Life's Lottery (77 page)

‘Clean yourself up. Congratulations. Now I won’t have to kill you too.’

Hackwill looks at Shane on the floor.

‘I promised him you,’ he whispers to Mary.

She blinks.

Is she signalling you to come on or to go back? To rush Hackwill, or to hold off?

If you rush Hackwill, go to 288. If you let Mary make her move, go to 296.

Y
ou force the pillow down on to Hack will’s face, feeling his whole body stiffen as he tries to throw you off, and lie on top of him, pinning his limbs with your body, pressing with as much weight as you can manage. It takes minutes that pass like hours.

Eventually, you can relax.

When you strip the bed, you find the knife in Hackwill’s hand. The bastard thought he was ready.

You can’t wake James without alerting the others. Do you ask Mary for help?

If you ask Mary, go to 287. If you go it alone, go to 290.

Y
ou clamber towards Hackwill, knowing you’ll have to kill him, then climb back.

To what? James is part of James-and-Mary now. The Super Marion Brothers are a bust. You and Marie-Laure are pathetic; she’s stopped even complaining when you call her ‘Chris’.

You’ve never done anything right. You can take Hackwill out of this game. And yourself.

Instead of kicking Hackwill out of his perch, you hug him and launch yourself out away from the cliff.

Falling.

Go to 0.

Y
ou grab Hackwill’s collar. James is with you. He lays a hand on the exhausted councillor too.

Two nights outside have worn Hackwill ragged. He seems thinner, older, more battered than the man who left ‘to get help’.

Between you, you and James haul Hackwill up the hillside. Mary waits, a rock in her hands.

‘You,’ Hackwill says, to Mary, ‘help me.’

‘I resign, sir,’ she replies.

Hackwill’s face is purple. ‘It’s too late for that,’ he says, reaching for his knife.

Mary sees the attack coming and dives. James punches Hackwill in the stomach. You grab for his knife-hand. The sharp edge passes across your stomach, cutting your padded waistcoat but not your skin. You lose your grip.

James and Hackwill struggle. The old school bully still has fight in him, the bastard. Mary bashes his head with the rock. With a roar, he turns, knife towards her. She backs away. James launches himself at Hackwill’s knife-arm, but misjudges and rolls over the edge, getting a grip on an outcropping.

You examine the fluff pouring from your gashed stomach. You aren’t yet convinced you aren’t hurt.

Hackwill stamps on James’s hand. ‘Fucking Super Marion Brothers,’ he snarls. ‘You were always shits.’

James clings on with determination. But you hear the whimpering he made in the copse as he weed himself.

Mary yells like a lioness and smashes the rock into Hackwill’s face, obliterating his nose. He grabs her and parks his blade in her chest, twisting viciously.

‘Traitor,’ he breathes through blood.

Mary, eyes sparking fire, holds Hackwill’s anorak with both hands and pitches herself over the edge.

You see Mary and Hackwill in their death embrace. They bounce several times off jagged rocks, then launch into open space, legs waving like a starfish, and fall together into the torrent. You see a pale water-trail that might be Mary’s hair, then they’re both gone.

‘Help,’ grunts James, voice cracked.

You pull him up. Whatever it was, it’s over. You listen to the roar of the river, pouring into the caves like an ocean emptying into Hell.

* * *

When you’re asked what really happened, you have no theories.

And so on.

Y
ou turn away from the cottage and run.

You love Mary, but not enough to die: two nights’ fucking doesn’t mean that much. As you run through the dark, you pour contempt on yourself. You don’t know what’s happened to Mary, or to James, and you don’t care. You just want to be away from all this. You keep running.

* * *

Two days later, you wander into a village. The story is out. Most of them are dead, but Hackwill is alive.

Officially, James takes the blame. He went mad and killed people, until Hackwill took him down. Before he killed Mary, James raped her.

* * *

It doesn’t matter if you believe it. You almost do. What counts is that you ran. You’re congratulated on surviving the massacre, but some say you were your mad brother’s accomplice. You turn down all tabloid offers for your story. You wind up the business and stay home, looking inwards.

When it was just a Chinese burn, you ran into the copse; but when it was life or death, you ran away. You hate yourself.

You loved Mary. Those few days gave you a connection to her as important as your lifelong link with James.

And you let them both die.

* * *

Hackwill is hailed as a hero. No one dares question his business practices now. He prospers. Through his influence, streets in Sedgwater are named after Jessup, Warwick, Shearer and Shane, the victims of James Marion. You let him get away with it.

* * *

Marie-Laure tries to console you. You tell her to fuck off. You tell her you hate her and wish she had died too. You live on for quite a few years, but it eats you up that you ran away.

And so on.

M
ary helps you get Hackwill out of Castle Drac and into a river. You watch the bundle swirl a little as it is rushed away. The river flows underground. He’ll probably never come up again.

Without him, Jessup and Shane are useless. All your problems are over.

* * *

Months later, you and Mary tell James what you did.

‘That’s a damn sight better than my feeble shot,’ he says. ‘And it didn’t cost us a minibus.’

‘We’re safe,’ you say. ‘You’re safe.’

Hackwill has taken the blame for Warwick and McKinnell.

‘One thing bothers me,’ you say. ‘Why did you kill Warwick and McKinnell?’

‘Me?’ James is shocked you can think such a thing. ‘
Me?
’

* * *

Your brother stays away from you for a while. After all, you’re a murderer and he isn’t.

Eventually, he comes round. He realises you killed to protect him. That’s what it’s all about.

Now all you have to worry about is Mary. Your relationship had better be for ever, because she’s the only one outside the family who knows what happened.

After a while, worry frays your nerves. Sleeping next to Mary, you find yourself holding the pillow, remembering Hackwill’s body under you.

What to do? What to do?

And so on.

Y
ou leap across the room. Hackwill’s knife cuts through Mary’s neck…

in slo-mo, you see skin and flesh part and blood burst, and your heart dies…

and is waiting for you.

You slam against Hackwill’s knife, but get your hands round his neck. You feel the blade in your chest, a hard obstruction, and hear your heartbeat. You’re going to last long enough to finish him.

You see life die in Hackwill’s eyes. He can’t believe you’ve killed him. You roll off the dead councillor and look at the blurry ceiling.

Reg Jessup is going to have to answer for this. You almost laugh.

Your hand flounders, but finds Mary’s. With your last strength, you grip her hand. Sticky blood binds your palm to hers. You feel the grip returned.

You both die. In love.

Go to 0.

I
nstinctively, you grip the rope, taking the strain in your arms.

The full weight of James and Hackwill, bulked up by rainwater, drags at you.

The shelf is slippery. You are pulled forward. You are in the air. Below you, rope flapping between you, James and Hackwill tumble.

You see the grey of the ground.

Go to 0.

I
f you get Hackwill outside, you can cart him to a river that flows underground. Throw him in there and the body will never be found. Your story will be that he knocked you out and made a run for it. You’ll clout yourself later to back that up.

You wrap him in a duvet cover and toss in his clothes and boots, even his knife. It’s a heavy sack – too many municipal free lunches in his gut – but you make it downstairs and out of Castle Drac.

You’re wearing pyjamas and the temperature is down around zero. At least it’s not raining.

You hump Hackwill along the grass, hauling him towards the pens. You muffle your sobs of exertion. The bundle is heavy, awkward. You’re leaving a dragging track that will be obvious in the daytime.

A light goes on in the cottage. You haul harder and the duvet cover splits. A white hand sticks out. Is it clutching the grass, anchoring you?

People come out of Castle Drac, running towards you.

Someone tackles you and hammers you to the ground. A torch shines. James is on top of you. He looks surprised.

‘I thought you were dead,’ he says.

‘No,’ Mary comments. ‘That’s Hackwill.’

Oh God, you’ve fucked this up.

‘What were you thinking of?’ James asks.

You have no answer.

‘I can’t help you now,’ James says.

And so on.

Y
ou visit Mary in hospital. Suffering from exposure and shock, she has lapsed into semi-coma. Stuck full of tubes, she looks like a little girl in a true-life TV movie. Her doctor, knowing what you went through with her, lets you in to watch her for a while. He thinks it might help.

You work out how it might have been. Mary worked for Hackwill, even when she was a policewoman. When she vandalised your home, she was under his orders. Shane was hired beef, just for show. Mary, who used to be a monster, was the effective one, the wetwork specialist.

‘Did you, Mary?’ you ask.

Her respirator goes up and down. Her cardiogram beeps.

‘McKinnell would have been easy. Too wrapped up in gut-ache to hear anyone coming behind him, with a knife.’

You see Mary creeping, ready.

‘Then Hackwill craps out, gets himself an alibi, and leaves his little helper behind to finish the job. You distract James with your kisses, fuck him until he’s in a deep sleep, then go out and kill Warwick and Shearer, knock me over, get back into Castle Drac to be around when James wakes up. You’re great in bed and he trusts you, the idiot. Then, it gets hazy.’

Her face doesn’t move.

‘Somehow, you get turned round. I think it was when I told Jessup about the copse. All the resentment you felt about being Hackwill’s creature bubbled up. You went rogue. Hackwill was out there somewhere, pretending to be lost, nice warm boots on his feet, snacking off emergency rations. You traipsed after Sean, caught up with him, killed him. Collateral damage. You didn’t have to, didn’t want to, but by then killing seemed easy. Certainly, you found and killed Hackwill. And James.’

The last, you’re not sure of. Hackwill could have killed James, before himself being killed by Mary. James could even still be out there, a Welsh Tarzan living off berries and leaves. At the end, confused by it all, Mary could have felt mercy for James. Couldn’t she?

You reach into the nest of tubes and take hold.

If you pull, go to 294. If you let Mary alone, go to 298.

‘
T
hief,’ you say.

For a moment, you wonder if he can understand English.
Voleur
. That’s the word.

‘You are him,’ Lethem says. ‘The other winner.’

You knew he knew you were coming.

He rushes at you – to attack? to embrace? – and you fumble, dropping your ice-axe. You collide, thumping together through layers of fur. You roll through the snow, clinging tight to each other. Snow packs round you, wrapping you in an ice grip. A giant ball grows round you.

Your fortunes are one. Your matched halves mesh.

People run after you.

Rocks tear at your furs but can’t reach you. You have become a two-scoop snowball. Together, you roll over a precipice.

In each other’s arms, you plunge from the top of the world.

Go to 0.

Y
ou and Mary lie awake in the four-poster. Tonight, you haven’t made love. You’re too concerned with thinking about the next room. James and Hackwill are in there. Will one try to kill the other?

James has already tried to kill Hackwill, so Hackwill knows the danger and might plan a pre-emptive strike.

Mary strokes your chest, understanding.

‘I hope he gets it right this time,’ you murmur.

‘What?’

‘Killing Hackwill. Enough of this fucking around with Warwick and McKinnell. James has to go for the bull.’

Mary props herself up on her elbow. ‘James didn’t kill McKinnell. That was my job.’

Your heart clutches.

‘I didn’t do it, lover. It was probably Shane.’

‘Then James
isn’t
a killer?’

Mary looks at you, her face curtained by her hair: you can’t see her eyes.

Damn. How could you have thought such a thing?

You get out of bed and go on to the landing. The other bedroom door is open. Hackwill and Shane stand over a bed, pressing a pillow down.

Hackwill sees you. ‘Fuck being quiet,’ he says.

Shane falls on you, knife sliding between your ribs. As you die, you regret thinking what you did of James. You don’t wonder whether Mary will be all right.

Go to 0.

Y
ou wake up in prison, not sure what you were dreaming. Now Mary’s dead, your conclusions are tenuous. Hackwill killed them all except Mary. You killed her.

While you were away (in a fugue of babbling, apparently) you’ve become a famous case for all the wrong reasons. The assumption is that you mercy-killed your catatonic friend. What you went through together – you must have been in love? – was a bond that brought you to Mary’s bedside, intent on freeing her from her functioning but empty shell.