Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11 Page 4

  At that moment, his boss exits the building with a coat-hanger grin and approaches the driver’s window. Art lowers it by half. Warm air and hard work escape through the gap.

  “Still here, Paler?”

  “Just waiting for the windscreen to defrost, sir.”

  “Well get yourself home to that lovely wife of yours and give her the good news.”

  “That is my only plan for the evening.”

  “That and a bloody great drink, I hope.” The older man laughs. “You deserve it, lad. A serious masterclass in closing a deal.”

  “Thank you.” Art is drained and not as buoyant as his employer, whose own bonus will undoubtedly be considerably more substantial.

  “And don’t even think about coming in tomorrow before noon.”

  Art forces a smile, closes his window and drives off, his windscreen still partly frozen. He turns the radio to a local station.

  And then his wife is on the phone asking whether she should open a bottle of wine, and Art says he’ll pop a cork on something fizzy when he gets in and his son’s heart is running out of blood to pump and the stranger waits for the woman to hang up the phone before clawing her over-styled hair from behind, pinning her head to the upright sofa cushion and swiping the sharp, bloodied blade across the front of her neck.

  He does this four times. On the final cut he stops halfway and shakes the knife back and forth, gritting his teeth, almost growling. Like he hates her. Like he knows her. Like he is enjoying the kill.

  Crank back a notch.

  To the point where Art Paler is relieved that he has been asked to stay late by his boss. And he doesn’t have to go home again to his wife and his son without that much-needed bonus. So he doesn’t have to detour via a bar and a bottle of Bordeaux he can’t afford on the way back to his house. He doesn’t have to pretend or confront. Or disappoint.

  Art lets his wife know that he will be working late again this evening. It has become a part of his daily routine. So that she knows how long he’ll be. How much time she has before he comes home. How long she has to wait to see him.

  He’ll be an hour.

  She’ll be waiting.

  But she won’t see him again.

  Tick back further.

  To the hour he first met his wife. When life was simpler and the future was not a spreadsheet loaded with numbers that didn’t quite add up and new love meant that optimism could be found in the greyest of skies. And nobody had to lie.

  Tock forwards to the birth of his son and the joy that only Art could feel. His wife was numb and down and sleep-deprived. And everybody said things would change. That she would get through. She would love him. He was her son.

  Swing past the part where her only release was to cut through her wrists. Because not feeling anything was better than feeling the way that she had since two became three. Happiness died for Art Paler that day.

  Wind on.

  Beyond the difficult first years, when he did everything alone and he had need for nothing else. Stop at the point where he married his second wife, his current wife, and she vowed to love him for richer and poorer. When she promised to love his son like he were her own.

  When everybody started to lie.

  Move on.

  Through the years of guilt and failure that Art Paler learned was now a part of life. Skim over the years where his second wife was a real mother to his son while Art allowed himself to drift effortlessly in and out of melancholy.

  Now stop at the instant where she ceased being a mother and became something else. When Art Paler learned to hate his son as much as his first wife had.

  Keep going.

  To that day when he accidentally saw that phone message with that picture and he felt duped and saddened and foolish because the thought had never occurred to him. That it could happen again. Art’s son would take his wife away. From that moment, everything became a suspicion. It all seemed so obvious. His phone call from work each day let them know how long they had. Together.

  Click to now.

  To the minutes following the calculated discovery of his murdered family and the stranger he had paid to kill them. There was supposed to be a struggle. For authenticity. But Art chases him down in the driveway. The stranger. The man with the clipboard whom nobody knows. The drunk who catered last year’s office Christmas party and boasted some sinister information in his stupor.

  Art pushes his full weight down on the handle of the knife that had killed his wife and son, plunging it into the chest of the stranger, going against the plan, ensuring he does not have to pay the other half of the money now the job is complete.

  There is no trail. It is a burglary gone wrong. Interrupted. A moment of temporary insanity caused by the bloody scene Art had returned home to. He had only just called his wife. There would be a recording. He would be free to start again. Or perhaps for the first time.

  Art Paler should be frightened or in shock or repentant. He just wanted to be free. To feel relief. To make everything add up. What he actually feels is lucky.

  Tomorrow is Wednesday.

  And he doesn’t have to be at work until noon.

  Based on a True Story

  A Mystery featuring Inspector McCusker

  Paul Charles

  “Inspector McCusker, I can’t be held responsible for a person being shot while they were trespassing in my home.”

  “He wasn’t shot,” McCusker replied crabbily. He was never best pleased when he had to start work before breakfast.

  “He wasn’t shot?” Harry Reid, the owner of the house spat, losing his cool for the first time since McCusker had arrived, half an hour earlier. “Then what about all the blood splattered over the walls and on the ceiling in my study?”

  “He wasn’t shot, Mr Reid,” McCusker replied again, firmly.

  “So, what happened to him then?” Reid enquired, regaining his composure somewhat.

  “We don’t know exactly,” McCusker admitted. “Our pathologist says it looks like the victim’s head just exploded!”

  Harry Reid looked like a collector and, if confirmation were needed, his Holywood house, merely a stone’s throw from the Culloden Hotel on the main Belfast to Bangor road, certainly looked like a collector’s house. You could look, but you most certainly could never ever touch. The room of death was shelved on all sides with deep-red, varnished, mahogany bookcases. Mostly the shelves were comfortably and carefully stacked. McCusker guessed Reid would by now have also collected, at the very least, his official retirement birthday. He was dressed head to toe in expensive black, and had well-groomed, traditionally styled grey hair and chin beard. His skin, particularly about his smallish nose, had the hue of a whiskey drinker. The skin of his hands, however, boasted the well-defined tan of a recent holiday location. His clear-varnished fingernails looked like they were manicured regularly, if not daily. He had the air of someone who clearly felt they had “done well”, against the odds. He had an entourage of personal, live-in staff – Alan Henderson, PA; Ronnie Millings, chauffeur; Billy Harrison, security, and Eric Wilksen, chef – to prove this point to someone, if not to himself.

  Reid and his people were very agitated because the SOCO team would not let them clean any of the blood and brain tissue from the valuable leather-bound books and the collection of priceless vases and decanters.

  McCusker continued to linger by the door of the study. He was about to lean on the doorpost when he realized he’d probably get blood on his Saturday-night, dark blue, pinstriped suit. He looked, and acted, like a man from the country, with unkempt straw copper hair and red cheeks. He was solid rather than overweight, gangly, awkward and shy, but he wasn’t the fool he might like others to think he was. He reckoned by the amount of human tissue splattered around the room, there couldn’t be much of the victim’s head left. All the Portrush-born-and-bred detective could see were two elongated denim legs in blood-splattered, fawn, Timberland boots protruding to the left of the desk along the royal blue carpet. McCusker no
ticed all of the SOCO team were stiff necked to ensure they avoided eye contact with the victim’s remains. Even the dapper DS Willie John Barr was starting to look a bit green around the gills. They were all no doubt helped in their endeavours to avoid looking at the corpse by the distraction of a very large swan-shaped white vase sitting on top of the desk.

  “Aruawareofathingmissinsir?” DS Barr asked.

  Reid looked at McCusker’s detective sergeant as though he came from another planet.

  “I believe the policeman was inquiring if you were aware if anything was missing,” Alan Henderson translated for his boss.

  “Really?” Reid said, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. McCusker wasn’t sure if Reid couldn’t believe that was what Barr had said, or if he couldn’t believe that his PA had understood.

  “I believe so, sir,” Henderson said. He, like the rest of Reid’s “people”, was dressed in a two-piece dark suit, with white shirt. They were distinguishable only by the different loud ties they wore. In another life, McCusker felt Henderson would have continuously rubbed his hands, tugged at his forelock and dipped his neck in respect to his boss.

  “Nothing is missing,” Reid declared.

  “What?” McCusker replied. “With all of the stuff in this room, you don’t need to do a thorough check to see if anything is missing?”

  “I can assure you, nothing is missing from my collection, Inspector.”

  “What about the rest of the house?” McCusker asked.

  Reid looked to Henderson who looked to Billy Harrison who said, “We believe there was only one intruder and he’s—”

  “Right,” McCusker replied, certainly not needing the head of security to draw a picture. “Have you any idea how he gained access to the premises?”

  “Yes, Mr Harrison,” Reid began, without looking at his employee, “perhaps you could explain to the PSNI, not to mention myself, how anyone broke into my ‘thief-proof’ house. I’ve certainly got the bills, if not the certificate of guarantee, to testify to the system you put in.”

  Billy Harrison didn’t look like the kind of person who enjoyed being the focus of Reid’s attention, not to mention his wrath.

  “Rest assured I’ll find out for you,” he said as he departed the room.

  “Make sure you do, Mr Harrison, make sure you do,” Reid ordered, surprisingly good-humouredly considering there were the bloody remains of a stranger on his floor. “Please rest assured, Inspector McCusker, that before the end of this day, I’ll find out how our security was breached. I will of course pass the information over to you.”

  Reid and his people led DI McCusker and DS Barr into the conservatory just off the kitchen. Eric Wilksen, the chef, peeled off into the kitchen, as niftily as Lewis Hamilton taking a pit stop, and went about his business of preparing something.

  Having settled into a luxuriously cushioned, basketwork sofa, all to himself, McCusker was just about to ask what it was, exactly, that Reid did when Alan Henderson opened the brown leather folder he’d been carrying under his arm since they’d first met and produced a single foolscap sheet of paper.

  Top and centre was an embossed deep blue “H” and “R” squished together so they shared a limb, as it were.

  By the end of the page, in four paragraphs of quite large typeface, Harry Reid’s name had been mentioned seventeen times, and still McCusker wasn’t sure exactly what it was he did. It appeared he owned companies who owned companies and these companies in turn were involved with other corporations who seemed to finance Mr Reid’s complex endeavours. As far as McCusker could gather, the crux of Reid’s business seemed to involve doing business with . . . his other businesses.

  A man who does business with himself has no need for a conscience, was McCusker’s golden rule. He was saved from having to ask an embarrassing first question of, “What exactly is it that you do?” when the chef, Wilksen, arrived with a platter full of bacon, eggs (fried and scrambled), sausages, fried tomatoes and – in McCusker’s humble opinion, the US of A’s No. 1 invention – hash browns.

  Henderson sat down to join them and ended up “playing mammy” and dishing out everyone’s ample helpings – everyone, that was, apart from Harrison, who had dry toast accompanied by black tea.

  “He’s pregnant,” the chef jested and was flashed a very disapproving look from both Reid and Henderson for his efforts.

  “Do you know if thieves have been working the area recently?” Reid began as McCusker tore into the food, his hunger overcoming the bizarreness of the situation.

  McCusker nodded at his DS to reply.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary,” Barr replied, taking great effort to speak as slowly as possible. “Have you been broken into before?”

  “No, positively not,” Alan Henderson replied on behalf of his boss. “Mr Reid moved in here fifteen months ago when he relocated to Ulster. It’s one thing to talk about regenerating the country, but it’s another altogether to be here right in the middle helping the country get back on its feet again after all those years of conflict.”

  The PA’s boast seemed to falter somewhat when McCusker asked, through munching on his packed bacon butty, “Ah, where do you come from, Mr Henderson?”

  “My PA is from Chipping North, Inspector,” Reid replied as he dabbed the corners of his mouth with a very expensive-looking lace napkin, “but I’m from just outside Belfast. I grew up not very far from here. I had five brothers and four sisters and we shared three rooms. I remember this house being in ruins for years and when I was a kid we’d all break in and play around the grounds. I’d tell everyone who’d listen that someday this would be my house and I’d restore it to its former glory. I’ll admit to you, Inspector, I’m very proud of what I’ve done to this house. I find there are not many pleasures one can take from wealth but restoring this house has certainly been one of the great pleasures in my life.”

  “Have you any idea, sir, what the thieves would have been after?” McCusker asked.

  Reid laughed but didn’t reply.

  “What?” McCusker asked before finishing the remainder of his tea.

  “You mean you don’t know?” Henderson asked.

  “You don’t read the papers, or watch the telly, Inspector?” Reid added, with the exact same smile still painted on his face.

  “Oh my good Go . . . it can’t be.” DS Willie John Barr gasped like he’d just witnessed the four Beatles back together again in one room. “Mr Reid, that wasn’t the White Swan in there on your desk, was it?”

  Before Reid had a chance to reply, Barr rose from the coffee table, his napkin falling to the floor and under his feet as he sped out of the conservatory and back into the main part of the house.

  A few minutes later they were all in the study again. This time Reid’s posture was two inches taller with pride.

  “It is the White Swan Decanter, Inspector,” Barr kept repeating as they all stood looking at the brilliant-white, glass decanter.

  The decanter, shaped like a swan, was about three feet tall, but unlike everything else in the study, it had not been splattered with blood; either that, or someone had wiped it down. So absolutely pure was the white of the glass, it looked to McCusker as if there were a 1,000-watt white spotlight shinning upwards from beneath the swan.

  “Do you know who legend says this once belonged to?” Reid asked as the entire PSNI team and Reid’s people gathered to study the unique swan.

  The remains of the intruder were now completely ignored, apart from, that is, one member of the SOCO team who inadvertently ventured behind the desk to get a closer view of the swan, only to be seen running off, palm of hand blocking his mouth, in the direction of a flushable receptacle.

  “Finn McCool,” Barr replied.

  “So they say,” Reid replied proudly, and then, “He spent some time up around your way, didn’t he, Inspector?”

  McCusker wasn’t sure if Reid was intentionally letting him know he was aware of the detective’s homeland.

  “I belie
ve he played off a mean par up at the Royal in Portrush,” McCusker offered, drawing an unsympathetic reaction from his audience. “Apparently he had a backswing that sounded like a thunderclap.”

  Barr was still too awestruck by what was before him to be drawn into McCusker’s humour as easily as he normally was.

  “There is a legend that anyone who comes into contact with the contents – supposedly McCool’s acidic tears – dies a horrible death . . .”

  At this point every head in the room swung in the direction of the blind side of the desk.

  “Is that the actual legend Willie John, or is it maybe just the Eddie McIlwaine version for his column in the Belfast Telegraph?” McCusker asked.

  Breakfast was concluded without any further revelations. Reid excused himself, saying Henderson would find a couple of windows of opportunity in the afternoon should the inspector have any further questions. McCusker tightened the Windsor knot of his Royal Golf Club tie into the crisp collar of his white shirt. This was his signal to his DS that he was ready to leave.

  McCusker was in a much better mood as he and Barr drove back into the city centre. He’d long since given up on feeling bitter towards his (golf-widow) wife who’d scampered with all their nest-egg money. She had taken it all and just ran. There had been no vengeful letters, no rude “serves-you-right” telephone calls. She just arose, took up all of their money and walked (via Aldergrove) into the sunset. McCusker suspected she’d scarpered off to America but he had neither the energy nor inclination to follow her. No, he had a much bigger problem he needed to address: the aforementioned heist had occurred four days before he was due to start his greatly anticipated retirement. He tried, unsuccessfully, to get his old post back in Portrush but his replacement had already started and consequently the only place McCusker could find an opening was in PSNI Donegal Place, Belfast.