Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  I do have certain rules and I stick by them.

  No children, no witnesses, no one under police protection.

  I entered the hitman profession by accident. But then isn’t that how most careers develop?

  I needed some cash fast. I have some expensive hobbies and collecting rare books is one of them. And when a title I lust after appears in a dealer’s catalogue and if my funds are insufficient, that’s when I indicate that I’m available for a job. In between books, I lead a normal life. I am not a greedy man, you see. I am pragmatic, dispassionate, logical. That’s what keeps me out of trouble.

  I even sometimes think of myself as something of an artist.

  There are so many ways to kill a person. Many of them are vulgar, I find. If the client wishes the hit to be loud, spectacular, sometimes in order to make an impression, I comply. But in most instances they leave the minutiae to me, and that’s the way I prefer it. I never use the same weapon twice, vary my methods. There are even cases where I can manage to make the death look accidental. Depends on my mood, the circumstances, the location. As I said, I’m a pragmatic sort of guy and I get a real kick out of improvisation. Which doesn’t mean I’m neglectful when I make sudden changes to a plan. I still remain careful and go by my own rules.

  On this occasion, a dealer in Belgium was advertising a first edition, not only in perfect condition and with dust jacket but also signed by both authors, which was pretty rare, of Boileau-Narcejac’s D’Entre les Morts. I actually do read French, not that I soil any of the books in my collection by actually reading them. I already had a reading copy, a later paperback reissue of the title. The film is actually better than the book in my opinion. But my principal motivation was the fact that this thriller novel had later become one of my favourite Hitchcock movies and, actually, one of my favourite films altogether. The price the dealer was asking was outrageous, but as I said neither of the now-deceased authors was in the frequent habit of signing copies of any of their titles, and once I saw the listing, my lust for the book could not be sated.

  Her name was Madeleine.

  Normally I don’t wish to know too much about the reasons behind the jobs. Makes things easier. But in this instance the dossier (which I had of course destroyed Mission Impossible-style after first carefully noting its contents) had spelled it all out. There’s nothing new under the sun. Rich husband, unfaithful wife, money involved. The usual shitty reasons.

  She was in the habit of cruising the plush hotels that circled the airport where she picked strange men up in bars. She didn’t do it for money, which she was not short of. No amateur whore, she. She did it for the sex or whatever else she was after. Never went with the same man twice.

  It didn’t take much planning.

  I followed her in my hire car from the moment she drove off from the mansion in which she and her husband (conveniently away that week at a trade convention in St Paul, Minnesota) lived in the plush suburbs of the city.

  I’d been tracking her for a few days, checking out her habits, the hotel she liked to frequent. She flitted between a half dozen four-star establishments and I’d booked rooms in all of them beforehand under an assumed name and a credit card which couldn’t be traced to me.

  When I saw her drive her hybrid Prius into the underground car park of the Royal & Golf, I rang to cancel my other reservations pretexting a flight delay and parked across the Boulevard and was already checking in at the reception desk and picking up my electronic door card by the time she emerged from the elevator which connected the hotel lobby with the parking area. She went straight to the lounge bar.

  I entered the dimly lit room in which a mediocre jazz pianist was tinkling the ivories in a corner with a repertoire ranging from Gershwin to Cole Porter and back to Gershwin again. Someone should have put a contract out on him long ago, I felt. But I didn’t do jobs for free.

  She was sitting at the bar and seemed familiar to the bartender. She never drank much, I knew. Just nursed a couple of glasses over a whole evening unless she connected with someone, usually businessmen passing through the city and stuck in the particular hotel between flights. Mostly gin and tonics, which was sort of more European than American.

  I sat on a stool across from her. There were barely half a dozen people in the bar; it was still early in the evening. She was daydreaming. From observing her over the last few nights I knew she never took the first step. Which reassured the punters who might be nervous and feared they were dealing with a professional. She dressed elegantly but conservatively and did not look like a woman of the night, which was why she was not bothered by the barmen or hotel security staff. She could have been any business executive in town for meetings halfway between the coasts. Bored. Available.

  She had style, did not throw herself at men. But there was an air of sadness about her, an emptiness that made you want to call her over and get her to lay her head on your shoulders while you stroked her long, lustrous dark hair.

  “A drink for the lady,” I beckoned the barman.

  She acknowledged me with a faint smile.

  Looked at me, the smile broadened. I was acceptable.

  “Thank you . . .” Took a glance at my own glass. “What’s that you’re drinking?” she asked.

  “Just Pepsi,” I said.

  It was always a good gambit to begin a conversation. A man who didn’t drink alcohol. I never quite figured out whether the fact I did not drink made me appear more reliable or more remarkable. At any rate, I knew there were no rumours circulating about a Cola-drinking killer at large.

  Her eyes were ebony black, deep wells of melancholy. Her lipstick just the right, discreet shade of red. Her cheekbones prominent and rouged to elegant perfection against the white tundra of her skin. She reminded me of Snow White. Her tailored suit top was open just one button down so you could catch a glimpse of the thin alley of her cleavage, and her breasts appeared to be milky white. Her voice was husky, a bedroom sort of voice. She didn’t wear her wedding ring.

  Normally, one would have conversed and quickly raised the subject of the unhappiness in her marriage, but I was aware she was on the prowl and knew all the normal preliminaries were quite unnecessary. I was the only willing male in the bar right now and I had passed her initial test of acceptability, it seemed.

  “We could have a last drink up in my room,” I suggested.

  She agreed.

  We were by now speaking the same language of things untold.

  As we entered the elevator, I caught a whiff of her perfume. Anaïs Anaïs. I’d always had a nose for fragrances. Sometimes that’s how I remembered women. Not just their bodies, but also their perfumes. Call me sentimental.

  Her ankles were a thing of beauty, thin, firm, curvy, like a delicate sculpture of flesh, and the shoes she was wearing, heels just right, neither too short nor too high, like a showcase.

  Constrained within the thin grey material of her suit skirt, her arse swayed gently over strong hips.

  We had already kissed before we reached the top floor where the room I had booked was situated.

  Yes, we fucked.

  Some of you might feel that was taking undue advantage of her. That I could have done the deed without going to bed with her (although to be technical about the whole thing, not all of it actually took place on the bed . . .).

  I disagree.

  Now, I might not be God’s gift to womankind but I did feel she deserved more than a peck on the cheek before I got around to the business of the night. If you feel that was an act of selfishness, then you are entitled to your own opinion and I won’t come after you with a SIG Sauer or a dagger drawn if you persist in thinking that.

  We made love.

  She drew a deep sigh as I entered her for the first time and her fingernails raked my back as she held tight to me while I thrust inside her. Her legs circled my buttocks and gripped me in a vice of desire, inviting me to go ever deeper and reach her furthest sexual connection points.

  When I cam
e, and opened my eyes and looked at her face, I caught a few tears pearling down her pale cheeks.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” she reassured me. “It’s silly. I always cry a little when I’m fucked. Just the way I am. Don’t let it bother you.” And she attempted a feeble smile.

  We lay together in the darkness a long time.

  Madeleine didn’t want to talk.

  Neither did I.

  Maybe this surprised her, as all the men she picked up on her lost evenings no doubt bombarded her with the customary questions as to why she did this, why she was unhappy, if they were sensitive enough to the situation, or just treated her disdainfully once they’d enjoyed the fuck they were seeking and found her eminently disposable.

  She gave me a few curious glances, peering through the penumbra of the room, expecting some form of reaction.

  I was different.

  It was the middle of the night by then. Soon, I knew, she would want to leave. She never stayed with any of the men she slept with until morning. It would have been too intimate.

  “You know, the view from the balcony is incredible. Did you know you can see the whole city and its lights? It’s really great. Let me show you.”

  She hesitated one brief moment then consented and rose, regally naked, from the bed. At the sight of her body, my heart seized a little. She now looked smaller without the heels, the clothes, like a little girl lost in a deep, dark forest.

  I took her hand, slid the window open. It was a summer night.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “No one can see us this high. Know we are naked.” I kissed her neck as we stepped across to the balcony rail. My hands held her waist. Her skin was warm and ever so soft.

  “It is beautiful,” she agreed, taking in the view that stretched for miles until the horizon of night and electricity just faded into nothingness. She shivered a little, as the breeze caressed our undressed bodies.

  “Good,” I said as my hands left her waist and rose.

  One sharp push and she tumbled over the balcony rail and fell into the void.

  Her white body flying downwards through the night was like a broken butterfly in flight.

  She didn’t even scream.

  By the time she reached the ground I was already back in the room and it only took me a couple of minutes to dress, gather her clothes, her bag and the bed’s crumpled sheets, dust the few surfaces I knew I had been in contact with and make my way to the ground floor through the service stairs and find my car. It hadn’t even been ticketed.

  I scattered her belongings in dumpsters throughout the next city fifty miles down the highway and caught the first morning shuttle flight out to the East Coast after returning the rental car.

  In all likelihood it would be reported as a suicide.

  Job done.

  And if you were expecting that on my next assignment I would meet another woman in a bar who would have looked just like her but wearing her hair a different way and in a different colour, and calling herself Judy, you’d be sadly mistaken. Life is not that ironic.

  Death is.

  And if you really want to know about the next hit, well it was a slimy Cuban in the drugs business and I slit his throat.

  The Baker Street Cimmerian

  Rhys Hughes

  “By Crom, my dear Watson!”

  The man who uttered this exclamation sat awkwardly in a chair by the fireplace and his blue eyes glared moodily at the page of a newspaper that he was holding open at arm’s length.

  “Yes, Holmes? What seems to be the bother this morning?” Dr Watson spoke with a mildness that was forced.

  The barbarian squinted. “This article here says that something devious is afoot somewhere and that police are baffled. Perhaps I should offer my services as usual, and employ my superior intellect to solve the case!” He clenched his rugged jaw and brooded.

  Dr Watson licked his lips. “I hope you don’t mind me pointing this out but you’re holding it upside down again.”

  “Bah!” The man called Holmes tore the newspaper in half with barely a twitch of his mighty biceps, then he stood and bellowed, “Something is afoot whether you like it or not. And here’s the evidence!” And he hurled a severed bloody foot on to the carpet.

  “I see,” meekly answered Dr Watson. He spooned three sugars into his teacup and stirred the sickly-sweet beverage for several minutes. Then he asked, “Where did you get this one from?”

  “Some vile dog that was busy inserting square pieces of paper through the horizontal slit in the front door not long after dawn. I was outraged by such behaviour and pursued him along the street. He didn’t get far before he was forced to hop the rest of the way.”

  “Ah, the postman.” Dr Watson swallowed a mouthful of tea unhappily and the teacup rattled on the saucer in his hand. He added, “Did you keep the letters? They may have been important.”

  “By no means. I made the fool eat them before I let him go.”

  “But there might have been a tax demand.”

  “Sorcery and magic, I call that!” snarled the barbarian, pacing up and down the room in agitation. His broadsword stood leaning in a corner, so he snatched it up and began practising thrusts and swipes against invisible foes, his reflexes inhumanly fast, his loincloth flapping disagreeably as he danced with astonishing grace on the balls of his bare feet, the muscles of his naked chest rippling in harmony with each other. Dr Watson observed this performance nervously but also in awe.

  There was an abrupt knock on the door. Before he could stop himself, Dr Watson had shouted, “Enter!” as a reflex. The door opened and a man nimbly stepped over the threshold at the exact instant that the barbarian was executing a particularly long thrust. The wide point of the blade went through his breastbone with a crunch. The new arrival opened his mouth soundlessly and his bulging eyes went blank.

  “Oh dear, Holmes! That’s the police commissioner!”

  “Impossible, by Crom! I killed the fellow you refer to last week with a spear when he loomed unwisely out of the fog.”

  “This is his replacement, the new police commissioner. You should try to be more careful. They don’t grow on trees!”

  The barbarian immediately rounded on Dr Watson. “Have you seen a man grow on a tree? It is ancient despicable witchcraft, I warrant, and I’ll have no gentle dealing with the dark arts.”

  “Just a figure of speech, Holmes. Calm down!”

  The sword was withdrawn with a squeak and the body collapsed, thick gore pulsing and watery blood spurting from the large wound. Dr Watson kneeled down by his side and tried to hear the message that the expiring man was gasping, but it wasn’t until he applied his stethoscope to the blue lips that he was able to decipher the words.

  “There has been a theft of jewels . . . Lady Muffintop was burgled last night in her mansion . . . The window was forced and so was her virtue in her own bed . . . Rubies, emeralds and diamonds, precious heirlooms taken by some heartless villain . . . Who could have done such a thing! . . . He also slashed the framed portraits on the walls . . .”

  The black-haired giant laughed and wiped his massive sword clean on the dying man’s trouser leg. “It was me, by Crom! She was a fine wench and with the talons of a hawk! My back is raked free of all the itches that your cursed ‘soap’ gave it. And when I had finished with her, she begged me to ravish her again! As for the gems, they belong to any man with the heart to take them. That is the true law.”

  “Oh, Holmes! You should try a little restraint . . .”

  The icy blue eyes flashed in quick anger. “Bah! I spit on the values of your so-called ‘civilization’. What do your decadent and perfumed virtues mean to me or to any Cimmerian? The ‘barbarian’ was alive aeons before the urbanite and will persist aeons after.”

  Dr Watson nodded resignedly. “You may be right.”

  “Ha! By Crom, you are a sly fox, changing your mind whenever it best suits you, and you lack merely the hook nose and curled blue-bl
ack beard to be a Shemitish counterfeiter! Truly you would have thrived in my own world in one of the decadent eastern cities.”

  “But, Holmes, we’ve talked about this before. Until we discover just how you got here, this is your world now—”

  But the barbarian was daydreaming, his mouth curling in a vast grin of lustful nostalgic delight. “Those eastern cities with their eastern women! Wide hips and generous bosoms. Ah, the wenches of Zamora, of Khoraja, Zamboula, Khauran, and that nameless city-state where I helped Murilo defeat the pet ape of Nabonidus! The sweetness of their lips crushed into mine, the firm duskiness of their thigh flesh and the rosy freshness of the aureoles surrounding their russet nipples!”

  Dr Watson was embarrassed; his cheeks flushed, he cleared his throat and brushed a few loose grains of sugar off his coat. “That doesn’t sound very appealing to me, I must say; but the morning is halfway gone and we haven’t even started on solving a case yet!”

  The barbarian brooded and he sighed profoundly.

  “In fact,” continued Dr Watson, “we haven’t solved a case since ‘The Adventure of the Neglected Cake Tin’ two weeks ago. That’s a very poor showing. Why the dry patch, Holmes?”

  “I lack inspiration, perhaps that’s why. By Crom, I am bored cooped up in these lodgings like a pig awaiting a butcher’s knife. I should be on a fine steed lashing out with axe and sword, splitting the thick skulls of the warriors of Vanaheim and Asgard! Soft living has befuddled my mind. I need the clean air of the mountains, the scent of blood in my nostrils, the glitter of frost on the bones of my enemies.”

  Dr Watson said cautiously, “Well, Holmes, perhaps you should try the cocaine? It’s about this time of day when you habitually take a dose. I’m sure it will give you the required inspiration.”

  “Bah! That effete white powder! I saw the effects of the pollen of the grey lotus on the minds of men, turning them into cannibals gnawing the flesh off each other in demented fury, when I was but a young thief. I’ll have nothing to do with any powdered drugs. I’ll stick to honest ale like a trueborn Cimmerian! Which reminds me that I do indeed have a gigantic thirst! Let us hasten to the tavern, Watson!”