Life's Lottery (40 page)

Now, Mary has been fucked and dumped.

Rowena, oddly, is the person to tell you. She telephones, as she does from time to time on the pretext of getting you involved in one of her charities, and asks if you remember Mary Yatman from school.

‘Scary Mary?’

The line goes quiet. Then she tells you.

It is hard not to laugh but you manage it.

You offer a reward and make solemn pronouncements.

Geoff Starkey gets the blame, as you knew he would. He has a history of drinking, and you’ve arranged a social worker’s report to mark him down as a hazard to his son. Will is taken into care and anything he might say about the Man Who Was Interested in Dinosaurs is disregarded. That was the breakthrough. Realising that what Will might say didn’t count.

* * *

Sedgwater expands, as you have planned, spreading along the main roads, absorbing several former villages. Sutton Mallet becomes a residential district. You buy property there. You even consider living there.

You marry, have children. You diversify, from property into information, from the concrete into the abstract. The new millennium comes and seems to belong to you, to people like you. You win awards, honours. You almost become famous.

In the years that pass after Mary, you realise you are not unique. Others have been to Sutton Mallet and learned what you learned. Some recognise your strength and offer themselves as disciples. You despise most of them, but are pleased.

* * *

You have everything anyone could want. And you keep it for a long time.

But in the end, you are fucked.

And dumped.

What he said didn’t count but what he knew stayed with him.

A quarter of the way into the new century, in a Sutton Mallet you could never have predicted, you are found; and found out.

Will Yatman still has his mother’s eyes.

And it’s hard not to feel he has inherited his mother’s monster.

At the end, as you look up from your bloodied bed at Mary Yatman’s beautiful eyes staring out of a hard man’s face, you wonder if you won after all. Maybe the shadow-spiders were just using you, as you used so many others, fucking you.

And dumping you.

He has to tell you who he is, but you knew right away.

‘I didn’t always like your mother,’ you say.

He ends you before you can complete the sentence.

Go to 0.

B
lit blurt…

* * *

All the lives fall away, like scales from your eyes.

This is the here and now.

You’re running across wasteland, on a cold day. Your lungs hurt, and you have to be careful of your footing. You can’t afford a twisted ankle.

Because of the shadow-spiders.

You have no past, no future.

The only thing in your mind is the shadow-spiders.

If pressed, you wouldn’t know your name; if you were married, whether you had a living family.

You don’t know where you are.

But the shadow-spiders are after you.

Ranging from about the bodyweight of a large cat to biology-defying monsters the size of the Albert Hall, the shadow-spiders are after you.

They scuttle with alarming speed.

You are in the open. You have been sighted.

This is your place. They are the intruders.

You pick up and put down your feet. You draw in and let out your breath.

That’s all.

* * *

…
blit blurt.

F
riday, 13 February 1998. You get home first, just after six. It’s already dark and the exterior light above the garage door has come on. You drive into the former barn that serves as a garage and park neatly in your space. You get out and feel a slight tingle. It’s not the cold, it’s the night. Your Fiat clicks as you activate central locking, a turtle making itself cosy.

You stand in your garage, enjoying the quiet moment. A sense of belonging. Then you go indoors, through the kitchen door as usual. A present is propped up on the table, with a card. It is not a valentine, but an end-of-the-week present; you and Ro have been exchanging them for sixteen years, never repeating, never spending more than five pounds. This week, you’ve got her a Hercules fridge magnet. You wonder what she’s got you.

Ro is a teacher, at your old school. Ash Grove is a well-respected Comprehensive now. Your own children, Joel and Jacintha – who are out at the Youth Theatre tonight – go there. Ro teaches French, German and English, and coaches netball. She keeps in touch with many of her former pupils and the corkboard in the kitchen is plastered with postcards. Her first pupils have school-age kids of their own.

There are four homes in Sutton Mallet now, all converted farmhouses. Two are owned by people who live in London and only appear at the weekends. One of those has been neglected for nine months, since its owner suffered a reversal and has had to put it on the block to finance a desperate stock deal. There are no takers at the moment.

You feel sorry for people who think of the world in terms of money and what it can buy. You have seen them coming into the bank, always steering into choppy waters. You and Ro know there are more important ways of keeping the score. Ways that matter.

The bank is behind you, as sealed off in your mind as its locked vaults. When you left your office at five-thirty, you blanked out all details of any business you were working on. At nine-thirty on Monday morning, it will all be in your mind, clear and ready.

The weekend is sacred. It is for personal projects.

You strip off your suit as you go upstairs, remembering the long-gone objects – plastic comb, picture frame, toothbrush – once placed on each step. It is a game between you and your wife. Sometimes, when each thinks the other is off guard, you will quiz each other. Neither has ever caught the other out.

In the recently fitted master bathroom, you take a shower. Outside, it’s crisply cold. You let hot water pour on to your chest, down your legs, into your eyes. You lobster yourself, scalding away your weekday skin.

While you are showering, Ro comes home. She comes into the bathroom, having followed your clothes, and removes her suit with easy movements, as if giving birth to her nude self. When the outer coating of Miss Douglass – she keeps her maiden name in the week – is pooled on the floor, she undoes her hair and combs it out.

You finish your shower and towel yourself.

Together, you go to your bedroom. Your tradition now is that you share the task of lighting all the candles. When that’s done, you cuddle, and ease into making love. You can still surprise each other. Underlying your union is something beyond the physical. But sex is still at the centre of it.

You both owe Victoria Conyer a great debt.

With the kids out for the evening, you enjoy yourselves.

Then, in the candlelight, you glow.

Go to 99.

T
he day after Sean hands in his notice, he introduces Tristram Warwick to you. He is to take over as manager and will be around for the next three months to learn the ropes.

At once, you know Tristram is a threat to you. He will find you out. He will bring down the Syndicate.

He has the power to take everything away from you.

* * *

You check the street. No one is near enough to be a witness. You press the buzzer and the entryphone hums incomprehensibly.

‘Tristram,’ you say, ‘it’s Keith Marion.’

The door buzzes open. You step into the hallway, followed by Vanda. You exchange a look with your wife.

Tristram has a flat at the top of a modern building, in a decent part of town. Once confirmed in his job, he’ll probably buy a house.

He won’t be confirmed in his job. He will be found. Dead.

You go upstairs.

* * *

You’re let into the flat by someone you know, Kay Shearer, of Shearer’s Shelves.

‘God,’ he says shrilly, ‘I hope you’re not still chasing those bloody repayments.’

Kay wears a tracksuit, as if about to go jogging.

Tristram steps out into the hallway. He wears a towelcloth robe. His hair is wet. He rubs his eyes with a hand-towel.

‘What is it, love?’ he asks Kay.

Then he sees you and Vanda.

‘Marion,’ he says.

‘This is my wife, Vanda,’ you say.

‘What do you want?’

‘To save us all a lot of trouble.’

You made up a noose from nylon washing line. You take it out of your pocket and let it out a little.

Kay understands first and tries to bolt.

You planned for Tristram to be not alone. It’s Vanda’s department. Kay slams into her, sliding himself on to the new-bought Sabatier knife, mouth opening in a big circle.

You get the noose over Tristram’s head and yank it tight. You remembered the nautical knots you studied as a child during your pirate craze. The line tightens around Tristram’s neck. His face goes purple.

Vanda pulls out the knife and finds a point on Kay’s chest to thrust, slipping the blade between ribs, into the heart.

Tristram flops like a doll.

They are both dead.

Excellent.

* * *

Fine. You aren’t being investigated at work. No one is picking through your files, gathering evidence. Your mortgage isn’t being inspected by an intelligence vast, cool and unsympathetic.

But Sean and Ro are still breaking up. That crisis continues.

What to do?

Ro has to go. The Syndicate needs Sean.

You and Vanda tell Sean. He agrees.

You hire Candy as a babysitter and Sean and Ro send their kids over to your house. Candy will have her hands full with four little terrors. But you need them all out of the way.

You hold a Syndicate meeting and encourage Ro to get drunk. The three of you hold back, and watch her get insensible. The idea is that she will have an accident while driving over to pick up the kids.

You drive out in both your cars, Sean with Ro lolling in the passenger seat. You stop by the Sutton Mallet turn-off and get out. It’s an awkward struggle getting the feebly resisting Ro into the driver’s seat and belted in, but Vanda coaxes her.

It’s well past midnight. No one drives by.

Sean lets off the handbrake and the three of you heave on his car, pitching it over the verge into the shallow ditch. Ro burbles in childish delight as the water seeps around her ankles. Sean opens the passenger door and climbs in next to her, easing himself into the seat. He holds Ro’s hand and smiles at her. She has no idea what is happening.

Vanda finds a large stone and smashes the windshield. It dents and shatters.

Sean has Ro bend forwards over the wheel, getting some slack into her seatbelt, stretching it tight over her neck. Then he yanks her head hard.

The idea is to snap her neck on the belt. Ro yelps and laughs. Sean didn’t tug hard enough.

You wade into the ditch, soaking yourself up to the knees, and reach into the car. You grab Ro’s head, seeing the panic in her eyes, and
pull.
You feel her neckbones straining.

Vanda gets in on the act, forcing Ro’s head from the other side. The seatbelt is throttling her.

You both wrench. There is a snap. And Ro is dead.

You leave Vanda standing by the road and Sean in the car next to his dead wife, then drive home to call the police.

* * *

The Syndicate is preserved.

Sean is sobered after the ‘accident’ – the autopsy reveals how unfit to drive Ro was – and you take more and more charge of the business.

The pressure is off. But there’s still the Crash.

Somehow, you forgot about that. You knew the problems Tristram and Ro would cause, but did not understand that the Crash was not warded off by your efforts.

When it happens, you get over to Sean’s place before he can skip out.

He is still in the family home.

‘Keith, Vanda…’

You surprise him packing.

The two of you drag him downstairs into his basement DIY room. You clamp his hands between vices and apply power drills to his legs.

He tells you where the money is. You make holes in his head.

* * *

You and Vanda are covered in Sean’s blood when you get upstairs. You think you can recover the money. Sean has involved so many people in the Syndicate that it will be assumed that he was the victim of a professional assassin.

As you walk into Sean’s hallway, the front door opens.

Candy steps in, with Sean and Ro’s kids, Megan and Liza.

You don’t hesitate. Vanda takes the kids. You take Candy.

You drag them down to the DIY room and finish the job.

* * *

Detective Sergeant Yatman remembers you both from school.

She used to be Scary Mary.

Vanda makes coffee as the policewoman comments on how nice your kitchen is. She has come to ask about what happened at Sean’s house. They have a suspect, she says. You know she means Councillor Hackwill. He’s crooked as a corkscrew. Everyone who went to school a few years behind him remembers his violent streak.

Mary drinks the coffee Vanda has made. She finishes the pleasantries and starts asking questions. You try to answer.

Mary coughs. You politely ask if she is all right. Mary coughs again and bends double. She is sick, bringing up blood with her vomit.

Vanda washes out the coffee pot.

Mary lies on the floor, bending shut like a pocket-knife. She is leaking from several holes. After a while, Mary stops jerking.

‘Serves her right,’ Vanda says.

Read 13, and come back here.

* * *

There are more police, more bank officials, more investors, more auditors. You can’t kill them all.

You know Vanda is looking for a way out.

Before she can turn you in, you resolve to deal with her. But she is ahead of you. You get up early one morning and find her half of the bed empty. You pull on a dressing-gown and visit her in the kitchen, a claw hammer behind your back.

She smiles. Your bare feet are in a pool of water.

The toaster lies on its side on the floor. Its wires have been wrenched out and lie in the water.