Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘It’s in the safe. It’s got a time lock.’

‘Bollocks,’ he said. He waved the gun at me, making me back up against the wall. What happened next was not what I expected. He grabbed the computer keyboard and pulled it across the desk. Then he turned the monitor round so it was facing him. With the hand that wasn’t holding the gun, he did a few mouse clicks and then a bit of typing. I tried to edge out of his line of fire, but he wasn’t having any. ‘Fucking stand still,’ he grunted.

Then he turned the screen back to face me and this time I nearly crapped myself. It was a live camera feed from my living room. Margo and Darren were huddled together on the sofa, eyes wide. Opposite them, his back to the camera, was another big fucker with a shotgun. The picture was a bit fuzzy and wobbly, but there was no mistake about it. Along the bottom of the picture, the seconds ticked away.

‘My oppo’s only a phone call away. Now are you going to fill the fucking holdall?’ he demanded.

Well, I wasn’t going to argue, was I? Not with my wife and kid facing a shooter. So I went to the safe. It hasn’t got a time lock. Head Office wouldn’t spend that kind of money. We’re just told to say that to try and put off nutters like the big fucker who was facing me down in my office. I was sweating so much my fingers were slipping off the keyboard.

But I managed it at the second go, and I shovelled the bags of cash into his bag as fast as I could.

‘Good boy,’ he said when I’d finished.

I thought it was all over then. How wrong can you get?

‘On your knees,’ he ordered me. I didn’t know what was going on. Part of me thought he was going to blow me away anyway. I was so fucking scared I could feel the tears in my eyes. I knew I was on the edge of losing it. Of begging him for my life. Only one thing stopped me. I just couldn’t believe he was going to kill me. I mean, I know it happens. I know people get topped during robberies. But surely only if they put up a fight? And surely only when the robber is out of control? But this guy was totally calm. He could afford to be – his oppo’s gun was still pointing straight at Margo and Darren.

So I fell to my knees.

Just thinking about what came next makes me retch. He dropped the gun to his side, at an angle so the barrel dug right into my gut. Then he unzipped his trousers and pulled out his cock. ‘Suck my dick,’ he said.

My head jerked back and I stared at him. I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. ‘You what?’

‘Suck my dick,’ he said again, thrusting his hips towards me. His half-hard cock dangled in front of my face. It was the sickest thing I’d ever heard. It wasn’t enough for this fucking pervert to terrorise my wife and kid and rob my safe. He wanted me to give him a blow job.

The gun jammed harder into me. ‘Just fucking do it,’ he said.

So I did.

He grabbed my hair and stopped me pulling back when I gagged. ‘That’s it. You know you want to.’ He said softly, like this was something normal. Which it wasn’t, not in any bloody sense.

It felt like it took a lifetime for him to come, but I supposed it was only a few minutes. When I felt his hot load hitting the back of my throat, I nearly bit his cock off in revulsion. But the gun in my chest and the thought of what might happen to Margo and Darren kept me inside the limits.

He stepped back, tucking himself away and zipping up. ‘I enjoyed that,’ he said.

I couldn’t lift my head up. I felt sick to my stomach. And not just from what I’d swallowed either.

‘Wait half an hour before you call the cops. We’ll be watching, and if there’s any funny business, your wife and kid get it. OK?’ I nodded. I couldn’t speak.

The last thing he did before he left was to help himself to the tape from the video surveillance system that is fed by the camera in my office. In a funny sort of way, I was almost relieved. I didn’t want to think about that tape being played in the police station. Or in a courtroom, if it ever came to it.

So I did what I was told. I gave it thirty-five minutes, to be on the safe side. The police arrived like greased lightning. I thought things would get more normal then. Like The Bill or something. But it was my night for being well in the wrong. Because that’s when things started to get seriously weird.

They’d sent a crew round to the house to check the robbers had kept their word and released Margo and Darren. They radioed back sounding pretty baffled. Turned out Margo was watching the telly and Darren was in his room playing computer games. According to them, that’s what they’d been doing all evening. Apart from when Margo had been on the phone to her mate Cheryl. Which had been more or less exactly when I’d supposedly been watching them being held hostage.

That’s when the cops started giving me some very fucking funny looks. The boss, a DI Golightly, definitely wasn’t living up to his name. ‘So how did chummy get in?’ he demanded. ‘There’s no sign of forced entry at the back. And even though they were all eyes down inside the hall, I doubt they would have missed a six-foot gunman walking through from the foyer.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It should all have been locked up. The last person out would have been Liz Kirby. She called the session before the last one.’

By that time, they had the CCTV tapes of the carpark. You could see the robber emerge from the shadows on the edge of the carpark and walk up to the door. You couldn’t see the gun, just the holdall. He opened the door without a moment’s hesitation. So that fucking doozy had left it unlocked.

‘Looks like he walked straight in,’ Golightly said. ‘That was lucky for him, wasn’t it?’

‘I told you. It should have been locked. Look, I’m the victim here.’

He looked me up and down. ‘So you say,’ he said, sounding like he didn’t believe a word of it. Then he wound the tape further back so we could see Liz leaving. And bugger me if she didn’t turn round and lock the door behind her.

‘How do you explain that?’ he said.

All I could do was shrug helplessly.

He kept the digs and insinuations up for a while. He obviously thought there was a chance I was in it up to my eyeballs. But there was fuck all proof so he had to let me go in the end. It was gone four in the morning by the time I got home. Margo was well pissed off. Apparently half the crescent had been glued to their windows after the flashing blue lights had alerted them that there was something more interesting than Big Brother going on outside their own front doors. ‘I was black affronted,’ Margo kept repeating. ‘My family’s never had the police at their door.’ Like mine were a bunch of hardened criminals.

I didn’t sleep much. Every time I got near to dropping off, I got flashbacks of that sick bastard’s cock. I’ve never so much as touched another man’s dick, not even when I was a kid. I almost wished I’d let the sad sack of shite shoot me.

Everything I am, I owe to my mam. She taught me that I was as good as anybody else, that there was nothing I couldn’t do if I wanted to. She also taught me the meaning of solidarity. Kick one, and we all limp. They should have that on the signs that tell drivers they’re entering our town, right below the name of that Westphalian town we’re twinned with.

So when she told me and my da what that prize prick Keith Corbett had planned for her and the other at the Roxette, I was livid. And I was determined to do whatever I could to stop it happening. My mam and da have endured too bloody much already; they deserve not to have the rug pulled out from under them one more time.