Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

Hooper steps across to Uncle Howard and shows him the blowtorch. The old man looks at the cold, blue flame hissing away in front of him with a half-frown, and I wonder if the confused and tangled brain cells inside his head can still recognise danger.

I’m standing alongside a workbench. It’s clear apart from one of those old pump-handled oil cans with a long nozzle. I reach out and bang my hand on the pump. Nothing. Hooper laughs and Patrick looks at me in disgust, like he’d expected it. He starts towards me with his steel rod, and I guess he’s been waiting for something like this so he can have some fun.

I pump again and a jet of oil spits out and catches Hooper square in the face. It slicks across his cheeks, a thick, glutinous stain, and enters his eyes. He blinks, or tries to. Then he swears ferociously and tries to wipe it away. It just makes things worse.

By now Patrick is building up speed, the steel rod whistling through the air towards me. Only he’s forgotten what workshops are like. He’s forgotten the electric chain pulley for lifting the metal into position at the machines; he’s forgotten the power lines that scatter the air in a tangle above our heads.

The tip of the rod is supposed to connect to my head. Instead, it hits the engine casing of the chain pulley with a dull, heavy thud, and travelling with the full force of Patrick’s shoulder. The shock goes up the rod and into his arm, and pain registers on his face. Nerveless fingers can’t hold onto the weapon, and it falls to the ground.

I don’t waste time scooping it up; I grab the nearest piece of hanging chain and throw my body to one side, using my weight to pull as hard as I can. For a nanosecond the chain pulley doesn’t want to move. Then it goes and gathers momentum and rumbles along its greased track above me. I can feel the weight carrying it along as I let go of the chain, the heavy links clanking together as they swing through the air. On the end of the chain is a giant, steel hook which gets momentarily left behind.

Hooper is too busy swearing and trying to scrape oil out of his eyes to notice what I’ve done, and looks for Uncle Howard, the blowtorch coming round.

But Uncle Howard isn’t there. Somewhere deep in the recesses of his damaged brain is a reflex which tells him from his years in a factory that he has to move; that with heavy machinery in a noisy workshop, not all warnings can be heard and you have to have eyes in the back of your head. In spite of his age and condition, his upper body sways like a boxer, moving just enough to avoid the deadly sling-shot rush of the heavy hook as it tries to catch up with the engine block.

It swishes harmlessly past him and hits Hooper dead square. In the split second before impact, the Yardie’s eyes seem to clear of oil and he sees what is about to hit him. But it’s too late and he’s gone, swept aside with a brief, soggy smack and tossed lifeless into a corner.

Patrick is snarling, trying to ignore the pain of his nerveless fingers. He picks up the steel rod with his other hand.

But this time there’s an added complication: Malcolm has finally come to, and he rises up and stands in front of him like his own reflection. For the first time Patrick seems to realise he isn’t the only big man in the world.

He whips the rod round in a scything arc, and I wait and wonder, because Malcolm has never had a fight in his life. He’s never had to and he doesn’t know how. For him, fighting is pointless.

But maybe he inherited something else from our stevedore grandfather. Like instinct. With no more effort than catching a fly, he opens his hand and takes the rod, the sound a dull smack in the silence. Patrick looks stunned and tries to pull it clear. Malcolm pulls back, only harder. As Patrick hurls towards him, my big brother steps forward and puts out his elbow, catching him under the chin with a dull crack. Patrick flies backwards then stands still, eyes filling with what looks like unimaginable pain and surprise.

When he doesn’t move after that, and his head droops forward over his chest, I go for a look-see. Patrick is impaled on a length of mild steel sticking out of the storage rack. I turn to look at Malcolm, but he’s fainted dead away, unaware of what he’s done.

Later that night, I open the door to The Chairman’s office. The building is deserted and I’ve got Patrick’s keys to let me in. I’m wearing gloves and a floppy hat pulled over my face just in case the security cameras are loaded.

He’s sitting at his desk, pounding keys. He’s like a fat spider, counting his worth, and I know that what he wanted his men to do to me and Uncle Howard was no more than another accounting principle, a book-keeping procedure. It’s not personal, because I don’t think revenge is a concept he knows. I turned him down, which offended him, and had to be seen to suffer the consequences. To him it’s part of the business.

And that’s why I can’t let this go. Because when he finds out about Patrick and Hooper, and how they failed to punish one old man or one old lady, he won’t stop. It won’t be because of his men – he doesn’t see them as anything more than tools. But because of his twisted sense of pride, he’ll simply order someone else – most likely one of the gangs, who I don’t know – to complete the job instead. Procedure.

I snick the door shut and leave the building. Behind me The Chairman has hosted his last meeting. He’s sitting at his desk, and clutched in his pudgy fingers is a small twist of dark, shiny dreadlock. It’s not much, but sufficient to show signs of a struggle.

They won’t find Hooper, of course. Well, not for a while, anyway. And when they do, they’ll find Patrick, his fingerprints on the hook which killed his Yardie colleague. The scattering of white powder and money on the floor will do the rest.

As for Malcolm, he’ll forget about it in time. There was a scrap, he intervened, and we left. Who knows what happened to the bad men?

After all, thieves fall out. They’re known for it.

Auguste Didier stared gloomily at the eggs awaiting his pleasure for boiling. He had none to offer, although he admitted that his ill-humour had nothing to do with them. Still in its shell, one egg looked much like another, but today they provided an unfortunate reminder that he must choose which of two young gentlemen was the bad egg. They could not both be the missing heir to Lord Luckens.

Not that his lordship was dead. On the contrary, when last week he had brazenly staggered into the kitchens of Plum’s Club for Gentlemen, over which Auguste presided as maitre chef, he was very much alive. The staggering was not so much due to age or the excellent club wine cellars as to his gait which suggested his life was spent perpetually astride a horse, and his feet a mere aberration of nature to be ignored.

‘Ha!’

The grey moustache had bristled, and keen eyes shot a triumphant look, as though Auguste were a fox planning a speedy exit from this world. ‘You the detective fellow?’

‘The chef fellow, your lordship,’ Auguste murmured patiently, casting a despairing glance at his hollandaise sauce, which had been delighted at this opportunity to curdle. His detective work had come about by chance, and was not an art in which he could lay claim to perfection, as were his culinary skills.

Lord Luckens ignored his remark. ‘Splendid. Here’s what I need you to do. I want you to cook a dinner for me at Luckens Place. Know the old ruin, do you? You can cook what you like.’

Auguste relaxed. He must have misheard mention of detection work, for this assignment presented no such problem. Indeed, the idea was an attractive one, for he had heard that Luckens Place in Sussex, far from being an old ruin, was a magnificent Elizabethan mansion with its own ornate banqueting house in the grounds, and a splendid towered gatehouse with a bedroom where Good Queen Bess herself was said to have slept. He might even cook an Elizabethan dinner, and suggest they follow the old custom of walking to the banqueting house for sweetmeats and desserts. He warmed to Lord Luckens immediately.