The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

by Maxim Jakubowski

  ~ * ~

  The Mammoth Book of

  BEST BRITISH CRIME 10

  Ed by Maxim Jakubowski

  No copyright 2013 by MadMaxAU eBooks

  ~ * ~

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  THE BONE-HEADED LEAGUE

  Lee Child

  THIS THING OF DARKNESS

  Peter Tremayne

  BIG GUY

  Paul Johnston

  THE CONSPIRATORS

  Christopher Fowler

  SQUEAKY

  Martin Edwards

  FISTS OF DESTINY

  Col Bury

  NAIN ROUGE

  Barbara Nadel

  THE KING OF OUDH’S CURRY

  Amy Myers

  LONDON CALLING

  Ian Ayris and Nick Quantrill

  THE CURIOUS AFFAIR OF THE DEODAND

  Lisa Tuttle

  GOD MOVING OVER THE FACE OF THE WATERS

  Steve Mosby

  STARDUST

  Phil Lovesey

  HE DID NOT ALWAYS SEE HER

  Claire Seeber

  METHOD MURDER

  Simon Brett

  THE MAN WHO TOOK OFF HIS HAT TO THE DRIVER OF THE TRAIN

  Peter Turnbull

  TOGETHER IN ELECTRIC DREAMS

  Carol Anne Davis

  LAST TRAIN FROM DESPRIT

  Richard Godwin

  THE MESSAGE

  Margaret Murphy

  TEA FOR TWO

  Sally Spedding

  SAFE AND SOUND

  Edward Marston

  CONFESSION

  Paula Williams

  TEN BELLS AT ROBBIE’S

  Tony Black

  WILKOLAK

  Nina Allan

  WHO KILLED SKIPPY?

  Paul D. Brazill

  INHERITANCE

  Jane Casey

  A MEMORABLE DAY

  L. C. Tyler

  LAPTOP

  Cath Staincliffe

  BLOOD ON THE GHAT

  Barry Maitland

  VANISHING ACT

  Christine Poulson

  THE BETRAYED

  Roger Busby

  TURNING THE TABLES

  Judith Cutler

  HANDY MAN

  John Harvey

  THE INVISIBLE GUNMAN

  Keith McCarthy

  THE GOLDEN HOUR

  Bernie Crosthwaite

  THE HABIT OF SILENCE

  Ann Cleeves

  THE UNKNOWN CRIME

  Sarah Rayne

  THE LADDER

  Adrian McKinty

  THE HOSTESS

  Joel Lane

  COME AWAY WITH ME

  Stella Duffy

  BEDLAM

  Ken Bruen

  4 A.M., WHEN THE WALLS ARE THINNER

  Alison Littlewood

  THE CASE OF DEATH AND HONEY

  Neil Gaiman

  ~ * ~

  INTRODUCTION

  F

  or ten years now it’s been my privilege to edit this collection of short stories presenting the best of British crime and mystery fiction, and I’ve been afforded the opportunity of publishing over 400 stories by some of the most outstanding writers in our field. Almost all the “big” names amongst our local authors in the British Isles (and beyond, as some have moved to the Antipodes during the course of the series’ career) have been included in our pages: Ian Rankin, Derek Raymond, Val McDermid, Mark Billingham, Simon Kernick, Peter James, Reginald Hill, John Mortimer, Alexander McCall Smith, Andrew Taylor, Anne Perry, Roger Jon Ellory, Liza Cody, amongst others, and it has been a pleasure to feature them.

  Stories published in The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime have won some of the most prestigious awards in the field, including the Crime Writers’ Association Short Story Dagger, the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award and the Anthony Award, while countless others have featured on the respective shortlists.

  The present volume is no exception as it features Peter Turnbull’s Edgar-winning story, Margaret Murphy and Cath Staincliffe’s CWA Dagger Short Story joint winners, and a further two shortlisted tales from diverse awards. In addition, Lee Child makes a welcome new appearance and an old friend of mine, Neil Gaiman, with whom I used to sit on the SF Foundation committee meetings in the years when he wasn’t quite as famous as he is now, also makes his debut, with a delightful Sherlockian tale, miles away from his more customary and splendid worlds of fantasy.

  Other return offenders, and most welcome they are as ever, include Paul Johnston, Edward Marston, Judith Cutler, John Harvey, Amy Myers, Christopher Fowler, Simon Brett, Peter Tremayne, Ken Bruen, Barbara Nadel, Martin Edwards, Barry Maitland, Adrian McKinty, Ann Cleeves, Phil Lovesey, and countless other regulars. But again, one of my greatest reasons for pride in the series is the fact that I’m able to introduce new writers who, in all likelihood, will also become household names in the years to come: take your bow, Nina Allan, Claire Seeber, Joel Lane, Lisa Tuttle (whose excellent writing in other fields is not to be missed), Paula Williams, Roger Busby (a veteran on the comeback trail), Jane Casey, Alison Littlewood and Richard Godwin.

  I hope that in this busy past decade our series has ably demonstrated the strengths and attraction of British crime writing in all its diversity, ranging from the cosy tale of detection to the noir borderlands of mayhem and destruction and the deep nooks and crannies of psychological suspense and terror. Crime writing is a many-sided art in which our writers tempt you in sly and clever ways, offering you puzzles to solve, asking ever-worrying questions about the world we live in but, most of all, providing first-class entertainment along with the thrills.

  As the market for short stories and anthologies changes, its retail profile changes too, and there is, sadly, a strong possibility this may be the final volume in our series (although our primary publishers wish to debut another crime project, which may involve many of our loyal authors, as an Internet/digital replacement). But ten years is a long time, and I rest assured in the knowledge of all the enjoyment these pages have brought to so many readers over that period.

  So, this is also the time to thank many of the people who have been instrumental in bringing these ten volumes to date to you, the readers, in addition of course to all the writers who have made these volumes so exciting. A vote of thanks then to David Shelley, who gave the project its first go-ahead, to Susie Dunlop, and then, at Constable & Robinson, who’ve supported me through thick and thin, Nick Robinson, Peter Duncan and Duncan Proudfoot, and in the USA Kent Carroll, Herman Graf and Christopher Navratil. Without them, we would not have lasted anywhere near so long.

  Every year, our authors have kept on surprising me with the sparkle of their imagination and the fluidity of their writing. This volume is no exception. Expect to be surprised, scared, charmed, intrigued, shocked even.

  And we’ll meet again, at some stage in the future, in a murky field where death, ghosts of the past, villains and detectives, cops and sleuths, fight their ongoing battle; where good and evil are never black or white but come in a hundred shades of grey. There are some pretty black stories here too: Wilkolak, Come Away With Me, The Hostess, etc.

  It’s been a great ride!

  Maxim Jakubowski

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  ~ * ~

  THE BONE-HEADED LEAGUE

  Lee Child

  F

  or once the FBI did the right thing: it sent the Anglophile to England. To London, more specifically, for a three-year posting at the Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Pleasures there were extensive, and duties there were l
ight. Most agents ran background checks on visa applicants and intending immigrants and kept their ears to the ground on international matters, but I liaised with London’s Metropolitan Police when American nationals were involved in local crimes, either as victims or witnesses or perpetrators.

  I loved every minute of it, as I knew I would. I love that kind of work, I love London, I love the British way of life, I love the theatre, the culture, the pubs, the pastimes, the people, the buildings, the Thames, the fog, the rain. Even the soccer. I was expecting it to be all good, and it was all good.

  Until.

  I had spent a damp Wednesday morning in February helping out, as I often did, by rubber-stamping immigration paperwork, and then I was saved by a call from a sergeant at Scotland Yard, asking on behalf of his inspector that I attend a crime scene north of Wigmore Street and south of Regent’s Park. On the 200 block of Baker Street, more specifically, which was enough to send a little jolt through my Anglophile heart, because every Anglophile knows that Sherlock Holmes’s fictional address was 221 b Baker Street. It was quite possible I would be working right underneath the great detective’s fictional window.

  And I was, as well as underneath many other windows too, because the Met’s crime scenes are always fantastically elaborate. We have CSI on television, where they solve everything in forty-three minutes with DNA, and the Met has Scene-of-Crime-Officers, who spend forty-three minutes closing roads and diverting pedestrians, before spending forty-three minutes shrugging themselves into Tyvek bodysuits and Tyvek booties and Tyvek hoods, before spending forty-three minutes stringing Keep-Out tape between lamp posts and fence railings, before spending forty-three minutes erecting white tents and shrouds over anything of any interest whatsoever. The result was that I found a passable imitation of a travelling circus already in situ when I got there.

  There was a cordon, of course, several layers deep, and I got through them all by showing my Department of Justice credentials and by mentioning the inspector’s name, which was Bradley Rose. I found the man himself stumping around on the damp sidewalk some yards south of the largest white tent. He was a short man, but substantial, with no tie and snappy eyeglasses and a shaved head. He was an old-fashioned London thief-taker, softly spoken but at the same time impatient with bullshit, which his own department provided in exasperating quantity.

  He jerked his thumb at the tent and said, “Dead man.”

  I nodded. Obviously I wasn’t surprised. Not even the Met uses tents and Tyvek for purse-snatching.

  He jerked his thumb again and said, “American.”

  I nodded again. I knew Rose was quite capable of working that out from dentistry or clothing or shoes or hairstyle or body shape, but equally I knew he would not have involved me officially without some more definitive indicator. And as if answering the unasked question he pulled two plastic evidence bags from his pocket. One contained an opened-out blue US passport, and the other contained a white business card. He handed both bags to me and jerked his thumb again and said, “From his pockets.”

  I knew better than to touch the evidence itself. I turned the bags this way and that and examined both items through the plastic. The passport photograph showed a sullen man, pale of skin, with hooded eyes that looked both evasive and challenging. I glanced up and Rose said, “It’s probably him. The boat matches the photo, near enough.”

  Boat was a contraction of boat race, which was cockney rhyming slang for face. Apples and pears, stairs, trouble and strife, wife, plates of meat, feet, and so on. I asked, “What killed him?”

  “Knife under the ribs,” Rose said.

  The name on the passport was Ezekiah Hopkins.

  Rose said, “Did you ever hear of a name like that before?” “Hopkins?” I said.

  “No, Ezekiah.”

  I looked up at the windows above me and said, “Yes, I did.”

  The place of birth was recorded as Pennsylvania, USA.

  I gave the bagged passport back to Rose and looked at the business card. It was impossible to be certain without handling it, but it seemed to be a cheap item. Thin stock, no texture, plain print, no embossing. It was the kind of thing anyone can order online for a few pounds a thousand. The legend said Hopkins, Ross & Spaulding, as if there were some kind of partnership of that name. There was no indication of what business they were supposed to be in. There was a phone number on the card, with a 610 area code. Eastern Pennsylvania, but not Philly. The address on the card read simply Lebanon, PA. East of Harrisburg, as I recalled. Correct for the 610 code. I had never been there.

  “Did you call the number?” I asked.

  “That’s your job,” Rose said.

  “No one will answer,” I said. “A buck gets ten it’s phony.”

  Rose gave me a long look and took out his phone. He said, “It better be phony. I don’t have an international calling plan. If someone answers in America it’ll cost me an arm and a leg.” He pressed 001, then 610, then the next seven digits. From six feet away I heard the triumphant little phone company triplet that announced a number that didn’t work. Rose clicked off and gave me the look again.

  “How did you know?” he asked.

  I said, “Omne ignotum pro magnifico.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Latin.”

  “For what?”

  “Every unexplained thing seems magnificent. In other words, a good magician doesn’t reveal his tricks.”

  “You’re a magician now?”

  “I’m an FBI special agent,” I said. I looked up at the windows again. Rose followed my gaze and said, “Yes, I know. Sherlock Holmes lived here.”

  “No, he didn’t,” I said. “He didn’t exist. He was made up. So were these buildings. In Arthur Conan Doyle’s day Baker Street only went up to about number eighty. Or a hundred, perhaps. The rest of it was a country road. Marylebone was a separate little village a mile away.”

  “I was born in Brixton,” Rose said. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “Conan Doyle made up the number two hundred and twenty-one,” I said. “Like movies and TV make up the phone numbers you see on the screen. And the licence plates on the cars. So they don’t cause trouble for real people.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But you’re going to have to let me have the passport. When you’re done with it, I mean. Because it’s probably phony too.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Hammersmith,” he said.

  “Does Hammersmith have a library?”

  “Probably.”

  “Go borrow a book. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The second story. It’s called ‘The Red-Headed League’. Read it tonight, and I’ll come see you in the morning.”

  ~ * ~

  Visiting Scotland Yard is always a pleasure. It’s a slice of history. It’s a slice of the future, too. Scotland Yard is a very modern place these days. Plenty of information technology. Plenty of people using it.

  I found Rose in his office, which was nothing more than open space defended by furniture. Like a kid’s fort. He said, “I got the book but I haven’t read it yet. I’m going to read it now.”

  He pointed to a fat paperback volume on the desk. So to give him time I took Ezekiah Hopkins’s passport back to the Embassy and had it tested. It was a fake, but very good, except for some blunders so obvious they had to be deliberate. Like taunts, or provocations. I got back to Scotland Yard and Rose said, “I read the story.”

  “And?”

  “All those names were in it. Ezekiah Hopkins, and Ross, and Spaulding. And Lebanon, Pennsylvania, too. And Sherlock Holmes said the same Latin you did. He was an educated man, apparently.”

  “And what was the story about?”

  “Decoy,” Rose said. “A ruse was developed whereby a certain Mr Wilson was regularly decoyed away from his legitimate place of business for a
predictable period of time, so that an ongoing illegal task of some sensitivity could be accomplished in his absence.”

  “Very good,” I said. “And what does the story tell us?”

  “Nothing,” Rose said. “Nothing at all. No one was decoying me away from my legitimate place of business. That was my legitimate place of business. I go wherever dead people go.”

  “And?”

  “And if they were trying to decoy me away, they wouldn’t leave clues beforehand, would they? They wouldn’t spell it out for me in advance. I mean, what would be the point of that?”