The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Ted was more interested in the agricultural detail. “What are they harvesting?” he asked.

  “Hard to tell,” said Hondercooter. “Probably wheat. You like that painting, Ted?”

  “Yes,” said Ted Norris. “I saw a lot of paintings like that in Rome. Only they were bigger and they were by Italians. No, I like it a lot.”

  “I’ll leave it to you in my will,” said Hondercooter.

  Ted Norris thought he was joking, but Hondercooter assured him he was not.

  “Well, that’s decent of you,” said Ted Norris.

  6

  Hondercooter was fattening one of the geese for Christmas. He had chosen the goose, which was the largest of the flock, and also the most bad tempered. He remembered something that he had learned about geese in school. The Romans kept geese as watchdogs, did they not? And hadn’t the geese hissed to alert the Romans that somebody was about to attack Rome? He would have to ask Ted Norris whether he knew that story; he had been to Rome, of course.

  This bad-tempered goose seemed to sense that something was up. As Christmas approached, he became increasingly aggressive, going so far as to hiss at Hondercooter himself as he walked past him in the yard. Hondercooter even had to aim a kick at the goose on one occasion and almost tripped up as a result.

  “You don’t know it, but you’re ending up on the table,” he warned. “Ted, Betty, me – we’re going to eat you, my hissy friend!”

  The goose looked at him. There was venom in his gaze.

  7

  Old Dog Tray particularly disliked the geese and barked at them ferociously whenever they came near him. The geese ignored this barking, emboldened by the senior goose, who seemed as unafraid of dogs as he was of humans. Tray lay on the grass and watched the geese from the corner of his eye. He would deal with them in due course. They would overstep the mark one day, and he would show them that a dog can only be pushed so far. There were some sheep down the road who also needed to be dealt with. Stupid creatures. Irritating beyond belief to a dog.

  8

  Ted Norris came to tell Hondercooter about what happened.

  “Your dog, Tray,” he said. “You seen him today?”

  “This morning,” said Hondercooter. “He’s about the place.”

  “Sorry about this, Hondy, but he’s killed two of my sheep. At least I think it’s him. Betty saw something and couldn’t quite make out what it was, but we think it’s your Tray. Really sorry to have to tell you this, you know.”

  Hondercooter was silent. He knew how serious this was. In a farming community, if a dog is a sheep-killer there was only one solution.

  “Let’s go and look for him,” suggested Ted Norris. “If he’s clean, then it won’t have been him. But if he’s covered in blood … ” He shrugged.

  “All right,” said Hondercooter. “We can try the barn. Sometimes he goes there. He likes lying in the straw.”

  9

  They found Old Dog Tray where Hondercooter had suggested he might be – in the barn. And, as predicted, he was lying in the straw. There was blood on his chin and all across the white patch on his chest. There were feathers, too, and the body of a goose, limp and ruffled.

  Tray looked up at Hondercooter and Ted Norris. There was guilt in his eyes. Alone of animals, it seems that dogs experience feelings of guilt, although there is some argument as to whether it is real guilt or merely a dread of punishment. Whatever the source of the emotion, that was what Tray demonstrated.

  Hondercooter shook his head. He knew what he had to do.

  10

  Walking back to the house, Ted Norris tried to cheer his neighbour up. He looked about him, at the contented herd of dairy cows, at the well-kept fences, at the neat fields. “You’ve got a really good place here, Hondy,” he said.

  Hondercooter nodded. “Yes, it’s a good place. Left it to you and Betty in my will, you know.”

  Nothing was said. Ted was surprised, and pleased. It would make him a wealthy man. And every farmer, however much he has, convinces himself that he needs more.

  11

  The following day there was an accident. A parcel delivery man, bringing a package of veterinary remedies to the farm, spotted Hondercooter on the ground near the barn. He ran over, thinking that the farmer may have had a heart attack or something of that sort. It was not that: Hondercooter had been shot. His shotgun lay beside him, not far from his right hand. A few yards away, lying on the ground watching the delivery man, was Old Dog Tray. He growled faintly when the delivery man appeared, but then he wagged his tail and came up to him, ready to be patted.

  12

  The police spoke to everybody, including Ted and Betty. “Was Mr Hondercooter depressed, do you think? Was there any reason why he would take his life?”

  The answer from everybody was the same. “No, he was a pretty level-headed sort of man. His farm was doing well – you can understand it when a farmer is up to his eyes in debt – people can get desperate then. But none of this applied to Hondercooter.”

  There was an inquest, the conclusion of which was that it had been accidental death. The police produced photographs of the ground near Hondercooter’s feet. It looked as if he had slipped, as it was muddy there, and there were marks which looked as if they had been made by a stumbling man.

  13

  Ted Norris looked after the dairy herd. He went through Hondercooter’s papers in the drawers of his large desk. He found a letter from Bollingworth, the lawyer in Nelson, and he telephoned him. “Mr Hondercooter’s dead,” he said. “I believe you’re his lawyer.”

  “Who am I speaking to?” asked Bollingworth.

  “Ted Norris. I’m his neighbour.”

  There was a silence, which might have been shock, or a moment for recollection. Then, “You’re the principal executor, you know, Mr Norris. And under Mr Hondercooter’s will you and your wife are the main beneficiaries.”

  Ted Norris was cool. “He said something about that. I didn’t pay much attention, but he did say something.”

  14

  Ted and Betty Norris decided that they would go ahead with their Christmas meal in spite of the sad circumstances. They took one of the geese – not the one that Hondercooter had been fattening – and they roasted that. They sat in their dining room, both wearing a paper hat from a Christmas cracker. On the wall behind Betty was the Brueghel. “I love that painting,” she said to Ted. “Brueghel’s very famous, I think. We’d better get it valued.”

  “We must find out what they’re harvesting,” said Ted. “Hondy thought it was wheat.”

  15

  Underneath the table, replete after the dinner of goose scraps fed to him by his new owners, reprieved because Ted could not bring himself to shoot him – not after what had happened – lay Old Dog Tray. A dog’s memory is strange: it is full of smells and random impressions; there is little sense of chronology to it. But he did remember having to defend himself; having deliberately to trip up his master – not something that a good dog liked to have to do. The memory came, and then faded; came back and faded again. And there had been a goose.

  AN ARM AND A LEG

  Nigel Bird

  COLD AIR POURED in when they opened the doors. It would soon be over. All Carlo had to do was accept his punishment and they could wake up in the morning and start over.

  The ride had been at high speed and in a straight line, so they’d either gone south down the A1 or round the Edinburgh bypass. It wasn’t easy to tell in the dark, but he figured south was the more likely when he factored in the roundabouts.

  Rolling round inside the back of the van, he’d been reminded of driving his wife and first-born home from the maternity ward at Little France in the restaurant’s Berlingo. Maria had been bumped around as sleeping-policemen and pot-holes took turns to attack the suspension; even with her newly stitched episiotomy, she didn’t utter a noise the whole way. Nor had Chris, the poor child, head bobbing in the seat they’d spent an age working out how to secure.

&n
bsp; That was ten years earlier. Since then Maria had given birth to a second child and, when her patience finally wore through, filed for divorce and sent him packing from the family home and business.

  If he’d kept away from the booze, he might still have been in line for taking over one of the most successful eateries in the city. He could have been sitting back counting cash and sipping orange juice while his shoulders were rubbed and he watched the Hoops put one past the Jambos or the ’Gers. Instead he was in some God-forsaken place wondering how they were going to take their revenge.

  It wasn’t long before they dropped him to the ground, his head hitting something hard and sharp.

  The icy wind from the Forth cut through his jacket and the smell of the salt filled his nostrils. He guessed they were at the cement works – that’s where he’d be doing it if the steel toe-caps were on the other foot.

  The men standing over him took a moment to spark up cigarettes. Carlo rested his cheek upon the smooth metal rail, so chilled that his tongue might have stuck to it if he’d given it a lick. His fingers identified wooden sleepers with pebbles scattered in between and his legs found the parallel rail exactly where he knew it would be. The bleating of a goat was the last piece he needed to complete his picture. They weren’t at the cement works but the East Lothian Family Park, built to entertain the kiddies.

  Sure, what he’d done wouldn’t be winning him an MBE, but using trains as weapons should have died out with silent movies.

  These guys were animals. Perhaps the farm was the best place for this to end after all.

  ***

  Tranent needed another chip shop like it needed another teenage pregnancy. When Carlo Salvino impregnated Kylie on the same night that he opened “The Golden Fry”, he really managed to hit the bull’s eye.

  Belters they were called, the people from the town. Some said it was on account of the tanneries in the area way back when, others that it was because of the way the miners had worn their lamps. As far as Carlo could make out it made more sense that it was because they were likely to settle a disagreement with punches rather than words and that they could hit as hard as anyone he’d ever come across.

  If he’d had the money he’d have set up in the city, moved over to Glasgow even, but at least he was within ten miles of his kids, the rates on the High Street were cheap as his chips and with four pubs on the doorstep success seemed a sure thing.

  “The Golden Fry” opened on Valentine’s Day. Carlo fixed up ribbons and fairy lights, ordered in cases of cheap sparkling wine and sprinkled heart-shaped chocolates along the window seat for the kids.

  At six the place was buzzing. By half past, the cava and chocolates gone, the only person left was a girl who’d been giving him the eye since walking in.

  They chatted about something, the weather or football or the price of fish. Whatever it was, Carlo couldn’t remember. Nor could he fully recall sharing a quick one against the wall in the Wynd when he walked her home. He had a vague recollection of some fumblings, but they weren’t enough for him to even daydream about while he stood around waiting for customers.

  Kylie came in the next day for a poke of onion rings wearing her school sweatshirt. She may have looked at least eighteen and he knew nothing illegal had taken place, but if he could have run a mile without needing to stop for a rest, he might well have done.

  Hers was the only sale that day and the next. The competition had put out word and the Belters were sticking together against the new blow-in on the block with his one-eighth Italian blood and fading good looks.

  It was Kylie who gave him the idea. If he could lure in the kids from the High School, he’d be quids in.

  He took on two extra staff, a couple of older ladies who’d never travelled further than Prestonpans, hand wrote signs and offered food at half the price of anyone else. “Credit Crunch Lunch” he called it and it took off like it was supersonic.

  There were still queues of black sweatshirts at the bakeries and the other chippies, but he had the lion’s share, the line of youngsters stretching back to where he and Kylie had had their fun. Hot plates full of fried pizza (Maria’s father would have had a heart attack), burgers, puddings, pies and fish were emptied daily within half an hour, as if a plague of locusts had descended and licked them clean.

  They were getting through two hundred polystyrene trays at a sitting, twice that on a Friday when the primary school kids piled in to kick-off their weekend with a healthy fry-up.

  After a month of success, Carlo felt that he had finally earned the slice of the luck he’d always deserved.

  Things started to change when two lads came in after the rush hour, all swagger and spiky hair with the familiar white line down the middle that always made him think of wobbly skunks.

  When they spoke, he just listened until they’d finished and watched them leave without ordering a thing, their mullets bobbing against their designer gear.

  Turning to Mrs Edgar, who was wiping grease from the wall tiles, he asked for an interpretation.

  They wanted him to put the prices up, she told him, and they wouldn’t be asking so nicely the next time. And, if he didn’t mind her putting in her two shillings worth, the Ramsay boys were nasty pieces of work and it might be worth listening to what they’d said.

  Listening? He’d tried that and hadn’t understood a single word.

  The wee shites. Who did they think they were telling him how to run his business? They’d have been plankton in Leith if they ever ventured from their tiny pond into those shark-infested waters.

  That same afternoon, Kylie told him about the baby. She wasn’t ready to tell her dad and her mum would beat her enough to make sure the kid never saw out the first trimester.

  She wanted to keep it, leave school and live with Carlo. She could serve at the counter for six months and after that she’d be a stay at home mum, make a nest they could share, a cosy place that would be a cut above the council scheme she was used to.

  Carlo didn’t say anything. Instead, a hug of reassurance, a pat on the behind and a poke of chips “on the house” did their job and she left with a half smile on her lips.

  Turning the open sign to closed, he hooked up his apron, left the ladies to get on with things and headed for the Cross Keys. Having a glass in his hand always made life easier to understand.

  The landlord, Billy, knew all about the Ramsays. They’d graduated from the Tranent Young Team and had a brief spell with the Hibs Casuals.

  Local folklore had it that they used the derelict farm up near the cemetery as their base. There were tales of broken bones, cuttings and even a crucifixion. He’d seen clips of them on YouTube working away on some bloke with a pair of pliers. Their faces were hidden, but everyone in town knew who they were watching.

  They were involved in drugs, loan-sharking and a bit of dogfighting every now and then.

  Their mother was known to everyone as Nan. Nan was where Carlo and just about everyone else went to get cheap fags. She sold them singly to those that were really hard up or too young to know better, with special deals for the under nines. The Ramsays were likely to be allied to “The Happy Haddock” given that the older one of them was sleeping with Nan’s half-sister, whose brother owned the joint.

  As Billy pulled Carlo another pint, he started on about Kylie’s dad. Bert was put away for tying a man to a car and dragging him around the Heugh for slapping his sister, that and for driving underage and without a licence. Family life had cooled the fire in his belly, though Billy saw him as a dormant volcano.

  The stories that followed were hardly better news.

  Opposite Carlo’s place was the “Quick N Eazy”, run by Ray and Jim McMerry. They worked like a tag team when it came to a scrap, the kind that would have had grannies screaming at their sets when wrestling was still taken seriously.

  Then there was Kwok or Kwang or whatever his name was at “Peking Cuisine”. He was bound to be Bruce Lee or a Triad or both.

  No, it wasn’
t looking good for Carlo Salvino, not until his fifth whisky gave him inspiration. There was nothing to be scared of.

  Who, he asked himself, who outside of the area had ever heard of the town? They didn’t even have a football team. It was a blackhead on the face of a giant and it was about time someone gave it a squeeze.

  First he went for the McMerrys. The “Quick N Eazy” had slashed its prices to keep up with him and the Ramsay boys were likely to have paid a visit to them too.

  As far as he could see, outside of a good fight and making a few quid, there was only one thing that Ray and Jim cared about. Their cat was pure Russian Blue and worth a few bob. An elegant thing, Carlo imagined she was the sort of creature a pharaoh might have wanted to have with him in his tomb.

  Beautiful she may have been, but loyal she was not. It took nothing more than chocolate drops and catnip to get her to go with him.

  Making sure she was safely secured in his laundry basket, Carlo went on to complete the next part of the plan.

  Sitting with Kylie’s dad, he could see why she wanted to move. The furniture stank, the carpet was hardly worth the name and the swirls on the wallpaper were making him dizzy. Outside the dirty brown render on the houses made it look like God had puked over every single one of them and the line of satellite dishes made it look like everyone on the street was trying to contact alien beings to get them the hell out of there.

  Bert hadn’t switched off the TV as Carlo talked, but at least he turned the sound down. He listened carefully, his expression remaining unchanged from beginning to end, a cold stare fixed upon Carlo as he talked of love and babies, apologies and marriage.