OxCrimes Page 19

  Still there was always tomorrow: another day.

  Another day for some. Not Tommy Johnson.

  PETER JAMES is the author of 25 thrillers, among them seven consecutive Sunday Times #1 bestsellers featuring Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. These have been published in 36 languages and have been #1 bestsellers in France, Germany, Russia and Canada. James has also been involved in 26 movies as writer and/or producer, and has competed as a racing driver in the Britcar and other series. He was born in Brighton in 1948.

  You’ll Never Forget My Face

  Peter James

  It was almost dark when Laura drove away from the supermarket. Sleet was falling and strains of ‘Good King Wenceslas’ echoed from the Salvation Army band outside Safeway. She wound down her window and pushed her ticket into the slot. As the barrier swung up, a movement in the rear view mirror caught her eye and she froze.

  Black eyes watched her from the darkness of the car’s interior. She wanted to get out of the car and scream for help – instead, her right foot pressed down hard on the accelerator and the rusting Toyota shot forward.

  She swerved past a van, zigzagged between a startled mother and her children, who were walking on a zebra crossing and raced across a junction.

  The eyes watched her, expressionless, in the mirror.

  Faster.

  The windscreen was frosting over with sleet, but she couldn’t find the wipers. She swung out too wide on a bend and the car skidded, heading on to the wrong side of the road. She screamed as the Toyota careered towards the blinding headlights of a lorry.

  The lorry’s bumper exploded through the windscreen. It slammed into her face, ripping her head from her neck, hurtling it on to the back seat. The car erupted into an inferno. Flames seared her body …

  Then she woke up.

  The room was silent. She lay engulfed in a cold sweat and gasping for breath. Suddenly, she remembered the old gypsy woman who’d tried to force a sprig of heather on her outside the supermarket.

  The gypsy had blocked her way and been so insistent that Laura had finally lost her temper, shoved past the woman and then snapped, ‘Sod off, you hideous old hag!’

  The gypsy woman had followed her to the car, rapped on the window, pressed her wizened face with its black piercing eyes against the glass and croaked.

  ‘Look at my face. You’ll never forget my face. You’ll see it for the rest of your life. The day you stop seeing my face is the day you die!’

  Laura turned for comfort towards her sleeping husband. Bill stirred fleetingly. She smelled the raw animal smell of his body, of his hair. He was the rock to which her whole life was anchored.

  Christmas Eve tomorrow. It was going to be just the two of them together this time and she had really been looking forward to it. She snuggled closer, wiggled her toes – hoping faintly that he might wake and they could make love – pressed her face against his iron-hard chest and began to feel safe again.

  In the middle of the next night, Laura woke again, startled by a sharp rapping. The room was flooded with an eerie sheen of moonlight. Odd, she thought, that she hadn’t drawn the curtains.

  Then she heard the rapping again and her scalp constricted in terror. The face of the old gypsy woman, a ghastly chalky white, was pressed against the bedroom windowpane.

  ‘Look at my face!’ she hissed. ‘Look at my face. You’ll never forget my face. You’ll see it for the rest of your life. The day you stop seeing my face is the day you die!’

  Laura turned to Bill with a whine of terror, but he was still sound asleep. ‘Bill,’ she whimpered. ‘Bill!’

  ‘Urrr-wozzit?’ he grunted, stirring.

  ‘Someone’s at the window,’ she said, her voice so tight it was barely audible.

  She heard the sound of his hand scrabbling on his bedside table. Then a sharp click and the room flooded with light. She stared fearfully back at the window and a wave of relief washed over her. The curtains were shut!

  ‘Wozzermarrer?’ Bill grunted, still half asleep.

  ‘I had a bad dream.’ She turned towards him, feeling a little foolish, and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’m sorry.’

  In the morning, Bill brought them both breakfast in bed. Then he gave her a huge card, and three gift-wrapped packages. ‘Happy Christmas,’ he said, and blushed – he was never very good at sentiment.

  Laura gave him his presents, an expensive bottle of after-shave and the cordless screwdriver he’d hinted he wanted. Then she opened hers.

  The first package was a sweater with daft-looking sheep appliquéd on the front. It made her laugh and she kissed him. The next was a bottle of her favourite bath oil. Then she saw his eyes light up in anticipation as she gripped the final package. It was small, square and heavy.

  ‘I – er – hope you like it,’ he mumbled.

  With mounting excitement she unwrapped a cardboard box. It was filled with sprigs of heather. Buried in their midst was a small porcelain figurine.

  Laura froze.

  Bill could sense something was wrong. ‘I … I got it yesterday,’ he said. ‘For your collection of Capo di Monte peasants. I thought it had … ‘his voice began to falter, ‘… you know – a real presence about it.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘A junk shop – something made me stop there – I just knew I was going to find the perfect present for you inside.’

  Quite numb, Laura stared at the black, piercing eyes of the hag that leered up at her with lips peeled back to reveal sharp, rat-like incisors.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ she said flatly, seeing how hurt he looked. ‘Really – lovely.’

  Laura kept the figurine on her dressing table over that week, to please Bill, but the thing’s presence terrified her.

  The following Sunday, he left to drive his container lorry to Italy. She didn’t start back at her office until the day after next, so she busied herself with housework. As the afternoon drew on, she felt increasingly uncomfortable.

  Finally, she made a snap decision, went to the bedroom, put the figurine in its box, took it outside and dropped it into the dustbin.

  Feeling better, she ate supper on a tray and watched a weepy movie on television, wishing Bill was home.

  Shortly after eleven, she went upstairs. As she switched the bedroom light on, her eyes fell on the dressing table, and a slick of fear travelled down her spine. The figurine was back, sitting in exactly the same position it had been that morning. Laura’s eyes shot to the undrawn curtains, then returned to the dressing table. The floor seemed to sway. She backed unsteadily out of the room, clutching the door frame to stop herself falling, then slammed the door shut.

  She stumbled downstairs, pulled the sitting room curtains tight, switched all the bars of the fire on, curled up on the sofa and listened, petrified, for a sound upstairs. She lay there all night, finally dozing for a brief spell around dawn.

  In the morning, she put the figurine in the boot of her car, drove to the tip three miles away, and threw it on to the heap. She watched it fall between the discarded fridges, busted sofas and tangle of rubble and old tyres, until it finally disappeared beneath a fire-blackened cushion.

  When Laura finally got home, she realised that it was the first time she’d felt at ease since opening that damned present. At two in the morning, she was woken by a sharp rap. The room felt as cold as a deepfreeze. As she switched on the bedside light, she let out a curdling yelp of terror. The figurine was back on her dressing table.

  Laura sat up the rest of the night, too frightened to sleep. Next morning, she carried the dreaded figurine out on to the patio and smashed it to smithereens with a hammer. She carried the fragments in a rubbish bag to her office, and during her lunch break dropped them in the incinerator. All afternoon she felt elated, as if she’d finally freed herself. When she finished work, she drove to the outskirts of town and went to Safeway to do her weekly shop.

  As she pushed her trolley down the aisles, she found she was smiling to herself.
Smiling at her little triumph and smiling, too, at her own stupidity. Probably the figurine hadn’t looked anything like the old gypsy, it was just her wild imagination, the same way she must have imagined throwing it in the bin and on to the tip but hadn’t.

  ‘Got spooked by the old hag and now I’m cracking up,’ she grinned to herself. ‘Silly fool.’

  It was nearly dark as she left the store. There was no sign of the gypsy woman, but even so, Laura looked carefully at the back seat of the car before climbing in and quickly locking the doors. She reached the exit, pushed her ticket into the slot and the barrier rose up. As it did, a sudden movement in her rear mirror caught her eye. The temperature plunged. Goose pimples as hard as rivets spiked her skin. In the mirror, she could clearly see the piercing black eyes watching her out of the darkness. The dream flooded back. She remembered how she’d accelerated helplessly and she found her right foot pressing down now. The car surged forward as if it had a will of its own. Laura let out a tiny whimper of fear, saw the rat-like teeth grinning at her in the mirror.

  ‘Got to stop this somehow. Got to change the dream. Got to break the spell.’

  Gripping the wheel with both hands, her heart thrashing, she turned to face her tormentor. There was no one there. Just the empty rear seat.

  ‘I imagined her,’ she thought, with immense relief ‘I imagined her!’

  The blare of a horn filled her ears. As she spun her head back to the road, she saw, far too late, the blazing headlights of the oncoming truck. In that last split second before the little Toyota exploded in a fireball, Laura remembered the gypsy’s words. ‘Look at my face. You’ll never forget my face. You’ll see it for the rest your life. The day you stop seeing my face is the day you die!’

  DENISE MINA is a writer of novels, comics and plays, and a film maker. Her crime novels include the Garnethill Trilogy, the Paddy Meehan books (filmed by BBC Scotland/Slate), and the Alex Morrow books, which have won, among other prizes, two CWA Daggers and Theakstons Novel of the Year. Her comics include Hellblazer and A Sickness in the Family and she is adapting The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Her latest book is The Red Road (2013). She was born in Glasgow in 1966.

  The Calm Before

  Denise Mina

  I remember that time as if I am living it now, the days before. Not the afterwards, not the noise and the headlines and the wails of the women. It’s just before that I remember. Calm.

  It was one of those amazing moments when things seem like they were meant, there seemed to be signs everywhere, and I read the signs and knew what they meant. The world made a kind of sense.

  All that summer the sea had been spewing up German bombs. They were old, and made a damp phut and sizzle on the water but the lights were beautiful.

  They explained on the telly: during the war a German submarine was hit and dumped the bombs just outside the harbour. The bombs tumbled down the side of a deep dark valley, nestling there in their cast iron coats, waiting for their time to come. Then when the summer storms came up they sucked them out of their nest, pulled them along the valley so they shirked their casings and rose like bubbles in ginger beer, up up to the surface, bursting when they reached the air and drew their first breath, sending flashes and splutters of blue and red and orange fire over the water.

  They’d been sitting down there for sixty years. All that time they’d been under the water, waiting for the salt to eat through the casing. I know what it takes to wait.

  It’s dark down there. And cold: They sent an MOD unit to have a look at them and one of the divers got his equipment caught. We watched them drag him onto the boat from the loading bay doors.

  They arrived in the town just when I did. How could that happen? Both coming to the town at the same time? A tiny, tiny chance. I thought they were beautiful. You’d be looking out at this grey water and then see a rip, a bob and bright sudden fire defying that broad, grey consensus.

  The fishermen hated the bombs. They had to steer around the unexpected fires in the water and the town was losing visitors. In the soap factory they all gathered around the loading doors every lunchtime, looking out to sea and watching, moaning about the tourists not coming and the bed and breakfasts empty and the seal boat trips making no money. I didn’t say I liked them. I just watched with the others and tried not to smile. I’m a private person. Being private came to be a precious thing to me. Small spaces that no one else went into. My room, my head and so on. Especially then.

  The calm time stays with me. Even now, years later, when anyone says ‘soap’ I have that sore smell in my nose. The walls smelled, the doors smelled, if you touched any surface it got on your hands and then anything you touched got the smell on it. A stab of smell. When I blew my nose the hankie was full of stinking silver trails. You could tell who worked there if you passed them in the street because they gave it off, sweated it. Disgusting.

  Highland. Kelp. Authentic. Traditional. Organic. I don’t even know what those words mean. They mean six quid a bar. They mean you’re a tourist and don’t want to buy a tea towel with a picture of a cow on it.

  Remorse. Sorry. Apology. Families left behind. They’re all just words.

  The village had big hills behind, small white cottages, fishermen going broke and jagging up on smack and being lost at sea. Nothing special. Quite a nice place. You can buy postcards of the sea front in Edinburgh they tell me.

  They sent me there because my people were from there. My gran. She’d just died so they offered me her house. It was too big, had two bedrooms and a garden and neighbours. There would have been plumbing needing done and the roof to fix, they said I’d even get a new kitchen but I didn’t want to have people to deal with, to have to talk to people. I’m only used to a cell. I took digs. A small room in a house with old Mr Mackay: he used the front door and I used the back. I’m not mental, I’m just private and that’s not wrong.

  What I remember most about the time is the driving test, before the driving test. I’d been eating beans and second day bread, smoking rollies, saving all my money for the lessons and the deposit. They learn to drive young up there, the instructor said. I was the oldest student he had. I remember before the test. Calm.

  I talk about the driving dreams a lot, I know, but it means so much to me. When I have that dream I’m happy all day, even now even when the other meaning is so clear. I can’t help it.

  In the dream I’m driving my van. There’s a space in the back where you could sleep if you got tired and no one could see you, bother you. You could go where you want. I’m driving my van through a summer valley, and my hand is resting on the wheel, warm in the sunshine and my arm’s bent, like I’ve been driving for a long time and I’m tired or something, I don’t know. The window’s open and maybe the radio’s on, I don’t know. I feel happy all day when I have that dream.

  In the soap factory I just kept my eyes down. To them I was a big city mystery, taken by his dad to live in Glasgow when he was ten and my mother left behind, shamed that her man left and never mentioned me. The factory people asked me about the fashions and the night clubs and the football. I cut it all short.

  Everyone knew I was sitting my test soon. I had a deposit down on a van as well but they didn’t know that. That was private. One of the supervisors came over to me one day and said even if I did pass the test he’d never let me drive for him, because I’d been in prison. He said it in front of everyone, to shame me because some of them didn’t know. I said nothing. When he left I went to the toilet. Locked the door before I let myself smile. He didn’t know what I’d been in for. He was the kind of man who’d have said if he knew. That’s the kind of man he was.

  They knew I went to the police station every week but they must have thought it was just a parole thing. They didn’t see me sign and the polis never told anyone. Cause of my gran I suppose. Out of respect.

  Come out of there, someone knocked on the toilet door. He kept talking and talking so I told him I’d been done for armed robbery. Next day they
were all nice to me. Some of the women tried to talk to me.

  The women didn’t drive the truck or anything, they wrapped the bars and made bows on them, they kept them kind of separate and I was glad. It was so long since I’d met a woman, I don’t know what to say to them. It’s been so long now I don’t know if I’ll ever meet another one.

  Sandra, she didn’t talk to me. She blushed when she saw me. I thought she hated me, actually, I’ve never been good at reading women. I’d heard that her man died on the boats and she didn’t go with loads of guys so she wasn’t a slag or anything.

  I never thought I’d miss the group but I did, not the team leaders that ran it, just the other guys.

  We had our own group. We had our own everything actually because we couldn’t mix with the other prisoners. They’d kill you if they got you alone. They killed one old guy, found him in a garden and stabbed him with a shovel. They hated us but I didn’t see how we were different. We all took things we shouldn’t.

  In the calm, the signs made me feel that things would be okay, that I’d pass and things would become clear. And then they did.

  It was a week before the driving test. We were standing at the factory doors, lunch time, a storm the night before had sucked some bombs up and they were bursting once in a while and we were all watching while we ate soap sandwiches. I saw her looking at me. Sandra, yellow hair, no ear rings, no holes, I liked that. She kept her face to the sea but her red eyes were sliding to the side, looking at me. She likes you, one of them said, you should come to the pub tonight, we’re all going. She’ll be there.

  I didn’t go. I don’t know what to say. I’m not a confident talker.

  They made me talk in the group. I learned how they teach you to talk and I can do it but I’d rather sit in my room or listen to the radio or watch through the window for the bombs on the water.