The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Larry scratched his stubbly head. “Fuck.”

  “What are we going to do, Larry?”

  “I don’t know. Give me a smoke, will you?” I fetched him the pack and lighter. His hands didn’t shake as he pulled out the cancer stick and lit it up. He slid the rest of the cigarettes into the pocket of his robe. I didn’t complain.

  “Fucking rockstars and their messes. I should have gone into hip-hop. At least real gangsters know how to get rid of the bodies.”

  It sounded like it wasn’t the first time he’d encountered a disaster like this. But that wasn’t something I wanted to pry into.

  Larry glared at me. “Were you fucking her when she died?”

  “No. I mean … maybe. I’m not sure, man.”

  “How can you not be sure?”

  “I, uh … I had my eyes closed.”

  Larry snorted, puffing smoke from his nostrils. “You fucking pussy.”

  “How’s this helping, Larry?”

  “It just seems like the kind of thing you should know. Psychologically speaking. I mean, years from now, will you be able to put your hand on your heart and say that you’ve never humped a corpse?” He licked his chapped lips. “Though as far as they go, this is one fine-looking cadaver.”

  Sour spit flooded my mouth. I fought hard against the urge to puke. “Kid, you look like shit. Go freshen up while I think about this.” He didn’t need to tell me twice. I managed to keep down my tequila supper, but only just. My reflection squinted at me from the mirror over the sink, gaunt and sickly. I picked the cigarette butt out of the sink and filled the cool white porcelain with cold water. Then I took a deep breath and dunked my face in. My lungs burned in my chest before I pulled myself back out. I reached for a neatly folded towel and daubed at my face. Now I looked gaunt, sickly and wet.

  I closed my eyes.

  The sound of creaking springs from the bedroom froze me to the spot. What the fuck? Hoping to find a revived groupie sitting up on the bed, I forced myself out of paralysis and sprinted from the bathroom.

  Larry kneeled between the dead girl’s thighs. His gown hung open and he fumbled with a condom. I couldn’t help but stare at his short, fat erection beneath the solid swell of his gut. “Want a picture, faggot?”

  “What are you doing, Larry?” He laughed. The ugly, fucked-up sound of it raised gooseflesh on my arms and back. “Larry, what the fuck?”

  “Dead or not, this bitch is smoking hot. No sense in wasting an opportunity.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Or what?” He stroked her inner thigh. “She won’t mind.” He rolled the condom on and I wondered why he’d picked a ribbed one. For her pleasure. What kind of a fucked-up thought was that?

  “Seriously, Larry. I mean it, man.”

  “Fuck you. If you want my help, you’ll give me and my new girlfriend some privacy.”

  But that wasn’t going to fly. Bad enough I’d killed the poor girl. No way was I going to let fat Larry have his way with her dead body. I leapt and shoulder-barged him off the bed. We hit the floor with an almighty thud. A tangle of limbs. Me on top. I straddled his chest and tried to take the advantage. It felt so wrong to be struggling on the floor with a pink-skinned, almost naked, fat man wearing a ribbed condom. But life throws shit like that at you sometimes.

  He grappled with my arms as I tried to land a punch. I couldn’t get a clean hit. Then he was holding each of my wrists in an iron grip. We stared at each other. Stalemate. He smiled, as if he was embarrassed by the situation. Then the fat fuck caught me with a headbutt. He let go of my wrists and I fell back.

  I cupped my nose with my hands. Blood ran down my face and filled my throat. I coughed and spluttered gobs of crimson into the air. It rained down on my chest. Larry was on his feet. He kicked my ribs and stomped on my head. I curled up into a ball. Helpless. But he’d figured the job was done. The mattress springs creaked again as he climbed back on to the bed.

  “You fucking prick.” Larry sounded amused. “I lost my erection. Talk about a fucking mood-kill.”

  I heard him roll off the bed and pad across the room. He snuffled and snorted. The bastard had his piggy snout in my coke.

  “That’s the business,” he said. “I’ll be back in the saddle in no time.”

  I got to my hands and knees then yakked on the carpet. Watery, bitter-tasting puke splattered my hands and forearms.

  “Better out than in,” Larry said. I groaned. “You should have left me alone, kid. I just wanted to clear my head. Now look at you.” My stomach lurched again. I breathed deep to wrestle back control of my innards and inhaled the pungent scent of tequila puke. Larry said something else, but I lost it in a fit of coughing.

  When my coughing stopped I pushed myself on to my knees. Larry stood before me, the tequila bottle in his pudgy hands. “Here, have a drink.”

  “Fuck you, Larry.”

  “Ah, don’t be like that. We just had a little misunderstanding. No harm done.”

  I spluttered a choked, sarcastic laugh. I held up my blood-coated palms. “Yeah, Larry. Just a little misunderstanding.”

  “Come on, kid.” His tone was kind. “Don’t be a little bitch about it. Take a drink.”

  I took the bottle and drank deep, clearing the blood from the back of my throat. It felt good. Harsh. Cleansing. I wiped a forearm across my mouth and stood on Bambi legs. Larry smiled and nodded at me. Then he glanced at the dead chick.

  “Okay, Joey. Give me ten minutes with her, while she’s still fresh, and then we’ll get to work. Okay? We can smuggle her out, and I know some people who’ll take it from there. You listening?”

  Still fresh.

  I smiled back at him and he opened his arms as if to invite a hug. I hefted the almost drained tequila bottle. Grunting, I brought it down hard on top of Larry’s head. His shaved scalp split neatly.

  “Uhn!” he said, all surprised and wide-eyed.

  “Okay, Larry.” I smiled at him, then clunked the bottle off the side of his head. He wobbled. “Okay, Larry.” I hit the other side of his head. Blood sprayed this time. “Okay, you fat fuck.” His eyes rolled back in his skull and he toppled backwards. I looked down at the bottle in my hands. It surprised me that it was still intact. In the movies, they always shattered into a million pieces.

  It looked like Larry was dead, but those same movies taught me never to wait for a fallen enemy to leap up for the final scare. I knelt by his side and pounded his face with the bottle. It was therapeutic. And when I realized that, I forced myself to stop. I didn’t want to become some sort of psycho. I picked my leather jacket up off the floor and covered the pulpy mess that used to be Larry’s face.

  I stood up and looked around the room. Cocaine on the table. Dead girl cuffed to the bed. Dead fat man laid out on the floor. Blood-covered rockstar, stinking of puke and clutching the murder weapon, swaying on his feet.

  It crossed my mind that jumping out my window might be my best option. But that was the coward’s way. Besides, my room was on the first floor. I’d probably break a leg at worst. Better to face the music. The music. Fucking music.

  Our album sales would go through the roof when this got out. When would I ever get a chance to enjoy that? Probably never. It would go to my family though, wouldn’t it? See my parents right? I thought about calling my lawyer.

  I picked up the phone and dialled down to the reception. “Hi. I’m going to need you to put me through to the police.” Fuck.

  ART IN THE BLOOD

  Matthew J. Elliott

  1

  SOME MAY CALL it a tragedy, others a fantasy. My friend Sherlock Holmes will not have it that those terrible events surrounding the Tuttman Gallery are capable of anything other than a rational, albeit unorthodox explanation. While he admits that the violent death of Anwar Molinet is beyond our ability to explain at present, he is insistent that future scientific developments will one day show how such a thing might be possible. I confess, I do not share his confidence – should I call it
hubris? – and to this day, he chides me for ever daring to suggest a supernatural solution to the mystery.

  “Can it be, Watson,” he says, “that you, a trained man of science, have fallen in with the spiritualists, soothsayers and other such frauds and self-delusionists?”

  I make no reply, and never shall. But I set down here the full, unbiased account of our most mysterious adventure, and leave it to the reader to decide.

  Sherlock Holmes did not, as a rule, encourage visitors at 221b, but he frequently made an exception for Inspector Lestrade. I confess, I have never understood his fondness for the company of the rodent-faced policeman over other officers for whose intelligence he expressed a higher regard, but I have rarely seen my friend happier than when sharing a bottle of the beaune with his old adversary. It was common on such occasions for Lestrade to voice his concerns regarding any recent problematic investigations. I expected today would be no different, but this afternoon the police official appeared agitated, glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece from time to time.

  “Are we keeping you from your duties, Inspector?” asked Holmes, with more than a touch of mockery.

  “Er, no, Mr Holmes. Not just at this moment. I was just thinking … it should be happening soon. Cawthorne’s post-mortem, I mean.”

  It took very little effort on my friend’s part to persuade him to elucidate.

  “Anwar Molinet was the fellow’s name,” Lestrade explained. “Murdered in broad daylight, in the middle of a busy restaurant.”

  “Oh?”

  He consulted his notebook. “Les Frères Heureux, it’s called. Ever heard of it?”

  “Your pronunciation could stand some improvement, Lestrade,” I remarked. “But, yes, I believe we’ve dined there once or twice. An excellent cellar.”

  “Although the manager’s cigars are quite as poisonous as I have ever experienced,” Holmes added. “It’s the curse of the modern age, I fear. I find it hard to believe that a detective of your undoubted abilities would experience even the mildest of difficulties running the culprit to ground. You seem to have an over-abundance of witnesses, and more than adequate supplies of the energy required for such a task.”

  Lestrade twitched visibly. “You might think so, Mr Holmes, but … Well, it’s a peculiar thing … impossible, even.”

  “I make it a habit to eliminate the impossible before proceeding in an enquiry. Come, come! Surely this is a matter for which the old hound remains the best.”

  “I should have thought so, too. But you tell me what it means when a man is brutally murdered in front of some twenty-odd people and yet not one of them claims to have seen a thing … Almost as though the killer were unvisible.”

  “Brutally?” I wondered aloud.

  “You’re a medical man, Dr Watson, and a soldier to boot but I doubt if even you have ever … ” Lestrade’s voice failed and I imagined for a moment that he was actually stifling a sob. “You’ll never see anything like it this side of hell, I swear it”.

  Holmes rose to his feet and stuffed his pipe into the pocket of his dressing gown. I saw at once that his mood had altered from extreme languor to devouring energy.

  “If we are content to sit here chatting about it, I too swear that we will never see it. You said that the post-mortem is due to begin at any moment. If we make a start now, we should be in time to interview the surgeon. Watson, Professor Cawthorne is a member of your club, yes? Then we should have no difficulty in breaching the inner sanctum of one of London’s most respected police surgeons. No, no, Lestrade, you need not accompany us. I see from your haggard features that you have already had far too much of the unsavoury side of this investigation. By all means, finish your drink, and show yourself out when you are ready. But please take a moment to extinguish my pipe which, my nostrils inform me, is beginning to singe my dressing-gown.”

  I was struck, upon entering the mortuary, how long I had been away from the world of practical medicine. The smell of carbolic and decaying flesh could never be described as palatable, but our ability to become accustomed to even the most unattractive circumstance will invariably out. On this occasion, however, it took some effort on my part not to gag as the odour assailed my nostrils.

  Cawthorne was soaping his hands as we entered, and gave no more than a brief backward glance. It was not his way, however, to be ungracious, even in the most morbid situation.

  “Why, John, what a pleasant surprise. Though I shouldn’t really be surprised at all, I suppose. And Mr Holmes.” The two men exchanged no more than a nod of assent, for feelings were somewhat cool between them, ever since Holmes had called Cawthorne’s competence into question during our investigation into the shooting of a vagrant on the grounds of Colonel James Moriarty’s Chelmsford home. “You’re here about the late Mr Molinet, I imagine?”

  With his stick, Holmes indicated a corpse beneath a bloody shroud. “This is he?” he asked.

  “It is. I’ve more or less finished with him, but you’re welcome to take a look. I confess, there are still a good many questions concerning the nature of his death I’d like answering. You have George’s permission to be here, of course?”

  It took a moment before I realized that Cawthorne was referring to the Inspector, with whom, it seemed, he was on first-name terms. To Sherlock Holmes and myself, however, he was simply “Lestrade”.

  I explained, in the most diplomatic terms, that our mutual acquaintance had chosen to remain behind at Baker Street, rather than view the body once more.

  “You won’t judge him harshly, I hope. This is a shocking matter, even for an old war-horse like George. Indeed, your joint experience in examining dead bodies notwithstanding, you should perhaps prepare yourselves for something you may not have seen before.”

  He tugged back the sheet, and we found ourselves looking at what had once been a man but had now been transformed into a nightmare. I made no remark; no gasp of astonishment escaped my lips. I seemed, in fact, utterly incapable of speech at that moment.

  “Well, well,” Holmes breathed, “you do not exaggerate, Professor.”

  “Whoever did this to Mr Molinet aided my examination considerably. As you can see, I had no need to make a single incision.”

  In the moments that followed, I heard only the whistling of my own breath, as we three gazed in silence at the hideously mutilated corpse, his innards visible through the gaping hole in the stomach. I had witnessed something similar when examining the body of the unfortunate Catherine Eddowes, but on that occasion, identification of the weapon had been a simple matter.

  “These tears are deep but also ragged,” Holmes observed, without apparent emotion. “This was not done with a blade of any sort. Claws, perhaps … or teeth. Have you ever seen the results of an attack by a wolf, Professor?”

  “Very few wolves in London, Mr Holmes,” Cawthorne replied.

  “Not the four-legged variety, in any case.”

  “In any event, there is an even greater mystery to be overcome, as you can see, since it would appear that this beast – whatever it may have been – clawed its way out, not in.”

  I heard someone say “There is devilry afoot,” and it was a moment before I realized that the words were mine, the first I had uttered since the hideous corpse had been uncovered.

  “I have, in the past, voiced the opinion that life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent,” Holmes murmured, “but this is perhaps too strange even for life as we comprehend it.” But I knew that he could not do anything other than proceed with his investigation, for he refused to associate himself with any matter which did not tend towards the unusual and even the fantastic. And I, who share his love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life, could do nothing but follow in his wake.

  2

  For Holmes’s sake I attempted, so far as seemed appropriate, to make light of the matter. “Well, Holmes, we have a rare little mystery on our hands,” I commented, as we rattled al
ong in the four-wheeler we had flagged down outside the mortuary.

  “Your propensity for understatement never ceases to amaze me, Doctor. We seem to have been presented with someone’s waking nightmare masquerading as a case. Molinet is slashed to pieces in a public place, apparently by a ferocious animal and in a manner that beggars belief … and yet no one seems to have seen anything.”

  “Witnesses to a particularly vicious crime are often unreliable,” I noted. “I’m certain I don’t need to remind you of the conflicting accounts we heard following the Pennington Flash Murder. Shock can play peculiar tricks on the mind.”

  “In one or two cases, I might agree, Watson, but surely shock cannot have affected ever single diner and member of staff in one of London’s most fashionable restaurants.”

  “Perhaps we are approaching the matter from the wrong end,” I suggested. “It may well be that knowing why Molinet was murdered will give us some indication of how it was done.”

  “Excellent, Watson! Really, you are coming along! How can I take you for granted when your clarity of mind comes to my rescue?”

  Holmes had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I have often been piqued by his apparent indifference to my assistance.

  Upon our return to Baker Street, we were advised by Mrs Hudson that Lestrade had only recently departed, and in a state of some merriment. Our long-suffering landlady was less than cheered, however, to learn that Holmes and I would not be staying for dinner, nor could we say when we were likely to return. Holmes searched through his ever-reliable index until he found the address of the late Anwar Molinet.

  My earlier intuition, alas, proved of little use when we were confronted with a locked door. There were no servants at Molinet’s Belgrave Square address, no one to answer our persistent knocking.

  “Our first broken thread, Watson,” Holmes noted, and though there was no malice in his tone, I could not help but redden with shame at the thought of a wasted journey taken at my suggestion.