OxCrimes

  Hugh picked up the phone and asked reception to find him a local number. His tour of the district had included several galleries and there was a particular curator he wanted to speak to. If he was right all his problems would be solved. All his problems except the stranger, who even now might be waiting outside the hotel. Hugh made his call, then placed the painting on the bed beside him and turned out the light hoping sleep would come.

  Hugh awoke to darkness and the unfamiliar peal of the hotel phone. The alarm clock glowed 03.05. He fumbled for the bedside lamp and then glanced at the painting still on the bed beside him before picking up the receiver.

  ‘Hello?’ His voice was fuzzy with sleep.

  ‘I’m in the lobby, bring down the picture and I’ll give you a thousand euros.’

  Hugh recognised the cool tones of the stranger. He held the phone to his chest. Turning one euro into a thousand would be a fabulous profit, but there was no guarantee that he could trust the stranger. And if he was lucky, the man he had arranged to meet might pay more; enough to settle his hotel bill and leave a sufficient stake to begin antique dealing.

  ‘I’m sorry. Gustav Loring commands high sums. I can’t afford to let it go for less than three thousand.’

  ‘Gustav who?’ The man’s voice was no longer cool. ‘Look, I don’t know how you and Gustav found out about the signal …’

  ‘What signal?’

  ‘The stupid red hat. Old Muller was to hand the painting over to a man wearing a red hat – me – only it wasn’t me was it? If you know about the hat I’m guessing you know I’m not the only one after the painting.’ There was a pause on the line filled with the stranger’s ragged breath. When he spoke again his voice was tight. ‘These guys won’t bargain with you.’

  ‘That’s fine.’ Hugh was amazed how calm he sounded. ‘I already have a client willing to pay a high price.’

  ‘Then you better get it to him in the next thirty seconds because I have my own client and his terms are also high, the picture or my throat. I’ll cut yours to save mine and not even blink.’

  Perhaps he said more, but Hugh had already flung the receiver to one side and was pulling on his clothes. He bundled the painting back in its newspaper, stowed it in his briefcase and then crept from his room, cursing the energy saving lights that announced his progress along the hotel corridor.

  Hugh secreted himself in an unlocked laundry cupboard on the fifth floor. He had never been so conscious of his heart before, the precious blood so easily spilled, pumping through his body. But even in his panic he was aware of something else. The man hadn’t known who Gustav Loring was.

  Hugh woke to the sound of chambermaids beginning their rounds and hobbled back to his room on cramped legs. His instinct was to abandon his suitcase and its contents, but his night flight had been swift and disorganised and there was something he needed to collect. He heard the approach of chambermaid’s trolley and let himself in, gambling that if trouble lay in store at least she might hear him scream and go for help.

  The hotel room was a mess of tumbled pillows and bedclothes, upturned furniture and scattered clothes. His suitcase gaped from the middle of the floor; its inner lining ripped and tattered. Hugh edged open the bathroom door, smelt aftershave and saw the bottle smashed in frustration against the tiles. He pulled the shower curtain slowly back and felt his breath come like sobs when he saw that this room too was empty. He fell on his knees and ran his hands around the ruined case; finally he tipped it upside down and shook it. But he already knew that his passport was gone.

  It had snowed in the night and the streets were covered with a thin dusting of white. Hugh almost lost his footing as he turned into —Strasse, but he righted himself still keeping a firm hold of his briefcase and its precious cargo. He needed to speak with the antique dealer, find out if he knew who the stranger was and why he was so desperate to lay his hands on the painting.

  There was something going on, a commotion of police cars and green uniforms midway down the street. Hugh slowed his pace, drawn towards the disaster, sure as iron filings drift towards a magnet. He joined the outer fringe of the small crowd that had gathered, and stood on his tiptoes, trying to see over the heads of the onlookers. He caught a glimpse of the antique shop door beribboned with crime scene tape. He turned to the broad, red-faced man standing next to him asked, ‘What happened?’

  ‘Murder.’ The man’s voice was louder than propriety demanded and a few heads turned towards him, but he paid them no mind. ‘The old guy who runs this place got his throat cut last night.’

  ‘A robbery?’

  ‘Most likely, though Herr Muller kept some bad company. Could be it caught up with him.’

  ‘That’s him! The murderer!’

  A ripple of excitement raced though the crowd. Hugh turned towards the shout and saw a young girl pointing at him.

  ‘I saw him going into Herr Muller’s shop when I was locking up last night. He killed him!’

  The red-faced man grabbed Hugh’s sleeve. For an instant it seemed he might be trapped but then Hugh struggled free of his coat and shoved the man hard, toppling him into the onlookers. He ran as if his life depended on it, sped on by shouts that were soon drowned in a wail of sirens.

  Hugh ducked into the crowds of Christmas shoppers, hearing once more the jangling tones of the children’s carousel. It had started to snow again and the cold was like a fever on him, damping his skin through the thin weave of his shirt. Hugh glanced back and saw two policemen patrolling the square, eyes bright beneath their visors as they scanned the crowd.

  He pulled the stupid red hat from his briefcase and stuck it on his head. It was a disguise of sorts, but he needed to get indoors before he was captured or froze to death. A coffee shop glowed bright at the far end of the square. Hugh made for it, forcing himself not to look back at the policemen. It was only when he got to the door that he realised his wallet, credit cards, driving licence, car keys and the last of his cash, were in the pocket of the coat he’d abandoned.

  For a moment he considered handing himself in, explaining the whole sorry mess and throwing himself on the mercy of the authorities. The old man had been killed for the loss of the painting; he knew it sure as he knew the stranger had threatened to slit his throat.

  The thought stopped Hugh in his tracks. Gustav Loring wasn’t worth killing for, and anyway, the man on the phone hadn’t known who the artist was. What made the picture so valuable to him?

  He had parked his hire car in a quiet street near his hotel. Hugh searched the verge until he found a rock big enough to smash the passenger window. The glass was tough and he cut his hand forcing it free of the frame. He accessed the boot from within, blessing whoever had invented hatch-backs, then freed the jack from beneath the spare wheel and used it to break the lock from the ignition. He found a screwdriver in the small toolbox in the well of the boot, turned it in the exposed ignition and fired the engine into life, wondering how long he had before the police contacted the hire company and circulated the car’s registration throughout the force.

  Cold air roared through the breached window as he drove along the autobahn numbing Hugh’s hands until he thought they might freeze to the steering wheel. He pulled into a service station and parked amongst ranks of juggernauts loaded with containers bearing the names of distant ports; Hamburg, Bergen, Stranraer, Copenhagen. He rubbed his hands together, trying to get the blood moving, then slid the painting from his briefcase and loosed it of its wrapping. The girls’ faces stared out; beautiful as ever, but now it seemed it was the girl in the mirror who had the sweeter expression while her twin’s mouth twisted into a smirk.

  Hugh’s father had been a practical man. He could keep a succession of elderly vans on the road and could talk to beggars or lords with equal ease. He could estimate the price of any painting to within ten percent accuracy and could judge the weight of a stranger’s purse. But he had also been superstitious.

  ‘Some paintings are bad luck, son. You don’t
always know at first, but as soon as you do, you get rid of them, even if it means giving them away.’

  Hugh pushed his father’s voice from his head. He took his pen knife and slit the paper backing from the frame, unsure of what he was looking for. Long ago Loring had pencilled the dimensions of the picture on the rear of the canvas as a guide to the framer, but there were no secret messages written there. Hugh slid his fingers along the inner batons of the frame, careful not to damage the painting. He was about to curse his own foolishness when he felt it, a slim cylinder tucked between the canvas and the wood.

  Hugh unfurled a spool of paper. Inscribed on it in brown ink were the numbers 22 – 369 – 741 – 8282. He had no idea what they meant, but he was certain this was what the stranger sought. If all went well he could be paid twice; sell the painting to the curator and the code, or whatever it was, to the stranger.

  It was almost as if he had conjured the other man by thinking of him. No sooner had Hugh slipped the paper into his trouser pocket than there he was, wrapped in a long brown coat, striding across the forecourt towards the service kiosk, the bloodless mouth no longer smiling. Hugh slid low in his seat. Was it possible the stranger had somehow tracked his car? No, Hugh watched as the man made a call on his mobile. He had no idea that the painting was only a few metres away. Hugh couldn’t make out what the stranger was saying, but he could see the expression on his face, a mixture of fear and anger that made Hugh slide down further still in his seat and stay there even after the man had killed the call and driven out of the forecourt into the swiftness of the autobahn.

  Schloß Cappenberg shone white against the snow. Hugh crossed the cobbled courtyard, taking in the neat façade, the ranks of vacant windows where anyone might be watching him from the shadows. He hurried up the front steps and into an entrance hall designed to impress. The Schloß was host to a photography exhibition and a few visitors stood examining the black and white prints that lined the wall. Hugh scanned the hallway, taking in the parquet floor, imposing central staircase with its carved mahogany banister, the visitors still wrapped in their winter coats. There was no sign of his pursuer.

  ‘Can I help you sir?’

  The young receptionist looked worried. Hugh wondered what kind of a figure he cut, standing there without an overcoat on one of the year’s coldest days. He twisted his face into a semblance of a smile and asked for the curator. The girl returned his smile, though her eyes remained wary.

  ‘Herr Weiss has asked me to pass on his apologies. He’s unexpectedly delayed, but invites you to explore the exhibition while you wait.’

  Hugh clutched the briefcase. The white rooms lined with faces were too open to be safe. He looked out of the window at the branches of an old tree. He wondered how many winters it had seen. Beyond it the Cappenberg chapel stood straight and stern, its spire pointing towards heaven.

  He said, ‘Tell Herr Weiss I’ll wait for him in the Kirk.’

  Hugh stood beneath the alter looking at the carved figures of Otto and Gottfried von Cappenberg united in stone. The statuette made the brothers look like twins; they had the same pageboy haircuts, the same broad faces and pious expressions. Hugh had never wanted a brother when he was younger, but since his father’s death he sometimes wished there was someone he could talk to, someone who really knew him.

  The Kirk was peaceful after his frantic drive. Hugh walked to where a golden ornament shone out of a display cabinet, the Cappenberger Barbarossakopf, head of a Cappenberg ancestor raised high by a squad of angels. Hugh thought again of his father. He would have loved the Schloß and its Kirk. He was walking towards the ornately carved seats of the choir when he suddenly froze.

  There was himself, face down in a pool of blood on the floor. Hugh looked again, no not himself, that was ridiculous, but another man of his height with the same thinning curls. Hugh knelt beside the body and rolled it over, knowing already what he would find.

  The stranger’s face stared up at him, his pale lips pulled back in a sneer a second bloody mouth gaping from his neck. Hugh pressed his hands against the wound, but the blood had ceased to pump from it. A knife shone from the floor. Hugh armed himself with it, in case the killer still hid in the shadows.

  There was sound of footsteps on stone and then a gasp. A smart, bearded man was standing at the top of the nave, his face a rictus of shock.

  Hugh jogged towards the curator, forgetting about the knife still clutched in his hand.

  ‘No!’

  Herr Weiss grabbed Hugh by the shoulder and pushed. Hugh felt himself losing balance. He raised a hand, meaning to catch hold of Herr Weiss’ lapel and right himself. The knife was still in his grip. The curator grabbed Hugh by the shoulders and the two men stumbled to the ground together. Hugh said, ‘No, it’s not …’ But his voice was drowned in a gurgle of blood and the screams of the curator as he ran for help.

  A passport was found in the pocket of the stranger who, in the absence of other documents, was identified as Hugh Carmichael, aged thirty-three, a struggling travel journalist with no known next of kin. Hugh’s body was left unnamed and unclaimed; the only possible clue to his identity a scrap of paper bearing a sequence of numbers whose significance remained unknown. The painting languished in the police evidence vault for a long time, but was eventually gifted to Schloß Cappenberg where the curator kept it in his office for a while, a reminder of his own mortality. Eventually the strange twins began to get on his nerves and he assigned it to the basement. After all, as he said to his deputy, it was a poor copy, not really worth the canvas it was painted on.

  PETER ROBINSON is best known for his DCI Banks books, set in his native Yorkshire; these began with Gallows View (1987) and in 2014 the twenty-third book, Abattoir Blues, was published. They have been filmed as a major ITV drama series. His recent standalone novel Before the Poison won the 2012 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel by the Crime Writers of Canada. He was born in Yorkshire in 1950 and divides his time between Richmond, Yorkshire, and Toronto, Canada.

  People Just Don’t Listen

  Peter Robinson

  They say that the eyes are windows to the soul, but I have never been sure what they mean, whoever they are. What does a soul look like? Have you ever seen one? Isn’t it supposed to be invisible? Perhaps they mean character. Can looking into someone’s eyes tell you about her attributes, her dreams, fears, hopes, disappointments, successes and failures? It’s possible, I suppose, though I know that, in reality, eyes are just gelatinous blobs of vitreous humour shot through with colour, fitted with rods and cones, connected to the brain via the optic nerve. Don’t get me wrong; please don’t assume that I have no aesthetic appreciation. I may be a man of science, but I am also a lover and collector of beautiful things.

  So ran the gist of our conversation that evening. I am not normally a drinker, and I rarely meet women in hotel bars, but I was out of town on business in an unfamiliar city, and I was in a mood for company.

  I first noticed her studying me in the long mirror behind the bar, the one that reflected all the different-coloured bottles. When she saw that I had caught her looking, she smiled, and we turned to face one another for real. I bought her a drink. Something blue with a striped umbrella and chunky ice cubes. It was then that we got talking about eyes.

  There was no doubt that she was lovely, and I am neither vain nor naïve enough to think that such a woman would pay me a moment’s notice were she not, shall we say, a working girl. Very high class, of course, but a working girl.

  I saw that when I first looked into her eyes. They weren’t hard or mercenary. Don’t get me wrong. Her eyes were as beautiful as the rest of her. Deep-ocean blue, with no hint of grey, in perfect proportion to her nose and mouth. I have never seen such a pure shade of blue. But there was something worldly about them; theirs was a calculating sort of beauty.

  When she asked me what I saw in them, however, I was cautious enough not to tell her the truth, only to say that they were very beautiful. She laughed and glance
d away shyly. If it was an act, it was a good one. As the evening wore on, and drink followed drink, it became clear where we were headed.

  When at last I invited her up to my room, she leaned forward and whispered a number in my ear. It seemed rather high, but no matter. I agreed to it, of course I agreed. A gentleman doesn’t haggle. She slid off the bar stool and fell in alongside me to the lifts, taking my arm as we went, for all the world as if she were my girlfriend. I felt a strange tingle of excitement, a shortness of breath, a ringing in my ears.

  I felt in my pocket for the little case of instruments I always carried with me and gripped the smooth leather. As the lift doors closed and she moved forward to kiss me, I found it hard to keep from laughing. It was all so easy. Why wasn’t she running away from me as fast as she could? She should have known what she was walking into, what was waiting for her in my room – the curare, the speculum, the little glass jar of clear preserving fluid. But people just don’t listen, do they? Hadn’t I told her I collected beautiful things? Hadn’t I told her she had beautiful eyes?

  ANNE ZOUROUDI lived for seven years in Greece and the islands inspire much of her writing. She is the author of seven ‘Mysteries of the Greek Detective’ books, featuring Hermes Diaktoros, the most recent of which was The Feast of Artemis (2013). Born in Lincolnshire, she now lives in the Peak District with her son.

  The Honey Trap

  Anne Zouroudi

  The American girl was wearing a red hat, a straw fedora with a sprig of delicate frangipane tucked in its ribbon band. The hat, being red, drew attention, but even without it the girl was beautiful and blonde enough to catch the eye. She was sitting with her friends at a harbour-front table, cool in the shade of the kafenion’s awning, ordering cold drinks from a waiter who was trying to flirt with her and her companions. But she wasn’t interested in him. She turned away to watch a fisherman hawking his catch, and she looked happy, healthy and carefree.