Life's Lottery

by Kim Newman

  ‘I was born in the fifties.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘I know.’

  You’ve had to live with cradle-snatching jokes. Actually, you’re only twenty-eight to Candy’s twenty-one.

  ‘It’s that you still know all the customers’ kids names and their aches and pains. You treat the bank as if it were a corner shop. Tristram can’t understand that. He’s like Sean, really, juggling money and reporting to head office, squeezing the pound. He knows the depositors count, but also that they’ll never like him the way they like you.’

  She kisses you. Since Kim was born, you’ve made love at every opportunity. Jason and Jesse make jokes about you being ‘at it again’.

  You don’t care.

  Sean was wiped out on Black Monday by the stock-market crash in 1987. Vanda is working in the DSS, and since the divorce has been seeing Ben McKinnell, a builder. You genuinely hope both of them can put their lives back together.

  As the slump begins to bite, you become more important. Warwick’s schemes to modernise the bank take a back seat as you have to extend help to those struggling with the recession. You discover his boyfriend is Kay Shearer, whom you manage to save from bankruptcy with a last-minute restructuring.

  At the bank, they call you ‘Dr Kildare’. When cases seem terminal, you find a way to save the patient. Customers save their homes or businesses in consultation with you. Because of Kay, Warwick keeps head office out of it.

  You can do some good.

  When you hear Sean has killed himself, you get drunk. Candy finds you downstairs after midnight, openly crying. She takes you in her arms and strokes you.

  ‘I could have done something,’ you say.

  ‘No you couldn’t. Sean was responsible.’

  ‘I stood by. I could have stopped him.’

  ‘Whatever you did would have had the same upshot. It wasn’t your fault, darling.’

  She gentles you out of despondency. You make love slowly on the rug. Candy conceives again and you call your new daughter Suzanne.

  Eventually, you are made manager. In Sedgwater, you are someone. Mum tells you that Dad would have been proud of you.

  And so on.

  Begin again?

  132

  You attach the blue wire. ‘There,’ you say. ‘Done.’

  Soon, they’ll pay. The Lottery fuckheads. All of them.

  But wait, what about the innocent people? The studio audience, the technicians, the passers-by? The presenter, the celebrities? Mystic Meg? Bob Monkhouse? Are they dupes or monsters?

  Sometimes, dupes have to be sacrificed.

  If you can live with the sacrifice, go to 144. If you abandon the project, go to 157.

  133

  James thinks about what he has just said. You see he is on a knife-edge.

  ‘Nahhhhhh,’ he concludes, chuckling.

  ‘Hackwill is going down,’ you say. ‘Down, down, down.’

  You and James slap hands in the air.

  Go to 163.

  134

  Sean and Laraine are invited to a reception at Councillor Hackwill’s home. You get to tag along. You assume the host won’t be too pleased to see you, since the last time you got together he wound up with stitches. Laraine has been before and seen something you want to borrow. Hackwill is proud of his collection of shotguns and makes great play of taking business associates shooting in spring and summer.

  Once you’ve done away with Sean, you’ll be tempted to have Hackwill blow his own head off in an accident. You cut that thought there. Murderers get caught because they get stupid, let murder take over from motive. The way to get away with it is to set a target, hit it, and retire undefeated from the homicide game.

  At the door of Hackwill’s graft-funded mansion on Cliveden Rise (Sedgwater’s Snob Row), Helen, Hackwill’s wife, greets the guests. Laraine introduces you: it’s clear ‘my brother Keith’ doesn’t ring any bells with Mrs H.

  Hackwill’s smile freezes a bit when you come into the room, but political instincts kick in. He comes over to pump your hand sympathetically and tells you he was sorry to hear about your brother. You suspect Hackwill threw a party when James was killed.

  Before you can be smarmed silly, Hackwill is called away by the ever-sidekicking Reg Jessup. The councillor makes an excuse about business, then has Reg drag Sean into another room. They proceed to have a hushed but embarrassing argument. Helen talks loudly to cover the row.

  You and Laraine slip away from the party. She knows where to go.

  In the hall, you overhear a snatch of argument.

  ‘The shortfall has to be filled,’ Hackwill says.

  ‘I’m not Old Man Marion,’ Sean replies. ‘The bank needs to be coaxed.’

  You’ll be doing the town a favour.

  Laraine tugs you upstairs, to the gunroom. It’s not even locked. The councillor is a megalomaniacal pillock. Rows of weapons are racked in display cases. Directional lights bring up the metal shine of the killing instruments.

  ‘Penis substitutes,’ Laraine declares.

  Hackwill brings guests here sometimes — which means you have to be quick now — to pose as a Bond villain, elegant and sophisticated, worldly and filthy rich. You pick a gun at random. A double-barrelled shotgun. The case is locked, but Laraine opens it with a hairpin. It must be illegal to store deadly weapons this sloppily.

  The gun (you have no idea of the make and model) is lighter than you expect. You break it in the middle to check that it isn’t loaded. Even Hackwill isn’t that stupid. Laraine locks the case again. The gap isn’t too noticeable.

  ‘Bullets,’ you say.

  ‘Shells,’ she corrects.

  She pulls out a drawer and takes out a pack of shotgun shells, like a brick of disposable lighters wrapped in blue paper.

  ‘Are these the right bore?’ she asks.

  You can’t afford to be wrong, so — though seconds tick and sweat trickles — you tear one corner of the pack open and slip out a cartridge. It fits perfectly in the breech. You take it out again and put it in your pocket.

  There are bars on the window — a rare sensible precaution — so you have to find another room.

  Laraine has the shells. You have the gun. You turn out the lights and leave.

  The landing light comes on. Hackwill is bringing people upstairs.

  ‘I’ve a new Purdey,’ he says. ‘Beautiful lines.’

  You only know a Purdey is a gun because it was the name of Joanna Lumley’s character on The New Avengers.

  You silently open a door and pull Laraine into a dark room. Hackwill drones on about guns, anticipating the vermin-blasting season.

  Your eyes get used to the dark. You’re in a small bedroom at the back of the house. A baby’s room, with a dangling Postman Pat mobile. Someone small is asleep in a crib. Hackwill and Helen have an eighteen-month-old daughter, Samantha.

  You open a window and look down at the garden. A fan of light spills from french windows, but beyond is a stretch of shadowed lawn. Laraine breaks the gun again, to make sure you’ve taken the shell out, and drops it out of the window. It thumps, and lies in the shade.

  Samantha wakes up and gurgles. You freeze. The gurgle becomes a whine, the whine threatens to become a scream. You look at Laraine, willing her to do something. She shrugs. The incipient scream starts coming.

  You both stand over the crib, cooing. The scream stops and down-shifts to something like a gurgle but with the occasional sniff-verging-on-a-sob.

  ‘Pick her up,’ Laraine whispers.

  You can hear Hackwill and his guests in the next room. Voices are raised, Sean’s among them. They must have come upstairs to continue the argument out loud, away from the others.

  You pick up the small baby-bundle and cuddle it. Her. Thank God, she’s not wet.

  There’s a sharp slap from the next room.

  ‘Just get the money, Rye,’ Hackwill says.

  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Hackwill lost it, hauled out one of h
is prized guns and shot Sean dead?

  The world doesn’t work like that.

  Tiny hands pull at the lapels of your jacket. It’s as if Samantha were frisking you.

  ‘Present,’ she says, a perfectly formed word. She’s been taught acquisitiveness before she can walk. She presses your hankie pocket. There’s something there, a hard cylinder. ‘Gimme,’ she says.

  You fish it out and give it to her.

  ‘Present,’ she says, satisfied, clutching it in tenacious little fingers.

  Laraine gasps.

  You put Samantha back in the crib. The baby sticks the shell in her mouth and starts gumming the metal end.

  It’s not going to go off.

  Samantha makes a tastes-bad face and throws the cartridge away. You scoop it out of the crib. Luckily, the baby’s vocabulary isn’t developed enough for her to give anything like a credible account of this incident.

  You sneak out and go downstairs. Laraine returns to the party and you creep out the front door. You feel your way round to the garden, find the shotgun, and nip back to Sean’s car. Laraine has left the boot unlocked and there’s a cloth inside to wrap the gun. You put the shells beside it, rearrange things to conceal the murder weapon, then lock the boot.

  The hard part seems over.

  A little giddy, you go back to the party and one drink gets you pretty drunk. You’re satisfied that Hackwill and Sean are skulking around glaring at each other, and concentrate on enjoying yourself. To rub it in, you flirt with Helen and suggest charades. You give a distracted Sean ‘How to Steal a Diamond in Four Un-Easy Lessons’, and watch him make an ass of himself. After a few more drinks, you can’t stop laughing. Laraine gets quite embarrassed, but it’s not as if you were married.

  The difficult thing is managing it when Hackwill doesn’t have an alibi. If you make an effort to lure him out of the way, he’ll know you’ve framed him. He might not be believed but you want not to be involved at all.

  You have to be ready to kill Sean at a moment’s notice, depending on Hackwill’s movements.

  This means an agony of waiting. Over the days — weeks — your nerves stretch.

  Sean gets antsy about the way you spend all your evenings hanging around his house, not least (you suspect) because it cuts into his bitch-busting. The loaded shotgun is in the larder, hidden behind the ironing-board. As Laraine says, Sean is never going to look there.

  Laraine’s biggest sacrifice, which she bitterly resents, is that she has to let the char go and do all the vacuuming and ironing herself. That ought to carry a mandatory death sentence in itself, she claims.

  Finally, while you’re all watching Top of the Pops, you get a break. Sean receives a telephone call that makes him uncomfortable.

  ‘Keith,’ he says, after hanging up, ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ you say.

  ‘Rob’s coming over. Business. Confidential.’

  Bingo.

  ‘Do you want me to go too, dear?’ Laraine asks.

  He shakes his head. ‘No.’ He is sweating.

  Excellent. If ever there was a credible murder set-up, this is it. Sean and Hackwill are like actors in your play.

  ‘When will he be here, dear?’

  ‘Five, ten minutes … Keith, please.’

  ‘Of course,’ you say. ‘I understand.’

  ‘You’re a mate.’

  If he’s at most ten minutes away, Hackwill must be on the road now.

  ‘I’ll put on the kettle,’ Laraine says. ‘Will Councillor Hackwill be bringing anyone?’

  ‘No. Just Rob.’

  Perfect. No witnesses. No alibi.

  You make a fuss of finding your coat and gloves. Laraine sees you to the door and gives you the gun, which she has fetched. You drape your coat over it.

  Sean fusses and frets inside.

  This would have been an uncomfortable meeting for him. He’d probably rather be shot in the face than meet Hackwill tonight. You’re doing him a favour.

  On the doorstep, Laraine kisses you. Since you’ve been plotting, the affair has been less intense physically, but you’re obviously more intimately and deeply involved than before.

  ‘It’ll be over soon,’ you say.

  Has Hackwill taken the Sutton Mallet turn-off yet?

  You think you hear his car coming. You smile, to encourage Laraine.

  You break the shotgun in your gloved hands and check. It’s loaded. It’s been thoroughly cleaned, which means Hackwill’s prints aren’t on it either. You hope that’s misleadingly suspicious in itself.

  You and Laraine stand well away from the porch.

  ‘Sean,’ Laraine shouts, loud enough to get her husband’s attention, ‘there’s a problem with Keith’s car.’

  He comes to the door, grumbling.

  Can you do this?

  You bring up the shotgun.

  If you blast the bastard, go to 147. If you hesitate, go to 151.

  135

  Sean makes no pretence of being angry that you’ve pried into his files. That irritates you a little: he assumes you’re the sort of person who habitually sneaks and spies and looks into other people’s business.

  You’ve visited him in his office and laid out everything you know he’s done. You’ve kept the flimsies with your ‘signature’.

  Sean has two more weeks at the bank. You can see he’s thinking, looking at you as a problem he has to solve. What is he capable of? Why is it that you are the one who feels uneasy?

  ‘I suppose you want something.’

  You really haven’t considered that.

  Could you report him? He’s your friend. And there would be a scandal that would hurt the bank. Dad wouldn’t have liked that.

  But what do you want?

  If you try to persuade Sean to give himself up, go to 137. If you try to force Sean to pay you off, go to 140.

  136

  ‘Dad, you have to,’ Jasper pleads.

  ‘Not this way. Not at James’s expense.’

  ‘I’m your son.’

  ‘James is family.’

  He looks as if his toys have been taken away.

  ‘You’ll come out alive. No mind-jail time. And Zazza will be looked after. Sam too. But I can’t let you abuse and betray James. He’s been betrayed enough.’

  Jasper is impatient, disgusted. He has no idea what you mean.

  ‘Put things right,’ you say. ‘Put the credit back where it should be. And resign. Retire early. I’ll seed you in any business you like up to a hundred K. But that’s it.’

  Jasper is used to dictating terms not being forced to them. He has acquired power without learning to be tough. His survival has been based on what he knows, on tricks he can pull off. Without James behind him, and you, he wouldn’t be in this office.

  He is in a sulk, being forced to a corner.

  Finally, he goes through with it.

  You stand over him, watching him as you once watched him do unwanted homework properly or rake up garden leaves. He could be wiping the mainframe for all you know but is just scared enough — of James finding out — to do a decent job of reparation. When it’s over, he’s empty.

  For the rest of your life, you’re going to have a sorrow you can never share with James, with Christina, with anyone. There will always be Jasper. The taste is bitter. But Jasper isn’t everything.

  And so on.

  Begin again?

  137

  ‘Sean, you have to tell someone what you’ve done.

  ‘Who do you suggest? The police?’

  ‘Warwick.’

  ‘Warwick!’

  ‘He can help you.’

  ‘He’ll love that.’

  ‘Sean, you can’t go on like this.’

  ‘Actually, Keith, I think I can. In two weeks’ time, I’ll make the last repayment. Nobody will be any the wiser. When I leave this office, I’ll take my private files with me. Nobody will get hurt.’

  ‘But it’s wrong. L
egally, morally. You’ve abused trust. The bank’s trust. Our customers’ trust. My trust.’

  ‘Keith …’

  ‘Dad trusted you, Sean. You wouldn’t be here without him.’

  ‘Neither would you. He made us take you on. You and your bloody CSEs.’

  ‘That’s irrelevant.’

  ‘No it’s not, it’s a hippopotamus.’

  ‘You won’t do anything?’

  ‘Keith, not everyone wants to spend his life in some provincial bank branch. We used to call your father “Captain Mainwaring”. Being manager here isn’t all there is.’

  ‘What’ll you do?’

  ‘That’s not the question. What will you do?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘So, Keith, it’s make-your-mind-up time.’

  You have to talk to someone. If Tristram, go to 142. If Vanda, go to 146.

  138

  ‘You can’t,’ you tell James. ‘It’d be murder. It’d make you like him.’

  James’s gun wavers.

  ‘You’re right,’ he says.

  ‘Mary,’ Hackwill shouts.

  She levels her gun and neatly shoots James in the head, swivels, levels again, and shoots Victoria.

  ‘Pity about Shane,’ Hackwill says.

  Blit blurt.

  Hackwill’s face is changing. It becomes liquid, bloats, whitens. For a moment, you see him as a middle-aged woman: Mrs Fudge, the Ash Grove dinner lady. So he was behind that too, the ordeal of custard. Hackwill has always been the monster in your life.

  Mrs Fudge’s red eyes grow, become compound. The Hackwill-cum-Fudge head loses all semblance of humanity. Black bristles swarm all round the egg-shaped mass. A ruff of spider-legs sprouts from his neck. It was an Arachnoid. All along.

  Mary’s gun is aimed at you.

  ‘Finish it,’ the shadow-spider says, with Hackwill’s bark.

  You hear the shot that kills you.