Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “What do you call yourself?” he stammered.

  “Danielle.” The waiter’s voice was an octave lighter, almost girlish.

  “And they make you wear that get-up, do they?” Frank tried not to imagine his mates’ faces, if they could see him now.

  “Sure. It’s a drag club. Boys become girls, that’s the deal.” Danielle pointed across the street. “And there’s the main event.”

  Frank twisted round in his chair. A carnival was passing the hotel, bystanders gathering to watch. A dozen showgirls were decked out in peacock feathers, sequins glinting under the streetlights. One of them looked like a supermodel, her skirt slashed to the hip, balancing on stilt-like heels.

  “And they’re all . . .”

  “Men,” Danielle confirmed. “Of course, sugar. Friday’s cabaret night.”

  She was gazing up at him. No one had paid him that much attention in years. His ex had hung on his every word at the start, but by the end she hardly bothered to meet his eye.

  “Come up to my room.”

  Frank knew he was stupid to trust her, but he was running out of options. Even the town’s architecture had started to look temporary; pastel houses so thin-skinned it looked like they were made of tissue paper.

  Danielle led him to a small room and made him sit still, while she applied creams to his face, touching his eyelids and lips with small brushes. Her potions smelled of the gardenia perfume his mother wore when he was a child. The scent made him long to be young again, before all the violence and killing started. Danielle knelt in front of him and studied his face intently.

  “You’ll never be Greta Garbo, but you’ll have to do.”

  She led him to a mirror and Frank stared at himself open-mouthed. A hard-faced blonde gazed back, ten years older than Danielle, her wig an extravagant mass of curls. The glittering shawl draped around his neck disguised the heft of his shoulders.

  “There’s no way I’m going out like that.”

  “What choice do you have?” she whispered. “We’re only going a couple of blocks. You can borrow my friend’s shoes.”

  It was dark when they got outside. Honky-tonk piano spilled from the bars, and crowds milled on every street corner, swapping information about trips on the marlin boats. Maybe it was panic that made everything shine, but the neon signs outside the cafés were a dazzle of red and gold. Frank’s mouth was so dry that his tongue felt like it had been welded to the roof of his mouth. The goon in the Hawaiian shirt would be easy to spot, but others would be lurking under the surface of the crowd. Gradually his confidence began to revive. The mob would be looking for a dark-haired ex-cop with a thuggish scowl, not a transvestite with a Tammy Wynette hairdo. Danielle led him across the intersection, weaving between cars.

  “We’re breaking the law, Mr Policeman.”

  “How come?”

  “Jay walking. They’ll slam us in jail.”

  Frank didn’t reply. He had broken more laws than he could count since he’d touched down in Palm Springs: housebreaking, assault, homicide. He tried not to think about it as he followed her down a narrow path to the docks. There was no one in the marina, the crowds drinking the night away in the centre of town. Dive-boats and dinghies were moored side by side, lobster creels piled on the jetty. The Hawaiian shirt was sitting on the harbour wall, smoking a cigarette. The man’s gaze drifted towards him then darted away again, towards the sea. Frank couldn’t resist tottering over on his high heels.

  “All alone, sugar? A big boy like you?”

  “Fuck off, you freak.” The goon shot him a look of disgust then took another drag from his cigarette.

  He must have inhaled deeply, because when Frank slipped the knife between his ribs, a line of smoke streamed from the wound. The goon tipped backwards, speechless, and Frank eased the gun from his pocket, then piled lobster creels over the lifeless body.

  Danielle was already starting the motor on the fishing boat she’d hired from a friend. When she reached up to kiss him, Frank responded without questioning why. Kissing a man turned out to be much like kissing a woman. Danielle was small and soft-skinned in his arms, her perfume enough to send him giddy. He couldn’t forecast what would happen when they reached Key Largo, but for the time being, he was safe. Anyone gazing across the harbour would see two Florida blondes piloting a boat across a calm sea, under a glitter of off-white stars.

  Red Esperanto

  Paul D. Brazill

  The winter night had draped itself over Warsaw’s Aleja Jana Pawla like a shroud, and a sharp sliver of moon garrotted the death-black sky. I was in the depths of a crawling hangover and feeling more than a little claustrophobic in Tatiana’s cramped, deodorant-soaked apartment.

  I poked my trembling fingers through a crack in the dusty slat blinds and gazed out at the constellation of neon signs that lined the bustling avenue. Sex shops, peep shows, twenty-four-hour bars, booze shops and kebab shops were pretty much the only buildings that I could see, apart from the Westin Hotel, with its vertigo-inducing glass elevator. Looking at it always made my stomach lurch a little.

  I fought back the acrid bile that burned my throat as I watched a black taxi jump a red light and cut across the road, narrowly missing a rattling tram. A police car’s siren wailed and pierced my pounding head like a stiletto. Another cop car joined the chase, quickly overtook the cab, swerved and screeched to a halt in front of it. The taxi driver tried to stop but the taxi skidded back across the icy road, just missing another tram, before eventually stopping on the pavement outside a garishly painted peepshow. A tall blonde dressed only in red high heels and suspenders looked out of its front door, saw the police cars and went back inside, slamming the door behind her.

  A massive, bull-necked man with a bald head and wearing a black leather jacket raced from the taxi towards the front of Tatiana’s apartment block, but before he could get close to the front door, a swarm of policemen swiftly surrounded him and dragged him down on to the snow-smothered ground, attacking him with truncheons before handcuffing him and hurling him into the back of a police van, giving him the occasional kick.

  I turned back toward Tatiana. She handed me a glass of bourbon. The smell made my stomach roll. I took a furtive sip and balked.

  “Not a Maker’s Mark fan?” she said.

  “I prefer Jack Daniels,” I said. “With coke. But, to be honest, I usually only drink whisky when I’m so drunk I shouldn’t be drinking anything at all. When I’ve drunk the pint of no return.”

  Tatiana grinned as I persevered with the drink. After a while, the burning sensation was cleansing. I turned back toward the window. A mob of English football fans wearing only T-shirts was staggering down the street singing a song about three lions.

  Tatiana came up behind me.

  “When the last pope – the Polish one – died, the whole of the street was lined with multicoloured candles, in tribute,” she said, looking almost tearful.

  Her English was perfect but her Ukrainian accent was as dark and as bitter as the Galois that she deeply inhaled. “It was a thing of rare beauty,” she continued, a halo of smoke floating above her.

  She switched off the flickering light and switched on a small lamp with dusty red bulb. My mouth was dry and I felt as if my heart were caged tightly within my chest and ready to burst free. Tatiana finished her drink and carefully placed the glass on the rickety bedside table.

  “Ready?” she said.

  I nodded and she dropped her crimson silk kimono to the floor and stepped over it. Her skin was white as the snow that fell outside her window like confetti. Her stockings and panties were black, her short-cropped hair blonde. She picked up her snakeskin handbag, took out a lipstick and traced her blood red lips.

  I took out my wallet and fished out a handful of notes. I placed them on the bedside table. Unsteadily, I sat down on the edge of the bed. Throbbing with guilt, I could hear the thump of a bass line coming from one of the pubs across the road and for a moment I wished I was there.
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br />   Tatiana dropped to her knees and licked her lips as she crawled toward me. She spread my legs and placed her scarlet painted talons on my hard penis. She dug in her nicotine-stained fingers so deeply that I suppressed a groan. Then she shuffled closer, her head above my crotch. She smiled warmly as she unzipped my fly, took out my erection and kissed my cock before licking it all over.

  Ten minutes later, as she poured me another drink, there was loud banging on the door. I stumbled to my feet, zipped up my black jeans and picked up my black sweater from a rocking chair.

  “Who the hell is . . . ?”

  Tatiana put a finger to her lips.

  “Quiet. It’s only Bronek. Wait,” she whispered.

  “Who?”

  “Oh, he’s just a customer who has problems separating business from pleasure.”

  The banging continued. And then the shouting began. Well, it was more like the cry of a wounded animal. Repeating Tatiana’s name over and over again.

  She shook her head and leaned close to me.

  “Wait until he has gone, eh?”

  She kissed my cheek and poured the last of the bourbon into my glass. She held up a finger and stepped into the bathroom

  Tatiana showered and dressed in a black polo-neck sweater and leather skirt. She cracked open another bottle of bourbon, sat next to me and we slowly drank in silence until, just before midnight, the noise stopped.

  “I think you can go now,” said Tatiana, standing, stretching and yawning.

  “Are you sure? Is it safe?” I said.

  “Yes. He will be at Mass now, and then he’ll return home to his wife and children.”

  I stood up, a little unsteady. Tatiana produced a handful of business cards from her bag and sifted through them.

  “Maybe we can get a taxi together?” she said.

  “Safety in numbers, eh?” I said, and I forced a smile which Tatiana didn’t return.

  “Oh, I think we’re outnumbered where Bronek is concerned,” she said, with the hint of a smile.

  I took the last of my notes from my wallet and stuffed them into the taxi driver’s sweaty paw while Tatiana wiped the white powder from her nose and pulled a Zippo from the pocket of her black PVC raincoat. She lit another French cigarette, dissolving into the darkness as the flame flickered out.

  “We made it in one piece, then,” she said.

  “Just about,” I said. My nerves were shot.

  Before I’d come to Warsaw, I’d heard stories about “The Night Drivers”. Legend had it that they were a group of amphetamine-pumped young men who, each midnight, tied fishing wire around their necks, and the cars’ brakes, and then raced each other from one end of the city to the next.

  So, when I saw the cut marks on the taxi driver’s neck and his red, red eyes, I didn’t exactly have the Colgate ring of confidence.

  I was relieved, then, when, minutes later, we pulled up outside the Palace of Culture and Science, Josef Stalin’s unwanted neoclassical gift to the people of Warsaw, which loomed over the city like a gigantic gargoyle keeping evil at bay. A large red banner was stretched across its entrance advertising an avant-garde jazz concert.

  “So, same again next month, then?” she said.

  “Yes, why not?” I replied, to the fading sound of her high heels click-clicking on the palace’s wet, concrete steps.

  I waited a moment until she was inside and then rushed across the road into Rory’s Irish Pub. I ignored the wrinkled, old cloakroom attendant and headed straight into the putrid smelling toilets to puke.

  “Out with the old, in with the new,” said a familiar, well-spoken, sandblasted voice from the next cubicle.

  I wiped my mouth with toilet paper, flushed and walked up to the basin. As I splashed my face with water, Sean Bradley stumbled out of the cubicle.

  “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at it through the bottom of a rather nice glass of gin and tonic, eh?” he said.

  He swayed as he zipped up his fly, waved to me and walked out the door.

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once described London as being a “great cesspool into which the flotsam and jetsam of life are inevitably drawn”, and the same thing might reasonably be said of the world of TEFL teaching. A Teacher of English as a Foreign Language can usually be described as either flotsam – perhaps a fresh-faced young thing taking a break from university – or jetsam – the middle-aged man with the inevitable drinking problem and enough skeletons in his closet to keep a palaeontologist happy for months.

  And, I’ll make no bones about it, Sean fitted rather snugly into the latter category. I literally stumbled into him the first week I arrived in Warsaw. After that, we seemed to orbit each other more than somewhat. Sean was a permanently drunk, dapper, nicotine-stained example of jetsam, who supplemented his teaching income by chess hustling.

  I walked into the half-empty bar, ordered a beer and shot of vodka to cleanse my palate.

  “Oh, bollocks,” I said, as I realized I had no more folding money left.

  “Can I pay by credit card?” I said.

  “Yes, of course,” said Blanka, the tiny barmaid with the statuesque, purple Mohican haircut. “But there’s a minimum amount you have to spend.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “I’ll run up a tab.”

  And then I headed toward oblivion like rainwater down a storm drain.

  I sat at a checkerboard table with Sean and watched Yankee-Doodle-Andy, a big, dumb-looking American I’d seen shuffling around the expat pub circuit, play pool with Rory, the owner. Rory was a pallid, ghostly, prune-faced old man with all the charm of a pitbull.

  “Evening gents,” I shouted.

  Rory glanced up, irritated.

  “For fuck’s sake,” he grunted, by way of a greeting.

  Like I said, he wasn’t well known for his charm. But, in his favour, he was equally ignorant of the smoking ban that had been introduced in Poland’s bars and restaurants. The air in the bar was as thick as pea soup. Little blue clouds of cigarette smoke hung below the green lamps that dangled from the low ceiling.

  The sound of Van Morrison’s version of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” crept out of crackly speakers as a nicotine-smudged TV screen showed an episode of MacGyver.

  Andy sat at the seat opposite Sean, sipping a Diet Coke and keeping an eye on the door.

  “The thing is, some people absolutely loathe the place,” said Sean, jabbing a yellow finger at a postcard of the Palace of Culture and Science that Andy had been using as a beer-mat. “The locals call it the Russian Wedding Cake, you know? And, indeed, that’s what it looks like: a wedding cake plonked in the middle of the road.”

  “I see what you mean,” said Andy, who quite clearly didn’t.

  The night staggered on. Andy bailed out pretty quickly and then the cloakroom attendant left. Sean and I were soon in our pots, sitting at the end of the bar smoking cigarettes and drinking whisky, watching the ice cubes glimmering and shimmering in the wan light. Blanka had gone home, too, and Rory clearly wasn’t enjoying Sean and I exploiting the Polish tradition that a bar can only close when the last customer has gone. I was about to order another round of drinks when I heard a loud bang that seemed to send seismic tremors through the pub.

  I turned and saw a stunningly beautiful blonde woman burst through the frosted glass door and rush into the bar bringing a trail of snow behind her. Her wet hair hung down like party streamers.

  Even in my drunken stupor, just looking at her was like lightning hitting a plane. She was tall, with long blonde hair and a slash of red lipstick across her full lips. She was wearing a long black raincoat which flapped in the breeze behind her.

  “Ding dong,” I said. “Who’s that?”

  “Oh. That’s C. J. Crazy Jola. Better watch out for her,” said Sean. “She’s eaten more men than Hannibal Lecter.”

  “Looks like a pretty tasty morsel herself,” I said.

  “No, really, she’s trouble. She’s a married woman, for a start,” said
Sean.

  I shrugged.

  “That’s not the greatest of sins.”

  “Yes, but she’s married to Robert Nowak. You do know who he is?”

  I shook my head.

  “He’s a twat, that’s who he is,” said Rory, as he went over to Jola’s table.

  “He’s a mid-level gangster who owns a lot of property in the area. He’s also a second-hand clothes baron,” said Sean.

  “Who and a what?” I said.

  Sean finished the last of his drink and shuffled off the bar stool. He staggered close to me and, even as pissed as I was, he stunk of booze. I recoiled.

  “He’s a mid-level gangster, basically,” said Sean.

  “Yes, you said that.”

  Sean tried to gather his thoughts.

  “He owns a couple of bars. Peepshows. And another one of his business enterprises is to get Poles that live abroad to collect donated clothes that have been left outside charity shops overnight in, say, London or Dublin, and ship them back to Poland to sell in second-hand shops. You can get some damn good stuff, actually,” said Sean, pointing to the Hugo Boss label on his shirt.

  “The only crime is getting caught,” I said, shrugging.

  “Yes, but if a butterfly beats its wings in the forest a one-handed man claps and a tree falls down,” said Sean, and he stumbled off in the direction of the toilets.

  I ignored him and tried to catch Jola’s eye. Rory was placing a drink in front of her. She said something to him and, for the first time since I’d known him, I actually saw him laugh. Though when he turned back to me he had the same grimace he always wore.

  Jola took out her mobile phone and began sending a text message. Fuelled by Scotch courage, I walked over.

  “Would you like another drink?” I said, swaying a little.

  Jola looked up and tried to focus on me, as if she were attempting to take in a magic-eye painting.

  She sipped her drink and shook her head.

  “Well, I would but I really shouldn’t,” she said, with a fake-sounding transatlantic accent. “I should go home and hit the sack. I’ve hit the bottle enough for one night.”