The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Holmes remained silent, a fixed point.

  “Oh, very well,” sighed the man I had known as Redfern. “If it helps – and I doubt it will – I’m sorry. Not about Ferregamo, of course, but about any discomfort you may have experienced.”

  I could remain silent no longer. “You seem to have forgotten, Redfern – I mean, Ruber – that four other people are dead, and I take it you are responsible.”

  “Haven’t you told him, Mr Holmes?”

  “If I have kept the good doctor in the dark … so as to speak … it is only because I find it difficult to credit that such a thing could occur in the world as I understand it. Very well, perhaps explanations are in order. All these terrible crimes were committed with just one target in mind: the late Mr Julius Ferregamo. I realized that very late in the day – both figuratively and literally – when I passed on the painting that had been a gift from Ruber here, and all my digestive problems vanished.”

  “And were inherited by Ferregamo?” I asked, hardly daring to believe the implications.

  “Had he not taken it, I daresay I should have suffered the same ghastly fate, a notion that should give fuel to my nightmares for some years to come.”

  From the tone of his voice, I knew that Ruber was mightily pleased with himself. “I was worried you might not have picked up on the little clue I left you – I never even saw you examine the paper I was writing on – but when word reached me about Ferregamo’s death, well … I knew you’d done exactly what I’d wanted you to do.”

  “It was not as though I had any choice in the experience. Once you led me to him, I found I could do nothing but give him your painting. With the assistance of Watson here, I swore off the evils of cocaine because I disliked the sensation of not being in control of my thoughts and senses. All the works you created under the alias of Algernon Redfern – they were meant for Ferregamo, were they not?”

  I had some vague notion of what Holmes was driving at, but it seemed simply too fantastic to credit. “What do you mean, Holmes?” I asked. “What are you saying?”

  “I am saying that Ruber here … ”

  “Felix Ruber, in case you were wondering,” the man in the darkness interrupted.

  “Very well,” Holmes continued, “Felix Ruber, you see, has … an ability. I cannot classify it scientifically, but it seems that his paintings are somehow able to affect their owner – adversely, I need hardly add. Hence, Mrs Serracoult’s fiery demise, the mysterious disappearance of James Phillimore, the invisible creature that clawed its way out of Molinet’s stomach, and so on. You have a very vivid imagination, sir, if more than somewhat disturbed.” Holmes touched my sleeve. Whether he could see my response or not, I nodded my understanding. “Given that you have achieved your goal,” he asked, “would you at least satisfy my curiosity and tell me your story?”

  “If you’re hoping that my story will contain an explanation of my gift, I’m afraid you’re destined to be disappointed, Mr Holmes. But why not?” As Ruber spoke, I began to take short, silent steps, tracking the voice to its source. “I was living on the streets of Vienna, when I first met Julius Ferregamo. I was little more than a child, trying to make money any way I could. You might think you’ve seen some terrible things today, gentlemen, but believe me, nothing can compare to the horrors I experienced growing up. Ferregamo was there to see what artwork he could snatch up for the so-called civilized world. The man was no better than a vulture. He’d heard some talk about my work … my abilities. You’d think that would have made me blessed. But once the word spread, life became impossible … I was the miracle-worker, the modern-day messiah. Believe it or not, I simply just wanted to paint. It is what I do, what I am. Ferregamo promised me a new life, away from that hell. I believed him. But he just wanted to use me like all the others. To be richer than he already was, to see his enemies crushed. It was my job to see that those things came to pass.”

  I remembered that Ferregamo had somehow retained his position as the premier art collector in London, perhaps even in Europe, but his competitors had all come and gone. Now I had some inkling of how they had gone. “So … you simply paint something and it happens?” I asked, and instantly regretted doing so. Had I given away my position?

  “Not quite, Doctor. You have to possess the painting to feel its power. People must have thought Ferregamo was a very generous man – he was always giving them gifts.”

  “And those gifts were your paintings,” Holmes responded. “Then you were his accomplice.”

  “I was his prisoner! Locked in a cell in his home, with a guard watching over me at all times. But finally, during my one mealtime a day, I was able to scratch a drawing into a metal plate with my fork – it was a drawing of a heart exploding. The guard took my plate and … I was free.” In his rage, he did not seem to have noticed my approach. I continued, step by careful step, as he expounded.

  “I disappeared, studied, changed my style. Then returned to destroy Julius Ferregamo. But that wasn’t easy if he had to possess my work. That was why, in addition to reinventing myself, I hid my revenge paintings under those rather more conventional landscapes. I found that using Brickfall and Amberley’s lead-based paint seemed to block the effects for a time. Don’t ask me to explain it; I don’t really understand it myself. But, of course, I couldn’t just send him one of my pictures, he would have known instantly. The only way was for him to buy one at auction. I had no idea he was out of the country until I saw it in the newspaper.”

  “And tell me, Mr Ruber, does that make you any less of a murderer?” asked Holmes. In the gloom, I could see only the easel on which Ruber’s last painting still rested. Where was the devil?

  “I won’t ask for your forgiveness. And I can’t ask for it over … over all those other people you just mentioned whose names I’m ashamed to tell you I’ve already forgotten.” I still could not see my quarry, but I was certain that I had traced the voice to its source, somewhere close to the easel.

  “Of late, I’ve given a great deal of thought to questions of captivity and freedom … it strikes me that I have been a captive for my entire life – even these last few months, living in self-imposed imprisonment, unwilling to go out in public for fear that Ferregamo might recognize me. I have been my own jailer, Mr Holmes; perhaps, in a way, that is true of us all. And I think that, for once, I should like to taste real freedom. The whole of Europe is open to me.”

  “I’m afraid that may not be possible. You must be called to account for the deaths you have caused.”

  Another chuckle. I knew that I was close. “I would not have categorized you as a wishful thinker, Holmes. It seems you still possess the ability to surprise me, after all. But you recall I said earlier today that I would stay in London until my work was completed. Well, Ferregamo has been dead some time now … and I departed the moment I knew.”

  I pounced. There was a crash – and then I experienced the sudden, overpowering numbness that comes seconds before the onset of great pain. My ribs burned, as I lay on the floor, and I could only hope that I had somehow succeeded in waylaying Felix Ruber as I fell. But I knew in my heart that I had not. Not only had he vanished without trace, but a search of the studio revealed no other entrance or exit. The windows had clearly not been opened in many a year, and we left some hours later, infinitely sadder but no wiser for our experience. Surely, I told myself, the voice could not have emanated from the self-portrait of Felix Ruber, which I had succeeded in knocking from the easel to the dusty floor?

  Holmes and I did not discuss the incident upon our return to Baker Street, and we have talked little of the case since. If his own words are to be believed, Ruber is at large somewhere in Europe as I write, and though my friend could easily use his influence with the high officials of several international police forces to arrange a wide-scale search, he has not done so.

  “Having given the matter further thought, it strikes me that it would be nearly impossible to bring the fellow to trial in a satisfactory manner,” he exp
lained, some months later. “The average British jury is not composed of massive intellects, and a prosecutor might just as well accuse hobgoblins and fairies of the crime. I fear that the finer scientific points would be lost on the great, unobservant British public.”

  For a man who has turned the docketing of fresh and accurate information into an art-form, it seems odd that he should be able to deny that these events occurred as they did, and as – so far as I am aware – the only other surviving witness, I fear that no one will place any stock in this account. So I lay it aside for now, in the hope that perhaps my friend is at least partially correct, and by the time it is published, long after my death, we will at last have come to comprehend the nature of Felix Ruber’s remarkable abilities.

  I should add that I hear rumours, from time to time, of queer noises emanating from the vaults of Cox and Co, where the portrait of Felix Ruber is stored, but I have not felt a pressing need to investigate further.

  UNHAPPY ENDINGS

  Colin Bateman

  I SAY YES to a lot of things I shouldn’t really say yes to, like the writing of this short story. It’s worth about a grand, but out of that there’s an agent to pay and a few pounds whittled away on research. It’ll appear under a pseudonym, nobody will ever connect me to it; it’s quite liberating, actually, I don’t have to worry about what critics think or my literary reputation and I can just indulge in flights of fancy or get away with murder or generally just please myself. The problem is that there’s always an unhappy ending, and that depresses me. Not at the time, you understand, but later. I just have a thing about writing unhappy endings.

  My research isn’t much more than sitting in the pub having a few pints watching and listening, because I’m not really one for learning the intricate details of anything. If there’s brain surgery in my story, I don’t feel the need to talk to a brain surgeon. I look it up on the net, give it a cursory read and then wing it. If you crash landed on a desert island and the pilot had a fractured skull and you had to operate to save his life so that he could, after a substantial period of recovery and perhaps physiotherapy and rehabilitation, together with the frequent consumption of the milk of coconuts, somehow repair the plane and fly you out of there, you wouldn’t want to use my story as a guide to how to drill into his head to relieve the pressure or take out the blood clot, because you’d really mess him up. He’d be slobbering in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, pointing the finger of blame at me, though of course he wouldn’t be able to literally point the finger of blame at me because well, you would have drilled into the area of the brain that controls the finger of blame. On my advice you would also have used the corkscrew you rescued from the premier seats at the front to do the drilling, pausing only to comment sardonically that planes don’t reverse into crashes and they should have the rich seats at the back. Actually using the corkscrew would be pretty damn sore unless you improvised chloroform using a mixture of vodka, egg whites and broccoli. You can’t really improvise chloroform using vodka, egg whites and broccoli. Don’t try it at home, because it’s really difficult to get the right kind of broccoli. You need Spanish broccoli, grown in the foothills of the Andes. You see, when information is presented in fiction you have a tendency to accept it as fact just because it’s there on the page before you; you presume we’ve done the research. Think about it. The Andes aren’t in Spain, but you just blithely accepted that they were.

  This story features a woman who works in a bank. She could work anywhere because it’s not really relevant, but having her work in a bank adds a certain je ne sais quoi given what later develops with the banknotes. I can toss in je ne sais quoi because it’s French everyone understands. I don’t speak French. If I made her a French banker I’d really be screwed because even though the story would be in English, you’d expect her to come out with a couple of French words just to make her character seem kosher. A French Jew, in fact. She’s from Montmartrelle, I might say, which shows that I can look up a map of Paris, and then corrupt not only the specific area but the entire arrondissement just enough to make it appear like it’s really based on Montmartre and I’ve changed it subtly because what I’m writing is too damn close to the truth to allow me to use its real name. What I’m writing must be closer to roman à clef than fiction, which also adds a certain frisson which will be further advanced by the pointless and distracting use of italics. All of which will be entirely irrelevant, because she’s not a French Jewess from Montmartrelle, but a banker from Derby.

  The hotel bar is modern with a pale wooden floor. You would think it would stain, but it can be wiped clean with a damp sponge. The ambience is provided by Sky Sports News with the sound high enough to be distracting but low enough not to impart any information, and the screen is just far enough away from where I’m sitting to prevent me from accurately reading the tickertape information at the bottom or the league tables and fixtures at the side. Sky Sports News is thus failing to inform me of anything on several different levels. The situation could be rectified if I simply moved closer, but I’ve become captivated by the Derby woman having a heart to heart with her boyfriend. I never actually see her boyfriend’s face because they’re both hidden by a pillar, and I don’t hear anything he says because he’s quietly spoken, but I hear everything she says because she’s louder, and I’m drawn to her because I was once engaged to a woman who said she came from Derby. I killed that woman because she tried to break it off. When the Jehovah’s Witnesses came to the door shortly afterwards, I still had blood and soil on my hands. They asked to speak to the woman from Derby, with whom they clearly had already established some kind of relationship, or she must have at least hinted at some stage that she might be willing to let them in, which is a dangerous thing to do with Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Mormons, or insurance salesmen, because they’re like multiple dogs with multiple bones, but I told them that I had just murdered her and buried her under the patio. People will accept anything if you present it in the right way. They laughed politely and left, no doubt discussing my unusual sense of humour, and I was able to make a clean getaway, that time, even though I would have been quite intrigued to discover if Jehovah’s Witnesses actually made for good witnesses.

  It takes a lot of work to dig up a patio.

  It’s useful to have a power point nearby.

  I catch a glimpse of the guy leaving. When I peer around the pillar and ask her if she’s okay, because she’s sobbing, she says there was no need for him to storm off like that. For the purposes of this story, she is good looking. If she was some big thunder-thighed porpoise, what follows would feel rather sordid, and you would probably allow it to colour your perceptions of me as a person. It is a universal truth that people prefer to read about attractive people making love, because you can understand the animal passions they might arouse in each other. If she had thick ankles and sagging arms and skin like a peppered mackerel, then it would just read as if I was taking advantage of her despair. So for the purposes of this story she is attractive. We are both, in fact, attractive. In fact, I’m gorgeous. Also, it would probably work better if it was set in Montmartrelle, with the bells of the Eiffel Tower peeling softly in the background, but for the purposes of this story the location will remain firmly here, in this dull city. But don’t worry, she is not another one who ends up under the patio. That would be ridiculous. Her room is on the nineteenth floor of this hotel, up where there are no patios.

  In retrospect, I will remove the bells from the Eiffel Tower. I could only justify them by creating an alternative history for France in general and the Tower in particular, one in which Napoleon wasn’t defeated at Waterloo etc., etc. and I would have to continue you right up to the modern era and actually make her a French banker, but this is a short story and they’re paying by the word, and it’s really not worth the effort.

  I get into her room by telling her the story about the man who won the lottery. It always works. He was an ugly man who very occasionally had ugly girlfriends, which is ano
ther universal truth. But when he won the lottery he decided that now he was entitled to enjoy the company of the most beautiful woman in the world. He found her in a hotel just like this one, I say. He watched her all night, and she too had had a row with her boyfriend, and he too had stormed off leaving her without any money of her own, which was ironic, because she worked in a bank.

  It wasn’t really ironic, but I was playing my game.

  “I work in a bank too!” my lady cries.

  “Really? What a coincidence. Anyway, the woman in my ugly lottery man story wanted to stay out and have a good time, but now she was going to have to go back to her room all by her lonely self and cry. Except, this ugly lottery guy sidles up to her and says, you don’t normally talk to guys like me, and you’ll probably slap me in the face, but today I became richer than I ever thought I could be, and I want to do something really special, I want to make love to you. He told her she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and that he knew that under normal circumstances she would never look even once at him, but he had seen her being abandoned by her man, and observed her checking her purse for money she did not have, and now he wanted to make her an offer. He told her he had thirty thousand pounds in cash in his jacket and that he would give her all of it in exchange for one hour in bed with her.

  Her first instinct, naturally, was to call security, but she hesitated, and she started to think about how awful her boyfriend was to leave her like that, even though she still loved him, and how much thirty thousand was, and how nobody would ever have to know what she’d done for it; she could say that she had won the lottery, and in some ways she had.

  And I pause there and take a sip of my drink.

  “Well, did she do it, did she?”

  The Derby woman is well and truly sucked in.

  I nod.

  “Oh, the little … and did she … did she enjoy it? You know what they say about ugly men. Did she fall in love and …?”