Life's Lottery (69 page)

‘Get going,’ James says.

You start at a run.

* * *

During your long hike, you think of James arranging things for the police. Your story is that you left, spent a day getting lost, and continued to the village. James will sort out the rest of it.

What will he have to do? Will he have to kill anyone else? Some deserve it. You remember Mary Yatman at your old house, turfing out the squatters and trashing the place. Can James kill a woman? Could you? You’ve killed someone now. The next time might be easier. That frightens you.

* * *

As cold rain lashes you and you come to hate the land you’re crawling over, you wonder whether you have defied God and are being punished for it. Your fingers and toes have no feeling. You are shivering, sobbing and babbling. Branches batter you. The ground repeatedly trips you up. Your eyes are blurry and you see only ghosts all around.

You must be covered in blood. Not all of it is yours.

It’s over, you think. Whatever began in the copse is finished. This hell is just a protraction of it. You’ll escape only if you face the consequences, if you tell the truth.

Up ahead, you see lights; the village. Rain tears at your face.

Confession would ease the pain.

You stagger into the village. You know where the police station is. You collapse outside and are carried in. The warmth lulls you. Uniformed men are all around. You have to say something before you pass out.

If you confess, go to 222. If you just blank out, go to 235.

‘
B
en McKinnell’s dead,’ Mary says. ‘Stabbed in the heart.’

‘She probably did it herself,’ says Jessup.

Mary backhands him, slamming him into his seat.

‘Fetch the other Marion bastard,’ Hackwill orders Shane. ‘It’s time this was sorted out.’

Shane goes upstairs, and comes back dragging James, hauled out of sleep and way behind the game.

‘Now,’ Hackwill demands, ‘who’s a fucking murderer then?’

‘Good question,’ you say. ‘Perhaps you’d like to answer first.’

Go on.

Y
ou dress quickly and take your knife out from under your pillow.

You haven’t time to be afraid.

The cottage has two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, two rooms and a kitchen down. You left Shane, Sean and Jessup in the dining-room, but the talk comes from the other room, which you use as an office.

On the landing, you pause outside the other bedroom. You don’t hear anything, then catch just the faintest moan. Mary should still be asleep in there. It occurs to you that she may not be alone.

Warwick and Shearer might have prompted someone else to take a chance on Mary. Scary as the prospect is, it certainly occurs to you. Thinking on, you hope James
is
with Mary, or else he’s in real trouble.

You go downstairs quietly. Your office door is slightly open. Two men talk in low, breathy voices. Static crackles. That gives it away. You step into the room and turn on the light. Sean turns, startled. The talking fades, in crackles, into the unmistakable sounds of love-making.

‘Keith,’ Sean blurts, ashamed and indignant.

‘Very clever,’ you comment.

Sean has found your surveillance system. He’s listening to Warwick and Shearer.

One of them gasps and sighs. You’ve heard women sound like that.

‘I was playing detective,’ Sean explains.

One of the lovers is vocal, a ‘fuck me, fuck me harder’ screamer, a ‘deeper, faster,
now
’ grunter. You think it’s Warwick.

‘I thought they might talk about us.’

‘Yes, Sean, of course you did.’

He is embarrassed. ‘I’ll switch it off.’

He reaches for the intercom board. The loud lover’s cry rises to a peak and chokes off. It doesn’t sound like sex.

‘You!’ shouts Warwick or Shearer. Then a scream. Pain, panic.

You run out of the front door, straight into a wall of horizontal rain that soaks and blinds you. Colditz, thirty feet away, might as well be across an Arctic waste. Your eyes are full of water. You can’t see anything.

You take a few steps. Someone is moving near the pens. You aim your torch, but the beam lights only driving water. You struggle on.

Something barrels into you from the side, staggering you. Your torch falls nose-first into mud. You see black legs scissoring round your own. You trip and fall, heavily.

Sean shouts into the rain. Good God, your life depends on Captain Useless!

The person who has knocked you over stands over you, a sexless shadow. Sean is still shouting. The edge of a long coat trails wetly across your face.

If you grab the coat, go to 234. If you lie prone, go to 247.

‘
C
ouncillor Hackwill’s dead,’ you say. ‘I killed him.’

Sleep enfolds you. You can keep James out of it. You’ll take the consequences.

* * *

For a while, it seems you can pull it off. The trick is not to give details about Jessup, claiming you went into a frenzy after attacking Hackwill.

The trouble is that James moved the bodies. You claim to have killed Hackwill and Jessup by the shepherd’s hut and left them. James has tossed them off the mountain, to shatter on rocks five hundred feet below.

* * *

You and James are charged. In James’s otherwise accurate statement, he claims to have killed Hackwill without you. The police keep asking about McKinnell. You keep saying it wasn’t you or James.

‘It’s a bit thick, isn’t it?’ says the sergeant. ‘A group of ten people, with three murderers?’

All sorts of questions are never answered.

* * *

You and James get twenty years apiece. In jail, you both get a lot of fan mail. Some is from local people who knew Hackwill for a bastard, but a lot is from young women who think the killer brothers are sexy. Or youths who think you’re well kewl. It’s a sick world, you think.

You’re with other dangerous prisoners. Not madmen, hard criminals. You have even harder guards. There’s no brutality, just deadening fascist control, a sameness of days that dribbles away into a sameness of years. Legislation passes and you’re dosed on anti-aggression drugs. Your mind dies, wrapped in cotton wool.

* * *

When you get out, you’re fifty. The world you enter is the future, the middle of the twenty-first century. It’s not like
Thunderbirds
or
Blade Runner
. It’s like being a child again, not knowing nine out of ten things adults take for granted.

You see James for the first time since your mother’s funeral in 2005. He seems older than you, having had a harder time inside.

A surprising number of people you know are dead. It’s not an easy century. There is nothing for you in this new world. Nothing.

And so on.

A
t the evening meal, you drink half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. You’re indefinably out of sorts. You feel betrayed by James and Mary; by your brother because he has formed a liaison with one of the victims, by Mary because you feel you passed up a chance with her. Yes, you admit you can’t have it both ways.

The losers, exhausted and battered after the assault course, grumble softly. You sense they are bonding together in hatred of you.

With James and Mary split off, you’re taking the full force of it.

Outside, it’s storming up a swine.

* * *

You lie there half cut, listening to the sonata of shagging from next door.

‘Fuck it,’ you think.

Kay Shearer lies in the next bed. You only live once. You should at least find out what it’s like. You get out of your bed and go over to the twin.

‘You’re drunk,’ Shearer says.

In the dark, his face looks womanish. He could almost be Chris.

‘Lucky for you,’ you say.

‘I’ve come here to patch things up with Tris.’

‘Warwick bangs botty for Britain,’ you say. ‘He’s had half the youth-experience lads in Sedgwater.’

You sit on the bed and touch Shearer’s face. You feel tears.

‘You’re right,’ he says.

‘Deeper… faster…
yes
!’ You giggle at the sound effects.

‘Fancy a fuck?’ Shearer asks. ‘I can’t take much more of that’ – a nod to the wall – ‘without at least tossing off.’

You neither, you think.

You find your hand is in Shearer’s soft hair.

If you want to go through with this, go to 248. If you back off, go to 261.

‘
S
ean, you cringing bastard,’ you snarl, ‘why did you kill Warwick? Was he digging too deep into your shenanigans at the bank? Dad always said you were a born till-dipper.’

You lean over Sean, hammering him with questions. ‘Answer me, shitface!’

You slap him. He starts blubbing like a kid, protesting his innocence.

Could this weakling kill? Maybe weakness makes murderers, not strength.

(You used to cry a lot, as a child. Remember? Kids like Shane and Robert would pick on you until you threw a Mental fit. How does it feel, growing up to be like them?)

‘I didn’t do it,’ Sean whines.

‘Stop it,’ says Mary, softly. ‘He’s broken.’

‘I didn’t want Tris dead. I’d have voted with him and Ben. I wanted to get us out of the mess.’

You dart a look at Hackwill, who is coldly angry.

‘Mary,’ you say, ‘fetch McKinnell.’

Sean is pathetically grateful. ‘That’s a fine idea,’ he says, through snot and tears. ‘Ben will back me up.’

Mary goes upstairs.

‘So you, Warwick and McKinnell wanted out of a deal? A Hackwill deal, perhaps? An interesting Development?’

‘That’s enough,’ Hackwill says.

Mary comes downstairs.

‘McKinnell’s dead,’ she says. ‘Stabbed in the heart.’

Go to 230.

‘
L
et’s get McKinnell down here,’ you say. ‘His trots have been going on too long. I think he’s faking, covering something up.’

‘Nonsense,’ blurts Sean. ‘He’s been crapping walrus turds.’

‘Get him anyway.’

You send Mary upstairs. She comes back down alone. She asks you to come upstairs.

There’s no lock on the bathroom door. McKinnell sits, trousers up, on the shut toilet. He is slumped, a gouge-wound in his chest. He’s dead.

You look at Mary.

‘It wasn’t me,’ she says. ‘I’m off the payroll.’

You look at McKinnell.

‘Whoever actually did it,’ Mary says, ‘I guarantee Hackwill paid for it.’

‘We’re agreed McKinnell is out of the running for Warwick.’

‘It was a real long shot.’

‘You’re right.’

‘Let’s go downstairs and put the screws on.’

‘Are you sure you want to go through with this?’ you ask.

‘I hate not knowing answers,’ she says.

Go to 230.

‘
W
hat was Warwick’s mental state?’ you ask, mainly addressing Kay Shearer but including the others. ‘Was he depressed?’

‘He wouldn’t have killed himself,’ Shearer says. ‘No matter what.’

‘There was a matter?’

‘They’ve been quarrelling since we set out,’ Sean says, eager to get someone in trouble, even a dead man. ‘Not outright rows, just nasty looks and bitten-off bits of bitchy dialogue. Typical gays.’

‘So all you breeders have perfect relationships,’ Shearer sneers. ‘Rowena – yes, your wife, Sean – said she’d fuck me if I were interested. You’re too wrapped up in this Discount Development scam to notice.’

‘Enough,’ says Hackwill, prematurely ending an interesting avenue of argument.

‘Why were you arguing?’ you ask Shearer.

‘Warwick couldn’t keep it in his trousers,’ Hackwill said. ‘A menace to any boy in the office.’

‘It wasn’t that,’ Shearer says. ‘It was the same thing as with Rowena and Sean. Tris was in too deep with the fucking Discount Development. Finally, I thought, he was seeing you, Robert, for the crooked shit you are and was going to pull out entirely. But you had Jessup working on him, mean little blackmail stunts: this boy would go to the police, that polaroid would be sent to me. It was only yesterday he’d decided –’

‘You decided for him, more like,’ says Jessup.

‘– to get out. He knew McKinnell was pulling out and he was going to back him up. Our argument, such as it was, was over. It was only then that he died. Not, Keith, much of a suicide scenario.’

‘Let’s get McKinnell down here to confirm this,’ you say.

‘That’s going to be difficult,’ Mary says.

She has slipped upstairs and come back down.

‘Ben McKinnell’s dead. And unless he stabbed himself in the heart and flushed the knife down the toilet, he didn’t commit suicide.’

Go to 230.

‘
Y
ou think one of us is a murderer?’ Sean asks. ‘That’s insane.’

‘It’s crazier than that,’ you say.

‘The boots,’ Shearer says. ‘My boots.’

‘I have no explanation,’ you say. ‘But it can’t be an elaborate hoax. I mean, it would be so hard to stage. My boots – the duplicates, I mean – have a scratch on them I got tripping on the boot-scraper just before getting into the minibus to come here. Even if someone went to the trouble of getting matches for all our footwear, they’d never have got that. I think the boots are what they call an “apport”, objects that appear out of thin air.’

‘Supernatural objects?’ Mary asks.

‘Yes,’ you say, reluctantly.

There is a general protest.

‘You think Tris was killed by this apport?’ Shearer demands.

‘I didn’t say that.’ But it’s what you think. A literal act of God. Or of some other extra-human entity or force.

‘What’s this nonsense?’ Hackwill asks.

Jessup explains about the boots.

‘And who saw this fabulous apport?’ Hackwill asks.

Shane timidly puts up his hand.

‘You’re telling me my boots have a
doppelgänger
?’

‘Everyone’s have, Councillor,’ you say, ‘except McKinnell’s.’

‘And why wasn’t McKinnell included in this cosmic largesse?’