Pinto. Some pretty famous cars. Even brilliant designers make mistakes.’

  He got Jones a coffee.

  Something McCann had once said came floating back into Donald’s mind.

  ‘I’ve heard that those old Volkswagen Microbuses are a death trap,’ he said.

  Jones grinned. ‘Oh yeah! No crumple zone at the front to absorb a crash and the exhaust pipe runs the full length of the floor … oh boy, you get a hole in the pipe and a hole in the floor and your vehicle’s filled with carbon monoxide, death trap isn’t the …’

  But Donald was no longer listening.

  It would be the easiest thing in the world.

  Punch a hole through the floor and the exhaust.

  Punch a hole. Let fate take over. If nothing happened, nothing happened. But if Sinya got into an unfortunate accident in the long drive from Belfast to Larne, well, it wouldn’t really be his fault. It wouldn’t be murder, or attempted murder. It was a design flaw in the vehicle, he was helping nature take its course.

  He said goodnight to
Jones, ran six flights to the first floor and out into the wet, cold January darkness.

  He knew that it would have to be now. Tonight. If he thought about it, he wouldn’t do it at all. He conscience would kick in. His middle class sensibility. His cowardice.

  It would have to be now or never.

  He reached the car park. It was six o’clock. Most of the vehicles had gone but the putrid yellow Volkswagen was still there. Sinya often worked late, trying to get ahead no doubt, Donald thought spitefully. He went to his Volvo, rummaged in the trunk and found a torch and his toolkit. He locked the trunk and walked to the Volkswagen.

  ‘I’m not going to do this, it’s not me,’ he said to himself.

  He checked that the coast was clear. No one was within a hundred yards.

  ‘I don’t even know what to do. Should have asked Jones for details. Doesn’t matter, I’m not going to do anything. I’m not a killer. What I will do is take a look underneath, just to see if it’s possible.’

  He scanned the car park again, turned on the torch, squatted on the wet tarmac and looked under the VW. A great hulking exhaust pipe ran almost all the way from the front of the cabin to the back of the car. The pipe was rusted, the chassis was rusted. A few taps from a screwdriver might do the trick …

  He stood, checked the car park one more time.

  No one.

  He was calm.

  He lay back down again.

  In five minutes it was done.

  He had punched a hole in the top of the exhaust pipe and another through to the cabin. He had connected the two holes with a paper coffee cup he had found lying around – squeezing the cup into a tube. If an accident did occur the cup would burn in the fire and if didn’t it was an innocent enough thing to find stuck under your car.

  He wiped himself down, got in his car, sped to the Crown Bar, had two pints of Guinness to calm his nerves and drove home.

  In his study he had a double vodka and a cognac but he couldn’t sleep.

  Susan went to bed and he checked the radio for reports of road accidents, deaths.

  He really didn’t want Sinya to die. If the poor man was injured that would be enough. Then Donald could resume his march back up the squash ladder and get his life back in order. Get to the top, stop drinking with McCann, start writing his book, have that talk with Susan about kids again …

  Finally he drifted off to sleep on the living room sofa at about three. He woke before the dawn in the midst of a nightmare. Sinya’s Volkswagen had plunged off the cliff at the Bla Hole just outside of Whitehead. Two hundred feet straight down into the rocks below. The car had smashed and it was assumed to be an accident but the police had found a paper cup wedged in the exhaust. The murderer had left fingerprints all over it.

  Five years earlier Donald had been arrested for cannabis possession at Sussex University. His prints were in the database.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he said.

  He turned on the radio, found the traffic report: a road accident in Omagh, another in County Down, nothing so far on the Belfast–Larne Road.

  He paced the living room. What madness had overtaken him? To try to kill a man over something so preposterous as a squash ladder? He had obviously taken leave of his senses. That’s what he’d do at trial. He’d plead temporary insanity.

  Insane was the right world. Macbeth crazy. Lear crazy. Susan woke and he was such a mess that she drove him to Belfast.

  He thanked her and ran to the car park.

  The Volkswagen wasn’t there.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ he said to himself.

  He cancelled his lecture, went to his office and waited for the telephone to ring. He imagined the phone ringing, the resulting brief conversation:

  ‘Is that Dr Bryant?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Detective McGuirk, we’d like to come over and ask you a few questions if that would be ok …’

  He found an ancient packet of cigarettes, lit one and sat in his onyx Eclipse Ergonomic Operator Chair waiting. The phone lurked in its cradle …

  There was a knock at the door but it was only McCann come by to see if he wanted to go for lunch. He said he wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t untrue. He felt sick to his stomach. McCann left. He closed the door and turned the light off. He sat there in the dark. Perhaps they wouldn’t ring him. The first he would know about it would be them marching into his office with guns drawn.

  He wouldn’t go with them. He wouldn’t let them take him. His office was on the sixth floor. The window. A brief fall through the damp air. A crash. And then … nothingness.

  He waited.

  Waited.

  He sank beneath his desk and curled foetally on the floor.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Dr Bryant?’

  ‘Sinya?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was Sinya. He was alive!

  ‘Yes?’ Donald managed.

  ‘Dr Bryant, Professor Millin cancelled with me today and I was wondering if you could squeeze in a quick game?’

  ‘A game? A squash game? Yes, yes, of course, I’ll be right over.’

  He sprinted the stairs.

  Sinya was already in the court warming the ball.

  He waved to him through the glass, ran to the locker room, changed into his gear and ran back to the court without stretching or getting a drink of water.

  He didn’t care how suspicious or unsubtle he sounded. He had to know.

  ‘I didn’t see your car this morning. You’re always in first,’ Donald said.

  Sinya grimaced. ‘That thing tried to kill me. I was half way home last night and I realised the whole car was stinking of exhaust fumes, I pulled over just before White-head. Would you believe it, the whole exhaust is rusted away next to nothing and a paper cup had blown in there and gotten stuck between the exhaust and the car. I left it at the garage in Whitehead and got a taxi home. I suppose I’ll have to get it fixed.’

  Donald grinned with relief.

  Emotions were cascading through him: relief, happiness, gratitude.

  He would inform Susan tonight that she should go off the pill. He would start going to that soup kitchen again. He would give to charity. He would really get cracking on the book.

  This would be his last squash game ever.

  ‘I have really screwed up my priorities, darling,’ he’d tell Susan. ‘That silly squash ladder! Something as banal as that. I’m going to be more Zen. Live in the present, live in reality. Real things. You, me, life, stuff like that. It’s corny but, well, I’ve had a moment of clarity. It’s about perspective. It all seems so bloody stupid now. God. I mean can you believe how obsessed I was?’

  Sinya hit him a few practice shots which he returned with ease.

  ‘Well I’m sorry about your car, old chap, but I think you can afford a new vehicle with the money they’re paying you in computers. And Larne isn’t the priciest place in the world to live. You should be more like me. Enjoy life. Live for the moment. Get yourself a Merc or a Beemer. You deserve it,’ Donald said.

  Sinya laughed. ‘Are you kidding? The university only gives me three hundred and fifty a week, you know. A BMW on my wages?’

  ‘Three hundred and fifty a week? What are you talking about? A junior lecturer makes twenty-five grand a year. It’s more in computers I’m sure.’

  Sinya grinned. ‘I’m not a lecturer. I’m a technician in the computer department. I fix the machines, man. Hardware, software, you name it.’

  Donald gasped but said nothing.

  The game began and Sinya took a mere thirty-five minutes to beat him.

  They showered, talked about the weather, shook hands, parted ways.

  Donald walked to the English department building.

  No one knew, no one had to know.

  When he got to his office he called Millin and told him.

  Millin was outraged. ‘Doesn’t the fellow know that the ladder is only open to faculty? My God, the effrontery.’

  ‘You’ll do som
ething about it?’

  ‘Of course I will. Right away. I’ll scrub the last two months’ results and put it back to the way it was at the beginning of December.’

  Donald hung up the phone. Leaned back in his chair.

  Grey sky.

  Black sky.

  Night.

  Stars.

  In the car Susan talked about the soup kitchen, birth control. He avoided giving direct answers. They ate separate microwaved meals from Marks and Spencer.

  When he got into work the next morning he went straight to the gym. VM Sinya’s name had disappeared and he, Dr D. Bryant, was again in the number one spot, for the first time in nearly two months.

  ‘The once and future king,’ Peter said at reception, startling him.

  ‘Yes,’ he attempted to reply, but his throat was dry and no sound came.

  JAMES SALLIS’s books include 15 novels, multiple collections of stories, essays and poems, the standard biography of Chester Himes, and a translation of Raymond Queneau’s novel Saint Glinglin. He has been awarded the Hammett Award for literary excellence in crime writing, a lifetime achievement award from Bouchercon, and the Grand Prix de Littérature policière. Born in Helena, Arkansas, in 1944, he now lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

  Venice Is Sinking Into the Sea

  James Sallis

  She loved him, Dana thinks, more than most, as she walks in the small park across from the house she’s rented for twelve years now. A Craftsman house from the thirties, two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, all of them much of a size. This time of morning the park’s filled with the homeless. They appear each day as the sun comes up, depart each evening, trailing off into the sunset with their bedrolls, clusters of overstuffed plastic bags, shopping carts. Occasionally she wonders where it is they go. Lord, she was going to miss him.

  Almost no traffic on the street where late each Friday night you can hear hot cars running against one another. Dana walks leisurely across to have coffee and a bagel at Einstein’s. She knows the bagels are bogus (she’s from the city, after all), but she loves them. Feels much the same way about the muscular firemen who hang out here most days.

  Sean was a fireman. Smaller than most, right at the line, which meant he’d always had to work harder, do more, to make the grade. Same in bed. ‘I’m always humping,’ he’d once said, unconscious of irony. Despite his size, or because of it, he’d gone right up (as it were) the ladder, promotion after promotion. With each promotion he was less and less at home, more and more preoccupied when there beside her.