Christmas came and went, term ended and began again.
McCann was no comfort but Donald found himself spending a lot of time with him in Lavery’s or the Bot, enjoying increasingly frequent liquid lunches.
At the gym he noticed now that Peter Finn was cool to him at the door. On a miserable Tuesday morning he played a man called Jennings, lost in straight games and found that he was now last on the ladder. He almost relished this final embarrassment. Now there was no place lower to go.
He slipped upstairs to the cafeteria, called Susan and asked if she could get a lift back to Carrick with one of her friends. He sat, nursing a coffee, watching the sky darken and the lights come on street by street, Sandy Row, the Shankill, the Falls, the illumination moving north to the old shipyards and then down around the university and the City Hospital. In Belfast tonight there would be violence and love and passion and death. People in the hospital would be passing away from cancer, accidents, heart disease, and in other wards dozens of babies were being born. New lives for old.
“It really isn’t that important, you know, old man,” he said to himself.
“What isn’t important?”
He turned. It was Mr Jones, his student from last term’s course on the Elizabethans. He was holding a book called Automotive Engineering Mistakes.
“Oh, I was just talking to myself. Join me. Have a seat. What on Earth are you reading?”
Jones sat. “It’s about design faults in cars. Not just the Ford Pinto. Some pretty famous cars. Even brilliant designers make mistakes.”
He got Jones a coffee.
Something McCann had once said came floating back into Donald’s mind.
“I heard those Volkswagen Microbuses are a death trap,” he said.
Jones grinned. “Oh, yeah! No crumple zone at the front to absorb a crash and the exhaust pipe runs the full length of the floor...oh, boy, you get two holes in the rust and your vehicle’s filled with carbon monoxide. Death trap isn’t the...”
But Donald was no longer listening.
It would be the easiest thing in the world.
Punch a hole through the floor and the exhaust.
Punch a hole. Let fate take over. If nothing happened, nothing happened. But if Sinya got into an unfortunate accident in the long drive from Belfast to Larne, well, it wouldn’t really be Donald’s fault. It wouldn’t be murder, or attempted murder. It was a design flaw in the vehicle, he was helping nature take its course.
He said goodnight to Jones, ran six flights to the ground floor and out into the wet, cold January darkness.
He knew that it would have to be now. Tonight. If he thought about it, he wouldn’t do it at all. He conscience would kick in. His middle-class sensibility. His cowardice.
It would have to be now or never.
He reached the car park. It was six o’clock. Most of the vehicles had gone but the putrid orange Volkswagen was still there. Sinya often worked late. Trying to get ahead no doubt, Donald thought spitefully. He went to his Volvo, rummaged in the boot and found a torch and his toolkit. He locked the boot and walked to the Volkswagen.
“I’m not going to do this, it’s not me,” he said to himself.
He checked that the coast was clear. No one was within a hundred yards.
“I don’t even know what to do. Should have asked Jones for details. Doesn’t matter, I’m not going to do anything. I’m not a killer. What I will do is take a look underneath, just to see if it’s possible.”
He scanned the car park again, turned on the torch, squatted on the wet tarmac and looked under the VW. A great hulking exhaust pipe ran almost all the way from the front of the cabin to the back of the car. The pipe was rusted, the chassis was rusted. A few taps from a screwdriver might do the trick...
He stood, checked the car park one more time.
No one.
He was calm.
He lay back down again.
In five minutes it was done.
He had punched a hole in the top of the exhaust pipe and another through to the cabin. He had connected the two holes with a paper coffee cup he had found lying around - squeezing the cup into a tube. If an accident did occur the cup would burn in the fire, and if it didn’t it was an innocent enough thing to find stuck under your car.
He wiped himself down, got in his car, sped to the Crown Bar, had two pints of Guinness to calm his nerves and drove home.
In his study he had a double vodka and a cognac but he couldn’t sleep.
Susan went to bed and he checked the radio for reports of road accidents, deaths.
He really didn’t want Sinya to die. If the poor man was injured that would be enough. Then Donald could resume his march back up the squash ladder and get his life back in order. Get to the top, stop drinking with McCann, start writing his book, have that talk with Susan about kids again...
Finally he drifted off to sleep on the living-room sofa at about three. He woke before the dawn in the midst of a nightmare. Sinya’s Volkswagen had plunged off the cliff at the Bla Hole just outside Whitehead. Two hundred feet straight down on to the rocks below. The car had smashed and it was assumed to be an accident but the police had found a paper cup wedged in the exhaust. The murderer had left fingerprints all over it.
Five years earlier Donald had been arrested for cannabis possession at Sussex University. His prints were in the database.
“Oh my God,” he said.
He turned on the radio, found the traffic report: a road accident in Omagh, another in County Down, nothing so far on the Belfast-Larne Road.
He paced the living room. What madness had overtaken him? To try to kill a man over something so preposterous as a squash ladder? He had obviously taken leave of his senses. That’s what he would do at the trial. He’d plead temporary insanity.
Insane was the right word. Macbeth crazy. Lear crazy.
Susan woke and he was such a mess that she drove him to Belfast.
He thanked her and ran to the car park.
The Volkswagen wasn’t there.
“Oh, Christ,” he said to himself.
He cancelled his lecture, went to his office and waited for the telephone to ring. He imagined the phone ringing, the resulting brief conversation:
“Is that Dr Bryant?
“Yes.”
“This is Detective McGuirk, we’d like to come over and ask you a few questions if that would be okay...”
He found an ancient packet of cigarettes, lit one and sat in his onyx Eclipse Ergonomic Operator Chair waiting. The phone lurked in its cradle...
There was a knock at the door but it was only McCann come by to see if he wanted to go for lunch. He said he wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t untrue. He felt sick to his stomach. McCann left. He closed the door and turned the light off. He sat there in the dark. Perhaps they wouldn’t ring him. The first he would know about it would be them marching into his office with guns drawn.
He wouldn’t go with them. He wouldn’t let them take him. His office was on the sixth floor. The window. A brief fall through the damp air. A crash. And then ... nothingness.
He waited.
Waited.
He sank beneath his desk and curled foetally on the floor.
The phone rang.
“Dr Bryant?”
“Sinya?”
“Yes.”
It was Sinya. He was alive!
“Yes?” Donald managed.
“Dr Bryant, Professor Millin cancelled with me today and I was wondering if you could squeeze in a quick game?”
“A game? A squash game? Yes, yes, of course, I’ll be right over.”
He sprinted the stairs.
Sinya was already in the court warming the ball.
He waved to him through the glass, ran to the locker room, changed into his gear and ran back to the court without stretching or getting a drink of water.
He didn’t care how suspicious or unsubtle he sounded
. He had to know.
“I didn’t see your car this morning. You’re always in first,” Donald said.
Sinya grimaced. “That thing tried to kill me. I was halfway home last night and I realized the whole car was stinking of exhaust fumes. I pulled over just before Whitehead. Would you believe it? The whole exhaust is rusted away next to nothing and a paper cup had blown in there and gotten stuck between the exhaust and the car. I left it at the garage in Whitehead and got a taxi home. I suppose I’ll have to get it fixed.”
Donald grinned with relief.
Emotions were cascading through him: relief, happiness, gratitude.
He would inform Susan tonight that she should go off the pill. He would start going to that soup kitchen again. He would give to charity. He would really get cracking on the book.
This would be his last squash game ever.
“I have really screwed up my priorities, darling,” he’d tell Susan. “That silly squash ladder! Something as banal as that. I’m going to be more Zen. Live in the present, live in reality. Real things. You, me, life, stuff like that. It’s corny but, well, I’ve had a moment of clarity. It’s about perspective. It all seems so bloody stupid now. God. I mean can you believe how obsessed I was?”
Sinya hit him a few practice shots which he returned with ease.
“Well, I’m sorry about your car, old chap, but I think you can afford a new vehicle with the money they’re paying you in computers. And Larne isn’t the priciest place in the world to live. You should be more like me. Enjoy life. Live for the moment. Get yourself a Merc or a Beemer. You deserve it,” Donald said.
Sinya laughed. “Are you kidding? The university only gives me three hundred a week, you know. A BMW on my wages?”
“Three hundred a week? What are you talking about? A junior lecturer makes twenty-five grand a year. It’s more in computers, I’m sure.”
Sinya grinned. “I’m not a lecturer. I’m a technician in the computer department. I fix the machines, man. Hardware, software, you name it.”
Donald gasped but said nothing.
The game began and Sinya took a mere thirty-five minutes to beat him.
They showered, talked about the weather, shook hands, parted ways.
Donald walked to the English department building.
No one knew, no one had to know.
When he got to his office he called Millin and told him. Millin was outraged.
“Doesn’t the fellow know that the ladder is only open to faculty? My God, the effrontery.”
“You’ll do something about it?”
“Of course I will. Right away. I’ll scrub the last two months’ results and put it back to the way it was at the beginning of December.”
Donald hung up the phone. Leaned back in his chair.
Grey sky.
Black sky.
Night.
Stars.
In the car Susan talked about the soup kitchen, birth control. He avoided giving direct answers. They ate separate microwaved meals from Marks & Spencer.
When he got into work the next morning he went straight to the gym. V. M. Sinya’s name had disappeared and he, Dr D. Bryant, was again in the number one spot, for the first time in nearly two months.
“The once and future king,” Peter said at reception, startling him.
“Yes,” he attempted to reply, but his throat was dry and no sound came.
<
THE HOSTESS
Joel Lane
N
ot long after I moved to Birmingham in the 1980s, a family feud led to one of the worst crimes in my experience. It happened in Digbeth, an old industrial district now taken over by warehouses and wholesale businesses. The narrow backstreets and rotting factories hid a multitude of stolen goods. But most of the actual crimes happened elsewhere. The Digbeth police station was busier with drunks fighting in the Barrel Organ and the Railway Tavern than with professional villains.
For two decades, the O’Kane family had been significant players in the black economy of Digbeth. They were a family of craftsmen: one could hide the pieces of a stolen car in a dozen vehicles; another could work stolen gold and silver into brand new jewellery. Three of them had done time, but they were a close family and we’d have needed something much nastier to put them out of business. I think the Digbeth team had a sneaking respect for their dedicated work on the wrong side of the disused tracks.
The Marin family were something else again. New money, well-spoken, an attitude you could break a glass on. The three brothers formed the core of an under-achieving but vicious gang that specialized in drugs and prostitutes. Its informal office was the back table of the Bar Selona, a dive frequented by people who’d been banned from the Little Moscow. There were some severe beatings around that time, of men we knew to be involved in similar business. But the victims weren’t talking even when their mouths healed.
I saw the youngest Marin brother one night in the Railway Tavern, when I was relaxing off-duty at a rhythm and blues gig. The band finished late, and when I came out of the function room a lock-in was in progress. I might have been tempted to buy a drink, but just at that moment a thin-faced man in a suit entered the pub in the company of a young policewoman. Who wasn’t, of course. It was some lad’s birthday, and the girl put handcuffs on him before starting a strip-tease. I walked out, but the girl’s minder shot me a look that could have frozen vodka.
We had an informer at that time who warned us that the Marin and O’Kane families were at odds. There was a fight outside a pub near the Parcel Force depot that resulted in a close ally of the O’Kanes being glassed: a classic “Belfast kiss”. He lost an eye. Then the house of the elder Marin brother burned down when he and his wife were away for the weekend. We found the charred remnants of a petrol-soaked blanket inside a broken rear window. Just after that, something scared our informant so badly that he relocated to the Netherlands.
While we were struggling to get to grips with the situation, Theresa O’Kane went missing on her ninth birthday. She was the only daughter of one of the family’s more law-abiding members. He and his wife didn’t hesitate to call us. Theresa had been walking home from her school in Highgate with a friend when a car had stopped and two men had got out. One of them had hit the friend with a cosh, and she’d blacked out. When she’d recovered consciousness Theresa was gone.
That night, we put out an appeal on local TV and radio. Nothing. A day of frantic searching and questioning followed. The Marin brothers didn’t have perfect alibis - that would have been too obvious - but we had nothing on them. Another night fell with Theresa’s parents - both of whom were under thirty - in a state of numb desperation. Then another dark November day. Another night.
The call came at six in the morning. A homeless man, looking for a place to sleep, had wandered through the viaduct off Digbeth High Street after a troubled night. The mewing of seagulls had caught his attention. Behind one of the arches, near the porn cinema, he’d found a heap of dead rats and a few dying gulls. There was an acrid smell in the air. Using a stick, he’d pushed the rats aside - and then run to a phone box.
Theresa O’Kane had been garrotted with wire. Her body cavity had been opened up, packed with rat poison and sewn shut again. Poison had also been forced into her mouth and throat. We were shown post-mortem photos. The body had only been under the viaduct a few hours, but our pathologist estimated the time of death as the evening of the abduction. She hadn’t made it through her birthday.
Of course, the murder was in the papers for weeks - though we managed to keep the rat poison quiet. The O’Kane family had to go through the standard press cycle of bogus sympathy, suspicion, revelation, blame, abuse and final indifference. Twenty-eight per cent of Daily Mail readers thought the O’Kanes were tragic victims, while seventy-two per cent thought their criminal record was directly responsible for the child’s death. It was business as usual: the memory of a dead child being tainted, circula
ted to the masses and put to work on the streets.
Small wonder that the O’Kane family sold their homes and were scattered overseas before the end of the year. The Marins continued their operations. We never managed to prove their connection to the murder, let alone the vicious symbolic gesture that followed it. But within a couple of years, we had some luck with their drugs racket and put the two elder brothers away. They weren’t sufficiently big-time to own the police or local authorities. Then the youngest brother died of a septic ulcer, and the gang was finished. Other bastards replaced them, of course.
The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10 Page 60