The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Mrs Kingshott handed him a knife to cut the lemon with, holding it delicately at the edges of the handle as if she was worried that she might suddenly turn it on herself.

  They lunched alfresco on a roast chicken, a bird which was also nearly vegetarian, apparently. Mr Kingshott wielded the carving knife as if it were a particularly large scalpel.

  “Breast or leg?” he asked Franklin. “Which do you prefer?” For a confusing moment Franklin thought that he was somehow referring to his daughters.

  “Leg,” Franklin said, incapable of saying the word “breast” to Mr Kingshott when surrounded by his flock of women. Mr Kingshott passed Franklin the delicately carved slices of dark meat and said, “No breast? Sure?”

  “Sure,” Franklin said.

  The peach pavlova made its entrance before the chicken had exited. Faith ripped the wishbone from the remains of the bird (it was hard to believe that someone so savage had received the same upbringings as Connie) and held out the little bony arch and said, “Make a wish, Frankie,” but before he could even begin to think of anything he wanted to wish for (where to start?) Faith had yanked aggressively on the fragile bone and claimed the greater part. Franklin could see a little shred of chicken flesh lodged between her front teeth. He hoped she was never in a position to perform a medical procedure on him.

  “Then Aunt Jefferson and Mr Bray,” Mummy said. “And all of the string section,” Patience said. It took Franklin a while to realize it was his own wedding that was being discussed.

  “Who’s on your guest list, Franklin?” Connie asked. “There’s your mother, of course,” she reminded him before he could answer. The thought of his mother at the wedding filled Franklin with feverish horror. The only thing that was certain was that it all would go badly. If only Franklin had told Connie that he was an orphan. Perhaps he could put his mother in a coma, it was always a handy device in Green Acres, when you wanted to shelve a cast member for a while. And his mother was pretty much a soap opera character anyway.

  “Patience and Faith will be the bridesmaids, of course,” Connie was saying to her mother. “It’s just a shame they’re different heights.”

  “You could cut Patience’s feet off,” Faith suggested.

  “Or stretch Faith,” Patience said.

  Mrs Kingshott stood up from the table suddenly and said, “There should be three bridesmaids.” Connie reached out for her hand and tried to get her to sit down again.

  “Come on, Mummy,” Faith said, surprisingly gentle. “Don’t get upset.”

  “Sit down,” Mr Kingshott barked at his wife. “And don’t start all that nonsense again.”

  Mrs Kingshott stood rigid and wild-eyed, like some terrible figure in a Greek tragedy. A dramatic clap of thunder exploded overhead and the heavens opened. From the look of her, Mrs Kingshott would still have been out there at bedtime and it took the persuasive powers of all three girls to coax her indoors. The pavlova was left to melt in the rain, the peach slices like beached fish in the surf.

  “What was all that about?” Franklin asked later.

  “Hope,” Connie said.

  “Hope?”

  “Our sister, the youngest. She died of meningitis when she was five. Mummy wanted to take her to the hospital but Daddy said she was making a fuss about nothing and it was just a fever. Hope died in Mummy’s arms.”

  “That’s terrible,” Franklin said, fresh to the tragedy.

  “Yes,” Connie said. “It is, isn’t it? Daddy’s such a brute. You have no idea,” she added, staring at something out of sight.

  “So let me get this right, the building’s on fire and I have to choose between rescuing a cat and rescuing the cure for cancer?”

  “Yes,” Connie said.

  “And I definitely can’t save both?”

  “No.”

  “Is it the cure for all cancers? Or just some?”

  “All.”

  “Is the cat old?”

  “What difference does that make? Is its life worth less because it’s old? Will it suffer less when it’s burnt alive?”

  Franklin wondered if Connie’s hypothetical cat was a distant relative of Schrödinger’s Cat. “And you’re definitely not in the building? It’s just a straight choice – cat or cancer? Cancer or cat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you? Just out of interest?”

  “I’m standing on the pavement watching, Franklin.”

  Mr Kingshott retired to the gloom of the library while the women of the household embarked on a furiously paced game of Monopoly in the course of which even Mrs Kingshott became a cut-throat (Park Lane! Mine!).

  Franklin excused himself and dozed on the sofa. He did feel extraordinarily tired and woozy and the Kingshott’s sofa was as comfy as a fairy-tale feather bed.

  When he woke, the drawing room was empty, no sign of any Kingshotts and the Monopoly board had been tidied away. It felt late and Franklin wondered how long he had slept. The clock on the mantelpiece said eight o’clock but surely someone would have woken him to partake in the endless round of eating and drinking that seemed to go on in the house.

  There was no sign of life anywhere and Franklin wandered from room to room, occasionally shouting “Hello?” to the air until only the library remained unexplored. Franklin paused before the closed door. The idea of disturbing the bear in his lair was unnerving. He put his ear to the door. There was no sound from within. Perhaps Mr Kingshott had jumped ship with his women. Franklin knocked sharply twice and when there was no answer he turned the handle and opened the door cautiously, half expecting to find Bluebeard’s wives hanging from butchers’ hooks.

  There was nothing, a faint tang in the air, iron and salt and something faintly raw.

  And a foot. A smallish foot, poking out from behind the desk. A foot encased in a beige wool sock and a tan handmade brogue that looked very like one that Mr Kingshott was wearing the last time Franklin saw him.

  Franklin approached the desk and discovered that the foot was (thankfully) still attached to the rest of Mr Kingshott. Unfortunately, there was a knife sticking out of his chest, exactly where his heart was. It seemed an ironic death for a man who spent his life sticking knives into other people’s hearts.

  Mr Kingshott’s eyes were open, as fixed and dull as a dead salmon. It was just like Cluedo, Franklin thought – Mr Kingshott in the library with a dagger. Not a dagger exactly but a small sharp knife, very like the one Franklin had used earlier to slice a lemon for Mrs Kingshott, although, when he thought about it now, the lemon had never made an appearance at lunch.

  Franklin’s feet were sticking to the carpet and he realized he had walked in Mr Kingshott’s blood. He felt sick. He knew he should phone the police but his brain was still fogged up. Had he been drugged? Faith must be pretty handy with narcotics.

  He retreated to the hallway and was fumbling in his pocket for his mobile when the front door burst open and several policemen rushed in, followed by all the Kingshott women.

  “That’s him,” Patience said, pointing dramatically at Franklin.

  “Yes,” Connie said, “that’s definitely him. He’s been stalking me for weeks, everywhere I go he follows.” She was a stagy actress, Franklin noted.

  “We have photographs,” Patience said in her own histrionic style. It was like being in the middle of a poor amateur dramatic production. An Inspector Calls. From nowhere Patience produced a folder of black-and-white photographs. Franklin managed to catch a glimpse of them over the shoulder of one of the policemen. They all seemed to show Franklin loitering in Connie’s wake in a variety of venues he recognized – Hollywood Park, George Street, coming out of the Lyceum. “I was trying to catch up with her, not follow her,” he protested.

  “Daddy tried to warn him off,” Connie said.

  “And so he killed him,” Faith said. “Obviously.”

  The cat appeared suddenly, arching its back and spitting at Franklin.

  “He’s an awfully good judge of character,�
� Connie said.

  “Mrs Kingshott?” one of the policemen said, turning to her, as if she had some kind of casting vote on Franklin’s fate.

  Mrs Kingshott gazed into Franklin’s face and gave a tremendous sigh. “I’m afraid so,” she said. “He’s been giving us all so much bother.”

  Franklin had an unnerving flashback to last night and the condom that Faith had produced and magicked away when she had finished ravishing him. He remembered the rabid biting and scratching – how many samples of DNA had she managed to steal off him? He had stood in Mr Kingshott’s blood, his own bloody footprints tracking his journey all the way from the body. And what about the knife? He remembered the delicate way Mrs Kingshott had handed it to him, so that no prints were on that knife except his.

  “I thought you loved me,” Franklin said to Connie. Even to his own ears he sounded pathetic.

  “He’s so deluded,” Patience said to the policemen.

  “I believe the medical term is erotomania,” Faith said. “It often leads to violence, I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t listen to them!” Franklin said.

  All four women stood on the doorstep and watched as Franklin was bundled into a police car. By now the place was swarming with more police, with forensics, with photographers, although it was a relatively subdued crime scene compared with anything in Green Acres. Franklin made a mental note for future use. If he had a future.

  As the car drove away, Franklin caught sight of Mrs Kingshott. She gave him a regretful smile and waved goodbye to him.

  Franklin waved back. Even now, he found himself not wanting to hurt Mummy’s feelings.

  THE BALLAD OF

  MANKY MILNE

  Stuart MacBride

  AND THAT WAS why, on a cold night in February, Duncan Milne was up to his neck in shite. Literally. There was a small stunned pause, and then the swearing started. “FUCK, Jesus, fuck! Aaaaaaargh!” then some spitting, then more swearing.

  A silhouette blocked out the handful of stars visible through the septic tank’s inspection hatch. “You OK?”

  “No I’m not fucking OK!” More spitting. “Argh! Jesus – that tastes horrible!”

  “Aye, well … it is shite.”

  Duncan “Manky” Milne wiped his eyes and flicked the scummy liquid away. The smell was appalling. “Don’t tell me it’s shite, OK? I know it’s fucking shite! I’m bloody swimming in it!” He screwed his face up and spat some more. Breaking into Neil McRitchie’s septic tank had seemed like such a good idea at the time – smacked out of their tits and jacked up on shoplifted vodka – but treading “water” in a subterranean vat of raw sewage, Milne had to admit it was losing its appeal.

  “Can you see it?”

  He scowled up at the dark shape. “Help me out!”

  A pause, then, “But—”

  “Josie, I swear: if you don’t help me out of here I’m gonnae stab you in the fucking eye!”

  “But you’re down there anyway … ” Wheedling, putting on her “little girl” voice, because she thinks it makes men squirm.

  “It’s pitch black down here. I can’t—”

  “So feel about for it! It’ll be easy enough to find. I’ll bet it floats.”

  Milne spat again, trying to get rid of the aftertaste. “Why the hell would it float?”

  Pause. “Well, it’s powder, it should—”

  “Oh for God’s sake. If it was bloody powder it’d be dissolved in all this crap! It’ll be wrapped in polythene. And parcel tape. Like in the movies.” A kilo of heroin for their very own.

  “OK, so it’ll sink. You just have to feel about for it.”

  “You fucking ‘feel about for it’! Jump down here and see how you like it!”

  “Come on, Duncan, pwease?” She was bringing out the big guns now – the fake lisp. Silly cow. It hurt to admit it, but she was probably right – he might as well look while he was down here. Wasn’t as if he was going to get any mankier than he already was.

  Grumbling and swearing, he groped about in the lukewarm liquid. Trying not to think about what was bobbing about his throat. Thank God he was six foot tall – four inches shorter and his mouth and nose would be submerged. The scum layer was warm, steaming gently all around him, further down it got colder – between the putrid froth and the knee-deep sludge at the bottom of the tank. That was slightly warm too, saturating his nylon tracksuit and socks, filling his trainers.

  Milne cursed again. A kilo of heroin would sink. And that meant he’d have to duck under the surface to get it. Not that he hadn’t already been there, having fallen head-first through the inspection hatch. But still: fuck this shite.

  Gritting his teeth he waded forward, feeling for the parcel in the sludge with his feet. Nothing. “It’s not—” was as far as he got before Josie hissed, “Shut up! Someone’s coming!”

  He froze.

  Thin light swept past the access hatch, caught in the steam rising from the rotting sewage, and then voices: “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” A man. Angry. Very, very angry.

  “I … I was looking for someone.” Josie trying her “little girl” voice again. Only this time there were no takers.

  “You think I don’t know what you are? Eh? Think I’m stupid?”

  “I don’t think you’re—”

  “We’ve had ENOUGH! Whores and drug addicts coming round here all hours!”

  “But—”

  “ENOUGH!”

  “You know what: fuck you granddad—” A muffled “thunk” and the sound of something hitting the ground: something undernourished and three months shy of her nineteenth birthday. “Thunk.” “Thunk.” “Thunk.”

  “Enough … ” And then it went quiet for a bit. And then there was some crying. And then some grunting. And then scraping, like someone was being dragged – the stars were blotted out again. Milne backed away quietly until he was against the far wall of the septic tank.

  “Click” and a beam of cold white light leapt through the access hatch, making the milky-brown liquid glow. More grunting and then an almighty splash as the something was unceremoniously dumped in, making a tidal wave of human waste. Milne closed his mouth and his eyes and prayed for the best.

  When it was over he wiped his face, and stared at the thing floating face-up in front of him.

  Some fumbling and a curse and then the torch was hurled in after her, bouncing off Josie’s cheek and spinning away into the scum. It stayed lit, sinking through the layers of liquid, glowing like a firefly. Flickering. Then dying. Leaving the tank in darkness once more.

  The sound of heavy lifting came from above and slowly the patch of stars disappeared. “Clunk!” And they were gone. Milne and Josie were entombed.

  Two days was a long time to spend trapped in a septic tank. Especially when the shakes started to set in. Coming down from a heroin buzz to the depths of cold turkey – making him sweat and shiver, even though the liquid waste was just warm enough to steam. To start with he’d held Josie close, like a child would its teddy bear, but then she started to smell worse than the sewage and he’d been forced to push her to the far side of the tank. Wedging her under the inlet valve so she stayed beneath the surface.

  Now it was just smells and darkness. He knew it was two days because the watch he’d taken from Josie’s dead wrist glowed in the dark. Two days shivering and sweating. Feeling terrible. Scratching at the holes in his arms, unable to stop, even though he knew they’d get infected. Didn’t matter now anyway. He was dead.

  He’d spent hours trying to get the tank’s thick concrete lid to move, but it was too heavy and too high above his head. He was well and truly trapped.

  Two days without a hit and the hallucinations were in full swing, following him in and out of consciousness as he floated on the surface with the frothy scum. Where it was warmest. Trying to stay beneath the ventilation pipe, hoping enough air would be drawn down by the internal/external temperature difference to keep him from suffocation as he slowly died of dehydration
.

  Drifting on a sea of warm shite and cold turkey …

  Within eighteen months of meeting Duncan “Manky” Milne, Josie has gone from a plump happy teenager to a straggly scarecrow with sunken eyes and track marks down both arms. Red and angry like hornet stings around the crook of her elbow.

  And Duncan hasn’t fared much better – his boyish good looks are gone, now he’s just skin and bone with a drug habit. And it’s all about where the next fix is coming from. Which is why they’re standing at the bar of the Dunstane Arms on George Street, trying to scrape together enough change for two pints of cider. An apéritif before they head down the docks to see if anyone wants to rent Josie for a quick blowjob.

  Of course, in the old days they both tried it, but no one wants to screw Manky Milne for cash any more. So these days he’s her Pimp Daddy. Even if he can only come up with enough cash for a pint and a half. Being a gentleman, Milne lets her take the pint – after all, she’ll be the one doing all the work tonight – and they settle back into a booth, out of sight of the barman who’s been giving them the evil eye since they slouched in five minutes ago, looking like shite.

  And that’s when they hear about Neil McRitchie.

  Two blokes standing by the bandit – poking the buttons, making the wheels spin, the light flash, and the music ding – laughing about how Neil McRitchie just got this big consignment in from Amsterdam: a kilo of uncut heroin. How Grampian Police decide to raid his house, but McRitchie flushes the whole parcel down the toilet before they break down the door. A kilo of smack, right down the drain. And then they drag him off to the station.