The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9 Read online

  “How?” Fields of battle were chaotic, yes, but even so I knew enough stories about officers shooting men who ran “the wrong way” to know how hard such an endeavour would be.

  “Harold was terrified,” Dad said. “Sick all the time. Your granddad had to be behind him just to get him into the line. All he wanted to do was get out of there. The plan was simple and it could very easily have failed. In fact I think that your granddad did probably think that it had failed. Once on the field, Harold dropped to the ground as if he was shot. And there he stayed until our boys had passed him by. Your granddad behaved as if his brother had died and, when the day was over, there was indeed no sign of him.”

  “But if he did survive,” I said, “why didn’t he visit his family? Where did he go? Did Granddad not try to contact him?”

  “Granddad wouldn’t have contacted him,” dad said with a smile. “That wasn’t his job. His role, as you youngsters have it these days, was to make sure that no one ever knew the truth. You have to remember, kiddo, that deserters were regarded as scum even by their families back in the First World War. Granddad wanted to save his silly little brother’s life but he couldn’t tell anybody about it. That was the deal. If Harold got caught, then George, his brother, knew nothing about his desertion. If he didn’t get caught then he just disappeared. He was “dead” and that was the end of it. And as the years passed, even if Granddad had wanted to tell his family, he couldn’t have done so. Harold was awarded medals posthumously, he’s a grave somewhere in one of the war cemeteries over on the continent. He’d become a dead man and until that night back in November 1967 he’d stayed a dead man.”

  Harold had come back? I began to feel chilly. I rubbed my arms with my strange purple hands and watched as Dad smiled up at me again.

  “Do you remember Mo who used to live upstairs to grandma and granddad?” he said.

  “Yes.” Mo had been funny to a kid like me, always staggering about all the time and, occasionally, swearing. “Mo went down the pub and left the front door open,” Dad said. “Your grandma was doing the dishes in the scullery when this bloke walked into the parlour. She didn’t know who he was at first, couldn’t see his face. There was just a silence. Your granddad didn’t speak and neither did the other man. According to her, when she did go into the parlour, they were both just standing there, looking at each other. Harold, she said, was faced away from her. But she saw the expression on your granddad’s face and so she walked around so that she could see the man. She got a right shock.”

  “Did she?” Grandma can’t have seen Harold since he was not much more than a child over fifty years before.

  “Your granddad went berserk.” Dad coughed. “Said that Harold had broken their pact. Told him to bugger off to where he’d come from and never come back. All Harold kept on saying, apparently, was that he was lonely, that he couldn’t do it any more, that he wanted to be part of something again. Granddad hit him. He took the coal shovel in his hand and he hit his brother over the head with it. He did it just as Mo was walking through the parlour door as drunk as a sack. Harold had left it open when he walked back into your grandparents’ lives.”

  Bile from my already grieving stomach rose up into my throat. “Granddad killed him.”

  “He didn’t mean to. He was angry.”

  “And Mo saw him do it?”

  Mo had used the word “murder” to describe what had happened that night. I had never known why until that point. I had never even questioned it. Mo had been a drunk. He’d eventually died in a pub brawl in 1969, a year before my granddad’s death.

  “Mo helped your granddad drag the body out to the yard,” Dad said.

  “But how did Mo never tell anyone? How …”

  “He told us, inadvertently,” Dad said. “But he never told the coppers. Your grandparents had the tenancy of that house. If they’d’ve had to go then the landlord would have chucked Mo out too. He didn’t want them carted off to prison. It was really an accident.”

  “Granddad killed Harold!”

  “He didn’t mean to.”

  “Yes, but he did it anyway!”

  “Love,” my dad said, “he turned up out of the blue. It was a shock, it … The cause of the unknown man’s death according to the coppers was a heart attack. He had a coronary and he hit his head on the side of the old chicken coop as he fell. That’s what they said.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t …”

  “He did die of a heart attack,” Dad said. “I asked and that was what I was told. The blow to the head wasn’t fatal.”

  “So he had a weak heart anyway,” I said. “Doesn’t make what Granddad did right.”

  “No. No, it doesn’t.”

  My father didn’t know where Harold had been or what he had done in the long years that had followed the First World War. Maybe he hadn’t done anything much for fear of being discovered? Or perhaps he’d had a family who had left him or died and that was why he had turned up, lonely and weary, at my grandparents’ place on that ill-fated November evening? I realized then, as I realize now, that I would never, ever know.

  Two days after my father told me about Harold, he slipped into a coma and died. Family and friends came from far and wide to attend his funeral and I often visit his grave up at the East London Cemetery. But about Harold I have remained silent. What good would upsetting what remains of the family about such a thing be now? Feelings still run high about the First World War even though modern opinions about desertion are more enlightened than they were at the time. I did do one thing, however. And shudder as I do when I write of it, I am glad that I did do it.

  I didn’t find my Uncle Harold’s grave, but I did find a record of the death of the unknown man in my grandparents’ yard in November 1967. It is the police doctor’s estimate of Harold’s age that haunts me: 17. Seventeen. Write it twice in numbers and letters, it doesn’t get any better. And how can that be?

  Harold, I estimated, had to have been seventy in 1967. So whoever my grandfather killed, it can’t have been Harold. And yet my grandmother said that it had been. And indeed why and for what reason would my gentle grandfather have attacked and killed a perfect stranger? I’ve spent sleepless nights wondering whether the man who entered my grandparents’ house that night was Harold’s son, his grandson or just someone who happened, for whatever reason, to look like him. My grandmother was, after all, frightened enough to not want the policeman who visited them to see any of Harold’s photographs, either in the albums or on the mantelpiece. But in spite of all that, was it just a case of mistaken identity? If it was, however, why did “Harold” say to Granddad that he was lonely, that he “couldn’t do it any more”?

  Logically the man who walked into my grandparents’ house that night in November 1967 cannot have been my great-uncle Harold. It was his son, his grandson, a lookalike, someone completely different. A burglar that my grandparents, for some reason, projected Harold’s image on to. Maybe there was a resemblance of some sort there. But there is something else it could have been too. Against all logic Harold did come back and he did enter that house in West Ham with the full intention of breaking the pact with his brother, maybe because his heart was weak and he knew that he was close to death. But as he entered that strange, ossified place, something happened. By magic, by the action of the place we all laughingly called the Time Machine, by some trick of biology or act of God, Harold became again the boy he had been when he disappeared. Alone and desperate, this “ghost” appealed to my grandfather for help and this time he denied him. Harold “died” again and lies in an unmarked grave somewhere in the East London Cemetery where all my family lie.

  But my grandfather said that he found a body in the back yard down by the chicken coop when he went out to the toilet one cold evening in November 1967. And maybe if that didn’t actually happen, then perhaps that was what was meant to happen and possibly I will just have to content myself with that. And, of course, with a load of black and white photographs that now live in b
oxes in my attic in Yorkshire.

  SHOOTING FISH

  Adrian Magson

  * * *

  MARAUDERS HIT MY patch again last night.

  It’s not much of a place for growing stuff; a thirty-by-thirty rectangle of scrubby earth behind a clutch of pine trees half a mile from where I bed down. There’s a small brook where I get water just a few yards away, and a shelter, where the worst of the wind is kept back by the trees. But it’s mine and all that stands between me and having to live on roots and whatever I can find, or trekking into town ten miles away.

  Allotments used to be about community cohesion and getting back to the land, where a family could grow potatoes and onions and things for the table. Now, since the credit crunch went further south than anyone had predicted, and country people had moved into the towns for protection – safety in numbers, so they thought – they’d found out the harsh reality: they’re about survival, pure and simple … and defending what’s yours.

  I looked at the ragged holes where the potatoes used to be. Three days of hard work wasted, digging and raking until the soil was broken up and soft enough to plant. Whoever had done this – and I figured it had to be someone who knew the area – hadn’t known shit about vegetables, other than maybe eating them. They’d ripped up plants wholesale only to find they’d struck too early and come up with barely enough to fill a soup bowl. Another month at least before I’d expected anything sizeable, but now it was all gone.

  I picked up a smashed trellis where I’d been trying to encourage peas and beans to grow. They were gone, ripped out and thrown to one side. Trails of heavy boot prints had trekked across the neat rows, scuffing into oblivion what the visitors hadn’t been bothered to bend and ease from the earth the way you’re supposed to if you care about that kind of thing.

  But then, marauders don’t. Care, I mean. They don’t have the brains, merely the greed, crawling out from under the stones they call home and living up to their name without considering the consequences.

  I checked the horizon, wondering if they were still out there. There’d be at least three – they rarely travel in smaller groups, preferring to rely on numbers to intimidate rather than using intelligence or guile. And they’d be armed with whatever ordnance they’d managed to steal from abandoned farmhouses when the owners had gone: shotguns, twelve-bores, old four-tens and whatever.

  I preferred to take my chances out here; at least I knew what country rats looked like. And I could read the countryside like an open book. Out here, I stood a better chance than anywhere else, even if it meant being alone.

  Alone I could handle.

  A couple of rooks clawed into the air from a strand of trees on the far side of a field three hundred yards away. I sank to the ground and watched. Crows are grudging, surly birds, too stupid to frighten easily. Not unless something unusual comes along. Like humans.

  Something must have spooked them.

  Something coming this way.

  A single figure, walking solidly, stumbling occasionally over the rough ground. It had been ploughed earth once, but not for the past two years. Not since the farmer had gone. Now it was just earth, overgrown with couch-grass and weeds, a few spindly remnants of wheat and whatever else he’d planted over the years struggling to find clear air.

  I waited until the figure was fifty yards away, then stood up and faced him.

  Her.

  The woman was pale and thin, about thirty, with long dark hair. She was dressed in a ski-jacket, combats and walking boots. The boots looked new, which meant they were looted or black-market.

  She stopped twenty yards away, looking at me with wide eyes.

  “Who are you?” she said. If she was scared, she didn’t show it.

  “My name’s Dave,” I replied. Well, it would have been rude not to. “You are—?”

  “Angel.” She looked around, beyond me, scanning the area, and I got the feeling she did this out of instinct, not training. “You got any shelter?”

  “No. Not here. Where are you from?” If she said she was local, I was getting ready to fight, because she wouldn’t be. I knew everyone within a fifteen-mile radius, all the other country-dwellers like me, the dispossessed and the ones who could do without company and the toxic surroundings of overcrowded towns and cities. Town dwellers I didn’t know, nor did I want to.

  She looked too pale to be country.

  She shivered and coughed. “I came south overland. Had an argument with the people I was with and took off.” She smiled, which threatened to light up her face. “Stupid, I know, but it had been brewing for ages. I had no choice, so I left.” She shrugged and looked around. “Didn’t expect to find anyone around here, but I’m glad I did. You got any eats?”

  Then she keeled over.

  She woke when I got her back to my caravan, eyes fluttering and disorientated. I’d got some tea on the brew and poured her a cup. She was skin and bone beneath the jacket and combats and weighed almost nothing.

  She sat up and took a sip. Looked surprised.

  “Couldn’t get this in the place I was in,” she said weakly, and drank it down. “Stocks ran out ages ago.” She put the cup down and lay back, breathing light and fast, eyes fixed on nothing I could see.

  I gave her a bowl of soup and some pitta bread, and she scoffed it down double-quick, in spite of the heat. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in a long time and I wondered how close she’d come to lying down and not getting up before stumbling over my allotment.

  “It’s been a couple of days,” she said, reading my mind. “Needed to get distance between them and me before stopping.”

  I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t my business who she was running from. Just as long as she hadn’t brought them with her.

  They came the following night, on the heels of a brief storm. The clouds had been heavy all day, thumping overhead like bad-tempered children spoiling for a fight. The rain had been welcome, though, I didn’t mind rain. It would irrigate the allotment and keep casual travellers huddled in whatever shelter they could find. When it ended, they’d be anxious to be on their way, depressed by the way nature pushed the wind and rain through every crack and cranny, forcing water down their necks and inside their clothing.

  In the drip-backed silence following the last puff of thunder, I heard a crack out in the field. I knew what it was: I’d scattered some canes out there while Angel was asleep. Still brittle even if wet, they were thin enough to give easily, thick enough to snap and give me warning of someone’s approach.

  I curled out of bed and went to the window. Eased back the curtain. Movement showed through the trees surrounding the caravan. A figure slipped sideways out of my field of view; another followed, going the other way. Visitors don’t behave like that.

  “Angel!” The voice came from the left, anger and command contained in just one word. “Angel, we know you’re in there. Come out!”

  I heard a clicking sound and my stomach flipped. It was the sound of a shotgun being racked. Deliberate, intimidating, dramatic, it carried an unmistakable message.

  “Angel.” Another voice, this one high-pitched like a woman, lilting, almost tuneful. But just as scary.

  Behind me, Angel stumbled out of the other bunk and crept up to my shoulder. I could feel her breath on my neck, sour and hot.

  “Are they your friends?” I asked.

  “Not any more.” She sounded almost regretful, and I wondered if I’d been set up. Find a solitary man growing food and surviving in the country, pretend to be vulnerable and afraid to gain his confidence and trust, then get your friends to come in and take him when his guard’s down. Good as a Trojan Horse.

  Another cracking sound, this time of undergrowth being kicked aside. It sounded about twenty feet away. Too close for comfort. If they had guns, these caravan walls would puncture like soft cheese.

  I reached sideways and took hold of the shotgun I’d never used, but kept handy. It felt heavy and cold, and I desperately didn’t want to use i
t. Guns were for other people, messy and brutal. Once used, guns couldn’t be denied, an irreversible action with irreversible consequences.

  A vivid flash of light and a roar of sound, and suddenly I was looking at a fist-sized hole in one corner of the caravan, and the interior was splattering with lead pellets bouncing off the walls like a hailstorm. Angel screamed in pain and ducked to the floor, and I followed.

  No good being a hero if you’re dead.

  “You OK?”

  “Yes. Stung my face, that’s all.” She suddenly sounded very young.

  A cackle of laughter from outside, and another shot. The blast took out a window, showering us with slivers of Perspex. It came from the right, followed by the high-pitched voice again.

  “Angel, sweetie!” it teased. “You got ten seconds to come out. I want my birthday pressie!”

  “Who are they?” I asked, and checked the gun was loaded. If they hadn’t come in already, it was because they were being cautious.

  “His name’s Roper,” said Angel, fear making her voice tremble. “The older one. He was always after me, but his wife kept him away. The other one’s Tyke.” I felt her shiver with revulsion. “Roper’s son. He promised me to him on his seventeenth birthday.”

  “When’s that?”

  A pause. “Today. No, tomorrow. Tomorrow.”

  “Nobody objected?” I scanned the darkness, waiting for the next shot. Now would have been a good idea to have a back door to slip through. Bad planning.

  “Nobody dared.” Her voice was a whisper. “Roper thinks he’s untouchable. The last man who argued with him disappeared.”

  “He ran off?”

  “No, They found his left hand a week later. But that was all.”

  Great. Psychopaths in my allotment. That’s all I needed.

  Suddenly another shot ripped through the walls, and a large figure flitted across my field of vision, heading for the door. He was going at a tilt that would take him through the thin wood without stopping. He’d be in among us and I knew that would be the end of it for both of us.