"Splash," by Mat Coward, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, January/February 2025.
This is the ninth story by Mat Coward to make it to this blog. He is not shy about his political stance. For example, I subscribe to Rebel Britannia, his free newsletter in which he provides a weekly history lesson from "this island's 2,000-year record of disobedience and dissent." But I don't think his views have ever come out as clearly in his stories as in this one.
Whatever happens -- environmental crises, pandemics, economic collapses -- rich people always end up richer, with the sole exception of those events which involve rich people having their heads chopped off. It is largely for this reason that I am strongly in favour of rich people having their heads chopped off on a pretty regular basis.
And so we meet Pewter who has the unlikely occupation of helping the disgustingly rich (not to be confused with the merely rich or the insanely rich) find new ways to spend their money. No doubt encounters with his clients led him to his opinion of decapitation.
But that isn't why he becomes a serial killer. The reason for that is more bizarre. And funnier.
This is a very funny story. Consider Pewter's friend Ozzy who is "chronically unemployed after the Metropolitan Police decided they could probably manage without his help. You might think say that someone has got to be pretty extraordinarily awful to be sacked by the Met, but in his defence Ozzy always pointed out that it wasn't really his fault, it was the fault of the methamphetamine."
Sounds reasonable to me.
One note: I am sure this story was written and purchased long before a certain event that happened late last year. An example of how art and life chase each other's tails.
