The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 7 Page 38

  2

  By good fortune, and co-incidence – which sometimes come together neatly – an aunt had died and left him the house off the Malone Road, a well-heeled part of the Northern Irish city. She was an archetypical Malone Road aunt – slightly disapproving and of firm convictions – but he had been fond of her and she of him. There were other nephews and nieces who might have benefited from a share in the house, but she favoured him. “I’m leaving this place to you,” she said. “I see no point in leaving it to the whole lot of you. One room each. Absurd.”

  That conversation took place a couple of years before she died. He returned to look over the place and to make arrangements for it to be looked after by a postgraduate student from the university down the road, who made desultory efforts at keeping the garden in order, but who at least was assiduous in maintaining the interior. Michael preferred a short-term arrangement of this nature, as he already sensed that he and his wife were drifting apart and that he would leave London. Now he had a place to come back to.

  3

  He thought that he might remarry – he was forty-five and there was still plenty of time, even to start a family, if he was lucky. But he did not want to hurry things. He found it easy to adjust to being on his own, but it did occur to him that he might get a cat. A dog would tie him down too much; a cat could be left to fend for itself for the occasional weekend. A cat gave a house a more lived-in feel. A cat would become a familiar spirit, like a benign ghost.

  “Try and get hold of an intelligent cat,” advised a friend. “Burmese, preferably. They’re very intelligent.”

  He agreed that this was a good idea; one would not want to live with a cat that found life too much of a challenge. A breeder was located in Fermanagh and Michael made the trip out to collect his allocated kitten.

  “These are very clever creatures,” said the breeder. “You won’t be able to teach this wee fellow any tricks. He’ll know them all already.”

  Michael looked at the diminutive cat, at its green eyes, which were already fixed on him. There was certainly a marked intelligence there; he was being assessed, he felt; weighed up in some obscure feline calculation. He felt slightly uneasy.

  4

  Michael worked from home, preparing complicated tax returns for clients whose faces he never saw. He did this from a study where he had a view of the stretch of garden that lay behind the house. The cat loved this miniature jungle, and spent hours stalking creatures real and imaginary amongst the shrubs. Michael went out from time to time and watched the cat in its hunting, but this would usually stop the cat from doing what it was doing. It would sit down, and direct its disconcerting gaze in his direction. Only when he had gone back in would the game resume.

  Burmese cats, he had been told, were affectionate, but this one was not. It appeared for meals, glaring at him if its food was late or if it in some way failed to meet its expectations. Then it would saunter off. If he tried to pick it up and stroke it, it would freeze and look at him with undisguised hostility.

  “The cat doesn’t like me,” he remarked to the friend who had recommended the breed.

  “Give it time,” said the friend.

  “I have, and it makes no difference. He seems to be getting increasingly hostile. It’s almost as if he resents the fact that I live in the house with him.”

  The friend laughed. “He wants you out?”

  “Don’t joke about it,” said Michael.

  5

  Some months after the cat’s arrival, when it was almost fully-grown, it made its first attempt to trip Michael up. He saved himself from falling, but only just.

  “You stupid creature,” he muttered.

  The cat looked up at him, with all the coldness of a psychopath, and then sauntered off. A dog, Michael reflected, always looks apologetic if it gets in its owners way; not so cats. Or not so this cat.

  There were several more incidents of this nature, and each time it occurred Michael became more irritated. It seemed to him that the cat’s behaviour was intentional, that it wanted him to fall and injure himself. In self-defence he tried to stand on its tail when it got between his feet – that, he thought, would teach it a lesson. But the cat spun round and dug its claws into his trouser leg, scratching him slightly. Then it looked at him with a murderous look in its eye, held his gaze for a few moments, and wandered away.

  6

  Michael spent long hours on the telephone to his ex-wife in London.

  “I’m missing you terribly,” she said. “Do you think we’ve done the right thing?”

  “Ask your boyfriend,” he said, and then changed the subject to the cat. “That cat.”

  “It looks so sweet,” she said. “That photograph you sent me. Really sweet.”

  “Appearances can be deceptive,” he retorted. “It is definitely not a sweet cat. Not at all.”

  “Are you being kind enough to it? You have to win their affection you know.”

  He explained about the tripping up. “Do you think it possible that a cat might decide to . . . to harm its owner?”

  There was silence at the other end of the line. “Are you all right, Michael?”

  He sighed. “I know it sounds absurd, but I have the distinct impression that this cat is trying to . . . Well, I don’t know. Trying to get me, I suppose.”

  She laughed. “Impossible. Cats don’t do that. No matter how intelligent. Cats know which side their bread’s buttered on.”

  He agreed that this was generally the case, but then he posed the question: what if an intelligent cat, a really intelligent one, thought that it might inherit a house, once the human owners were disposed of?

  7

  Some days after this conversation, Michael returned to the house one night after being at a dinner party out of town. It had been a good evening and his hosts, although tactful about it, had clearly attempted a bit of match-making. He found that he liked the woman invited to sit beside him. She was also divorced and had a seven-year-old son. The father was in Dubai, working for an engineering firm. She and Michael got on well and telephone numbers were exchanged. He saw the hostess watching this with approval; why, he wondered, do people get pleasure in bringing others together? Was it because we feared loneliness, not only for ourselves, but for others?

  He came back to the house in a state of elation. He was on top of his work; he was not short of money; he had the prospect of a date with that nice woman. But then there was the cat.

  He retired to bed and turned off his light. He dozed off quickly, but was suddenly awakened by a noise downstairs, a yowling sound. He got up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. It would be hungry, he supposed. That was the way it yowled when it wanted him to feed it.

  It was a stair-rod that tripped him up. It was near the top of the stairs, and it had come out at such an angle that anybody would be bound to fall over it in the dark. He shouted out as he fell and reached out wildly for something to clutch. His hand found no purchase on the wall, but brushed against the light switch and inadvertently turned it on. As he fell, he saw the cat at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at him with its intense green eyes.

  He was not injured; bruised, perhaps, but nothing more than that. The cat, after surveying the scene, walked calmly away, and out of its cat door. He sat there for several minutes, rubbing his left knee and thinking. He was positive that the stair-rod had not been out of place when he had gone up to bed; he would have noticed it if it had. He was sure. He was quite convinced.

  There was only one explanation: the cat had moved the stair-rod deliberately.

  8

  He had nobody to speak to. If he tried to tell any of his friends about what had happened they would have concluded that he had lost his reason. Cats did not try to murder their owners, even if they had a motive. The idea was absurd. Cats had few intentions in this life; and as for motives, the very concept was inappropriate and misleading when applied to the animal world.

  But Michael was sure, and the next morning he rehea
rsed his alternatives. He could give the cat away – there would be plenty of people who would willingly provide a home to such an elegant, exotic creature. Yet if he did that, he would be passing on to somebody a creature who might do to a new owner exactly what it had tried to do to him. So he could not do that.

  He could take it to the vet, he supposed, and ask for it to be put down – that would be self-defence surely. But no vet would put down a perfectly healthy young animal just because the owner had taken a dislike to it. And that is what the vet would conclude; he would think that it was a matter of personal dislike.

  He decided that he would have to do something to bring the cat under control. Even if he could not reform it, he could let it know that he was aware of what it was up to. And that is the line of reasoning which produced his brilliant idea.

  He looked out of his window. The cat was in the garden, sitting on a patch of grass, looking back at him in its superior manner. He pointed a finger at the animal and mouthed the words: “I’m on to you, kitty!”

  9

  He timed his arrival back at the house very carefully. He wanted the cat to be in when he returned, so that he could witness the impact of his plan. So he made sure that he came back at a point in the day when he knew that the cat would be hungry and would be waiting indignantly to be fed.

  And his new dog was chosen carefully too. He was a recently-retired police dog, still in good shape, who had been living with his former handler in Dunmurry. The handler and his wife were moving into a flat and wanted somewhere more suitable for the dog.

  “He’s a great chap,” said the handler. “When I was in the force he solved a lot of crimes, so he did.”

  “Just what I’m looking for,” said Michael.

  He led the dog into its new home. When it saw them come in, the cat arched its back and retreated on tip-toes to the back of the room. Every hair on its body was electrified, standing straight in terror and outrage.

  “I think we understand one another very well now,” said Michael.

  The cat said nothing.

  12 BOLINBROKE AVENUE

  Peter James

  IT WAS A pleasant-looking mock Tudor semi, with a cherry tree in the front garden and a wooden birdbath. There was nothing immediately evident about the property to suggest a reason for the terror Susan Miller felt each time she saw it.

  Number twelve. White letters on the oak door. A brass knocker. And in the distance, the faint sound of the sea. She began to walk up the path, her speed increasing as she came closer, as if drawn by an invisible magnet. Her terror deepening, she reached forward and rang the bell.

  “Susan! Susan, darling! It’s OK. It’s OK!”

  The dull rasp faded in her ears; her eyes sprang open; she gulped down air, staring out into the darkness of the bedroom. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, hoarsely. “The dream. I had the dream.”

  Tom settled back down with a grunt of disapproval and was asleep again in moments. Susan lay awake, listening to the steady, endless roar of the traffic on the M6 pouring past Birmingham, fear roaring like an icy flood-stream through her.

  She got out of bed and walked over to the window, afraid to go back to sleep. Easing back the edge of a curtain, she stared out into the night; the large illuminated letters advertising IKEA dominated the horizon.

  The dream was getting more frequent. The first time had been on Christmas Eve some ten years back, and for a long while it had recurred only very occasionally. Now it was happening every few weeks.

  After a short while, exhaustion and the cold of the late October air lured her back into bed. She snuggled up against Tom’s unyielding body and closed her eyes, knowing the second nightmare which always followed was yet to come, and that she was powerless to resist it.

  Christmas Eve. Susan arrived home laden with last-minute shopping, including a few silly gifts for Tom to try to make him smile; he rarely smiled these days. His car was in the drive, but when she called out he did not respond. Puzzled, she went upstairs, calling his name again. Then she opened the bedroom door.

  As she did so, she heard the creak of springs and the rustle of sheets. Two naked figures writhing on the bed swirled in unison towards her. Their shocked faces stared at her as if she was an intruder, had no right to be there. Strangers. A woman with long red hair and a grey-haired man. Both of them total strangers making love in her bed, in her bedroom. In her house.

  But instead of confronting them, she backed away, rapidly, confused, feeling as if it was herself who was the intruder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I’m—”

  Then she woke up.

  Tom stirred, grunted, then slept on.

  Susan lay still. God it was so vivid this time, it seemed to be getting more and more vivid just recently. She had read an article in a magazine recently about interpreting dreams, and she tried to think what this one might be telling her.

  Confusion was the theme. She was getting confused easily these days, particularly over time. Often she’d be on the verge of starting some job around the house, then remember that she had already done it; or rushing out to the shops to buy something she had already just bought. Stress. She had read about the effects of stress, in another magazine – she got most of her knowledge from magazines – and that it could cause all kinds of confusion and tricks of the mind.

  And she knew the source of the stress, also.

  Mandy. The new secretary at the Walsall branch of the Allied Chester and North East Building society, where Tom was deputy manager. Tom had told her about Mandy’s arrival a year ago, and had then never mentioned her since. But she had watched them talking at the annual Christmas party last year, to which spouses and partners were invited. They had talked a damned sight too much for Susan’s liking. And they e-mailed each other a damned sight too much.

  She had not been sure what to do. At thirty-two she had kept her figure through careful eating and regular aerobics, and still looked good. She took care over her short brown hair, over her makeup and her clothes. There wasn’t much else she could do, and confronting Tom without any evidence would have made her look foolish. Besides, she was under doctor’s orders to stay calm. She had given up work in order to relax and improve her chances of conceiving the child they had been trying for these past five years. She had to stay calm.

  Unexpectedly, the solution presented itself when Tom arrived home that evening.

  “Promotion?’ she said, her eyes alight with excitement.

  “Yup! You are now looking at the second youngest ever Branch Manager for the Allied Chester and North East Building society! But,” he added hesitantly, “it’s going to mean moving.”

  “Moving? I don’t mind at all, darling!” Anywhere, she thought. The further the better. Get him away from that bloody Mandy! “Where to?”

  “Brighton.”

  She could scarcely believe her luck. In their teens, Tom had taken her for a weekend to Brighton; it was the first time they had been away together; the bed in the little hotel had creaked like mad, and someone in the room below had hollered at them and they’d had to stuff sheets into their mouths to silence their laugher. “We’re going to live in Brighton?”

  “That’s right!”

  She flung her arms around him. “When? How soon?”

  “They want me to take over the branch at the start of the New Year. So we have to find a house pretty smartly.”

  Susan did a quick calculation. It was now mid November. “We’ll never find somewhere and get moved in within a month. We’ve got to sell this place, we’ve got to—”

  “The Society will help. They’re relocating us, all expenses paid, and we get a lump sum allowance for more expensive housing in the south. They’re giving me the week off next week so we can go there and look around. I’ve told the relocations officer our budget and she’s contacting some local estate agents for us.”

  The first particulars arrived two days later in a thick envelope. Susan opened it in the kitchen and pulled out the
contents, whilst Tom was gulping down his breakfast. There were about fifteen houses, mostly too expensive. She discarded several, then read the details of one that was well within their range, a very ugly box of a house with a small but charming garden, close to the sea. She liked the idea of living close to the sea, but not the house. Still, she thought. You spend most of your time indoors, not looking at the exterior, so she put it aside as a possible and turned to the next.

  As she saw the picture, she froze. Couldn’t be, she thought, bringing it closer to her eyes. Could not possibly be. She stared hard, struggling to control her shaking hands, at a mock Tudor semi identical to the one she always saw in her dream. Coincidence, she thought, feeling a tightening knot in her throat. Coincidence. Has to be. There are thousands of houses that look like this.

  Twelve Bolinbroke Avenue.

  Number twelve, she knew, was the number on the door in her dream.

  The distant roar of the sea she always heard in that dream.

  Maybe she had seen the house when they had been to Brighton previously. How long ago was that? Fourteen years? But even if she had seen it before, why should it have stuck in her mind?

  “Anything of interest?” Tom said, reaching out and turning the particulars of the ugly box round to read them. Then he pulled the details of the semi out of her hands, rather roughly. “This looks nice,” he said. “In our bracket. In need of some modernization. That’s estate agent-speak for a near wreck. Means if we do it up it could be worth a lot more.”

  Susan agreed that they should see the house. She had to see it to satisfy herself that it was not the one in the dream; but she did not tell Tom that; he had little sympathy for her dreams.

  The estate agent drove them himself. He wore a sharp suit, white socks and smelled of hair gel. “Great position,” he said. “One of the most sought-after residential areas of Hove. Five minutes walk to the beach. Hove Lagoon close by, great for kids. And it’s a bargain for this area. A bit of work and you could increase the value a lot.” He turned into Bolinbroke Avenue, and pointed with his finger. “There we are.”