The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Years passed. I moved to the Acocks Green station and lost interest in Digbeth. The area slipped further into silence, with old houses and even churches being used as storage space for construction materials. As rents fell and concern for preservation became increasingly absurd, the ground was laid for the area’s colonization by offices - but that was still a decade off. Turf wars were still going on: pubs were set on fire, building projects were subject to overnight “accidents”. The only people living in the district were in hostels or on the streets.

  I’m not sure when it started - some time in the early nineties. We thought it was one of the new gangs making its presence felt. An old man who’d been drinking in the Eagle and Tun was found dead in Lower Trinity Street, a few yards from one of the arches of the railway viaduct. Two days later, a homeless woman was seen dying in convulsions under the railway bridge by the Taboo cinema. Both deaths were the result of strychnine poisoning. Which could be rat poison, though we found no sign of it in the area.

  A week after that, three children aged nine or so were found dead. They’d been playing with a ball in a disused car park near the Digbeth viaduct. Again, it was strychnine. Some of the powder was found smeared on their mouths. The local police station went into overdrive, trying to find a drug dealer who might have sold them (or given them) a wrap of painful death. They arrested every addict they could find. It was late October. A few days before Theresa O’Kane’s birthday.

  Childhood memories are strange things. Who can predict when a buried memory will come to the surface and cause harm? It could be at puberty, or on leaving home, or after a broken marriage, or after the loss of a child. And when the trauma is profound enough to tear you out of the world... what then? I’m not de Richleau, I don’t have those certainties. The best I have is guesswork. There was no way I could banish Theresa unless I could stop the ruthless from controlling others. But maybe I could make her back off.

  We kept a police watch on the viaduct, and no one was going there at night any more. At 3 a.m. we packed up and left the poorly lit brickwork to whatever crept in the shadows, picking over scraps of litter. An hour later, I came back alone, wearing a black tracksuit, surgical gloves and a scarf over my face. Under the scarf, I was wearing a flesh-toned Latex mask I’d got from a Soho colleague with underground contacts. The eyes and mouth were narrow slits.

  A half-moon was just visible through a skin of cloud. There was frost on the pavement. Miles away, fireworks were slamming doors in the night. I paused under the bridge where the homeless woman had died. Rain had drawn spikes of lime from the brickwork. Then I walked slowly on, past the private cinema to the viaduct.

  From the pub in Lower Trinity Street, you can see three railway arches. I stood in one of them and lit a cigarette, then dropped it and stamped it out. A trace of smoke filtered through the cold air. The smell of rotting brick was overwhelming. About twenty yards a way, against the wall, a Victorian iron urinal had been closed up for decades. She was standing there, watching me. Her face looked slightly out of focus, as if one of us were shivering.

  I waited under the viaduct, cupping my hands over my mouth to trap the warmth. She was hesitant, but determined. It was her birthday and no one else had come. Did they tell you it was a surprise party? I thought. Her hair was dark and tangled. Her face was as white as the frost. Her school blouse and skirt were torn and smeared with oil or tarmac. As she moved towards me, looking sick, I held out my arms. Then I turned my face so her lips would touch my cheek.

  Her small hand pressed into mine. I felt her grip more as intent than as sensation, since her hand was as weak as fresh snow. Her mouth fastened on the slick non-flesh of the mask. Then she let go of me. Her face closed in on itself, flickered like old celluloid. I watched her turn and walk slowly away, back into the shadows of the industrial estate.

  When there was no further sign of movement on the street, I peeled off the mask and gloves and slipped them carefully into a plastic bag. I’d dusted them with strychnine powder before putting them on. I wasn’t sure if I’d told her a kind of lie or a kind of truth. Either way, she’d got the message.

  There were no more unexplained deaths in the Digbeth area for a while. A few more children died from poisoning, but that was just a result of the amount of toxic waste in the ground. If police work teaches you anything, it’s that gradual death is very rarely a crime.

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  COME AWAY WITH ME

  Stella Duffy

  11 April, 7.30 p.m.

  C

  aroline comes home to a quiet and empty house. This is no surprise, Pete has been working late most nights for the past month. He’s on a tight deadline, his own boss, and in this economy any work is good work. When Pete started out film editors were special, those with his broad training rare; now any kid with a Mac and half a brain can call themself an editor - and frequently do. Pete is that rare thing, old-school trained, with an old-school work ethic. This current job is taking much longer than he’d planned, longer than he quoted for as well. But he gets on fine with the director, and he says the project will be astonishing when it’s done. That’s all he says; Pete firmly believes that the director is the author of the piece. His job is to help the director bring the dream they once held in their mind to reality through the mess of rushes and retakes. He never talks to Caroline about the work until after she’s seen the final edit. He never talks to anyone but the director about it. Not even the writer. Old-school, pecking order, playing the game.

  Some nights Pete doesn’t come home at all, texts Caroline at ten or eleven or later, when he’s finally managed to sneak out for a fag - a fag he promises Caroline he doesn’t have - and when he’s outside he texts to say he loves her, it’s looking like an all-nighter, he’ll sleep in the spare room if he comes home, sleep tomorrow if not, kip on the divan in his office if he gets a chance. Pete is twenty-three years older than Caroline, and more thoughtful than any of the young men she knew and loved before she met the one who calls himself her old man. He is not old at fifty-seven, but even Caroline sometimes wonders how it will be when she is fifty-seven and Pete is eighty. She thinks he might be her old man then.

  ~ * ~

  7.35 p.m.

  Caroline opens the fridge. It’s been a good day, lots done, lots ticked off on the to-do list. Caroline is a manager for an events company. She doesn’t do the running around, the charming and cheering of people, she does the ordering, the sorting, the arranging. Booking taxis and vans, planes and trains, ensuring deliveries get there on time, ensuring people get there on time. She and Pete met when he was editing a corporate video for one of her company’s clients. One of those ghastly ra-ra-ra corporate videos, inevitably underscored with Tina Turner belting out “Simply The Best”. The screening time had been brought forward by a day because the CEO had some emergency he had to attend to in the wilds of middle America and, with the client company terrified that online delivery wasn’t secure enough for their ground-breaking yay-us video (underscored with Tina Turner singing “Simply the Best”), Caroline had offered to go and pick up the edited video herself, take it directly to the conference centre the next morning. Which she duly did, having spent half an hour with Pete laughing at the absurdities of corporate paranoias, then another half-hour enjoying a small glass of the single malt Pete always allowed himself on completing a job, and then six hours in Pete’s studio, laid out on the divan he kept there for late-night naps, laid out for Pete, with Pete, Pete laid out for her.

  She opens the fridge for a glass of the cold white left over from yesterday and finds instead a typewritten note, tied to a half-bottle of champagne with a thin red ribbon. The note says : “Drink Me. Drink Me First. Do Nothing Until You Have Drunk Me. Then Go Upstairs”.

  Caroline smiles. He remembered. Today is the anniversary of that first night, that night in his studio, that night before the morning when she drove along the M40, exhausted, delighted, smiling and singing to herself, singing “Simply
the Best”. What Pete has never known is it’s also the anniversary of the day she ran out on The Bloke Before a year earlier, Pete’s presence that night the perfect antidote to her anniversary-inclined mind.

  She takes out a glass, opens the champagne, sits at the kitchen table and drinks it. Does as Pete’s asked. She knows he’d expect her to rush upstairs, she usually would, but this is so sweet, such a lovely gesture. She’ll drink the fizz and then go to see what’s next. What Pete has waiting for her.

  The half-bottle lasts two and a half glasses; on the half she decides it’s time to go up. It’s 7.55 p.m. now and she’s slightly fuzzy. Happily fuzzy. Loving her old man, sure no man her own age would have remembered, made such a gesture, known how much she enjoys these games.

  She does enjoy games. Pete and Caroline enjoy games.

  ~ * ~

  7.58 p.m.

  Caroline turns on the bedroom light. In the middle of the bed, slightly on Pete’s side of the bed actually, is an open suitcase. The small, wheelie suitcase they use when one of them goes away for a night for work. Caroline hates going away for work, Pete even more so, they both try to get out of it whenever they can, but sometimes needs must, and sometimes they have to go. They have been sharing this suitcase for almost five years; it doesn’t get a great deal of use.

  Sitting in the open suitcase is an A5 envelope, and inside the envelope are tickets and her passport. Caroline’s name on first-class return tickets to Venice.

  There is another note with the tickets, printed in blue this time. It says a car will be there to pick her up at 9 p.m. She has an hour to pack, bring clothes for two days, bring clothes for warm days and slightly chilly nights by the water. Bring herself. Bring love. Bring five years of them.

  ~ * ~

  8.55 p.m.

  Caroline has showered and packed. She is ready. She carries the little case downstairs, her handbag already on her shoulder, and a thought occurs to her. It’s a wonderful, wonderful gesture, but there is a tiny part of her that thinks it’s also a very little bit odd. They have played games before, ever so slightly scary games. Caroline doesn’t want this to be a game, she wants it only to be fun. She runs back upstairs, opens the drawers on Pete’s side of their shared chest of drawers. She checks. His passport is gone, good. She looks in the drawers below. She’s not sure, but she think some pairs of his boxers are missing, a couple of pairs of socks. The doorbell rings. She opens the wardrobe; his suit is missing, the not-quite-best suit he likes to wear out for a nice dinner. Not that they go out that much, his work, her work, recently they’ve been thinking it’s as nice to stay in for the night as go out. The doorbell rings again and Caroline calls that she is coming. She feels good now. Safe in the knowledge that, if this is a game, it’s one he’s playing with her. Safe in the knowledge that Pete will be waiting for her, at the airport, in the hotel maybe. Safe.

  ~ * ~

  9.05 p.m.

  Caroline is in the car, the driver knew her name and which airport she is going to - Heathrow, Terminal 2. Lucky, as she hadn’t checked herself. She wonders if the driver will hand her a package, more instructions, more messages. She texts Pete to tell him he is brilliant; there is no reply but she wasn’t really expecting one. She knows Pete likes to maintain the mystery of his games, when he plays games. They are on the M4 and almost at Heathrow before she has stopped wondering where Pete is now. She worries that perhaps she is meant to pay the driver. Pete’s not as good as she is with cash, with always making sure she has enough cash. Caroline has just-in-case ten- and twenty-pound notes tucked in the back of her wallet, in the zipped section of her handbag, in a little plastic purse in her make-up bag. Just in case. So Caroline knows she has enough cash, but she wonders if Pete has paid the driver anyway; she’s usually the one to pay the driver. They arrive at Heathrow. Pete has paid.

  ~ * ~

  10 p.m.

  This is the last flight to Venice tonight. There is no queue for First Class and Caroline slips through security quickly and easily, is directed to the first-class lounge.

  ~ * ~

  10.45 p.m.

  Boarding is announced and just as she walks the easy distance to the boarding gate a text comes. It is from Pete. “There will be a water taxi waiting for you. Look out for the sign with your name on it. I love you. Pete”.

  A water taxi. Caroline and Pete haven’t used the water taxis before, they seem so extravagant, so unnecessary, when the journey on the vaporetto is easy and smooth anyway; when that round trip via Murano, past the cemetery, is so easy. They have been to Venice three times before now, have stayed in San Marco and Dorsoduro. She wonders if the taxi will take her to one of those hotels or somewhere new. Caroline is tired and boards the plane, happy to lean back in her seat, to take the meal offered, the wine, to eat and drink, and then she sleeps.

  ~ * ~

  12 April, 1.15 a.m. local time

  Caroline sleeps most of the flight and wakes groggy; the champagne and the wine have muddied her mind. And she’s very tired. It’s been a long week, tonight was meant to be Friday night nothing, Saturday sleep in. But her bag is the third off the carousel, and then she is through the green lane and out into arrivals where the nice young man holds a broad card with her name on it. CAROLINE HUNTER. He speaks almost no English and she has even less Italian but they know the international signs for yes, that’s me, and follow, and please take your seat, here, in this ludicrously luxurious little speedboat that is also a taxi, all wood panelling and lace curtains. And then they are off, he is driving the boat and Caroline is wide awake, can’t keep the grin from her face, they are powering down the channel to the island and she can see the old lights, and the towers, walls and there, just peeking over the wall, a spire, the top of the campanile perhaps, it might be San Marco, it might be another church, it is there and gone as the taxi speeds over the waves thrown by the boats it passes. He is a young man and he drives like a young man.

  ~ * ~

  1.45 a.m.

  The ride, the water, the waves, the wind are successful in their conspiracy to please; Caroline is wide awake and delighted. The taxi enters the Grand Canal; the Guggenheim palazzo is on her left. Caroline remembers when she and Pete went there, how they spent the whole dinner that night talking about what they’d do with a house like that, what it must be like to live in such a place, to have the water so close, so part of your home.

  She thinks about the first time she came here, with The Bloke Before, with John. So many mistakes with him and then that last mistake, coming to Venice, agreeing to come away with him when she’d already had enough of his possessiveness, arguing with him and running out of the nasty little bed and breakfast he’d booked for her birthday treat, running out and leaving him. Calling the B&B owners and struggling for the right words, the language to pass on the message that she’d gone back to London, heart-wrenching messages from John begging her to come back, to try again, and then, as the days and weeks wore on, angrier messages, messages she has tried hard to forget.

  She hadn’t gone back, she stayed on in Venice, furious with John for being so demanding and yet calling her possessive. Caroline was certain something had been going on and, sure enough, the next day, watching him across a square she’d seen him chatting with a couple of girls, chatting and then laughing and then, yes, just as he’d accused her of the day before, there was the exchange of numbers, then the kiss on both cheeks, too friendly, too lingering. John was the slut he’d called her, and she knew he was.

  Caroline looked down at her handbag, Pete’s notes inside, with her return ticket. God, she was lucky she’d run from John. But that first time here with him, when they’d arrived at the airport and walked down to catch the vaporetto and she’d assumed they were riding the waves to an island... she hadn’t quite understood, not from the books or the movies, that it really was all water. No roads, no cars. Caroline had not been able to imagine no cars. And all those bridges, the dead ends, the alleyways that app
eared to go somewhere and just returned to water instead.

  That was then, with John. Caroline knows better now, knows Venice better. A little at least. She knows it with Pete, where they like to stay, to eat, to drink.

  Caroline is now with Pete and this is a lovely gesture on his part, but actually she is starting to feel a little lonely. It is dark and colder than she expected and Pete’s surprises, his games, are all very well, but she prefers to play with him rather than for him. She will explain this, tomorrow perhaps, over breakfast; that she is grateful for his romantic gesture, and maybe, anyway, it would be more fun to be together than apart, in touch than not.

  San Marco is on the right now, they are closer to the southern shore, so maybe the taxi is turning off soon. The boy-racer driver has slowed a little, Caroline is sure there must be laws about driving too fast here, though the canal is wide and virtually empty. It is late, later than at home. The Accademia Bridge and then an opening. The taxi turns south. He drives her down one wide canal then into another more narrow, then there are smaller turns, dizzyingly fast. Even though she realizes, technically, they must be driving slower, the boat’s speed seems faster. The canal is so narrow here she could reach out and touch the sides. The tide is out and the taxi is low in the water. The edges of the canal loom over her. Caroline does not want to touch the sides. It is dark, cold, wet. She looks ahead and now it seems as if they must have come back on themselves. If she leans to the side, if she looks past the young driver’s head, she can see the Doge’s Palace, more distant now, it is down one, two, maybe three widenings of this narrow canal they are in. Then under another bridge, very low this time, another left turn, another left, back in on themselves again, and then the taxi stops. It is dark, and the silence is sudden. He turns and smiles. Here.