The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 7 Read online

Mama Esther was there before her, buying bread slices and gossiping with Margret.

  “Did you hear? He found her with another man and beat her so bad she had to limp home to her parents’ house in Luwero!”

  “Are you sure?” asked Margret.

  “Oh yes, Olive and Conrad are broken up. No doubt.”

  When they saw Star standing there, they turned to her and smiled. It was a bad look, as if Conrad would run straight back to her, as if she should be happy that another woman was hurt.

  Star walked up to the soda kiosk. She’d just paid 300 shillings for powdered milk when Conrad appeared with a bag of empty coke bottles. His eyes were puffy and he had a cut on his cheek. He was wearing the ragged old jeans Star had washed so many times.

  “How are you, Star?” he asked in a dull voice.

  “I’m well,” she smiled.

  “You look pretty,” said Conrad, eyeing her new red dress and shoes. “You must be eating.”

  As she walked away from him, Star smelled waragi on her husband’s breath.

  “If only he had a woman to take care of him . . .” she whispered to the baby.

  The truth was, Star missed the old dog and their nights together before the children were born. Now her house was almost empty. His too. She unlocked her back door and put the food away. The baby was fast asleep in her sling so Star laid her down on the mattress.

  From the jar, the picture of Conrad seemed to wink at Star. She hiked her red dress up and pulled down her new polka-dot underwear. White stretch marks wriggled across the smooth black skin of her belly. She stroked them for a moment, then stepped out of her knickers and dropped them over the Royco jar. The leg-hole slid down the glass until the gusset framed Conrad’s face.

  “Draw him to me,” said Star and held a familiar image in her head.

  She walked through the bush until she came to the coffee plantation where Conrad’s family was buried. Star liked graveyards and she’d hinted as much to Conrad, but the idea of making love a few feet above his ancestors’ bones made him retch.

  When Conrad emerged from the trees, a sprig of green beans in his hand, Star didn’t waste time on sweet-talk. She pushed the dusty plastic flowers from his Grandma’s headstone and stretched out to take him. His eyes were milky when he kissed her, like that half-wit with the cataracts who begged in the dust on Namirembe Road. He tugged her dress over her head and nuzzled her breasts, whispered Star in her ear as he bit her lobes. She’d been ready for him for weeks and when he entered her, she fastened on like a limpet.

  Star walked to the yard where her kids were playing. Rose ran up and wrapped her arms round her mother’s waist. Star ran a hand over her daughter’s short hair and leaned to kiss her.

  “You have a good Tata, don’t you? He’s even sent you to school. You think we’d be happy if he came back to live with us?”

  “Yes!” said Rose, “Tata!” and ran back to her game.

  Star went to the bed and reached for Conrad but the jar was gone. Her bedroom stank of body odour and toilet flies buzzed over the pillow. A hand closed round Star’s throat and a cold circle pressed her temple.

  “You’re looking pretty pretty these days Star,” growled a voice from behind her, “Looks like you’re spending someone else’s shillings. I heard your kids are even in school. I just went to find your idiot husband . . . where’s he gone?”

  Conrad had gone for soda but somewhere along the way, the empties vanished. He found himself leaving the bush with his flies undone and scratch marks on his upper arm.

  “I must’ve been in a fight,” he thought, “and got knocked out, maybe. My head is paining.”

  He was avoiding the police station. Robert had been paranoid since his secret stash went missing. All the boys took a beating. Suspicion had first fallen on Jackson as the biggest liar and the most shifty person all round. Hadn’t he been up to something secretive for weeks? Jackson’s body turned up in the swamp near where they’d found Paddy’s and deep down in Conrad a feeling of relief bubbled up with a pop like his friend’s last breath.

  The scratches on Conrad’s arm were fresh. When he touched them he had such a strong image of Star in a hot red dress that he stopped in the road.

  “I can even smell her,” he muttered.

  Star’s scent reminded Conrad of the way it used to be on lazy Sundays when they should’ve been in church. He turned round and looked towards his old house. His kids were running about with some unreeled cassette tape tied on to a sheet of paper, pretending it was a parachute. The woman at the Dairy had said they were all in school now except for the baby, that God must have blessed his family with a windfall. He thought of his wife alone in her house in that red dress.

  “Maybe I could visit her.” He looked down at his ragged jeans. “I’ll have to change first.”

  Conrad pushed open the back door of his house and walked into the kitchen. He hadn’t tidied since Olive walked out and there were pans covered in flies and pools of milky scum by the freezer. A rotten stench, too, like old Nile Perch mingled with sweat, Robert’s smell. Since Jackson’s disappearance, the Chief was always slumped in front of Conrad’s TV watching football. It would all change if he moved back in with Star. She liked to keep their lives in order. Conrad undid his belt, dropped his jeans and pulled his shirt over his head.

  A cold circle jabbed Conrad’s back.

  “My latrine filled up, Conrad,” said Robert. “You know how it gets when it rains and you have to call the shit-suckers in to drain it out?”

  “Yeah,” said Conrad, his shirt wrapped round his head. He stood there with his penis out, feeling a hazy terror. “So the latrine’s back to normal now?”

  “The latrine is. But some other shit I thought I sorted weeks ago is overflowing, ’cos you see some idiot dumped something so big it broke the drainage machine.”

  “What could do that?” asked Conrad and turned round to blink at Robert through the cotton of his shirt.

  “Well maybe it’s this thing in your back.”

  Star shook so badly she could barely think. She could still feel the imprint of Robert’s hands on her neck. But worse, the jar was missing. Surely Robert wouldn’t have taken it. Dumbly, she looked in the fridge. There was no Royco, just soda and onions.

  “Have you seen a glass jar?” she asked Joyce.

  Joyce paused, her hand an inch away from slapping Joseph’s face.

  “You mean the one with Tata’s picture in it?”

  “Yes!” said Star, trying to keep the panic from her voice.

  Conrad kneed Robert in the balls. Robert doubled up and puked. He dropped Conrad’s gun wrapped in a five-shilling bag, the only piece of evidence Robert had collected in his career. Conrad yanked his T-shirt over his head and went for the gun. He brought it down hard on the back of Robert’s neck.

  “Maama! Baby has the jar,” called Rose and pointed to the culprit.

  The baby sat with one buttock in a mud puddle, gurgling at the open Royco jar. Her fat little fist was around her father’s paper head.

  Conrad slid in the sick and across the floor. He landed under Robert. Robert punched him in the face.

  “You idiot,” he growled, “You’re going to the swamp to join your friends, Paddy and Jackson . . .”

  Conrad kicked Robert’s gut and he fell to the floor on top of Conrad.

  “Bad baby!” shouted Star.

  The child wailed and reached for Star’s dress, but for once, Star left her there. She picked up the jar and screwed back the lid, dusting the dirt from its grooves.

  “Baby, I thought I’d lost you!” she said, cradling it.

  Rose stood in the doorway and stared at her mother, her mouth slack. Star sat down in her plastic chair and placed Conrad on the dirt between her feet.

  “Draw him home,” she whispered.

  Robert smashed Conrad’s head against the floor. He pushed a thumb into Conrad’s eye-socket. The gun was between them. Conrad’s hand closed over the barrel just as Robert
found the handle.

  “Wrong end, my friend.” growled Robert, “Your poor wife’s going to miss you.”

  Star waited for the familiar image but none came. The kids kept their distance, playing quietly now with the baby. Star knew that behind her back they exchanged worried looks, wondering if Mama went mad when Tata left, whether she could manage. The sun set in a pink haze and kites circled overhead. She watched them then leaned down, her lips bent in a kiss. The Royco jar burst with a loud pop and the contents ran out in a blur of blue and brown. As the new moon rose over the thorn tree, all Star had left of Conrad were brightly coloured blotches that bubbled as the red earth swallowed them.

  THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A VICTIMLESS CRIME

  Paul Johnston

  THE BANKER’S HOUSE burned down the night after Beltane. It took only a few minutes for the fire chief to declare that it was a case of arson – there were three melted petrol cans at the front door and windows. Only one body was found, curled up foetus-like in a bedroom on the first floor. When the owner called the next day, hot under the collar, from the Caribbean, he said it was probably the Norwegian au pair. When he had taken his family away from Edinburgh, she had stayed to complete her advanced English course.

  “So it’s a murder case now,” Detective Chief Superintendent Andrew Garvie said to his subordinate.

  “Aye.” Jimmy Bain was looking at the building like a fairytale castle next to Lothian and Borders Police headquarters. It contained one of Scotland’s most exclusive private schools. “He went there, you know.”

  Garvie, thin and bespectacled, followed his gaze. “The banker? I’m aware of that.” He turned to the other man, his expression hardening. “So did I, Detective Inspector.”

  Bain raised an eyebrow. “Is that right, sir? I didn’t know.”

  Garvie would have bet his golf clubs that his least favourite but most effective investigator was perfectly aware of where he’d been educated, just as he knew that Bain had been at a bog-standard high school in Fife.

  “Did you know him, then?” the inspector asked, running nicotine-stained fingers over his thin grey hair.

  “I did not,” Garvie replied coldly. “He was four years older and in a different house.”

  “I read in the paper that he was expelled for nicking a teacher’s car.” Bain’s lips formed into a slack grin. “Started his thieving early then.”

  The superintendent frowned. “I don’t know about that, but Sir Rory Ferguson doesn’t have a criminal record.” He wasn’t going to tell the inspector that Rory was a member of his golf club, or that he had often sat late into the night drinking with the banker who had become globally notorious for the size of his earnings and pension.

  “There was talk that he’d be stripped of his knighthood.”

  “I wouldn’t listen to talk if I were you, Inspector.” Garvie looked at the file on his desk. “Where do we stand with the investigation?”

  Jimmy Bain shrugged. “The techies are still combing the ruins, but they’re not too optimistic of finding anything that’ll identify whoever started the blaze.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “My people are still ringing doorbells. It was the middle of the night and that part of Morningside isn’t exactly teeming with people.”

  The superintendent nodded. He’d been to the Ferguson house the previous Christmas. It was large, detached and separated from the neighbouring buildings by high walls.

  “Campbell’s looking at the internet. Customers whose investments were wiped out and workers who lost their jobs have set up websites. Some of them are quite threatening.” Bain looked ostentatiously at his watch. “I’m meeting Sir Ronald’s lawyer in half an hour, sir. He told me on the phone there had been abusive calls and letters.”

  Garvie stood up. “Right, on you go. And Inspector? Keep in touch this time. I don’t want to find out about the case from the TV news.”

  Bain’s lips twitched but didn’t break into a smile. “What about the girl’s father? He’s flying in from Oslo at midday.”

  “I’m handling that,” the superintendent said.

  After the door had closed behind the inspector, Andrew Garvie took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The last thing he wanted was to meet the grieving parent, but the Chief Constable had told him to offer the Norwegian every courtesy. He was something high up in the oil business, and he was also bringing his daughter’s dental records with him so that she could be identified.

  The detective superintendent checked that his door was securely closed, then found the name Farrelly in his mobile phone memory and pressed connect.

  Jimmy Bain finished looking through the file of letters and phone transcripts in the opulent New Town office.

  “Mr Farrelly, do you take any of this seriously?” he asked, making his accent as heavy as he could.

  “I do, and I sincerely hope you do too, Detective Inspector.” The lawyer enunciated like an old-time BBC news-reader.

  “It’s just people letting off steam, isn’t it? I mean, you cannae blame them for feeling aggrieved. They’re out of pocket or on the dole, while your client’s sailing his yacht in the sun.”

  Donald Farrelly W.S. rose from his chair and leaned towards the diminutive policeman. “It is my client who is the victim here, Inspector. He has lost his house and possessions—”

  “Which, I’m sure, were well insured, unlike the au pair.” Jimmy Bain got up. “All right, sir, I’ve got enough to work on. No doubt we’ll be in touch.”

  “Make sure you are,” the lawyer said. “I play golf with Superintendent Garvie.”

  “Is that right?” Bain said, on his way to the door. “Is he any good?”

  Outside, in his car, he wondered if Farrelly had also been at school with his boss and Sir Rory.

  Andrew Garvie stared at the letter that the Norwegian had handed him as soon as they got into the car at the airport. The police driver was taking them back into the city.

  “Is this . . . can we be sure this is genuine?”

  The dead girl’s father turned icy blue eyes on to him. “Certainly,” he said. “Iris told her mother she was dating her employer.”

  The superintendent looked at the headquarters of the bank that had been one of Rory Ferguson’s main competitors, before Rory’s bank had crashed into bankruptcy. What on earth had his friend been doing? Servicing the hired help was one thing, but writing her a love letter was way beyond the pale.

  “You realize what this means?” the Norwegian said. His cheeks and hands were weather-beaten, and he wasn’t carrying a trace of fat. “This is a murder case.”

  “Quite so,” Garvie said. “We’re treating it as one.”

  “Really?” the oilman said. “So, are Sir Rory Ferguson and his wife on their way back for questioning?”

  “I beg your pardon?” The superintendent’s voice was faint.

  “They are suspects, are they not?”

  Andrew Garvie’s eyes widened. “You mean . . .”

  “One of them arranged Iris’s death, you can be sure of that.” The Norwegian sat back in his seat, his fists tightly clenched.

  Garvie considered placating the grieving father with platitudes, but decided that would be a waste of time. Then it struck him how much Jimmy Bain would enjoy this twist in the case.

  The media had a field day when it was announced that the banker and his wife would be returning to Scotland. Donald Farrelly had refused to answer any questions after emphasizing how public-spirited his client was being.

  “Public-spirited, my arse,” Jimmy Bain said to his wife, as they watched the TV news. “The man was shagging the—”

  “Language,” Mavis Bain said. “This is not the police canteen.”

  The inspector raised his eyes to the ceiling. It certainly wasn’t the canteen – the food there was better. “I’m going out,” he said, heading for the door. “I might be late.”

  “That’ll make a change,” Mavis said sourly.

  His mobile rang b
efore he reached the pub at the end of the road.

  “Detective Inspector Bain?” said a female voice.

  “Aye. Who’s this?”

  “I’d . . . I’d rather not say just now.” The woman had the understated accent of the Scottish landed gentry. “Can we meet as soon as possible? It’s to do with the fire at the Ferguson house.”

  Bain played ball with alacrity. An hour later, a tall, slim woman wearing a fedora pulled low and a black trouser suit walked into the bar in Newington. He nodded to her from the corner table. After he’d been to get a tonic water and ice for her and another pint of heavy for himself, he took in the tanned face.

  “I know who you are,” the inspector said. He’d seen plenty of photographs of Lady Angela Ferguson in the papers. She was involved with a charity that worked on famine relief in Africa.

  “Don’t bother saying my name,” she said in a low voice.

  Bain shrugged. “No problem. What can I do for you? I’d have thought you’d have seen enough police officers over the last few days.” Garvie had kept him away from the interviews with the banker and his wife, but he assumed they’d been dragged over the coals. The Norwegian’s evidence was hard to argue with. His daughter had been identified by her teeth, and he had signed an exclusive deal with one of the national dailies. But, as yet, no one had been charged.

  Lady Angela took a dainty sip of her drink. “Who do you think set the fire, Inspector?”

  Bain couldn’t help his eyebrows heading ceiling-wards. “I can’t discuss that with you,” he said, taking refuge in his pint. The fact was, he and the team had checked all the individuals and groups who had abused and threatened the banker – none had been deemed serious and most of the people had alibis.

  “You don’t know, do you?” The woman held her eyes on him, finally shaking her head. “I don’t know who actually did it, either.” She paused. “But I know who was responsible.”

  “Really?” The inspector leaned closer. “And who’s that?”

  Lady Angela looked around and then met his eyes again. “Mrs Thatcher.”

  Bain let out a frustrated groan. “Oh, come on. I didn’t have you down as a socialist.”