Deadly Pleasures Page 3

  Obviously that detail carried an air of familiarity for Jake Parlane. But the similarity of their experiences didn’t make him feel any sentimentality or pity for the boy. It was an interesting coincidence, was all.

  What was also interesting was how little effort Nathan Pooley put into defending himself. He seemed in a state of shock, unable to recollect details of what had happened on the night of the raid. His attitude to Colonel Tuckett was still that of a junior employee, deferential, unwilling to contradict anything said by his boss.

  Which of course meant the court proceedings were pretty short. With a defendant apparently unwilling to defend himself and the abundance of planted evidence that had been found, the guilty verdict came as no surprise.

  Nor, really, did the sentence. Sentencing in that time and in that place was an inexact science, pretty much at the discretion of the judge. Therefore dependent on prevailing political conditions, whether he’d woken up with a hangover, was suffering from dyspepsia or had just had a row with his wife.

  As the American West struggled for respectability, there was a lot of pressure in aspiring towns like Santa Veronica to cut down the crime rate and to make examples of malefactors. Wells Fargo were particularly keen to improve their standards of reliability and safety for their clients’ money. So scapegoats were needed. It was therefore no surprise to anyone when the judge sentenced Nathan Pooley to twenty years.

  As with Jake Junior’s death, it took quite a while before Jake Parlane thought any more about Nathan Pooley. According to plan, the Black Cross Gang was disbanded. All remaining loot was divvied up between the surviving members, with Jake as boss taking a very substantial lion’s share. Some of this he invested in land and real estate. In particular he bought a handsome plot on the outskirts of Ruthville, on which he built a fancy villa surrounded by verandas. Inside, it was equipped with all the latest newfangled inventions for gracious living. Just the kind of house his wife had longed to live in all her life. Though in fact she’d died before the first brick was laid.

  Jake Parlane lived alone. Sure, he had cooks and maids and grooms, but none of them stayed overnight on the premises. Aaron slept in a room over the stables. He’d been offered a room in the main building, but turned it down. Compared to the places he’d bedded down for most of his life, the stables represented luxury. Besides, despite his emancipation, it still didn’t seem right to him that a man and his servant should sleep under the same roof.

  For a time there was speculation in Ruthville that Jake Parlane might marry again. Given his obvious wealth, he was not an unattractive prospect and there were a good few young ladies of Ruthville who set their caps at him. But nothing proceeded beyond civilities. He seemed to have lost interest in that kind of thing.

  Jake Parlane enjoyed the irony of his respectability and he enjoyed his new life. Unexpectedly, he found pleasure speculating in real estate and construction, and he was good at it. Without risking any of the bullion hidden in the foundations of his villa, he made a lot of money. And – an incongruity that gave him especial delight – he banked it with Wells Fargo.

  Life was fine and dandy. His evenings Jake spent in his leather armchair, drinking perhaps a little too much of the excellent bourbon he could now afford. And if it was too much, who cared? Not a great deal he had to get up for in the mornings, just keeping an eye on his latest construction project and letting his money accumulate. He could afford to stay in bed till the headache disappeared.

  There was only one cloud on Jake Parlane’s horizon, but it was a cloud that just kept getting bigger. He found he was becoming obsessed by the empty wooden frame on his writing desk.

  ‘It’s one last job, Aaron.’

  The ageless black face showed little reaction. Just a slight wrinkling of the lines around his dark hooded eyes. Jake knew he had engaged the man’s interest.

  ‘Thought we done the last job at Santa Veronica, boss. Surely you ain’t short of cash?’

  ‘No, got more of the stuff than I know what to do with. That’s kinda the problem. Why we need to do one last job.’

  Aaron was silent, letting his employer outline the plan at his own pace.

  ‘Fact is, I been thinking too much about Jake Junior. Maybe I never did all I shoulda done for the boy.’

  ‘You couldn’ta stopped him being shot, boss. ’Less you’d forbidden him to come on the River Crossing raid. Boy sure wanted to come on that job. Wanted to prove hisself to you.’

  ‘Hm.’ Jake Parlane was thoughtful. ‘Maybe so. But maybe it was because I put too much pressure on the boy that he wanted to prove himself.’

  ‘Hey, what kinda talk’s this, boss? You getting soft in your old age?’

  ‘I think maybe I am, Aaron.’

  ‘Well, you just fill up your glass with bourbon and start drinking. That’ll get you thinking better thoughts.’

  ‘No, Aaron. I’ve made my mind up. I gotta see this thing through.’

  The ex-slave shrugged. ‘You the boss, boss.’

  ‘It concerns that boy Nathan Pooley …’

  The black face showed no surprise. No reaction of any kind, as he said, ‘You tell me what you want me to do.’

  Now that Jake Parlane was a pillar of Ruthville society, it wasn’t appropriate for him to be too closely associated with the job, but he had complete confidence in leaving the arrangements to Aaron.

  There weren’t many of the Black Cross Gang still alive. A few had continued in the same business and got shot in the line of duty. Some had banked their cash and followed their boss down the path to respectability. But there were still three or four who were up for the job Aaron offered them. He told them there’d be no pay-out because there wouldn’t be any loot, but he offered them fees. Their residual loyalty to Jake Parlane made them all say they’d do the job for free.

  And the method they were going to use went right back to the early days of the Black Cross Gang.

  The evening before the day that had been scheduled for the raid, Aaron sat up late with Jake Parlane. He watched him wincing at the griping pains in his stomach, pains that the bourbon could numb for decreasing lengths of time. The ex-slave felt concern for his boss, though no one would ever have guessed it from his expression.

  ‘You double-checked everything, have you, Aaron?’

  ‘Double-checked it good, boss. Bribed one of the prison guards, it was easy. He’s given us the information we need.’

  The prison he referred to was the one where Nathan Pooley was serving out his twenty years. A lot of Californian malefactors with long sentences were sent up to San Quentin or the more recently opened Folsom Prison, but the nearest penitentiary to Ruthville was a dilapidated wooden structure in Santa Veronica. Because the foundations had already been laid for a new modern replacement, very little effort was put into maintaining the old building. Which was ideal for Jake and Aaron’s purposes. Ideal for the Wells Fargo method.

  ‘And I bring him straight back here when we sprung him – right?’

  ‘Right.’ There was a silence. ‘And do you want to know what happens then, Aaron?’

  ‘Only if you want to tell me, boss.’

  Jake Parlane grinned through his pain. ‘Sure I’ll tell you.’ He pointed to the large new brass and rosewood camera on a tripod in the corner of the room. ‘Soon as Nathan Pooley gets here, I take his picture. And when the photograph’s developed, I put the damn thing in that frame over there.’

  ‘The one that used to have the picture of Jake Junior in it?’

  Jake nodded. There was the smallest of shakes from Aaron’s head. He didn’t understand his boss’ reasoning, but he wasn’t about to ask any more questions. What Jake Parlane did was up to him. And to Jake what he was doing made perfect sense. It was a way of setting the record straight. He’d always dismissed Jake Junior as a milksop, never taken the trouble to find out what was going on in the boy’s cloudy brain. And there, languishing in prison was Nathan Pooley, an innocent who lived in the same kind of dream world
as Jake Junior had. To Parlane’s mind, what he was planning to do for the victim of Colonel Tuckett’s frame-up would offer some kind of restitution – a resolution even.

  ‘And when I’ve taken Nathan Pooley’s photograph,’ he went on, ‘I serve him a good meal, best meal he’ll have tasted for thirteen years. And I let him drink the best liquor he’s tasted probably in his entire life. Then I show him to a bedroom where there’s the softest mattress he’s ever encountered, certainly a lot softer than the stinking palliasse he’s been sleeping on in that prison.

  ‘And the next morning, after he’s had the best breakfast of his life –’ Jake Parlane reached into the pocket of his vest and produced a large key on a gold chain – ‘I open the strong room in the cellar and I show Nathan Pooley the bullion down there. And I tell him it’s all his.

  ‘Then you, Aaron, load the bullion on to the covered wagon, and you ride with him to the Mexican border – you know, the place we always used to get through …’ The black man nodded. ‘And once you’ve seen him safely across the border, you come back here, and Nathan Pooley starts living his new life.’

  One of Aaron’s rare smiles crossed his face. ‘You sure are, boss. You’re getting soft in your old age.’

  Everything worked like it should have done. The Wells Fargo method was as effective as ever, the team of horses ripping the window out of Santa Veronica’s crumbling penitentiary. The prison guard’s information proved to be correct – it was the window of the cell in which Nathan Pooley was incarcerated. And soon the boy, once again in the same state of shock he had been at his trial, was safely ensconced in the covered wagon.

  Serendipitously, there had been other prisoners in his cell, so the operation became a mass breakout. And the prison guards and the Santa Veronica sheriff’s men were so busy chasing the fugitives who’d escaped on foot that they didn’t even notice the one who’d been driven away.

  It was nearly dark when Aaron delivered Nathan Pooley to Jake Parlane’s villa. The young man had said nothing on the journey, not questioned why he had been sprung, where he was being taken. Maybe thirteen years in prison had taken away his will, had inured him to the idea of having no control over anything that happened. Aaron was not surprised; he’d seen that happen to plenty of men when he’d been inside.

  Nor did Nathan Pooley show much reaction when they arrived at the house in Ruthville. He appeared not to recognise Jake Parlane – and there was no reason why he should have done. Jake had been just another face in a crowded courtroom thirteen years before. And the young man submitted meekly to having his photograph taken.

  And once that had been done, Aaron reckoned it was time for him to go and bed down in the stables.

  The scene that greeted him in Jake Parlane’s drawing room the following morning was not a pretty one. Aaron had seen enough dead bodies in his time – indeed he’d been responsible for a lot of them – not to be squeamish, but this was something else. It was clear that, before he died, Jake Parlane had been cruelly tortured.

  Needless to say, there was no sign of Nathan Pooley. Nor of the bullion from the strong room in the cellar. Nor, when the stables were checked out, of the covered wagon.

  Aaron couldn’t have said he was surprised. He knew – and he’d have thought Jake Parlane should have known too – that prison sure does brutalise a man.

  THE PIRATE

  Ann Cleeves

  Ann Cleeves began her crime writing career with a series featuring George and Molly Palmer-Jones, and followed it with books about a cop from the North East, Inspector Ramsay. More recently, she has won acclaim for two more series, featuring Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez respectively, which have been adapted for television as Vera and Shetland.

  The girl arrived into the island on the launch; she’d obviously just come into Scilly because she had luggage with her. I was sitting outside the Turk’s Head to catch up with the news and see who was coming into St Agnes and she caught my eye immediately, striding up the jetty with the other tourists. She was wearing a leather three-cornered hat, battered and well-worn, and a red jacket. In my head I named her the pirate. She was straight-backed and fierce and I liked her at once. She reminded me of myself when I was a young woman, free and easy and at the art school in Falmouth. Now I’m sixty. I watch and I paint and I worry about dying. The drink or the smoking will kill me soon.

  I saw the girl later from the front window of my studio. I grew up in this cottage and it came to me when my parents died. It has a view over Periglis, perhaps the best view in the island. I’ve been offered a fortune for the house, but what would I want with more money? My paintings sell well, and occasionally dealers come on the scrounge, prodding and flattering, and asking to buy direct, but I always send them away. My agent looks after that sort of thing. He rips me off but I can’t be arsed to make a fuss. Life’s too short. Each day here, with this view and the light over the lake and the sea beyond, is enough. That and the possibility that one day I’ll make a perfect piece of art.

  The girl walked past the lake with her rucksack on her back. No man. I liked that too. I’ve had lovers of course and was considered rather wild even in middle-age. There were no children. I still brood about that on the bad days when my work’s not going well. I think I might have made a good mother. But for years I’ve been on my own and these days that’s how I like it.

  On an impulse I followed her and watched her put up a tent at the campsite at Troy Town. She was deft and competent and it was like seeing a ghost of my younger self at work. I didn’t approach her and she didn’t see me. I knew that I’d bump into her again. St Agnes is a small place and islanders and trippers all end up in the Turk’s Head eventually.

  She was there the following night. I was drinking my second rum and shrub and she came in, not cocky, as if she owned the place, but confident as if she had a right to be there. She wasn’t wearing the hat. A shame. It suited her. She bought a pint of bitter and sat next to me. Perhaps she knew who I was. People turn up occasionally, students and the stalkers of the art world, hoping that I’ll do them a quick sketch on the back of an envelope. Islanders take pleasure in pointing me out because they know that I hate it.

  ‘You’re Maureen Dance,’ she said. Her voice was West Country. Not Cornish. Devonian perhaps.

  There didn’t seem any point in answering.

  ‘I’ve got some questions,’ she said.

  I didn’t want to talk to her there with everyone staring. But I wanted to meet her again. Close to, I saw she had a strong face, dark eyebrows. The face of a pirate. I knew I’d like to paint her.

  ‘Come to my house,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow night.’

  She nodded and went to the bar. When I left, sure-footed up the path despite the dark, she was playing darts with a bunch of the boys who row in the gig team.

  I thought of her all day. Of that distinctive face and the pirate hat. I imagined the painting that it would make and the story which the picture would tell. Of a woman easy in her own body, searching for answers. When she turned up at the cottage I was ready for her. There was charcoal and paper on the table and I sketched all the time that we talked.

  The next morning the tent was gone and the campsite was clear. No rubbish. Just a patch of flat grass to show that she’d been there at all. Again I had the strange sense that she was some sort of ghost, disappearing as soon as she’d arrived. I got on the phone to one of the boys who crews on the launch.

  ‘The young woman who was camping at Troy Town, did she go out to St Mary’s today?’ From St Mary’s you get the ferry or the plane to Penzance. It’s the only way out of the island.

  He hesitated for a moment. He’s not the most observant of men.

  ‘The girl with the hat. She’s not here anymore.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ He’s suggestible as well as a bit stupid. If anyone else asks he’ll remember that he saw her, that he caught a glimpse of her leaving the island with the other visitors.

  I recognised the hat as soon as I saw it on th
e day that she arrived. It had belonged to my favourite lover. He came to the islands when I was forty and he was my last chance of passion and a child. He spent a summer with me in the cottage, writing his poetry, helping out in the bulb fields. Occasionally he’d disappear back to the mainland and on his final visit to me he’d left his hat there. When he arrived in St Agnes without it I should have realised it was a sign.

  That last night, I’d opened wine to celebrate his return. In the cottage near Periglis he took my hand and told me that he was leaving me. He had a woman on the mainland who was carrying his baby. Someone closer to his own age.

  The bright young woman was his daughter. She should have been my daughter. She was here with questions about the man who’d disappeared before her birth.

  ‘I talked to his friends.’ She saw that I was sketching her but she didn’t seem to mind. ‘They said he’d spent time here on St Agnes and that he’d always loved your work.’ She looked up frowning. ‘You know what happened to him, don’t you?’ And glancing up she saw the big oil that I’d painted of him. It hangs on the wall over my desk. Her mother had probably shown her photographs and she recognised him immediately.

  Now she’s lying in the sandy soil in my garden, buried next to her father. I couldn’t take a chance, you see. She was intelligent and persistent and could start rumours and an investigation. She was a free spirit and for a while nobody will miss her and when they do they’ll look for her on the mainland. Her rucksack, with the hat stuffed inside it, has been dropped into the water to be taken away by the strong neap tide. I couldn’t let her live. There’s too much to lose. There’s this view and this light over the water. The chance that one day I’ll create a perfect piece of art.

  DAY OR NIGHT

  Liza Cody

  Liza Cody is a former editor of the CWA anthology, whose award-winning first novel, Dupe, introduced the private eye Anna Lee. A series of books featuring Anna resulted in a television adaptation starring Imogen Stubbs. More recently, Liza’s novels have included the Bucket Nut trilogy, Gimme More, Ballad Of A Dead Nobody and Miss Terry.