OxCrimes Read online

  ‘Yeah we got more.’

  ‘Say I wanted as many as you give me, how many would that be?’

  ‘Why?’ said the driver, ‘You want to start a war?’

  ‘Thirty,’ said Cynthia.

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ said the driver. ‘We are not flooding the market, we want to drip them in, a few at a time, here and there.’

  Ashton could see the guy didn’t like it so he showed him the money, a wad thick as a bible. ‘I got ten grand here. I’ll take another five, right now. Another thing, I can ask my friends to look out for Trayvon. I got mates that are similarly indisposed, up there in Sutton. There are things that can be done for him. Socks would be the start of it. Come on, let’s do another five, right now.’

  ‘Alright,’ said Cynthia, in the back.

  ‘The lady wants to do business.’

  ‘The lady is not in charge,’ said the driver. ‘And she will get a fat lip for talking too much. A fatter lip, I should say. We will do it. We will go and pick up more boxes now. It will be a long drive.’

  They were headed south on Upton Way, towards the M1. Now the vehicle was on a major road it would be ID’d on cameras, and SO19 would be alerted – though this assumed a level of co-ordination across sections that couldn’t be taken be granted.

  Cynthia handed Ashton a photo across the seat divide. It showed a grinning teenager in football kit. Ashton had seen it before, in the newspapers, alongside a picture of the guy he’d stabbed.

  ‘My Trayvon,’ said Cynthia. ‘A skinny little boy. Never would you think he was eighteen. Always eating but he never put on weight. Looks like he can be push around, you know? So he learn to be good with his fists.’

  She sighed. ‘Six months earlier, he would have got tried as a juvenile, then he could have gone to a young offender institution. But they tried him as adult, a skinny boy like that, and they sent him to a jail full of bad men and gangster. What is a little lad doing in a category A? Sharing a room with hardened criminals, nasty men, and there being drugs everywhere and all kinds of bad thing. I came for visit him one time and he had lumps all over his face. He said he was playing football and fall over and hit his head.’

  ‘So I decide to help my boy. I build a line of supply. He can say to the bad men, my mother can sort out your friends on the outside. Now all the gangster watch out for him and keep him safe. Because of his mother’s line of supply. I don’t want him consorting with bad men, you understand, but he have to consort so what can I do? That’s the only reason I do this business, the only one. And now I can talk to him regular.’

  ‘How so?’ said Asthon.

  ‘They alway someone smuggling a phone in, and rent it out. The prisoners all got a SIM card hidden. Trayvon calls me five times a week, ask how his dog is doing. That remind me, I hope this doesn’t take too long, the blessed thing needs to be fed soon, it go hungry for long it gonna be ripping up the curtains again.’

  The driver addressed Ashton. ‘We will drop you off. You keep the box you just bought and the rest of your money. Then we get more boxes, drive back to you, and that will take about ten minutes.’

  ‘Somewhere out of the rain,’ said Ashton, ‘where I can be plausibly waiting. I’m going to be carrying, remember. I don’t want to get picked up on suspicion.’

  ‘That bus shelter near Aldi,’ said Cynthia.

  Ashton said, ‘After, drive me back into Northampton, and let me out near my car. I’m not strolling round with my arse hanging out, in the rain, carrying a fucking armoury.’

  ‘Okay.’

  They were two miles from the motorway turn-off when Cynthia’s phone rang.

  ‘That’s him. It’s Trayvon. Hello? I can’t hear you properly love. Are you under the sheets? Well you’ll have to whisper a bit louder. Okay you do that.’ She addressed the men in front. ‘He is going to put more blankets on the bed. He is hiding under the blankets and whispering to his mother.’ With the phone back against her head, she said, ‘No. I can’t believe it. No. For no reason? That is too much.’ She was leaning forward again, and Ashton could feel her breath on his neck. ‘He say they put him on no association, for no reason at all. That is an outrage. For five days now, he didn’t talk to nobody. Nobody at all, and he is climbing the walls. One of his friends pay a screw to slip him a phone. No reason at all. It is an animal house in there, no rules at all. This supposed to be a civilised country.’

  Oh shit, thought Ashton. For fuck’s sake. A prison that can’t keep an inmate quiet, a backup unit that’s backed up its own arse, no GPS, this was a fucking shambles. Would be funny if it wasn’t going to get him killed. He’d come back and haunt the CO, call him a twat all day for evermore.

  Cynthia was talking to her son again. ‘I’m doing a little bit of business now with one of your friend’s friends. He says he went to prison and he learned to speak Spanish. I think that’s commendable, don’t you? How big is your library there? His name’s Chris … Some Liverpool group.’ She leaned forward. ‘That’s right isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I represent interests in Liverpool, that is correct.’

  A silence stretched as Cynthia listened. Ashton considered the door handle. He could pull it, duck and be out of the jeep in a second. Good that he’d never put his seatbelt on. But he’d be hitting the tarmac at over fifty, and taking his chances with the oncoming traffic. He didn’t fancy it.

  Cynthia said, ‘Trayvon say he never heard anything about this deal.’

  Ashton said, ‘I’m not your son’s friend’s friend, I’m a friend’s friend’s friend’s friend, if you see what I mean, this has gone through a number of people, and maybe on one of those steps there was a communication breakdown.’

  He heard a metallic clicking behind him.

  The driver said, ‘Cynthia. Load the gun. Rack the slide.’

  Cynthia said, ‘I already done it.’

  ‘There one in the chamber? Like I showed you?’

  ‘I got one lined up. I’m putting the silencer on.’

  ‘You keep that aimed at our guest.’

  ‘It’s not a nice thing to do,’ said Cynthia. ‘But I’m doing it.’

  ‘This is not cool,’ sighed Ashton. He was still apart from his fingers rapping up and down at the base of the window.

  ‘Cynthia is no great shooter but she won’t miss from there,’ said the driver. ‘A round will go straight through that chair into your spine. Are you a policeman?’

  Ashton told himself to get annoyed, and in a moment he was, and he said, ‘Yeah I’m an undercover cop, that’s right. And you know what else? I’m the pope. And I’m the Loch Ness monster. I’m a yeti mate, you want to watch out. Came all the way from Tibet, shaved, splashed some cologne. I’m the abominable snowman. The lady’s right, you’re paranoid. You need to be secure, I understand, but I don’t want to get killed cause some fuck up got stoned and forgot to make a phone call. Let’s calm the fuck down here.’

  Cynthia said, ‘Trayvon says he’s going to make some calls and then he’s going to ring back.’

  The jeep turned onto the M1 slip road. It was doing seventy when they joined the motorway, heading south.

  ‘Why are we on the motorway? said Cynthia. ‘We can’t get off now till Milton Keynes.’

  The driver said, ‘So he won’t jump out.’

  Eight years previously Ashton had joined some friends on a climbing holiday in Eldorado Canyon near Boulder, Colorado. For the first three days they had taken easy lines on Regarden Wall but on the fourth they decided to be more ambitious and tackle the Orange Spur. Ashton was the last on the rope. His belayer was anchored to a tree and playing out the slack as Ashton sweated over a short dihedral. He was on a ledge a dozen feet shy of a sharp ridge, and his friends were above, waiting. He took two steps, then lost his footing and slipped. The rope pulled tight as his belayer caught the strain, and for a moment he was swinging. Something felt wrong and he looked up just in time to see the the taut rope sheer right off on the ledge. His swing took him into th
e rockface and he reached out and got one hand up to the wrist into a jagged crack. His feet scuffed the rock but found no purchase, then his whole weight was pulling on that hand, jammed into the crack, and the rope was slack and falling. He got his other hand up and clung to the rock. It was a good sunny day and looking down he could see the frilly tops of the pine trees about eighty feet below and the severed rope swinging lazily. He was conscious of noises from his friends above and his ragged breathing, and the wind whipping at his clothes and hair, and the warm sandstone on his cheek. His was very quiet and very still, with no thought but just to carry on holding. Nothing in the universe existed except for those points where his body touched stone. He could hear the efforts of his friends as they tried to get down to him but the words seemed distant and irrelevant. He did not move his face to look at the approaching men or move his eyes. They were coming and they would get him in time or they wouldn’t. He was trying his hardest but he knew that might not be enough, but at least he hadn’t given up.

  A rope was clipped into Ashton’s carabiner, then another rope was lowered for him to grasp. He clambered up to where his white-faced companions held him tightly. He sat down with his back against a tree and his body failed him, and he started to tremble, and he realised his wrist was broken.

  Ashton’s wrist throbbed. Cynthia’s mobile rang.

  Ashton said, ‘Cynthia, if I get killed here, he’ll kill you after. He thinks you talk too much.’

  The jeep slewed into the hard shoulder then stopped violently. Ashton was thrown forward against the dashboard and his head thumped the windscreen. The driver reaching down into the pocket at the base of his door. A pop sounded behind him and he slumped forward with his head down against the wheel, and didn’t move again.

  The car stank of cordite. Ashton waited for everything to stop. But he continued to exist.

  Finally he said, ‘Cynthia? You didn’t have to shoot him.’

  ‘Sure I did. He keep a gun down there. He was going to kill you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And after he kill you he would kill me. You right about that but you didn’t have to say it, I had that figured by myself. Now you call some friends and we deal with this.’

  Ashton reached forward, turned the hazard lights on.

  ‘I’m not making any movements. I’m going to talk for a minute, if that. Hear me out. You are going to be arrested. That is going to happen, either in a minute or a day. Because I am a policeman and back-up is coming. Two dead guys in here and you go away for twenty years.’

  He resisted the urge to turn around, watched the traffic gliding past, headlights smearing traces in the darkness.

  ‘Refrain from firing again, and no one’s got much against you. You shot him to save me and yourself, his hand is on his weapon: you’d beat a murder case on self defence. There’s supplying firearms but a smart lawyer will get most of that pinned on him, make it look like he bullied you into it. In the dock you’ll look like a poor dear who got used and abused by a habitual criminal. You’ll do a few years and you’ll be out before Trayvon. I know you’re a smart lady so I’m putting it before you no bullshit and asking you to think it over.’

  Nothing continued to happen. Ashton blinked rapidly. He’s been splattered with the driver’s blood, or worse, and now some was dripping into his eye. He felt it was important to get it out, so didn’t see much of the arriving units, but he heard the screech of sharply braking vehicles, to front, back and side.

  ‘Cynthia, put it down. These guys will shoot if they see you holding a gun. They get very keyed up, sitting in those vans all day.’

  He heard something thunk to the floor, then Cynthia said, ‘God have mercy on his soul. And on mine, and yours. And on my son’s.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Ashton, then the shouting started.

  VAL McDERMID is the author of more than thirty novels, as well as numerous short stories and radio plays. She is best known for the series of multi-award-winning novels featuring psychologist Tony Hill which were adapted for ITV’s Wire in the Blood. Born in 1955 in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, she divides her time between Manchester and Edinburgh.

  I’ve Seen That Movie Too

  Val McDermid

  I truly believed I’d never see her again. That she was gone for good. That the virus she’d planted in my bloodstream would be allowed to lie dormant forever. Which only goes to show how little I really understood about Cerys.

  Everybody has an ugly secret. I don’t care how righteous you are. Saint or sinner, there’s something lurking in your past that looms over every good thing you do, that makes your toes curl in shame, that makes your stomach curdle at the thought of discovery. Don’t try to pretend you’re the exception. You’re not. We all have our skeletons and Cerys is mine.

  The world as I know it falls into two groups. The ones who fall under Cerys’s spell and the ones who are immune to the point of bafflement. Over the past three years, I’ve discovered there were a lot more in the former group than I’d ever suspected. The list of people she’d bewitched ranged from the daughter of a duke to a celebrity midget, from a prizewinning poet to a gay male member of parliament. It mortifies me how many of them I now know she was fucking during the months she was supposed to be my girlfriend. What’s even more extraordinary is how many of them were convinced they were the special one.

  For the members of the latter group, that word ‘even’ is crucial to their insistent deconstruction of Cerys. ‘She isn’t even beautiful.’ ‘She isn’t even interesting.’ ‘She isn’t even sexy.’ ‘She isn’t even funny.’ ‘She isn’t even blonde.’ But to those of us on the other side of the fence, she’s all of those things. The only explanation that makes any sense is the notion of viral infection. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a computer virus as, ‘a piece of code surreptitiously introduced into a system in order to corrupt it’. In every sense of the word ‘corrupt’, that’s Cerys.

  The one good thing she ever did for me was to walk out of my life three years ago without a goodbye or a forwarding address. I don’t think her motive was to destroy me; that would presume my reaction even entered her calculations. No, the suddenness of her departure and the thoroughness of her vanishing had been all about her need to get free and clear before the answers rolled in to the questions other people had started asking. But at the time, I didn’t care about the reasons. I was just grateful for the chance to free myself. Deep down, I didn’t mind the anguish or the self-loathing or the shame, because it’s always easy to endure pain when you understand it’s part of the healing process. Even then, I knew that somewhere down the line I would get past all the suffering and resume control over my heart and mind.

  And I did. It took me well over a year to drag myself beyond what she’d done to me, but I managed it.

  Yet now, in an instant, all that healing was stripped away and I felt as raw and captive as I had the day she’d left. Here, in the unlikely setting of the Finnish consul’s Edinburgh residence, I could feel the gears stripping and the wheels coming off my reassembled life.

  I shouldn’t even have been there. I don’t usually bother with the fancy receptions that attach themselves to the movie business like barnacles to a ship’s hull. But the three Finnish producers who had become the Coen brothers of the European film industry had optioned a treatment from me and my agent was adamant that I had to show my face at the consul’s party in their honour at the Edinburgh Film Festival. So I’d turned up forty minutes late, figuring I’d have just enough time for a drink and the right hellos before the diplomats cleared their throats and signalled the party was over.

  As soon as I crossed the threshold, I knew something was off-kilter. Cerys had always had that effect on me. Whenever I walked into a room where she was, my senses tripped into overdrive. Now, my head swivelled from side to side, my eyes darting round, trying to figure out why I was instantly edgy. She saw me at the same moment I spotted her. She was talking to some guy in a suit and she didn’t miss a beat when she ca
ught sight of me. But her eyes widened and that was enough for my stomach to crash like a severed lift cage.

  I felt a ringing in my ears, stilling the loud mutter of conversation in the room. Before I could react, she’d excused herself and snaked through the throng to my side. ‘Alice,’ she said, the familiar voice a caress that made the hairs on my arms quiver.

  I was determined not to be suckered back in. To put up a fight at least. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I tried to make my voice harsh and almost succeeded.

  Cerys reached out, circling my wrist with finger and thumb. The touch of her flesh was a band of burning ice. ‘We need to talk,’ she said, drawing me to her side and somehow manoeuvring me back through the doorway I’d just entered.

  ‘No,’ I said weakly. ‘No, we don’t need to talk.’

  She turned to me then and smiled, the tip of her tongue running along the edge of her teeth. ‘Oh Alice, you always cut straight to the chase, don’t you?’ She made a determined break for a staircase at the end of the hall. I couldn’t free myself without drawing the wrong kind of attention from the other people milling round in the hallway. The last thing I wanted was for anyone to make a connection between me and Cerys. I’d kept my nose clean on that score and it had saved me from enough of the consequences of our association for me to want to keep it that way.

  So I let her lead me up the broad carpeted stairs without obvious protest. Somehow, she knew where she was going. She opened the second door on the right and pulled me into a small sitting room – a pair of armchairs, a chaise longue and an antique writing desk with matching chair. She used my momentum to spin me round like a dancer then closed the door briskly behind her, turning a key in the lock.

  ‘To answer your question, I’ve been working with the Finnish film agency,’ she said. At once I understood her apparent familiarity with the layout of the Finnish consul’s house. And that the chances were I wasn’t the first person she’d been with behind that locked door.