Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

It would have broken my heart if she’d woken up like that for anybody else.

  Moser and I stepped away and I explained that the abusive boyfriend was now in custody, that Elaine and Nicole could go safely to the duplex where they’d been living or stay with a friend across the street.

  “That’s just as well,” Moser said, “because I couldn’t allow them to stay on here.”

  I thought he meant because of the lack of whole beds, but that wasn’t it.

  “The guy who owns this place,” Moser said, “what’s his name?”

  “Wolfgang. I’m not sure what his full name is.” By now he might have changed it again, to that of someone else whose precociousness he suspected of identifying a fellow extraterrestrial.

  “Well, I’ve checked the address and he doesn’t have any of the permits he needs to run a refuge, especially one with children.”

  “I don’t think Wolfgang intended this place to become anything formal. He just took in people who asked him for help.”

  “Well, he’ll have to learn to say no,” Moser said, “unless he goes through the authorization procedure. But even if he gets personal clearance, his chances of being approved for one big open-plan room . . .”

  “He means well,” I said. “I can’t say more than that.”

  Moser gave me a card. “Have him get in touch with me if he wants to talk about his options.”

  I took the card.

  But my lack of enthusiasm for bureaucracy’s facility for stifling generosity must have shown, because Moser said, “I’m not one of the bad guys, Mr Samson.”

  “I worked that out before,” I said.

  “It’s just the way things are.”

  14

  I didn’t return to the hospital until the morning. The heavy rain had stopped at last. Impenetrably grey skies were dropping no more than a drizzle.

  Sam met me there, curious to see the guy who was at the centre of the action. And I was pleased to see that Nurse Matty was on duty again. Or was it still? “Don’t you ever get time off?” I asked her.

  “I volunteered for a double,” she said, “which tells you something about my private life.”

  “It tells me you’re a wonderful, caring person who’s probably stockpiling her money in order to open a charitable foundation.”

  “Me and Bill Gates.” She eyed Sam up. “So, who’s your friend? Or is this a non-friend too?”

  “She is, indeed, a friend. As well as being my daughter.”

  “The cop?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she’s your daughter?” Matty tilted her head. “Her mother must be very, very beautiful.”

  I declined to respond. “How’s the patient?” I asked.

  “He’s making me a little uncomfortable, to tell the truth.”

  “Because of his endless demands for attention and enhanced comforts?”

  “Cut up like he is, he should be restless and trying to get more pain relief out of us. But instead he just lies there.”

  “And that’s a problem for you?”

  “He watches everyone come and go, and then he smiles a little smile whenever someone takes his blood pressure or fluffs up his pillows.”

  “And says thank you, I bet.”

  “Every time. It’s creeping me out. I’ll be glad when we get a normal patient back in that bed.”

  “Matty, have you had a personal chat with him?”

  “Personal? Is that man-code for something I don’t understand?”

  “Asked him about himself, his family?”

  “No.” She peered at me. “Why?”

  “Well, don’t, if what you like is normal.”

  “Okay, now you’re creeping me out too.” She shook her head. “You know where he is.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she said to Sam and went about her business.

  I led Sam to my non-friend.

  Wolfgang was not asleep. He gave us a little smile when we came in. “Albert,” he said. “And a stranger.” He peered at Sam. “Are you two related? Daughter?”

  “Thanks for acknowledging my genes,” I said. “This is Sam.”

  “How do you do, Sam?”

  “Nice to meet you, Mr . . . Mozart?”

  “Just call me Wolfgang.” He turned to me. “I thought you told me your daughter is a police officer.”

  “She is.”

  He stared at her. “Okay, I can see it now. But there’s something . . . more. You’re an unusual person, Ms Samson.”

  “Is that unusual-good or just unusual-different?” Sam asked.

  “Good. Definitely good. You will do things in your life.”

  “No need to butter her up. She’s not here to arrest you,” I said.

  “We’ll see how it goes,” Sam said. “No promises.”

  I said, “They’re complaining about you out there. They say you should be trying to get more morphine out of them.”

  “It’s only pain,” Wolfgang said.

  “There have been developments since I was here yesterday.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “Probably not, but there will be consequences for you.” I sat beside Sam to tell the story of the previous evening. As it went on, Wolfgang looked increasingly weary. Weary and unbelieving.

  “Elaine is responsible for what happened?”

  “I don’t know how the law will interpret it, but hers was the big bang from which the rest of yesterday’s universe followed.”

  “But why? I took her in. I fed her. Her and her child.”

  “It was about her, Wolfgang, not you.”

  He absorbed this. “Okay. I can see that. I’m thinking narrowly.”

  “She was desperate to get rid of her boyfriend. She never intended for anyone to get hurt. And, like yourself, she hasn’t had a good experience with the police.”

  He glanced at Sam, who said, “So she went to her best friend. She got the friend to ask Harvey, the boyfriend, what it would take to get him to leave Elaine alone once and for all. Harvey said money.”

  Wolfgang shook his head slowly, sad about the way human nature plays out. Maybe he was wishing his dad had taken him along to Planet Other.

  “So Elaine and the friend hatched up a plan,” I said. “The friend told Harvey that you keep a lot of money around the house. Elaine thought he’d go to your place alone and that between you and the women there you’d subdue him and he’d be arrested.”

  I paused while Wolfgang revisited what had happened in his house the previous day. “When I saw the four masked men,” he said, “I shouted for all the women to get out. Everyone ran out the back door.”

  Except for Nicole. I said, “Maybe Harvey smelled some kind of rat when Elaine’s friend became cooperative. But for whatever reason he recruited some friends of his own for the visit to your house. Friends willing to rough you up for some easy money.”

  “All wearing those terrorists’ masks.” Wolfgang shook his head, looking wearier and wearier.

  Sam said, “We have Harvey in custody, Mr Mozart. I hear that he gave up the rest of the ‘terrorists’ in about five seconds.”

  “They’re sad, silly men,” Wolfgang said. “I’ve been thinking about how they acted when they had me in their car. They were childish and squabbly. And if they needed money so badly, they should just have asked. I’d have given them some.”

  “That’s not how things are expected to work on Planet Earth,” I said. “And chances are it was greed rather than need anyway. For which they’ll all go down, for assault with deadly weapons.”

  “I won’t press charges.”

  “What?”

  “I won’t testify against them. I should have talked more with Elaine. I should have learned more about her problems. I should have worked out some way to help her. I could have talked with this Harvey.”

  “Had him hold your stone and let it make him see the light?”

  “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  “I’d say you are o
therworldly, but you’d just agree with me,” I said.

  Sam said, “Your refusal to testify won’t keep them from being charged, Mr Mozart. They’ll testify against each other. The medical records here will establish the injuries. They’ll plead out. And they will go to jail. They’re dangerous and they need to be prevented from hurting more innocent people.”

  I said, “Why wouldn’t you help punish idiots who are willing to stab people to get a few bucks?”

  “Because jail is not the answer. We have a higher percentage of our population in jail than any other country in the world and things like this still happen.”

  “You could ask the judge to give them twenty-five years of community service.”

  Wolfgang sat up in his bed. “I want to talk to them.” He looked at me but then settled on Sam. “Can you make that happen, Officer Samson? I need to talk to them. All of them.”

  15

  Sam and I stood in the parking lot before we went our separate ways. “Weird guy, your friend Wolfgang,” she said.

  “He’s not my friend.”

  “Why does he want to talk to Harvey and the other idiots?”

  “I think he believes he can spread peace on earth, one peace at a time.”

  “Is he a megalomaniac?”

  “He’s got this piece of limestone that he thinks has his extraterrestrial father’s handprint on it. Wolfgang believes that people who touch the stone feel better. Maybe even become better people.”

  “If they do let him talk to Harvey,” Sam said, “they won’t let him take a lump of stone into the interview room. They’d be afraid your Wolfgang would just whack him on the head with it.”

  “That’d make us feel better, in his place,” I said. “But then again you and I are not extraterrestrials.”

  “I suppose I should be thankful that you’re human, no matter what Mom says.”

  “She was never that beautiful,” I said. “It was her brains I went for. But then they ran out.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Wolfgang that he can’t run his house as a refuge anymore?”

  “Maybe he’ll pass his handprint around Children’s Services and they’ll sign him up and everyone will live happily ever after.”

  “You think?”

  “With him I don’t know what to think,” I said. “Will Elaine face charges?”

  “She and Laurie didn’t tell Harvey ‘Go stab’, but they provided information knowing it was likely to result in a felony crime. Most judges won’t like that much, especially in an election year.”

  “Maybe Wolfgang will want to fund a high-priced lawyer for her.”

  “Has he got a lot of money?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Will you go back in there now and tell him that Elaine might be in trouble?”

  “Do you think I should?” I said.

  “Maybe for Nicole,” Sam said.

  “Yeah, all right. Good kid, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like you,” I said. And she didn’t even smack me for calling her a kid.

  God’s Lonely Man

  Peter Guttridge

  The wind rocked the car and spray broke across the traffic-lanes and misted the seaward window. Falcon kept the black limousine in view through the swish of his own wipers. He glanced at the ruined West Pier, buffeted by the unusually high sea. He wondered if this was the day it finally sank beneath the waves.

  The limousine pulled off the promenade on to the narrow drive in front of the Grand Hotel. The doorman hurried to open the rear door with one hand, unfurling with a sweep of his arm the umbrella in his other. Falcon’s target took a moment to exit the car then climbed the steps into the hotel.

  Falcon picked up the book from the passenger seat and climbed from his car, his stiff left leg caught up in his clothing. He cursed as spray spumed over the promenade railing and slapped him in the face. He hated Brighton.

  Wiping the stinging saltwater from his eyes, he hobbled across the road, anger rising as he saw the doorman give him a look that mixed amusement, contempt and pity.

  “Don’t I get your umbrella?” Falcon snapped as he drew level.

  “Bit late for that,” the doorman said, gesturing to Falcon’s wet hair plastered to his head.

  Falcon fought down the urge to drive his fist into this man’s stupid, smirking face.

  “What room?”

  “Four thirty,” the doorman said, the smirk replaced by fear as he saw something in Falcon’s eyes. “His driver is parking.”

  Falcon hauled his leg up the steps, limped across the extravagant foyer and stood aside as the lift doors opened, disgorging a boisterous trio of women. They walked to the bar, arms casually draped about each other’s shoulders, glancing back at him and giggling.

  Falcon had never known that kind of camaraderie with men and certainly not with women. He’d never known intimacy with a woman except as a transaction. Instead of love he’d only known loss.

  He entered the lift, praying for the doors to close before anyone else joined him. As they were closing, a long-fingered hand thrust between them. Falcon’s face contorted for a moment. He had expected God to abandon him, given his line of work. What he hadn’t expected was that God would keep spitting in his face.

  A petite blonde wearing a slash of red lipstick, a short skirt and an apologetic smile stepped into the lift. She looked Falcon up and down. Falcon looked straight ahead. The woman stood too close, her perfume engulfing him. Falcon watched her reflection in the polished brass, his emotions shifting between longing and loathing.

  The lift stopped at four. He brushed past her the moment the doors opened and set off down the corridor. The corridor was thickly carpeted, but at 422 he realized there were soft footfalls behind him. He paused, fiddling with the book in his hand.

  Her perfume preceding her, the woman walked past him, hips swaying. When she’d gone a few yards ahead he followed more slowly. He passed 424, 426. She continued along the corridor.

  He stopped at 430. The woman had slowed, looking at a piece of paper in her hand. Falcon hesitated, his fist half-raised to knock on the door. She came back down the corridor and stopped beside him. She laughed throatily.

  “This should be interesting,” she said as she reached over to rap on the door. She pointed at the Bible in his hand then touched her breasts. “Which do you think he’s going to go for, Father – The Good Book or the Bad Girl?”

  Falcon gave her a tight smile and stepped to one side, his cassock swishing against his legs. He gestured for her to move directly in front of the fish-eye glass set in the door.

  “I’m s-sure he’d rather s-see you than me,” he said.

  He heard the chain being removed on the inside of the door. The woman glanced at him then moistened her lips.

  Falcon took the gun from the Bible’s hollowed-out pages and let the book fall to the floor. He barged the opening door with his shoulder and shot the man through the right eye.

  The man slumped to the floor as Falcon turned the gun on the woman. She was terrified, he could see, but she didn’t make any sound. She held his eye as she reached for the door and pulled it shut.

  He should kill her. He gestured to the lift as he stooped to pick up the Bible. She walked ahead of him. She watched him as he pressed the button. He examined her face. Longing or loathing. Love or loss. He had four floors to decide.

  The Day of the Dead

  Mary Hoffman

  Just because he was wealthy, obnoxious and had a much younger wife, everyone assumed he was American.

  That was what he wanted people to think. He had been born Dick Sams in the Peabody Buildings Estate in Clapham Junction, London. But once he moved to the States he soon realized that it was a liability to be known as “Dick”, in spite of Cheney, Nixon and Van Dyke – or maybe because of them.

  The USA was just a distant dream when Dick Sams married his first wife, Barbara, as they both turned nineteen. He hadn’t done much at school, left as soon as he
could without any qualifications and got a job in a mate’s garage.

  But Dick’s real life happened in the evenings, when he roadied for a band at the local town hall. “Roadied” was a misleading term, since they never went on tour, but they still needed someone to shift amplifiers and other heavy equipment and Dick was strong and wiry, though not brawny.

  It was at the local town hall that he got his big break, meeting Tony Calloway, who was the band’s manager. Tony liked the way Dick worked, tirelessly and without moaning, so enlisted him to help with another band, one that really was going somewhere.

  It was a long, hard road and he and Barbara had two kids by the time he got there, but Dick, by sheer force of desperation to get out of the shabby life in rented accommodation he foresaw before them, made a new career in the recording industry. He watched and learned the whole time, hungry for information the way he had never been at school.

  He asked questions, met the right people, learned how every piece of equipment in the recording studio worked, and worked long hours for the overtime.

  But there was a cost. His children scarcely knew him and Barbara complained she never saw him.

  It was so unfair.

  “I’ve been working my balls off to make life better for us,” he said. “To buy us somewhere to live, to give you and the boys everything you want. Can’t do that if I spend my evenings watching telly with you, can I?”

  He wanted to take her to America with him when the offer of a job in a New York studio came up. They left the boys with Dick’s mother and went for three weeks.

  After that, Barbara came home and started divorce proceedings, having discovered that when she did spend time with her husband, she found she didn’t like him much. And she hated America.

  Dick was the opposite; he loved every bit of it, especially the big bucks he made at his job. He changed his first name to “Rich” and his surname to Samson. Rich Samson soon owned the studio he worked for, having persuaded a beautiful young black woman to let him manage her singing career, which went global.

  That was wife number two.

  It was wife number three who was with him in Mexico. Rich’s power cruiser, named the Peabody to remind him how far he had come, was moored in the marina at Bendita Cruz.