He studied the outside of the shed door. A broken old-fashioned wooden latch had been superceded by a more robust system with an eye screwed into the frame and a clasp to the door. An open padlock hung from the eye. It could be removed to fit the clasp over the ring, then replaced and closed to secure the building. But a locked padlock in the embers of Shelley Lincoln's funeral pyre would be far too much of a giveaway.
Greg concentrated on the older fixture instead. It was a traditional Sussex design—a wooden bar pivoted by a screw in the door and fitting, when the door was closed, into a wooden slot on the door frame. A rectangular hole cut into the door would once have held a handle attached to the bar, which someone inside could lift to let themselves out. But the crosspiece was missing, and the bar hung downwards.
He tested the bar, which he found still rotated on its screw-fitting. Hardly daring to believe his luck, he moved it round like the hand of a clock until it stood upright above its pivot. He then gently banged the door closed. Shaken off balance, the bar very satisfyingly moved through an arc to settle into its welcoming groove in the door frame. The shed was locked from the outside.
Greg Lincoln felt a surge of glee. The Sussex craftsman who had made the latch had made it good and robust. Greg used a screwdriver to tighten the screw and, after a few adjustments, found that every time he closed the door, the bar would infallibly fall into the locked position. With no inside handle to reopen it.
Deliberately leaving the latch bar hanging in its downward position, he moved into the shed. Petrol next ... petrol to fuel the conflagration. The smell inside was already so strong that he didn't reckon Shelley or Dan would notice however much more of the stuff he sprinkled around. But he was careful. Glossy pools on the floor would raise suspicions. So he poured his petrol trail out of sight beneath the benches and armchairs. He shifted the sofa bed and generously soaked its back, which would be out of sight against the wall.
Greg Lincoln moved deftly, glorying in his own cleverness. While he prepared his fire-trap, his mind coolly assessed possible methods for igniting it. Had to be something remote, something that would activate while he was safely off the scene. He'd decided that the following day he actually might do what he had claimed to be doing so many times before, and go to the golf club. There'd be plenty of old bores there, escaping the cloying bonds of a family Christmas, able to give him an alibi for the time of his wife's murder.
The ignition method couldn't involve anything electronic. That too might leave traces. No, he needed something that would disappear in the general conflagration, offering no clues to outside intervention.
A fuse, it had to be some kind of fuse.
He looked around the shed for inspiration. He still felt confidently calm. He was in a zone where he knew that the right solution would come to him. Greg Lincoln could not fail.
But nothing he saw inside rang the right bells. Pensively, he moved out into the garden, and found himself drawn to the bonfire he had observed earlier. The bonfire that was still burning three days after Dan had lit it.
The centre of the fire was dead white ash, but from the circle around the edges little spirals of smoke rose. Greg's tasselled loafer probed tentatively into the smoulderings, and instantly found what he was looking for.
Amidst the embers were some strands of brown garden twine. One or two were glowing, alight but burning very slowly.
He found a big ball of twine in the shed. Unwilling to risk accidents inside the incendiary bomb that he had created, he conducted his experiments in the garden.
First he tried soaking a length of the twine in petrol, but it burnt too quickly. Besides, that might leave some forensic trace. Then he just lit the twine as it was and found, to his intense gratification, that it worked perfectly. If he held his fuse up and lit the end, it flamed only for a few seconds, but continued to burn. A red glow moved slowly along, and the twine was consumed at a satisfyingly steady rate. The smouldering burn was resilient, too; however much he shook the fuse or waved it about, the twine continued inexorably to burn. It must have been treated with some flammable preservative.
He tested his fuse's effect on a pool of petrol on the red-brick path. When the tiny red glow reached the fluid, a very rewarding flare-up ensued.
Consciously slowing down his pulse rate, Greg Lincoln experimented until he had a fuse that would burn for almost exactly twenty minutes. Perfect. The following morning he would wait until Shelley and Dan had gone into the shed, then come down to the garden, check his locking device had worked, and bang on the door to say he was off. By the moment of combustion he would be safely in the golf club, surrounded by witnesses.
He laid the fuse to run through a knothole into the shed and to end up in a pool of petrol behind the impregnated sofa-bed. He set the latch bar in the upright position. Then he returned to Lovelock Manor to reward himself with a large Scotch. He resisted the temptation to ring Vicki Talbot. Much better to contact her with the fait accompli, the news that his wife was dead, and that he was free to spend the rest of his life with his lover.
That evening he was particularly solicitous to Shelley, showing uncharacteristic interest in the booty she had brought back from the garden centre. He didn't dislike his wife. Her personality was too pallid to inspire dislike. And he felt a mild regret about the fate that awaited her the next morning. But not enough regret to make him change his plan.
He slept surprisingly well, but woke early, round six, to the sound of heavy rain. His first reaction was delight. Rain would ensure that, once Shelley and Dan got into the shed, they wouldn't leave it in a hurry. They would work out their horticultural strategy in the dry, rather than venturing out into the garden.
But no sooner had he had this heartwarming thought than he was struck by another, less pleasing consequence of the heavy rain. His twine fuse would get soaking wet!
Greg managed to get out of bed and collect his clothes without rousing Shelley. His wife continued to breathe evenly, little knowing that what she would wake to would be the last morning of her life.
Greg's carefully cut twenty minutes of twine was indeed very wet. Not wishing to re-enter the booby-trapped shed, he had brought a lighter with him from the kitchen. When he fed a flame to the frayed end, the twine did catch alight and flare briefly, but then sputtered and soon no glow showed. He threw it down on the ground in frustration, and tried to think of some other way of detonating his time bomb.
For a tiny moment he felt doubt. The possibility crept into his mind that he might fail. But he quickly extinguished the unworthy thought. Of course he would succeed. He was Greg Lincoln.
It didn't take long for the solution to come to him. Simple, really. Better than the twine fuse. The only surprise was that he hadn't thought of it earlier.
He opened the shed door, and carefully left it open. To lock himself in would not be very clever, he thought with a chuckle. And as soon as he walked inside, he realised just how perfect his new plan was. The overcast sky made the interior darker than ever. Which meant that when Shelley and Dan came in, the first thing they would do would be to light the candle.
Cylindrical and large, probably three inches in diameter—ideal for his purposes. A half-inch of blackened wick showed at the top.
Taking advantage of the tools he found in the shed, Greg worked with confident efficiency. First he used a Stanley knife to take a quarter-inch slice off the top of the candle. Careful not to cut through the wick, he excavated a hole about two inches across and three down into the centre of the candle.
He cut the wick, so that it was three inches long, and poked the blackened end through the hole in the disc. Lighting the wick briefly ensured that the surrounding wax melted and cemented into position.
The next bit was easy. He simply poured petrol into the little wax reservoir that he had created and replaced the lid he had cut off, so that its trailing white wick was immersed in the fluid. He then used the warmth of his fingers to seal the wax and hide the mark of his cut. He woul
d rather have used a flame, but prudence warned him against the unnecessary risk. Anyway, Dan wasn't going to look at the candle closely. The first thing he'd do when he and Shelley entered the gloom would be to find his lighter and put it to the candle wick.
And then—boom. Conflagration. Greg Lincoln almost hugged himself at his own cleverness.
He was about to leave the shed when he was stopped by the sound of approaching voices.
"Where's Greg?” asked Dan's voice, deep and throaty.
"He's gone. He said he had some golf thing."
"At this time in the morning?"
"I don't know. I never ask what he's doing."
"No, you let him ride roughshod over you."
"Dan...” There was a note of pained pleading in Shelley's voice.
"Well, the way he treats you ... it makes me mad."
"He's my husband, Dan."
"Useless kind of husband. He doesn't care about you at all. The only person he thinks about is himself."
"That's not true. Yesterday he bought me a hundred pounds’ worth of gardening tokens, and he really sounded interested in the garden."
Greg was touched by his wife's tribute to his solicitude. But he remained aware that he was in a rather awkward situation—geographically, at least.
"Oh, yes?” asked Dan cynically. “He doesn't care about you. I'm the only one who cares about you. I'm the only one who loves you, Shelley."
Hm, thought Greg, there's a turnup for the book. And he waited with interest to hear what would come next.
"I know you do, Dan. But—"
"And you love me too. Go on, you've told me you do."
"I may have said things like that in the past, Dan...” Shelley wasn't finding what she was saying easy. “But the fact is that Greg is my husband. I'm a Catholic, and I believe that marriage is for life."
"Even a rotten marriage that makes you unhappy?"
"Maybe it's only a rotten marriage because I haven't worked hard enough to make it a better one. And the fact is that Greg is my husband and we have both sworn to stay together until death do us part."
Oh, thought Greg, what a splendidly loyal little woman I married. Pity I've got to murder her.
"And if death did you part?"
"What do you mean, Dan?"
"If Greg died, would you marry me?"
There was a long silence, then Shelley's voice said quietly, “Yes, Dan. I can give you that satisfaction at least. If Greg were to die, I would marry you."
Oh well, there's a nice warm thought for them to end their lives with, thought Greg.
"Thank you for saying that,” murmured Dan, his voice thick with emotion. Then Greg heard him approaching the shed, even putting his hand on the open door. “So I can't tempt you in?” asked the gardener. “Just for a quick cuddle?"
"No,” said Shelley firmly. “It wouldn't be fair to Greg."
Her husband was divided between respect for his wife's loyalty and annoyance at the realization that, if she wouldn't go into the shed, he was going to have to find another way of murdering her.
"All right. If that's what you feel...” And, as a petulant punctuation to his words, Dan slammed the shed door shut.
Things happened very quickly then. Just at the moment Greg heard the clunk of the wooden door latch finding its slot and locking him in, he was aware of a sudden roar of combustion behind him. He turned back to the inferno that had once been a sofa-bed, and saw flames licking along the floor towards him from every direction.
Greg Lincoln had been a very good planner, after all. His twenty-minute twine fuse hadn't really gone out. Burning more slowly because of the damp, its spark had still crept inexorably towards the knothole and the pool of petrol inside the shed.
Realising that that's what must have happened was the last thought of Greg Lincoln's unlamented life.
And his last sight, through the flames and the cracking windows of the garden shed, was his wife Shelley, held in the protective arms of the gardener Dan. Which was where she would stay for the remainder of her very happy life.
©2008 by Simon Brett
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Black Mask: THAT KIND OF GUY by Gary Cahill
Gary Cahill's crime-noir debut in Black Mask came about as an answer to a challenge put to him by his friend and now fellow crime writer Jim Fusilli. The tale also qualifies for EQMM's Department of First Stories. It's the very first published fiction of New York Public Library staffer Cahill, who lives in Weehawken, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City in which much of his atmospheric story is set.
I walked up the street, turned to head down the hill, and got the full effect. Late in the year and late in the day, the setting sun colors the west side of the skyline a burning, burnished, ruddy gold, until an ever richer deep-sea blue washes over from the Jersey side to put out the fire. Dramatic. Beautiful. I put my head down against the breeze off the harbor and moved on.
As the day darkened, I rolled to-ward the waterfront to meet this jerk Charlie to address our differences concerning an even bigger jerk—the drug-slinging, woman-smacking, kid-terrorizing scumball I call Roly Poly Paul. I was vexed; Charlie was Paul's guy, and we needed to sort it out. At the bottom of the hill I crossed the street, and walked toward the river.
A couple blocks ahead I saw a car parked along a hedgerow in the lumber-yard lot and someone leaning on its right front fender. The car was a dark, nondescript four-door, and the lounger was Charlie. I got closer and saw he was dressed down in a way I'd never seen—sneakers, blue jeans, and a hooded sweatshirt in place of his usual city-side roach-killer boots, pegged black jeans, and a slick, shiny black leather blazer meant to announce how well he was doing. He turned his head and nodded as I hit the corner across from the lot.
Charlie was all smiles, and as I crossed the street the headlights from a car heading up the boulevard behind me caught something in his left hand, glinting. As I drew near, I noticed the trunk was open, just barely. He said, “Hey” as he rolled his shoulders forward and took one step alongside the front passenger door.
As hard as I could, I clubbed him with my forearm and fist across the left side of his head. He dropped the wrench, rolled left, hit the right front fender, and bounced back up. That shot across the ear must have hurt like hell, but it didn't do the job. My right, brought up from the ankles to plant the wrench under the left side of his jaw, did. His neck looked like it stretched six inches as he fell across the hood. I wouldn't have been surprised to see his head start coming off.
I poked and pushed him with the wrench until he fell off the car's front end to the ground, took his cell phone, money clip, and wallet, pocketed the cash, left his gun. Ah, the final indignity of being found armed, covered in your own blood instead of someone else's, and dead. I stuffed the wrench under my jacket and walked toward the ferry, sauntered to the dock's edge, shared what had happened with the river, and turned my attention back to Roly Poly Paul.
* * * *
In this part of my life, most everybody calls me G, tagged by some blue-collar blacks who used to help me augment, loudly, the soul and R&B jukebox selections at a few West Side bullet-and-beer bars. I was out of it enough to think it reflected my first-name initial instead of just being a truncated version of “guy” or something. Ah, live and learn, but it stuck.
Hang around those joints enough—not to mention others with a more hardscrabble clientele—be short on cash enough and you'll soon run into someone more than willing to help, for a price. I ran into Willy, though, truth be told, I'd known Willy years before, both of us being locals from my side of the Hudson. He sported other facets to his existence beyond the legit, most of them relating to a family he chose to belong to, through blood ties of a different sort than heredity. He ran games for high rollers, complained you couldn't find a kid to highjack a truck or who was worth a damn in any way anymore, kept an eye on street-level guys to make sure all the money coming in was going d
owntown, and occasionally got involved in painting houses or wet work or whatever you call it when somebody's got to go.
So Willy offered to help me out of a minor monetary crisis.
"Yeah, yeah,” I complained. “But for a few hundred bucks up front, I'll be paying five times that for five years."
"No, no, I'm offering you the inside deal ... Not for civilians...” is what he told me.
Inside deal. The classic paradox I pondered here is that no one should borrow from these guys unless you already have enough in your pocket to pay it all back, and more, immediately.
So I took the money. And then I couldn't pay it back.
If you have credit with a drug dealer and don't make good, you can work it off by moving product. As long as the word “trafficking” doesn't come up in any official capacity, it's all good. I am not the kind of guy you picture collecting for the mob, but Willy told me my new job was hardly that, at least in spirit. There are always mooks in for just a little bit, and sending hard guys to straighten them out is more muscle than you need. A pissed-off, truly violent man I am not, so I did what I had to, mostly advising people on doing the right thing, only rarely pushing anyone around, and realizing I was now connected, if only by a really long extension cord. I guessed Charlie had been wired about like this, until I pulled the plug.
Which brings me back to Paul, whose roly-polyness merely identified him physically. In action, he was a slumming works-upstairs-at-a-bank-on-the-East-Side, always had two too many at the bar, talked too loud, laughed too loud, annoying bastard who would mouth off when Charlie was around because Charlie was supplying the coke and pills and whatever other dope Paul was moving and word was that Charlie was a protected guy, being a money-maker for some of Willy's associates. My problem with Roly Poly Paul wasn't the dope he maybe gave Sally. It was what else he gave Sally.
* * * *
In a small town, even one close to the big city, there are only a few degrees of separation from person to person, and stories get around. I didn't know her well. Sally was younger than me, short blond shag, grey-blue eyes, ex-athlete, and quite attractive for all that. But she'd had it hard. A single mom of two grade-school girls, the father gone. She was on assistance, vulnerable, sad, and lonely, and had taken up with Roly Poly Paul, who had an apartment a couple blocks away, convenient for his commute to the city. When it seemed to the neighbors that Sally was suddenly running into a lot of doors or slipping a lot in the bathroom, word got out. And it wasn't so much knowing just enough about her as it was knowing too much about him that got me onto RPP's case—a lump like him belting around a hometown girl. I don't think so. Hey, I really don't do that kind of thing, but officially I am a collector for the mob, right? Maybe I could take one step forward, get a feel for it. Maybe I could do just enough.
EQMM, January 2009 Page 9