Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  And before the other man could raise an objection, the barbarian was out of the door, down the stairs and in the street, oblivious to the chaos his presence was having on pedestrians and traffic. Dr Watson hurried to catch up. Along numerous sidestreets they went until they reached a pub in one of the seediest quarters of the city.

  Striding inside, the barbarian cried out to the landlord, “Ale, by Crom! The darkest and strongest brew in the house!”

  “A glass of grapefruit juice for me, please,” added Dr Watson.

  The landlord pulled a pint of frothy stout.

  “Bah! That’s a glass for a child!” roared the barbarian. “Give me a real drinking horn fit for a warrior!” (“They don’t do drinking horns around here,” hissed Dr Watson ineffectually.) “I spit on this transparent thimble of weasel milk!” But he drained the pint in a single gulp and leaned over the counter. “There! That flask will suffice!”

  “It’s the cleaner’s bucket, sir,” retorted the landlord.

  The edge of the broadsword came down hard on the wooden counter, embedding itself half a yard deep, and it was withdrawn with a wrenching noise so horrible that everyone present covered their ears with their hands while the landlord hastily removed the mop and filled the wooden bucket to the brim with Guinness. The barbarian took the bucket, threw back his head and inverted it over his gaping mouth.

  Dr Watson wore an apologetic expression as he watched the throat of the drinker throb, though much of the brew spilled down his scarred chin and over the rippling muscles of his chest. At last he held aloft the empty bucket and cast it aside heedlessly, belching an astoundingly loud belch, wiping flecked lips with the back of a hand.

  “By Crom, now I need a piss!”

  And without any shame whatsoever, he lifted his loincloth, relieved himself where he stood and grinned. The arc of yellow rose high, came down on the brass foot-rail of the bar, splashed over the trousers of Dr Watson, who moved a few steps to the side, while the barbarian loosed another barrage of belches in mid flow.

  “That’s better! Now I feel ready to tackle a case!”

  There was utter silence in the pub.

  A man in the corner came forward through the gloom. “You are the famous Sherlock Holmes? You don’t look the way I imagined, but that doesn’t matter. Perhaps you can help me? Shall I tell you a little about myself and the trouble I am experiencing?”

  Dr Watson interrupted at this point. “No need. Holmes can work out those things for himself. It’s his speciality.” And he nudged the barbarian in a meaningful way, but the barbarian only blinked, scratched his mane of black hair and clenched his huge fists.

  “Go on, Holmes,” Dr Watson urged. “Remember what I told you, how I showed you to make logical deductions?”

  “Yes, yes!” growled the barbarian, studying the newcomer with a gaze so blue and piercing it seemed more like the twin prongs of a bident made of an amalgam of steel and lightning (“I’ve heard of a trident, but never a bident!” complained the landlord to Dr Watson, who shushed him) than a look that one man might bestow on another.

  “Well then, what do you deduce?” urged Dr Watson.

  The barbarian struggled to speak. “There is a bulge in the fellow’s hat, which means he is concealing something there, perhaps a barometer, and this suggests he has red hair and a fondness for dog biscuits, or maybe he is contributing to an encyclopaedia of snakes that . . .” An enormous frown runnelled the barbarian’s brow. “No, start again. There is a blister on the third toe of his left hand, or the fourth finger of his right foot, which can only mean that his sister’s brother’s wife’s parrot is a . . .” He ground his teeth together in agitation. “Let’s see. The stain on his trousers logically suggests that his bank manager desires . . .”

  The effort was too much. With a demented howl that would have sent all the wolves of London baying in savage harmony, had there been any in the city at this time, the barbarian snatched up his sword again, swung a mighty blow at the newcomer and lopped his head clean off. The head jumped over the bar, landed with a sound like half a coconut, rolled along the floor and somehow got under the feet of the landlord, who tripped and fell and banged his own head on a cask.

  Blood flowed into the sawdust. The barbarian could not ignore the call of its aroma and patterns. He went wild, swinging his sword in a blur of death, cutting off the heads of every customer present in the pub. Only Dr Watson was spared as usual. Then the berserker fit left him and he ceased mowing down the regulars. None was left.

  “You didn’t handle that as well as you might have done,” ventured Dr Watson meekly, “but no matter: you tried your best and that’s all anyone can ever do really. Next time you might get the hang of it; but I suggest we leave this establishment now and go elsewhere. Perhaps we ought to lie low in the park for a couple of hours?”

  The barbarian said nothing in reply, gave no indication he had heard the words, but allowed himself to be led out of the pub and along various streets to the gates of a spacious area of greenery, where couples strolled arm in arm and ducks circled on a lake.

  They sat on a bench and Dr Watson said, “Have you given up on the deerstalker and pipe, Holmes? You really should try to get used to them if you want to fit into your adopted role.”

  The barbarian thrust his sword into the soft earth between his gaping legs and let it stand there, vibrating with a curious enigmatic note. “What use is that cloth helmet against the arrows of Hyrkania or the spears of Stygia? As for a pipe: I care not to fill my lungs with noxious fumes, for they are already clogged with smogs. By Crom, the air of this city stinks like the breath of a Kushite toad god!”

  “But they are necessary props for your present role.”

  “I’d sooner disembowel you than perch that thing on my head.” The nostrils of the barbarian flared. Then something caught his eye, a child sailing a model boat on the lake, and his dangerous mood was gone in an instant. He leaped up and gestured.

  “What’s the matter?” Dr Watson murmured.

  “A ship! A ship with sails!” came the excited answer. “I recall when I sailed for Bêlit, queen of the black coast, a pirate with the compassion of a panther! We prowled and slayed for many moons and sank innumerable merchant vessels and burned scores of villages. Bêlit was voluptuous but lithe, slender yet formed like a goddess!”

  Dr Watson said meekly, “Was she the woman?”

  The barbarian turned and glowered. “What do you mean by that? Yes, she was a woman. Do you think she might have been a man in disguise? I say no! Despite her thirst for the blood of weaklings and a hunger for the property of chiefs and kings, she was a lady, but a filthy whore in bed all the same! Wenches by the hundreds I have known, and she-devils by the dozen, but Bêlit most assuredly had ivory globes in the top twenty breasts ever witnessed by these eyes, which have roved over the chests of fairest womanhood from Aquilonia to Khitai!”

  Dr Watson kept his mouth shut and watched the boy and the boat. He was taken by surprise when his companion suddenly ran and jumped into the lake, landing among the startled ducks and creating a huge wave that sank the model and washed over the boy, who scarpered off howling. Dr Watson watched the display with dismay.

  “Control yourself, Holmes, for the sake of decency!”

  “Bah! I am no pampered catamite to live according to the rules of any master. I make my own destiny. It does a true man good to have a bath on occasion. You should try it yourself, Watson. But we are wasting time! It seems to me that we must find a new case.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” sighed Dr Watson.

  The barbarian splashed to the shore and stood there, gleaming dully in the weak sun, his eyes like blazing sapphires.

  “Over here, my dear Watson. I spy villainy in progress.”

  “It’s an ice-cream stall, Holmes.”

  “A man who can make ice scream? A wizard or enchanter! In the dim fastness of remote Hyperborea I met such vermin and extinguished their lives with honest cold steel. Like t
his!”

  “Restrain yourself, Holmes. The man is innocent.”

  But the barbarian had already dragged the vendor out of his booth and was stamping on his head with his iron-nailed boots, while casual strollers took a detour around the spreading circle of crimson. Then the barbarian knelt and sawed at the man’s neck with a serrated knife until his mangled head rolled free. He stood triumphantly and Watson led him away while the severed head rolled hollowly across the path, over the grass verge and on to a lawn where some youths were kicking a football about. Somehow the head got mixed up with their sport and was kicked into an improvised goalmouth with a splat. Nobody cheered.

  “That was gratuitous, Holmes. You’re not playing the game properly. I am starting to think you don’t really want this opportunity at all, that you regard it only as a nuisance. I suggest we forget about solving new cases today and go and visit Arthur instead.”

  “Bah! He asks too many questions. I dislike him.”

  “This is how we make our living.” Dr Watson lowered his voice. “We tell him what we’ve been up to, he writes it down, publishes it as a brand-new tale and shares the payment with us.”

  “I would prefer to live on plunder and booty!”

  “Yes, well I’m not so adept at such things as you. I rely on cash from Arthur to pay the bills. Come on, let’s go and see him and tell him about that very peculiar case we solved last month. I’ve given it a title, ‘Twenty Thousand Red-Headed Leagues Under the Sea’, but I’m sure he’ll change it. He always does. This way, Holmes . . .”

  “He doesn’t seem to trust me. One day I shall be compelled to send his flabby soul to whatever hell he believes in.”

  Dr Watson sighed. “Of course he trusts you. It’s just that you haven’t been an especially profitable substitute for the real Sherlock. Try to see it from his point of view. And remember that his middle name is the same as your own. So you are kindred spirits.”

  Defeated by this logic, the barbarian allowed himself to be led to the house of Arthur, who received them politely and eagerly. Dr Watson told the story of the case mentioned above, hugely embellished, while Arthur made notes. The barbarian endured all this with barely tamed impatience, his eyes roaming the room, looking for possible plunder. One dark night it might be worth breaking in here and—

  Something caught his attention, a flickering shape in the corner. Like a large moth it fluttered among the shadows between the grandfather clock and a cabinet. The barbarian peered more intently. It was a tiny woman with wings! Drawing a poniard from his belt, he estimated the range and angle and with a snap of the tendons of his forearm, as fast as the crack of a whip, hurled the blade through the air.

  It struck the creature and pinned it to the wall.

  “My fairy!” shrieked Arthur, jumping up and running to the scene of the slaying. He was unable to draw out the poniard and clenched his fists in anguish. “You killed her! My only concrete proof of the afterlife! Why did you do such a thing? Why, you brute?”

  “I am a Cimmerian. I was born on a field of battle. The screams of the dying are sweet music to my ears. Slaughter and rapine are the best things in life. That is why,” the barbarian replied.

  Arthur slumped and his eyes shone with tears. “Why did you come to our world? Why did you have to take the place of the real Sherlock? It’s so unfair. What happened to him? Did he end up in your own world? Did you swap places thanks to some cosmic mix-up no better than a bad joke? I want him back, I want the real one back . . .”

  The barbarian shrugged. “I have already told you what happened. One moment I was in the forest of the Pictish Wilderness, attempting to outrun the band of painted warriors who were pursuing me, seeking a vantage to make a stand and sell my life dearly to them, when I burst into a clearing in the centre of which stood a stone circle.”

  “A temple of the people who were chasing you?” Arthur was intrigued despite his grief. The barbarian shook his head.

  “It was very ancient and no work of the Picts. Perhaps it was as old as Atlantis or older. To reach the far side of the clearing I had to run through the circle. As I passed the outer ring, the air shimmered, everything went black and a moment later I found myself standing in a room of that cursed Baker Street lodgings with no way back. I was furious and yet too dazed at first to respond as I should have, by slicing with my sword through the neck of the man who occupied the room.”

  “I was even more dazed than you were,” said Dr Watson.

  The barbarian ignored him and continued: “By what agency I know not, we became friends and he persuaded me to play the role of this ‘Sherlock’, who had been standing in the spot that I arrived at. But I now believe I made a mistake. I should have killed him and taken my chances alone in your world.”

  Arthur rubbed his nose and mused aloud: “And the real Sherlock, I wonder if he succeeded in your world? With his immense intellect and mastery of logic I have no doubt that he quickly dominated the primitive locals and became the ruler of his own kingdom, perhaps the mightiest king ever to reign.”

  “Unfortunately we’ll never know,” said Dr Watson.

  The man in the deerstalker hat stumbled on the rough grass, regained his balance and puffed on his pipe. “I appear to be standing inside a stone circle of unique design. What’s this?”

  The first painted warrior dashed into the clearing.

  “Ah, a naked savage covered in woad. From the gore that is crusted on his tomahawk I deduce that it has been employed in splitting numerous skulls in recent days. The blood is pale and anaemic, which means that it belonged to persons who had been deprived of adequate nourishment for many weeks. Doubtless his captives.

  “But why keep them as starved prisoners before killing them? There must be a ritualized element to their deaths, perhaps a religious sacrifice to a pagan god. There is a vomit stain on his knee, which suggests that something he ate at a feast disagreed with him. The presence of human hair in the vomit indicates cannibalism.”

  More warriors entered the glade and stopped to eye with implacable hatred the man in the stone circle, who had touched his fingertips together and was blithely continuing to cogitate.

  “One of the hairs has a sheen that suggests it has been lavished with expensive lotions and therefore belongs to a rich merchant. Clearly this is not a mercantile land, so he must have travelled from afar. The scent of this lotion is reminiscent of a certain spice that comes from the southern part of the subcontinent. One moment.”

  Removing a magnifying glass from his pocket, he stooped to examine the hair in greater detail. “Ah yes, the merchant was a fat man with a limp in his left leg. He had a wife who was conducting an affair with the seller of melons in the market. His favourite colour was mauve. On the fifth day following his fifty-eighth birthday he—”

  With a bellow of primal bloodlust, the first painted warrior unleashed himself on the speaker, splitting the deerstalker in half with the tomahawk and rending the cranium beneath in twain. The superlatively clever brains of Sherlock Holmes flopped on to the floor like dough from a cake-tin that a baker had neglected to put in the oven.

  With a chorus of howls, the other warriors approached and danced on the grey mess, spreading it with their bare feet over the glade like mind jam, thinning forever the abnormal cerebral powers of the famous sleuth. Then they went home in savage single file.

  Here, There and Everywhere

  Edward Marston

  Steve Long was like a lot of young men – alert, willing, well-educated, conscientious and chronically unemployed. When he graduated in Modern History from Manchester University, he’d assumed that he could walk into almost any profession that he chose. But the jobs market seemed to shrink by the day and he found himself taking on all sorts of temporary employment just to keep his head above water. He sold plastic flowers, delivered pizzas, worked in a biscuit factory, stacked shelves all night at a supermarket, had stints as a bartender, spent a dispiriting month in the kitchens of a hotel and, worst of all, acted
as a dogsbody for a major political party and lost any belief in the essential goodness of human beings.

  The one job he actually relished was with an organization that provided security for public events. There was always something going on in London at the weekends, whether it was supervising a big sporting occasion or manning the barricades at the Chelsea Flower Show. Tall, well-built and supremely fit, Steve thrived on action and was equally at home breaking up fights at a football match, helping to protect some showbiz icon or throwing out gatecrashers at an arts ball. It was varied work that allowed him to attend events he could never afford to go to as a member of the paying public. And since he was prepared to work outside London, he got more and more calls from the security firm.

  “Ever heard of Westonbirt?”

  “Isn’t that where the National Arboretum is?”

  “Got it in one,” said the voice at the end of the line. “How are you fixed for next Saturday?”

  “I’m free and available,” replied Steve, mentally cancelling a visit home to see his parents. “What’s the deal?”

  “Get yourself to Westonbirt by 4 p.m. for acclimatization.”

  “Why?”

  “You need to get the lie of the land. You’ll be acting as a steward at an event organized by the Forestry Commission Live Music. They get big numbers at these things so you’ll be very busy.”

  “Who’s performing there?”

  “Status Quo!”

  “Jesus!” exclaimed Steve. “Are they still alive? I mean, my father still talks about going to concerts to hear the Quo.”

  “There’ll be lots of people just like him in the audience. The band has a strong nostalgia appeal. Do you know how to get to Westonbirt?”

  “I will do by Saturday. Who do I report to?”