The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 7 Part 3

"I'm quite sure you know what I'm going to ask you now, Pagan."

"You'd be right for a change, Philip."

Nevertheless I asked it: "Who was it then who was driving the Rolls?"

"You know perfectly well yourself. Christmas is the occasion for the giving and receiving of presents, is it not? The Magi started all that stuff, although there's considerable doubt in higher theological circles whether there ever were any Wise Men. But even I was willing to join in all that goodwill. I'd bought my Christmas present for Sally, remember? And somebody else had decided to deliver his Christmas present personally to his pal, Jeff Lloyd somebody who was quite incapable of pa.s.sing anyone he found fiddling underneath the bonnet of a broken-down car without stopping to sort out the trouble; someone who, like Jeff himself, probably couldn't keep his job if he got run in by the rozzers for drunk-driving an offence of which he was most undoubtedly and totally guilty. And he'd been at the Garage party." It was my turn now to nod as Morse continued: "Helen drove him home to Kidlington that night. He's a wonderful chap and she was glad to be able to help him."

"You sound as if you know him."

"Not really. But I did go to see him yesterday. In fact he didn't seem to recognize me from the night before. Huh! He's fully recovered from his fictional flu, though, and he tells me he'll be back at work tomorrow, with a plaster across his forehead. He's going to say that his missus had hit him across the head with a roasting-tin. She's a lovely woman, by the way. Wouldn't hurt a hair on his head."

"And you mean Jeff Lloyd agreed to all this just to save Tom What's-his-name his job, his reputation, and all that?"

"Don't you remember me telling you what a good fellow Jeff was, too?"

Yes, I did remember.

Morse was right.

And very soon he was gone, and I sat alone in my room for ten minutes or so, taking in everything, and deciding to go out for a stroll to clear my head.

Helen Lloyd was prodding a garden-fork into the hydrangea patch as I walked out. "Can I ask you a question, Mrs Lloyd?"

"Try me!"

"Why was Pagan so anxious to keep the number-plate?"

"Perhaps there's a chance that Sally will write to him again? A chance her mother may die soon, perhaps?"

"Don't know," I muttered.

She smiled openly: "I suppose there's a much more obvious reason, though. It had cost him an awful lot of money, and he said he'd probably try to sell it back to the dealer."

She looked up at me, still smiling. "Always a bit on the tight side where money's concerned, isn't he?"

I turned to leave, but had one last question: "Why was it you turned to Pagan first of all when you needed help? Why him?"

"That's the easiest question I've been asked this whole wretched holiday, Philip. You see, I fell in love with him."

"And did he . . . does he . . .?"

"Reciprocate?"

Her smile had suddenly saddened, and slowly she shook her head.

Morse completed Mods, with, it was rumoured, the second highest marks of the year, but decided thereafter to discontinue his Cla.s.sics Degree with Greats. He spent two years at the Patent Office in London before joining the Thames Valley Police. The rest is history. The Lloyds emigrated to Canada in 1978, but there has been no news of them since. Grove Street Garage is now a block of flats, but of the Rolls I have discovered nothing. For nostalgic reasons I walked along Daventry Road a week after my return to Oxford, and (mirabile dictu) watched awhile as the current owner of "The Firs" was creosoting a st.u.r.dy looking garden-fence. Should any reader reprimand me gently for forgetting my promise to the Lloyds, it should be noted that they are no longer "still around", and in fact seem wholly forgotten. But no, not wholly, since not infrequently there drift back into my mind some memories of one of them.

When I returned to College after the Christmas vac of the year in which Morse had left Lonsdale, awaiting me in the Porters' Lodge was a brown-papered parcel containing a Christmas present. It was the rather tattered paperbacked Homeric Dictionary, inscribed in which I found the words: "Hunc librum Philippo, amico suo fideli, dedit Paga.n.u.s". It is the most precious book in my whole library.

Philip Day (Lonsdale College, Oxford) 2008.

GHOSTS.

John Harvey.

IT WAS MID-MORNING, and Kiley was in his office two floors above a charity shop in Tufnell Park, stranded between his second cup of coffee and his third. Investigations, read the ad in the local press, Private and Confidential. All kinds of security work undertaken. Ex-Metropolitan Police. The absence of carpet made it easier to hear footsteps on the stairs. A pause and then a knock.

She was late-thirties, dressed ten years younger, and looked all of forty-five, with the eyes of someone who woke up every day expecting to be disappointed and was rarely, if ever, disabused.

"Jack Kiley? Rita Barnes."

Her hand was all cheap rings and bone.

Kiley knew the name and a moment later he knew why.

"Bradford Barnes, he was my son."

The flowers had spread across the pavement close to the spot less than a hundred metres away where he'd been killed; tiny candles had burned through the night. Photographs and messages taped to the wall. Always remembered. A tragic waste. Bradford had been on the way home from a party, not late, a little after twelve, and had inadvertently brushed the shoulder of a young woman heading the other way. When he'd stopped to apologise, one of the men with her had raised his voice and then his fist. Punches flew and then a knife. When the group sauntered off laughing they left Bradford where he lay. A still-warm statistic, choking on his own blood. The twenty-second young person to have been stabbed to death in the capital that year and still months to go. Gang stuff, drug deals gone sour; the wrong look, the wrong word, the wrong place at the wrong time. Disrespect.

"A year ago next week he was killed," Rita Barnes said, "three days short of his birthday, an' the police still in't got a b.l.o.o.d.y clue."

The flowers had long since faded and been swept away; the photographs torn down.

She took an envelope from her bag and counted the notes out on his desk. "There's two hundred and fifty. I'll get more. Find the b.a.s.t.a.r.d as did it, okay?"

What was he supposed to say? It was a waste of his time and her money?

Well, he had the time.

When she'd gone he put in a call to a DI he knew at the local nick. Jackie Ferris met him in the back room of The a.s.sembly House, its dark wood panelling and ornamented windows harking back to palmier days.

"Not got a clue, that's what she says?" Still on duty, Ferris was drinking lemon and lime.

"She's wrong?"

"We've had more than a clue since day one. Jason Means. It was his girlfriend Barnes b.u.mped into. He's got form and a mouth to go with it, but forensics didn't give us s.h.i.t and, surprise, surprise, no one's talking. Least, not to us." Ferris raised her gla.s.s. "You might have more luck."

Rachel Sams lived on the seventh floor of an eight-floor block close to the closed-down swimming pool on Prince of Wales Road. Three of the flats on her level were boarded up and padlocked fast. The first two occasions Kiley called she refused to open the door and then, when she did, it was only to slam it in his face. It took a fierce squall of rain Rachel hunched against the wind as she manoeuvred a buggy laden with supermarket carrier bags and containing a wailing two-year-old for Kiley to open negotiations.

"Here, let me help."

"p.i.s.s off!"

But she stood back while, after freeing the bags and handing them to her, he lifted the buggy and led the way.

Kiley followed her into the flat and, when she didn't complain, closed the door behind him. The interior was dominated by a wide-screen plasma TV, the furniture, most of it, third- or fourth-hand. Toys were scattered, here and there, across the floor. While Rachel changed the child's nappy, Kiley found a jar of instant coffee in the kitchen.

They sat at either end of the sagging settee while the boy piled wooden bricks on top of one another, knocked them down with a loud whoop and started again.

"Darren, for Christ's sake."

"He's Jason Means' boy?" Kiley said.

"What of it?"

"Jason see him much?"

"When he can be bothered."

"Bradford Barnes' mother came to see me, a week or so back."

"So?"

"She wants to know what happened to her son."

"She buried him, didn't she? What else she wanna know?"

"She wants to know who killed him. Wants some kind of I don't know justice, I suppose."

"Yeah, well, she ain't gonna find it here."

Kiley held her gaze until she looked away.

After that he called round every week or so, sometimes bringing a small present for the boy.

"Listen," Rachel said, "if you reckon this is gonna get you into my knickers . . ."

But, stuck up there on the seventh floor, she didn't seem overburdened with friends and now, as soon as he arrived, Darren scrambled up into his lap and happily pulled his hair. Kiley hadn't mentioned Bradford Barnes again.

Ten days short of Christmas, the sky a low, flat unpromising grey, he got round to the flat to find Rachel hurling bits and pieces over the balcony, tears streaming down her face.

"That b.a.s.t.a.r.d! That lousy b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

Kiley tried to calm her down and she lashed out, drawing blood from his lip. When he finally got her back inside, she was still shaking; Darren cowering in the corner afraid.

"One of my mates rung an' told me, he's only gettin' married, i'n it? To that s.k.a.n.ky wh.o.r.e from down Stockwell. Saw it in Facebook or somethin'." Picking up a half-empty mug, she hurled it against the wall. "Well, he's gonna learn he can't treat me like that, i'n it? He's gonna pay, yeah? Pay."

Kiley listened while she told him what had happened that night, how Jason Means had stabbed Bradford Barnes three times, once in the neck and twice in the chest, and then walked off laughing. He phoned Jackie Ferris and listened while Rachel told her story again, then promised to look after Darren while the two of them went to the station so that Rachel could make a statement.

Three days later, Jason Means was arrested.

Rita Barnes had tears in her eyes when she came to thank him and ask what more she owed him and Kiley said to forget it, it was fine. He would have given the two-fifty back if it hadn't been for a little matter of paying the rent.

"You're sure?"

"Sure."

She kissed him on the cheek.

That night, Kiley walked past the spot where Bradford Barnes had been killed. If you looked closely, you could just make out the marks where the photos had been taped, a young man smiling out, his life ahead of him, ghosts on the wall.

THE BLOOD PEARL.

Barry Maitland.

"EVENING, BEN. THE usual?"

"Please, Sam." I sank with a groan of relief on to my usual stool at the end of the bar.

"Hard day?"

"Aren't they all?"

Sam pa.s.sed over the double Scotch, and as I sipped thankfully he said, "Lady was in earlier, asking for you."

"Oh no." Even here I wasn't safe from them. It wasn't enough that I was with them all day long, grinding through the exercises, slaving over the tricky vowels and fricatives, lurching around the unpredictable pitfalls of the English language. It wasn't that they weren't keen quite the opposite. They had strong family and money pressures from back home to make them want to gobble it all up, as fast as I could feed it to them. They dogged my steps, imploring my undivided attention to their painful efforts and demanding my contact details so they could phone or e-mail me at any time of the day or night to check some point. "But please Ben, what is difference between there, their, they're?" "Dear Ben, do I say cough like plough or tough?"

I didn't know they'd stalked me to the pub, but I wasn't surprised. It was only a matter of time. I contemplated moving on to some other watering hole, but what was the point?

"Ben. Finally tracked you down."

I spun around in my seat, slopping my Scotch, startled by the familiar voice. "Paula . . ."

We hadn't met in maybe two years and I could see straight away that they had taken their toll. She looked older, tired, and I saw she was thinking much the same about me. Mind you, she was still the same beautiful woman beneath the weary frown, and my heart quickened to see her there.

"Let me get you a drink," I said, and from the look that crossed her face I guessed she was a.s.suming that was my answer to all of life's problems, which was pretty much the case.

We went and sat at a quiet corner table. "Cheers," I said. "And how's Jack doing?"

"I buried him two months ago, Ben."

"Oh no." That did knock me back. "I'm so sorry, Paula. I had no idea."

"I tried to let you know, but you were hard to find."

"I'm so sorry," I repeated. "Was it sudden?"