Muller CrimeFest

Leaving the Scene Celebrating 16 Years
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-83501-425-7
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 400 Seiten

Twenty superb new crime stories have been commissioned specially to celebrate the final CrimeFest, described by the Guardian as 'one of the fifty best festivals in the world'. Sixteen years of murder, mystery, and mayhem - CrimeFest stands as a cornerstone of crime fiction, uniting the genre's finest minds. Now the most distinguished names in crime writing have collaborated to commemorate this milestone with an exceptional anthology of meticulously crafted short stories. Featuring contributions from globally renowned authors and compelling new voices - including Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, Vaseem Khan, and Ruth Dudley Edwards - this collection represents essential reading for connoisseurs of crime. CrimeFest: Leaving the Scene, offers a worthy celebration of the festival's remarkable heritage. All royalties are donated to the RNIB library.

Adrian Muller is one of the co-founders of CrimeFest, the international crime fiction convention.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Muller, Adrian

Leseproben

TWO DEATHS IN BRISTOL

Jeffery Deaver

‘Four hours to go, Robbie.’

‘About that, yes.’

‘You know you’ll be bored.’

‘Life is all about taking chances, now, isn’t it?’ DC Robert Foxworthy looked up from his immaculate desk, the top as grey as his suit and the thin stripes in his red and grey tie. Tall and forever a bit stooped over, he was jowly and had ears that protruded some, but short of adopting a Beatles haircut circa 1965, there was nothing to do about that.

‘Dreadfully bored,’ DI Thomas Hayden-Smith, big and stanch and keen-eyed, tried again.

The two were in Foxworthy’s cubicle in the Avon and Somerset territorial police complex on Valley Road in Portishead. It was a new facility, and large – forty acres or so. Perfectly fine. Foxworthy preferred the old stations, like Bridwell.

Or Fishponds.

The latter for obvious reasons, of course, given his Sunday afternoon passion.

‘And what’s on the old pensioners agenda, Robbie? Mary have you painting nooks and painting crannies? What a cranny anyway? Perhaps an irritable old woman who minds the children.’

‘I will not miss your humour, Tom.’

The man was, in effect, Foxworthy’s boss in CID, though he was ten years his junior. Interested only in policing the street, Foxworthy had not taken the normal trajectory: constable to detective constable to swapping a letter and becoming inspector, DI or DS, much less the netherworld of bureaucracy above, supervisor and the like.

At fifty-five, Foxworthy had five years till mandatory retirement – though higher-ups could dawdle for a bit more time, but tended to be relegated to personnel and budgetary issues, and looking triumphantly stern as they made press announcements of arrests with a barricade of cocaine bricks before them like a wall of a grey-white castle.

No thank you.

Foxworthy might also have retired last year.

After the Incident.

The knife stab in the thigh was from the crazed young man raging against the dangers of immigrants and wielding a nasty ten-inch blade his mother had used just that morning to make her signature stew for supper.

Oblivious to the irony that it was who was dangerous, and the festivalgoers he attacked were peace personified, he had touted his ‘superior-race’ status. First on the scene, DC Foxworthy had approached cautiously and defused the situation.

Up until the point where he was rewarded for not siccing an ARV armed unit on the kid by a sloppy thrust of the mutton blade. At least Mr Aryan had been courteous, or incompetent, enough to miss vital nerves and vessels.

Cliches are cliches for a reason and Foxworthy leaned into one of then – getting back on the horse. Following medical leave, he returned to doing what he had been doing for decades in Bristol: investigating major cases within CID. Part of his return, though, had nothing to do with overcoming ill ease and timidity about blades; it was about the fact that, as Hayden-Smith had teased, he did indeed have a fierce allergy to boredom. And one thing you could say about policing was that it never was dull.

But now was the time to leave, he was convinced. The aches – leg and otherwise – were part of it. But more, Foxworthy and Mary wanted to travel (to wherever fish streams waited to be fished and pastoral landscapes waited to be painted). Bill and his wife had moved back to Somerset, with Robert, Foxworthy’s grandson, and dinners and outings awaited. Foxworthy had an ancient Austin Healy he was repairing and was long overdue for its resurrection.

And then there was his Team.

The DC was among the fiercest of the fierce followers of Bristol City, which had been described in the past, by friend and foe, as a bit of a yo-yo: promotion and relegation, promotion and relegation.

Foxworthy cared not. He exalted in sitting in the stands at Ashton Gate and shouting and waving the colours – red and white, the hues of the flag of St George himself, no less! He liked the tidal wave roar of the crowd, the elegance of the lads’ footwork, the fact that the most famous half-centre in all English football played for City. Billy Wedlock, a hall-of-famer, who was not from Spain or Italy or Korea or Brazil. Bristol born and bred, when not on the pitch, he lived and worked in a pub near the stadium.

Being on call so much, Foxworthy had missed far too many games.

That was about to change.

In four hours.

Well, now three hours and fifty-two minutes.

‘The boys give you a proper send-off?’ big Hayden-Smith asked, examining a framed citation in the box Foxworthy was filing with mementoes. He’d received it for saving a life. Or for something else. He wasn’t sure. He had a lot of them.

The DI was wearing a white shirt, starched to perfection. By coincidence, he too wore a tie similarly coloured to Foxworthy’s, though with the width of the red and grey stripes reversed.

Foxworthy smiled. ‘Went to the Mare. Rollicking time it was.’

Pints, some toasts, cheesy chips and soggy calamari, a recycled speech by Supervisor McDaniels, some sad karaoke, but then karaoke was always sad, in Foxworthy’s view. The boss had presented him not with a gold watch but an Amazon gift card.

Far more appreciated, as a new fishing reel had been beckoning.

Hayden-Smith had not been in attendance. He was leading the Lanham task force, whose existence was the reason Foxworthy’s party had not been well attended. Fine with him. Over the years, bedtime had been creeping closer and closer with each night, like a determined if confused mealworm.

‘Seriously. I joke. I deflect. But I wish you’d stay just a bit longer. There’s something about you. You find things, Robbie. No one knows quite how you do it.’

‘Your mobile gone missing, Tom? I’ll ring it if you want.’

‘Ha.’

He nodded at the large white envelope on the desk, the retirement packet from Human Resources and the forms that sat atop it. ‘You haven’t signed anything yet, I notice.’

‘It’s ten past seven, Tom. Noon is my official stop time. And I was just turning to the paperwork now.’ And, to prove his determination and sincerity, withdrew from his breast pocket the gold pen he used to jot notes in his interviews with suspects and witnesses.

‘Ah, well. All right. So be it. But then do a lad a favour? We’re knee-deep with Lanham…’

‘Any luck, Tom?’

The DI scoffed. ‘I’ve got a dozen constables on the street canvassing. No sign of him. And in the Surveillance Room, ten pairs of eyes—’

‘Twenty eyes total.’

Another laugh, but a grim one. ‘Scanning the screens. Not a trace of the bastard.’

Bristol did not have nearly the number of CCTVs of, say, London, where the joke was that every woman who gave birth was presented with a Metropolitan Police security camera for the baby on the way out of hospital. But there were enough eyes in the sky – pole mounted and a few drone – to sweep for villains.

In this instance, the subject of the hunt was one Peter Lanham.

The squat, gruff, compact mob boss from Nottingham had escaped from an MI5 and Nottinghamshire police operation. The list of offenses was impressive. He had violated the Criminal Law Act, the Organised Crime Group provisions of the Serious Crime Act, the Proceeds of Crime Act, the Misuse of Drugs Act, the Firearms Act and the Modern Slavery Act.

Oh, and the little matter of murder and kidnapping as well.

An informant had suggested he’d come west, to escape from the country, and Avon and Somerset was considered a possible egress point.

‘You want me to join the hunt and watch TV in my last four hours of service?’

‘I wouldn’t do that to you, would I, now? No, there’s an incident needs looking into. An unfortunate accident, it seems.’

Foxworthy was frowning. ‘I always wondered why that particular adjective gets limpeted on to “accident”? How many accidents have we seen?’

‘I, for one, miss your levity, Robbie.’

But then that lightness between them, fragile at best, vapoured away.

A body.

A life had become a non-life.

And for whatever reason that had occurred, it was now Foxworthy’s mission to determine why, see if a danger still existed, take care of the many arrangements that such an occurrence required. The paperwork alone was daunting.

There was another mission, too: to tell the survivors of the loss and be as comforting as he could.

After all, a death, he had always felt, was like a precious gem pitched into a pond: the loss of the stone was cause for sorrow in its own right, but the waves that resulted would spread out a vast distance and touch family and friends and neighbours and fellow workers and, perhaps, congregants.

‘Traffic?’

‘No. Poor bloke tripped and fell. St Nicholas Street. Near the bridge.’

‘I’ll go over there now, Tom. Of course.’ Foxworthy rose.

‘Thank you. Oh, and Robbie?’

He looked back as he took a raincoat off the rack in the corner of the cubicle.

‘And please don’t pull a Kelly.’ A grim...