The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “He was trying to kill himself,” I told one of the policemen. “That’s a crime, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “And we only prosecute the failures.” I think he meant this light-heartedly, but I spent part of the evening mulling his words over, reading meaning into them.

  “Did he say as much?” he asked me. I nodded. But later that night a different policeman came to my door with what he termed “a few follow-up questions”. I learned that the man whose life I had saved was called Donald Thorpe, and that he was denying being suicidal. It was “just an accident”, caused by his lack of acquaintance with the route and some mulchy leaves on the road surface.

  “But he told me,” I insisted. “He said he would do it again.”

  The officer stared at me. His hands were in his pockets. Previously, he’d seemed interested only in his surroundings, but now he asked me if I lived alone. When I nodded, he asked if the house had been in my family a long time.

  “It has,” I agreed.

  “It’s almost like a museum,” he commented, looking around him again. “You could open it to the public.” I decided to ignore this. “Gashes and bruises, maybe some pelvic damage and a rib that’ll cause him gyp.” He turned his attention back to me. “He was dazed when you reached him; might explain what you heard him say.”

  I made no reply.

  “Papers’ll be after you for a picture.”

  “Why?”

  “They like the occasional feel-good story. You’re a hero, Mr Jamieson.”

  “I’m not,” I was quick to correct him. “I only did what anyone would do.”

  “Well, you were there. And that’s all that matters.”

  Less than an hour after he left, the first reporter arrived. I started to let him into the house, but then thought better of it – which is why the word “recluse” appeared in his third or fourth version of the story.

  “Just tell the readers what happened,” he explained. “In your own words.”

  “Who else’s would I use?”

  He laughed as though I’d made a joke. He was holding a tiny recording device, holding it quite close to my mouth. But he was looking past me at the hall’s “cramped furniture and outdated floral wallpaper” (as he himself put it later). I told him the story anyway, deciding to leave out the suicide bit.

  “The other couple who stopped,” he said, “they saw you drag the victim clear as the car burst into flames … ”

  “That’s not quite how it happened.”

  But it was how he wrote the story up. It didn’t matter that I’d told his recorder differently. I became the CRASH INFERNO HERO. When his photographer arrived on my doorstep, he asked me if I had any burns to my hands or arms, any blood-stained or charred clothing. I had already showered and changed into fresh clothes, so I shook my head. The bloodied handkerchief, discarded when the medics had arrived on the scene, was steeping in the sink.

  “Any chance we can get a shot of you at the site?” he then asked. But he had second thoughts. “Car’s probably already been towed … ” He rubbed at the line of his jaw. “The hospital,” he decided. “Bedside, how would that be?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  How could I tell him? Meeting Thorpe, the first question I would need to ask would be: why did you lie? Why keep the suicide attempt a secret? And then: will you do it again? (Of course, I would meet Thorpe again, at his hospital bed. But that was for later.)

  After further negotiation, the photographer settled for me on my doorstep, then standing beside my car, arms folded.

  “Don’t you feel a bit of pride?” he asked. “You’re a bloody lifesaver. What about a smile to go with it?”

  I lost count of the number of pictures he took – well over twenty. And as he was finishing, another photographer arrived, five minutes ahead of his reporter. And so it went for much of the rest of the night. Even the neighbours became curious and emerged from their homes, to be collared and interviewed by the press.

  Very quiet … private income … looked after both parents up to their death … no girlfriend … goes out in his car sometimes …

  The Reluctant Hero.

  Quick-Thinking Quiet Man.

  Brave and Bashful.

  Local Hero.

  This last they used most often over the next few days. Faces I hadn’t seen for a while came calling – members of my father’s congregation, the ones who’d visited him during his illness. A neighbour over the back called to me one day and passed a home-baked cake across the fence. There were more requests from the media for bedside photos. Just a quick handshake. I appeared on two radio shows, and there was even talk of a civic reception, some sort of bravery award or medal. And then, just when it seemed to be quieting down, a call from the police.

  “He’d like to see you. I said we’d pass on the message.”

  Meaning Robert Thorpe; Robert Thorpe wanted to see me.

  “But why?”

  “To say thanks, I suppose.”

  “I don’t need him to say thanks.” But then again, maybe I did. Maybe in saving his life I’d convinced him that life itself was worth living. And wouldn’t it be heartening to hear him say as much?

  So I went.

  And I wonder now – was that my fatal mistake?

  There were only a couple of photographers this time. They were waiting in the corridor outside Thorpe’s ward. They had found a young nurse to stand next to the bed. She was to pretend to be changing a drip. I’d be shaking hands with the man I’d rescued. This was all being explained as we walked into the ward. Thorpe was sitting up. Part of his hair had been shaved, and the black stitches in his scalp looked fierce.

  “Are you Mr Jamieson?” he asked, holding out a hand. I could only nod that I was. He gripped my hand and the cameras clicked. “As I keep telling them, I don’t remember too much.”

  “But you’re all right?”

  “So the scan says.”

  “Just one more, please, gentlemen,” one photographer was saying.

  “How about a smile, Mr Jamieson?” asked the other.

  “And if our glamorous assistant could lean a little further in towards the patient … ” (He meant the nurse, of course.)

  Then the other photographer took a call on his phone and handed it to me. “Newsroom want a word.”

  More questions, all about how I felt and what had been said to me. Then it was Thorpe’s turn to speak.

  “Saved my life, so I’m told … eternally grateful to him … don’t know how I’ll repay … It’s all a bit of a blur … ”

  I realized I was drifting towards the swing-doors, keen to be leaving. But Thorpe waved for me to stay. When he handed the photographer’s phone back, he asked if he and I could be left alone for a minute. One of the photographers was asking the nurse for her name and a contact number as they left. There was a chair next to the bed, so I sat down.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t bring you anything.” There was nothing on the bedside cabinet except a plastic jug of water and a beaker. No cards from family, no flowers or anything. Thorpe just shrugged.

  “They’re letting me out tomorrow.”

  “You’ll be glad to get home.”

  He gave a low chuckle, reminding me of the crash scene. His eyes were boring into mine.

  “‘ … the sanctity of human life’.”

  “You remember that much then?”

  “I remember everything, Mr Jamieson.”

  I was silent for a moment. I wanted some of the water in the jug, but couldn’t bring myself to ask.

  “Go on,” he said with a smile. “You’re dying to ask.”

  “You were trying to kill yourself.” It was a statement rather than a question.

  “Is that what you think?”

  “You didn’t want to be saved. You said you’d do it again.”

  “Do what, Mr Jamieson?”

  “Kill yourself.”

  “Is that what you told the police?�
��

  I swallowed and licked my lips. I could feel sweat on my forehead. The ward was stifling. Thorpe gave a shrug.

  “Doesn’t matter anyway.”

  “Are you going to do it again?”

  “I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “So it sunk in then?”

  “What?”

  “What I said to you about the sanctity of life.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  I nodded again. Thorpe closed his eyes slowly.

  “Go home, Jamieson. Enjoy it while you can.”

  “Enjoy what exactly?”

  The eyes opened a little. “Everything,” he whispered. To my ears, it seemed louder than any explosion.

  You know what happened next.

  Thorpe walked out of the hospital and disappeared. It was a couple of days before neighbours began to complain of a smell in the tenement stairwell. Police broke down the door on the second floor and found two bloodstained corpses. Ten days they’d been there. Both men were unemployed. They shared with a third, and he was missing. His name was Robert Thorpe. The car he’d crashed had belonged to one of the two. There were signs in the living room that a card game had been underway. Poker, according to reports. Cigarette-butts littered the carpet. They had been emptied from one of the murder weapons – a solid glass ashtray. It had been reduced to fragments by the force of impact against the first victim’s skull. Three empty bottles of vodka, traces of cannabis, the remains of a dozen cans of super-strength lager … The second victim had attempted escape but made it only as far as the hallway. He had been punched, kicked and bludgeoned in what the media kept referring to as a “sustained and horrific assault”, quoting one of the police officers.

  Questions were asked. Why had police not checked on the flat in the aftermath of the crash? Why had none of the neighbours come forward earlier? What did it say about the state of our society that no one had intervened?

  And why had Richard Jamieson felt it necessary to save the killer’s life?

  THE MONSTER WHO LIVED – that was the headline I’ll always remember. Thorpe was pictured in his hospital bed, shaking my hand. It seemed to me that the pretty nurse should have been in the shot, but she wasn’t. I was aware that software existed which could alter photographs. I wished they’d used it on me instead of her, but of course I was the subject of their follow-up stories. The journalists were back at my door. They wanted to know if I felt anger, embarrassment, even shame.

  “Aren’t you ashamed, Mr Jamieson?”

  “Shouldn’t he have been left to die?”

  “Don’t you regret …?”

  “Didn’t he say anything …?”

  I stopped answering the door. I left the house only in the middle of the night, shopping at the 24-hour supermarket on Chesser Avenue. I kept the curtains closed in the den. I ate from tins and drank from cans. I even let the bin go uncollected, so they couldn’t accost me as I walked up the path with it to the pavement.

  Did I feel angry? No, not really. But I better understood the situation a few days later when he killed again. A shopkeeper this time, the event caught on the security camera which had been installed to deter shoplifters. It had failed to deter Thorpe. His haul consisted of cigarettes, alcohol and cash from the till. The victim left behind a wife and five children. My doorbell rang and rang. The voices called questions through the letter-box. One of them pretended to be a postman with a delivery. I opened the door.

  “He’s killed again, Mr Jamieson. Do you have anything to say to the grieving widow? She wouldn’t be a widow if you’d … ”

  I slammed the door shut, but could still hear his voice.

  Your father was a man of the church … your grandfather, too … how would they feel, Mr Jamieson?

  Did I feel regret?

  Did I feel shame?

  Yes, yes, yes. Most definitely yes. And anger, too, eventually, as the meaning of his words sunk in. He hadn’t wanted to be saved because he’d known he would do it again – as in kill again. Don’t … I’ll do it again … And I had allowed this to happen. I had allowed the monster to live.

  The TV and radio kept me up to date with the manhunt. Police questioned me several times. Could I shed any light? I explained it to them as best I could. One of the officers was the same man who’d come to my house that night with the follow-up questions, the one who had doubted Thorpe’s attempted suicide. He kept shifting in his chair, as if he could not get comfortable. His face was pale. I knew from the media that the police were under a good deal of pressure. They had let Thorpe go. They hadn’t checked his flat. They hadn’t noticed that the blood on his clothes belonged to more than one person. They shared a certain culpability with me in the minds of the press.

  “If only you’d left him to die,” the officer said as he paused on my doorstep.

  “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  “Turns out you were wrong, Mr Jamieson.”

  Wrong? But when I rescued him, he was still an innocent man, his crimes a secret. He was victim rather than monster, and I was the hero of the hour, wasn’t I?

  Wasn’t I?

  Well, wasn’t I?

  I turned to my father’s library again in search of answers, but found too little comfort. There were books about the nature of evil and the more complex nature of good. Why do we do good deeds? Is it in our nature, or does communality dictate that what is best for others is also likely to be of benefit to us? Do people become bad, or are they born that way? Robert Thorpe’s life was picked over in the days that followed. His father had been a domineering drunk, his mother addicted to painkillers. There was no evidence that he had been abused as a child, but he had grown up an outsider. His spells of employment were short and various. Girlfriends came and went. One opened her heart to a doubtless generous tabloid. He watched violent films. He liked loud rock music. He was “a bit of an anarchist”. Photos were printed, showing the trajectory of the killer’s life. A blurry child, clutching a funfair ice-cream. A teenager in sunglasses, no longer smiling for the camera. A man at a party, cigarette drooping from his mouth, sprawled across a sofa with a woman in his arms (her face softwared out, to preserve anonymity).

  Lucky her.

  The manhunt continued, but the media interest began to wane. There were rumours that Thorpe could have disguised himself and headed to Northern Ireland – no need of a passport. From there, it would have been straightforward to cross to Ireland proper. The Western Isles was another possibility. Or far to the south, melting into Manchester, Birmingham, or London. His photo was on show at every mainline station, and in shop windows and at bus stops. He had taken around three hundred pounds from the shopkeeper. It was only a matter of time before he struck again.

  I started to emerge from my house, as a butterfly from its chrysalis. The neighbours showed little interest. There were no reporters waiting kerbside. But everywhere I went, Thorpe’s eyes stared back at me from all those wanted posters. I felt I would never be free of him. I dreamed often of crashed cars, mangled corpses, stained carpets, shattered ashtrays. I reached into my parents’ drinks cabinet for bottles of whisky and sherry, but found both foul beyond words. One night, I decided to go for a drive. I hadn’t been out of the city since the evening of the crash. I found myself steering the same route, slowing at that curve in the road, headlights picking out the remaining scraps of police tape. From a distance, there was no other sign that anything had happened here. I drove on, stopping at the all-night supermarket on my way back into the city.

  Of course he was waiting for me, but I couldn’t know that. I parked the car in the driveway. I lifted out the bag of shopping. I unlocked the door of the house. I closed it after me, placing the bunch of keys on the table in the hall, the same way my father and mother would have done. There was a draught, meaning an open window. But I still wasn’t thinking as I carried the shopping into the kitchen. Glass crunched underfoot. There was glass in the sink, too, and spr
ead across the worktop. The window frame was gaping. I put down the shopping and checked the den. Someone had raided the drinks cabinet. I switched on the light in the living room. He was lying on my father’s bed. The whisky bottle was on the floor next to him, emptied. He had his hands behind his head. He had twisted his body to face the doorway.

  “Hello again,” he said.

  “What do you think you’re doing here?”

  He had removed the stitches from his scalp. The wound hadn’t quite healed. There was a baseball-cap resting on his chest. He placed it to one side as he began to swing his legs over the side of the bed.

  “I missed you,” he said. “This where you sleep?”

  “I sleep upstairs.”

  “That’s what I reckoned. Took a look around, hope you don’t mind.”

  “The window’s broken.”

  “Windows can be fixed, Richard.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Your old man’s still listed in the phone book – Reverend Jamieson.” Thorpe wagged a finger. “Time you did something about that.”

  “You’ve been killing people.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Why?”

  There was that smile again, as if he knew some joke no one else in the world did. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said, “when they took me to hospital, cleaned me up and had me checked. And the cops, asking me questions but never quite the right questions. Every time those doors swung open, I reckoned I was done for. But they patched me up and then they let me walk right out of there.” He was pointing towards the doorway. He was still sitting on the edge of the bed, and it seemed to me that he was offering me the chance to escape, indicating the direction I should take. But I was too busy listening to his story.

  “It struck me then,” he went on, “that I could do it again.”

  “Kill, you mean?”

  He nodded, eyes fixed on mine. “Again and again and again. So tell me, Mr Richard Jamieson, how does that square with your ‘sanctity of life’? What does the Bible tell you about that, eh?”