The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries by Maxim Jakubowski Page A

breath.
    “Steve was standing right outside the door. I svear to God it was him. I told you, he is bad luck that one, he’s voodoo, got a sixth sense – my Mama told me about sheiit like him. We can’t let him see us! I’m supposed to be off sick the night he gets ripped off – he’s gonna know! He’s gonna kill me if he sees me.”
    “Hen, you’re seeing things,” Dougie tried to protest as she pushed him through the door, down some steps into a dingy basement which smelt of piss and stale vomit.
    “I’m not, it vos him, it vos him!” she looked like she was about to turn hysterical, her eyes were flashing wildly and her nails were digging into his flesh. He tried to use
his free hand to extricate himself from her iron grip, but that only served to make her cling on harder.
    “Hen, calm down, you’re hurting me . . .” Dougie began.
    “There’s someone coming!” she screamed and suddenly began to kiss him passionately, smothering him in her arms, grinding her teeth against his lips so that he tasted blood.
    And then he heard a noise right behind him.
    And the room went black.
    “Fucking Hell,” Lola looked down on Dougie’s prone body. “That took long enough.”
    “I told you he was good,” her companion pouted, brushing his hands on his trousers. “But I thought you’d enjoy using all your skills on him.”
    “Hmm,” Lola bent down and prised Dougie’s fingers away from the Adidas bag. “I knew this would be the hardest part. Getting money out of a tight fucking Jock.”
    That slinky Russian accent had disappeared like a puff of smoke. She sounded more like the petulant queen she was now.
    “Come on.” She stepped over her would-be Romeo and the pile of shattered ashtray glass he lay in. “Let’s get out of here.”
    The car was parked nearby. As Lola got into the passenger seat, she pulled the honey-gold Afro wig off her head and ran her fingers through the short black fuzz underneath.
    “I am soooo tired of that bitch,” she said, tossing it into the backseat.
    Her companion started the car with a chuckle.
    “He fucking believed everything, didn’t he?” he shook his head as he pulled out.
    “Yeah . . . and you said he was a private detective. Well, let me tell you honey, you wouldn’t believe what I suckered that dick with. My dad was a Russian gangster. My mother was a
Somalian princess. I was on the run from Swiss finishing school. Can you believe it?”
    Lola hooted with derision. “Almost like the fairytales I used to make up for myself,” she added. “You know, I thought he might fucking twig when I told him I was named after a
character in Raymond Chandler. But I couldn’t resist it.”
    “Well,” her companion smiled at her fondly. “You certainly made up for the loss of that Queen Anne silver. We’ve got enough to keep us going for months now. So where do
you fancy?”
    “Not back to Soho,” Lola sniffed, as the car pulled into the slipstream of Marylebone Road. “I’ve fucking had it with those posing thugs. I know. I fancy some sea air.
How does Brighton sound to you?”
    “The perfect place,” her companion agreed, “for a couple of actors.”
    Dougie came around with his face stuck to a cold stone floor with his own blood. Shards of glass covered him. He could smell the acrid stench of piss in his nostrils, and from
the pub above, he could hear a tune, sounding like it was coming from out of a long tunnel of memory. He could just make out the lyrics: “ I met her in a club down in old Soho/Where you
drink Champagne and it tastes like cherry cola . . .”
    In loving memory of Lee Hazlewood 1929–2007, who had all the best stories and all the best songs.

GREEN TARTS
    Deryn Lake
    God grant me grace, but I am getting on in years. I looked in the mirror this very morning and an old man stared back at me. I gazed at him in horror, hardly believing that I
had come to this. But sooner or later we all have intimations of mortality. Thus I will do as