The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries Read online

  When I felt as though I was the one who’d had the breath punched out of me.

  How bloody old am I?

  It’s a fair question, but I don’t suppose it really matters. Too old, that’s the point, isn’t it? Too old to smoke and not worry about it; to put on a pair of socks without sitting down; to think about running for a bus.

  Too old to feel immortal . . .

  Like you’d expect, it was mostly Diet Coke and fizzy water in the pub afterwards. I had orange juice and lemonade myself, for the first week anyway, but Zoe drank beer from the off.

  Ruth didn’t give a monkey’s what anyone did once the class was over, but there was one woman who didn’t approve; who clearly enjoyed having another reason to dislike Zoe. She was glaring across at her from an adjoining table, one night a few weeks in, and I was giving it the old cow back with bells on.

  “Maybe she’s jealous because she secretly fancies you,” Zoe whispered.

  I pulled a face. “Christ, don’t put me off me pint!”

  She really enjoyed that one. Her laugh was low and dirty, and it still amazes me really, to think of it coming out of a mouth like hers. A face like that.

  “She’s just dried-up and bitter,” I said. “Hates it that she’s doing this to try and change how she looks, or what have you, while others don’t really have to.”

  Zoe smiled, leaned a shoulder against mine. “Some people just don’t know how to have fun, you know? Think their bodies are temples and all that.”

  “My body’s more of a slaughterhouse these days,” I said.

  She enjoyed that one too. It felt fantastic to make her laugh. We shared a big packet of crisps, which really wound up the old bag on the next table. She left early, while Zoe and me and a few of the others stayed until they rang the bell, same as always. Ruth and Anthony were giggling by the jukebox, and Maggie kept an eye on me from a table near the door, where she sat clutching her mobile phone, waiting for Phil to come and pick the pair of us up.

  “Why do you come?” I asked her. “It’s not like you need to lose weight or anything. You seem pretty fit . . .”

  She leaned a shoulder into mine. “You’re sweet.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  She took another swig from her bottle. “I’m lazy,” she said. “I need to make myself do things, get out and do something a bit off the wall, you know? Anyway, it’s a laugh, don’t you reckon?”

  I did reckon, and I told her.

  “I work in a stupid office,” she said. “The people there are all right I suppose, but I don’t want to see them after work or whatever. I think it’s good to meet people who aren’t anything like you are. People with different lives, you know? I tried a French class, but it was too hard, and the teacher was a bit stuck-up. This is much better. Much.”

  She had a voice it was easy to listen to. She certainly wasn’t posh, but there wasn’t really an accent either. Just soft and simple, you know?

  “What about you?” she asked.

  I said I was basically there to keep Maggie happy, and to try and get at least some of the old fitness back. I mentioned that I used to box a bit and she said that she could see it. That it was in the way I carried myself.

  I had to hide my face in my glass, and I’d all but downed the rest of the pint by the time the blush had gone away.

  “Someone needed a drink,” she said.

  There was a burst of high-pitched laughter from Ruth and Anthony, and when I looked across, I could see that Maggie had gone from a smartarse smile to something that looked like concern.

  I went up to get the two of us refills, and exchanged nods with Craig who was deep in conversation with the woman behind the bar. He was smoking which made me deeply fucking envious. If Maggie hadn’t been sitting by the door, I might well have ponced one.

  “Enjoying yourself?” he said.

  When the barmaid went to fetch the drinks, Craig span slowly round and leaned back against the bar. He looked across at Zoe for a minute, more maybe, then turned to me. His face said “I know, I couldn’t agree more, mate. But look at me and look at you.”

  Or he might just have been asking me to pass the ashtray.

  Oh fuck it, who knows?

  Her old man had a place in Battersea, on the edge of the park. There was a night I was driving her back from one of Frank’s casinos, down through Chelsea towards Albert Bridge, when she started asking me all manner of funny questions.

  “Do you actually like any of them, though? Are any of them really your mates if you think about it?”

  The gin had slowed her up a little. Thickened her voice, you know?

  “Any of who?” I said.

  She jerked a thumb back towards where we’d come from. “That lot. The boys. They’re just people you work with, aren’t they? Just blokes you knock around with, right, and I don’t suppose any of them give a toss about you, either. Wouldn’t you say?”

  I shrugged and watched the road. It wasn’t like I’d never heard her talking bollocks before. Next time she spoke, her voice had more breath in it, and she kept saying my name, but that’s something else people do when they’ve had a couple, isn’t it?

  “It’s just London, right?” she said. “Frank doesn’t own stuff anywhere else, does he?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t think so either.”

  “He’s been up north on business, definitely. Manchester . . .”

  “It was only a few times,” she said. “Just to meet people.”

  “Birmingham as well. I drove him to the station.”

  “He was just looking, though, that’s what I heard. Nothing came of it. It’s all here really, don’t you reckon?” She said my name again, slow with a question in it. Wanting me to agree with her. “Everyone’s here, aren’t they?”

  I heard a song I knew she liked come on the radio and I turned it up for her. That girl who did Eurovision without any shoes on. I was waiting for her to start singing along, but when I looked in the rear-view I could see that her eyes were closed.

  Her head was tipped back and her mascara was starting to run.

  Things really started to go pear-shaped the time Zoe turned up looking like she did and Craig didn’t turn up at all.

  I hadn’t admitted it to myself, not really, that the two of them were seeing each other outside the class, but I had to stop being stupid and face facts when I saw her walk in like that. It was like I suddenly knew all sorts of things at once. I knew that they’d got together, that everyone else had probably sussed it a damn sight faster than me, and I knew exactly what had happened to her face.

  In class, I stepped that bit faster than usual. I stamped on and off that bastard thing, and it was automatic, like I could do it all day and I wasn’t even thinking. Ruth said how well I was doing and when Zoe smiled at me, encouraging, I had to look away.

  Afterwards, she didn’t turn towards the pub with the rest of us, and when I saw that she was heading for the car-park, I moved to go after her. Maggie took hold of my arm and said something about getting a table. I told her I’d be there in a minute, to get one in for me, but she didn’t look very happy.

  I tried to get a laugh out of Zoe when I caught her up; made out like I was knackered, you know, from chasing after her, but she didn’t seem to really go for it. “Do you not fancy it tonight then?” I said. “Not even a swift half?”

  She was fetching her car-keys from her bag. Digging around for them and keeping her head down. “I’ve got an early start in the morning,” she said. “New boss, you know?”

  I nodded, told her that one wasn’t going to hurt.

  She caught me looking, not that I was trying particularly hard not to. It was like a plum that someone had stepped on around her cheek, and the ragged edges of it were the color of a tea-stain. There was a half-moon of blood in her eye.

  “I didn’t know there was a cupboard open and I turned round into it,” she said. “Clumsy bitch . . .”

 
“Shush . . .”

  “I actually knocked myself out for a few seconds.”

  “Listen, it’s all right,” I said.

  “What is?”

  “Come and have one quick drink,” I said. “Who am I going to share my salt and vinegar crisps with if you don’t?”

  It was as though she suddenly noticed that my hand was on her wrist, and she looked down and took half a step back. “I’ll see you next week.”

  “Look after yourself.” It came out as a whisper. I didn’t really know what else to say.

  She pressed the button on her car-keys and when the lights flashed and the alarm squawked, I saw her jump slightly.

  In the pub, I couldn’t blame Maggie for being off with me. I sat there with a face like a smacked arse, and I couldn’t have said more than three words to anyone. After half an hour I’d had enough, and I asked her to call Phil, get him to fetch us early. That didn’t go down too well either because she was having a laugh with Anthony, but I just wasn’t in the mood for it.

  As we were leaving, Ruth raised her glass and said something about me being her star pupil.

  Zoe didn’t turn up at all the following week.

  We were driving, same as always. Seemed like, when it came to being close or what have you, that was the only time we ever really saw each other. Me in the front, her in the back.

  “Go slowly, will you?” she’d said when she got in.

  Obviously I was going to do what she wanted, right, and it was raining like a bastard anyway, so it wasn’t like I could have put my foot down. Still, I wanted to get back to her place as quickly as I could. Don’t get me wrong, I hated it when she got out of the car, hated it, but lately I’d taken to stopping somewhere after I’d dropped her off; soon as I’d got round the corner sometimes.

  I’d pull over in the dark and sit quiet for a minute. Reach for a handkerchief. Throw one off the wrist, while I could still smell her in the car.

  Sounds disgusting, I know, but it didn’t feel like it back then.

  I drove, slow like she wanted, along the Brompton Road and down Sydney Street. Staring at the jaguar leaping from the end of the bonnet; the road slick, sucked up beneath it.

  When I turned up the radio to drown out the squeak of the wipers, she leaned forward and asked me to switch it off.

  Pissing down now. Clattering on the roof like tacks.

  “There’s people been talking to me,” she said.

  “What people?”

  “They’ve been going over my options, you know?”

  “What options?”

  “The choices I’ve got.”

  I looked in the mirror. Watched her take a deep breath when she saw that I didn’t understand.

  “Billy’s fucked up,” she said. “Silly bugger’s really gone and dropped himself in it.”

  Her brother. My ex-sparring partner. Always had been a bit of a tearaway.

  “What’s he done?” I asked. Prickles on my neck.

  “He went for some flash Maltese fucker with a knife . . .”

  “Jesus.”

  “Didn’t really do him too much harm, but they’ll happily bump it up to attempted murder. Put him away for a few years unless I decide to help.”

  I knew who she was talking about now. Coppers were the same as anyone else at the end of the day. There were plenty of stupid ones, but enough of them with brains to make life interesting.

  “There’s only Billy and me,” she said. “The bastards know how close we are.”

  She started to cry just a little bit then. I went inside my jacket for the handkerchief I’d be using later on, but she’d already pulled one out from her handbag. I’d heard the pills rattling as she rummaged for it.

  I was taking us over the bridge by now. Gliding across it. The lights swung like a necklace up ahead and the rain was churning up the water on either side of me.

  “It’s not like I know a fat lot.”

  “Fat lot about what?” I said, but it was obvious what she was banging on about.

  “Frank. Frank’s business. All that.”

  All that.

  “Obviously they think I know something.” She raised her hands, let them drop down with a slap on to the leather seat. “Maybe I know enough.”

  Course she did; she wasn’t stupid, was she? Enough to get her little brother out of the shit and herself slap bang in it.

  I wanted to slam on the anchors and stop the car right there on the bridge. To reach into the back and shake her until her fillings came loose. I wanted to tell her that her brother was a pissy little waster, and that she shouldn’t be such a daft bitch, and to say absolutely fuck all to anyone about fuck all.

  I was the one that kept my mouth shut, though, wasn’t I? The one who just gripped the wheel that little bit tighter and manoeuvered the car like I was on my driving test. Checking the wing mirrors, hands at ten to two, watching my speed.

  “I need to go away,” she said.

  Ten to two. Both eyes on the road . . .

  “Somewhere abroad might be best. Somewhere hot, near the sea if I get a choice, but it might not have to be that far. Maybe Scotland or somewhere. I’ve tucked a bit away and I’m sure I can make a few bob later on. I can type for a kick-off.”

  Slowing for lights. No more than a mile away from the flat on the edge of the park. Checking the mirror and feathering the brake; moving down through the gears.

  “I just don’t feel like I can do it on my own, you know? That’s the only bit I’m scared of, if I’m honest. It’s pathetic I know, relying on someone like that, but the thought of nobody being there with me makes me feel sick, like I’m looking over the edge of something. I don’t mean sex or whatever, but that’s not out of the question either. It’s mostly about having someone around who gives a toss, do you know what I mean?”

  Waiting for the amber, willing that fucker to change.

  “Someone who worries . . .”

  She said my name, and it felt like I had something thick and bitter in my gullet.

  Neither of us said anything else after that, but we were only five minutes away from the flat by then. The silence was horrible, make no mistake about that, but it just lay there until it sort of flattened out into something we were both willing to live with. Until she asked me to turn the radio back up.

  When we pulled up, I got out to open her door, then climbed back in again quick without saying much of anything. When I looked up she was standing there by my door. She had an umbrella, but she never even bothered getting it out; just stood there getting pissed on, with the rain bringing her hair down, until thick strands of it were dead and dark against her face.

  She was saying something. I couldn’t hear, but I was looking at her mouth, same as always.

  I thought she said: “It doesn’t matter, Jimmy.”

  Then she put the tips of two fingers to her lips and pressed them against my window. They went white where she pressed, and I could still see the mark for a few minutes after I drove away.

  I didn’t stop the car where I normally did. Just kept going for a bit, trying to swallow and think straight. I drove up through Nine Elms and pulled in a mile or so past the power station.

  Sat there and stared out across the shitty black river until it started to get light.

  Craig looked confused as much as anything when I walked round the corner. Grinned at him. It was half way through the morning, and him and a couple of older women in blouses and grey skirts had come out the back entrance of the bank for a crafty smoke.

  “All right, mate?”

  “Ticking along,” I said. “You?”

  It must have been there in my face or the way I spoke, because I saw the women stubbing out pretty long fag-ends, making themselves scarce. Neither of them so much as looked at him before they buggered off.

  Craig watched his colleagues go, seemed to find something about it quite funny. He turned back to me, taking a drag. Shook his head.

  “Sorry, mate. It’s just a bit stra
nge you turning up here, that’s all. How d’you know where I worked?”

  “Zoe must have said, last time she came to the class, you know?”

  Something in his face that I couldn’t read, but I didn’t much care.

  “How’s she doing, anyway?” I said.

  “Er, she’s good, yeah.”

  “It was a shame she stopped coming, really. We were all saying how she made the rest of us work a bit harder, trying to keep up.”

  “She just lost interest I think. Me an’ all, to be honest.” Then a look that seemed to say they were getting their exercise in other ways, and one back from me that tried and failed to wipe it off his face.

  It was warm and he was in shirt-sleeves. I was sweating underneath my jacket so I slipped it off, threw it across my arm.

  “Are you feeling OK?”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “You’ve gone a bit red.”

  I nodded, looked at the sweat patches under his arm and the pattern on his poxy tie.

  He flicked his fag-end away. “Listen, I’ve got to get back to work . . .”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll say hello to Zoe, shall I?”

  “How’s her face?”

  That took the smile off the fucker quick enough. Put that confused look back again, like he didn’t know his arse from his elbow.

  “It’s fine now,” he said. “She’s all gorgeous again.”

  “Nasty, that was. Not seen many shiners worse than that one. Door wasn’t it?”

  “Cupboard door.”

  “Yeah, that’s what’s she said.”

  “She forgot it was open and turned round fast, you know? Listen—”

  I was just looking at him by now.

  “What?”

  I knew I still had that. You never lose the look.

  “What’s your problem?”

  Breathing heavily, a wheeze in it. For real some of it, like the red face, but I’d bunged a bit extra on top, you know. Laid it on thick just to get his guard down.