Life's Lottery (70 page)

‘Maybe the footwear demons couldn’t face duplicating the diarrhoea,’ says Jessup.

‘And where is McKinnell?’ Hackwill asks.

‘On the bog, Robbo,’ says Jessup. ‘Where else?’

‘Fetch him down.’

Reluctantly, Jessup stirs himself. You all stand and sit in silence while he’s away. You look at faces.

‘And where’s your killer brother?’ Hackwill demands.

Jessup comes down, face pale. ‘McKinnell’s dead,’ he says. ‘Stabbed.’

Go to 230.

Y
ou aren’t a man of leisure. You don’t just employ advisers to invest for you, you take an interest. You build up your holdings, then diversify from stocks and bonds – merely shifting numbers around on a screen – into actual business, into making things, providing services.

You can afford to lose money for a while. You pump cash into the town. You take up the skeleton of Sedgwater’s Discount Development, a wasteland ruin since its collapse, and refashion it as an enterprise zone, backing an array of small businesses.

Part of the money is set side for Jason’s computer business and Jesse’s fashion-design consultancy. They are only seventeen and fifteen, but they will grow into the businesses waiting for them.

You use your money to make more.

You can’t just sit idle.

It’s harder work than you’ve ever had to do. Money
doesn’t
buy you everything. It can make almost everything easier but it’s no substitute for work.

You get over your minor celeb status. You want to be the first Lottery millionaire to be taken seriously.

Your marriage is better than it’s ever been. When you apply yourself, Vanda wakes up. She sticks with you.

You have come a long way. But there’s still a long way to go.

And so on.

‘
N
o,’ you say. ‘We were friends at school.’

The word ‘friends’ is like a pebble in your mouth. You are so shattered that one more verbal stumble won’t stand out in a statement full of them.

‘Um,’ the sergeant says. ‘I think that’ll be all for today. The doctor wants to take a look at you.’

You wonder if you’ve passed.

Read 250, go to 255.

A
week later, you are interrogated in Llandudno. This has proved too much for the village police. The survivors have been brought to town and are giving their stories.

It’s not been easy for you. You’ve been taken through everything several times. Your first account is so full of lacunae – from your reasons for offering Councillor Hackwill such a substantial discount and operating the course well after the season has ended to who you spend your nights with and Mary’s admission to you that she had been hired by Hackwill to kill McKinnell – that the inspector taking your statement won’t let you sign it.

Frustratingly, you’re kept apart from the others. You especially need to square stories with James and Mary. It must be this bad for them all.

Hackwill can’t talk about hiring Mary as a hit woman. And whoever killed McKinnell and/or Warwick will have to adjust their own statement to cover. Unless someone’s cracked and told everything.

You decide the best policy is total honesty. You go through everything, telling as much of the truth as you know. The only thing you hold back is Mary’s ‘confession’. After all, she didn’t kill Warwick: you can alibi her for that. But she could have killed McKinnell. She was paid for it. In advance.

To cover for this dishonesty, you vouch that Hackwill alleged James tried to kill him. You are confident – aren’t you? – that he was lying. Repeating his lie doesn’t hurt James. If anything, it reinforces Hackwill’s crookedness.

You don’t want to talk about the boots. You mention them but not that you can’t believe they were natural things. Police statements do not require apports.

You are very tired.

Between interviews, you wonder about the immediate and long-term future. You suspect your business is in ruins. You can’t stop thinking of Mary. If you come out of this together, it’ll be worth it. You’d accept the deaths of any number of crooked businessmen; you’d let Robert Hackwill get away with murder; you’d see your business go under. If you and Mary have each other, you’re ahead.

When you get back to Sedgwater, you’ll have to break up with Marie-Laure. There’ll be a fuss about that, but you don’t care.

You haven’t seen Mary for four days. And it’s agony, a heart-stabbing pain.

You write it into the official record. In your police statement, you say that at a certain point during the week you fell in love with Mary Yatman. It’s a fact that can be used in evidence, for or against both of you. It makes you feel better.

Finally, the question comes. ‘Mr Marion, at any time, did Miss Yatman confide in you that she had been hired to murder Mr McKinnell?’

If you tell the truth, go to 238. If you lie, go to 251.

‘
C
an we help him, Dr Cross?’

‘Marion is physically stable, Susan.’

‘This read-out. All these criss-crossing lines, different colours.’

‘Strands of the construct. Lives, if you will.’

‘And the colour-bursts before the flatlines?’

‘Deaths, mostly. Or stalemates. Sometimes, just a loss of interest.’

‘What happens when Marion has only flatlines?’

‘At this point, that’s not an immediate probability.’

‘Come on, Doctor. There are more ends than beginnings. Eventually, Marion will run out of lines.’

‘So far, we haven’t observed any alternatives in which he becomes immortal. Though quite a few stray into what we might call the fantastic.’

‘If they all end, will he wake up?’

‘Remember, Susan, he isn’t, in any useful sense, asleep.’

‘You’re interested in seeing how the lines weave, aren’t you? More than in upsetting the chessboard. Is there a best-seller in Marion syndrome?’

‘That’s harsh. I had considered a paper, but we don’t yet have the philosophical apparatus to cope with Keith Marion, much less the medical. And given the way things are outside his skull, coping is a more realistic approach than helping. I’m not sure if we should even try to
help
.’

‘What are we for, then?’

‘Paying him some attention?’

Y
ou can’t do it. Your knife is raised. You only have to step out of the hut and stick it into Hackwill’s neck. James will do Reg Jessup. Then you get out of here fast. Whoever killed McKinnell will take the blame.

But your feet won’t work. Dead man’s boots anchor you.

‘It’s a fucking wind-up,’ Hackwill shouts.

He deserves to die. But you can’t kill him.

‘Robbo,’ Jessup shouts, like a pantomime audience, ‘behind you!’

Now, too late, you move. You step out of the hut as Hackwill turns. His hand grips your wrist and you drop the knife.

He has a knife too – you gave it to him, remember? Suddenly its cold blade is under your chin, the flat pressing against your Adam’s apple.

‘So I was right,’ Hackwill says. ‘It was you bastards. You were chickenshit at school and you’re chickenshit now.’

Jessup scuttles away from James.

Your brother looks at you. It’s like the copse. Only this time Hackwill has you and James is looking on. You remember the choices you had.

James doesn’t have a choice, doesn’t have to think. Knife out, he comes at you in a run.

The knife is taken away from your throat. You feel a warm gush of relief. No, a warm gush of blood. James is close, fury in his eyes. He’ll kill Hackwill. But you don’t live to see it.

Go to 0.

Y
ou put the file down on the desk. You did that once before, you remember. Are you pre-programmed for this?

‘It’s gone, isn’t it?’

You look at Sally. You know what she means.

‘The need to know?’

You nod.

‘I envy you,’ she says.

You leave her office, in the clear. You are free.

And so on.

Y
ou get a grip on the coat and intend never to let go. You open your mouth to yell. Sean must have woken everyone up. Rainwater pours into your throat.

The person you’ve got hold of bends. You are beyond cold and fear.

Something thuds into your forehead. A knife-point. Weight is exerted, your skull splits. It doesn’t hurt. Which shows how serious it is.

Go to 0.

W
hen you wake up, the mystery is solved. It was Mary. You always knew she was dangerous. You are commended. If you hadn’t gone for help, the rest of you might have died.

Mary confesses. There’s something strange there. In detail, she explains how she murdered them all, McKinnell, Hackwill, Jessup. She never says why she did it, and she never says why she confessed. She is found guilty but insane and disappears into a special hospital.

But you killed Hackwill. You know you did.

James doesn’t want to talk about it.

While you were yomping to the village, things happened at the Compound. He has picked up fresh scars and wants to dissolve the business. After the publicity, you suppose you wouldn’t get many clients anyway. When the Marion brothers offer you a Murder Weekend, they really mean it.

You marry Marie-Laure, get a job as PE teacher at Ash Grove, and have two children, John and Jean.

Mary sits in a cell, not speaking. James emigrates. Mum dies.

* * *

In 2014, Sam Hackwill – Robert’s daughter – visits you and asks about the murders. She has grown up a nervous wreck, fatherless and out of control. She has screened everything about the case, which is extensive since Mary is the ‘sexiest’ female murderer since Myra Hindley. Sam’s head is stuffed full of the contradictions.

‘The how is established,’ she says, ‘but the why is up in the air.’

By now, you remember it as if you’d seen Mary kill Hackwill and Jessup. You’ve edited your own mind to fit the official version. Remembering a film from childhood, you print the legend.

‘Mr Marion, have you any idea?’

You don’t like to disappoint this watery-eyed girl with an open wound for a heart. You know she’s had dependency problems. Growing up with Robert Hackwill as a living father might have been worse. She talks as if he were a saint but he must have been a domestic tyrant, a bully in every room of the house of his life.

You shake your head. ‘When we were just kids, Mary was wild. Sometimes, she’d explode. I think, deep down, she never got over that. She used to say she had a monster inside her.’

That was in all the texts now. Other people remembered.

‘Maybe, sometimes, the monster came out. Your dad just happened to be in the way.’

‘If there was only a reason.’

‘Maybe at school, your dad dragged her into a copse and hurt her.’

You didn’t mean to say that.

Sam thinks about it. She is arguing against the mental image you’ve given her.

‘Robert did do things like that,’ you say.

A tear tracks down from Sam’s eye, following the line of a coral cheek implant.

‘I know,’ she says, tinily. ‘I didn’t want to remember.’

John comes into the room, wanting to ask you about filling in his mandatory work-experience form, and backs out.

You pat Sam’s shoulder. She is crying now. She grabs you and you hold her, not the way you once held her father, but from the front, her face against your chest.

‘I didn’t want to think I was right,’ she says. ‘I wanted to think he was the man Mum talks about, the good man. But he hurt me. When I was little.’

You’ve never regretted killing Hackwill less than you do now. But you do regret not knowing the full story. You always will.

* * *

Sam Hackwill composes herself, and leaves.

A year later, Mary Yatman is killed in a prison riot. You’ll never know now.

And so on.

Y
ou lie awake in righteous triumph, certain James is lying awake in angry frustration. After a while, you regret your pettiness. Just because James scored and you didn’t is no reason to piss on his parade. In the next room, Shearer does a Captain Chainsaw act, snoring mechanically.

You should be tired, but you can’t sleep.

The next day, you and James are both groggy, hung-over even. Of the group, only Shearer seems to have had a good night’s sleep. Afterwards, you’ll always blame your blurry mind and slowed reactions for the accident.

Because James is dead, only you come to court to be found responsible.

James, Shearer, Sean, McKinnell.

By a miracle, Mary survives, though as a paraplegic. She testifies against you. Because of James, your family don’t support you.

* * *

You aren’t sure if you could have helped. Certainly, you could have cut yourself loose from Hackwill’s team and tried to crawl down to where James was hanging, the others dangling freely below him, their weight dragging on him. You could have taken the fall with them, probably. But you could also have taken the strain. If one of the others – Mary? Shearer? – had got a grip, you could have clung to the mountain.

But you didn’t.

For the rest of your life, you go over and over those few seconds. When you didn’t do anything.

You remember the look in James’s eyes as his fingers lost hold of the outcrop. It was the copse all over again except that this time, you thought first.

Before the courts, before your family, before Mary, he blamed you. But not before you blamed yourself.

And so on.

Y
ou smarten yourself up, start jogging home after dropping the kids off at school and while Marie-Laure’s out at work. At first, it’s murder. Your legs just won’t work. Then it gets easier. Marie-Laure comments that you’re looking better.

* * *

You’re bored with vegging out and the circular conversations everyone you know has.

You can speak Japanese. You can broker multi-million-dollar deals. You can organise events. But you can’t get a job. And you are anchored by Marie-Laure and the kids and your own past indolence to this life.