Safe Enough, page 18
“Like he stole ninety quid from you. That’s like not paying four times. You end up doing him for nothing, and you end up doing the previous three guys for nothing too, because now that money’s gone.”
“I wouldn’t like it,” she said.
“Suppose he stole your earring, as well?”
“My what?”
“Your earring.”
“Who?”
Cameron looked across the room at Mason. Kelly Key followed his gaze.
“Him?” she said. “I wouldn’t do him. He’s mad.”
“Suppose you did.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“We’re playing let’s-pretend here,” Cameron said. “Suppose you did him, and he stole your money and your earring.”
“That’s not even a real earring.”
“Isn’t it?”
Kelly shook her head. “It’s a charm from a charm bracelet. You guys are hopeless. Couldn’t you see that? It’s supposed to be fastened onto a bracelet. Through that little hoop at the top? You can see the wire doesn’t match.”
We all stared at Mason Mason’s ear. Then I looked at Cameron. I saw his eyes do the blank thing again. The channel-changing thing.
“I could arrest you, Kelly Key,” he said.
“But?”
“But I won’t, if you play ball.”
“Play ball how?”
“Swear out a statement that Mason Mason stole ninety quid and a charm bracelet from you.”
“But he didn’t.”
“What part of let’s-pretend don’t you understand?”
Kelly Key said nothing.
“You could leave out your professional background,” Cameron said. “If you want to. Just say he broke into your house. While you were in bed asleep. The homeowner being in bed asleep always goes down well.”
Kelly Key took her gaze off Mason. Turned back to Cameron.
“Would I get my stuff back afterward?” she asked.
“What stuff?”
“The ninety quid and the bracelet. If I’m saying he stole them from me, then they were mine to begin with, weren’t they? So I should get them back.”
“Jesus Christ,” Cameron said.
“It’s only fair.”
“The bracelet is imaginary. How the hell can you get it back?”
“It can’t be imaginary. There’s got to be evidence.”
Cameron’s eyes went blank again. The channel changed. He told Kelly to stay where she was and pulled me back across the room, to the corner.
“We can’t just manufacture a case,” I said.
He looked at me, exasperated. Like the idiot child.
“We’re not manufacturing a case,” he said. “We’re manufacturing a number. There’s a big difference.”
“How is there? Mason will still go to jail. That’s not a number.”
“Mason will be better off,” he said. “I’m not totally heartless. Ninety quid and a bracelet from a whore, he’ll get three months, tops. They’ll give him psychiatric treatment. He doesn’t get any on the outside. They’ll put him back on his meds. He’ll come out a new man. It’s like putting him in a clinic. A rest home. At public expense. It’s doing him a favor.”
I said nothing.
“Everyone’s a winner,” he said.
I said nothing.
“Don’t rock the boat, kid,” he said.
I didn’t rock the boat. I should have, but I didn’t.
He led me back to where Mason Mason was sitting. He told Mason to hand over his new earring. Mason unhooked it from his earlobe without a word and gave it to Cameron. Cameron gave it to me. The little snake was surprisingly heavy in the palm of my hand, and warm.
Then Cameron led me downstairs to the evidence lockup. Public whining had created a lot of things, he said, as far as police work went. It had created the numbers, and the numbers had been used to get budgets, and the budgets were huge. No politician could resist padding police budgets. Not local, not national. So most of the time we were flush with money. The problem was, how to spend it? They could have put more woollies on the street, or they could have doubled the number of CID thief-takers, but bureaucrats like monuments, so mostly they spent it on building new police stations. North London was full of them. There were big concrete bunkers all over the place. Manors had been split and amalgamated and HQs had been shifted around. The result was that evidence lockups all over North London were full of old stuff that had been dragged in from elsewhere. Stuff that was historic. Stuff that nobody tracked anymore.
Cameron sent the desk sergeant out for lunch and started looking for the pre-film record books. He told me that extremely recent stuff was logged on the computers, and slightly older stuff was recorded on microfilm, and the stuff from twenty or thirty years ago was still in the original handwritten logbooks. That was the stuff to steal, he said, because you could just tear out the relevant page. No way to take a page off a microfilm, without taking a hundred other pages with it. And he had heard that deleting stuff from computer files left telltale traces, even when it shouldn’t.
So we split up the pile of dusty old logbooks and started trawling through them, looking for charm bracelets lost or recovered years ago in the past. Cameron told me we were certain to find one. He claimed there was at least one of everything in a big police evidence lockup like this one. Artificial limbs, oil paintings, guns, clocks, heroin, watches, umbrellas, shoes, wedding rings, anything you needed. And he was right. The books I looked at told me there was a Santa’s grotto behind the door behind the desk.
It was me who found the bracelet. It was right there in the third book I went through. I should have kept quiet and just turned the page. But I was new and I was keen, and I suppose to some extent I was under Cameron’s spell. And I didn’t want to rock the boat. I had a career ahead of me, and I knew what would help it and what would hurt it. So I didn’t turn the page. Instead, I called out.
“Got one,” I said.
Cameron closed his own book and came over and took a look at mine. The listing read Charm Bracelet, female, one, gold, some charms attached. The details related to some ancient long-forgotten case from the 1970s.
“Excellent,” Cameron said.
The lockup itself was what I supposed the back room of an Argos looked like. There was all kinds of stuff in boxes, stacked all over shelves that were ten feet high. There was a comprehensive numbering system with everything stacked in order, but it all got a little haphazard with the really old stuff. It took us a minute or two to find the right section. Then Cameron slid a small cardboard box off a shelf and opened it.
“Bingo,” he said.
It wasn’t a jeweler’s box. It was just something from an old office supplier. There was no cotton wool inside. Just the charm bracelet itself. It was a handsome thing, quite heavy, very gold. There were charms on it. I saw a key, and a cross, and a little tiger. Plus some other small items I couldn’t identify.
“Put the snake on it,” Cameron said. “It’s got to look right.”
There were closed loops on the circumference of the bracelet that matched the closed loop on the top of Mason’s snake. I found an empty one. But having two closed loops didn’t help me.
“I need gold wire,” I said.
“Back to the books,” Cameron said.
We put his one of everything claim to the test. And sure enough, we came up with Gold Wire, jeweler’s, one coil. Lost property, from 1969. Cameron cut a half-inch length with his pocket knife.
“I need pliers,” I said.
“Use your fingernails,” he said.
It was difficult work, but I got it secure enough. Then the whole thing disappeared into Cameron’s pocket.
“Go tear out the page,” he said.
I shouldn’t have, but I did.
* * *
I got a major conscience attack four days later. Mason Mason had been arrested. He pled not guilty in front of the magistrates, and they remanded him for trial and set bail at five thousand pounds. I think Cameron had colluded with the prosecution service to set the figure high enough to keep Mason off the street, because he was a little worried about him. Mason was a big guy, and he had been very angry about the fit-up. Very angry. He said he knew the filth had to make their numbers. He was OK with that. But he said nobody should accuse a marine of dishonor. Not ever. So he stewed for a couple of days. And then he surprised everyone by making bail. He came up with the money and walked. Everyone speculated but nobody knew where the cash came from. Cameron was nervous for a day, but he got over it. Cameron was a big guy too, and a copper.
Then the next day I saw Cameron with the bracelet. It was late in the afternoon. He had it out on his desk. He slipped it into his pocket when he noticed me.
“That should be back in the lockup,” I said. “With a new case number. Or it should be on Kelly Key’s wrist.”
“I gave her the ninety quid,” he said. “I decided I’m keeping the bracelet.”
“Why?”
“Because I like it.”
“No, why?” I said.
“Because there’s a pawn shop I know in Muswell Hill.”
“You’re going to sell it?”
He said nothing.
“I thought this was about the numbers,” I said.
“There’s more than one kind of numbers,” he said. “There’s pounds in my pocket. That’s a number too.”
“When are you going to sell it?”
“Now.”
“Before the trial? Don’t we need to produce it for evidence?”
“You’re not thinking, kid. The bracelet’s gone. He fenced it already. How do you think he came up with the bail money? Juries like nice little consistencies like that.”
Then he left me alone at my desk. That’s when the conscience attack kicked in. I started thinking about Mason Mason. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to suffer for our numbers. If he was going to get medical treatment in jail, well, fine. I could live with that. It was wrong, but maybe it was right, too. But how could we guarantee it? I supposed it would depend on his record. If there was previous psychiatric treatment, maybe it would be continued as a matter of routine. But what if there wasn’t? What if there had been a previous determination that he was just a sane-but-bad guy? Right then and there I decided I would go along to get along only if Mason was going to make out OK. If he wasn’t, then I would torpedo the whole thing. Including my own career. That was my pact with the devil. That’s the only thing I can offer in my defense.
I fired up my computer.
His name being the same first and last eliminated any confusion about who I was looking for. There was only one Mason Mason in London. I worked backward through his history. At first, it was very encouraging. He had had psychiatric treatment. He had been brought in many times for various offenses, all of them related to his conviction that he was a recon marine and London was a battlefield. He built bivouacs in parks. He went to the toilet in public. Occasionally he assaulted passersby because he thought they were Shi‘ite guerrillas or Serbian militia. But generally the police had treated him well. They were usually kind and understanding. They got the mental health professionals involved as often as possible. He received treatment. Reading the transcripts in reverse date order made it seem like they were treating him better and better. Which meant in reality they were tiring of him somewhat. They were actually getting shorter and shorter with him. But they understood. He was nuts. He wasn’t a criminal. So, OK.
Then I noticed something.
There was nothing recorded more than three years old. No, that was wrong. I scrolled way back and found there was in fact some very old stuff. Stuff from fourteen years previously. He had been in his late twenties then and in regular trouble for public disorder. Scuffles, fights, wild drunkenness, bodily harm. Some heavy-duty stuff, but normal stuff. Not mental stuff.
I heard Cameron’s voice in my head: He rarely drinks. He’s pretty harmless.
I thought: Two Mason Masons. The old one, and the new one.
With an eleven-year gap between.
I heard Mason’s own voice in my head, with its impressive American twang: Sir, eleven years in God’s own Marine Corps, sir.
I sat still for a minute.
Then I picked up the phone and called the American Embassy, down in Grosvenor Square. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I identified myself as a police officer. They put me through to a military attaché.
“Is it possible for a foreign citizen to serve in your Marine Corps?” I asked.
“You thinking of volunteering?” the guy answered. “Bored with being a cop?” His voice was a little like Mason’s. I wondered whether he had been born in Muncie, Indiana.
“Is it possible?” I asked again.
“Sure it is,” he said. “At any one time we’ve got a pretty healthy percentage of foreign nationals in uniform. It’s a job, after all, and it gets them citizenship in three years instead of five.”
“Can you check records from there?”
“Is it urgent?”
I thought of Cameron on his way to Muswell Hill. Being shadowed by a recon marine with a grudge.
“It’s very urgent,” I said.
“Who are we looking for?”
“A guy called Mason.”
“First name?”
“Mason.”
“No, first name.”
“Mason,” I said. “Both his names are Mason.”
“Hold the line,” he said.
I spent the time working out Cameron’s likely route. He would probably walk. Too short a journey to drive, too awkward on the tube. So he would walk. He would walk through Alexandra Park.
“Hello?” the guy at the embassy said.
“Yes?”
“Mason Mason served eleven years in the Marines. Originally a UK citizen. Made the rank of First Sergeant. He was selected for Force Recon and served all over. Beirut, Panama, the Gulf, Kosovo. Received multiple decorations and an honorable discharge just over three years ago. He was a damn fine jarhead. But there’s a file note here saying he was just in some kind of trouble. One of the Overseas Veterans’ associations just had to bail him out from something.”
“Why did he leave the Marines?”
“He failed a psychiatric evaluation.”
“You get an honorable discharge for that?”
“We kick them out,” the guy said. “We don’t kick them in the teeth.”
* * *
I sat there for a moment, undecided. Should I dispatch sector cars? They would be no good in the park. Should I send the woollies on foot? Was I overreacting?
I went on my own, running all the way.
It was late in the year and late in the day and it was already going dark. I crossed the railway as a train rumbled under the bridge I was on. I watched the road ahead, and the hedges on each side. I didn’t see Cameron. I didn’t see Mason.
Alexandra Park’s iron gates were already closed and locked. This facility closes at dusk, said the sign. I climbed over the gates and ran onward. The smell of night mist was already in the air. I could hear distant traffic all the way from the North Circular. I could hear starlings roosting somewhere to the south. In Hornsey, maybe. I followed the main path and found nothing. I saw the dark bulk of Alexandra Palace ahead and stood still. Go on or turn back? The streets of Muswell Hill, or the park? Surely the park was the danger zone. The park was where a recon marine would do his work. I turned back.
I found Cameron a yard off a side path.
He was half hidden under some low shrubbery. He was on his back. His coat was missing. His jacket was missing. His shirt had been torn off. He was naked from the waist up. He had been ripped open from the sternum to the navel with a sharp blade. Then someone had plunged his hands inside the wound and lifted his stomach out whole and rested it on his chest. Just pulled it out, the whole organ. It was right there on his chest, pale and purple and veined. Like a soft balloon. It had been squeezed and pressed and palpated and arranged until the faint gold gleam of the charm bracelet showed through the thin translucent lining. I saw it quite clearly, in the fading evening light.
I think I was supposed to play the part of the Kosovo wife. I was Cameron’s coconspirator, and I was supposed to recover the jewelry. Or Kelly Key was. But neither of us did. Mason’s tableau came to nothing. I didn’t try, and Kelly Key never even saw the body.
* * *
I didn’t report it. I just got out of the park that night and left him there for someone else to find the next morning. And someone else did, of course. It was a big sensation. There was a big funeral. Everyone went. Then there was a big investigation, obviously. I contributed nothing, but even so Mason Mason became the prime suspect. But he disappeared and was never seen again. He’s still out there somewhere, a mad recon marine blending in with the local population, wherever he is.
And me? I completed my probationary year and now I’m a Detective Constable down in Tower Hamlets. I’ve been there a couple of years. My numbers are pretty good. Not quite as good as Ken Cameron’s were, but then, I try to live and learn.
SAFE ENOUGH AND OTHER STORIES
Mysterious Press
An Imprint of Penzler Publishers
58 Warren Street
New York, NY 10007
All individual stories are copyright © by Lee Child.
Introduction © 2024 by Lee Child.
Compilation copyright © 2024 by Otto Penzler.
“Addicted to Sweetness,” first published in MWA Presents the Rich and the Dead, edited by Nelson DeMille (© 2011).
“The Bodyguard,” first published in First Thrills, edited by Lee Child (© 2010).
“The Bone-Headed League,” first published in A Study in Sherlock, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger (© 2011).
“Dying for a Cigarette,” first published in The Nicotine Chronicles, edited by Lee Child (© 2020).
“The .50 Solution,” first published in Bloodlines: A Horse Racing Anthology, edited by Maggie Estep and Jason Starr (© 2006).
“The Greatest Trick of All,” first published in Greatest Hits, edited by Robert J. Randisi (© 2007).
