Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

That’s why that loud check suit didn’t matter. He never intended leaving the room. It was the security manager who had both keys and access. He who stole money, jewels, various other valuables.

“Just a few bits here and there, and never enough to justify the Belle Vue’s guests calling the police, but enough to launch an in-house investigation.”

In which their upright, vetted, army veteran was hardly going to investigate himself.

“Stanley Hall was the fence?”

“If you’ve ever been to the East End, Sullivan…”

I didn’t tell him this was where I was born, or that, council house or not, my family still disowned me, not just for being an unmarried mother, but for being a PI to boot. The shame is just too much to bear.

“That’s why he needed such a large trunk, and I’ll bet that’s why he was killed.”

“He started to get greedy?”

It would have been the perfect murder, had it not been for me and the Cuthbertsons’ divorce. Because having calmly hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door he’d locked behind him, the security manager was waiting until the mid-afternoon lull before removing his accomplice’s body, and in the victim’s own trunk, too. No wonder he’d arrived so quickly on the murder scene. No wonder he’d looked so bloody grim. But equally… I stared into the telephone. If it hadn’t been for me hanging on to evidence, he could have got away with it. I tried to console myself with the fact that at least now Mrs Hall could bury her son in time for Christmas. Tried is the operative word.

“By the way, Sullivan, one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Did you just call me darling?”

Susan was wheeling her bike down the hall on her way to Josie’s when I heard her call out, “Hello, Mr Sullivan.”

I blinked. I hadn’t associated him with either ice skating or pony rides.

“Hello, Susan.” He tapped her on the head with a rolled-up page of foolscap. “Still practising what I taught you?”

She laughed, in a happy, friendly, offhandedly familiar sort of way before bursting into song in the front doorway.

“You look over your shoulder

Before you stick your right arm out.

When it’s clear, then you manoeuvre…”

She was still Hound-Dogging away as the door slammed in her wake, and if she leaves that scarf behind one more time, I’ll throttle her with the bloody thing.

“You’re the road-safety officer?”

It was the first time he’d come to the flat, and I’d reckoned on Susan being gone by eleven-thirty. She’s usually pretty prompt. Else I dock her pocket money.

“That’s me. Handsome, funny, clever… and what was that other thing again?”

“Old,” I snapped. “And you could at least have the decency to look sheepish.”

“Why? Susan and I hit it off straightaway, it’s how I knew who you were, remember? You’re all she talks about, you know.”

“Really?” It takes pathetically little to make a mother’s heart swell.

“Uh-huh.” His nose wrinkled. “Until Rusty the pony came along, anyway.”

It’s only a small flat and he seemed to fill up most of it. “Here,” he said, handing me the sheet. “I thought you’d like a copy of the security manager’s confession.” He glanced at me from the corner of his eye as he made us both a cup of coffee. “Are you sure you didn’t write it for him? It’s almost word for word what you told me.”

I was so busy reading that it took me a few minutes to realize how quickly he’d made himself at home. Or how right it felt.

“Female intuition,” I said glibly.

“And a good memory,” he said, concentrating surprisingly hard on stirring coffee that contained neither milk nor sugar. “The size of that trunk? The colour and design of his suit? Neck at right angles to the body? One might almost say photographic.”

In a book, I’d have had the grace to blush. In real life, I stared him out.

“A word of advice, though, Lois.” When he leaned back in the chair, I heard it creak. Then again, it could have been a low chuckle in the back of his throat. “Next time, either tuck the roll into the inside of your stocking or wear a less figure-hugging skirt. By the way, happy birthday,” he said, tossing a box across the table.

No point in asking who had told him. “What is it?”

“What does it look like?”

It looked like a diamond solitaire. “A reward from the Belle Vue?”

“Are you kidding? Those people won’t even give their fleas away.” His craggy face grew serious. “Lois, please say you’re not going to make me go down on one knee.”

I dropped the box. We banged heads picking it up.

“You’re asking me to marry you?”

“Why not?” He ran his hand over his jaw. “I get free housing through my job, which would save you rent on this place, for a start. Then it’s not like Susan and I don’t get on.” If I had a daddy, I’d like him to be like the road-safety man. “And… well…”

“Well what?” This time I was determined he would do it.

“And I love you.”

I loved him too, but I was holding that one up my sleeve. “I won’t change what I do, Sullivan. I’ll still be Hepburn Investigations with seedy divorces and even seedier clients.”

“It never occurred to me that you would change, Lois, and I don’t want you to. Not ever.”

“I still bank my cheques in Susan’s trust fund?”

“Absolutely.”

I told him I supposed it was a deal, only on this occasion we didn’t seal it with a handshake. Afterwards, and once you could wipe the grin off my face, because that’s something else I hadn’t done in a decade, I have to admit that committing to a lifetime with someone didn’t seem half so scary.

Slowly, the world turned back to a million shades of grey.

Of course, the murmur went around the Monty Club in Shield Terrace more or less immediately and-also, of course-reached its owner, Ralph Ember. Versions did vary in detail, but all said a club member, Cordell Maximillian Misk, known mostly as Articulate Max, somehow wangled himself into the team who did the copycat bank raid on International Corporate Diverse Securities and came away with a very delightful individual share in untraceables. So when Articulate turned up with his mother and great-aunt Edna at the club, asking to see Ralph personally, he had an idea what they wanted, even before any conversation began. Ralph was in his upstairs office at the time testing the mechanisms of a couple of Heckler & Koch automatics. A barman called on the intercom to tell Ember they would like a conference.

It was the press, not Ember, who gave the International Corporate Diverse Securities raid this “copycat” title, because it seemed so accurately modelled on that huge suction job done at the Northern Bank in Belfast, maybe by the IRA, in December 2004. Although the takings from I.C.D.S. in Kelita Street, Holborn, London, were not up to the Belfast haul of (pounds)26 million, the methodology looked similar: basically, get among the bank executives’ families and keep them hos-tage until the managers opened up the vaults and let the money go. Ralph thought the idea might have come from an American novel and film, The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

The I.C.D.S. product, as Ralph heard it, varied from (pounds)21 million to (pounds)12 million. Even the larger amount did fall short of Belfast, but both these lesser figures were clearly satisfactory millions, all the same, and so were the eight between-that is, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20. Ralph and most other people familiar with Misk would have considered this sortie beyond his class, even in a dogsbody role. Some accounts said he’d been lookout, others that he ran the phone link at one of the hostage homes. But the rumours putting him on the operation in some sort of job persisted. And as soon as Ralph came down to meet the three, he did notice a new jauntiness in Articulate. That was how Ralph would describe it, “jauntiness.” In his view, jauntiness in an established Monty member such as Max often meant a whack of recently obtained safe loot, “safe” indicating two factors: (a) it had been lifted from someone’s safe, for example a Holborn, London, bank’s, and (b) the notes were old and, therefore, reasonably safe to spend.