The Mammoth Book Best International Crime

by Maxim Jakubowski

  He closed his eyes and visualized the President’s corroded hip. He dreamed he was going further, sawing through the thoracic cage and plunging his latex-covered hand into the patient’s open chest, to pull out the corpus politicum, the very essence of Hernieux’s soul. Like an Aztec sacrificial killer from Mexico’s glory days before Cortez. Sic transit gloria mundi. A shudder coursed through him as he held up Jack’s blade and it shone in the sun’s light.

  He felt like Macbeth the regicide and his vision of a phantom dagger, as the tragedy moved irreparably on. But he also knew that he would save the presidential hip and there would be no fatal forest moving towards the felon’s castle, just a lot of speeches and the flow of expensive champagne. Presidential bones are worth a lot of money.

  After the necessary repairs, the President would have to undergo lengthy rehabilitation and give up on certain terrestrial pleasures. That’s how life went. If the surgery worked, the President would still retain his favourite drug: power. Did the exercise of power actually give you a hard-on? K asked himself and cut into his thumb with Jack’s blade. Lightly.

  He put the blade back into its box and walked over to his Mercedes and drove off to the clinic. HIS clinic. A jewel of modernity designed exclusively for the rich and the very rich. Occasionally, to demonstrate he sometimes still had something of a soul, Professor K agreed to treat some poor people. Not quite for free, though. Which gave him a reputation as a) a greedy bastard, b) a ruthless operator, c) a philanthropist, d) the best surgeon, cutter and filer in the country.

  By the way: few people know the fact but a lancet, also known as a bistoury comes from the words bistorit, bistorie, which means a dagger. In the past, there had been lancet monsters, doctors in the death camps but also killers who did not wear yellow or green frocks. Wolves whose teeth happened to be surgical instruments.

  Truly, as Jules Romains had once pointed out, life was such a bizarre assembly of events, and it was difficult to face it in cold blood. Or something approaching it. His memory was somewhat faulty when it came to literature or philosophy. He enjoyed Jules Romains, a now much out of fashion author who had written interesting things about illness and the healthy.

  During the course of the journey between his house and his clinic, he wondered what his driver, monsieur Maxence (as the Spanish maid called him) thought of him. Then he concentrated his mind yet again on how he could dispose of President Hernieux. Without being caught. Of course. Which would mean the operation both succeeding and failing. A post-operation form of trauma could not be blamed on the surgeon.

  In an ideal world, the President would be rid of his painful limp and later succumb to a welcome cardiac arrest, a perfect outcome. However, these days, forensic investigations were difficult to foil. There was no way he could find some exotic poison with delayed effect; only in bad mystery books. It would only lead to a humiliating court appearance which would end up with a maximum sentence, however much he might pay a whole retinue of venal lawyers. And you couldn’t expect any form of clemency from a jury of everymen pretending to worship men in white when in reality they actually were madly jealous of them.

  At the clinic, he was greeted by his whole team of zealots, all welcoming him effusively like a poor man’s Greek choir. Anna M, the anaesthetist, a sturdy woman in her forties, was often a pleasant distraction. She would enter his well-lit offi ce, wearing only thin lingerie under her tightly buttoned blouse. He would impatiently peel her knickers off and mount her there and then over the desk’s darkly polished wood.

  On other occasions, she would kneel in front of him and take him whole in her mouth. She would swallow everything, licking her lips as if it had been the finest caviar. He loved it, even though Anna was nothing more than a sex slave.

  He didn’t know why a mature professional like her agreed to be his plaything, just like any old whore; maybe she was just a masochist who enjoyed being humiliated by men, even more so when they were powerful and often held power over life and death.

  K, naturally, also had a wife. Which had helped both increase his wealth and spread his genetic capital with a son and daughter. The boy was a fool but the girl had her father’s intelligence and her mother’s beauty. Damn families! Wives no longer cared much in bed and children were so ungrateful. The bucking and blow-jobs by Anna were as a result all the more welcome.

  At 7.30, he walked into the operating room.

  Everything was set.

  Including President Hernieux.

  Totally helpless. “You old bastard,” K muttered under his breath. “Not in charge any more, hey?”

  Had he known what was on the professor’s mind, he would no doubt have been scared shitless, not that the operation could in any way be described as life-threatening.

  Dr Anna M expedited the President into a dream land where pain no longer existed and the ballet began.

  An operation like the one they were about to perform was by necessity bloody and somewhat spectacular from a spectator’s point of view, but for K it was all a matter of routine. The bones were sawn with haute couture precision, and as the minutes clocked by, the President slowly regained some of his youth. Surgeons like K were past masters at reviving the inside of bodies. With folk now so reluctant to die at a normal age, the amount of operations on used joints was on a constant growth arc, involving knees, hips, shoulders, etc . . .

  It took quite a few extra blood bags to keep the damn bastard’s useless life stream on course. Oh, how Hernieux was going to be made to pay for it! But what were a few thousand euros for the President of the Unilateral? For him, a university professor’s monthly earnings were just pocket money. Not that he wouldn’t notice their expenditure, as in addition to the darkness of his soul, he was also damn mean.

  How nice it would be to saw him in half from top to bottom . . .

  K was becoming delirious; the hate grew inside him like a rising soufflé; he was daydreaming of the perfect crime; a medically perfect crime.

  He took hold of the artificial joint.

  Put it in place.

  When he was operating on a patient, the subject was always guaranteed the most modern, unbreakable, infusible materials, ceramics or plastics that performed impeccably. No way would they break like the archaic prostheses of our grandparents, causing untenable suffering to the patients, should they not strictly follow the right medical advice. K remembered a patient who had once, shortly after surgery on his hips, wanted to try out some complicated yoga position under the impression it could only have a beneficial effect. The result had been edifying!

  It was finished.

  Well done, as ever. Although there had been a serious cardiac scare during the surgery.

  But the President was alive.

  Much to K’s regret. And relief, as the bastard had bled like a pig. But now, the artificial hip (guaranteed for life) was in place.

  He returned to his study where a pile of mail awaited him, already sorted by his faithful secretary Miss T, an efficient woman, much too ugly to be fucked between surgeries, but totally devoted to him.

  Among the letters was one made up of letters cut out of a local newspaper:

  You Should Butcher That Fucker Hernieux

  He silently agreed with the anonymous writer. Probably some poor bugger who’d been robbed by UIB, that nest of financial terrorists whose minions had done more harm than Al-Quaeda and the Chechen rebels together.

  Professor K could now dream freely of the perfect crime, albeit within the frame of the rehabilitation process. There was a knock on the door: his secretary opened it and allowed Dr Anna M to walk into the office.

  “A welcome diversion,” K thought. “Maybe a bit of fun will provide me with ideas . . .”

  “Hello David,” Anna said as she moved towards the glass, metal and polished wood bulk of the Professor’s desk.

  “Lock the door,” he said, “I’m sure that old bitch likes to listen behind it.”

  “What would you do if you were in her place?”
/>
  “I wouldn’t even guess,” he grinned.

  She was unbuttoning her dress. On this occasion, she didn’t even wear a g-string. Just a pair of dark stockings highlighting her milky skin.

  “It always affects me when I see you at work.”

  To confirm this, she slipped her middle finger deep inside her vulva and then placed it beneath her lover’s nose. Was she truly his mistress? At any rate, they had never slept together, nor spent dirty weekends together. Between quickies and blow-jobs theirs was a relationship with neither future nor responsibilities. He didn’t even know whether she actually took pleasure from their activities or enjoyed the spectacle of her own degradation.

  She leaned over the desk, rump extended to him and he roughly entered her from behind, digging deep into her insides, having briefly greased his cock with spit. He grasped her breasts and savagely kneaded them. K had no subtlety. He fucked like he ate. With greed and speed.

  “What did you think of the President?” he asked distractedly shortly after he’d ejaculated.

  “Boring,” answered Anna. “Truly . . . Can you pass the tissues over, darling, you’ve spread it all over me.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  She sneered:

  “I’m unsure whether I do this for you or for me.”

  “You like it when I fuck you in the arse, Anna?”

  “I enjoy being humiliated. I’m a bit of a whore and a masochist.”

  “My poor darling. I grant you it’s uncommon: a doctor being fucked like a dog by a professor . . .”

  “I don’t think so. It’s all in the mind.”

  All the while she was thinking to herself “and if your cock was longer and thicker I’d be even more a whore and a masochist . . .”

  “I was daydreaming I was sawing the bastard in half.”

  “All part of the job.”

  “I HATE HERNIEUX.”

  “And you fantasize about killing him . . .”

  “I know I should never be mentioning this to anyone, not even you.”

  In the meantime, she had cleaned the Professor’s penis with a tissue and slipped it between her lips. Anna’s mouth secreted an infinite softness and her tongue wrapped itself around his semi-hard member like a soft flannel.

  “Oh, oh, oh,” said the Professor.

  Anna kept on sucking him. The Professor soon was in a good mood again.

  K’s loins were on fire. Inside his head raced a storm of images and thoughts, but none somehow coalesced. He couldn’t quite order them into place, too distracted as he was by what Anna was doing with his cock.

  Anna sucked and nibbled.

  K came. Moaning.

  “So, if you want it so much, why don’t you kill him. KILL HIM.”

  (Like Lady Macbeth encouraging her still hesitant husband.)

  “It’s not that I don’t want to take revenge on that fool, but I am worried about the cops, the judges, and a jail full of hardened criminals.”

  “My little wolf,” Anna said, with a lupine smile, “you’re just too faint-hearted. We can deal with the President when he’s at the bone rehabilitation centre. I can do it for you. But there would be certain conditions attached, naturally.”

  (The bitch is going to ask me to divorce and marry her . . .)

  “Of course, my dear, of course. Everything has to be paid for . . .”

  “Nothing reciprocal, dear friend, just a few things to be agreed with me, your kind Anna.”

  “Anything you want.” And he mumbled “Except divorce, my darling, except divorce.”

  “I won’t ask you to divorce your wife. I have no need of it. All I’d require is a larger participation in the clinic’s profi ts. That is, I’d want to replace W on the board.”

  (Ah, the bitch! But she was right: she was worth W a hundred times over and, at least, she knew how to make him come hard . . .)

  “I’m good,” Anna said. “And not only when it comes to matters carnal.”

  “I know, I know. You’re a trooper. A trooper and a whore. I do like you a lot.”

  His wife’s features crossed his mind, and it was with disgust he recalled through the eyes of memory her sad, tired fl esh. Sad and tired for him, but maybe not for others. Maybe she spent interesting afternoons in the arms of younger gigolos. She certainly had enough spare cash to procure them.

  “I’m exhausted,” he said.

  “And so am I,” she quickly responded.

  The rest and rehabilitation centre owned by Dr S was the best and most expensive in the region. S and K were old friends, but did not see each other very often. Which is why S was somewhat surprised to see the internationally-renowned “bone cutter” appear in his office.

  “I’ve come to find out how President Hernieux’s health is.”

  “There are phones . . .”

  “Of course, but it happens that I have a favour to ask of you. For a change. I have a friend who’s a therapist and needs a job. Can you help?”

  “We’re full, but if you insist.”

  “She’s a first-class hydrotherapy expert and I hear she sucks cock like a vacuum cleaner.”

  “OK. We’ll see. Send her over.”

  Hernieux was floating in the water like a lead fish. The staff swore there was nothing better than a good hydrotherapy session. And that some repeated movements underwater would, in due course, cause miracles to happen.

  He had heard over the last few days there was a new “girl”, a Miss Anyaluisa. She apparently had a hell of an arse and magnificent tits. Not that he should get excited about it, Hernieux reckoned, best concentrate on the repair of his damn hip and wait for everything to strengthen around the prosthesis. K might well be a maniac and bitterly envied for his power but in his own field he was the tops. A scalpel, saw and bone champion extraordinaire. Expensive of course, what with all those exceptional extras he added on, but damn money when you’ve reached the stage when you can barely walk without your joints screaming like hell.

  This was anything but fun and he had to force himself to follow the nurses’ instructions. He had never obeyed anyone before, apart from his own father, a domestic tyrant of the worst kind. Who’d ended up in jail when his daughter had gone running to the police to complain that he’d begun touching her up day and night after he had become a widower.

  The world was a sack of shit and only the rich and the strong could survive. The men with power.

  He had often suspected his sister of having invented his father’s attentions in order to take revenge on his fierce severity, but the court had imposed a long sentence, with little chance of parole. Once she had rid herself of her father, Elisa became both hooked on drugs and the most feared lesbian in the city.

  Those were his thoughts as his eyes lingered over the beautiful Anyaluisa.

  She wore a tight, short uniform.

  She was pacing around the swimming pool. He floundered a bit in the water in an attempt to catch her attention, but the pain that raced through him was like a dagger to the heart.

  Nonetheless, she noticed him.

  “Mister President, I do think you need attention.”

  And winked at him.

  For the past few days, Hernieux had been experiencing some pain on the left side of his chest. but had not mentioned it to the medics. The problem with his hip was trouble enough and, anyway, he’d never had heart scares.

  Anyaluisa slipped out of her uniform. Under which she wore a severe black one piece swim suit. She dropped into the pool and approached him.

  “Are you in much pain, sir?”

  “Yes, rather.”

  He was not lying. He had been warned. Physical rehabilitation was no bed of roses.

  The President had never been a patient man.

  Unless it involved orchestrating some fiendish take-over bid.

  “You must think of something else,” the young woman said. “Try and forget the pain; be stoic, like the Greeks . . .”

  An amateur philosopher, just what he needed.<
br />
  But when she slid her hand under the band of his swimming trunks, he quickly forgot his pain. Anyaluisa’s agile fingers were soon tightening around his old shrivelled penis, manipulating it gently, as it slowly but surely reacquired some of its vitality. She quickened her movement and whispered:

  “Does that feel better, mister President?”

  “OOOH, YES!”

  The fires of youth were surging back into his loins. Finally, repressing a scream, he let himself go, right into Anyaluisa’s hand.

  The pain in his hip had faded, although the one in his chest was still present.

  “My heart . . . it hurts . . . in my left arm . . .”

  “It’ll pass,” she said. (No pain can resist me)

  But the President’s pain persisted.

  She helped him move around in the water slightly, as if to justify her actual presence beside him, and said:

  “You really are making progress, monsieur Hernieux.”

  But he was still suffering from the acute pain in his chest.

  “Miss Anyaluisa T, our new hydrotherapist,” was how she had been introduced to him by the head nurse, himself the very image of a provincial army officer with an overt military stance.

  “The woman’s methods are unconventional, to be sure, but maybe it’s all part of some new foreign form of therapy,” he reflected.

  Or maybe she had done it all just to present him some form of bill later. All large-arsed and big-titted women were venal bitches. Honest women had small breasts and narrow bums. Of course.

  He was impatient to see what might happen tomorrow.

  But Anyaluisa was nowhere to be seen. He learned she would not be coming today. And was not given a reason. The pain in his chest returned. It was a dreadful day and an exhausting evening. Full of disgusting dreams, in which ugly, hairy women kept on dragging him towards the fires of hell.

  He was awakened by a presence in his room. He was lying on his back, like an insect with too heavy a carapace.

  Then, in the dim light of the bedside lamp he caught beautiful Anyaluisa’s silhouette. She shed her uniform and appeared fully naked, shining as if she had dipped her whole body in precious oils, like some Egyptian courtesan or historical Olympic performer.