Life's Lottery (75 page)

Because he’s dead, Shearer never has to answer charges for the murders. You and Mary argue about it for the rest of your lives. You think Shearer killed Warwick and McKinnell; she says Hackwill has got away with it.

As far as you know, Hackwill prospers.

You and Mary live together, but don’t have children.

Something lasts.

And so on.

Y
ou’re back home in Sutton Mallet. The room hasn’t changed. You haven’t fouled up your past.

Your heart thumps.

That was worse than any back-at-school, unprepared-for-an-exam nightmare you’ve ever had.

Ro and the kids come home. They are overwhelmed by how pleased you are to see them, and seem to feel that Daddy has geeked out while they were away. You don’t care.

From now on, you don’t think about the past much. Just the future.

And so on.

F
irst, you check the other bedroom. The four-poster is empty. You have a gut-sick feeling.

You and James spent the whole evening nagging at Shane, and – by extension – Hackwill. Shane was in a sweat about going to jail. He all but confessed the whole deal. Every word sharpened Hackwill.

In the dining-room, you find three bodies. Jessup and Sean stir, sleep interrupted. You check Shane.

‘What the fuck?’ he says.

‘He’s alive,’ you tell James.

‘Hackwill’s bolted,’ James announces.

‘Fucker,’ Shane says.

* * *

The next morning, Mary comes back with the police. Shane is arrested and confesses to the murder of Ben McKinnell. He denies killing Tristram Warwick.

Searching the mountain, the police find Hackwill dead, with a knife in his heart. You wonder how James managed it. Then they find Shearer, half out of his mind. Kay Shearer killed Robert Hackwill. In revenge.

Shane gets twenty years.

You marry Mary. You have two children, Jerry and Jocelyn.

You turn the Compound back into a farm and make a go of it, selling goat’s cheese.

Happy ending?

And so on.

J
ames binds his feet, fixing towels with string. It looks absurd, but no one laughs.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Mary says.

James doesn’t argue. Again, you wonder if Mary was with him the night before last.

‘Keith, hold the fort,’ James says. ‘If we don’t come back, try smoke signals. Jessup is flammable.’

You look at Shane, wondering if you could fight him off.

Mary slips long mittens over her feet.

‘Don’t worry about me,’ she says. ‘I used to be a beat copper. I have indestructible feet.’

James and Mary set out.

* * *

Two days later, the police helicopter arrives. You, Shane and Jessup are air-lifted out. It turns out that Mary made it to the village.

You get her story second-hand from the pilot. She and James found Sean dead, throat cut. James and she separated, hoping to trap the killer – they thought it was Shane and were worried about you – and she got lost.

James is missing. So is Hackwill, who never turned up at the village. Police and emergency services swarm over the mountainside. No trace is ever found of either of them.

You feel half your life has been torn away.

* * *

Your business collapses, of course. In town, you’re not the only one. Without Hackwill, a lot of the local developments are exposed as financial balloons and burst. Even the losses of Sean and McKinnell have ripple effects. The evaporation of Shearer’s Shelves with the death of Kay Shearer puts eighteen people out of work.

Mum elaborately doesn’t blame you. She knows too well that it’s always James who leads you on, gets you in trouble.

Led you on. Got you in trouble. You are sure James is dead.

You think of him and Hackwill like Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, plunging together over a waterfall, bodies lost in some torrent.

Open verdicts are returned.

* * *

Mostly, people assume Hackwill killed McKinnell, Warwick, Shearer and Sean, and that James hunted him down. A minority opinion has it the other way round, with James as the killer of them all.

You don’t know.

You take a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. You can either drink it, or think some more.

If you drink the Jack, go to 278. If you think, go to 291.

T
his is where you get the bastard. On the cliff, years away from the copse, from the Lime Kiln, from your compulsorily purchased home. This is where Robert Hackwill pays.

You insist you be second in the human chain, with Hackwill ahead, and the others – Shane, Jessup, Warwick – behind you.

Half-way up, there’s a shelf. When you and Hackwill are on it, with the others dangling below, you act fast. You shove Hackwill into space and sever the rope. You can claim it was quick thinking, saving the others from being pulled down with him. Hackwill disappears, plunging down along with the still-torrential rain.

It’s too thick for anyone to be sure what they saw.

Hackwill kicks the cliff as he falls, tumbling. He plummets head first, bouncing towards the valley. The rain is so thick you can’t see bottom. You won’t see the bastard hit.

But Hackwill sticks to the cliffside. Something has caught him. His legs are moving.

James, free of Mary’s team, is on the shelf beside you. He has rappelled down.

‘What happened?’ he asks.

‘He fell.’

James holds up the cut end of the rope. ‘Yeah?’

‘He was falling,’ you correct yourself. ‘I had to cut him loose.’

James looks at you, appalled. ‘I can’t believe you did what you’ve done.’

He crouches and leans out as far as he can, looking down.

‘I’m going down after him,’ he says.

‘No,’ you say, not knowing whom you’re afraid for.

If you let James try to rescue Hackwill, go to 272. If you go down yourself, go to 284.

N
ight falls apparently at three in the afternoon. You’re all stuck in Castle Drac with a corpse, glaring at each other, split into hostile camps. You have an alliance with James and a liaison with Mary. The others are enemy, with Jessup and Shane sticking by Hackwill. Shearer is on his own, with neither major faction. And Sean comes on like Switzerland but looks more like Poland. If you all had to agree on someone to sacrifice, Sean would get the vote.

Your frustration builds because you cannot get alone with James to confer. Hackwill has ordered Jessup to mark you both. Whenever it looks as if you’ll snatch some time in the kitchen or outside the cottage to talk, Jessup pops up. You still can’t read James, or understand why he has done what has been done, but you are with him. When he makes his move, you’ll back it up, no matter who gets hurt.

* * *

What you feel for Mary is new and exciting and dazzling, but you can’t let that blot out the link you’ve shared with James all his life, instinctive ever since the copse.

If you’d killed Hackwill then, this wouldn’t be happening. You wonder if you could have done it, a small boy attacking a bigger bully like Bambi battering Godzilla.

* * *

You and James aren’t allowed to sleep in the same room: Hackwill decrees you be split up. Until this came up, you had thought you would be sleeping with Mary.

Now, it’s an issue.

‘This is our place,’ you say. ‘We make the rules.’

‘All that ended with Warwick,’ Hackwill says.

Nobody else protests.

‘I’m going to be in one of those twin beds,’ Hackwill says. ‘And one of you will be in the other, where I can keep an eye on him. Which of you will it be?’

If it’s you, go to 280. If it’s James, go to 293.

Y
ou are arrested and charged with the murders of Benjamin McKinnell, Tristram Warwick, Shane Bush, Sean Rye, Reginald Jessup, Robert Hackwill and James Marion. Assault and reckless endangerment of Mary Yatman and Kay Shearer are attached seven pages into the document. You’re even charged with sexual assault upon Mary Yatman, though her violator either failed to ejaculate or used a condom, so no DNA match is possible.

You have a breakdown and the pre-trial period passes in a drugged blur. Because of this, you never present a coherent defence.

The worst thing is that Mum thinks you killed James.

Though you are present at the trial, which ends with you being found guilty and committed to Broadmoor, you don’t fully understand the case against you until the paperback comes out, with its dramatic reconstruction of your rampage, and subsequent determined double-time trek to the village to establish your alibi.

Iain Scobie, hack author of
Mountaintop Massacre
, interviews the sergeant who first took your statement. He claims to have known you did it when you said Hackwill was a bully at school. In your eyes, he saw a lasting hatred that cut through your pose of shock and grief. He thinks you’re shamming insanity and should be in prison not a secure mental facility.

You find yourself sharing a rec room with Dennis Nilsen and Peter Sutcliffe. They argue over what to watch on television: Nilsen likes nature programmes, Sutcliffe wants the God slot. You don’t care. You resent the fact that good books have been written about both of them, but all you rate is Scobie’s fanciful drivel.

The BBC makes a film,
Mountaintop
, with Paul McGann as you and Warren Clarke as Hackwill. It ‘explains’ the murders with hazy flashbacks to playground tussles and a weirdly homoerotic bit of bullying in the showers. It is trite compared with your memory of the copse.

You hear Kay Shearer has got married (to Victoria Conyer), so you assume his sexual orientation has changed. Mary, who is played by Amanda Donohoe in the TV film, ghost-writes
Survivor’s Account
, backing up Scobie’s conjectural version with memories excavated through hypnosis. Michael Eaton, screenwriter of
Mountaintop
, points out that Mary’s recovered memory includes incidents and lines of dialogue he freely admits to making up ‘for dramatic purposes’.

A few years into the new century, Broadmoor – overcrowded with motiveless madmen, all with fashionable nicknames and book-to-TV-movie atrociographies – becomes known for periodic hellish night riots. The authorities see these as a chance to institute an unofficial death sentence, culling the famous names.

Your turn comes.

As you lie, twitching your last, on the rec room floor, something comes to you. The police combed the whole mountain for evidence. But they never found the boots.

For a moment, it seems as if you know where they went wrong, where the cache of now-perished footwear still nestles, but then the life goes out of you.

Go to 0.

A
s James and Shane walk away, you can’t help noticing how much broader at the shoulders Shane is than James.

The drizzle is clearing. Within a day, this should be over. If they make it to the village.

Hackwill is smug again, in control. You’ll have to watch him carefully over the next twenty-four hours.

The first awkward thing is McKinnell. It seems best to leave him where he is, but that means no one can use the toilet. A day of pissing outside won’t be too much of an ordeal.

Warwick is still out there, with the boots.

You’d like to spend the time alone with Mary, but that wouldn’t be sensible.

Everyone sits around in Castle Drac. Jessup gets up a game of cards, but you and Shearer duck out of it. You try to read an orienteering magazine but can’t concentrate. You keep wondering how far James and Shane have got.

The day crawls by. The sun comes out and shines briefly with wonderful intensity. Then it gets dark.

James and Shane should be on the downslope. The village will be in sight long before they reach it. They’ll have to walk most of the night. Towards the end, they’ll feel as if they’re wearing divers’ boots.

Hackwill is the big winner at cards. No surprises there. Jessup lets him win.

Every time you look at the group round the dinner-table, you think ‘Murderer’ at Hackwill. He has blanked his face completely.

The game winds down.

Rather than get into a face-off, you agree to prepare the evening meal. It would have been your responsibility if the course were continuing.

‘Where’s Kay?’ Sean asks.

You think he went upstairs to lie down. He’s still in shock.

‘He went out,’ Jessup says.

‘What?’ you ask.

‘Hours ago. I thought you knew.’

Hackwill cracks a smile. You aren’t keeping this together.

You leave Mary in charge and take a torch outside. It’s not full night yet and the stars aren’t out. Everything is dark grey-green.

You find Shearer in Colditz, dead. Head at a wrong angle, like Warwick’s.

They were all playing cards. It can’t have been Hackwill.

James could have dumped Shane and hurried back; or the other way round. Why did you think of James first? He’s smart, Shane isn’t.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

A scream from Castle Drac. A woman: Mary.

You begin to run. Then you freeze.

If you run to the cottage, go to 273. If you run away from the cottage, go to 286.

M
ary is right. You are still discovering her, the strength you give each other. She helps you and James through the crisis as your business almost goes under in the burst of appalling publicity. But the notoriety helps in a way. In a sick moment, you think of offering murder weekends at the Compound, site of the Shearer Slayings. That doesn’t come off but you realise some of your clients do find taking their survival course on blood-soaked ground adds something to the experience. It’s sick, but there it is.

Hackwill gets back to his dealings. You follow the story, almost as a hobby. First, Reg Jessup cracks up and is committed to an expensive asylum. That must be a constant worry to Hackwill. What will Jessup do? Will he ever tell a new story? Will anyone listen?

Though the police buy the Shearer story, their investigation into the murders focuses on Warwick’s business interests and, through him, Hackwill’s affairs. Folders are passed on to the Fraud Squad.