The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 7 Part 44

"I am. I only arrived in New York three weeks ago. Carson's the name. Dr Henry Carson."

A YEAR TO REMEMBER.

Robert Barnard.

"MY, HOW TIME flies!" wrote Annette Bigsby, as she sat down on December 13 to compose the round-robin that, immaculately word-processed, would accompany her Christmas cards to friends and relations all around the world.

"This last year has been one of all sorts. Some of the usual, which my correspondents will recognize: holidays in Majorca and Las Vegas, visits to Brighton, London and Morocco, and then some of the unusual to balance them.

One high spot of the unusual occurred in May. What could be nicer and more heartwarming than opening the door to a relative unseen for more than fifteen years? And how lovely that we could immediately strike up a rapport! That's what happened with my second cousin Malcolm Watts only a teenager, but wise and generous beyond his years."

Annette put down her pen. She would have to say more of Malcolm, but she wanted to strike the right note from the beginning. On reading it through she thought she already had struck a nice balance (as she would have put it) between the true and the misleading.

When she opened the front door on that memorable day in May 2007 her main emotion was not the surprise which her letter, quite cleverly, led her readers to a.s.sume she felt. She had already had contact with Malcolm through the Families United website. She had responded unwillingly to his appeal, and in fact had only done so because it had been made clear that if he did not get the facts of his birth from the website he would get them from his adoptive mother, who was obviously as weak and indiscreet as Annette had always feared.

"More than fifteen" was also true but misleading. It was over seventeen years since mother and baby had been allowed home from hospital, three days after Malcolm's birth. After overnighting at cousin Caroline's home she had kissed the boy goodbye (cousin Caroline seemed to insist on it) and gone back to her own home in Peterborough.

"Am I what you expected?" asked Malcolm in his eager-puppy way.

"I'm not sure . . . I don't think I expected anything."

"I thought I might remind you of my father."

"Oh dear that's so long ago. He was dead before you were born." And in truth Annette could hardly remember anything about him.

"Dead? He must have been very young. How did he die?"

"It was a car crash. Tragic. Absolutely tragic."

"But you've married since?"

"Been married. At the moment I'm in a relations.h.i.+p. We're planning to marry, but we've just not got around to it yet."

"And you'd rather he and I didn't meet."

Annette flounced a little.

"I don't know why you say that."

"Because you specified times when I could come so exactly. They were obviously when he was at work."

"Well . . . well yes. I didn't think Grant was quite ready yet."

"Ready?"

"Ready to be told."

Annette licked the tip of her Uniball pen and continued writing.

"Professionally on the job front, I mean everything has gone like a dream. I am now well entrenched as head buyer at the Peterborough M and S, and enjoying enormously the work and the challenge. So much has been done in the last year or two to improve and brighten the store's women's clothing, and I am happy and proud to have been part of this. Grant, in his challenging and demanding job in securities, goes from strength to strength, and both of us seem to be on a steep upward curve."

"Who was round here today?" Grant asked, when he got in in the early hours.

"Round here?"

"There were two cups and saucers on the draining board."

"Oh, that. That was Peggy Hartley from marketing. She's been on to me to see the house, because she'd love to move to this area."

"What's so f.u.c.king special about these houses?" Grant asked. He had never so much as nodded to any of the neighbours, or shown any consciousness that they lived in a desirable neighbourhood. "It's just a f.u.c.king house."

"Well, it's two or three steps up from anything Peggy Hartley can afford. We do very nicely, Grant."

Grant grunted, and got down to what he did very nicely.

Annette nearly swallowed her Uniball before she got down to the first crux in her account of 2007. This needed careful handling.

"So those are the main outlines of my year. One of the joys has been the way the two strands have meshed. No sooner did Malcolm and Grant meet than they seemed to form a partners.h.i.+p both taking enormous pleasure in each other's company. Grant has no family to speak of, unlike most Londoners. He has lost them through emigration, death and spending long periods away." (She thought, then crossed out the last six words and inserted an "or" before "death"). "So it was a particular joy to see how one of my few remaining relatives got on with the man who will be my husband. Goodness! We must make arrangements for the wedding soon!"

When Annette got back from work at twenty past five one July evening, Grant and Malcolm were eyeing each other up like two dogs meeting each other for the first time in a park. This time what she noticed about Malcolm was not his puppyishness but his incipient manhood. The moment she came in Grant started getting together his gear for work: the tightly-b.u.t.toned suit jacket over the padded waistcoat and the swagger stick. There was no sign of any refreshment having been offered to Malcolm.

"You've got a visitor," said Grant, pausing bulkily by the door, an expression of disgust on his face. "I'll leave you to it."

"We can manage," said Malcolm.

"Yes, I'll give Malcolm a cup of coffee and then I have a lot of work on my plate for tomorrow. Be careful, darling."

"Oh, I'll be careful. Ain't I always? If I wasn't I'd be on Disability, and I wouldn't be able to keep you in the manner to which you are accustomed." He leered. "Have fun."

Annette busied herself in the kitchen to get her thoughts together, then brought coffee into the lounge.

"You arranged this, didn't you?" she said accusingly. "Coming here at a time when you knew I would be at work and Grant would be at home."

"How would I know that? You never told me he was a night worker." Seeing her thoughts Malcolm changed his tactics. "All right, all right. You told me when not to come. And I kept watch on the house."

"What did you do that for?"

"To be able to come and see Grant in his natural habitat."

"I would have asked you to meet him eventually."

"You'd have given him directions how to behave, covered over all his rough edges."

"Does Grant look like somebody I could tell how to behave?"

"He might have made an effort. I wanted to meet the real him."

"Well, now you have." She didn't ask what he thought of him, but he told her just the same.

"Mum-"

"Don't call me that."

"We're alone, Mum. And I didn't tell him. I'm your cousin Caroline's son as far as he's concerned. He's a violent man, Mum. There's aggression bubbling away under the surface the whole time. Does he hit you?"

"No, he doesn't! The idea!" lied Annette.

"Well, I wonder at you. You've got loads of cla.s.s, and he's just a common nightclub bouncer."

"Casino. That's quite different. He's in charge of security at a very well thought of casino, part of a chain."

"Well, swipe me. Actually, Mum, I don't give a d.a.m.n what he does for a living. What I care about is the atmosphere of violence he carries around with him. He's an eruption waiting to happen. And then he spouts a lot of nonsense about keeping you in the lap of luxury."

"He earns a very good wage. It's a dangerous job. And the house takes a lot of upkeep. It's the age when the plumbing and the electricity start going wrong, and the Council Tax is horrendous."

Light dawned.

"It's yours, isn't it, Mum? Your house."

"Yes. What of it? I got it with my divorce settlement with a mortgage to match. If it hadn't been for Grant I'd have had to sell it."

"How did you meet him?"

"At the casino. It's a nice place to go. You don't have to be a big gambler. There's a really good restaurant, and it's the same to them if you bet high or if you're cautious, like me. I like it there."

Malcolm came over and took her in his arms.

"Mum, you were lonely, weren't you? After your divorce. You were just a well-off widow waiting for some lounge lizard to get his claws into you."

"Grant is not a lounge lizard," Annette said weakly.

"A lounge Rottweiler then." Malcolm pushed her away so that he could look into her eyes. "Mum, I worry about you. I don't care how violent he is towards the other punters-"

"Don't be silly. You're ignorant. How could he be violent towards the casino's best customers? He'd be out on his ear in no time."

"All I'm saying, Mum, is: you need someone to protect you. I'm glad I came along in time."

Annette smiled satirically.

"Malcolm dear, you're seventeen. I'm sure one day you'll be a very capable man, but at the moment you're not-"

"I'm not taking him on at all-in-wrestling, Mum. He's got all the muscle. What I've got is brain."

Annette said nothing. She really didn't know about his brain one way or the other. Malcolm drew her closer to him.

"Mum, you've got me to rely on."

"One sadness was Malcolm's inability to come on our holiday with us. He was just too busy looking for a job. I know he's going to find one where he will do well, and he's quite right to be choosy, because he's a very personable young man. We went back to Vegas as I call it now where we were so happy last year. It's not the gambling that attracts us: Grant gets enough of that in his job. It's the whole atmosphere, the feeling of something exciting going on all the time. So we don't lose much money in fact, Grant made a very nice 'killing' this year. But that's not something we'd rely on doing another year we're not so daft."

"This is better than having your tame puppy along," said Grant as the plane neared the US coastline and he opened his third little bottle of whisky.

"He's a very nice puppy," said Annette, who was herself slightly squiffy from white wine.

"Tell me again what relation he is."

"He's my cousin Caroline's son."

"Legitimate is he? All fair and square? Not wrong side of the blanket, or adopted, or babynapped from some unsuspecting couple?"

"Of course he's legitimate. What kind of daft idea are you getting?"

"Only when you've mentioned your cousin Caroline earlier, you've never mentioned any husband."

"Can't we give Malcolm a rest? You've gone on about him quite enough in the last few weeks. We're off on holiday."

"Right. And it's going to be a cracker. I'm mainly going to watch. That's how you become a winner in casinos. You keep your eyes open. I've got all the background now, from A to Z or zee as those Yanks say. Just watch me!"

Strangely enough, his exultation did not make Annette feel happy.

But in the next few days she did what he'd ordered: she watched him. They played the tables a little, made a few friends among the English contingent in the hotel, and Grant kept his eyes open. By the second day he was concentrating on one of the croupiers, occasionally playing at his wheel, more often watching from a distance. It was slow work. They only had ten days, but it was the seventh day before Grant said to Annette, whose uneasiness had been growing.

"That croupier is bent."

"Oh Grant! I'm sure he's not. It's the best-run casino in Vegas everyone says so."

"Makes no difference. He's bent. And I know what he's been doing."

"But Grant be careful! Please, please be careful. It could be dangerous. There could be large sums involved."

"You're mental, woman. Of course there are large sums involved. There better be. Why do you think I'm interested? Just do exactly and I mean exactly what I tell you. That, and nothing more."

The following evening, when Annette was dressing for dinner, Grant said: "Don't bother to dress. You're staying in this room tonight. I need you to be here."

"But Grant, I-"

"Ring room service if you're hungry. And make sure everything is packed. Yours and mine. Everything."

"But Grant, it's only Tuesday. We don't go until-"

"DO WHAT I SAY! Can I be clearer than that? Do what I say and we're made."

And he left the room.