The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Speech over, Bert stood and, for a moment, it appeared that he was weighing up the penalty for the dragging of another human being against the satisfaction it would give him to take the bastard outside and tie him to the bumper. Instead, he left the room momentarily and returned with two glasses of vodka.

  Without exchanging words, they clinked glasses and downed their drinks simultaneously. There was no ice and it hadn’t been kept in the fridge, but what could one expect at ten in the morning.

  Carlo received a slap on the back that would have knocked anyone under twelve stone flying. They shared vodka after vodka until, by mid afternoon, they were practically old friends.

  Job done. With Kylie’s dad on side, the odds had tilted in his favour.

  “The Golden Fry” didn’t open that day as Carlo toured the bars. Staggering home, he was pleased to see the sign, a colour photo with “Lost, Minky. Reward. Ray and Jim @ Quick N Eazy” written above it.

  He considered collecting the cash, but decided to stick to the plan instead.

  Three days he waited, watching the McMerrys stew and savouring every moment of their anxiety.

  On Tuesday night, Kylie stood with him frying fish, a small diamond ring telling of their engagement. It had only cost a few quid down at the pawnbrokers, but he promised her that they’d get a proper one when they got the chance.

  At the end of the evening, Carlo sent Kylie home early then set about his work before the oil cooled. Flicking the fryer back on, he turned out the lights and headed upstairs.

  They say that animals can sense when things aren’t right, that they have a sixth sense about imminent danger. It was a load of tosh as far as Carlo could see, the way Minky burrowed cosily into his armpit as if he were the earth mother herself.

  He carried her downstairs, put her on the floor and threw her a few fish scraps. She hadn’t chosen it exactly, but as a last meal it seemed to be up to the job.

  The batter was in a bucket he’d prepared that afternoon and, before she knew it, so was Minky. She couldn’t get a grip on the smooth plastic walls, scratched at them to get a grip, bit at the hand that held her down, but all to no avail.

  Carlo’s rubber gloves protected him well. Grabbing her tail and her scruff he threw her into the fat in one smooth movement. Minky opened her eyes as she sank, the beautiful blue spheres peering out from the white paste that covered her. A few strokes of doggy paddle and it was all over.

  To her credit, she went down without a word of complaint and Carlo thought again of Maria in the van.

  He fished Minky out, shook off the excess oil and spooned her into a box looking like a cartoon character who’d been in a road accident.

  It took hours for the streets to empty and when they did, Carlo crossed the road to deliver his package.

  Returning to his shop, he picked up a sledgehammer and gave it a baseball slugger’s swing. Thousands of lines appeared in the window and it bulged out over the pavement.

  Something gave in his back as he swung, so he decided that breaking through completely wasn’t necessary. When the McMerrys found their cat and saw “The Golden Fry”, they’d put two and two together and the Ramsays wouldn’t have any legs left to stand on.

  Unfortunately for Carlo, Ray and Jim had never been much good at arithmetic. It was the way the window looked that gave it away, the fact that it bulged out instead of in. He’d avoided the CCTV cameras, but not fooled the McMerrys; they’d put enough folk through glass to know it was an inside job.

  ***

  The diesel engine coughed into action.

  Carlo had ridden behind it six times one summer’s day when his dad was still alive. Chris and Jack had loved it, the circular tour of the farm, throwing badly aimed nuggets of food at sheep, donkeys and llamas. Nursery rhymes cheered the passengers, taking their minds off the fumes.

  That visit was expensive. This one was going to cost him an arm and a leg. His left wrist and ankle had been cuffed to one of the rails. As he felt the train approach, the vibrations tickling his flesh and rattling his bones, he stretched out the rest of his body like a starfish and turned his face away.

  He pictured the time they were there last, the four of them standing by the ostriches, his dad holding out a scoop full of seed. The things had stretched their necks out so far and with such zeal that they’d practically taken his hand off. How they’d laughed, him and the boys, at the way his dad had dropped the whole lot and jumped back three paces at a speed that might be expected of one thirty years younger.

  The drivers of the train felt the bump under the wheels and gave a quick toot in celebration. The whistle and the scream were heard by the night staff at the brewery and the insomniacs of Dunbar alike.

  Before leaving, Ray and Jim broke into the small animal shed and shone their torch from one enclosure to the next.

  “We’ll try one of these this time, eh?” Ray said, stepping over the board and getting in amongst the rabbits.

  “Aye. Let’s have the black and white yen,” Jim said.

  Ray picked it out by the ears, handed him over to his brother and the two men set off for home, talking gently to their new pet every step of the way.

  THE LOVER AND

  LEVER SOCIETY

  Robert Barnard

  THE NEW (AND most unlikely) literary society finally came into existence in one of the buildings of Pisa University, hardly more than a hop, skip, and jump from the world-renowned torre pendente. The hall where the delegates to the “Lover and Lever Conference” gathered was more than large enough to accommodate those who were interested in the two Irish writers being honoured, but the specialness of their enthusiasm more than made up for the relative sparseness of their numbers. By 10.30 officers for the new society had been elected, and over coffee the delegates got to know each other. The Irish delegates had to apologize that interest in these two admittedly Anglo-Irish writers was not greater, but the Englishness of their take on Ireland was controversial. There was a strong undertow of Italian interest (this was the country in which Lever spent his last years), and the rest of Europe had provided most of the other delegates, mostly Ph.D. students, with one jet-lagged customer from Australia.

  By lunchtime there had been the election (actually nomination and election by acclamation) of a secretary and a treasurer, and in addition, two lectures had been given. It was over lunch, in fact, that things began – not to go wrong, no no! – but to acquire an edge. When they reached the fifth and last course, the prime mover in the conference, a man called Terry Butterfield whose bloodhound good looks had over the years set hearts of all sexes aquiver, rose to give the speech of welcome.

  “It is a great pleasure,” he began, “to welcome to Pisa all those lovers of Irish literature who believe that much more needs to be done to celebrate the impressive body of work of two unjustly neglected literary figures, Samuel Lover and Charles Lever. Here I would pay particular tribute to Professor Mario Pollini, of the English Department here in Pisa, without whose sterling work this two-day conference – really almost a festival – could never have taken place. Also Professor Jim Northcote, newly retired from his august position at London University, and Brian Bracewell, the well-known writer of … the well-known writer.”

  He paused.

  “We also owe a great debt to Declan Donnelly, my friendly rival in matters bibliographical, for his custodianship of the financial side of this wonderful coming-together of Lever-lover and Lover-lovers.”

  Smiles all round, rather self-satisfied. It was a joke they had seen coming since the day they registered. One or two in the audience thought that in the references to Declan Donnelly they had heard the sound of gritted teeth.

  “Does it sound like friendly rivalry to you, mate?” asked the delegate from Australia, any trace of Irish in his accent being subsumed into the cockney tones which are the Australian language.

  “No,” said Brian Bracewell, on the other side of the table. “But why rivalry? Does Lever fetch astronomical prices? It
seems unlikely. And Lover didn’t write all that much fiction.”

  “I should say it’s a question of numbers, mate. Lever went on writing long after anybody much wanted to read him. Scarcity value, that’s what it’ll be. There’s not much logic in the secondhand trade, apart from that. Some subject is taken up, or some writer, often following a television series, and suddenly all the books on Vermeer, or Franz-Joseph of Austria, or Ned Kelly, are fetching sky-high prices. It’s a mad world, and I’ve always kept well out of it.”

  Terry Butterfield was coming to the end of his speech, working up to a bit of eloquence.

  “I leave it to others to talk about Samuel Lover. I am a Lever man. Charles Lever spent the later years of his life not in Ireland, not in England, but mainly on the continent of Europe, for most of the last twenty-two years in Italy. He was, in his thoughts and spirit, a European. It may seem that his years here have left little trace. We can see buildings that he knew, but we can see buildings that Attila the Hun knew, and he was around fifteen hundred years before Lever.” (Some laughter.) “But if there are only one or two buildings that we know that he lived in, places we know he went to regularly, like the Casino in Bagni di Luca, we are perhaps looking in the wrong place. We should be looking for Italy in his books. And there we find the sun, the love of pleasure, of sheer fun, the realized life which Englishmen find difficult to cope with but which suits Irishmen down to the ground. Instead of looking for traces of Lever in Italy, which are few, we should be looking for traces of Italy in Lever, and they are legion.”

  He sat down to warm applause.

  Sitting opposite him at the table was the delegate from Helsinki, a man who had made no impression hitherto except for an unquenchable thirst. Now he leaned across the table and put his mouth close to Terry Butterfield’s ear.

  “He left something in Italy. There’s a descendant lives in Siena.”

  Terry Butterfield’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Surely not.”

  “Quite legit, at least I think so. Descendant of one of his daughters. Name of Teresa Spagnoli. You should have asked her to be here.”

  “I would have if I’d known,” said Butterfield. But he was lying. If she really was a descendant of Charles Lever he would have kept her very quiet from everyone, which meant in particular from his “friendly rival” in matters bibliographical, Declan Donnelly. Their “friendly rivalry” was particularly “friendly” when it came to first editions of Malcolm Merrivale – that late Lever novel, published reluctantly by Newby, and given the sort of print run usually only awarded to silly girls from Yorkshire who thought they had written great novels.

  Further down the table Declan Donnelly was taking in the little scene that had taken place after the speech’s end.

  “What the hell’s going on there?” he mused.

  “Don’t know,” said Morag O’Connor, a close friend of Terry’s. “But he’s interested, Terry is. I know the signs.”

  “What in the world could that Finn be telling him?”

  “Search me. Does it matter? I could ask him.”

  “No. Don’t do that. Things always emerge in conversation. I always get to know things if I go about it in the right way.”

  “Aren’t you a judge? I can’t imagine many people gossiping with a judge.”

  “Oh, I’m not the sort of judge who used to enjoy putting on the black cap! People talk to me as if I’m an agony aunt. My current wife says I’m ‘the judge next-door’.”

  This particular agony aunt, Morag noticed, went in search of agony. When the lunchtime was drawing to a close and groups were breaking up she saw Declan Donnelly, glass in hand, casually wandering up towards the talkative Finn. Or not towards him, but taking a path that, with the odd stop and detour, would land him next to the rather unsteady university lecturer.

  “Declan Donnelly,” he said, holding out his hand. “And you must be Jyrki Kaapola. Did I pronounce that right?”

  “Not really. Nobody doesh. Why bother? Just call me Jerk.”

  “All right, Jerk, I will. I’ve been called worse things than that in my time, by people in the dock.”

  “Are you a pleeshman?”

  “Judge, Jerk. Terry’s just been telling me what you told him.”

  “Oh, yes? This woman – the descendant on the distaff side. Did I say that right?”

  “No, but I get the idea. On the female side.”

  “Thash right. Daughters – more than one. I mean: daughter of a daughter of a daughter.”

  “Daughters of—?”

  “Charles Lever, of course. Lives in Shiena. No distance. She should have been asked to come.”

  “How do you know about her?”

  “Colleague in the English Department in Helsinki. Has a holiday home in Tuscany. Liquor’s cheaper here. He’d met her.”

  “Her being …?”

  Jerk swayed. He looked as if he had only seconds in which he would remain upright. But he put his hand on the table and with practised skill maintained a vertical stance.

  “Name … It’s gone … I had it, but Shpanish shounding … Like an ancestor from … di Spagna. That’sh it. Di Spagna.”

  “Christian name?”

  “Oh … Matilda, Teresa, or … one of those.”

  “I don’t see the connection between the two.”

  “End with ‘a’. Trishyllabic.”

  Though Declan was about to say practically all Italian women’s names ended with an “a”, the Finn at last lost out in his battle with gravity and sank with a grunt to the floor. The delegates clustered around him, but not before Judge Donnelly had made a strategic retreat. He did not feel himself compromised in the least by talking to a drunk, but he didn’t want Terry Butterfield to see him doing it.

  He considered what to do next. He could, of course, take off for Siena at once. He was just one of many delegates, and he had no special duties during the weekend. On the other hand, he was the financial brain behind the weekend and the new society, and he had just been elected treasurer. It would not look good. And judges these days had to be very aware of what would and would not look good.

  And the other token in the balance was that Terry Butterfield was occupied the whole weekend. He was in overall charge, and down to do this or that pretty much till midnight that night, and till lunchtime on Sunday, when the conference ended. He, Donnelly, could take off midmorning on Sunday without his absence attracting any comment. And he could be in Siena by around lunchtime, or mid-siesta, if they still had them in Siena. Meanwhile, he slipped back to his hotel, secured the Siena telephone directory, and established the existence of a di Spagna, M – living in Via Fontegiusta 41. He went to the nearest bookshop and bought himself a road map of Siena.

  Meanwhile, Terry Butterfield pursued a similar course. His hotel was a more modest one than the judge’s, but it was close to one of the entrances to the Campo Santo, and the famous tower was only a few yards away from its windows. Terry recognized the cheapness as his duty as conference organizer, and his view of the tower as one of the perks of office. The proprietor came up with a telephone directory of Siena and also a very grubby street guide to the town which had obviously been lent to generations of tourists. No one noticed during the Sunday lunch that he was itching to get away: Terry had the reputation of a solid bloke, unflappable, with a touch of gravitas. But he was, in fact, on tenterhooks, and the moment he could say his farewells and get away to the station without arousing any thoughts of a quick getaway he did so.

  Judge Declan Donnelly stood on the step of Via Fontegiusta 41 and pulled an antique door handle, resulting in a cacophony inside and outside the dwelling. He heard footsteps in the house, and then he was conscious of being observed through the spy-hole in the door.

  “Che vuole?”

  “My name is Declan Donnelly. Do you speak English?”

  “Yes. What you want?”

  “I—” It sounded to his ear a bit absurd however he put it “—I want to talk to you about an ances
tor of yours who wrote books.”

  There was a long pause. He was conscious of being observed closely, and was glad he had dressed with the utmost care, and had assumed the facial expression of one of the pillars of the community.

  “You come in,” said the voice. The door opened and closed behind him, and he followed an ample (but not fat, let alone obese) figure down the ill-lit hallway into a large room furnished with the usual bulky pieces that spoke of plush and respectability. Miss or Mrs di Spagna was an attractive and lively forty-something, and she spoke the language of the plush of her flat, but less so the language of respectability.

  “Who this writer, then?”

  Declan sat down where she gestured him to.

  “The writer is an Irish novelist called Charles Lever. He wrote in the mid-nineteenth century and he lived the last years of his life in Italy. I was hoping—” the hope was fading though “—you had a collection of his novels.”

  The well-upholstered shoulders shrugged.

  “I never ’eard of ’im. Maybe my ’usband.”

  “Your husband? I heard that the descendant of Charles Lever was a woman.”

  “Oh, maybe ’is first wife. She died last year. She was a great reader, ’e’s a great reader, they ’ave a fine library. I lock it up. I don’t give ’im time to read. I didn’t marry ’im for books.”

  She gave him a meaningful glance, a slight smile, then looked away.

  “And your husband – can I talk to him?”

  “No. ’E is away. Three ’ole weeks. Can you imagine? It is so lonely.”

  “It must be. And you not long married.”

  “Esattamente! You are good-looking man. Well-dressed, smooth, a touch James Bond. Experienced, eh?”

  “I have been married more often than was perhaps wise. People assume that you are fickle, like a bee flitting from flower to flower.”

  “What is that – a bee?”

  “Bzzzz,” said Declan. “They think you want variety.”