Life's Lottery

by Kim Newman

  93

  Friday, 13 February 1998. You get home first, just after six. It’s already dark and the exterior light above the garage door has come on. You drive into the former barn that serves as a garage and park neatly in your space. You get out and feel a slight tingle. It’s not the cold, it’s the night. Your Fiat clicks as you activate central locking, a turtle making itself cosy.

  You stand in your garage, enjoying the quiet moment. A sense of belonging. Then you go indoors, through the kitchen door as usual. A present is propped up on the table, with a card. It is not a valentine, but an end-of-the-week present; you and Ro have been exchanging them for sixteen years, never repeating, never spending more than five pounds. This week, you’ve got her a Hercules fridge magnet. You wonder what she’s got you.

  Ro is a teacher, at your old school. Ash Grove is a well-respected Comprehensive now. Your own children, Joel and Jacintha — who are out at the Youth Theatre tonight — go there. Ro teaches French, German and English, and coaches netball. She keeps in touch with many of her former pupils and the corkboard in the kitchen is plastered with postcards. Her first pupils have school-age kids of their own.

  There are four homes in Sutton Mallet now, all converted farmhouses. Two are owned by people who live in London and only appear at the weekends. One of those has been neglected for nine months, since its owner suffered a reversal and has had to put it on the block to finance a desperate stock deal. There are no takers at the moment.

  You feel sorry for people who think of the world in terms of money and what it can buy. You have seen them coming into the bank, always steering into choppy waters. You and Ro know there are more important ways of keeping the score. Ways that matter.

  The bank is behind you, as sealed off in your mind as its locked vaults. When you left your office at five-thirty, you blanked out all details of any business you were working on. At nine-thirty on Monday morning, it will all be in your mind, clear and ready.

  The weekend is sacred. It is for personal projects.

  You strip off your suit as you go upstairs, remembering the long-gone objects — plastic comb, picture frame, toothbrush — once placed on each step. It is a game between you and your wife. Sometimes, when each thinks the other is off guard, you will quiz each other. Neither has ever caught the other out.

  In the recently fitted master bathroom, you take a shower. Outside, it’s crisply cold. You let hot water pour on to your chest, down your legs, into your eyes. You lobster yourself, scalding away your weekday skin.

  While you are showering, Ro comes home. She comes into the bathroom, having followed your clothes, and removes her suit with easy movements, as if giving birth to her nude self. When the outer coating of Miss Douglass — she keeps her maiden name in the week — is pooled on the floor, she undoes her hair and combs it out.

  You finish your shower and towel yourself.

  Together, you go to your bedroom. Your tradition now is that you share the task of lighting all the candles. When that’s done, you cuddle, and ease into making love. You can still surprise each other. Underlying your union is something beyond the physical. But sex is still at the centre of it.

  You both owe Victoria Conyer a great debt.

  With the kids out for the evening, you enjoy yourselves.

  Then, in the candlelight, you glow.

  Go to 99.

  94

  The day after Sean hands in his notice, he introduces Tristram Warwick to you. He is to take over as manager and will be around for the next three months to learn the ropes.

  At once, you know Tristram is a threat to you. He will find you out. He will bring down the Syndicate.

  He has the power to take everything away from you.

  You check the street. No one is near enough to be a witness. You press the buzzer and the entryphone hums incomprehensibly.

  ‘Tristram,’ you say, ‘it’s Keith Marion.’

  The door buzzes open. You step into the hallway, followed by Vanda. You exchange a look with your wife.

  Tristram has a flat at the top of a modern building, in a decent part of town. Once confirmed in his job, he’ll probably buy a house.

  He won’t be confirmed in his job. He will be found. Dead.

  You go upstairs.

  You’re let into the flat by someone you know, Kay Shearer, of Shearer’s Shelves.

  ‘God,’ he says shrilly, ‘I hope you’re not still chasing those bloody repayments.’

  Kay wears a tracksuit, as if about to go jogging.

  Tristram steps out into the hallway. He wears a towelcloth robe. His hair is wet. He rubs his eyes with a hand-towel.

  ‘What is it, love?’ he asks Kay.

  Then he sees you and Vanda.

  ‘Marion,’ he says.

  ‘This is my wife, Vanda,’ you say.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To save us all a lot of trouble.’

  You made up a noose from nylon washing line. You take it out of your pocket and let it out a little.

  Kay understands first and tries to bolt.

  You planned for Tristram to be not alone. It’s Vanda’s department. Kay slams into her, sliding himself on to the new-bought Sabatier knife, mouth opening in a big circle.

  You get the noose over Tristram’s head and yank it tight. You remembered the nautical knots you studied as a child during your pirate craze. The line tightens around Tristram’s neck. His face goes purple.

  Vanda pulls out the knife and finds a point on Kay’s chest to thrust, slipping the blade between ribs, into the heart.

  Tristram flops like a doll.

  They are both dead.

  Excellent.

  Fine. You aren’t being investigated at work. No one is picking through your files, gathering evidence. Your mortgage isn’t being inspected by an intelligence vast, cool and unsympathetic.

  But Sean and Ro are still breaking up. That crisis continues.

  What to do?

  Ro has to go. The Syndicate needs Sean.

  You and Vanda tell Sean. He agrees.

  You hire Candy as a babysitter and Sean and Ro send their kids over to your house. Candy will have her hands full with four little terrors. But you need them all out of the way.

  You hold a Syndicate meeting and encourage Ro to get drunk. The three of you hold back, and watch her get insensible. The idea is that she will have an accident while driving over to pick up the kids.

  You drive out in both your cars, Sean with Ro lolling in the passenger seat. You stop by the Sutton Mallet turn-off and get out. It’s an awkward struggle getting the feebly resisting Ro into the driver’s seat and belted in, but Vanda coaxes her.

  It’s well past midnight. No one drives by.

  Sean lets off the handbrake and the three of you heave on his car, pitching it over the verge into the shallow ditch. Ro burbles in childish delight as the water seeps around her ankles. Sean opens the passenger door and climbs in next to her, easing himself into the seat. He holds Ro’s hand and smiles at her. She has no idea what is happening.

  Vanda finds a large stone and smashes the windshield. It dents and shatters.

  Sean has Ro bend forwards over the wheel, getting some slack into her seatbelt, stretching it tight over her neck. Then he yanks her head hard.

  The idea is to snap her neck on the belt. Ro yelps and laughs. Sean didn’t tug hard enough.

  You wade into the ditch, soaking yourself up to the knees, and reach into the car. You grab Ro’s head, seeing the panic in her eyes, and pull. You feel her neckbones straining.

  Vanda gets in on the act, forcing Ro’s head from the other side. The seatbelt is throttling her.

  You both wrench. There is a snap. And Ro is dead.

  You leave Vanda standing by the road and Sean in the car next to his dead wife, then drive home to call the police.

  The Syndicate is preserved.

  Sean is sobered after the ‘accident’ — the autopsy reveals how unfit to drive Ro was — and you
take more and more charge of the business.

  The pressure is off. But there’s still the Crash.

  Somehow, you forgot about that. You knew the problems Tristram and Ro would cause, but did not understand that the Crash was not warded off by your efforts.

  When it happens, you get over to Sean’s place before he can skip out.

  He is still in the family home.

  ‘Keith, Vanda …’

  You surprise him packing.

  The two of you drag him downstairs into his basement DIY room. You clamp his hands between vices and apply power drills to his legs.

  He tells you where the money is. You make holes in his head.

  You and Vanda are covered in Sean’s blood when you get upstairs. You think you can recover the money. Sean has involved so many people in the Syndicate that it will be assumed that he was the victim of a professional assassin.

  As you walk into Sean’s hallway, the front door opens.

  Candy steps in, with Sean and Ro’s kids, Megan and Liza.

  You don’t hesitate. Vanda takes the kids. You take Candy.

  You drag them down to the DIY room and finish the job.

  Detective Sergeant Yatman remembers you both from school.

  She used to be Scary Mary.

  Vanda makes coffee as the policewoman comments on how nice your kitchen is. She has come to ask about what happened at Sean’s house. They have a suspect, she says. You know she means Councillor Hackwill. He’s crooked as a corkscrew. Everyone who went to school a few years behind him remembers his violent streak.

  Mary drinks the coffee Vanda has made. She finishes the pleasantries and starts asking questions. You try to answer.

  Mary coughs. You politely ask if she is all right. Mary coughs again and bends double. She is sick, bringing up blood with her vomit.

  Vanda washes out the coffee pot.

  Mary lies on the floor, bending shut like a pocket-knife. She is leaking from several holes. After a while, Mary stops jerking.

  ‘Serves her right,’ Vanda says.

  Read 13, and come back here.

  There are more police, more bank officials, more investors, more auditors. You can’t kill them all.

  You know Vanda is looking for a way out.

  Before she can turn you in, you resolve to deal with her. But she is ahead of you. You get up early one morning and find her half of the bed empty. You pull on a dressing-gown and visit her in the kitchen, a claw hammer behind your back.

  She smiles. Your bare feet are in a pool of water.

  The toaster lies on its side on the floor. Its wires have been wrenched out and lie in the water.

  You raise the hammer. Vanda flicks a switch.

  Go to 103.

  95

  This is going to make a mess.

  You don’t take the blade out of the razor Dad is using. You take a fresh pack, one of those little plastic dispensers.

  It’s best if you’re in the bath. The warm water will sweep you away without pain.

  You put the plug in and let the taps run. Steam covers the windows and the mirror. You are no longer looking at yourself.

  You take off your clothes, letting them fall where they may, and sit in the bath. It’s too hot, but you let it pass. Your body goes lobster red.

  You are supposed to punish yourself, after all.

  You slide a blade out of the dispenser and cut your fingers getting the paper off the shiny sliver of sharpness. Drops of blood splash into the bathwater and disperse in red threads.

  Where to cut?

  If you had an old-fashioned Sweeney Todd straight razor, you suppose you’d have a chance of opening your throat. That would be the best thing: sure and certain and swift.

  But the Wilkinson’s Sword blade is barely two inches long and thinner than a wafer-thin mint. You couldn’t even find your femoral artery — it’s in your thigh somewhere — to puncture it. So, it’s the wrists then.

  Both of them?

  You’ll have to do one and see if you’re in any state to finish the job.

  You look at your left wrist. You see the blue line of the vein. Easy. Just slice across it.

  You hope Ro won’t be too upset. This isn’t really about her. It’s about you.

  Keith, this is your suicide.

  The thin sliver is pressed between your right thumb and forefinger. It is sticky with blood from your minor cuts.

  You look at your vein. Do you draw a line across you wrist? Or do you cut in at the wrist and carve down, following the vein?

  Across? Or down?

  If across, go to 97. If down, go to 98.

  96

  The hardest part is remembering the name. You lie awake beside Rowena after she has silently cried herself to sleep, remembering his face, his voice, his habits. He was the neat boy. Not inspired, but neat. Full marks for anything that involved copying out presentably. Which was most things. Probably still is.

  Mickey Yeo, who wrote and drew comic books for a while, and Norman Pritchard, who went to jail when they caught him in the front seat of a car with a hundred car keys on a chain, still bob about vividly in your recollection. You remember Norman firing the branch at Mickey, and Mickey hamming up his

  death

  Liberty Valance act.

  Who was the boy who gave you your first cigarette? The one you sucked on, trying to understand the appeal. You must have smoked a dozen fags over two or three years before you learned how to take the smoke into your lungs

  that’s the killer

  but it was that first one that started it.

  Without Neat Boy, you’d be alive.

  Finally, you decide to do it by elimination. You can still remember the class register. You heard it every day for years. Like the Lord’s Prayer, it’s written into your memory for ever.

  Adlard, Allen, Banner …

  Adlard, Stephen. He was the first in the register. That’s what marked him out. First alphabetically, he had to be first in presentation.

  You don’t know what happened to him. Neat boys don’t do memorable things, not like Mickey or Norman. Neat boys don’t go to Beverly Hills or Strangeways.

  Your chest is like concrete, anchoring you to the bed. You are tired of the pain, the constant tiny tearing of Velcro fishhooks inside you.

  Stephen Adlard.

  He’s in the local telephone book. He lives about three miles away, at a nondescript address, 96 Raleigh Road.

  You have his number. Should you call? What would you say? What are you going to say?

  You remember his sardonic posture, offering

  death

  the Players packet, daring you to take your first drag, to begin your protracted assisted suicide. You remember Adlard’s head cocked to one side, not egging you on, knowing you had no choice. If you hesitated you’d be the prig, the softie, the good boy. And he’d be hard like Mickey and Norman. He’d be with them, attracting the girls’ attention. Bobby Moore said smoking was a mug’s game, but you had no choice, you had to be a mug or an outcast. You’d be the bald coon — yes, you called black people coons when you were thirteen, you did, you did — in the shadows, whose name nobody could remember. Adlard knew what he was doing when he

  began murdering you

  made cigarettes available to you.

  It was 1973. You were kids: nothing counted yet. Was Ro one of the girls who’d just walked past? No, that would have been too neat. But she was at the Girls’ Grammar then. You might even have seen her. Within a year, at Ash Grove, you’d be sitting behind her in French, wondering about her as you wondered about all the girls, not knowing, as you wouldn’t know for years, that she’d become your wife, the mother of your children.

  Back then, Jon and Jenny weren’t.

  as you won’t be

  That first cigarette couldn’t be the most important decision of your life. No, that was whether to ask Rowena or Victoria to the Rag Day party. Or whether to go to university after college or take the job your dad arrange
d at the bank. Or what to call the kids.

  But you can remember it. Like you can remember your first kiss. God, Vanda Pritchard, Norman’s twin sister. Or the first time you had sex. With Rowena who, apart from Jacqui Edwardes that one time at college when you’d had an argument with Ro, is the only woman you’ve ever slept with

  or ever will

  and now do you wonder if you should have tried harder, when desire was still important to you, to make love with more girls, women.

  Denbeigh Gardens, long gone under the Discount Development. Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Mickey Yeo, Norman Pritchard

  and stephen mr fucking death’s neat blue-eyed boy adlard

  It’s a weekend. Adlard will probably be home.

  You stand at the end of Raleigh Road, thinking you should be able to identify Adlard’s house by its neatness. But you can’t. None of the semi-detacheds — large, spacious, 1930s homes: the Death Cunt must be doing well for himself — is more precisely perfect than the next.

  You come to Number 96. It should be Number 13, or Number 666. There’s a girl’s bicycle on the lawn, its yellow bum-shaped seat scuffed. The grass could do with cutting. Neat Boy is slipping.

  If you had a shotgun, this would be easier. The most lethal implement in your possession is a small hatchet, for kindling. No, you’re wrong. The most lethal substance in your possession

  apart from fucking fags

  is in the petrol tank of your car.

  You could walk through town with a full plastic jerry-can, you suppose. People would assume you’d run out somewhere and were going back to your car. But people don’t run out of petrol in towns. Too many garages.

  So you’ve rescued empty plastic screw-top bottles — milk, lemonade, Coke, the bigger the better — from the rubbish and filled them. These you have put in a suitcase and dragged through the streets.

  You would have driven, but you’re low on fuel since you siphoned it out.

  Your hands still stink from the messy business of pouring and the sleeves of your sports jacket are soaked. Your wrists feel as if ten-ton weights are fixed to them. The case got heavier and heavier as you hauled it along your own personal via dolorosa.