Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  He steadied himself mentally as he walked, trying to look relaxed, like this was something he did every day. He had no fear of dying, not now, but he feared one last failure, failing to get to Mohr, being stopped before he was even close.

  He pushed the door open and stepped inside. There was music playing, but it was nothing he recognized, some kind of rock from the 1970s. And it was so warm that for a moment he had to stand and collect himself – he felt almost instantly sleepy after the biting cold out on the street.

  He walked into the main room then, a long bar down the left-hand side, tables and booths filling the rest of the space. Only a couple of the tables were occupied, fewer than a dozen guys in total, all Mohr’s people. One table was playing cards, the other had been listening to one of them telling a story, but they fell silent when Karsten walked in.

  He kept walking and looked at the barman as he passed and said, “I’m here to see Herr Mohr – he knows I’m coming.”

  The barman didn’t respond at all, just stared blankly. Karsten had almost reached the door at the far end of the room, though, when he heard a voice behind him.

  “Hey, kid!”

  Karsten felt his heart perform a strange sickening manoeuvre. He stopped and turned as casually as he could manage. The dim lighting was the only thing masking his fear and the fluttering twitch that had started below his left eye and which he couldn’t control.

  It was the guy who’d been telling a story and he looked at Karsten now as if he was in the mood for sport. The others were all looking at the guy and smiling, and Karsten guessed this was one of the big men in the organization, maybe even the one who’d arranged Stefan’s murder. It made Karsten wish that he had more bullets, that he could kill this man too, kill all of them.

  “You’re not Turkish, are you?”

  The others all burst out laughing. Karsten looked anything but Turkish. It was a double joke too, because the Turk wasn’t even Turkish, but an Albanian.

  Karsten couldn’t speak for a moment and responded by pulling his beanie hat off and putting it in his jacket pocket. He was too hot anyway, so hot he felt he might pass out.

  The guy nodded in mock approval and said, “Now that is a fine German boy.” He smiled at Karsten and said, “Don’t look so worried, I’m just having some fun, but if you had been a Turk . . .” That seemed to be a punch line in itself because his friends fell about laughing again, maybe even laughing too hard, and so did the guys playing cards.

  Karsten nodded and turned and walked through the door. There was a short corridor in front of him and then stairs to the upper floor. Even as he reached the bottom of the stairs he could see Mohr’s bodyguard standing on the small landing at the top.

  He tried a smile and stopped when he was halfway up the stairs and said, “I’m here to see Herr Mohr.”

  The bodyguard was heavily built, his head shaved, wearing a leather jacket.

  “He’s busy.”

  “He knew I might be coming tonight.” As Karsten talked he eased the rucksack from his back and opened it. He clearly didn’t look threatening because the guard looked unimpressed rather than suspicious. “I’ve brought him the payment . . . the money I owed.” He was reaching into the rucksack now, and was pleased that it looked as if he was searching for the money instead of ensuring the towel was wrapped around the end of the gun, that his hand was firmly on the grip. “Three thousand, five hundred . . .”

  Karsten held the outside of the rucksack with his other hand, pointing up at the bodyguard. He fired and his hand kicked backwards. The towel muffled the noise but the shot was still much louder than he’d expected. He’d been aiming at the bodyguard’s chest but the bullet hit him in the side of the neck and blood sprayed out of it. The guy fell to his knees as he reached up, his hand blindly trying to address the fountain of blood which pumped deep and sleek around his fingers.

  Karsten wasn’t sure if he heard someone shout behind him – the music seemed louder now and he couldn’t distinguish the sounds. They had to have heard something, surely. Either way, he wouldn’t have long and knew he needed to move quickly.

  The bodyguard toppled forward, a confused expression locked into his face. His body slid down four or five stairs before becoming wedged and crumpling awkwardly.

  Karsten flew up the remaining stairs, jumping over the body. He could smell burning and pulled the gun out of the rucksack. He pushed the door open and stepped into the office. He dropped the smouldering rucksack on to the floor, pointing the gun forward as he kicked the door shut behind him.

  Mohr was sitting there just ten feet away behind the desk. He had a shock of dyed hair, was overweight, wearing a shirt and pale grey suit – he looked like a car salesman. And amazingly to Karsten, he was actually going through the books in that there was some kind of ledger on the desk in front of him. There were no bundles of money or drugs, but then he guessed that was only in the movies.

  Mohr almost instantly went to reach into his jacket but Karsten waved the gun at him and said, “Hands on the table or I’ll kill you right now.”

  Mohr complied and Karsten reached behind and fumbled for the lock, turning it. He couldn’t hear anyone coming yet, so maybe they hadn’t heard the first shot. They would hear the others, but it wouldn’t matter then. The rucksack was still smouldering and Karsten stamped on it a couple of times as he moved forward, never letting the gun stray from Mohr’s body.

  “You look familiar,” said Mohr. “But you don’t work for the Turk. Have we met before?”

  Karsten shook his head. “I saw you once, from a distance, but we’ve never met.”

  Mohr shrugged and looked ready to speak, but Karsten only had a limited amount of time and this wasn’t a conversation.

  “I look like my brother, that’s why you think I’m familiar. Stefan Groll, who you murdered.”

  He was expecting a denial, but Mohr nodded and said, “You know, in America they have something called suicide by cop, when a person wants to die and behaves in such a way that a policeman shoots him.”

  “Stefan didn’t want to die – he wanted his girlfriend to live, that was all.”

  Mohr looked threatening as he said, “Did he honestly believe I would let him wreck my business? You call that wanting to live?” His voice got louder, and Karsten wondered if he was hoping his shouts might be heard from downstairs. “What did he think, that I would see the error of my ways and leave the drugs business behind? He left me no choice!”

  Karsten couldn’t hear anything, but he suddenly sensed as if by instinct alone that something was happening in the bar below, that there was some movement. He had no more time and realized anyway that he wasn’t here for an admission of guilt, which was just as well, but for something much simpler.

  He braced his arm and fired. The noise was deafening now. It hit Mohr in the chest and knocked him back in his chair. But there was no explosion of blood this time and Mohr looked damaged, winded, but no less threatening. His hands flailed about, and Karsten saw he was reaching for his gun in its shoulder holster.

  At the same time Karsten realized Mohr wasn’t as overweight as he looked, that he was wearing body armour. He aimed the gun a little higher, directly at Mohr’s face. He squeezed the trigger, closing his eyes at the crucial moment, hearing a single word from Mohr, “No!”, small and desperate and then the deafening bang and another and another until the trigger clicked beneath the pressure of his finger and nothing happened.

  He opened his eyes. Mohr had slumped sideways, not quite falling out of his plush leather office chair. He was dead, his face barely recognizable. Karsten’s ears were ringing with the gunshots, but he heard the rush of bangs and clattering and shouts as his own death came panicked towards him.

  Then he heard a gunshot, but it was from the bar below. He walked to the office door, unlocked and opened it to look down the stairs. There were more gunshots. The door into the bar opened, the seventies rock pounding out, then a voice shouting, “Miki! The Turk!” A per
cussive thud followed, the sound of that same person having the air pummelled out of his lungs by the impact of a bullet. Karsten couldn’t see him, but he guessed he’d slumped in the doorway, wedging the door open, because the noise level stayed the same and the gunfire became more insistent.

  Karsten stepped back inside, locked the door again. He could see another door in the corner behind the desk. He picked up his rucksack and ran through it, into a long narrow corridor which had boxes of spirits lined up along one wall.

  There was a window at the end of the corridor and he opened it and looked down. It was a yard below, with a couple of cars parked there. It was quiet too, though he could still hear the noise carrying up from the bar and perhaps a siren in the distance.

  The window was narrow and he doubted any of the other people in Mohr’s bar would have got through it. Karsten slipped the gun into the rucksack and threw it down, then pulled himself through the window, slinking his hips sideways to get out. There was a Mercedes parked almost below and he jumped, landing on the roof with a denting thud, and immediately to the ground from there. The car wasn’t alarmed.

  He picked up the rucksack, took the gun out again and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He walked along the side of Mohr’s bar and out into the street. When he saw other people nearby looking on with concern, he adopted the same expression himself.

  There were a couple of cars parked erratically outside the bar, and still the sound of gunfire, as if there were some kind of stand-off. There were more sirens now, too, and even as Karsten walked casually from the scene a couple of police cars came tearing past.

  He dropped the rucksack into a litter bin a little way before the Deutzer Brücke, making sure he pushed it in all the way. And halfway across the bridge he stopped as he had before and looked at the cathedral and the trains passing on the railway bridge. He took the gun from his pocket and dropped it into the dark water below.

  He stood for a moment longer, waiting for yet another police car to go hurtling over the bridge behind him. But he had no thoughts for the city now, nor for his family and his memories. He could think of nothing clearly because he was not meant to be alive.

  What would he do now? He had no plans because he had imagined no future for himself beyond tonight. He was to return home, he supposed, but then what? Resume his studies, start again? He thought of an old Samuel Beckett quote he’d once heard – he couldn’t remember all of it, only the end, Fail again. Fail better.

  He walked on and, feeling the cold as his senses came back to him, he reached for his beanie hat and put it on again. Had he failed tonight? He had failed to die but that had never been part of his plan, just a consequence of it. He had killed Mohr and one other, deaths which sat remarkably lightly on his conscience, so in that at least he’d succeeded.

  Perhaps, as it turned out, Mohr would have died tonight anyway, but Karsten had killed him, in a stand against Stefan’s death, and against all the bad luck and bad choices that had beset their family and dragged it down. He had succeeded, for the first time in years, and it didn’t matter that he didn’t know how he’d succeeded, because neither had he ever understood the flowering of his failures.

  He walked on, back the way he’d come, back to the market, and there for a few paces he walked alongside a middle-aged man carrying three cardboard boxes, an awkward load. Karsten was about to turn when he heard the man mutter something as the boxes slipped.

  Karsten turned on his heel, grabbing the box that was in danger of toppling to the ground.

  “I’ve got it,” he said.

  “Thanks,” said the man, and was about to say something else when one of the other boxes slipped. Between them they managed to stop it falling to the floor but the top burst open and Karsten saw that it was full of wooden toys.

  Once it was safely lowered to the floor Karsten smiled and said, “I loved these when I was a kid.”

  The guy smiled too as he stacked the open box on top of the other and picked them both up.

  “I still do,” said the man, then looked at the box in Karsten’s arms as if at a complex puzzle.

  “I’ll carry this one for you.”

  “Thanks, it’s only just over here.”

  They walked a short distance to his stall, the man talking briefly about the market and how long he’d been coming here. There were two people already at the stall, the guy’s son and daughter he guessed, maybe a few years younger than Karsten.

  He said hello to them and was thanked again for helping out.

  “I was just there,” said Karsten, and they shook hands and he said, “Well, good luck with the fair.” He turned and headed towards the cathedral.

  The man smiled and watched him walk off, but then for some reason he couldn’t quite fathom, he became full of misgivings for the young man who’d just helped him. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt in some way that it was important not to let him walk away.

  He glanced at his son and daughter who looked back at him almost as if they knew what he was about to do. It was the way he was, he supposed, and they were long used to it by now.

  “Hey, son!” He followed after him and as Karsten turned around he said, “I didn’t even catch your name.”

  Karsten came back a couple of paces.

  “Karsten Groll.”

  “This may be a strange question, Karsten, but do you have a job right now?”

  Karsten shook his head and said, “I’m an art student, but I’m taking some time out.”

  “Art?”

  He nodded and said, “Sculpture mainly. Some painting, but mainly sculpture.” Over the past twelve months Karsten had almost forgotten art but suddenly felt the urge to go back to it, as if his old life were seeping back into him. He’d lost the will to create but could finally see that it would come back if he gave it time.

  “Well look, my other son’s travelling around the world, so we’re one short this year. I can’t pay you much, but it could be a good experience for an artist.”

  “You want me to work on your stall?”

  “Why not?”

  Karsten looked across at the son and daughter who were smiling expectantly, and he said, “I’m not sure what me plans are.”

  “It’s only four weeks – Advent, that’s all.”

  Karsten nodded and said, “I used to come here when I was a kid.” He walked back as the man introduced himself and his family and talked about the opening tomorrow and what they might expect over the coming month.

  Within twenty minutes it felt as if he had always been a part of this, or at least, as if nothing had come before. It was as if he had turned around on the Deutzer Brücke and not gone on and killed Mohr and his bodyguard.

  Because this kindly man and his family had taken him in on a moment’s trust, killer that he was. His future had been a blank, but now it seemed to him that the world had been made new again, and tomorrow night he would still be here when lights filled the darkness.

  Tempus Fugit

  Will Carver

  It’s just a Tuesday.

  Nothing important ever happened on a Tuesday.

  So, when Art Paler agreed to work late this evening, he could not have predicted the scene he now finds himself a part of. He could not have envisaged his wife sitting up, dead, on the tan leather two-seater sofa, her throat a broad claret smile. He could not have imagined his son, collapsed on the kitchen tiles, futilely attempting to hold in his guts as they spill on to unswept crumbs and spattered olive oil. And he would not have thought it likely that he could confront the stranger in his house. That he could chase him outside to the street.

  That he could exact such revenge.

  Not on a Tuesday.

  Wind back a few minutes.

  To a time when everyone was still alive.

  The stranger approaches the Paler residence with a black clipboard in his left hand. That is the extent of his disguise but it implies enough for on-looking neighbours to shy away from their windows, wanting to avoid a petition
or sales call or attempted religious conversion.

  The only thing they sidestep is the opportunity to become a witness.

  Art fumbles with his phone in the car, eventually stroking the correct icon to cut the sound of local radio from the speakers, replacing it with a short dial tone, followed by beeping, ringing, waiting. Then his wife’s voice.

  She says, “Hey, honey,” and the stranger knocks on the door.

  Art replies, “I’m minutes away,” and his son has already been stabbed deep into his stomach twice.

  “You want me to open some wine?”

  The stranger has one hand over the boy’s mouth as the dimpled, eight-inch chef’s blade penetrates fat and muscle and organs another six times before dragging him into the kitchen to bleed out.

  He is a victim. Another statistic. And he’s only good for death.

  The killer waits in the kitchen doorway for Mrs Paler to finish her phone call. It is neither calculated nor courtesy. The miserable heap of silent flesh to his left is taunted by this stranger’s presence. But he can’t call out, it’s over for him. He does not have the option to warn the woman in the next room of her impending fate. He cannot tell her that he loves her one final time. There is no opportunity for life to flash before his eyes. No moment for him to consider his worth as a son. There is only time to fail and die.

  Dial back a few moments.

  Before an empty clipboard lay on a doormat, half covering the word Welcome.

  Art Paler presses the button on his keys to unlock his modest hatchback in the car park. The final words of his boss seem to linger in his ear as he opens the car door, jumping in to escape the layer of cold that separates the sombre sky from the spattering of a falling autumn.

  A bonus well earned.

  With the engine turning and the heat blasting out at maximum, Art places his mobile phone into a cradle on the dashboard that connects it to the car’s speaker system. He could call his son now, tell him that he can give him some money, help him out a bit, pay off that credit card that has had him so deflated these last few months. He could dial his wife and let her know that she should stock up on holiday brochures. But some things are best said in person, with a glass of wine in hand. It can wait, he tells himself.