Life's Lottery (65 page)

You’re still crawling, towards the sofa. Shane stands by the sofa, gun aimed at the twins, barrel drifting between Juanita and Joseph.

‘Don’t,’ you say. It’s all you can manage. You haven’t got a gun or a wrench.

‘Don’t,’ you say.

Shane looks at your children. And can’t.

* * *

People come. The police. You fade.

Go to 0.

W
hat I want of you is quite simple. I want you to keep doing what you have been doing. You can go back to the beginning, to
1
, if you wish. Or re-enter wherever you choose. You’ll learn you’re not just one Keith, but a legion of Keiths, and that a legion of lives are affected by you, or even depend on you.

You may think of me as an enemy of man.

Not so.

I am fascinated. I am pleased to encounter those truly rare individuals who see beyond the game, who do not constantly succumb to deals and catches.

Believe me.

And, if truth be told, I am disappointed each time I win.

There’ve been complaints, I know. Altogether too many
Go to 0
outcomes. Premature, sudden
0
s. Statistically, that’s unlikely. There are an infinite number of outcomes, and I’m guiding you within only a comparatively narrow band. I haven’t let you go down the Synth, for instance. You can venture further on your own, ponder the outcomes between the lines we’re treading together.

Most people, in my experience, live
And so on
lives. At some point, sometimes frighteningly early, they fix their futures and just live them out.
And so on.
Often, the
And so on
point comes as suddenly as a
Go to 0
. The difference is that you have to live with it.

Are the
And so on
lines really inescapable? Once you have received that verdict or reward or punishment or revelation, do you really have to stick with it?

Maybe not. Some people never surrender. I like them; though they can be infuriating. Perhaps they should look for satisfaction rather than adventure.

You can crap out now. Go to
300
, maybe. Or
37
. Whatever.

Or you can explore. Make conclusions. Make something of yourself and for yourself.

Don’t be afraid.

Just go on.

T
he woman’s name is Marie-Laure Quilter. You aren’t married but have two children, Josh and Jonquil. You can’t help but laugh at your daughter’s name, which is the highest possible scoring word in Scrabble. You don’t work. You don’t seem to do much of anything.

Okay, so you live in a tip. But, hey, there are advantages.

* * *

You sit back and take a holiday, coasting through things. It’s easier than it ought to be, since you only have one or two friends – VC, here called Victoria, is one, and a loser called Vince – and they’re used to you nodding as they talk at you. The same goes for Marie-Laure, who nags a bit but does your washing and cooks for you.

Admittedly, you put off seeing Mum. But that seems to be in character. Doing nothing but pig out on stodge, watch videos, smoke dope and drink beer, you perfect your ‘Keith Marion’ impersonation. Your kids jump on you a bit and Marie-Laure lets you shag her, but you keep everything low-key. God, this is an easy life.

If you let go and become ‘Keith Marion’, go to 204. If you resist and remake yourself, go to 237.

A
s you walk away, I am proud of you. Few can resist a sure thing.

Go back to 1.

It will be different this time.

Y
ou find Mary in charge. James and Hackwill have driven off in the minibus. This disorients you.

‘Warwick is dead,’ you say.

Shearer is in glum shock. The others don’t believe it.

‘Why did they go?’ you ask Mary.

‘You weren’t back. Hackwill demanded to be taken to the village to bring help. James argued but agreed to drive him.’

It’s not like James to give in.

‘What’s this about boots?’

You check Mary’s feet. She still has her Docs on. Bovver boots, they used to be called. Skinheads wore them in the early ’70s, for aggro, for putting the boot in.

‘I can’t get my head round that,’ you say.

‘But Warwick’s dead? How?’

‘I couldn’t tell.’

‘
Warwick?
’ Mary is as fazed by this as you. You want to hold her hand. Are you allies out of bed?

‘Do you have a phone?’ she asks.

‘James does. A mobile. It’s in the bus.’

‘No help, then?’

You shake your head.

* * *

By nightfall, James and Hackwill haven’t come back. The rain gets worse, cranking up from drizzle to downpour, with storm in the offing.

You let the guests into Castle Drac and organise a hot meal. You’ve been left with the glum, no-initiative losers: Shearer doesn’t say anything, Shane never did add much to a group, McKinnell spends most of his time on the bog, Jessup and Sean compete to see who can whine the most.

You realise Hackwill kept his troops in line. Without him, it’s all falling apart. Mary is some help but seems softer than you thought, more uncertain, more vulnerable.

The rain assaults the cottage. There are drips everywhere.

‘Tomorrow,’ you announce, ‘if the rain lets up and James isn’t back, I’ll lead you out of here. It shouldn’t come to that. If James isn’t back himself, he’ll send someone.’

James doesn’t know Warwick is dead. Or that the universe is spitting out surplus boots.

‘Tonight, we just sit tight.’

‘Inside?’ Sean asks, eagerly.

You’re tempted to enforce course discipline and send them out to Colditz in the rain. A river will be running through the sleeping quarters. You let them stay.

Shearer and McKinnell, psychologically and intestinally upset, get your twin beds. You and Mary take the four-poster, which makes Shane look glumly angry and almost excites prurient comment from Jessup. The rest settle in chairs downstairs.

* * *

Mary lights candles by the bed and you make love. Differently. Last night was fucking. Now, the violence is gone, the desperation in check. You draw each wave out, opening yourselves to each other, coaxing not pounding. Again, you have no parallel with the experience since early Chris.

Of course, it occurs to you that you might not survive the next few days. Warwick is dead, stranger things are happening. Mary might be your last love.

She’s got a lock on your heart. It’s not just sex, it’s emotion. This time, you’re not confusing lust and availability with a real connection. You’ve known this woman since she was a little girl, since you were a child. And yet not before now have you reached each other.

You see the monster in Mary Yatman was a desperate fiction, a protective cover. Like the uniform she wore as a policewoman, like the hardness of her body and mind. Inside, she’s confused, reaching, wounded, generous, loving. Just like you.

Lying together, sharing body-warmth, her hair over your face, you try to find a calm centre. The roof rattles, clawed by wind and rain.

* * *

You are woken by the door opening. Someone hangs in the frame, holding himself up by hanging on the jamb. He is wet and dripping.

Mary holds up the candle. It’s James, face dead white, clothes soaked. He pitches forwards, collapsing.

You and Mary get out of bed. You pull on a dressing-gown and kneel by your brother. Mary crouches naked, balanced like an aborigine, and lifts one of James’s eyelids.

You feel his chest. His heart is racing.

‘Let’s get him on the bed,’ Mary says.

You lift him. His arm flops round your shoulder.

‘Get his wet clothes off first,’ Mary says.

She pulls off his boots and socks. You work from the top. James isn’t quite unconscious. He mumbles, wavering on his feet as you help him out of his clothes. When he’s naked, you and Mary towel him down. It seems he’ll never get dry. Then you push him into bed.

You want to ask him many things, but he conks out.

You and Mary sit in the office – the others haven’t been disturbed – over coffee and review the situation.

Outside, the rain is a liquid wind. To go for a walk would be to risk drowning.

James has come back on his own: no Hackwill, no minibus. Something has happened.

Mary is tense but cool. Not so air-headed she doesn’t see how serious this is, but not in a panic either. Good girl. You love her outside bed too. How does she feel about you?

‘Mary, were you supposed to kill Warwick?’

‘No,’ she says, not hesitating to answer. ‘McKinnell. He wants to back out of the Discount Development. The idea was to scare Warwick into line. He has doubts too. But Warwick would have been next. Having people killed gets to be addictive.’

The woman you love has just admitted she was a hired killer. How does that make you feel? Your guts churn. You’re sick at heart. But you surf in a tube of joy.

‘I told myself I’d never do it, though I agreed to. I lay there in bed last night, knowing I could do it. If I’d been in Colditz, it’d have been easier. I’d just have had to wait for McKinnell to go out for a shit and follow him. But you came into the room.’

‘And changed things?’

She doesn’t answer that.

‘Shearer might have killed Warwick,’ she says. ‘They weren’t exactly the Happy Homos. Warwick strayed a lot. This week was supposed to bring them together. I think you and James fucked that up. Good plan, by the way. Or it could have been Shane. Hackwill can count on him to do things I might not, if not as well. He’s still just a thug. Remember he wanted to be the Man From U.N.C.L.E.? Prat.’

‘Any other theories?’

‘Yes. You and James. Hackwill sussed as soon as he saw your brother’s smiling face that the special rate was a come-on. This was all about you getting your own back. He thinks it’s because he took your mum’s house away because James showed him up in a pub. But it’s the copse.’

‘You remember?’

‘I remember everything. You and school custard. I thought my monster was an extreme way of getting what I wanted, but I couldn’t match your custard fit. Hackwill doesn’t like to think back that far. He’s gone beyond bullying children. Now, he demands to be loved for what he does. Jessup might remember.’

‘He was there too. In the copse.’

‘Tell you what, if James killed Warwick – I know it wasn’t you because I was clamped round you at the time – let’s frame Reggie Jessup. If anyone deserves ten years of solid arse-rape at Her Majesty’s pleasure, it’s him.’

Mary’s softer than you thought. But not that soft.

‘It wasn’t James,’ you say. ‘He’d have let me in on it.’

‘Like you let him in on you coming to my room?’

Good point. You imagine James lying there, listening to a sonata of shagging, pissed off at the exclusion, wondering how to crank up the game. Could he have got to the point where murder was the answer? He’s the only one here who’s actually killed anyone before, and he’s got the commendations to prove it. How much easier would it be to ice a Hackwill toady than some panicked Argie conscript? Why Warwick? Opportunity. He was the unlucky sap who got up early to take a leak.

No. It feels wrong.

It’s more likely to have been Robbo himself. You imagine Warwick making a gay pass at the councillor, to piss off his boyfriend, to attach himself to the power source. You see Hackwill repulsed, personally affronted, taking things into his own hands rather than delegating to Shane or Mary.

Or Shearer. Jealous, enraged, murderous. Or Shane, in an uncontrollable burst of homophobia. Or anyone.

Suicide? Act of God? Extra-dimensional boots showering down on Warwick, trampling him to death?

* * *

In the morning, the storm hasn’t let up. You can’t possibly lead six people through it over treacherous ground to the village.

James is in a deep sleep, shivering under a pile of blankets. McKinnell is locked in the bathroom. Sean demands you get him out of this hellhole and Mary satisfyingly slaps him across the face.

‘Well done,’ says Hackwill, barging through the door. ‘Someone should have done that years ago.’

You are as astonished as anyone else that Hackwill has come back. You thought he’d be miles away by now, doing his best not to send you any help.

‘Where’s the minibus?’

‘In a valley, upside-down. Where’s your fucking brother?’

Mary stands by you as you face Hackwill.

‘Bastard hit me with a wrench,’ Hackwill announces to the room, displaying a bruise on his forehead. ‘Then shoved me and the bus off a cliff. But I’m not easily killed. You’re both going to prison for a long time, Marion. I’ll see to that.’

Shane has stood up, awaiting orders.

‘Yatman, secure this bastard.’

Mary doesn’t move.

‘Mary,’ Hackwill says, voice rising in alarm. ‘Do your job.’

‘Fuck right off,’ she replies. ‘I don’t work for you any more.’

‘He’s tried to murder me!’

‘Naughty naughty,’ Mary says.

Hackwill looks betrayed, not to be taken seriously. ‘Bush, hop to it,’ he snaps.

Shane steps forward and Mary punches him in the throat, staggering him backwards.

‘The problem isn’t the alleged attempt on Councillor Hackwill’s life,’ you say, ‘but the actual killing of Tristram Warwick.’

Hackwill doesn’t look surprised but he’s always Mr Poker-Face.

Mary – the only person you know didn’t do it – is with you. Which line of investigation do you pursue? Think about it.

Go to 199.

W
hom or what do you suspect?

If Hackwill, go to 210. If James, go to 211. If Shearer, go to 212. If Shane, go to 213. If Jessup, go to 214. If Sean, go to 224. If McKinnell, go to 225. If suicide, go to 226. If natural or supernatural phenomenon, go to 227.

A
s Columbo says, there’s just one thing more to worry about.

You split the double roll-over jackpot. You took home £6.5 million, but so did someone else. You might have had £13 million, but someone was mimicking your thoughts as they filled in their card. Someone was stealing from your mind.