Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  The candlesticks had taken out both of Brett’s eyes.

  As her strength returned, Kelly worked on a tribute. White lilies, white roses, and white gerberas, with green ferns for contrast. When she had finished, she thought it the most beautiful wreath she had ever made.

  Time for her last journey to the village. She took a taxi from her flat, not wanting to brave the motorway. A “For Sale” sign stood outside Meadow View. The car stopped at the gate to the memorial garden, and she asked the driver to wait while she laid the wreath.

  It did not take long for her to find the grave she sought. Not Brett’s, of course. There had been a cremation in London, which she was too unwell to attend. No flowers, by request, but donations to his favourite ethical causes. Everyone agreed, it was as he would have wished.

  Kelly felt a lump come into her throat as she stared down at the small black stone bearing John Fryer’s name.

  In the act of bending to lay the wreath, she halted.

  John Fryer’s wife had been buried with him. An inscription said simply that she had fallen asleep.

  It was her Christian name, and the date of her passing, that caused Kelly to scream.

  Honoria Fryer had died three months before her husband.

  Lost and Found

  Zoë Sharp

  He waits. No hardship there – he’s waited half his life. But now, tonight, finally you provide him with that perfect moment.

  The one he’s been waiting for.

  In the alley, in the dark, just the distant glitter of neon off wet concrete. And he’s so scared he can hardly grip the knife. But anger drives him. Anger closes his shaking fingers around it, flesh on bone.

  He tries not to know what the blade will do.

  But he knows. He’s seen it too many times. He remembers them as only a slur of violence, swirled with a lingering despair.

  And he can’t remember a time before you. A time when he was innocent, trusting. You taught him misery and guilt, and he’s carried both through all seasons since. A burden with no respite.

  Tonight, he hopes for respite.

  Tonight, he hopes finally for peace.

  There should be lights in the alley, but he’s taken care of them. Something else you taught him – not to let anyone see.

  It’s fitting you should die here in the dark, amid the rats and the filth and the garbage. You are what they are – the detritus of life.

  And he is what you made him.

  He hopes you’re proud.

  But right now he just hopes you’re ready. That he’s ready. He’s dreamed of this so often down the years between then and now he feels suddenly unprepared, naked in the dark.

  Shivering, he’s a seven-year-old boy again, with all the majesty fresh ripped out of him, howling as he’s punished for truth, punished for faith.

  Punished for believing, when you told him you would take very special care of him indeed.

  He’s punished himself and those around him ever since. Lived a life stripped to base essentials, where refined means cut with stuff that’s only going to kill you slow.

  Lost.

  And now he’s found you again, and he thinks, if he does this right, he may find himself again, too.

  He hears the footsteps, familiar even loaded by the drag and stagger of the years. He folds his hand tighter around the knife, takes in the sodden air, feels the pulse beat in his fingertips.

  Feels alive.

  It’s a privilege only one of you can share.

  Attuned, he sees your figure sway into the open mouth of the alley, hesitating at the unexpected gloom. A stumble, a smothered curse, but he knows you won’t play it safe. You never have. Going around will take time, and you’re loath to be away from your latest pet project, whoever that might be.

  He wonders if he will be in time to save them – not from what’s been but from what’s to come – even as he steps out of the recess, a wraith in the shadows, the knife unsheathed now and eager for the bite.

  At the last moment you hear his lunge of breath and you begin to turn. Too slow.

  He is on you, fast with the lust of it, strong with the manifestation of his own fear. His hand grasps your forehead, tilting your head back for the sacrifice. Is it instinct that tries to force your chin under, or do you know what’s coming?

  Too slow.

  He can smell soap overlaying sweat and tobacco, the garlic of your last meal. Garlic that failed to keep this vampire at bay.

  The knife, sharp as a butcher’s blade, makes a first pass across your stringy throat. It slips so easily through the skin that for a moment he almost believes you are the demon of his childhood nightmares and to be slain by no mortal hand.

  Then he remembers a laughing boast – that the first cut is for free.

  The second cut, though, is all for himself.

  He goes in deep, hacks blind through muscle, tube, and sinew, glances across bone. The blood that gushes outward now is hot, so hot he can almost hear it sizzle.

  Your legs run out on you. Shock puts you down and sheer disbelief keeps you there. He steps back, hollowed out by the skill, watches your eyes as the realization finally sets in. Your heart still pumps but you are dead, even if you don’t know it yet.

  He expected a fierce joy. He feels only silence.

  He turns his back, not waiting for your feeble struggles to subside, and walks away. At the mouth of the alley he drops the knife into a drain, and walks away.

  The rain starts up again, like it’s been waiting, like it’s been holding its breath.

  The rain cleanses him. His feet take him past the gang tags, the articulation of alienation that forms the melody of his daily life, to the crumbling church. Not the same church, but another very like it. They have all become one to him – a place of undue reverence. A place where he was found and lost, and maybe found again.

  A penance. And now a place of twisted sanctuary.

  Approaching the altar, he makes jerky obeisance, slides into the second row. The wood is polished smooth by long passage of the tired and the hopeful. And the building smells of incense and velvet, wax dripped on silver, and the pages of old books lined with dusty words.

  Still damp from the rain, he finds no warmth here.

  Still restless from the act, he finds no comfort.

  He wonders if he was expecting to.

  You first came upon him sitting alone like this, all those years ago, scuffed and crying, pockets emptied and pride stolen. You comforted him then. He remembers a pathetic gratitude. Salvation.

  The blood rises fast in him. His hands are clasped as if for prayer, the knuckles straining to release a plethora of fury and regret.

  There was no release then. He had nowhere to take it other than the river, was so close to letting go when strangers wrestled him, a child demented, from the railing’s edge. They were shocked at his vehemence, his determination.

  They brought him back to you.

  And you smiled as you told him suicide was the gravest sin. That he would go straight to the depths of hell, where he would be raped by every demon up to Lucifer himself.

  So he chose to live rather than die, although it seemed to him that there was little to choose between one and the other.

  Lying jumbled in the alley, the truth of what’s been done finally descends on you, soft as snow.

  You see the lights of passing cars, buttoned tight, oblivious. Flashes of coloured sound made distant by the glass wall of your dysphonia. Out of reach. Out of touch.

  You are nearly out of time.

  But still you grip the coat-tails of life with the stubborn savagery that is your nature. Logic tells you that you should already be dead, that somehow the blade has missed the vital vessels. You have gotten away with too much to believe you will not get away with this, if you want it badly enough.

  After all, you have survived exposure, excoriation, excommunication, by will and nerve.

  Someone will come.

  A stranger, a Samaritan. So
meone who doesn’t know you well enough to step over your body and move along through.

  If he doesn’t come back to finish you first.

  Only a fatalist would believe this is some random act of violence, but not knowing who scratches at the back of your mind. There are so many likely candidates.

  You are troubled that he did not speak. You expected the bitter spill of self-righteous self-pity. Of blame.

  See what you made me do, old man.

  Killing you without triumph is pointless.

  But the face . . . you don’t remember the face. You are not good with the faces of men, although it’s different with the boys. Unformed and mobile, fresh . . . you have never forgotten one of your boys.

  Your special boys.

  It tore your heart out to have them taken away from you. To be taken away from them. But they underestimated the number, and few came forwards to be counted.

  They called it shame.

  You call it love.

  Maybe that is the reason you are lying here, bleeding out into a rain-drummed puddle smeared with oil, in an alley, in the dark, alone.

  Maybe he loves you too much to see you with anyone else.

  He is on his knees when the cops come for him. They shuffle into the church snapping the rain from their topcoats, muting radio traffic, hats awkward between their fingers. Like they’ve seen too much to believe in the solace of this place. Like they’re embarrassed by their own lack of devotion.

  For a moment panic clenches in him and he teeters on the cusp of relief and outright despair. He should have anticipated this.

  He rises, crosses himself – a reflex of muscle memory – and turns to them with empty hands.

  The cops don’t need to speak. Their faces speak for them. It is not the first time they have come for him like this. Not here. He doesn’t stop long enough to pull on a coat before they hustle him out, through the slanted rain to the black-and-white angled by the kerb, lights still turning lazily.

  The ride is short. The cops exchange muttered words in the front seat. He reads questions in their gaze reflected from glass and mirrors but has nothing to say. This is the place of his choosing, and they cannot understand the choice.

  He stares out through the streaked side window at the passing night, at the tawdry glitz of hidden desperation.

  The rain comes down with relentless fervour. Water begins to pile up in the gutters, flash-flooding debris towards the storm drains. If only sins were as easily swept clean away.

  The car slews to a halt beside two others just outside the crime tape. The lights zigzag in and out of sync with more urgency than the men around them.

  Hope plucks at him.

  The cops step out; one opens his door. They lift the tape to duck inside the perimeter, though there is nobody to keep at bay. Violence is too common here to draw a crowd in this rain.

  A detective intercepts them with a doubtful glance, hunched into the weather. He has a day’s tired stubble above his collar, and a tired suit beneath his overcoat.

  “This him?”

  One of the cops nods. “All yours.”

  “Let’s go.” The detective steps back with a spread arm, an open invitation tinged with mocking – for what he is, for what he represents.

  “Wallet was still in the vic’s hip pocket – how we knew he was one of yours,” the detective says as they walk toward the alley. “But we would have made him sooner or later.”

  The detective waits for a response, for a simple curiosity that’s not forthcoming.

  “I do what needs to be done.”

  The detective shrugs. “Sure you do. For the sinners as much as the saints, huh?”

  “That’s always been the way of it.”

  “Sure.” The detective’s face bulges, bones pressing against his skin as if engorged. “This guy’s a convicted pederast. He fucks boys – kids. The younger the better. And he was a priest when they sent him down. A goddamn priest.”

  “He’ll be judged.”

  They reach the throat of the alley and the detective stops, as if to go farther will leave him open to contamination.

  “Well, I’d say he’s had his earthly judgement.” And if the voice is ice, the eyes are fire. “All that’s left for him is the fucking divine.”

  Adrift in your own circle of confusion, you catch only snatches of words you recognize but can no longer comprehend.

  “. . . amazed he’s lasted this long . . .”

  “. . . nothing more we can do . . .”

  “. . . had it coming . . .”

  And you’re colder than the sea, locked inside a faltering body and a breaking mind, locked into a tumult of regret and the terror of going to meet a vengeful Maker.

  The medics rise, retreat, leaving the clutter of their futile effort strewn around you.

  You want to cry for them not to leave you, not to let you die alone, but you lie muted by the blade, stilled by the approaching darkness. Darker than the alley, darker than the earth. The devil prowls the shadows, waiting without tolerance, watching with lascivious eyes. Soon he will engulf you, rip apart your body even as your last breath decays, and devour a soul already rotten.

  Unless . . .

  “. . . he’s here . . .”

  Your eyes flutter closed.

  Thank God.

  It takes effort to open them again, to see the priest approaching. The medics have moved back a respectful distance, clustering with the detective at the mouth of the alley, superfluous. The priest bends over you.

  You prepare yourself for Penance, Anointing, Viaticum. He’ll hear no spoken confession from your lips, but absolution assuming contrition surely must be granted.

  You prepare yourself for a ritual worn with consoling familiarity. One you carried out often enough, back in a former life.

  But as the priest bends low, you catch sight of his face, and this man’s face you do remember, from behind the blade right the way back to his boyhood.

  He was a special boy, all right.

  Your first temptation on the path of sin.

  And now your last.

  The fear writhes in you, but he touches your forehead with a gentle finger and when he speaks, his voice is gentle too.

  “God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, has reconciled the world to Himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace . . .”

  Impatient, your mind runs on ahead:

  . . . and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

  But the expectation is not fulfilled. The essential words do not follow.

  Your eyes seek his, frantic, pleading. The devil growls at your shoulder, taking shape out of the umbra, exulting as he solidifies. Closer. You feel his talons pluck at your vision, begin to pull the fetid shroud across your eyes. You are sinking.

  Quickly! Finish it!

  The priest bends closer still, his voice a whisper in your closing ear.

  “You found me, and I was lost. Now you are lost, because I found you . . .”

  Eyes Wide Shut

  Col Bury

  Castro caught a red tear, trickling down the flushed cheek, with the muzzle of his Browning 9 mm. “Aw . . . poor O’Shea. We all get our comeuppance eventually, don’t we, Jack?”

  The reply was muffled by a duct-taped mouth, but the panicky eyes and frantic head shakes translated as “guilty” to Castro.

  “That you begging for forgiveness, Jack? Well, you won’t be getting any from me,” Castro spat, his gold incisor accentuating a sneer behind the neatly trimmed goatee. “Fancy agreeing to come for a pint with me. As if I’d tell you anything. I’m no grass, ya fuckin’ sucker. Thought your lot always had your eyes wide open.” Castro took a small bottle from his jacket pocket. “He-he. You’ll know it as Rohypnol, but we call it ‘Roofies’.”

  Jack O’Shea still appeared groggy, but his v
ivid blue eyes widened on seeing the bottle, the head-shaking more frenetic.

  Castro thrust the single-action Browning to O’Shea’s left temple. “I see you’ve pissed ya pants too. Is that the piss of a guilty man?”

  As he shook his head, O’Shea’s eyes gestured desperately at his wallet on the adjacent desk.

  “What? I’ve already taken the hundred quid. It’ll come in handy that, thanks a lot, buddy. The credit crunch even affects us guys you know.”

  O’Shea indicated again, more pointedly this time by using his head.

  “Oh, you want me to look inside?”

  O’Shea nodded.

  Castro used the muzzle of the pistol to open the wallet and studied the photo of O’Shea with his three children. Beaming smiles all round; his two young sons in their Manchester City kits, one with a foot propped up on a football. The older girl had headphones on, her long strawberry blonde hair lit by the sun glistening off the vast lake splitting a backdrop of two mountains.

  “This you trying to convince me then, Jack?”

  He shrugged, blinked exaggeratedly.

  “Well, it’s not working, man. The only thing this has done is give me a fuckin’ semi-on looking at your daughter.”

  O’Shea’s eyes hardened.

  “Tell me, Jack . . . does she take it up the arse?”

  He wriggled on the wooden chair, jerking it briefly off the badly tiled floor, the leg and wrist ligatures binding him and the chair as one.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘Yes’ then, buddy. Or at least she will do when I’ve finished with her.” A throaty laugh revealed the gold tooth.

  Muffled cursing followed, pleading eyes widening again.

  “You really love ’em don’tcha, Jack?”

  His head dipped.

  Castro pointed at the snapshot with the pistol. “Look at you with your daft smile and that twinkle in your eyes. Aw, big daddy Jack O’Shea, the family man, eh? Hey, have you ever considered . . . you know . . . with her?” He pointed the gun at O’Shea’s daughter.

  O’Shea glared at him, fixedly.

  “What?” Castro shrugged, chuckled. “You must’ve considered it, even for a split second. C’mon, man, admit it.”