Life's Lottery (50 page)

‘Daddy’s in the nude,’ Jesse says, giggling.

Jason and Jesse are at the doorway.

You’re trying to put things together. Your head is breaking open.

‘Mummy left a letter,’ Jason says, holding out the envelope.

* * *

‘I’ve known for months,’ Ro says. ‘I don’t know how you could not have.’

Your head still doesn’t work.

‘Don’t worry. It won’t last. None of them do.’

‘I wouldn’t take her back,’ you say, meaning it.

‘Yes, you will, Keith. You shouldn’t, but you will. You’re like that.’

You feel such a
fool.

Ro is right. After six months, during which time you hear of Sean’s meteoric rise in the City, Vanda comes back. She stands on your doorstep, with her new hairstyle and expensive dress. You hold out your arms.

Then you remember what you said.

If you let Vanda in, go to 129. If you throw Vanda out, go to 131.

‘
I
’m staying with my sister,’ you tell Mary Yatman.

‘Of course,’ the policewoman says.

She has taken down Laraine’s statement. The story is that she has waited four days, assuming Sean would come back, before reporting him missing.

‘There’s nothing to be worried about yet,’ Mary says.

‘We hadn’t had a row,’ Laraine insists.

You’ve decided she’ll maintain the happy-marriage façade until the search gets intense. Then, she’ll let slip some of the truth. It’ll make Sean seem more unstable.

‘Husbands usually show up,’ Mary says. ‘Worse luck.’

She obviously thinks Sean is shacked up in Brighton with a teenage girl.

Four days ago, you used Sean’s credit card to buy a railway ticket to Gatwick. Not at Sedgwater Halt but in Bristol, where the counter clerk couldn’t possibly recognise you as someone who isn’t Sean Rye. Thank God for his bank manager’s scrawl of an easily forged signature. Sean’s car is parked in the forecourt of Bristol Temple Meads station, presumably collecting tickets under the windshield wipers. The police should connect the car with the missing person but if they don’t you’ll give them a hint when Sean’s credit-card statement comes through.

You show Mary out of the house, leaving Laraine in the kitchen.

‘Mary,’ you say, as you step outside. ‘Do you think he’s done a Reggie Perrin?’

Mary shrugs. ‘I couldn’t say yet. Most people come back.’

You need to phrase this to throw suspicion on Sean and away from you.

‘There’s something about the bank,’ you say. ‘He’s been secretive. Strange. Something about some development deal.’

Mary nods, once. Good. She’s up to speed on whatever dodgy business Sean and Hackwill are doing.

She puts a hand on your arm. ‘Look after your sister.’

‘I will. Thank you.’

She lets you go and walks towards her car.

As she opens her car door, she turns back, like Lieutenant Columbo about to ask ‘Just one more thing’.

‘I was sorry to hear about your brother.’

You don’t know what to say.

‘He did things that had to be done,’ Mary says.

‘It’s a family tradition.’

You’re an idiot! Who do you think you are, bandying ironic little hints with the cops.

Mary drives away. Laraine comes up behind and hugs you. You turn and kiss her, deeply.

* * *

You and Laraine cuddle on the sofa in front of a comforting fire. The poker – cleaned and undented – hangs from its hook.

Sean is in the garden, deep under the compost heap.

How do city folks without gardens manage murder?

You considered going out on the moors and burying him there. But two of you hauling an inert third over wetlands at dead of night would have been a nerve-stretching risk, and dawn would show the excavated patch, no matter how you tried to match the sod.

The compost heap is at the end of the garden, against a high wall, where you could work out of sight of nosy neighbours. Between you, you dug a hole four foot deep in three hours. You put Sean in and filled it up. Because it’s supposed to be a heap, the extra earth displaced by the body wasn’t a problem.

If you dug up all England, how many murdered corpses would you find? People would rather believe in a runaway husband than a murdered one.

Mary isn’t going to come back with a spade.

* * *

You and Laraine aren’t sleeping together as much. You’d thought the absence of Sean would give you the opportunity to fuck day and night, but it hasn’t worked out like that. Again, you’ve been surprised by the ordinariness of the affair. You’ve got past the frenzy-of-sex stage and are settling a bit, maybe even cooling off. You’d thought incest would keep you together. It was the extra element making an affair into a lifelong relationship. Of course, you already had a lifelong relationship with Laraine. You’re even a little disappointed: breaking every law and taboo your society has to offer hasn’t given your relationship a staying power beyond that of every other fling-cum-thing you’ve ever had.

You bring it up. ‘We’re not as close as we were,’ you say.

‘What did you think, Keith? That we’d get
married
?’

The contempt and disgust Laraine puts into the word are a shock. Laraine has what she really wanted: Sean dead, her free. Where do you fit in?

You have the sort of petty rows you once had with Clare. Laraine, having known you since birth, has more ammunition.

Every nag begins ‘You always did…’

…make lousy coffee… forget to clean the bath… dream too much.

Laraine withdraws into herself, besieged by ghosts. She says she sometimes thinks she hears Sean in the next room, humming the
Ghostbusters
theme.

It’s natural. She’s used to the idea of him in the house. You had the same thing when Clare moved out, and Clare is not under a compost heap with a dent in her brainpan.

* * *

Mary comes back every few days. Sean’s car is found. And they track his credit card, which hasn’t been used since he bought his ticket.

‘If he’s left the country, he isn’t using his own passport,’ Mary explains. ‘But that’s possible.’

‘Is there money missing?’

‘I can’t say.’

You’re relying on the dodginess of the Discount Development to cover for you.

‘One thing bothers me,’ Mary says. ‘Why did he use his credit card for the train? If he bought a plane ticket, he must have used cash.’

‘You have to give your name when you buy a plane ticket. If he has a fake passport, it won’t match his credit card.’

‘Sure. But if he had the cash for an air ticket, why not buy the train ticket out of it?’

God, this is just like
Columbo.

‘You think Gatwick was a feint?’ you say. ‘That he’s still in the country?’

Mary nods.

Now is the time. ‘Mary, I don’t know if I should say anything, but… well, Larry has told me Sean wasn’t what he seemed. He used to… get violent with her.’

Mary thinks.

You’ve made a mistake. She’s remembering James. He got violent too.

‘Bastard,’ Mary says.

She approved of James battering Hackwill. Rough justice. Would she approve of you and Laraine killing Sean? That’s going down a very strange route.

‘If a man did that to me,’ she says, ‘I’d kill him.’

If you want to take Mary into your confidence, go to 141. If you try to throw Mary off the track, go to 152.

Y
ou call in sick, claiming flu. You can manage this only for a few days before you’ll need to see a doctor or risk losing income you can’t afford to sacrifice.

Reg Jessup is dead.

Hackwill pays back in kind.

Control your family. Or lose members of it.

You get a heavy wrench from the car toolkit and keep it on a hook by the door, hidden behind the coat-rack.

You can’t ask the police for protection. That would mean explaining why you need it. And why you didn’t shop James as soon as you knew he’d gone outside the law to continue his war with your old school bully.

You can’t even ask James. He has to be in Somerset, in case Hackwill goes for Mum or Phil.

This should be between Hackwill’s gang and the Marion brothers. But it isn’t. It’s spread out. To J and J, the copse would seem as remote as the burning of the Alexandria Library. Even Chris doesn’t get it. And you never told Mum about Rob Hackwill at the time. It didn’t do to snitch to mums.

Laraine gets in touch, a bit hysterical. She’s had the same phone call. She lives alone, in Bristol. You tell her to go on holiday. She protests that she has a job and a cat.

How did you all get anchored like this? Jobs, mortgages, family, pets. They’ve made you vulnerable. They’ve given you a last ditch to defend.

You’d send Chris and the twins to her parents’ in Brighton, but how do you know Hackwill isn’t having you watched? You could be ready in the flat with the wrench while Hackwill’s balaclava boys are calling on Chris’s parents.

This was private. How did it get to this?

After three days, you have to go back to work. You tell Chris – who still doesn’t take it seriously – not to let anyone in while you’re gone, and give her instruction in the use of the wrench.

Driving back from school, you’re certain you’ll find the flat door open and your family gone. As you get stuck in a traffic jam, the worry becomes a certainty.

Chris is making tea. The twins are simultaneously asleep.

You’re so relieved that you cry. Then, taking advantage of a rare moment of peace, you make love with your wife.

This can’t go on.

* * *

Being cold about it, the best thing would be if Hackwill killed one of your family and then James killed him. It would be over.

And you’d still have a family. Most of one.

You remember
Sophie’s Choice.
It’s Chris’s favourite book and movie, but you’ve never understood it until now. Which would you let go to save the others? Chris for the twins? One twin for the other? Which?

First, you could do without Phil. You barely even know him. Then, agonisingly, it would have to be Laraine. Then Mum. Then – God, you can’t be thinking this – your wife.

No, this is all wrong. First, you’d die yourself. To save everyone. That’s right.

You need James alive to avenge you, to end the cycle.

If James were to kill Hackwill now, before Hackwill strikes at you, would that be best? Why do you have to stick to this move-and-counter-move deal? This isn’t chess.

Yes, James should kill Robert Hackwill.

You’re a PE teacher, not Michael Corleone. How did you get to this? You take to hugging your wife often.

* * *

Finally, they come. Three of them. Balaclava helmets. Professional home-invaders, like the police or soldiers.

You are home in the evening.

‘It’s about your brother, sir,’ says a voice on the entryphone.

You think it’s the police and, with relief, buzz them in.

You make it to the wrench, but have to drop it. You had a blunt instrument ready, but they bring guns.

Chris is on the sofa, hugging the twins. They have no idea what’s happening but pick up on their parents’ fear and grizzle. Chris desperately tries to keep them calm. You are in an armchair.

Three guns – pistols, barrels extended by silencers – play around the room. The leader of the men takes off his balaclava. Your heart dies. If you’re allowed to see his face, you aren’t expected to live.

‘Hello, Keith.’

It’s Shane Bush. One of Hackwill’s old mates.

‘We’m a long way from Ash Grove, ain’t we?’

You barely knew him. He was just a thug. Now, he’s a killer.

‘Sorry about this, but local gov’ment be a good job. Lot o’ opportunities these days.’

‘Shane,’ you say. ‘This is my wife, Christina, and my babies, Joseph and Juanita. I beg you, don’t hurt them. They aren’t part of this.’

‘Hwaa-neeta,’ Shane laughs. ‘Bleddy daft name.’

By telling him the names, you hope to reach him, to make them seem real to him, to make it harder to kill them. It obviously hasn’t worked. Are Shane and his friends on drugs?

They’re people too. It can’t be easy. They must have screwed themselves up to this.

‘You don’t want to hurt babies,’ you say.

You look at the eyes of the others. If you break their solidarity with Shane, you’ve a chance. They’ll all be guilty. One of the three might have qualms, or be afraid of getting roped in with the others.

‘Yurr, Shane,’ says one. ‘Her with the teats. Can I fuck her?’

You try to stand up. Shane puts a bullet in the wall behind you. The silenced shot is a
thwick
sound. You freeze. Chris is crying. Juanita, screech a little higher than Joseph’s, starts up, loud.

Shane is impatient. ‘Your kid brother’s a bloody sight harder than you, Keith.’

Of course he is, you think. He doesn’t have anyone to lose. Not like you do.

Another balaclava comes off. Not the rapist wannabe, but the smallest of the three. Long blond hair falls out of a bun. It’s a woman. Her cold eyes are familiar but you don’t know the face.

‘Don’t kill my babies,’ Chris implores the woman.

It doesn’t get through. The woman looks disgusted with Chris and revolted by the twins.

‘Quiet them down,’ she says.

‘Mary,’ says Shane, almost whining, ‘you said I could do the talking.’

‘You’re a fuckhead, Shane. Always have been.’

A name dredges up. Mary Yatman.

She sees you recognise her. ‘Yes, that’s right, Keith. It’s an Ash Grove reunion.’

She was a little monster as a kid. Obviously, she’s grown up to be a big monster.

‘Reg Jessup is dead, Keith,’ says Mary. ‘Your boy did it. Trained to kill in the Marines. Give him a medal, eh? But that means we have to pay back and take it to the next level. Like Space Invaders. You kill one of us, we kill all of you.’

All?

‘Be a waste to kill teats,’ says the wannabe rapist.

‘Shut up, Grebo,’ Mary says. ‘Or I’ll shoot you in the balls and let you bleed.’

Mary holds her gun casually. Shane and Grebo – ? – hang on to theirs as if they were their dicks. Mary lets her wrist flop, but you know she’s more comfortable with the firearm, probably better with it.