I, Crime Writer
Anthony North
I, Crime Writer
By Anthony North
Copyright Anthony North 2012
Cover image copyright, Yvonne North 2012
Other books by Anthony North
I, TRILOGY INTRODUCTORY VOLUME
I, STORYTELLER SERIES
I, POET SERIES
Inmate Earth: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/237329
Bard Stuff: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/252874
Mind Burps: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/272508
Verse Fest: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/302837
I, THINKER SERIES
I, Paranormal: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/237339
I, Essayist: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/259928
I, Society: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/272861
I, Unexplained: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303478
I, Observer: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/304480
CONTENTS
Introduction
To Be Wed
Handyman
Mini-Novel - Gunning For Lenny
A Traditional Way
Cass Nova and the Moment of Truth
Behind the Curtain
Mini-Novel - The Point Of It All
How Loud They Are
Cass Nova and a Shake Of the Dice
Boiling Mad Chef
The Detective's Club
A Life of Crime
Cass Nova and the Shadow Season
The Appearance of Things
Mini-Novel - Mistaken Identity
Cass Nova and a Ghost Of A Chance
Suspects A'Plenty
Cass Nova and the Guarded Angel
Future Prospects Good
The Cottage on the Moor
Mini-Novel - The Last Battle
The Reconciliation
Witness to A Gross Event
Fresh Identity
Ferocious
Ruby Slane - The Midnight Run
Ruby Slane - Pass the Parcel
Ruby Slane - I Got Your Number
Ruby Slane - A Van Load of Trouble
Ruby Slane - Revenge Is Sticky
Ruby Slane - Don't Cross Me
About the Author
Connect With Anthony
INTRODUCTION
I'm a short story writer - only 5 foot 4. This book features crime tales. I write minimalist Flash Fiction; a perfect dip-in volume - fast reads for a fast world. You'll also find a few Mini-Novels - 1500 word tales so full they think they're bigger. So, meet con men, killers, detectives & thieves. Now take my hand. Follow me. Then give it back.
TO BE WED
I said to her as she came out of the shower that night: ‘To be wed is to be obstinately attached to another.’
She was agitated and didn’t immediately see the joke, but eventually she laughed, and it seemed a release and every emotion poured out of her as I held her in my arms.
It was the night before our wedding – and the culmination, I suppose, of that present phase of life. From now on there’d only be the two of us, which seems an obvious statement considering our wedding, but it meant much more.
We had met, it seems, soon after we were born. Our mothers knew each other, and together with Billy’s mom, formed a deep friendship. So it was obvious that my love and I would be friends – with Billy.
Oh, damn you, Billy! Damn you to hell!!!
As kids I did, of course, play with Billy a lot. I hadn’t fallen in love with her yet, and she remained on the periphery of the bonding of two boys. Later, when I put my football away and thought of girls, the relationship of the group changed. Billy was suddenly an unwelcome complication I could do without.
We had fights a lot then, but I thought it was just boys being boys. I never realized he had such a deep longing.
She made it clear to me how Billy felt when he started pestering her. She shouted the fact at me over and over again so I’d get it into my thick head. You see, until then I didn’t understand the complications of the human mind, and words like ‘stalker’ were alien to me.
Well, he certainly became a stalker. At times he hounded her. I tried to stop him, with words, with violence, but nothing seemed to work. And then, when we announced we were to be married …
Well, it was obvious he had gone over the edge, and something had to be done …
It was the night before the wedding. I cleaned the knife, weighted it and threw it in the river. The body I hid as best I could. And it wasn’t until he was dying that I realized he had maybe not loved her at all. Could I have been so wrong about that look?
Still, my love eventually worked through her emotional tirade and pointed out that at last I was no longer wedded to him – no longer obstinately attached to another. It had been annulled.
And the next day we were married. But I could still imagine the blood on her hands.
HANDYMAN
‘Look what I can do with my hands,’ said Jimmy when he was a kid. And there he was, making gestures from the funny to the obscene. And later, when he found a new use for his hands, he’d supplement it by pulling girls’ pigtails. He never really grasped the deeper impulses of what he was doing.
I suppose that’s why, later, he used his hands to become a bully, hitting out, declaring ‘I’m the big guy around here.’ He was challenged once when someone else used their hands, but Jimmy settled that score in a dark alley, using his hands to hold the baseball bat.
Using his hands was the making of Jimmy. Not in the way it should – he never used them to be a carpenter, or builder, or anything useful – but to perfect how to break into that house, how to mug someone fast, and occasionally using his feet to get away.
When he met the love of his life, he used his hand more gently – until she decided she had a life and opinions of her own. That’s when he started using his hands to batter her.
Of course, she eventually had enough, and she used her mouth to tell the police everything about him. He used his hands to escape when they tried to arrest him, laying three of them out before making it back to seek revenge.
That’s when he used his hands to throttle her – which was nearly the end of the story of Jimmy. Except that something strange happened to him and he used his hands one more time – to pull the trigger and blow his brains out.
Well, I say brains, but that was the problem with Jimmy. Always his hands. Never his head.
GUNNING FOR LENNY
No one messed with Big Sam. You just had to look at him to know that. A face like concrete, it was held up by a bull neck, his mass of hair held in a tight pony tail, but seeming, still, to surround his head like a lion's mane. His body, too, said violence, large but nonetheless athletic.
He entered the bedroom, his sinister eyes looking round as if laser beams. Checking the windows, he decided the room was safe. But with Lenny, his boss, you could never be sure. After all, Lenny was a gangster, and that meant he had enemies. Hence, he gave the room another quick glance before going out to the corridor.
Lenny Mars was waiting for Big Sam. Some forty years of age, he had built his empire with violence, but also with cunning. Maybe that's why he had so many enemies. The violence, people could understand. It's the law of the jungle. But cunning? No one liked to be outdone like that.
Big Sam looked at Lenny and said: 'It's safe.'
Both of them were men of few words. Lenny simply nodded his head. Then he turned round to Rachel by his side.
'Okay babe,' he said. 'honeymoon's over.' A fleeting smile broke his lips. 'So what shall we do now?'
Rachel knew only too well. And now, an hour later, she lay there in bed, her long blonde hair spread out on the pillow, and the mingled sweat of her and Lenny's passion still glistening from he
r perfect breasts.
Rachel was perfect in every way, as well she knew. 'Except,' she remembered Johnny, her brother, saying, 'you are a bit scatty, sis.'
He'd said it often.
'I'm not a bimbo,' she'd shout back. ‘I'm not.'
And Johnny would smile.
She loved his smile, until ...
'Got to go out,' said Lenny, looking her over as he dressed, placing his shoulder holster over this shirt. 'Big Sam, you ready?' he called.
Big Sam came straight in, and it was clear to Rachel he'd been guarding the door - and had heard every moan of her passion. Indeed, Big Sam's eyes strayed to the bed, saw her nakedness. Rachel saw two bulges in his trousers. One was a gun, she knew.
She smiled at him; saw his embarrassment.
'Ready, boss,' he said, and they left.
Who'd they be beating up today, thought Rachel as she dressed, wandered the house - her new domain. Or maybe they're killing someone. After all, Lenny must always seem to be on top, even though Rachel knew in some things he preferred to be underneath.
She thought of their sex together. She always classed it as sex. She loved sex - always had. And she learnt the art well.
And Lenny Mars appreciated that. Yes, it was always sex.
Not love.
Lenny didn't understand alien things like that.
And in a way neither did she. Not any more. Not since Johnny was found with a little hole in his head.
'A gangland slaying,' the police had said. And of course, they were right.
Rachel knew sex, and she knew the Underworld. Her father had been in it, and so had Johnny, and so had all her friends. She was a veteran. But it still destroyed her heart when Johnny developed that hole in his head. When she realised her lovely brother was dead and she'd hear him tell her what a bimbo she was no more.
What was there left, then, except giving in, finally, to Lenny. He'd wanted her for so long. And now it was fitting that she would give him what he deserved.
'This is boring,' she whispered into Lenny's ear.
They were in the lounge, not alone - never alone - but part of a card school. Lenny, three associates, Big Sam by the door and Rachel hanging lose, as if a spare part, an adornment.
'Rachel's bored, fellas,’ he said out loud, breaking her confidence. He laughed - the other's laughed mechanically.
'We can give her something to stop boredom,' said one of them, seconds before receiving a slap from Lenny.
'Sorry, boss,' the goon said, 'didn't mean anything.'
It was clearly the drink, but Rachel knew he'd be laid up for some time, as soon as he dared to leave.
Rachel hated but loved such power. Her body was a temple in more ways than one. Her body was Lenny's, and God help anyone who even looked her way. But it was boring. She understood that only too well. Yet boredom was the price to pay. After all, she knew what she had to do. She knew the code. And knew that everyone knew the consequences.
She wondered what the consequences would be for Big Sam days, or maybe weeks later. Big Sam couldn't have stood a chance - not with Rachel's skills. She showed just enough to offer, but not to satisfy. She pouted, she posed - just enough to demand desire, but not action.
Stage by stage she built him up, watched the bulge become bigger than the other one. And she even picked the time when it would all over spill.
Big Sam speared her, not with passion, but with raw animal energy. Rachel screamed as he took her on Lenny's bed, half with sheer excitement and half with pain. But it would be worth it, and she couldn't say, in truth, that she didn't like it. Maybe it would help to purge the sorrow of life without Johnny. And always, that inner knowledge - the knowledge that Lenny would share when he placed the mysterious video in the player, lying seductively by his chair.
But …
'That was fantastic, babe,' he said as he speared her, too. ‘A dream come true. You're so good. You know me so well.' But as he finished, a warning. 'But no one else, babe. Big Sam's my soul mate. We share everything. But anyone else will die.' He pulled himself off her. Turned to her. Slapped her face playfully. Stared into her eyes - her very soul. 'And maybe you.'
So Big Sam was still there, thought Rachel over the following days, or maybe weeks. I'm sorry, Johnny, she thought, I really am. And a voice said, in her head: 'Always the bimbo, my dear sis, always the bimbo.' But no more.
Maybe it was with anger, but also with cunning, that she finally cemented her relationship with Lenny. But when the time was right, she knew exactly what to do.
Certain factors had, of course, to be in place. And once they were she had to be ready straight away. And when the first factor presented itself she quickly put on the gloves.
Lenny was so foolish leaving the gun unattended in the room. Picking it up, she waited for him to go into the bathroom. Then with split second timing, she opened the bedroom door, shot Big Sam twice in the chest, dropped the gun, pulled out Big Sam's from his holster and turned just in time to shoot Lenny twice in the chest with Big Sam's.
She stared down at the two corpses and smiled. Then, putting one gun in each of their hands, she fired a round each into strategically perfect places on the wall. Checking the video was still downstairs, she destroyed the gloves and phoned the police.
It would be an open and shut case, the forensics perfect, and motive easy to find. And through her ecstasy she realised Johnny was bound to be smiling.
It was the following day that she stood by Johnny's grave.
'I did it, Johnny,' she said. 'They're gone - just remember that; they're gone forever.'
And in her head, she heard Johnny's voice:
'Thanks,' he said, 'but always a bimbo, sis, always a bimbo.'
Rachel offered a smile. A smile tinged with sadness as she turned and faced the police. So perfect a plan. If only she'd put the correct guns in the correct hands.
A TRADITIONAL WAY
I never wanted to be there. They just never understood that simple fact. Why can’t they get it?!!!
When I woke up that morning I knew something had to give – after all, it always does. I’m not up to this life, you see. Responsibility and such things just don’t come into it – and I’ve been like this most of my life. And now, in my 50s, I’ve no desire to change.
So I got up, washed, dressed, went to a cafe for breakfast and just stewed all day.
We all have our routines, you see – our traditions. And they are part and parcel of how your life has been lived. And I’m no different. And living here just isn’t for me.
What do I know of paying bills, of being sociable? And then there’s the time of year to take into account. Christmas – when the traditions are even more important.
So it was inevitable I would do it. It was inevitable I would pick up that brick and smash the shop window, and pretend to steal things, and then sit around waiting.
Well, I’m back home now, comforted by the bars. It’s where I traditionally belong.
CASS NOVA AND THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
It had been one of those cases. And DC Sandy Powell had been vital to me solving it. ‘Well I think it’s either Bob Mortimer or Chris Jones, guv,’ she had said.
It had begun with the discovery of the body of Roxy Sullivan. Shot through the heart, the killer had covered his tracks well. No DNA. Nothing. Looking into her past, she was a prostitute with form for blackmailing her clients, which just wasn’t nice.
We uncovered some dozen regular clients, and looking into their lives, it was obvious that Mortimer and Jones were both suitable candidates for blackmail, so they were our prime suspects. But how to prove one way or the other?
Enter, Molly Beavis. Of course, that wasn’t her real name. But as she said to Mortimer when she met him: ‘I’m not telling you my real name, ‘cos you’ll come after me. But I just want you to know, I know. You killed Roxy. I was her friend and she told me everything …’
That night I staked out Molly’s flat – she hadn’t done a very good job of cove
ring her tracks. I didn’t have to wait long for the car to pull up, and Mortimer to get out. He looked up, saw Molly moving about through the window. He went in.
I burst into the flat just after the gun shot. The body was laid on the floor, half visible, half behind a curtain. Mortimer was about to fire at me, too, but changed his mind when it was clear I would take a shot first. He dropped the gun as two uniforms rushed in and took him away.
I went and knelt beside her still body – shook my head. ‘Okay, Sandy, theatricals over,’ I said.
Sandy kicked away the manikin Mortimer had shot and smiled. Our use of coercion may well have been questionable, but as she had given her ‘Molly’ speech to both suspects, we kind of knew we’d get our man.
BEHIND THE CURTAIN
I wish my brother would visit. But he can’t.
Circumstances, see.
I’d got myself into trouble. It was my own fault. I remember thinking about it in the shower that night. It had begun as a simple business deal, but some businessmen are not all they seem. And to cut a long story short, the deliveries I received turned out to be heroin.
Of course, I tried to get out of the deal, but they weren’t having that. And the blackmail began. If I didn’t continue, they’d ruin me. I tried again a short time later, and this time they threatened my brother. And if I still complained, well – it was the end for me.
It was inevitable I’d go a bit paranoid, I suppose. And there I was in the shower. I used to enjoy my showers, but now the only image in my head was of people behind the curtain with knives, and I’d end up like the girl in Psycho.
Well, that night I saw the shadow behind the curtain. But I was prepared. I picked up the knife I always kept by my side and lunged through the curtain, knife held ready.
I wish my brother would visit. But he can’t.
THE POINT OF IT ALL
‘Just ‘cos I’m here, don’t think I want to be.’
Jimmy Haroldson stood in the doorway to the house, defiantly. At twelve, he had grown up quickly of late. And as he looked at the smile disappear from his father’s face, a sense of gratification crossed his mind.
