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Synopsis
The very best of over 30 gripping stories of British mystery and crime are packed into this tantalizing collection that's sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. This must-have anthology for the lover of all things mysterious contains thrilling works from beloved bestselling authors and exciting new up-and coming talents.
Release date: May 7, 2013
Publisher: Running Press Adult
Print pages: 608
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The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10
Maxim Jakubowski
FOR TEN YEARS now it’s been my privilege to edit this collection of short stories presenting the best of British crime and mystery fiction, and I’ve been afforded the opportunity of publishing over 400 stories by some of the most outstanding writers in our field. Almost all the “big” names amongst our local authors in the British Isles (and beyond, as some have moved to the Antipodes during the course of the series’ career) have been included in our pages: Ian Rankin, Derek Raymond, Val McDermid, Mark Billingham, Simon Kernick, Peter James, Reginald Hill, John Mortimer, Alexander McCall Smith, Andrew Taylor, Anne Perry, Roger Jon Ellory, Liza Cody, amongst others, and it has been a pleasure to feature them.
Stories published in The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime Volume 10 have won some of the most prestigious awards in the field, including the Crime Writers’ Association Short Story Dagger, the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award and the Anthony Award, while countless others have featured on the respective shortlists.
The present volume is no exception as it features Peter Turnbull’s Edgar-winning story, Margaret Murphy and Cath Staincliffe’s CWA Dagger Short Story joint winners, and a further two shortlisted tales from diverse awards. In addition, Lee Child makes a welcome new appearance and an old friend of mine, Neil Gaiman, with whom I used to sit on the SF Foundation committee meetings in the years when he wasn’t quite as famous as he is now, also makes his debut, with a delightful Sherlockian tale, miles away from his more customary and splendid worlds of fantasy.
Other return offenders, and most welcome they are as ever, include Paul Johnston, Edward Marston, Judith Cutler, John Harvey, Amy Myers, Christopher Fowler, Simon Brett, Peter Tremayne, Ken Bruen, Barbara Nadel, Martin Edwards, Barry Maitland, Adrian McKinty, Ann Cleeves, Phil Lovesey, and countless other regulars. But again, one of my greatest reasons for pride in the series is the fact that I’m able to introduce new writers who, in all likelihood, will also become household names in the years to come: take your bow, Nina Allan, Claire Seeber, Joel Lane, Lisa Tuttle (whose excellent writing in other fields is not to be missed), Paula Williams, Roger Busby (a veteran on the comeback trail), Jane Casey, Alison Littlewood and Richard Godwin.
I hope that in this busy past decade our series has ably demonstrated the strengths and attraction of British crime writing in all its diversity, ranging from the cosy tale of detection to the noir borderlands of mayhem and destruction and the deep nooks and crannies of psychological suspense and terror. Crime writing is a many-sided art in which our writers tempt you in sly and clever ways, offering you puzzles to solve, asking ever-worrying questions about the world we live in but, most of all, providing first-class entertainment along with the thrills.
As the market for short stories and anthologies changes, its retail profile changes too, and there is, sadly, a strong possibility this may be the final volume in our series (although our primary publishers wish to debut another crime project, which may involve many of our loyal authors, as an Internet/digital replacement). But ten years is a long time, and I rest assured in the knowledge of all the enjoyment these pages have brought to so many readers over that period.
So, this is also the time to thank many of the people who have been instrumental in bringing these ten volumes to date to you, the readers, in addition of course to all the writers who have made these volumes so exciting. A vote of thanks then to David Shelley, who gave the project its first go-ahead, to Susie Dunlop, and then, at Constable & Robinson, who’ve supported me through thick and thin, Nick Robinson, Peter Duncan and Duncan Proudfoot, and in the USA Kent Carroll, Herman Graf and Christopher Navratil. Without them, we would not have lasted anywhere near so long.
Every year, our authors have kept on surprising me with the sparkle of their imagination and the fluidity of their writing. This volume is no exception. Expect to be surprised, scared, charmed, intrigued, shocked even.
And we’ll meet again, at some stage in the future, in a murky field where death, ghosts of the past, villains and detectives, cops and sleuths, fight their ongoing battle; where good and evil are never black or white but come in a hundred shades of grey. There are some pretty black stories here too: Wilkolak, Come Away With Me, The Hostess, etc.
It’s been a great ride!
Maxim Jakubowski
Lee Child
FOR ONCE THE FBI did the right thing: it sent the Anglophile to England. To London, more specifically, for a three-year posting at the Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Pleasures there were extensive, and duties there were light. Most agents ran background checks on visa applicants and intending immigrants and kept their ears to the ground on international matters, but I liaised with London’s Metropolitan Police when American nationals were involved in local crimes, either as victims or witnesses or perpetrators.
I loved every minute of it, as I knew I would. I love that kind of work, I love London, I love the British way of life, I love the theatre, the culture, the pubs, the pastimes, the people, the buildings, the Thames, the fog, the rain. Even the soccer. I was expecting it to be all good, and it was all good.
Until.
I had spent a damp Wednesday morning in February helping out, as I often did, by rubber-stamping immigration paperwork, and then I was saved by a call from a sergeant at Scotland Yard, asking on behalf of his inspector that I attend a crime scene north of Wigmore Street and south of Regent’s Park. On the 200 block of Baker Street, more specifically, which was enough to send a little jolt through my Anglophile heart, because every Anglophile knows that Sherlock Holmes’s fictional address was 221b Baker Street. It was quite possible I would be working right underneath the great detective’s fictional window.
And I was, as well as underneath many other windows too, because the Met’s crime scenes are always fantastically elaborate. We have CSI on television, where they solve everything in forty-three minutes with DNA, and the Met has Scene-of-Crime-Officers, who spend forty-three minutes closing roads and diverting pedestrians, before spending forty-three minutes shrugging themselves into Tyvek bodysuits and Tyvek booties and Tyvek hoods, before spending forty-three minutes stringing Keep-Out tape between lamp posts and fence railings, before spending forty-three minutes erecting white tents and shrouds over anything of any interest whatsoever. The result was that I found a passable imitation of a travelling circus already in situ when I got there.
There was a cordon, of course, several layers deep, and I got through them all by showing my Department of Justice credentials and by mentioning the inspector’s name, which was Bradley Rose. I found the man himself stumping around on the damp sidewalk some yards south of the largest white tent. He was a short man, but substantial, with no tie and snappy eyeglasses and a shaved head. He was an old-fashioned London thief-taker, softly spoken but at the same time impatient with bullshit, which his own department provided in exasperating quantity.
He jerked his thumb at the tent and said, “Dead man.”
I nodded. Obviously I wasn’t surprised. Not even the Met uses tents and Tyvek for purse-snatching.
He jerked his thumb again and said, “American.”
I nodded again. I knew Rose was quite capable of working that out from dentistry or clothing or shoes or hairstyle or body shape, but equally I knew he would not have involved me officially without some more definitive indicator. And as if answering the unasked question he pulled two plastic evidence bags from his pocket. One contained an opened-out blue US passport, and the other contained a white business card. He handed both bags to me and jerked his thumb again and said, “From his pockets.”
I knew better than to touch the evidence itself. I turned the bags this way and that and examined both items through the plastic. The passport photograph showed a sullen man, pale of skin, with hooded eyes that looked both evasive and challenging. I glanced up and Rose said, “It’s probably him. The boat matches the photo, near enough.”
Boat was a contraction of boat race, which was cockney rhyming slang for face. Apples and pears, stairs, trouble and strife, wife, plates of meat, feet, and so on. I asked, “What killed him?”
“Knife under the ribs,” Rose said.
The name on the passport was Ezekiah Hopkins.
Rose said, “Did you ever hear of a name like that before?”
“Hopkins?” I said.
“No, Ezekiah.”
I looked up at the windows above me and said, “Yes, I did.”
The place of birth was recorded as Pennsylvania, USA.
I gave the bagged passport back to Rose and looked at the business card. It was impossible to be certain without handling it, but it seemed to be a cheap item. Thin stock, no texture, plain print, no embossing. It was the kind of thing anyone can order online for a few pounds a thousand. The legend said Hopkins, Ross & Spaulding, as if there were some kind of partnership of that name. There was no indication of what business they were supposed to be in. There was a phone number on the card, with a 610 area code. Eastern Pennsylvania, but not Philly. The address on the card read simply Lebanon, PA. East of Harrisburg, as I recalled. Correct for the 610 code. I had never been there.
“Did you call the number?” I asked.
“That’s your job,” Rose said.
“No one will answer,” I said. “A buck gets ten it’s phony.”
Rose gave me a long look and took out his phone. He said, “It better be phony. I don’t have an international calling plan. If someone answers in America it’ll cost me an arm and a leg.” He pressed 001, then 610, then the next seven digits. From six feet away I heard the triumphant little phone company triplet that announced a number that didn’t work. Rose clicked off and gave me the look again.
“How did you know?” he asked.
I said, “Omne ignotum pro magnifico.”
“What’s that?”
“Latin.”
“For what?”
“Every unexplained thing seems magnificent. In other words, a good magician doesn’t reveal his tricks.”
“You’re a magician now?”
“I’m an FBI special agent,” I said. I looked up at the windows again. Rose followed my gaze and said, “Yes, I know. Sherlock Holmes lived here.”
“No, he didn’t,” I said. “He didn’t exist. He was made up. So were these buildings. In Arthur Conan Doyle’s day Baker Street only went up to about number eighty. Or a hundred, perhaps. The rest of it was a country road. Marylebone was a separate little village a mile away.”
“I was born in Brixton,” Rose said. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Conan Doyle made up the number two hundred and twenty-one,” I said. “Like movies and TV make up the phone numbers you see on the screen. And the licence plates on the cars. So they don’t cause trouble for real people.”
“What’s your point?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But you’re going to have to let me have the passport. When you’re done with it, I mean. Because it’s probably phony too.”
“What’s going on here?”
“Where do you live?”
“Hammersmith,” he said.
“Does Hammersmith have a library?”
“Probably.”
“Go borrow a book. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The second story. It’s called ‘The Red-Headed League’. Read it tonight, and I’ll come see you in the morning.”
Visiting Scotland Yard is always a pleasure. It’s a slice of history. It’s a slice of the future, too. Scotland Yard is a very modern place these days. Plenty of information technology. Plenty of people using it.
I found Rose in his office, which was nothing more than open space defended by furniture. Like a kid’s fort. He said, “I got the book but I haven’t read it yet. I’m going to read it now.”
He pointed to a fat paperback volume on the desk. So to give him time I took Ezekiah Hopkins’s passport back to the Embassy and had it tested. It was a fake, but very good, except for some blunders so obvious they had to be deliberate. Like taunts, or provocations. I got back to Scotland Yard and Rose said, “I read the story.”
“And?”
“All those names were in it. Ezekiah Hopkins, and Ross, and Spaulding. And Lebanon, Pennsylvania, too. And Sherlock Holmes said the same Latin you did. He was an educated man, apparently.”
“And what was the story about?”
“Decoy,” Rose said. “A ruse was developed whereby a certain Mr Wilson was regularly decoyed away from his legitimate place of business for a predictable period of time, so that an ongoing illegal task of some sensitivity could be accomplished in his absence.”
“Very good,” I said. “And what does the story tell us?”
“Nothing,” Rose said. “Nothing at all. No one was decoying me away from my legitimate place of business. That was my legitimate place of business. I go wherever dead people go.”
“And?”
“And if they were trying to decoy me away, they wouldn’t leave clues beforehand, would they? They wouldn’t spell it out for me in advance. I mean, what would be the point of that?”
“There might be a point,” I said.
“What kind?”
I asked, “If this were just some foreigner stabbed to death on Baker Street, what would you do next?”
“Not very much, to be honest.”
“Exactly. Just one of those things. But now what are you going to do next?”
“I’m going to find out who’s yanking my chain. First step, I’m going back on scene to make sure we didn’t miss any other clues.”
“Quod erat demonstrandum,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Latin.”
“For what?”
“They’re decoying you out. They’ve succeeded in what they set out to do.”
“Decoying me out from what? I don’t do anything important in the office.”
He insisted on going. We headed back to Baker Street. The tents were still there. The tape was still fluttering. We found no more clues. So we studied the context instead, physically, looking for the kind of serious crimes that could occur if law enforcement was distracted. We didn’t find anything. That part of Baker Street had the official Sherlock Holmes Museum, and the waxworks, and a bunch of stores of no real consequence, and a few banks, but the banks were all bust anyway. Blowing one up would be doing it a considerable favour.
Then Rose wanted a book that explained the various Sherlock Holmes references in greater detail, so I took him to the British Library in Bloomsbury. He spent an hour with an annotated compendium. He got sidetracked by the geographic errors Conan Doyle had made. He started to think the story he had read could be approached obliquely, as if it were written in code.
Altogether we spent the rest of the week on it. The Wednesday, the Thursday, and the Friday. Easily thirty hours. We got nowhere. We made no progress. But nothing happened. None of Rose’s other cases unravelled, and London’s crime did not spike. There were no consequences. None at all.
So as the weeks passed both Rose and I forgot all about the matter. And Rose never thought about it again, as far as I know. I did, of course. Because three months later it became clear that it was I who had been decoyed. My interest had been piqued, and I had spent thirty hours doing fun Anglophile things. They knew that would happen, naturally. They had planned well. They knew I would be called out to the dead American, and they knew how to stage the kinds of things that would set me off like the Energizer Bunny. Three days. Thirty hours. Out of the building, unable to offer help with the rubber-stamping, not there to notice them paying for their kids’ college educations by rubber-stamping visas that should have been rejected instantly. Which is how four particular individuals made it to the States, and which is why three hundred people died in Denver, and which is why the others were executed, and which is why I sit alone in Leavenworth in Kansas, where by chance one of the few books the prison allows is The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Peter Tremayne
“This thing of darkness.
I acknowledge mine.”
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, V, i
MASTER HARDY DREW, Constable of the Bankside Watch, stood regarding the blackened and still smoking ruins of the once imposing edifice of the house on the corner of Stony Street near the parish church of St Saviour’s. There was little left of it as it had been a wood-built house, and wood and dry plaster were a combustible mix.
“It was a fine old house,” Master Drew’s companion said reflectively. “It once belonged to the old Papist Bishop Gardiner.”
“The one who took pleasure in burning those he deemed heretics in Queen Mary’s time?” asked Master Drew with a slight shudder. He had not been born when Mary had been on the throne but he knew it to be a strange, unsettled period when, during those five short years, she had earned the epithet of “Bloody Mary”.
Master Pettigrew, the fire warden, nodded.
“Aye, Master Drew. The same who condemned some good men to the flames because they would not accept Roman ways.”
“Well, it is not infrequent that buildings catch alight and burn. You and your sturdy lads have put out the flames and no other properties seem threatened. Why, therefore, do you bring me here?”
Master Pettigrew inclined his head towards the smouldering ruins.
“There is a body here. I think you should see it.”
The constable frowned.
“A poor soul caught in the fire? Surely that is a task for the coroner?”
“That’s as may be, good master. Come and examine it for yourself. It is not badly burned,” he added, seeing the distaste on Master Drew’s features. “I believe it was not fire that killed him.”
He led the way through the charred wood and the odd standing wall towards what must have been the back of the house and into an area that had been partially built of bricks and thus not much harmed in the conflagration.
Master Drew saw the problem straightway. The body of a man was hanging from a thick beam by means of iron manacles that secured his wrists and linked them via a chain over the beam. He breathed out sharply.
“This is a thing of darkness. A deed of evil,” he muttered.
The constable tried not to look at the legs of the corpse for they had received the force of the fire. The upper body was blackened but not burned for, by that curious vagary to which fire is often prey, the flames had not engulfed the entire body. The flames seemed to have died down after they had reached the corpse.
The body was that of a man of thirty or perhaps a little more. Through the soot and grime it was impossible to detect much about the features.
Master Drew saw that the mouth was tied as in the manner of a gag. The eyes were bulging still and blood-rimmed, marking the struggle to obtain air that must have been filled with smoke and fumes from the fire.
“You will observe, Master Drew, that the upper garments of this man speak of some wealth and status, and the manner of his death was clearly planned.”
The constable sniffed in irritation.
“I am experienced in the matter of observation,” he rebuked sharply.
Indeed, he had already observed that, in spite of the blackened and scorched garments, they were clearly those affected by a person of wealth. His sharp eyes had detected something under the shirt and he drew the long dagger he wore at his belt and used it to push aside the doublet and undershirt. Beneath was a gold chain on which was hung a medallion of sorts.
Master Pettigrew let out a breath. He was probably thinking of the wealth that he had missed, for being warden of the fire watch around Bankside did not provide him with means to live as he would want…or not without a little help from items collected in the debris of fires such as this.
Using the tip of his dagger, Master Drew was able to lift the chain over the head of the corpse and then examine it. Master Pettigrew peered over his shoulder.
“A dead sheep moulded in gold,” he breathed.
Master Drew shook his head.
“Not a dead sheep but the fleece of a sheep. I have seen the like once before. It was just after the defeat of the Spanish invasion force. They brought some prisoners to the Tower and I was one of the appointed guards. One of the prisoners was wearing such a symbol. When a sergeant wanted to divest him of it, our captain rebuked him, saying it was the symbol of a noble order and that the prisoner should be treated, therefore, with all courtesy and respect.”
The warden looked worried.
“A nobleman murdered here on the Bankside? We will not hear the last of it, good constable. A noble would have influence.”
Master Drew nodded thoughtfully.
“A nobleman, aye. But of what country and what allegiance? This order was set up to defend the Papist faith.”
Master Pettigrew looked at him in horror.
“The Papist Faith, you say?”
“This is a Spanish order for I see the insignia of Philip of Spain on the reverse.”
“Spanish?’ gasped Master Pettigrew. “There are several noble Spaniards in London at this time.”
Master Drew’s features hardened.
“And many who would as lief cut a Spaniard’s throat in revenge for the cruelties of previous years. Were there no witnesses to this incendiary act?”
To his surprise, Master Pettigrew nodded an affirmative.
“Tom Shadwell, a passing fruit merchant, saw the flames and called the alarm,” returned Master Pettigrew. “That was at dawn this morning. My men managed to isolate the building and extinguish the flames within the hour. Then we entered and that was when I found the body and sent for you.”
“Well, one thing is for certain, this poor soul did not hang himself nor set fire to this place. To whom does this building now belong?”
“I think it must still belong to the Bishop of Winchester for he has many estates around here. Such was the office of Bishop Gardiner but he has been dead these fifty years, during which it has remained empty.”
“That’s true,” Master Drew reflected. “I have never seen it occupied since I came here as Assistant Constable. No one has ever claimed it nor sought to occupy it.”
“Aye, and for the reason that local folk claim it to be haunted by the spirits of the unfortunates that Bishop Gardiner tortured and condemned to the flames as heretics.”
Master Drew pocketed the chain thoughtfully and glanced once more at the body.
“Release the corpse to the charge of the coroner, Master Pettigrew, and say that I will speak with him anon, but to do nothing precipitate until I have done so.”
He was about to turn when he caught sight of something in the corner of the room that puzzled him. In spite of the fire having damaged this area, he saw that the floorboards were smashed and that, where they had been torn away, a rectangular hole had been dug into the earth. He moved towards it.
“Is this the work of your men, Master Pettigrew?” he asked.
The warden of the fire watch shook his head.
“Not of my men.”
Master Drew sniffed sharply.
“Then someone has excavated this hole. But for what purpose?”
He bent down, peered into the hole and poked at it with the tip of his long dagger.
“The hole was already here and something buried, which was but recently dug up and removed and…” He frowned, moved his dagger again and then bent down into the hole, carefully, trying to avoid the soot. With a grunt of satisfaction he came up holding something between thumb and forefinger.
“A coin?” hazarded Master Pettigrew, leaning over his shoulder.
“Aye, a coin,” the constable confirmed, scraping away some of the soot with the point of the dagger.
“A groat?”
“No, this is a shilling, and an Irish shilling of Philip and Mary at that. See the harp under the crown on the face…and either side, under smaller crowns, the initials P and M? Now what would that be doing here?”
“Well, Bishop Gardiner was a Papist during the time of Mary and approved her marriage to the Spanish King Philip. It is logical that he might have lost the coin then.”
Master Drew looked down at the hole again. He knew better than to comment further. Instead, he slipped the coin into his pocket and moved towards the exit of the blackened building. Outside, groups of people were already gathering. He suspected that some of them had come to forage and pillage if there was anything worth salvaging.
“Where are you away to?” called Master Pettigrew.
“To proceed with my investigation,” he replied. “I’ll speak to the fruit merchant who first saw the conflagration.”
“He has the barrow at the corner of Clink Street, selling fruit and nosegays to those visiting the folk within the prison.”
The constable made no reply but he knew Tom Shadwell, the fruit seller, well enough and often passed the time of day with him as he made his way by the grim walls of the old prison.
“A body found, you say, good constable?” Tom Shadwell’s face paled when Master Drew told him of the gruesome find. “I saw only the flames and had no idea that anyone dwelt within the building. Had I known, I would have made an effort to save the poor soul. So far as I knew, it had been empty these many years.”
“You would have been too late anyway,” replied Master Drew. “It is murder that we are dealing with. Therefore, be cautious in your thoughts before you recite to me as much as you may remember.”
Tom Shadwell rubbed the bridge of his nose with a crooked forefinger.
“The first light was spreading when I came by the corner of Stony Street to make my way to my pitch. I was pushing my barrow as usual. It is not long after dawn that the prison door is opened and visitors are allowed to go in. I usually start my trade early. I was passing the old house when I saw the flames…”
He suddenly paused and frowned.
“You have thought of something, Master Shadwell?” prompted the constable.
“It is unrelated to the fire.”
“Let me decide that.”
“There was a coach standing in Stony Street, not far from the house. Two men were lifting a small wooden chest inside. It seemed heavy. Even as I passed the end of the street they had placed it in the coach, then one climbed in and the other scrambled to the box and took the reins. Away it went in a trice. I then crossed the end of the street towards the old house and that was when I heard the crackle of the fire and saw its flames through the window. I pushed my barrow to the end of the street, for I knew Master Pettigrew, warden of the fire watch, dwelt there. I was reluctant to leave my barrow – prey to thieves and wastrels – but there was no one about, so I ran along to his house and raised the alarm. That is all I know.”
“This coach, could you identify it?”
Shadwell shook his head.
“It was dark and the two men were clad in dark cloaks.”
“Well-dressed fellows, would you say?”
“Hard to say, Master Constable.”
“And which way did this coach proceed? Towards the bridge?”
Shadwell shook his head.
“In this direction, towards Clink Street or maybe along to Bankside, not towards the bridge.”
Having ascertained there was nothing more to be gathered from the fruit seller, Master Drew turned past the Clink Prison to the adjacent imposing ancient structure of Winchester Palace that dominated the area just west of the Bridgehead. Southwark was the largest town of the diocese of Winchester. In the days when Winchester was capital of the Saxon kingdom, before London reclaimed its Roman prominence, the Bishops of Winchester were all-powerful. Even after Winchester fell into decline as a capital, the bishops remained within court circles and therefore had to be frequently in London for royal and administrative purposes. So the grand Winchester Palace was built on the south bank of the Thames.
Master Drew explained his business to the gatekeeper of the palace and was shown directly to the office of Sir Gilbert Scrivener, secretary to His Grace, Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Winchester.
“The house on the corner of Stony Street? We have large estates in Southwark, Master Drew, as you know. But I do vaguely recall it. Unused since Bishop Gardiner’s decease.”
“You have no personal acquaintance with the house, then?”
“My dear constable,” replied Sir Gilbert, “I have more things to do with my time than personally to acquaint myself with all the properties controlled by the diocese. As for the burning of this building, and the murder of foreigners, it is not to be wondered that they and empty houses are treated in such manner – since it is so, it may be a blessing for it has long been His Grace’s wish to rebuild that crumbling edifice and set up on the site something more useful to the church and the community.”
“So you are acquainted with the house?” replied Master Drew sharply.
Sir Gilbert spread his hands with a thin smile.
“I said, not personally. But I am His Grace’s secretary. I fear you do but waste your time for do we not live in Southwark, and is it not said that these mean streets are better termed a foul den than a fair garden? Its reputation is best described as notorious. Bankside itself is a nest of prostitutes and thieves, of cut-throats and vagabonds.”
“And playhouses,” smiled Master Drew grimly. “Do not forget the playhouses, Sir Gilbert.”
The secretary sighed impati
Stories published in The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime Volume 10 have won some of the most prestigious awards in the field, including the Crime Writers’ Association Short Story Dagger, the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award and the Anthony Award, while countless others have featured on the respective shortlists.
The present volume is no exception as it features Peter Turnbull’s Edgar-winning story, Margaret Murphy and Cath Staincliffe’s CWA Dagger Short Story joint winners, and a further two shortlisted tales from diverse awards. In addition, Lee Child makes a welcome new appearance and an old friend of mine, Neil Gaiman, with whom I used to sit on the SF Foundation committee meetings in the years when he wasn’t quite as famous as he is now, also makes his debut, with a delightful Sherlockian tale, miles away from his more customary and splendid worlds of fantasy.
Other return offenders, and most welcome they are as ever, include Paul Johnston, Edward Marston, Judith Cutler, John Harvey, Amy Myers, Christopher Fowler, Simon Brett, Peter Tremayne, Ken Bruen, Barbara Nadel, Martin Edwards, Barry Maitland, Adrian McKinty, Ann Cleeves, Phil Lovesey, and countless other regulars. But again, one of my greatest reasons for pride in the series is the fact that I’m able to introduce new writers who, in all likelihood, will also become household names in the years to come: take your bow, Nina Allan, Claire Seeber, Joel Lane, Lisa Tuttle (whose excellent writing in other fields is not to be missed), Paula Williams, Roger Busby (a veteran on the comeback trail), Jane Casey, Alison Littlewood and Richard Godwin.
I hope that in this busy past decade our series has ably demonstrated the strengths and attraction of British crime writing in all its diversity, ranging from the cosy tale of detection to the noir borderlands of mayhem and destruction and the deep nooks and crannies of psychological suspense and terror. Crime writing is a many-sided art in which our writers tempt you in sly and clever ways, offering you puzzles to solve, asking ever-worrying questions about the world we live in but, most of all, providing first-class entertainment along with the thrills.
As the market for short stories and anthologies changes, its retail profile changes too, and there is, sadly, a strong possibility this may be the final volume in our series (although our primary publishers wish to debut another crime project, which may involve many of our loyal authors, as an Internet/digital replacement). But ten years is a long time, and I rest assured in the knowledge of all the enjoyment these pages have brought to so many readers over that period.
So, this is also the time to thank many of the people who have been instrumental in bringing these ten volumes to date to you, the readers, in addition of course to all the writers who have made these volumes so exciting. A vote of thanks then to David Shelley, who gave the project its first go-ahead, to Susie Dunlop, and then, at Constable & Robinson, who’ve supported me through thick and thin, Nick Robinson, Peter Duncan and Duncan Proudfoot, and in the USA Kent Carroll, Herman Graf and Christopher Navratil. Without them, we would not have lasted anywhere near so long.
Every year, our authors have kept on surprising me with the sparkle of their imagination and the fluidity of their writing. This volume is no exception. Expect to be surprised, scared, charmed, intrigued, shocked even.
And we’ll meet again, at some stage in the future, in a murky field where death, ghosts of the past, villains and detectives, cops and sleuths, fight their ongoing battle; where good and evil are never black or white but come in a hundred shades of grey. There are some pretty black stories here too: Wilkolak, Come Away With Me, The Hostess, etc.
It’s been a great ride!
Maxim Jakubowski
Lee Child
FOR ONCE THE FBI did the right thing: it sent the Anglophile to England. To London, more specifically, for a three-year posting at the Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Pleasures there were extensive, and duties there were light. Most agents ran background checks on visa applicants and intending immigrants and kept their ears to the ground on international matters, but I liaised with London’s Metropolitan Police when American nationals were involved in local crimes, either as victims or witnesses or perpetrators.
I loved every minute of it, as I knew I would. I love that kind of work, I love London, I love the British way of life, I love the theatre, the culture, the pubs, the pastimes, the people, the buildings, the Thames, the fog, the rain. Even the soccer. I was expecting it to be all good, and it was all good.
Until.
I had spent a damp Wednesday morning in February helping out, as I often did, by rubber-stamping immigration paperwork, and then I was saved by a call from a sergeant at Scotland Yard, asking on behalf of his inspector that I attend a crime scene north of Wigmore Street and south of Regent’s Park. On the 200 block of Baker Street, more specifically, which was enough to send a little jolt through my Anglophile heart, because every Anglophile knows that Sherlock Holmes’s fictional address was 221b Baker Street. It was quite possible I would be working right underneath the great detective’s fictional window.
And I was, as well as underneath many other windows too, because the Met’s crime scenes are always fantastically elaborate. We have CSI on television, where they solve everything in forty-three minutes with DNA, and the Met has Scene-of-Crime-Officers, who spend forty-three minutes closing roads and diverting pedestrians, before spending forty-three minutes shrugging themselves into Tyvek bodysuits and Tyvek booties and Tyvek hoods, before spending forty-three minutes stringing Keep-Out tape between lamp posts and fence railings, before spending forty-three minutes erecting white tents and shrouds over anything of any interest whatsoever. The result was that I found a passable imitation of a travelling circus already in situ when I got there.
There was a cordon, of course, several layers deep, and I got through them all by showing my Department of Justice credentials and by mentioning the inspector’s name, which was Bradley Rose. I found the man himself stumping around on the damp sidewalk some yards south of the largest white tent. He was a short man, but substantial, with no tie and snappy eyeglasses and a shaved head. He was an old-fashioned London thief-taker, softly spoken but at the same time impatient with bullshit, which his own department provided in exasperating quantity.
He jerked his thumb at the tent and said, “Dead man.”
I nodded. Obviously I wasn’t surprised. Not even the Met uses tents and Tyvek for purse-snatching.
He jerked his thumb again and said, “American.”
I nodded again. I knew Rose was quite capable of working that out from dentistry or clothing or shoes or hairstyle or body shape, but equally I knew he would not have involved me officially without some more definitive indicator. And as if answering the unasked question he pulled two plastic evidence bags from his pocket. One contained an opened-out blue US passport, and the other contained a white business card. He handed both bags to me and jerked his thumb again and said, “From his pockets.”
I knew better than to touch the evidence itself. I turned the bags this way and that and examined both items through the plastic. The passport photograph showed a sullen man, pale of skin, with hooded eyes that looked both evasive and challenging. I glanced up and Rose said, “It’s probably him. The boat matches the photo, near enough.”
Boat was a contraction of boat race, which was cockney rhyming slang for face. Apples and pears, stairs, trouble and strife, wife, plates of meat, feet, and so on. I asked, “What killed him?”
“Knife under the ribs,” Rose said.
The name on the passport was Ezekiah Hopkins.
Rose said, “Did you ever hear of a name like that before?”
“Hopkins?” I said.
“No, Ezekiah.”
I looked up at the windows above me and said, “Yes, I did.”
The place of birth was recorded as Pennsylvania, USA.
I gave the bagged passport back to Rose and looked at the business card. It was impossible to be certain without handling it, but it seemed to be a cheap item. Thin stock, no texture, plain print, no embossing. It was the kind of thing anyone can order online for a few pounds a thousand. The legend said Hopkins, Ross & Spaulding, as if there were some kind of partnership of that name. There was no indication of what business they were supposed to be in. There was a phone number on the card, with a 610 area code. Eastern Pennsylvania, but not Philly. The address on the card read simply Lebanon, PA. East of Harrisburg, as I recalled. Correct for the 610 code. I had never been there.
“Did you call the number?” I asked.
“That’s your job,” Rose said.
“No one will answer,” I said. “A buck gets ten it’s phony.”
Rose gave me a long look and took out his phone. He said, “It better be phony. I don’t have an international calling plan. If someone answers in America it’ll cost me an arm and a leg.” He pressed 001, then 610, then the next seven digits. From six feet away I heard the triumphant little phone company triplet that announced a number that didn’t work. Rose clicked off and gave me the look again.
“How did you know?” he asked.
I said, “Omne ignotum pro magnifico.”
“What’s that?”
“Latin.”
“For what?”
“Every unexplained thing seems magnificent. In other words, a good magician doesn’t reveal his tricks.”
“You’re a magician now?”
“I’m an FBI special agent,” I said. I looked up at the windows again. Rose followed my gaze and said, “Yes, I know. Sherlock Holmes lived here.”
“No, he didn’t,” I said. “He didn’t exist. He was made up. So were these buildings. In Arthur Conan Doyle’s day Baker Street only went up to about number eighty. Or a hundred, perhaps. The rest of it was a country road. Marylebone was a separate little village a mile away.”
“I was born in Brixton,” Rose said. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Conan Doyle made up the number two hundred and twenty-one,” I said. “Like movies and TV make up the phone numbers you see on the screen. And the licence plates on the cars. So they don’t cause trouble for real people.”
“What’s your point?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But you’re going to have to let me have the passport. When you’re done with it, I mean. Because it’s probably phony too.”
“What’s going on here?”
“Where do you live?”
“Hammersmith,” he said.
“Does Hammersmith have a library?”
“Probably.”
“Go borrow a book. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The second story. It’s called ‘The Red-Headed League’. Read it tonight, and I’ll come see you in the morning.”
Visiting Scotland Yard is always a pleasure. It’s a slice of history. It’s a slice of the future, too. Scotland Yard is a very modern place these days. Plenty of information technology. Plenty of people using it.
I found Rose in his office, which was nothing more than open space defended by furniture. Like a kid’s fort. He said, “I got the book but I haven’t read it yet. I’m going to read it now.”
He pointed to a fat paperback volume on the desk. So to give him time I took Ezekiah Hopkins’s passport back to the Embassy and had it tested. It was a fake, but very good, except for some blunders so obvious they had to be deliberate. Like taunts, or provocations. I got back to Scotland Yard and Rose said, “I read the story.”
“And?”
“All those names were in it. Ezekiah Hopkins, and Ross, and Spaulding. And Lebanon, Pennsylvania, too. And Sherlock Holmes said the same Latin you did. He was an educated man, apparently.”
“And what was the story about?”
“Decoy,” Rose said. “A ruse was developed whereby a certain Mr Wilson was regularly decoyed away from his legitimate place of business for a predictable period of time, so that an ongoing illegal task of some sensitivity could be accomplished in his absence.”
“Very good,” I said. “And what does the story tell us?”
“Nothing,” Rose said. “Nothing at all. No one was decoying me away from my legitimate place of business. That was my legitimate place of business. I go wherever dead people go.”
“And?”
“And if they were trying to decoy me away, they wouldn’t leave clues beforehand, would they? They wouldn’t spell it out for me in advance. I mean, what would be the point of that?”
“There might be a point,” I said.
“What kind?”
I asked, “If this were just some foreigner stabbed to death on Baker Street, what would you do next?”
“Not very much, to be honest.”
“Exactly. Just one of those things. But now what are you going to do next?”
“I’m going to find out who’s yanking my chain. First step, I’m going back on scene to make sure we didn’t miss any other clues.”
“Quod erat demonstrandum,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Latin.”
“For what?”
“They’re decoying you out. They’ve succeeded in what they set out to do.”
“Decoying me out from what? I don’t do anything important in the office.”
He insisted on going. We headed back to Baker Street. The tents were still there. The tape was still fluttering. We found no more clues. So we studied the context instead, physically, looking for the kind of serious crimes that could occur if law enforcement was distracted. We didn’t find anything. That part of Baker Street had the official Sherlock Holmes Museum, and the waxworks, and a bunch of stores of no real consequence, and a few banks, but the banks were all bust anyway. Blowing one up would be doing it a considerable favour.
Then Rose wanted a book that explained the various Sherlock Holmes references in greater detail, so I took him to the British Library in Bloomsbury. He spent an hour with an annotated compendium. He got sidetracked by the geographic errors Conan Doyle had made. He started to think the story he had read could be approached obliquely, as if it were written in code.
Altogether we spent the rest of the week on it. The Wednesday, the Thursday, and the Friday. Easily thirty hours. We got nowhere. We made no progress. But nothing happened. None of Rose’s other cases unravelled, and London’s crime did not spike. There were no consequences. None at all.
So as the weeks passed both Rose and I forgot all about the matter. And Rose never thought about it again, as far as I know. I did, of course. Because three months later it became clear that it was I who had been decoyed. My interest had been piqued, and I had spent thirty hours doing fun Anglophile things. They knew that would happen, naturally. They had planned well. They knew I would be called out to the dead American, and they knew how to stage the kinds of things that would set me off like the Energizer Bunny. Three days. Thirty hours. Out of the building, unable to offer help with the rubber-stamping, not there to notice them paying for their kids’ college educations by rubber-stamping visas that should have been rejected instantly. Which is how four particular individuals made it to the States, and which is why three hundred people died in Denver, and which is why the others were executed, and which is why I sit alone in Leavenworth in Kansas, where by chance one of the few books the prison allows is The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Peter Tremayne
“This thing of darkness.
I acknowledge mine.”
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, V, i
MASTER HARDY DREW, Constable of the Bankside Watch, stood regarding the blackened and still smoking ruins of the once imposing edifice of the house on the corner of Stony Street near the parish church of St Saviour’s. There was little left of it as it had been a wood-built house, and wood and dry plaster were a combustible mix.
“It was a fine old house,” Master Drew’s companion said reflectively. “It once belonged to the old Papist Bishop Gardiner.”
“The one who took pleasure in burning those he deemed heretics in Queen Mary’s time?” asked Master Drew with a slight shudder. He had not been born when Mary had been on the throne but he knew it to be a strange, unsettled period when, during those five short years, she had earned the epithet of “Bloody Mary”.
Master Pettigrew, the fire warden, nodded.
“Aye, Master Drew. The same who condemned some good men to the flames because they would not accept Roman ways.”
“Well, it is not infrequent that buildings catch alight and burn. You and your sturdy lads have put out the flames and no other properties seem threatened. Why, therefore, do you bring me here?”
Master Pettigrew inclined his head towards the smouldering ruins.
“There is a body here. I think you should see it.”
The constable frowned.
“A poor soul caught in the fire? Surely that is a task for the coroner?”
“That’s as may be, good master. Come and examine it for yourself. It is not badly burned,” he added, seeing the distaste on Master Drew’s features. “I believe it was not fire that killed him.”
He led the way through the charred wood and the odd standing wall towards what must have been the back of the house and into an area that had been partially built of bricks and thus not much harmed in the conflagration.
Master Drew saw the problem straightway. The body of a man was hanging from a thick beam by means of iron manacles that secured his wrists and linked them via a chain over the beam. He breathed out sharply.
“This is a thing of darkness. A deed of evil,” he muttered.
The constable tried not to look at the legs of the corpse for they had received the force of the fire. The upper body was blackened but not burned for, by that curious vagary to which fire is often prey, the flames had not engulfed the entire body. The flames seemed to have died down after they had reached the corpse.
The body was that of a man of thirty or perhaps a little more. Through the soot and grime it was impossible to detect much about the features.
Master Drew saw that the mouth was tied as in the manner of a gag. The eyes were bulging still and blood-rimmed, marking the struggle to obtain air that must have been filled with smoke and fumes from the fire.
“You will observe, Master Drew, that the upper garments of this man speak of some wealth and status, and the manner of his death was clearly planned.”
The constable sniffed in irritation.
“I am experienced in the matter of observation,” he rebuked sharply.
Indeed, he had already observed that, in spite of the blackened and scorched garments, they were clearly those affected by a person of wealth. His sharp eyes had detected something under the shirt and he drew the long dagger he wore at his belt and used it to push aside the doublet and undershirt. Beneath was a gold chain on which was hung a medallion of sorts.
Master Pettigrew let out a breath. He was probably thinking of the wealth that he had missed, for being warden of the fire watch around Bankside did not provide him with means to live as he would want…or not without a little help from items collected in the debris of fires such as this.
Using the tip of his dagger, Master Drew was able to lift the chain over the head of the corpse and then examine it. Master Pettigrew peered over his shoulder.
“A dead sheep moulded in gold,” he breathed.
Master Drew shook his head.
“Not a dead sheep but the fleece of a sheep. I have seen the like once before. It was just after the defeat of the Spanish invasion force. They brought some prisoners to the Tower and I was one of the appointed guards. One of the prisoners was wearing such a symbol. When a sergeant wanted to divest him of it, our captain rebuked him, saying it was the symbol of a noble order and that the prisoner should be treated, therefore, with all courtesy and respect.”
The warden looked worried.
“A nobleman murdered here on the Bankside? We will not hear the last of it, good constable. A noble would have influence.”
Master Drew nodded thoughtfully.
“A nobleman, aye. But of what country and what allegiance? This order was set up to defend the Papist faith.”
Master Pettigrew looked at him in horror.
“The Papist Faith, you say?”
“This is a Spanish order for I see the insignia of Philip of Spain on the reverse.”
“Spanish?’ gasped Master Pettigrew. “There are several noble Spaniards in London at this time.”
Master Drew’s features hardened.
“And many who would as lief cut a Spaniard’s throat in revenge for the cruelties of previous years. Were there no witnesses to this incendiary act?”
To his surprise, Master Pettigrew nodded an affirmative.
“Tom Shadwell, a passing fruit merchant, saw the flames and called the alarm,” returned Master Pettigrew. “That was at dawn this morning. My men managed to isolate the building and extinguish the flames within the hour. Then we entered and that was when I found the body and sent for you.”
“Well, one thing is for certain, this poor soul did not hang himself nor set fire to this place. To whom does this building now belong?”
“I think it must still belong to the Bishop of Winchester for he has many estates around here. Such was the office of Bishop Gardiner but he has been dead these fifty years, during which it has remained empty.”
“That’s true,” Master Drew reflected. “I have never seen it occupied since I came here as Assistant Constable. No one has ever claimed it nor sought to occupy it.”
“Aye, and for the reason that local folk claim it to be haunted by the spirits of the unfortunates that Bishop Gardiner tortured and condemned to the flames as heretics.”
Master Drew pocketed the chain thoughtfully and glanced once more at the body.
“Release the corpse to the charge of the coroner, Master Pettigrew, and say that I will speak with him anon, but to do nothing precipitate until I have done so.”
He was about to turn when he caught sight of something in the corner of the room that puzzled him. In spite of the fire having damaged this area, he saw that the floorboards were smashed and that, where they had been torn away, a rectangular hole had been dug into the earth. He moved towards it.
“Is this the work of your men, Master Pettigrew?” he asked.
The warden of the fire watch shook his head.
“Not of my men.”
Master Drew sniffed sharply.
“Then someone has excavated this hole. But for what purpose?”
He bent down, peered into the hole and poked at it with the tip of his long dagger.
“The hole was already here and something buried, which was but recently dug up and removed and…” He frowned, moved his dagger again and then bent down into the hole, carefully, trying to avoid the soot. With a grunt of satisfaction he came up holding something between thumb and forefinger.
“A coin?” hazarded Master Pettigrew, leaning over his shoulder.
“Aye, a coin,” the constable confirmed, scraping away some of the soot with the point of the dagger.
“A groat?”
“No, this is a shilling, and an Irish shilling of Philip and Mary at that. See the harp under the crown on the face…and either side, under smaller crowns, the initials P and M? Now what would that be doing here?”
“Well, Bishop Gardiner was a Papist during the time of Mary and approved her marriage to the Spanish King Philip. It is logical that he might have lost the coin then.”
Master Drew looked down at the hole again. He knew better than to comment further. Instead, he slipped the coin into his pocket and moved towards the exit of the blackened building. Outside, groups of people were already gathering. He suspected that some of them had come to forage and pillage if there was anything worth salvaging.
“Where are you away to?” called Master Pettigrew.
“To proceed with my investigation,” he replied. “I’ll speak to the fruit merchant who first saw the conflagration.”
“He has the barrow at the corner of Clink Street, selling fruit and nosegays to those visiting the folk within the prison.”
The constable made no reply but he knew Tom Shadwell, the fruit seller, well enough and often passed the time of day with him as he made his way by the grim walls of the old prison.
“A body found, you say, good constable?” Tom Shadwell’s face paled when Master Drew told him of the gruesome find. “I saw only the flames and had no idea that anyone dwelt within the building. Had I known, I would have made an effort to save the poor soul. So far as I knew, it had been empty these many years.”
“You would have been too late anyway,” replied Master Drew. “It is murder that we are dealing with. Therefore, be cautious in your thoughts before you recite to me as much as you may remember.”
Tom Shadwell rubbed the bridge of his nose with a crooked forefinger.
“The first light was spreading when I came by the corner of Stony Street to make my way to my pitch. I was pushing my barrow as usual. It is not long after dawn that the prison door is opened and visitors are allowed to go in. I usually start my trade early. I was passing the old house when I saw the flames…”
He suddenly paused and frowned.
“You have thought of something, Master Shadwell?” prompted the constable.
“It is unrelated to the fire.”
“Let me decide that.”
“There was a coach standing in Stony Street, not far from the house. Two men were lifting a small wooden chest inside. It seemed heavy. Even as I passed the end of the street they had placed it in the coach, then one climbed in and the other scrambled to the box and took the reins. Away it went in a trice. I then crossed the end of the street towards the old house and that was when I heard the crackle of the fire and saw its flames through the window. I pushed my barrow to the end of the street, for I knew Master Pettigrew, warden of the fire watch, dwelt there. I was reluctant to leave my barrow – prey to thieves and wastrels – but there was no one about, so I ran along to his house and raised the alarm. That is all I know.”
“This coach, could you identify it?”
Shadwell shook his head.
“It was dark and the two men were clad in dark cloaks.”
“Well-dressed fellows, would you say?”
“Hard to say, Master Constable.”
“And which way did this coach proceed? Towards the bridge?”
Shadwell shook his head.
“In this direction, towards Clink Street or maybe along to Bankside, not towards the bridge.”
Having ascertained there was nothing more to be gathered from the fruit seller, Master Drew turned past the Clink Prison to the adjacent imposing ancient structure of Winchester Palace that dominated the area just west of the Bridgehead. Southwark was the largest town of the diocese of Winchester. In the days when Winchester was capital of the Saxon kingdom, before London reclaimed its Roman prominence, the Bishops of Winchester were all-powerful. Even after Winchester fell into decline as a capital, the bishops remained within court circles and therefore had to be frequently in London for royal and administrative purposes. So the grand Winchester Palace was built on the south bank of the Thames.
Master Drew explained his business to the gatekeeper of the palace and was shown directly to the office of Sir Gilbert Scrivener, secretary to His Grace, Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Winchester.
“The house on the corner of Stony Street? We have large estates in Southwark, Master Drew, as you know. But I do vaguely recall it. Unused since Bishop Gardiner’s decease.”
“You have no personal acquaintance with the house, then?”
“My dear constable,” replied Sir Gilbert, “I have more things to do with my time than personally to acquaint myself with all the properties controlled by the diocese. As for the burning of this building, and the murder of foreigners, it is not to be wondered that they and empty houses are treated in such manner – since it is so, it may be a blessing for it has long been His Grace’s wish to rebuild that crumbling edifice and set up on the site something more useful to the church and the community.”
“So you are acquainted with the house?” replied Master Drew sharply.
Sir Gilbert spread his hands with a thin smile.
“I said, not personally. But I am His Grace’s secretary. I fear you do but waste your time for do we not live in Southwark, and is it not said that these mean streets are better termed a foul den than a fair garden? Its reputation is best described as notorious. Bankside itself is a nest of prostitutes and thieves, of cut-throats and vagabonds.”
“And playhouses,” smiled Master Drew grimly. “Do not forget the playhouses, Sir Gilbert.”
The secretary sighed impati
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