The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9 Part 1

THE MAMMOTH.

BOOK OF.

BEST BRITISH CRIME.

Volume 9.

EDITED BY.

MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI.

INTRODUCTION.

WELCOME TO YET another full year of British killers, investigators, femmes fatales, everymen and women in peril and the whole kitchen sink of crime and mystery fiction as practised on our hallowed sh.o.r.es.

These very sh.o.r.es where Conan Doyle gave birth to Sherlock Holmes, Colin Dexter to Inspector Morse, Raymond Chandler went to school and, less of a prestigious or nationalistic landmark, Jack the Ripper, the first universally feared serial killer, slashed his way into the hall of infamy.

Better critics than me have attempted to define where British crime and thrillers differ from their American or European counterparts. I will not attempt it. After all there are cosy US authors who work in the footsteps of Agatha Christie, as there are homegrown Brits who write as hardboiled blood-and-guts prose as Chandler and Hammett and their contemporary representatives. They have crooked and/or tormented cops; we have them too. They have long highways; we have motorways. But what they all have in common is the fact that on both continents crime and mystery writing thrives and not a year goes by without impressive new talent emerging and the genre we love is seen renewing itself constantly like waves lapping against the sh.o.r.e.

I've always tried to present the whole breadth of crime, mystery and thriller writing in these annual anthologies. So you won't just find gentle stories of detection, puzzling historical labyrinths full of devious characters or sharp social comment about the imperfect society we live in beneath the surface of some savage and, often, scary stories. All life is here, moods, settings, villains and goodies and all characters in between. In a nutsh.e.l.l, all the variety and must-read qualities of crime writers at their best. And there is little doubt in my mind that we have on our British (and Celtic) sh.o.r.es a wonderful a.s.sortment of outstanding talents.

We welcome back many old favourites but also big "names" like Reginald Hill, Ann Cleeves, R. J. Ellory, John Lawton and Stuart Neville for the very first time. And, as ever, it's with great joy that we have newcomers like L. C. Tyler, Chris Ewan, Ian Ayris, Col Bury, Matt Hilton and Christine Poulson on board; some are at an early stage in their careers while others have already made a mark for themselves.

Past volumes have enjoyed great critical and commercial success and we've gathered a couple of handfuls of nominations for prestigious short story awards. Phil Lovesey's story in last year's volume was shortlisted for and subsequently won the CWA Dagger, alongside John Lawton's delightful spy tale in these pages, and Christine Poulson's ingenious puzzler, also from this year's volume, was selected for an American readers' award, and I am confident more stories from this b.u.mper edition will catch the attention in the best possible way and make crime pay, at any rate from a literary point of view.

So, close the windows tight, check the back door is locked and the front door bolts are safely in place, slip between the bedcovers and dive deep into our wonderful world of crime. When you emerge from the s.h.i.+mmering darkness, it will already be next year and we will have yet another menu of dark and sinister but enjoyable deeds ready for you.

Bon appet.i.t criminel, as they say in France!

Maxim Jakubowski.

MEET ME AT THE CREMATORIUM.

Peter James.

I WANT YOU, he texted.

I want you more! she texted back.

Trevor was fond of saying that the past was another country. Well, at this moment for Janet, it was the future that was another country. The future and another man.

And tonight she was going to have him. Again.

A sharp erotic sensation coiled in the pit of her stomach at the thought of him. A longing. A craving.

Tonight I am going to have you. Again, and again and again!

Her past receded in the rear-view mirror with every kilometre she covered. The forest of winter-brown pines that lined the autobahn streaked by on both sides, along with road signs, turn-offs and other, slower cars. She was in a hurry to get there. Her heart beat with excitement, with danger. Her pulse revved. She had been running on adrenalin for forty-eight hours, but she wasn't tired, she was wide, wide awake. Going into the unknown. Going to meet a man who had been a total stranger until just a few weeks ago.

His photograph, which she had printed from the jpeg he had emailed her, lay on the pa.s.senger seat of her elderly grey Pa.s.sat. He was naked. A tall, muscular guy, semi-erect as if teasing her to make him bigger. A tight stomach, nearly a six-pack, and she could already feel it pressing hard against her own. He had brown hairs on his chest and on his legs, thick and downy and she liked that. Trevor was white and bony, and his body was almost hairless. This man was tanned, lean, fit.

Hans.

He looked wild, like a young Jack Nicholson, his hair thinning on the top. He looked just the way he had sounded on the internet chat room when she had first been attracted to him.

Feral.

The background to the photograph was strange. An enclosed, windowless s.p.a.ce that might be the engine room of a s.h.i.+p, although she had a pretty good idea what it really was. Like everything about him, it excited her. s.h.i.+ny floor-to-ceiling metal casings, beige coloured, with dials, gauges, switches, levers, k.n.o.bs, winking lights. It could be some kind of control room in a nuclear reactor? Or Mission Control?

She felt on a mission very much under control!

Who had taken that photograph, she wondered? A lover? A self-timer? She didn't care; she wanted him. All of him. Wanted that thing that half-dangled, half-rose, wanted to gather it deep inside her again. Wanted him so badly she was crazed with l.u.s.t. Mosquitoes got crazed with blood l.u.s.t. They had to land, take in the blood, even if it killed them. She had to have Hans, take him into her, into her body, into her life, even if that killed her, too.

She didn't care. For now she was free. She had been free for two whole days and that was longer than she had been free for years.

On the scratchy reception of the car's radio, struggling through the occasional interference of someone talking in German, Bob Dylan was singing "The Times They Are A-Changin'".

They were, they really were! Flecks of sleet struck the windscreen, and the wipers cleared them. It was cold outside and that was good. It was good to make love in the warmth when it was cold outside. And, besides, the cold had plenty of other advantages.

I will never let you go, Trevor had said. Never. Ever. He had told her that for years.

Hans explained to her precisely what he was going to do to her. Exactly how he would make love to her the first time. And he had done so just the way he had described. She liked that Germanic precision. The way he had studied every detail of her photograph. The way he already knew her body when they met. The way he told her he loved her hair, and had buried his face into it. Into all of it.

My name is Hans. I am thirty-seven, divorced, looking to start a new life with a lady of similar age. I am liking brunettes. Slim. Excuse my bad English. I like you. I don't know you, but I like you.

I like you even more!

She would be forty this year. Hans would be her toyboy, she had teased him. He had laughed and she liked that; he had a big sense of humour. A wicked sense of humour.

Everything about him was totally wicked!

She looked OK, she knew. She'd never been a beauty, but she understood how to make herself look attractive, s.e.xy. Dressed to kill, plenty of men would look at her. She used to keep in shape with her twice-weekly aerobics cla.s.ses, then, when Trevor had gone through one of his particularly nasty phases, she had turned to binge eating and then binge drinking for comfort. Then she enrolled in Weight.w.a.tchers, and the fat and the flab and the cellulite had come off again. Her figure was good, her stomach firm not a distended pouch, like those of some of her friends who'd had children. And her b.o.o.bs were still firm, still defying gravity. She'd like to have been a little taller, always had wished that. But you couldn't have everything.

Anyhow, Trevor, who was much taller than her, told her, the very first time they had made love, that people were all the same size in bed. That had made her smile.

Trevor used to tell her that nothing you do in life is ever wasted. He was always coming up with sayings, and there was a time when Janet had listened to them intently, adored hearing them, filed them away in her memory and loved repeating them back to him.

Loved him so d.a.m.ned much it hurt.

And she hadn't even minded the pain. Which was a good thing because pain was something Trevor did really, really well. The knots, the handcuffs, the nipple clamps, the leather straps, the spiked dog collar, the whips, the stinging bamboo canes. He liked to hurt her, knew how and where to inflict it, but that had been OK because she loved him. She would have done anything for him.

But that was then.

And sometime between then and now he had changed. They had both changed. His horizons had narrowed, hers had widened.

Every system can be beaten. That was one of his sayings.

He was right.

Now she was a lifetime away. So it seemed. And 1,212 kilometres away, driving through spartan December pine forest. Klick: 1,213. And in a few moments, travelling at 130 klicks an hour, with her life in the two large suitcases jammed on the rear seats, 1,214.

Hagen 3.

The turn-off was coming up. She felt a tightening of her throat, and a p.r.i.c.k of excitement deep inside her. How many villages, small towns, big cities had she driven through or pa.s.sed by in her travels, during her life, and wondered, each time, What would it be like to stop here? What would it be like to drive into this place as a total stranger, knowing no one, then check into a hotel, or rent a small flat, and start a totally new life?

She was about to realize her dream. Hagen. So far it was just images she had googled on websites. Hagen. The thirty-seventh largest town in Germany. She liked that. A population of two hundred thousand. On the edge of the Ruhr. A town few knew about outside of its inhabitants. A once important industrial conurbation that was now reinventing itself as a centre of the arts, the websites proclaimed. She liked that. She could see herself in a place that was the centre of the arts.

Up until now, she had not had much contact with the arts. Well, there had never been time, really. During the weekdays she was always on the road, driving from place to place, as an area sales representative for a company that made industrial brushes. Finis.h.i.+ng brushes for the printing trade. Brushes for vacuum cleaners. Brushes for the bottom of elevator doors. For electrical contacts. She would miss her flirting and banter with her clients, the almost exclusively male buyers at the factories, the components wholesalers, the plant hire stores and the hardware stores. She was missing her comfortable new company Ford Mondeo, too, but the Pa.s.sat was OK, it was fine, it was a small price to pay. Tiny.

Then at the weekends, Trevor wasn't interested in any area of the arts. He didn't want to know about theatre, or art galleries or concerts except for Def Leppard, great music if you like that kind of thing, which she didn't but they were not art, at least, not in her view. He just wanted to watch football, then either go to the pub or, more preferably, up to a particular S&M club he had discovered in London, where they had become regulars. He liked, most of all, to hurt and humiliate her in front of other people.

Ahead of her and to her left, across the railings on the elevated road, she could see the start of a town. It lay in a valley, surrounded by low, rounded, wintry hills. Everything she could see was mostly grey or brown, the colours bleached out by the gloomy, overcast sky. But to her, it was all intensely beautiful.

Hagen. A place where no one knew her, and she knew no one. Except just one man. And she barely knew him. A place where a stranger she was going to have s.e.x with tonight, for just the second time, lived and worked. She tried to remember what his voice sounded like. What he smelled like. A man so crude he could send her a photo of himself naked and semi-erect, but a man so tender he could send her poetry by Aparna Chatterjee.

l.u.s.t is what I speak tonight, l.u.s.t is what I see tonight, l.u.s.t is what I feel tonight, And I l.u.s.t You.

Show me your Body Inside out ...

No clothes on, No holds barred ...

Bit by bit, Part by part, Give me your smells.

And your sweat ...

Trevor had never read a poem in his life.

The road dipped down suddenly beneath a flyover that seemed, from this angle, as if it went straight through the middle of a row of grimy, pastel-blue townhouses. She halted at a traffic light in the dark shadow beneath the flyover, checked in her mirror, for an instant just checking then saw a yellow road sign. There was an arrow pointing straight ahead, with the word Zentrum. Another arrow pointed left, and bore the word Theater.

She liked that. Liked the fact that the second word she saw on arriving in the town was Theater. This was going to be a good place; she felt it in her bones, in her heart, in her soul.

Hagen. She said the word to herself and smiled.

Behind her a car hooted. The lights were green.

She drove on past a road sign that read Bergischer Ring, and realized from the directions she had memorized that she was close to her hotel. But anxious as she was to see Hans, she wanted to get her bearings. She wanted to arrive slowly, absorbing it all, understanding the geography. She had all the time in the world, and she wanted to get it right, from the very beginning. It seemed too sudden that one moment she was on the autobahn, the next she was slap in the centre of the town. She wanted to feel it, explore it slowly, breathe it in, absorb it.

She turned right at the next road she came to, and drove up a steep, curving hill, lined with tall, terraced townhouses on both sides, then past a grimy church. She made a left turn at random, up an even steeper road, and then suddenly she was in scrubby, tree-lined countryside, winding up a hill, with the town below her.

She pulled over into the kerb, parked in front of a butane gas cylinder that was partially concealed by a threadbare hedge, stopped and climbed out. The central locking had packed up a long time ago, so she went around the car, making sure the doors and the boot were locked. Then she walked over to the hedge and looked down, across the valley, at her new home.

Hagen. A place that boasted, among its tourist attractions, Germany's first crematorium. Which had a certain convenient ring to it.

The town lay spread out and sprawling in the bowl beneath her. Her eyes swept the grey, grimy urban landscape beyond the gas cylinder, below the grey, sleeting skies. She saw a cl.u.s.ter of industrial buildings, with a white chimney stack rising higher than the distant hills. A small nucleus of utilitarian apartment buildings. A church spire. A Ferris wheel brightly lit, although it was only three o'clock in the afternoon, reminding her that darkness would start to fall, soon. She saw a narrow river bordered by grimy, industrial buildings. Church spires. Houses, some with red roofs, some grey. She wondered who lived in them all, how many of their inhabitants she would get to meet.

It is neither fish nor meat, Hans said, telling her about Hagen. But she didn't mind what it was, or was not. It looked huge, vast, far bigger than a town of two hundred thousand. It looked like a vast city. A place where she could get lost, and hide, for ever.

She loved it more every second.

She noticed a strange, cylindrical building, all gla.s.s, lit in blue, above what looked like an old water tower, and she wondered what that was. Hans would tell her. She would explore every inch of this place with him, in between the times they lay in bed, naked, together. If they could spare any time to explore anything other than each other's bodies, that was!

She turned away from the view and walked on up the hill, hands dug into the pockets of her black suede jacket, the sleet tickling her face, her scarf tickling her neck, breathing in the scents of the trees and the gra.s.s. She followed the road up into a wooded glade, until it became a track, which after a few minutes came out into a knoll of unkempt gra.s.s, with a row of trees on the far side, and a rectangular stone monument at the highest point.

She climbed up to it, and stopped at a partially collapsed metal fence was that screening it off, for some kind of repair work. She knew it was the Bismarck monument, because she recognized it from every website one of Hagen's landmarks. She stared at it silently, then took her little digital camera from her bag and photographed it. Her first photograph of Hagen! Then she stood still, licking the sleet off the air, feeling a moment of intense happiness, and freedom.

I'm here. I made it! I did it!!!!!

Her heart was burning for Hans, and yet strangely, she still felt in no hurry. She wanted to savour these moments of antic.i.p.ation. To savour her freedom. To relish not having to hurry home to make Trevor his evening meal (always a variation on meat and potatoes, he would eat nothing else). To be able to stand for as long as she wanted beneath the statue of Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, a man partly responsible for shaping the country that was about to become her adopted home, for however many days of freedom she had remaining. And she did not know how many those might be.

Better to live one day as a lion, than one thousand years as a lamb, Trevor was fond of saying, strutting around in his studded leathers and peaked cap.

Of course, he would not have approved of her being here. And particularly not of her standing like an acolyte wors.h.i.+pping at the statue of Bismarck. Trevor had a thing about Germany. It wasn't the War, or anything like that. He said the Germans had no humour well, Hans had proved him wrong!

He also said the Germans were efficient, as if that was a fault!

Trevor had a thing about all kinds of stuff. He had a particularly big thing about crematoriums. They gave him the creeps, he said.

Whereas she found them fascinating.

Yet another thing on which they disagreed. And she always found his dislike of crematoriums particularly strange, since he worked in the funeral business.

In fact, thinking back on fifteen years of marriage, what exactly had they agreed on? Rubber underwear? Handcuffs? Masks? Inflicting modest pain on each other? Bringing each other to brutal climaxes that were s.n.a.t.c.hed moments of release, escape from their mutual loathing? Escapes from the realities they did not want to face? Such as the one fortunately, thank G.o.d now (!) that they could not have children?

Time was, when she really had been in love with him. Deeply, truly, crazily do-anything-for-him, unconditional love. She had always been attracted by death. By people who worked close to death. Trevor was an embalmer with a firm of funeral directors. He had a framed certificate, which was hung in pride of place in the sitting room, declaring him to be "A Member Of The Independent a.s.sociation of Embalmers".

She used to like his hands to touch her. Hands that had been inserting tubes into a cadaver, to pump out the blood and replace it with pink embalming fluid. Hands that had been applying make-up on a cadaver's face. Brus.h.i.+ng a cadaver's hair.

The closer she was to death, the more alive she felt.

She liked to lie completely naked, and still, and tell Trevor to treat her as if she was a cadaver. She loved to feel his hands on her. Probing her. Slowly bringing her alive.

The best climax absolutely the best ever, in her entire life was one night when they had made love in the embalming room at the funeral director's. With two naked corpses lying, laid out on trolleys, beside her.