Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “Why would he care?”

  “I don’t know.” He didn’t know how to explain it. To that man, they probably looked privileged. He fished for a living, standing there on a deserted beach, casting his line into the surf. A simple life. What would he make of the two of them with their petty squabbles, their need to spend money to feel happy? He looked at the fisherman’s lean silhouette, black against the greeny-white chaos of the waves, and felt like weeping.

  “You’ve cracked. Fucking looper.” The anger had gone out of her voice. She turned and started walking back, following the wavering line of footprints they had left. He gave her a couple of minutes before he followed, shoving his hands in his pockets and walking with his head down, pretending to whistle.

  He’d parked where the road ended, a patch of tarmac walled in by dunes on three sides. It was sheltered from the wind and he was conscious of the heat from the sun again as he trudged across the car park, pulling the keys out of his pocket. His face stung – either he had burned or the wind had seared his skin. The car would be roasting when they got in, and Lisa would complain. She had her back to him, standing beside the passenger door, looking at her phone. Her back was hunched, lumpy with emotion. The white trousers had been a mistake, he almost said. Her arse looked twice its usual size. What could she do to him, anyway, if he said it? She’d wanted him to start telling the truth.

  “All right?”

  “No.” She threw the word in his direction without turning around.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “We’ve got a flat again.”

  “Shit.” He crouched down to look, poking at it with a wary thumb. “Shit. We used the spare tyre already.”

  “I told you to get it fixed.”

  He hadn’t thought it was worth it. He’d been planning to tell the car-hire people it was damaged when he got the car. Trying to save money again.

  “Is your phone working?”

  “No reception. You?”

  Not a bar of it. He flung himself at the nearest sand dune, slipping and sliding. He held his phone up, trying to catch a signal – as if it was floating around on the breeze somewhere above his head and he might manage to snag it. There were snakes in the Cape, he recalled, feeling vulnerable. Cobras. Lethal, they were.

  “Nothing.” The dune half-collapsed behind him as he ran back down. “I’ll have to go for help.”

  “Go where? We didn’t pass any villages or houses even. And you can’t leave me here on my own. I could get raped.”

  “You’d be lucky.” Her face went a terrifying shade of purple. “Listen, Lisa, I’m only messing with you. I just mean that there’s no one here, and—”

  “I know what you meant. Go fuck yourself.”

  “You have to laugh, though. I mean, what are the chances? Two flat tyres in one holiday?”

  “I’m not laughing. It’ll get dark soon. And cold.” She folded her arms. “I’m not staying here on my own.”

  “I’ll go and ask that fella. The fisherman. He might be able to give us a lift.”

  “He probably doesn’t even speak English. And he might not have a car.” She looked around. “We’re the only people here.”

  He started off towards the gap in the dunes, ignoring her. He could make himself understood. He had cash on him. That usually worked wonders.

  It took him a second to take it in, squinting against the wind and the low sun. The rocks were empty. The beach was deserted. He ran forward a few paces, trying to catch sight of him, but there was nothing.

  “Fuck.” For the first time he felt afraid. He didn’t know how to survive away from the modern world. For all his shite about wanting the simple life, he needed his phone. He needed a man to come and fix the tyre. He wanted a recovery truck to rescue them, or, failing that, a car with tourists in it like themselves, who’d give them a lift. They could have a laugh about what bad luck he had. He could hear himself now, playing up to it. Ah God, sure I’m a disaster altogether. And Lisa would nod, meaning it.

  She saw his face as he came back towards her. “What?”

  “Not there.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Go and see for yourself. He’s gone home.”

  “How?”

  “Maybe there’s another car park. Maybe he lives nearby but I don’t know where. In a sand dune or something. There’s no houses.”

  “Go and find him.” She was half-sobbing.

  “I can’t.”

  “What’ll we do? We can’t stay here. There’s nothing here. No light, even. No water.”

  “Stop panicking.” He spoke sharply, wanting to shut her up. “I have to think.”

  He opened the boot to look at the other tyre. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. He levered it out and bounced it on the ground experimentally. No. Worse. He let it fall, left it lying there.

  “You could try to drive on it.”

  “I’ll wreck the car.”

  “I don’t care about the car. It doesn’t matter if it wrecks the car.”

  “We’d get stuck, Lisa. That road is all loose sand and gravel.”

  “Then we’d better start walking, because I am not staying here.” Her voice had risen and the edge in it sawed across his nerves. He just wanted her to stop talking. To stop.

  He became aware that he was staring into the boot. At the wheelbrace, specifically. It was heavy, he recalled. Metal. It could do damage, with enough force behind it.

  He ached to swing it. He imagined the impact. The force travelling back up his arm, vibrating away to nothing in his very bones. Her knees, crumpling. Her body folding. Her head turned away from him, so he didn’t have to see her face.

  He could drag her on to the beach. Into the surf. The waves could take her. This was a shipwreck coast. It had killed hundreds of times over. The sea had enough power to explain a cracked skull; she would be in tatters by the time she was discovered. If she was ever discovered.

  She had turned away from him again, muttering to herself.

  He had his hand on the wheelbrace, his fingers curled around the cold metal, when he heard the engine in the distance. His first reaction was disappointment, before relief surged in like the tide. It was a bakkie, a pick-up truck with two men in it, travelling fast. He came out from behind the car waving his arms, conscious of Lisa doing the same. Stop. Don’t drive past us, wherever you’re going. Don’t leave us here. Something terrible might happen.

  The driver braked hard, opened his door and jumped out, all in one quick movement. “What’s up? Got problems?”

  He was white but he had a strong accent. Blue eyes. Lined face, though he couldn’t have been older than them; the sun would do that to you. Sandy hair. And the other man, the passenger, he was the same. They could have been brothers. Farmers? Or fishermen too? Something physical – they were lean as running dogs. They made him feel fat and pale and useless.

  “Our car . . .”

  “We’ve got a flat tyre.” Lisa stepped in, straight down to business. “Can you give us a lift back to the nearest town?”

  Two pairs of blue eyes switched to her, assessing her. The driver grinned, showing gaps in his teeth. “No town near here.”

  “There must be somewhere. Somewhere our phones would work.” She waggled hers at him. “This thing is dead.”

  “Can I see it?” The passenger held out his hand.

  “Nothing to see.” Lisa was putting it into her bag.

  “Give it to me.” There was a strange tone in his voice.

  She looked up. “What?”

  He got there before she did. Not rescuers. Hunters, like the weasel he’d seen on the first day. “Give him the phone, Lisa.”

  “Why?”

  “Give it to him or he’ll take it.”

  Lisa looked at him, then back at the passenger. And back to him. He could see the fear on her face. He could taste it in his own mouth. Nothing he could do. Nothing he could say to them. She handed it over.

  “Give me your jewel
lery.”

  “Give it to him,” he said when she hesitated. “Go on. It’s not worth it.”

  “Not my engagement ring.”

  “Everything.” The man was implacable. The driver hadn’t moved. He was watching the two of them. Waiting for someone to try to fight back. He’d be waiting a while.

  “Where are you from?” the passenger asked.

  “Ireland.” They said it in unison. Waited for the chorus of approval, the one you always got. People loved the Irish, didn’t they? The world over.

  “Got your passports with you?”

  He did. And his driver’s licence. And yes, they could have his watch. His camera. His MP3 player. His wedding ring. His cash. It all went and he didn’t care. He didn’t need any of it. He felt numb. Lisa was crying. He couldn’t understand why.

  “It’s all right,” he said to her, as the passenger finished going through the car. “It’ll be all right.”

  She shook her head, her face twisted like a child’s. “I want to go home.”

  The driver moved at last. “We’ll leave you good people. You stay.”

  “Will you let someone know we’re here?” They wouldn’t, he knew.

  “Someone will come.” He pointed to Lisa. “Go stand by him.”

  She came to him, whimpering with fear as she passed the men.

  “Turn around.”

  “Why?” He was genuinely curious. He didn’t feel scared, he realized. He felt nothing at all.

  The passenger was holding something behind him, so they couldn’t see it.

  That wasn’t good.

  “Turn around.” The driver was grim. “Walk forward, slowly. Fifty paces. Go onto the beach and keep walking. Don’t look back.”

  They did as they were told; they had no choice. The sand was pale pink as the sun slipped towards the horizon. The blue in the sky and the sea had faded to lavender. All of Africa lay behind him and the wind that chilled his face came from the end of the world. He’d never seen anything more lovely.

  “What’s going to happen?” Lisa whispered. “What’s going to happen to us?”

  Her hand found his and he let it lie there, warm and human, as they walked towards the pitiless sea.

  A Nice Cup of Tea

  Christopher J. Simmons

  On the day she was going to die, Edith found the dead rat in the garden. It lay there on the garden path for all to see, curled and doubled up. It had obviously been writhing in agony for the last few seconds of its life. The body was bloated and it was quite stiff when she nudged it with the toe of her shoe. Timorously Edith lifted it slightly and then withdrew her shoe, watching as the tiny body simply rolled back into its original position.

  Edith fiddled with the phial of arsenic. The chemist had been right. The stuff had worked a treat. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was rats. As she looked down at the deceased, a squadron of aircraft flew overhead. She looked up and wondered what part of Hitler’s citadel they had been bombing the night before.

  Edith’s heart gave a lurch and her chest felt tight, her eyes watering. Suddenly, killing vermin seemed minascule compared to other things that were going on in the world, but daily life had to go on and the rats had to be deterred. Her father was old and she had too many jobs to be able to keep the large garden in trim. It had become a playground for vermin. One had scampered over her foot only the other day as she pegged out the washing. They were getting too bold. If nothing was done about them soon, then they would overrun the place in no time.

  She had even caught one squeezed under the kitchen door, its front in the kitchen, and its behind still in the backyard. She had felt guilty afterwards when she had screamed and started hitting it with her brush as the animal squealed with pain whilst trying to wriggle back out from under the door. But it was added pressure – she didn’t need any more stress what with looking after her aged father who ordered her about ever since her mother had been blown sky-high when a bomb had torn apart the friend’s house she had been visiting at the time.

  “Edith! Edith!”

  The banshee wailing only added weight to her already overburdened shoulders. It was exactly the same reaction when she heard the screeching of the klaxon – a sharp grip of fear followed by an overpowering lethargy at the thought of spending hours in the confined space of the Anderson shelter with her father shouting and complaining, mainly about the Germans, although Edith, just for good measure, still came in for criticism from her father’s tongue.

  Edith had obviously not reacted quickly enough, and lost in her thoughts had not moved from the rat.

  “Edith! Edith!” came the continued wailing from upstairs.

  Really, her father was becoming quite tedious in his old age. If she ran up those stairs once, it was a thousand times. Leaving the dead body to deal with later, she quickly marched into the house.

  Up in his bedroom, Edith listened attentively to her father’s latest request. He wanted another cup of tea.

  “I have already made you two cups of tea, father. That will make three cups of tea this morning. The doctor said all this tea isn’t good for you.”

  “Blast that fool of a man.” said Albert venomously, which led him on to a fit of coughing. “I don’t care what he has to say. I know my own health better than anybody. Now, get me that cup of tea, girl!”

  In frustration and sheer exhaustion, Edith looked at her father and, deciding that it would be far more trouble than it was worth to argue with the cantankerous old sod, she slowly descended the stairs to start the preparation for his tea.

  Where he put it all, she did not know. Edith had taken after her mother who, like her, had been big boned. Her father was a scrawny man with sunken features, his facial skin stretched tight over his skull. And despite all this liquid he never needed to go to the loo.

  It was another of Edith’s numerous tasks to escort her father to the outside toilet opposite the kitchen and then wait by the door while she listened to him huff and strain inside.

  Then, after flushing the toilet herself as he also seemed incapable of doing even that, she helped him back up the stairs and into his bed. But that was only twice a day and although he had a commode, it was rarely used.

  So how did he hold in all those pints of tea he drank throughout the day?

  It was a mystery to her.

  Down in the kitchen Edith began to make her father another cup of tea, rescuing the tea leaves that she had used for his earlier two cups that morning. Did the old fool not realize there was a war on? Tea, like everything else on this island, was rationed and most times plain unavailable.

  Edith sat at the kitchen table and began to flick through a magazine she had managed to pilfer from her friend, June.

  Edith gazed longingly at the pictures of people on the beach, laughing and having a wonderful time. Where were these people who had time to gambol across the bright golden sand beneath a huge yellow globe as their skin turned a luscious mahogany? They certainly didn’t look like anyone Edith knew as everyone, herself included, had pasty complexions from the harsh winters, short summers and lack of a proper diet. They couldn’t be on this planet – the whole world appeared to have been sucked in to Hitler’s mania.

  She turned the page to look at a photograph of some bananas growing in their plantations and ripening under the sun. Edith longed to taste them. What she wouldn’t do just to taste that exotic fruit one more time.

  Edith had tasted banana once and she tried to conjure the taste in her mind and transfer the memory to her tongue without success. She was sure that her lips would tingle if ever they could taste the treasure within that yellow skin. Edith wished she could be transported to such a decadent and beautiful paradise where she ate richly coloured fruit and played on the beach all day.

  Here in London, with the constant traffic during the day and the constant fear of being bombed at night, Edith could only wonder what she was going to concoct with the frugal vegetables she had in her almost bare larder.

>   It was at that moment that there came a thumping from upstairs. The old man was banging his walking stick on the floor, impatient for his third cup of tea. She tried to ignore his banging, but soon the screams of distress and agitation started to float down the staircase.

  “Where is my tea, girl?” her father shouted for all the neighbours to hear. “Have you gone to Ceylon for the tea leaves, girl?”

  Edith roused herself from her chair and bit back a clever remark she could have shouted at the ceiling above her. Having squeezed the last of the tea out of the leaves, Edith took up her father a cup of very weak tea, knowing that he would make the inevitable comment.

  “No tea left to put in the pot, girl?”

  Edith, feeling beaten and faded, declined to give her father any fuel for the fire he was so hopefully stoking. Instead she simply turned and headed for the bedroom door.

  “I will want to go out sometime today. Midday will do me perfectly well. You can come and dress me in about fifteen minutes and help me down the stairs.”

  “You are perfectly capable of dressing yourself.” Edith remarked at the door. “I will help you down the stairs, but I know you can dress yourself quite happily.”

  “You will help me on with my shoes, girl. You know I can’t reach.”

  “Fine.” Edith sighed. “I will be back to help you on with your shoes.”

  Before her father could start any other argument, she left and sharply closed the bedroom door behind her.

  It was midday and finally, after much fussing, Edith and her father finally got out on to the street. Making sure that her father’s blanket was properly secured across his lap, she started to push her father along the pavement in the dilapidated wheelchair that had once serviced her mother during a spate of illness.

  The sunny day had turned cloudy and a wind that had started up fought against Edith as she pushed the great hulking monstrosity and her father along the street.

  The streets were busy as people hustled and bustled around trying to make the days seem normal despite the numerous airplanes humming overhead. Sometimes, if it was enemy aircraft approaching, then the wail of the siren that broke through the air was enough to send a shiver down every spine.