Life's Lottery (76 page)

Hackwill is nipped by the occasional charge.

Mary anonymously sends the Avon and Somerset Constabulary a caseful of documents she happened to have smuggled out of Hackwill Properties.

Helen Hackwill leaves her husband, taking little Samantha and baby Colin with her. Hackwill is forced to resign from the council. The charges pile up. Not murder, but everything else.

Hackwill goes to prison. Not the maximum security hellhole he’d rate as a murderer, but still a prison. His political and business allies desert him as quickly as his wife did. After all, it’s not as if anyone
liked
him.

You and Mary marry. You have two children, Jack and Juno.

Things get better.

And so on.

Y
ou’re the best climber, so it’s down to you. Hackwill scrabbles away, panicking. If you don’t reach him, he’ll probably lose his grip and fall into the river. The water will pound him into the centre of the earth.

Your towel-muffled feet feel strange on the rock outcrops. You monkey your way down. James is about twenty feet above and to the left of you, following at his own pace. You can’t see Mary.

It’s not like her to stand and watch.

‘Stay back,’ Hackwill shouts.

‘Bastard,’ you reply.

Hackwill loses his hold and slides a couple of feet, anorak scraping rock. He jams against an outcrop. You reach him. He thumps your leg feebly. You kick him in the face and hurt your swaddled toes. He clings to the ground. The incline is just getting steep. He’s trapped.

If you kick Hackwill again, go to 275. If you help him up, go to 285.

J
ames makes it. He gets down to Hackwill, at the end of the rope you feed him.

What will happen if he gets back, with Hackwill alive?

He signals that Hackwill is alive but hurt – thumb up, but shaking – and starts winding the rope around him. You feel the added weight. You brace yourself.

James starts climbing, hauling Hackwill up. Then James loses his footing. The rope saws your hands.

If you grip the rope, go to 289. If you let go, go to 299.

Y
ou run towards the cottage. Mary is still screaming.

You’ll kill anyone who is hurting her. She’s the woman you love. All these fucking-around years, the Chris era and the Marie-Laure period, were preparation. This is the real one.

* * *

You shoulder right through the door.

Hackwill holds Sean down on the sofa. Jessup stands over them with a knife in his hands, not knowing what to do with it.

Sean is white with fright.

‘Do it, Reg, or you’re out of the gang,’ Hackwill shouts.

Jessup shuts his eyes and stabs. He barely grazes Sean’s chest but the bank manager yells. You haven’t time to get involved. Coldly, you care a lot less about Sean than about Mary.

More screams come from above.

You run upstairs. In the bedroom, Mary is being raped.

You get instamatic flashes. Mary’s wrists cuffed to the bed-posts, her legs scissoring, someone massive covering her. Shane.

Fuck.

James must be dead.

You roar and rush for the bed. You don’t make it. You feel a knife slipping into your back. Hackwill.

You die loving Mary and hating Hackwill.

Go to 0.

Y
ou’d be insane to jeopardise what you’ve got.

In the ’90s, you and Ro have another daughter, Loretta, then adopt Ion, a Romanian orphan. You specialise in negotiations that bring jobs to communities shattered by the gutting of the British mining industry.

You enter parliament in 1992, as MP for Sedgemoor West. In 1997, in the first Blair cabinet, you’re made junior minister for trade. Though fit for survival in the New Labour Party by virtue of your ’80s background and PR skills, you have the feeling Tony keeps you around as a socialist conscience. You consistently oppose alliances with media barons like Murdoch and Leech and argue against information monopolies. Power interests you very little, but you see opportunities to rearrange the country, to unpick the reverses of the last twenty years, to revitalise the hope you believe all men and women should have as a birthright.

In 1992, Phil, your stepfather, puts a £10 bet on you becoming prime minister by 2010 and is given 500:1 odds. He lives to collect his £5,000.

You keep fighting. Surprisingly, you often win.

And so on.

Y
our foot satisfyingly swipes Hackwill’s head. You’ve remembered to point your toes and get some swing into it. His gloved hands open. He slithers down, hovers on the lip of the drop, then disappears into the river.

You stand up in triumph. James shouts something at you.

The wicked witch is dead! It’s over!

A rock thumps against your head. You pitch forward, senses jarred. Your face scrapes across rock as you follow Hackwill, plunging head first. You’re in the air, then in the water.

The icy cold is an all-over electric shock. You are too paralysed to struggle for breath.

Go to 0.

I
t eats at you from inside.

The sainthood of a Belgian.

Numbers on a card make him a martyr, and you…? What is left for you?

You are down below
£3
million, then below
£2
million. Where is it all going?

You have a slight heart attack. You’re treated privately, of course, and offer to pay for a heart transplant.

If it were medically possible, you’d opt for a whole-body transplant. Maybe even a brain-wipe.

You’d like to wake up innocent. And rich.

You’re not so rich any more, though.

Maybe you
can’t
be innocent and rich.

* * *

You’re barely even a millionaire any more. Spiders are scuttling closer.

What you have just isn’t enough, so you start playing the Lottery again.

And so on.

G
o back to any earlier choice.

If all else fails, go back to 1.

* * *

You’ll be here again. You’ve probably been here before.

T
wenty years later, your body gives out. A bottle of Jack a day, topped up with interesting prescription and non-prescription anti-depressants on the market in the new century, slowly assaults your liver and kidneys. Finally, you’re carried away in an epidemic of Beijing flu. You have moments of clarity towards the end but have too much complicated past to put together.

* * *

Thinking about it, you loved your mum and dad, and your brother and sister. And Christina, who married an academic. That’s something.

But you’re sorry.

Go to 0.

Y
ou can’t believe you seriously thought about murder. This whole week is supposed to be punishment, a lesson. What can a dead man learn? If Hackwill died, he’d be out of his misery.

Mary’s team, with James’s help, is way ahead.

Hackwill, slowed down especially by Jessup, fumes and frets. Tonight, he wants to be in the warm.

You certainly aren’t going to try anything with him. You also can’t believe you nearly got into bed with Kay Shearer.

This course is dragging things out of you. Things unthought.

* * *

You see the outcrop shudder as Hackwill grabs it, and know it’ll come free.

Roped to Hackwill are Shane, Warwick, Jessup and you. You try to shout but rain fills your mouth.

James, at the end of Mary’s roped-together team, turns to look.

The outcrop detaches itself from the wet cliff. Hackwill bends back at the waist. The weight of his head pulls him into the air.

If Shane hangs on tight, you’ll be saved. (It’s not your decision. After all this fussing, when a crisis comes your life depends on Shane, on the Man From B.U.N.G.L.E.) Shane panics and makes a grab not for the rock but for Hackwill’s legs.

Warwick calls Shane a fuckhead. Hackwill and Shane fall, dragging Warwick and Jessup away. The weight of all four men snaps the rope round your waist as if with a guillotine blade. You’re dragged away from the face of the rock.

You see a sky full of rain as you fall.

Go to 0.

H
ackwill snores lightly in the other bed. Mary is alone in the next room. The others are downstairs. Only Shane’s a danger and he’s slow. James can handle him easily and have enough left over for Jessup.

It’s down to you.

James has killed for this, cleared your way to Hackwill. You sit up in bed, quietly. You lower bare feet to cold floorboards.

You take your pillow and stand over Hackwill. Asleep, he’s like anyone else. The eyes you remember from the copse are closed. You hold your pillow over his face.

Can you do this?

If you can, go to 283. If you can’t, go to 295.

C
hrist, it’s cold. Being rich doesn’t keep you warm. No matter how many layers you buy, the cold still gets in, needles of ice scything through every seam, carving into you.

And, God, but Tibet – Nepal? Wherever – is shit. Corruption and poverty and Chinese uniforms, and fucking monks, leeching off everyone. You’ve spent quarter of a million on this trip (mostly in bribes) and you’re still miserable.

The helicopter can’t land near Thierry’s perch, so you have to crawl up the lower slopes of some mountain with a serial number rather than an English name, roped to a gang of cut-throat guides. Why couldn’t the Belgian pick a cave in Snowdonia?

You fight the rock, the snow, the ice, the smell, the hate. Inch by inch, you climb. The air gets thin. The rush of wind is eternal in your ears.

* * *

It’s not what you’ve imagined. The hermit hole is not really a cave but a hut-sized house built against the slope. Its roof is a bright orange plastic sheet. Not your idea of spiritual.

Lethem is outside, pottering. At home doing the garden. He must grow his own vegetables.

You tell the head guide – you can’t but think of him as a Sherpa – to stay back, and walk across stony ground, wind carving your face even through the fur mask and goggles. You are more tired than you ever have been, but the thinness of the air is giving you a high, almost a rush.

Lethem glances up. Swaddled in furs, he could be a bloody yeti.

You have an ice-axe in one hand, in case you want to kill him.

You look at Lethem. His face is exposed, blue at the lips a bit, weathered on the cheekbones.

You take off your goggles.

If you see an enemy, go to 292. If you see a brother, go to 300.

‘
I
don’t think that’s a good idea,’ you say. ‘Either we all go or we all stay. Someone will come eventually. We’ll be missed.’

‘So you’ll have time to kill us all,’ Hackwill says.

‘No,’ says Shearer. ‘You’re the one Tris and Ben were walking out on. You’re the one who needed to keep them in line. You did it. Or you had her do it.’ He nods at Mary.

‘Kay, you have my word –’

‘As what? District councillor? Chairman of the Planning Committee? Corrupt bastard? Murdering cunt?’ Shearer is on the point of collapse.

Hackwill looks round the room. ‘All right,’ he says, without conviction, just to shut Shearer up, ‘I did it. I fucking killed wimpo Warwick and shit-guts McKinnell and I drove myself into a gorge while leaving James here safe by the road. I’m guilty of every bloody thing you think I am. Happy?’

Shearer calms. You relax a little. It seemed for a while that Shearer and Hackwill would go for each other.

Hackwill takes his knife out of his coat pocket and drives it to the hilt into Sean’s eye. The bank manager’s face spurts blood and he stiffens against the wall.

‘Now
that
,’ Hackwill says, ‘I admit to.’

Everyone alive in the room is electrified. Hackwill pulls his knife out of Sean’s skull as if it were a slightly recalcitrant cork. He stabs Shearer in the heart.

‘And
that
too. I did that.’

Shearer looks more surprised than dead.

‘Shane, take Mary,’ Hackwill snaps. ‘She’s the only dangerous one.’

Shane, brain on a five-second delay, moves. But Mary is fast. She kicks him in the groin, doubling him over, gets her own knife at his throat, cutting swiftly.

Hackwill grabs Mary by the hair and holds his blade to her neck. He makes her drop her knife.

Shane kicks on the floor.

You are frozen. You haven’t done anything.

Jessup is terrified.

‘Reg, time to join the homicide club,’ Hackwill announces.

Reg blubbers.

‘Think about it. If you don’t, you’re a witness.’

Hackwill holds Mary’s head close to his. Her face impassive, she relaxes. The blade smears blood and optic gunk on her neck.

‘Why should I care about her?’ you ask, trembling.

‘Because you’re not a murderer, you idiot,’ Hackwill says. ‘If you were, you’d never have let it get this far. Your brother, however… Reg, do James. Now.’

Jessup rushes across the room. He shuts his eyes and sticks his knife into James’s stomach. James yowls in agony and sinks to the floor, hands round the knife-hilt, face twisted.

‘That’s not a fatal wound,’ Hackwill comments. ‘Cut his neck open or something.’

James pulls the knife out and drops it. He is doubled up, lap full of blood.

You can’t do anything, or Mary will die. She’ll probably die anyway – Hackwill must plan for you both to die – but every second gives you another chance.

James is going. Mary’s still here. Prioritise.

Jessup picks up his knife with distaste. It’s squirmy with blood.

‘The neck,’ Hackwill says.

With an animal cry, Jessup stabs and slashes at James’s head. Blood arcs. James raises his hands from his stomach but is whipped this way and that by the blows.

‘That’s enough,’ Hackwill says.

Jessup is exhausted, drained, bloody and insane.