I Want Him Dead

by Anthony Masters

  The redundancy had been traumatic and certainly unexpected. Paul had been a senior partner at Wyatt, part of the fabric of the place. Then he wasn’t, and the shock of losing so much almost broke him, as he was to later break her.

  At first Paul had mooched listlessly around the house, waiting for the telephone, as if there had been some mistake and soon he would receive an apologetic call reinstating him. The phone certainly rang, but only for her, and the more this occurred the more despondent he became.

  Eventually he began to go out to mysterious meetings he wouldn’t discuss, which concluded with the creation of Cafferty Steele — an event that was as great a shock to Anne as the redundancy from Wyatt had been for Paul. Only later did she begin to understand about Rachel Lancaster. When she had finally forced him to admit the true position after her visit to the barge, she went to meet her fourteen-year-old son Peter on his way home from school.

  “Dad’s leaving.” Anne had been completely sober, telling him straight away, without procrastinating, and then watching the shock spread over his face.

  He was built like Paul — stocky and slightly overweight, sporty enough to be a cricketer, too heavy for a footballer — and his personality was slightly ponderous, rather over-earnest. She knew that Peter had been as incredulous as she had.

  “When?” he had asked flatly.

  “Now.”

  “Who’s he going to?”

  “Rachel Lancaster.”

  “Doesn’t he want you any longer?”

  “No.”

  “What about me?” he had pleaded, with all the bleak selfishness of a child.

  “He’ll always want you. Just in the same way,” she had said over-confidently.

  “But it can’t be the same way,” he had replied.

  She had tried to reassure him but had failed miserably. He sniffed, finding the idea unbelievable as well as unlikely.

  “Don’t worry. Things will work out.” Anne winced, realizing how platitudinous she must have sounded.

  “Why’s he doing this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because of the redundancy?”

  “It may have played some part,” she had told her son hesitantly.

  “You mean he felt he was no good any more?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And this Rachel made him feel better?” Peter’s voice had been thick with emotion.

  “Yes.”

  “How could he have got fed up with you, Mum?” he had said with sudden aggression.

  “We’ve been together a long time,” she had told him. “Over twenty-five years.”

  “So it’s all worn out,” he had said memorably.

  “I didn’t think it was.” She had put an arm round his shoulders, choking back her tears. Her hatred for Paul had hardened at that moment.

  As she waited impatiently at the pedestrian lights for a group of students laden with musical instruments to cross the road, Anne recognized that the fury inside her had been a safety valve; its physical force drove her on, making the days possible. She had lain awake at night for so long, unable to sleep, feeling her rage simmer, and then begin to increase, focusing on each small, petty and inconsequential incident that had occurred between them. Now she had driven herself to the brink.

  To want Paul dead in her ravaged mind’s eye was one thing, but to fantasize to Eamonn Coyd in this melodramatic way was a horrifying example of the levels of delusion she had sunk to over the last few months. Her father had died of natural causes. Her love-turned-hate hadn’t killed him. Anne felt devastated that with love turning into hate for a second time she should have resorted to such a plan of action. No wonder Gerald Batt sounded so hesitantly concerned, unsure about her judgement. Directly she had weathered Peter’s open day she would ring Coyd and tell him she had been joking. A journalistic ploy, perhaps, for Anne knew she had to think up some kind of credible explanation.

  But another part of her wondered why she hadn’t pulled up at the phone box she had just passed — and there was another, on the other side of the street. Why was she driving on? Could she have underestimated Coyd? Was he even now in touch with some shadowy man of violence? Some professional assassin? Yet she still didn’t stop.

  When her father moved out to live so briefly with Monica Custow, the art historian, he suffered a stroke from which he never recovered. He had lived on for another six months in a wheelchair, his face distorted in a downward rictus, but she had never forgiven him. A just punishment, she had thought at the time, bleeding inside for the loss of the man who had meant so much to her for so long.

  Outwardly, Anne’s mother had taken her husband’s departure — and subsequent stroke — in her stride, her busy social life with her two older daughters apparently unimpaired. Anne, however, found herself consumed with such despair that she had been unable to communicate with any of them. Even now the memory of her father’s desertion and her mother’s uncomplaining acceptance was a source of deep, inner misery.

  As Anne tried to find a parking place near the school, she wondered how long she had been dependent on alcohol. She had first discovered it to be confidence-building when she was a lackey on the editorial desk of the regional newspaper and it boosted her still further when she began to specialize in civil liberties. In those days Anne had seen herself as a blunt, awkward, schoolgirl, but she had later wondered whether this had given her a certain cachet — a stubborn seeker after the truth with a lock of hair over her eyes, a courageous true Brit who would leave no stone unturned in her quest for justice in the convoluted world of human rights.

  Anne had investigated a Bengali sweatshop in Kilburn, the National Party in Hackney, police relations with the West Indian community in Brixton, the formation of a group of vigilantes on an estate in south London and the refusal of a west London school to allow a Sikh girl to observe her religion. Her work had become increasingly respected and commissions flooded in, mainly from Gerald Batt.

  Recently, determined not to give Paul the satisfaction of destroying her completely, she had been casting round for a new piece for The Guardian. Eamonn Coyd had been recommended as an interviewee by a social-worker acquaintance whose description rang derisively in Anne’s head: “A psycho who likes to talk and who wouldn’t hurt a fly, despite the way he looks”. Had she made her insane request to this man because of his ineffectiveness, knowing he could never carry it out?

  The line of parked cars seemed interminable, and Anne decided to drive round the block and try for a space near the front of the building. Firmly pushing away her aberration which she still knew she should instantly put right, her thoughts turned to the contrast between Peter and Rachel Lancaster’s son, Ben, who was a year older and who did all the right things, a team player, a winner, tipped for this and that, outshining Peter in every possible way. Paul had formed a careful, politically correct stepfather/stepson relationship with him, “horsing” about — lumbering in Paul’s case — a big bear making clumsy play with a talented cub, allowable in the getting-to-know-you syndrome, behaviour that was “appropriate” but perhaps a little challenging.

  But she knew that she was only putting off going to the telephone box.

  Anne got out of the car and hurried towards the school, nodding to acquaintances, feeling a little stereotypical in her Monsoon dress and ultra high heels. That was what Peter would expect, though. His mother in her own school uniform.

  “Looking forward to the urn tea?” asked Penelope Davidson, coming up behind Anne, her face lit by the hard warmth of cynicism.

  “Well, I’m more nostalgic for those little finger-sandwiches — smeared, just smeared, with bloater paste,” she replied, switching with relief into lighter mode and rather pleased that, in the circumstances, she was able to be at least faintly witty.

  “I’d like to kill Gavin,” Penelope rattled on in her too-fast voice, as if she didn’t want a moment of thought or expectation to surface. “He’s gone off and left me to face the bun fight. Seems he’s go
t to be in court. Except I know he hasn’t.”

  Her performance was too bright, but Anne smiled and took her arm. “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll be your escort.”

  “Thanks. I don’t think I can face Mr Brenner after Jack was so rude to him. Of course he’s suffering from little-man syndrome. Honestly — I’d like to kill Gavin.”

  The words repeated themselves in Anne’s mind mockingly and embarrassment suffused her. An alcoholic breakdown was acceptable, but hysterical negotiations with a petty crook were beyond belief. They passed a telephone box near the school gates and Anne almost darted inside, until she realized that Eamonn Coyd’s telephone number was in her desk diary at home. Well, he can wait, she thought. He wasn’t going to do anything, was he? It was all a joke. A joke in poor taste. “Come on, Anne. We can do it together,” said her father.

  That afternoon, Eamonn Coyd met his brother Joe in a small and scruffy park on the outskirts of Richmond and they strolled around an empty ornamental lake in which a mountain of rubbish was growing.

  Joe was still shaky from McMarn’s visit, but he had as usual been a good enough actor not to give anything away to Carla. His performance, however, had been greatly assisted by the fact that he and Carla had an unspoken bargain never to discuss any of his “business activities”. God knows how he had got away with it, though, he thought; he had even blamed Timothy for the mess on the floor.

  “The Candy Man won’t let you go,” Eamonn advised his brother, making an attempt to set the mood for his proposition. “Whatever protection you give him.”

  “I don’t have a choice, do I?” Joe was irritable, knowing that his life was running out of control again, for the first time in over a year.

  “You’re not telling Carla?”

  “You know I’m not.”

  Because of Mam, Joe had always wanted to protect Eamonn, make it up to him, but he had never succeeded. Now Freda had taken over the role he was grateful, although he was not optimistic about the future. No doubt Eamonn would soon steal something from her or they would fall out and he would be back on the streets, roving haphazardly from hostel to hostel until petty crime took him back into prison once again.

  “You’ve been briefed?”

  “I went for a drive with that bald-headed bastard Ryland last night. Now I know what I’ve got to do.”

  “Did he give you a gun?”

  Joe nodded.

  “McMarn’s filth.”

  This winter they had sometimes walked here in the park, catching a glimpse of the river in the tea-time light, the darkness creeping over the grass at four. The old caravan had been parked under the bridge for many years, and they invariably stopped for a cup of tea, a no man’s land in their carefully separate lives.

  “You’re no hit-man,” Eamonn told him. “You should have gone over the water. Put down new roots.”

  “There’s no point in going over that.”

  There was a long pause, but it made neither of them uncomfortable for the two brothers were often silent in each other’s company. They shared an intuition for each other’s thoughts.

  “I want to help you,” said Eamonn.

  Joe nodded, humouring him.

  “There’s this Anne Lucas, the journalist who’s been interviewing me about being banged up.” He knew he was speaking too quickly and Eamonn tried to calm down, to be more convincing.

  “Well?”

  “Her old man’s got a bit of the mid-life and fucked off with this woman. Lucas wants him dead.”

  Joe laughed derisively. “You can’t be serious.”

  “It could be a way out for you,” said Eamonn.

  “How?”

  “She inherits his money. There’s a lot of it.”

  Joe glanced at Eamonn impatiently. “What have you got yourself into? This isn’t your style.”

  “I thought it might be yours. Ten now. Twenty on completion. That could just be a beginning. Think about it.”

  Eamonn went over to the caravan and brought back a couple of strong teas to find Joe staring out across the darkening park.

  “Do you know what they said they’d do to Tim?”

  “You told me.”

  “They meant it.”

  “This Lucas woman. She isn’t a nutter.”

  “What is she, then?”

  “She’s a drunk.”

  “What did I tell you?” Joe was suddenly angry. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing wasting my time like this.”

  “You know what McMarn is.”

  “Piss off.”

  “Remember Nash? Ray Nash?” Eamonn tried another tack. “He’s got a motor business in Australia. Might need a mechanic. All you’d need would be a work permit. And the money.”

  When they had finished their tea, Joe and Eamonn strolled slowly round the lake, a group of teenagers passing them, trading insults as the light faded.

  After the open day was finished Anne and Penelope went straight to a pub in Wimbledon village as a reward for the rigours they had suffered in the interests of their sons’ education.

  The afternoon had predictably consisted of urn tea and sandwiches, displays of work, lab experiments, a video of sporting prowess, followed by a consultation with Peter’s housemaster who told Anne that her son had been off form but he could understand why. The headmaster’s final homily (“Youth will lead us into hope”), had led naturally into a hearty rendition of the school song. The whole affair had been tedious to a degree and had required much tolerance.

  Anne and Penelope had always been wary of each other and they had never gone to get determinedly drunk together before; now they both felt a mixture of relief and anxiety and by the third whisky confession time was fast approaching.

  Penelope had two children, Jack and Helen. She expressed dissatisfaction with them both. “It’s like a ritual death dance, with the children as spiritual vampires. The only difference is that Jack’s fangs are more likely to be sunk into my throat and Helen’s into Gavin’s, but I definitely get the worst of it. I’m home all day and in the holidays the little bastards step up the torture. Since Gavin took up golf he’s got it made, and I know he stays longer in chambers in the evenings than he needs.” Penelope paused, breathless after her tirade. “Sometimes I wonder if he’s got a bit on the side.”

  “Has he?” asked Anne curiously. She needed to be drunk again now. Needed to blot out what she had said to Eamonn Coyd, although she would rectify the situation directly she returned home. So why was she delaying returning home? Coyd could be up to anything.

  “Not at the chambers, anyway. Everyone knows Beth Duggan’s a dyke and that cow-faced Tina Bradley’s got an invalid mother and a no-touch policy. Of course, you know Gavin had an affair last year, just a fling at that conference. He had a conscience about it and ran straight home to tell mummy-wife he’d fucked Joanna Tallis. And do you know — do you know what I said —” Penelope began to splutter. “I let the bastard off.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “There were two reasons.” Penelope’s voice was a little unsteady now and she sounded defensive, as if justifying herself. “He hadn’t done it before — and the thought of them together turned me on. How about that?”

  “It’s understandable.” Anne suppressed a desire to laugh.

  “What about you?” asked Penelope. Then she paused uncertainly. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  “I will if you get me another whisky.” Anne watched her walk to the bar. Penelope was still attractive, she thought. Attractive but battered. The skin on her face was stretched hard and shiny and the flesh on her neck had slightly withered. Was that why Gavin had had his fling? Was sex that important? She and Paul had once been companions — not chums, but real friends, able to travel for days without getting bored or silent. In fact the travels had continued to hold up, even when the domestic side had begun to flatten out. Yet he’d had the crass insensitivity to take Rachel to France and, worse still, down to Spindrift.

 
; “You OK?” Penelope returned, placing the large whiskies on the table unsteadily. “I’m sorry I started all this.”

  But Anne knew she wasn’t. “It’s OK. I — I feel much the same. When Paul and I split up I just went down.”

  “And Peter? How did he take it?”

  “Censoriously.”

  “Of both of you?”

  “He doesn’t have much of a relationship with Paul. Peter doesn’t exactly take it out on me — it’s more subtle than that — but I know he thinks I haven’t run the course, gone the extra mile. He disapproves, but that’s only because he feels betrayed. By me, as well.”

  “Do you think Paul will ever come back?”

  Anne took a long draught of her whisky. “He might try.”

  “But you wouldn’t have him —”

  Immediately Anne knew she was on dangerous ground, but the alcohol made her carry on, despite the knowledge that she was going to regret what she said afterwards. “I’ve lost all respect for Paul — as well as for myself. I feel — I feel I really loathe him — or loathe what he’s become, and he’s like a stranger to me now. My worst nightmare is being in bed with him, having sex. I feel this revulsion — this rage — I can’t really explain it. It’s happened to me before in a completely different way. My father left us. We were very close.” She came to a halt, conscious that she was saying too much, that she was going to regret all this and very soon. Then she plunged recklessly on. “It’s as if I can’t bear to be in the same world as he is and while he exists — I’m nothing.” What in God’s name was she saying? Anne couldn’t believe that it had all come flooding out.