by James Goss
a) Too easy (well, actually, I can’t drive).
b) In danger of making him a figure of sympathy.
I needed Fast Eddy out of the way and in a way that exposed him for the fraud he was.
I had to come up with a way that didn’t involve running thirteen miles through mud.
TURNED OUT, MUDDY Hell needed volunteer Mud Marshalls, whose job it was to stand along the course, looking after the various obstacles and challenges and manning the hoses. They really needed marshalls as these were unpaid positions, normally taken by friends of those competing. And I was Fast Eddy’s friend. He just didn’t know it.
Come the day, I didn’t even need to bother with a disguise. It was raining, bitterly raining, and we were all issued with cagoules with hoods that condomed our faces. I stood by my little patch of course and waited.
The runners were sent off in little groups. I’d finally found a use for RunKeeper. I could use all the data from Fast Eddy’s endless feed of practice runs and last week’s obstacle course try-outs—called the ‘Dry Run’ because they’d not created the mud or baited any of the traps. I could make a reasonable guess of how long it would take Eddy to get round the course. I was helped by the groups themselves being staggered, with runners being set off at one-minute intervals. I should have a clear field. And the rain itself meant that there should few spectators. People pretend interest in their friends running through fields. They may even turn up to support them. But not if it’s chucking it down—then cars tend to break down, or the kids play up, or alarms get slept through. You know the drill. It’s far easier to just like the photos when they turn up on Facebook. And they will. Admit it, you’ve done it yourself plenty of times.
I stood by the course and I waited. Despite the waterproofs, I was soaked through. Twitter told me that Fast Eddy had just posted ‘and were off!!!’ so I calculated how long I had to wait and how bad the resulting head cold would be.
My first runner came past. This meant there would be five minutes until Fast Eddy.
“Excuse me?”
I turned. There were two hikers there.
“Has Eddy been through?” One of them waved a flag.
Oh, God. Spectators.
I thought quickly. “Er... which one is he?”
“He’s wearing a t-shirt with Fast Eddy on. He’s doing it for a friend of ours. Sandwich?”
They produced a tupperware box of sandwiches. I guess that would be what you’d expect from the Venn diagram overlap of ‘Friends of Danielle’ and ‘People Who Would Turn Up In This Weather.’ I had to move them on and quickly.
“I’m Brian,” said one of them, inevitably.
“I’m Suze,” said the other. Christ, why do all the dull people have to introduce themselves to everyone?
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” said Brian. He was wearing a bandana.
“I wish I was doing this,” said Suze. The henna was running in her hair.
They both nodded and vowed to do it soon. They never would.
They stood and watched, the damp air filling just a little with the pot pourri of cheese and pickle.
“Fast Eddy’s brilliant, isn’t he?” said Brian.
“We follow everything he does on Twitter. Do you?”
I shrugged and checked my watch. He was due here in two minutes.
“Hey,” I said tapping the canister that fuelled the ice-water hose. “Can you give me a hand here? The pressure’s a bit low, and we don’t want your friend to miss his dose of cold water.”
“No, we wouldn’t want that,” they both agreed, doing the odd little laugh of people who feel they should find something funny but don’t. I asked if they wouldn’t mind changing the cylinder for me while I ran a safety check on the mud jump. In reality, they were becoming unwitting accessories to murder, because the hose was no longer quite what it appeared to be.
“Lovely,” I said. “I’ll just go and check the jump. Health and safety. You know.” I rolled my eyes. They rolled their eyes.
While Brian and Suze busied themselves with the cylinder, I ran over to the vault. It was, in reality, a fairly simple wooden gymnasium horse. But I’d used it to alter the course slightly. People were supposed to round the corner into the copse, be doused with the ice hose, dodge under the mild electric fence, and then onto the vaulting horse, trying to jump from it to the rope swing over a mud pit and down.
I’d simply moved the vaulting horse, concealing the mud pit. There were so many of these on the course that no-one would notice this one missing.
I checked the supporters, in case they were looking. They weren’t, so I pushed the horse quickly back into its proper position, calling out to the supporters “Fresh mud!” They looked up just as I finished. “All good!” I said.
“Looks great from here!” they enthused.
Thumbs up all round.
Fast Eddy approached at a ragged stagger. He already looked a mess.
“Give him hell,” I said to Brian and Suze.
“Woo hooo!” Brian and Suze called out to him, and turned the hose on him. The pressure was a little higher than he was expecting. He looked dazed. He probably also wasn’t expecting the fast-setting concrete. Well, I’m lying. It was mostly a liquid called QuickSet I’d got from a hardware store. Like gravy granules, it would turn a soup into a stew in seconds and make the mud pit very hard to get out of.
Eddy staggered under the high pressure, falling against the electric fence rather than crawling under it. Brian and Suze howled with laughter, and, bless him, Fast Eddy tried to laugh back, his face gurning with the strain. It wasn’t that bad—the voltage was reasonably low. Perhaps a little higher than on all the other fences on the course, but not too bad.
Leg spasming slightly, Eddy dragged himself up onto the vaulting horse. The QuickSet was already making his clothes stiffer than a teenage boy’s pyjamas. The extra weight was dragging him back, but he made it up onto the top of the horse, wobbling a bit. He fist pumped the air. “King of the World!” he roared.
Brian and Suze clapped. Brian wolf-whistled. He was the type.
Eddy sized up the rope and threw himself into the air. He caught it, which was brilliant. I’d concealed another electric cable inside it, with a rather stronger current running through it. He yelped and fell into the mud pit. And vanished.
I had (and believe me, this took time) dug the pit a bit deeper than it was supposed to be. A foot deeper.
FastEddy surfaced to the cheers of Brian and Suze. They were taking pictures. Bugger me, they were taking pictures.
“My legs!” screamed Fast Eddy.
“Oh, it’s cramp, probably.”
“No it’s not,” Eddy wailed. “They’re not working! Help me!” His arms thrashed weakly about and his head slid under the surface.
Supporters: These Are Your Rules
DO NOT shout namby-pamby encouragement (ie “You can do it, mate!”)
DO shout “Try harder, you Muddy Funster” or “Go ahead and drown, weakling”
NO HELPING. NEVER ANY HELPING.
A THICK, TREACLY bubble broke the surface.
Brian and Suze, unbelievably and wonderfully, asked me to take a picture of them next to the mud pit. They positioned themselves, and I took the shot when Eddy’s head bobbed up again. I’d actually framed it quite nicely. They posted it immediately.
“Help me! For God’s sake help me!” Eddy cried.
Brian and Suze looked at each other, concerned for a moment.
“Try harder...” Brian started a little self-consciously, but then found himself. “You Muddy Funster!”
“Go ahead and drown!” bellowed Suze, a little fiercely.
They both laughed, and checked their phones to see how many likes their selfie had.
Eddy gave a screeching howl and tried to lift an arm out of the mud. Brian and Suze faltered in their chanting, wondering if something was wrong.
“Something may be wrong,” I suggested. Brian and Suze nodded, reassured that someone
else had said it, and carried on chanting. Eddy, standing on tiptoe, just about kept his head up, but he was grunting with the effort. The muscles in his legs were failing. He was trying to say something, but mud was coming out of his mouth in big, thick gobbets.
“I’ll go and get an official,” I volunteered.
Brian and Suze looked quite pleased about this, and their chanting grew in volume, almost drowning out Eddy’s frantic bellows. Brian and Suze weren’t worried. They knew an official was on the way to assess the situation.
I ran off into the woods, stopping after ten yards. I paused only to reach up to the rope, and tug out the concealed cable. I then watched Brian and Suze.
Pleased that Officialdom was being informed and that Help was on its way, they were doing what any other concerned bystander would do. They were filming Fast Eddy’s struggles and imminent rescue, mugging away at the camera with thumbs-up and everything, all the time keeping up the chants of “Try harder, you Muddy Funster” and “Go ahead and drown!”
From where I stood, I couldn’t quite see his head go under for the last time, but that was alright. I’d see it later on YouTube.
GOD BLESS BRIAN and Suze. They’d uploaded the video without thinking what it was. The spectacle of a charity fun runner being chanted to his death by his friends was a massive hit. The Daily Mail screengrabbed and analysed almost every frame like it was the Zapruder footage, but then again, the Daily Mail do this with a video of a kitten sleeping.
No one noticed or even thought about me. Muddy Hell came in for a lot of flack for torturing their contestants to death. Jackie Aspley wrote a column titled ‘Who are the sick people who sign up for these Nazi death camps?’ which got charity fun runners and a fair few World War II historians enraged. Brian and Suze (‘Are these the nastiest people in Britain?’) were hounded, a little unfairly, I thought.
No one even thought about me. I think I was mentioned in an early report in The Independent, which claimed that the ‘Death Pit’ was only manned by ‘an unpaid volunteer who was unable to find someone to bring help.’ The Death Pit soon became ‘A Plague Pit’ after chemical analysis. The QuickSet did show up, but the press were more interested in the sexier ingredients I’d added. The night before the race I’d gone round all the mud pits adding pigswill and cow manure. The organisers of Muddy Hell claimed, quite rightly, to have no knowledge of this. No one believed them, and they soon found themselves fighting lawsuits from former contestants who weren’t happy that they’d signed ‘I don’t care, Break Me’ contracts.
Fast Eddy, annoyingly, emerged from all this as a martyr. That was the one thing I’d got wrong. Well, until someone spoke to Guy, to ask him what he thought about the person who’d raised nearly ten grand for his dead girlfriend. Bless Guy, he said, “Who? I’ve never heard of him.” There was a small exposé of Eddy’s financial shenanigans, but it wasn’t very thorough. Everyone was a bit too transfixed at the sight of the man drowning slowly in mud.
I’d finally got something done. My first planned murder. I’d done good.
I’d watch that video, late at night, and think, I did that.
CHAPTER THREE
GIRLS, GUNS AND GAMES
I DIDN’T KILL Guy’s next girlfriend. Actually, I rather liked her. I really liked her. The problem was it was Amber Dass, the girl I’d met in the bar the night I’d killed Danielle. I’d always hoped to bump into her again, and when I did, she was going out with Guy.
And she was great. So great I had no problems remembering her name this time. Her family were rich Malaysian lawyers. You’d imagine this would mean she was confidently petite, graceful in a gown that flowed in straight lines, with a smile as delicately balanced as the rest of her. Actually, Amber was a shambles. Confident, yes, but the Cinderella of Stoke Newington constantly looked as though she’d just got out of bed to sign for a delivery, and yet was still ridiculously hot. She was always wearing yesterday’s t-shirt, which raised the question of when she ever got around to changing it. She drank like a fish, she sometimes dyed her hair, played in a band and was amazing at video games.
Guy was in love with her from about three seconds after he met her. “Can you believe this girl?” he hooted. “She’s just such fun.”
“Yeah,” I said. I was pleased we were talking again (Amber’s idea). I was pleased he’d moved on. I just... well, why did it have to be with her? All of a sudden, I was having no trouble remembering her name.
Amber made Guy so happy. Almost without trying. Which was a complete contrast to Saint Danielle, who had made him miserable by either clinging to him or belittling him. Danielle had constantly told Guy what he couldn’t do, but Amber was delighted by what he could.
“He is an amazing cook,” she told me one evening, which was a bit of a bombshell. She caught my glance before I could hide it. “Augh! I know what you’re thinking. Malaysian girl, brilliant cook. But I’m not a walking takeaway. I can turn on the rice cooker and that’s about it. At home we had people to do that. No, seriously. Staff.”
That was Amber’s issue. She just couldn’t help reminding you about her family life back home. It sounded pressured. “Such a big house! So many Aunts! All of them with a different lecture about eligible young accountants or the even more eternal torments of pincers in hell. You should come out and visit. Dad loves to have the driver take visitors through the slums. Just to show what it’s really like. I’m not sure what they think when a limo comes crawling through their shanty town with tourists taking pictures. But la! Anyway, all that family pressure’s eased off now that my three lovely brothers have got married to rich girls. That’s the line taken care of, and so I’m free to come to London and get a little job and stay out of the way.” She rolled her eyes. She’d tried working for a proper global firm, hated it, and was now someone’s PA. She just liked the irony (“I’m someone’s staff!”). “It’s handy for them, me being in London. It means I’ve always got a cousin somewhere in my flat. But that’s okay. So long as they don’t ask too many questions or finish off my scotch.”
It was one of those evenings—Guy had got in from work shattered, found the energy from somewhere to cook dinner, and had then fallen asleep on the couch. So it was just Amber and me, talking over his snores. I liked it when this happened.
Yes, I can see what you’re thinking. But she was so bloody cool. I couldn’t help having a tiny crush on her. More than a tiny crush on her.
The thing was, not everyone loved Amber. Guy hadn’t changed his Facebook relationship status, but she had started appearing in pictures. And madly, people started to object to this:
Didn’t take you long to move on lol. 2 hours ∙ Like
NO RESPECT :(:(:( 1 hour ∙ Like
Mail order? 52 mins ∙ Like
She’s Not even cold. 46 mins ∙ Like
Disappointed. 15 mins ∙ Like
Looks foreign. 8 mins ∙ Like
Little snide comments from friends of Danielle’s who were Facebook friends with Guy, and seemingly unable to cope with the idea of him moving on, of being happy. He did what he did when Danielle was alive, and knuckled down to ignoring it all very hard, like a well-trained old hound who didn’t put up a fuss when someone kicked it.
One evening it all got a bit much for him. I don’t like drinks after work—I’d far rather rush home, have some food—but Guy had asked. He looked a mess, his hair all-over-the-place and his eyes baggy. “People are mental,” he said, taking a drink of what was clearly not his first pint. “Mental. Right. I mean, I get that not everyone is going to be thrilled that I’ve got a new girlfriend. And I can see that, yeah, a few people might have a pop at me on my wall... but this is...” He pushed his hand through his hair, found a tangle, and tugged away at it repeatedly. “Right. So some people I don’t even know have got an opinion about it all. That’s fine. Wrong, but fine. That’s what the web’s for—having the wrong opinion. Say what they like behind my back. ’S fine. But they’re yack yacking about Danielle turning in her grave
, and me dancing on it and so on... and someone tags me in the post. So I log on, and I just have to read it. And every time that updates, I get more of it. And they’ve tagged Danielle as well. So it appears on her wall... I mean... why would you even do that?” He shrugged. “I’ve kept my privacy settings open, you know... after she... er... anyway. The point is, you know, I’m now having to lock my profile down. And I’m even getting flack for that. Mental. Just ’cause of Danielle.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”
“Why?” he shrugged. “It’s not as though you’ve done anything.”
For a moment, I felt really guilty. I probably shouldn’t have killed his girlfriend. Then again, I hadn’t actually planned to. And he was waaay better off with Amber. For an insane moment, I nearly told him what I’d done. That I’d killed Danielle, and you know, also the idiot fundraiser. But that was all. Just the two. And they’d made his life much better.
We sat there, looking at each other across our drinks, utterly at peace in Lloyd’s No1’s. If there was ever a moment to tell your oldest friend you’d slaughtered his girlfriend and it had all worked out for the best, this was it. And I did. I very nearly told him.
But I didn’t. I doubt he’d actually have thanked me. He should have done, but he wouldn’t.
“Anyway,” Guy said. “Just getting if off my chest. And telling you. In case you see anything. Just don’t tell me. Okay? I’m really better off not knowing. Really.”
I nodded. That’s me told.
“Right then.” Guy drained his pint. “Another?” He sauntered off to the bar. Well, sort of sauntered. Little bit of a drunken lurch. But he seemed more his normal self. And at least we’d had the worst of it.