The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Finding the kitchen empty, I wandered outside. The potato peelings still lay in a little pile in the back field where I had thrown them the night before. Obviously the cat was not hungry.

  Three or four crows picked at the topsoil in the middle of the field, among them a solitary rook. At this distance, I couldn’t see the rook’s white snout and identified it by its shaggy silhouette and awkward-looking gait in relation to its sleeker cousins. The birds were behaving against type since it is the rook that is sociable, while the territoriality of crows normally keeps their numbers down.

  In the distance, the summit of Knocknadobar was still wreathed in low grey cloud. I imagined huge ravens tumbling acrobatically out of sight, their playful nature belied by their grim demeanour.

  Alice was making tea. There was no sign of either Diana or John.

  “I love this house,” she said, running her hand along the grain of the worktop.

  “I know,” I said.

  “No, I really love it,” she said, looking out of the window.

  I asked about the bedrooms and she confirmed they had used our room on all previous visits apart from the last one, when Virginia and Donald had sought to make amends for the confusion by offering Alice and John the upstairs suite.

  Diana appeared dressed in loose flowing clothes and wearing a little make-up that helped to make her eyes shine. Her thick reddish-brown hair had gone wavy, as it always seemed to do when we went away anywhere; she hated it, but I loved it. I got up to give her a kiss and felt her body relax against mine. She needed this holiday. Over her shoulder I watched the crows moving about in a random pattern in the back field.

  We went to a harbour on the north side of the peninsula where John and Alice swam and Diana read a book (as a reaction against creative writing students’ ever lengthening portfolios she had brought a number of very short novels and was currently rereading Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold) while I fished from the rocks, casting out a silver lure and retrieving it, a repeated action that seemed as if it might never end unless I actually caught a fish. This finally happened as Alice and John joined us on the rocks, Alice towelling the ends of her damp hair.

  At first I assumed the lure had merely become snagged in weed, which had happened once every five or six casts. But on this occasion the weed pulled back. The rod tip bent and I felt that unique and familiar conflict – the desire to let the fish have its head and take line from the spool, thus extending the fight, balanced against the need to land the fish before it swam into weed. I managed a few turns on the reel and glimpsed the glimmer of a golden flank turning in the deep water just beyond the rocks. It was a decent size, but beaten. I used the lowest ledge of the rocks to land it and knelt to unhook the lure. I turned to display my catch to the others, who applauded.

  “What is it?” Diana asked.

  “It’s our dinner,” I said. “A pollack. Couple more like this and we’ll eat well.”

  “Really?” Diana’s eyes were wide. Perhaps she had thought I might put the fish back.

  Alice stepped forward.

  “May I?” she said and took the fish from me. She grasped its tail in her right hand and turned it over. In one swift movement, she cracked the top of its head against the nearest rock. I heard Diana gasp and John spoke his wife’s name as if in reproach. Alice shrugged and dropped the dead pollack on the rocks. “Catch some more,” she said, making it sound like a challenge.

  Grilled and served with lemon and steamed green beans, pollack proves a more than adequate substitute for cod or haddock. A New Zealand sauvignon blanc or a pinot grigio will be the perfect accompaniment. At some point as the sky darkens, the house martins and swallows swooping over the back field will be replaced by bats, but you will be unable to identify the moment when this happens, or even if it actually has. The one thing you can be sure of is that the black dots in the background, the murder of crows, will not go away. They may change their configuration, flapping in and out of vision, altering their numbers, but two or three will always remain.

  Scented candles will burn, keeping midges and mosquitoes at bay and causing shadows to flicker over faces. Intellectual arguments will ripple back and forth as the precise meanings of words will be debated, assumptions about the nature of existence questioned. Doubts, fears, uncertainties at the back of your mind will fade and retreat, but not quite disappear.

  Conversation will turn, as usual, to books, to art, to films. Someone will talk about a black and white Czech film they have recently seen, made in 1968 but set in the 1930s. They will say it deserves to be better known. Someone else will confess to not liking subtitles. Another person will say that The Third Man is their favourite film of all time and you will remember the scene in the Ferris wheel, Harry Lime talking to Holly Martins, describing the people below as dots and asking him if he would really feel any pity if one of them stopped moving for ever.

  The four of us in one car, we drove past the harbour where I had caught the pollack and on uphill towards the forest. We passed a rustle of reed buntings dispersing from their perch on a barbed-wire fence. Cows chewed on the long grass, their huge jaws grinding and crushing and it suddenly hit me. Cows. Cattle. The cattle like them.

  “What are you smiling at?” Diana asked.

  I grinned at her. “I’ll tell you later.”

  When the road petered out in a pine wood, we left the car and threaded our way between the trees, startling a jay, which clattered away with a telltale flash of white rump.

  Diana’s question seemed to come out of nowhere.

  “Don’t you miss being here with your other friends?” she said. “Only, because you normally come with them.”

  I noticed John look at Alice, who merely grunted and made a dismissive gesture with her hand.

  Leaving the wood, we tramped through bracken to the unmarked summit of Slievagh. Soon after we began our descent on the seaward side, I noticed a strange black disc on the surface of the promontory ahead of us. It reminded me of the black rubber mat a bowls player will drop on the green before starting to play. Because of the changing angle of slope and the lack of other topographical features, it was difficult to tell the size. I was walking with Diana; Alice and John had pulled ahead. We exchanged shrugs, puzzled looks.

  It soon became obvious it was a hole, but how deep? Was it merely the result of peat cutting? Or a landslip? It was too big for a pot hole. Once we reached the plateau, the narrow angle meant the hole resembled a sheet of water sitting on the grass. Alice and John had reached the edge and were looking down. It took Diana and me a minute or so to join them and finally get a look over the edge.

  “It’s a long way down,” Diana said.

  Alice and John smiled.

  “There’s an easier way down to the sea over there,” John joked, pointing to where the cliff edge and a series of huge boulders appeared to offer a reasonably easy climb down to the lower rocky ledges on to which the waves could be heard perpetually pounding. Diana left the edge of the hole and walked towards the boulders. John went with her.

  I looked at Alice. We were both standing a few feet from the edge and several yards apart. Taking great care I knelt down, then eased myself on to my front so that I could see right over the edge. Alice followed suit. As I looked down at the waves sloshing against the rocks more than a hundred feet below, I could feel my heart beating against the cropped turf. I looked at the sheer rock face on the far side of the hole dotted with patches of grass that clung to the most negligible of ledges, running on a diagonal towards the bottom. Half-way up, my eye was drawn to the down-turned bright-red beak of a blue-black bird bigger than a jackdaw but smaller than a crow that was perched on one of the ledges. I caught my breath and looked up at Alice to see if she had seen it. She was looking at me and her scarlet lips formed a curve, but you couldn’t really call it a smile.

  DRIVEN

  Ian Rankin

  I’M THE ONE you all hate, the one you’ve been hearing and reading about. I was a
hero for a short time, but now I’m the villain. Well, not the villain. Do you want to hear my side of the story? I have this need to tell someone what happened and why it happened. Here’s the truth of it: I was brought up to believe in the sanctity of life, and this has been my downfall.

  I am a son of the manse. A curious phrase; it seems to be used by the media as shorthand of some kind. But it happens also to be true. My father was a Church of Scotland minister in a career spanning nearly forty years. He’d known my mother since primary school. I was their only child. In my late teens, I calculated that impregnation (a word my father would probably have used) probably took place on their Isle of Mull honeymoon. Early July they were married (by my grandfather, also a kirk minister), and I entered the world on April 1st the following year. A hard birth, according to family legend, which may explain the lack of brothers and sisters. My mother told me once that she feared I’d been stillborn, so quiet was I. Even when the doctor slapped my backside, I merely frowned and gave a pout (family legend again).

  “I knew right then, you’d grow up quiet,” my mother would say. Well, she was right. I studied hard at school, did as little sport as possible, and preferred the library to the playground. At home, my father’s den became my refuge. He’d collected thousands upon thousands of books, and started me with parables and other “wisdom stories”, including the Fables of Aesop. I grew up, quite literally unable to hurt a fly. I would open windows to release them. I would lift worms from the baking summer paths and make a burrow for them with a finger-poke of the nearest soil, covering them over to shield them from the sun. I turned down my parents’ offer of pets, aware that everything had to die and that I would miss them terribly when the time came. Nobody ever called me “odd”; not until very recently. But then you know all about that, don’t you?

  What you can’t know is that I thought my upbringing normal and untroubling, and still do. After school, there was university, and after university a lengthy period of speculation as to what should come next. Lecturing appealed, but I was torn between Comparative Religion and Philosophy. I could train for “the cloth”, but felt two generations of church service was perhaps enough. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God (though I had doubts, as many young people do); it was more a feeling that I would be better suited elsewhere. My father had taken to his bed, in thrall to the cancer which had slumbered inside him for years. My mother was strong, and then not so strong. I helped as best I could – shopping, cleaning and cooking. Between chores, I would retire to the den – it had become mine by default – and continue my studies. I learned at long last to drive, so as to be able to visit the supermarket, loading the car with porage oats, smoked fish and loose-leaf tea, tonic water, washing-powder and soap. Once a week I wrote out the shopping-list. Other days, I stayed home. Sometimes we would manoeuvre my father into the walled garden, a rug tucked around him, the transistor radio close to his ear. My mother would pretend to weed, so he couldn’t see she wasn’t able.

  Then the day came when he asked me to kill him.

  The bed had been moved downstairs, into the sitting room. There was a commode in one corner. Some furniture had been removed from the room, meaning the hallway was more cluttered than before. A few of his old congregation still visited, though my father was loath to let them witness his deterioration.

  “Still, some people find it necessary,” he told me. “It strengthens them to see others weaken.”

  “But it’s kindness, too, surely,” I answered. He merely smiled. It was a few days after this that, having just accepted another small beaker of the green opiate mixture, he said he was more than ready to die. I was seated on the edge of the bed, and reached out to take his hand. The skin was like rice-paper.

  “That stuff you keep giving me – don’t think I don’t know what it is. Liquid morphine. A couple of glassfuls would probably do the job.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “If you love me, you will.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You want to see me get worse?”

  “There’s always hope.”

  He gave a dry chuckle at that. Then, after a period of silence: “Best not say anything to Mother.” I know now what I should have said to him: it’s your fault I’m like this. You made me this way.

  It took him another six weeks to die. Three months after his funeral, my mother followed him. They left me the manse, having bought it from the Church fifteen years before. The parish had moved the new minister and his young family into a new-build bungalow. After a time, I was forgotten about. My parents’ old friends and parishioners stopped visiting. I think I made them feel awkward. They looked around the rooms and hallway, as if on the lookout for expected changes of décor or ornament. The bed, freshly made, was still downstairs. The commode was dusted weekly. The lawn grew wild, the beds went unweeded. But curtains were changed and washed seasonally. The kitchen gleamed. I ate sometimes at my father’s old desk, a book propped open in front of me.

  The years passed.

  I became a keener driver – maps plotting my course into the countryside around the city, then further afield – west to Ullapool, north to the Black Isle. One daring long weekend, I travelled by ferry from Rosyth to the continent. I ate mussels and rich chocolate, but preferred home. Books travelled with me. I became adept at finding cheap editions in Edinburgh’s various secondhand shops. Every now and then I would see a job advertised in the newspaper, and would send off for the application form. I never got round to returning them. My life was busy enough and fulfilling. I was reading Aristophanes and Pliny, Stendhal and Chekhov. I listened to my parents’ records and tapes – Bach, Gesualdo, Vivaldi, Sidney Bechet. In the attic, I discovered a reel-to-reel deck with a box of tapes my father had recorded from the radio – concerts and comedy shows. I preferred the former, but concentrated fiercely on the latter. Laughter could be disconcerting.

  Oh, God.

  I say “Oh, God” because it’s now time to talk about him. No getting around it; pointless to tell you any more about my shopping trips, tastes in music and books … All of it, pointless. My life has been condensed. For all of you, it begins with the moment I met him. Everything that I was up to that point you’ve reduced to words like “bachelor” and “loner”, and phrases like “son of the manse”. I hope I’ve shown these to be reductive. I’m not excusing myself; I feel my actions merit no apology. It was a country road, that’s all. Not too far out of town, just beyond the bypass. A winding lane, edged with hedgerows. The sun was low in the sky, but off to one side. Then a bend in the road. Dvorak on Radio Three. A fence, with trees beyond it. Smoke, but not very much of it. A car, concertinaed against one of the largest trunks. Tyre-marks showing where it had torn through the fence.

  I pulled to a stop, but only once I was safely past the bend. Flashers on, and then I ran back. A blue car, leaking petrol, its engine exposed. Windscreen intact, but frosted with cracks. Just the one figure inside. A man in the driving seat. He was conscious and moaning, head rolling. The airbag had worked. I managed to yank open his door. It made an ugly grating sound. He was not wearing the seatbelt.

  “Are you all right?”

  It was an effort to pull him from the wreck. He kept saying the word “No” over and over.

  “You’ll be okay,” I assured him.

  As I hauled him to safety, hugging him to me, his face was close to mine. He half-turned his head. I could feel his breath on my cheek. There was warm blood running from a wound in his scalp.

  “Don’t,” he said. And then: “I’ll do it again.”

  I realized almost immediately what he meant. No accident, but an attempt at suicide. Seatbelt unfastened, picking up speed as the bend came into view …

  “No, you won’t,” I told him.

  “Just leave me.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I believe in the sanctity of life.”

  I had laid him on the ground, a bed of leaves beneat
h. At first I took his spasm for a seizure of some kind, but he was laughing.

  Laughing.

  “That’s a good one,” he was able to say at last, blood bubbling from the corners of his mouth. Another car had stopped. I walked towards it, hoping the driver would own a mobile phone. There was an explosion of hot air from behind me. The crashed car was on fire. The heat was bearable. The injured man, I realized, had craned his neck so he could watch me rather than the explosion. His shoulders were still shaking. A young couple had emerged from their open topped sports car. I felt sure they would own phones; indeed, led lives which felt them necessary.

  “You all right, pal?” the male said. He was wearing an earring. I nodded. His girlfriend was wide-eyed.

  “Another minute, he’d’ve been toast,” she commented. Then, fixing her eyes on me: “You’re a hero.”

  A hero?

  The description would send me to the den that night, to consult any books I could find. I didn’t feel like I’d committed an act of bravery. I didn’t feel “heroic”. Heroes were for wartime, or belonged to the realm of mythology. I wished my father were still alive. We could have discussed the notion and its implications.

  A police car had arrived first at the crash site, followed a few minutes later by the paramedics. The driver was sitting up by this time, arms wrapped around his chest. He was in his thirties, around the same age as me. His hair was thick, dark, and wavy, with just a few glints of grey. It had been a couple of days since he’d shaved. “Swarthy” was the description that came to mind. His eyes had dark rings around them. Tufts of chest-hair welled up from beneath his open-necked shirt. His arms were hairy, too. Even when I wasn’t looking at him, I sensed he was keeping a careful eye on me. He had been holding a white handkerchief – my handkerchief – to his scalp-wound.