The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 7 Part 31

"Only the non-venomous ones from the pit and then later some small Cypriot snakes. The world apart from Murad, Ofis and myself thought differently however. Ofis, the snake woman, was left alone, which was just how she liked it. But then Murad died and Ali inherited everything. I knew he hated Ofis, she was like a needle in his pride, an insult to his mother. But he was still afraid to go anywhere near her and she was too poor and old by that time to move. I feared for her."

"Why didn't she move in with you?" kmen asked. "If you felt that she was vulnerable?"

"Why should she?" Irini said. "The house was hers for the duration of her life and besides she liked living with her serpents. Unlike me she was truly a snake woman in every sense. And although her life was not exactly what it had been when Murad was still alive, it wasn't that bad until Ali Koray's debts began to overwhelm him. He gambles you see. Badly. He sold my house and the others with it to the foreigner just to pay off his debts."

kmen, who had instructed Aye Farsakolu to look into Ali Koray's affairs said, "Go on."

"I moved. We all moved, we had to. But Ofis stayed and I became worried for her. Not because of the foreigner you understand. I mean he had been rough with us, the rest of the tenants, but then we knew that he would. He is a gangster. No, I worried about Ofis because of Ali Koray."

"Why was that?"

"Ali Koray, it was said, got into debt again very quickly after he sold his property. He is a lazy man who does nothing except sit in his father's office, drink tea and play cards," she said. "He doesn't work and so with no work and no property left to sell, what can he do? I'll tell you what I think," she said, "I think that he remembered Ofis' house and that it reverted back to him on her death. I'd lay money myself that he didn't mention that to you when you spoke to him."

"You think that Ali Koray killed Ofis Hanm?"

"Yes," she replied simply, "I do. I know the foreigner wanted to buy it originally but Ofis wouldn't sell. Ali Koray, however, needed to sell or do something."

"Can you prove it?" kmen asked.

The old woman flung her withered hands to either side of her body. "Listen to what I say and see what you think," she said. "Whoever killed Ofis shot her house to pieces as you know. Whoever killed Ofis was making sure he killed all of her snakes along with her. He shot the house just to make sure that nothing was left alive in that place. There were no more than her two little snakes she'd had for years, but he wouldn't have known that. Now to my knowledge the foreigner didn't know anything about the snakes. But Ali Koray did and he was very afraid of them. Now Ofis' house is his and I think that if you ask the foreigner whether Ali Koray has approached him about it, you will find that he has indeed done so."

kmen sat back in his chair and considered what had just been said to him. To say that Irini Angelos' story was strange was an understatement. But then Lunar Park and its inhabitants had been nothing if not strange as he well knew. There was a lot that puzzled about her story like why Ofis Hanm preferred, actually preferred to live with snakes. There was also the problem of what Irini had been doing at Ofis' house when Constable Yldz apprehended her.

"Irini Angelos," he said as he lit another Maltepe cigarette, "we still haven't established exactly why you were at Ofis Hanm's house this evening, have we?"

"No."

"So, you told me that you are a thief . . ."

"Yes," she said, "in part that is true." Then she reached into the pocket of her long black coat and took out a brightly coloured piece of paper. "I stole this," she said as she laid it on the table in front of kmen.

He leaned forward in order to look at what turned out to be a small poster. It showed a painting of a very voluptuous woman covered in thin, writhing snakes. Above the image was written "The Slave of the Snakes the wonder and glory of Lunar Park". Pointing down to what to him was indeed a familiar image of a woman he said, "This is Ofis?"

"Yes," the old woman replied. "Lovely wasn't she? You know that years ago Ofis asked me if there was anything I would like from her should she die before me. I said I would like one of these old posters. A young boy who came to the park week in and week out, a poor thing with a hare lip, painted it and Murad had it copied. He made a very good likeness of Ofis."

"So if that is the case you're not stealing anything at all," kmen said.

"I have no proof Ofis said that I could have anything," Irini replied. "And so . . ."

"And so that wasn't the whole reason why you went to that house this evening was it, Irini Angelos?"

For a moment she looked as if she might be about to dissemble but then she shrugged again and said, "No, it wasn't. I wanted to tell you about Ali Koray too."

"So why didn't you just come down to the station and ask to see the inspector like everyone else?" Arto Sarkissian asked.

The answer when it came made both the Armenian and the policeman smile.

"Because I don't like the wait," Irini said with a considerable amount of tetchiness in her voice. "People wait for hours to see people like cetin Bey. I'm far too old and tired to do that. Getting arrested really does cut out a lot of needless time-wasting."

The following day saw Aye Farsakolu confirm that Ali Koray did indeed have gambling debts. He had also, according to Mrs Lukash, approached her husband the previous evening about a possible sale of Ofis Hanm's house. And although Ali Koray denied ever having so much as set foot in Ofis Hanm's house, his shoes told another far more sinister story.

"Condemned by snake as opposed to human blood," kmen said when he went to see Irini Angelos at her small room in Balat a few days later. "It was all over his shoes."

"Ah well, you see the snakes always looked after Ofis," Irini said as she placed a small gla.s.s of tea in front of her guest. "She was their G.o.ddess."

kmen smiled. "You know," he said, "that when we found Ofis Hanm she had one snake in each hand."

The old woman nodded her head. "Like the snake G.o.ddess of Knossos in Crete," she said. "It is a statue showing a voluptuous bare breasted woman holding a writhing snake in each hand."

"Oh, yes," kmen said, "I think I may have seen a picture of that somewhere."

"It is a great treasure," Irini said. "And yet I imagine you probably don't like it very much do you, Inspector?"

"You mean because of the snakes?" kmen said. "You know, Irini Angelos, there is a reason for my phobia about snakes."

"There is always a reason for everything," the old woman replied.

He then told her about his childhood encounter with snakes and with their G.o.ddess Ofis Hanm. When he had finished his story Irini said, laughing, "Oh dear, you poor little boy! You know that people were always putting their hands into the pit, but not to save the Slave as you did! They generally had a far more s.e.xual motive. Oh, you poor dear child!"

She put her thin arms around his neck and for just a few moments she held him as he imagined she would have done her own children many years before. In fact, he felt very sad that poor Irini had now seemingly been deserted by her children. For her to end her days in a damp little room in a rough part of Balat seemed both very harsh and very sad. She was so vulnerable. He openly expressed his fears to her. Again she laughed.

"Oh, you don't want to worry about me, Inspector," she said. "I have accepted my fate. But I also have a little help now too."

Seeing the twinkle in her dark old eyes, kmen said, "What's that Irini Angelos?"

"I've just simply followed Ofis' example," she said. "If you look behind you on top of the bookcase you will see."

kmen was suddenly gripped by a terrible cold feeling. This was coupled with a genuine belief that turning around to see what might be on top of the bookcase was going to be a very bad idea. But he was a man and a police officer and so he couldn't just not do something so simple and seemingly safe as turn his head around. And so he did it quickly, sweating as he moved.

"Oh. Ah."

There were two little snakes on top of the bookcase. They had shiny skins and bright, inquisitive eyes. They were also loose.

"Non-venomous Cypriot Whip snakes, just the same as Ofis had," Irini said with a smile. "Everybody in the neighbourhood knows I have them and no one ever comes near or by. They are my new children. One is called Ofis and one cetin, in honour of you and what you did for my old friend, Inspector."

"Oh, er, well," kmen swallowed hard and then wet his bone-dry lips with his tongue. "It is I suppose quite an honour to be er, named alongside one who is a Snake G.o.ddess . . ."

"Ofis" and "cetin" looked at him with a lot of sinuous approval.

"They like you," Irini said still smiling at the odd sight of her little pets and a man they were unconsciously tormenting. "You should make your peace with snakes you know Inspector. You, I feel, have a natural affinity with them."

"Yes, well, affinity, er . . . I suppose that even snakes have their likes and dislikes, don't they?" he said.

"Absolutely," the old woman replied. "Would you like another gla.s.s of tea, Inspector?"

"Not just at the moment," kmen said, as he tried without success to wrest his gaze from the strange eyeless stare of the serpent named especially for and after him. "I'm fine now. Absolutely . . . fine."

THE OCTOPUS NEST.

Sophie Hannah.

IT WAS THE sight I had hoped never to see: the front door wide open, Becky, our babysitter, leaning out into the darkness as if straining to break free of the doorway's bright rectangle, her eyes wide with urgency. When she saw our car, she ran out into the drive, then stopped suddenly, arms at her sides, looking at the pavement. Wondering what she would say to us, how she would say it.

I a.s.sured myself that it couldn't be a real emergency; she'd have rung me on my mobile phone if it were. Then I realized I'd forgotten to switch it on as we left the cinema. Timothy and I had been too busy having a silly argument about the movie. He had claimed that the FBI must have known about the people in the woods, that it must have been a government relocation programme for victims of crime. I'd said there was nothing in the film to suggest that, that he'd plucked the hypothesis out of nowhere. He insisted he was right. Sometimes Timothy latches on to an idea and won't let go.

"Oh, no," he said now. I tasted a dry sourness in my mouth. Becky shivered beside the garage, her arms folded, her face so twisted with concern that I couldn't look at her. Instead, as we slowed to a halt, I focused on the huddle of bins on the corner of the pavement. They looked like a gang of squat conspirators.

Before Timothy had pulled up the handbrake, I was out of the car. "What is it?" I demanded. "Is it Alex?'

"No, he's asleep. He's absolutely fine." Becky put her hands on my arms, steadying me.

I slumped. "Thank G.o.d. Then . . . has something else happened?"

"I don't know. I think so. There's something you need to have a look at." I was thinking, as Timothy and I followed her into the house, that nothing else mattered if Alex was safe. I wanted to run upstairs and kiss his sleeping face, watch the rhythmic rise and fall of his Thomas the Tank Engine duvet, but I sensed that whatever Becky wanted us to see couldn't wait. She had not said, "Don't worry, it's nothing serious." She did not think it was nothing.

All our photograph alb.u.ms were on the floor in the lounge, some open, most closed. I frowned, puzzled. Becky was tidier than we were. In all the years she had babysat for us, we had not once returned to find anything out of place. Tonight, we had left one photo alb.u.m, the current one, on the coffee table so that she could look at our holiday pictures. Why had she thrown it and all the others on the carpet?

She sank to the floor, crossing her legs. "Look at this." Timothy and I crouched down beside her. She pointed to a picture of Alex and me, having breakfast on our hotel terrace in Cyprus. Crumbs from our bread rolls speckled the blue tablecloth. We were both smiling, on the verge of laughing, as Timothy took the photograph.

"What about it?" I said.

"Look at the table behind you. Where the blonde woman's sitting."

I looked. She was in profile, her hair up in a pony-tail. She wore a sea-green shirt with the collar turned up. Her forehead was pink, as if she'd caught the sun the day before. Her hand, holding a small, white cup, was raised, halfway between the table and her mouth. "Do you know her?" asked Becky, looking at Timothy, then at me.

"No."

"No."

She turned a page in the alb.u.m and pointed to another photograph, of Timothy reading Ulysses on a sun-lounger beside the pool. "Can't you read John Grisham like everybody else?" I'd said to him. "We're supposed to be on holiday." In the pool, the same blonde woman from the previous photograph stood in the shallow end, her hands behind her head. I guessed that she was adjusting her pony-tail before beginning her swim. She wore a one-piece swimsuit the colour of cantaloupe melon.

"There she is again," said Becky. "You didn't talk to her at all, in the hotel?"

"No."

"Didn't even notice her," said Timothy. "What's this about, Becky? She's just another guest. What's the big deal?"

Becky sighed heavily, as if, by answering as we had, we'd confirmed her worst fears. I began to feel frightened, as if something unimaginably dreadful was on its way. "She doesn't look familiar?"

"No," said Timothy impatiently. "Should she?"

Becky closed the alb.u.m, reached for another one. This was one of our earliest, from before Alex was born. She flipped a few pages. Cambridge. Me, Timothy and my brother Richard outside King's College, sitting on a wall. I was eating an ice-cream. The day had been oven-hot. "Sitting next to you, Claire," said Becky. "It's the same person."

I looked at the blonde head. This woman I was sure Becky was wrong, she couldn't be the same one was turned away from the camera towards her bespectacled friend, whose face was animated. They looked as if they were having a lively conversation, utterly unaware of our presence. "You don't know that," I said. "All you can see is her hair."

"Look at the freckles on her shoulder and arm. And her earring. She's wearing the same ones in Cyprus gold rings that are sort of square. Not very common."

I was beginning to feel a creeping unease, otherwise I might have pointed out that rings could not be square. "It's a coincidence," I said. "There must be more than one blonde woman with freckly arms who has earrings like that."

"Or it's the same woman, and she happened to be in Cambridge and then Cyprus at the same time as us," said Timothy. "Though I'm inclined to agree with Claire. It must be a different woman."

Becky was shaking her head as he spoke. "It isn't," she said. "When I looked at the Cyprus photos I noticed her. I thought I'd seen her somewhere before, but I couldn't place her. I puzzled over it for ages. Then later, when I was standing by the shelves choosing a DVD, I noticed the picture in the frame."

All our eyes slid towards it. It had been taken by a stranger so that all three of us could be in it: Timothy, Alex and me. We were in the grounds of a country house hotel just outside Edinburgh. It was the week of the book festival. Many of our trips, over the years, had revolved around Timothy buying books. Behind us were two large sash windows that belonged to the hotel's dining room. Clearly visible at one of them was the blonde woman from the Cyprus photographs. She was wearing a blue shirt this time, again with the collar turned up. Her face was small, but it was unmistakeably her. And the earrings were the same, the square hoops. I felt dizzy. This had to mean something. My brain wouldn't work quickly enough.

"That's why she looked familiar," said Becky. "I've seen that photo millions of times. I see it every time I come here. Alex is just a baby in it and . . . I thought it was an amazing coincidence, that the same woman was wherever you were in this picture four years ago and also in Cyprus this summer. It seemed too strange. So I got the other alb.u.ms out and had a look. I couldn't believe it. In each one, she's in at least nine or ten of the photos. See for yourselves."

"Jesus." Timothy rubbed the sides of his face. When he removed his hands there were white spots on his skin. I began to turn the pages of another alb.u.m. I saw the woman, once, twice. In Siena, at a taverna. Walking behind me in a street market in Morocco. Three times. She stood beside Timothy outside the Tate Modern, again with her short-sighted, frizzy-haired friend.

"But . . . this can't be a coincidence!" I said, expecting to have to convince Becky, or Timothy. n.o.body disagreed with me. I felt sharp, piercing fear.

"What does it mean?" Timothy asked Becky. He rarely asked anybody for advice or an opinion, let alone a nineteen-year-old babysitter. His lips were thin and pale. "She must be following us. She's some sort of stalker. But . . . for nearly ten years! I don't like this at all. I'm ringing the police."

"They'll think you're crazy," I said, desperate to behave as if there was no need to take the matter seriously. "She's never done us any harm, never even drawn herself to our attention. She's not looking at us in any of the photos. She doesn't seem aware of our presence at all."

"Of course not!' Timothy snorted dismissively. "She'd try to look as innocent as possible as soon as she saw a camera coming out, wouldn't she? That's why we've not spotted her until now."

I turned to Becky. "Is every alb.u.m the same?" I didn't have the courage to look.

She nodded. "Some, she's on nearly every page."

"Oh, G.o.d! What should we do? Why would someone we don't know want to follow us?'

"Timothy's right, you've got to tell the police," said Becky. "If something happens . . ."

"Christ!' Timothy marched up and down the lounge, shaking his head. "I don't need this," he said. "I really don't."

"Tim, are you sure you don't know her?" An affair, I was thinking. A jealous ex-girlfriend. I would almost have preferred that; at least there would have been a rational explanation, a clarifying link.

"Of course I'm sure!"

"Do you want me to stay?" asked Becky. What she meant was that she was keen to leave.

"She's not some woman I've slept with and discarded, if that's what you're thinking," Timothy snapped.

"You have to tell me if she is," I said. Neither of us cared that Becky was listening.

"Have I ever done anything like that?"

"Not that I know of."

"Claire, I swear on Alex's life: not only have I never slept with this woman, I've never even spoken to her." I believed him. Alex was sacred.