Life's Lottery

by Kim Newman

  Go to 0.

  139

  ‘Me,’ you say, mouth dry.

  ‘Pardon?’ Mary asks.

  You clear your throat. ‘Me.’

  Mary is surprised. She can’t understand anyone who’d volunteer for death.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ you say.

  ‘What for?’ Mary snaps.

  ‘That you don’t get it. I’m sorry for you.’

  ‘Bloody cheek,’ she says, and shoots you in the knee.

  Agony explodes. Chris screams, the twins screech.

  ‘Promise me,’ you say through tears.

  Mary is almost sad. She can’t promise. Chris knows their names and has seen their faces.

  ‘Spare the children,’ you say. ‘Kill her, but spare the children.’ Your heart is a stone.

  Grebo moans disappointment. ‘I want to fuck.’

  Mary thumps him in the face with the butt of her gun.

  ‘You’re harder than your brother,’ Mary says. ‘Much.’

  ‘Give me your word. Kill Chris, but not the twins.’

  ‘Want me to adopt them?’

  ‘No, just make sure they’re found. Make an anonymous call.’

  Chris has stopped crying. She’s scared speechless, but you know your wife agrees with you.

  ‘Okay,’ Mary says. ‘I respect you.’

  You try to remember Mary as a little girl, as a teenager. You knew her so little. Will she honour her word? She seems stranger even than you expected. Shane and Grebo are the mindless thugs you thought Hackwill would send. Mary is incalculable. Can she kill babies?

  Mary points her gun at Chris’s forehead. Your wife’s eyes are expectant, eager, hopeful.

  If you trust Mary not to kill the twins, go to 181. If you don’t, go to 194.

  140

  ‘What do you want?’ Sean asks. ‘Money.’

  It occurs to you that Sean could arrange things so that when he leaves, you — not Tristram Warwick — become manager.

  Or you could go for a pay-off now, and more later.

  If you ask for money, go to 155. If you ask to be made manager, go to 165.

  141

  ‘If a man did that to me,’ Mary says. ‘I’d kill him.’

  Funny you should say that …

  You catch the laugh before it escapes, but Mary spots the smirk.

  ‘I thought so,’ she says.

  Your heart throbs.

  You’re in the kitchen with Mary. She looks at you, a cat-smile playing around her lips. You remember the monster she used to be.

  Laraine comes in. She’s been shopping, in town.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Rye,’ Mary says, warmly.

  ‘Constable Yatman,’ your sister acknowledges, dumping bags on the kitchen table.

  ‘There’s no news,’ you say.

  Mary looks at Laraine’s back. Your sister sorts out tins for the cupboard and perishables for the fridge.

  ‘I don’t think we need to bother you any more,’ Mary says. She gets up and puts on her uniform cap. ‘I don’t think it’s coming home.’

  Laraine is struck by the expression and turns.

  ‘Goodbye, Laraine,’ Mary says, and leaves.

  You ought to be relieved. But there’s still Laraine.

  You and she haven’t slept together in days. Since you moved into the house, you’ve been in the guest bedroom except for sex. Even with Sean gone, it seemed foolish to sleep together in the master bedroom.

  Sean is fading as a ghost. But another is taking his place.

  You think about James. You came back home to write about James. That project is long abandoned, but you were getting somewhere. You were close to an understanding of your brother, of the strengths that helped him get by, but which also finally got him killed.

  James did things on his own.

  He would have understood that murder was best managed by a single person. Two people who kill together can never rest easy, because each knows there’s someone in the world who knows what they’ve done.

  How can you trust someone with a secret like that? How can you know anyone well enough to know they’ll never tell? You almost told Mary. You think she knows. That scene could easily have played out very differently.

  You realise you’ll leave this house soon, go back to London, get on with your life. Leaving Laraine behind; with Sean under the compost heap. She already thinks she’s haunted. How long will it take, if she’s left alone, for her to hear a voice calling her, begging to be dug up, to be freed from mulch?

  She’s close to the edge — she wouldn’t have slept with you in the first place if it weren’t for that — so she could all too easily succumb to some fugue of guilt. What if she cracks open, spilling it all? Then you’d get sucked into the morass.

  Even if she gets over it, what? A few years go by. How long will it be before her marriage is declared void by virtue of desertion or notional widowhood? She’s an attractive woman. She’ll meet someone. She has a knack of falling for the wrong man. And she’s open, good-natured, trusting. That’s how she gets into these situations.

  She’ll tell him.

  You try to picture the man she’ll tell. It could be anyone. How can you predict what he’ll be like, how he’ll take the news, what he’ll do?

  If he’s someone like Sean, who sees other people’s weaknesses as business opportunities, you could find yourself being blackmailed, squeezed by someone who taunts you with your nastiest secrets. Or if he’s someone like Dad, with an inflexible morality, he’ll get through the horror and work on Laraine, easing her towards confession. Her psychological healing will be at the cost of your freedom. You see yourself years from now, hauled out of your unimaginable future life to face charges. There is no statute of limitations on what you have done.

  You are cold with fear. You imagine James shaking his head. He’d have gone it alone. He did. It got him killed.

  What about the best-case scenario? Laraine’s man, the man she tells, loves and forgives her. You have a ghastly feeling he’ll have more trouble with the incest than the murder, but he’s strong inside, confident of his own feelings, and he’ll want to protect Laraine. Still, he won’t care about you. He’ll see you as the instigator of everything, forcing your sister into sex against her will, then coercing her to murder. Maybe he’ll try to arrange some deal whereby Laraine is treated lightly by the law if she gives evidence against you. You trust your sister enough to know she’ll resist, that she’ll insist she was an equal partner, if not the dominant one, in everything, but this man, Mr Unknown, won’t believe her. He’ll love her, so he’ll blame you. And you’ll take the fall.

  James quotes from Charlie Chan. ‘Murder is like potato chip. Cannot stop at “just one”.’

  You sit up in bed, heart pounding.

  If you follow James’s reasoning, go to 148. If you resist the thought, go to 158.

  142

  You arrange to meet Tristram Warwick outside the office, at a pub out of town, in Achelzoy.

  Your guts feel stretched like a drumskin.

  Shortly after dark, you make your excuses to Vanda and drive out to Achelzoy.

  Just before the Sutton Mallet turn-off, you start wondering about the car following you. This isn’t a busy road and you’re driving slowly, concentrating.

  Why doesn’t he overtake? Is it Sean? In the dark, you see only headlamps.

  On impulse, you take the Sutton Mallet turn-off. It’s just a dead end leading to a tiny hamlet. The other car also takes the turn. As you proceed over the pitted road, your stomach troubles you. This is fear.

  Eventually, there’s nowhere to go. Past the hamlet’s few houses, there’s a triangular space where cars can turn round. You manage that and are facing the other car head-on.

  The road is too narrow for two cars to pass. You’re trapped. You’ve trapped yourself. The buildings around are dark. No one to see or hear or help. You want to be sick.

  The headlamps get nearer, like tiger’s eyes. It’s Sean’s MG
.

  You turn off your own car lights and unbuckle your seatbelt. There are two people in Sean’s car. You guess one is Sean, but you can’t make out the other.

  What will Sean do?

  The MG rolls close to your car. Its lights die, but the engine still purrs.

  You open your door. Sean gets out of his car. You make out his suit rippling in the dark. He has something in his hands. A gun?

  You get out of your car. In the cold of the night, you are calm. You don’t shake and shiver. But your insides are water.

  Sean walks towards you. He’s carrying an iron crowbar.

  Just before he hits you, you turn your head, trying to see who is in the passenger seat of Sean’s car. It’s a woman. Not Ro.

  You die not knowing who it was.

  Go to 0.

  143

  You get Laraine calmed, by ordering her to make more tea. When you phrase wishes as commands, Laraine buckles to. That gives a frightening picture of life with Sean.

  At six on the dot, the smiling bank manager comes home.

  Is he just a little disturbed that you’re here?

  He shakes your hand and grasps your shoulder, invites you to stay for dinner, rabbits on about the Discount Development. There’s been a breakthrough. He’s on an up now: happy hysteria. You see the slightest dip would affect him, plunge him into the depths, turn his sweaty open hands into hard, heavy fists.

  ‘Sean,’ you say, getting his attention. ‘I’m only going to say this once. Don’t ever hit my sister again.’

  He mimes astonishment, tries to get his eyes to twinkle merrily, and makes as if to deny it.

  You throw hot tea in his face.

  ‘Not ever,’ you repeat.

  You imagine James standing at one shoulder and Dad at the other. All the force of the Marion men is in you, channelled against the pathetic Sean Rye.

  ‘Of course, Keith,’ he assures you. ‘I’d never hit Larry. I love and cherish her.’

  He is telling the truth. As he sees it.

  Driving away from Sutton Mallet, you still feel the dead with you. Dad is in the back seat, quiet. James is next to you, finally beside you.

  ‘I was wrong,’ he says. ‘You’ve changed since the copse. You can take care of things.’

  It won’t last. Sean’s resolve.

  ‘He’ll forget. He’ll hit her. He can’t help himself, the bastard.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to deal with him.’

  You know you can deal with Sean as James dealt with Hackwill. You know you’ll have to. You’re even looking forward to it.

  And so on.

  Begin again?

  144

  You sit in the audience. The device is in a hold-all under the stage. It’s always been your intention to be here. You wouldn’t ask Bob Monkhouse to make a sacrifice you weren’t willing to make yourself.

  A troop of Girl Guides dance to Abba.

  In addition to their music interests, Clare and Maisie have a string of music and clothing outlets, Dancing Queen. They have ridden kitsch, nostalgia and cool, and triumphed. So it can be done. The world is not completely against people.

  The Girl Guides all have awkward smiles or stern frowns. Their bodies work perfectly but they don’t know what to do with their faces. Knowing they are on television discombobulates them. Their faces are shown on the huge monitors up above the stage, grainily enlarged and sweating through make-up.

  Do they deserve to die? Just because they bought into the lie fed to so many, the lie that the Lottery will make them happy, that being on television is the apex of all human life.

  Three minutes to go. Enough time for Mystic Meg, shrouded in smoke, to make predictions and the guest, singer-songwriter VC Conyer, to begin the draw. Enough time to evacuate the studio.

  If you sit tight, go to 154. If you cry out, go to 167.

  145

  ‘People have been killed, James,’ you say. ‘That’s enough.’

  Your brother looks at you as if you were shit.

  ‘I have to think of my family,’ you say.

  ‘I am your family,’ James snarls.

  He starts stumping up the stairs. Victoria looks at you, neutrally, and follows him.

  You drop your guns and leave the building.

  As you get outside, to be welcomed by the police and the fire brigade, you hear gunfire from inside.

  ‘What the fuck happened here?’ asks a detective.

  You can’t say.

  Another explosion on the fourth floor rains debris into the car park. Uniformed men scurry out of the way.

  There are armed officers, with rifles that seem feeble next to the monster you were using. The detective, Inspector Draper, gathers the men together. He orders them in. At a trot, they go through the doors.

  You’re crying. There’s a lot more gunfire. Then a signal whistle and the firemen go in. Hoses spurt. Foam mushrooms.

  Draper keeps an eye on you.

  After twenty minutes, the fire is under control. They start bringing bodies out, faces uncovered.

  First out is Shane Bush. Then some bloke you don’t know. Then Victoria, pale and still alive, hands buried in a huge stomach wound. She dies in the car park, before they can lift her into an ambulance. You keep wiping away tears.

  Television cameras arrive. You overhear comments about a ‘Wild West gun battle in sleepy Somerset’.

  A fireman brings James out. Your brother is dead. Shot about a million times. You howl.

  Then, through smoke and foam, Robert Hackwill staggers out, supported by WPC Mary Yatman. He raises his hand in victory. Bystanders applaud him.

  Red rage explodes in you.

  If you try to kill Hackwill, go to 149. If you tear your hair and pound the ground, go to 159.

  146

  After the kids are in bed, you tell Vanda the whole thing, from Sean’s initial offer through his obvious success to what you discovered in the HOUSEKEEPING file and your conversation with him. Half-way through the story, she digs out a packet of cigarettes — she’s supposed to have given up — and starts chain-smoking. She hurries you through the whole thing, rarely even asking, ‘What did you do then?’ or needing a clarification. At the end of it, you feel relieved of a burden but Vanda appears weighed down. You don’t understand.

  ‘What should I do?’ you ask.

  ‘I’m thinking.’

  Vanda drags on her cigarette, nasty little sucks that unnerve you.

  Finally, she comes to a decision. ‘Keith, go outside into the garden and look at the moon.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Just do it. I’ll make the call.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You can’t be expected to blow the whistle, not in your state. I’ll arrange everything.’

  This is what you wanted. You’ve passed the baton and it’s out of your hands. As you let yourself out of the kitchen door, Vanda is on the phone.

  There’s no moon tonight. You stand in the dark, thinking. Through the kitchen window, you see Vanda as she makes her call.

  You always knew she was stronger than you. It’s not that you’re weak. You just need her. Together, you’re strong.

  Thinking about it, you realise your marriage keeps you on track. You didn’t go in with Sean in the first place because of Vanda and the kids. You couldn’t jeopardise your family.

  If Sean and Ro had a marriage like yours perhaps they wouldn’t be in the state they’re in.

  You sit on the swing you built for the kids. For the first time in weeks, you feel calm. The right thing has been done.

  Vanda finishes her call. She comes to the kitchen door. You turn on the swing seat. Her face is in shadow but she’s outlined by the light in the house.

  ‘It’s taken care of,’ she says. ‘Sit tight.’

  ‘What did the police say?’

  A pause.

  ‘Someone is coming over,’ she says.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Just think it through. What you�
��re going to say. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘I love you,’ you say.

  You can’t see Vanda’s face. But you know what’s there.

  ‘Oh, Keith,’ she replies, stepping out into the garden. She puts a hand on your shoulder and squeezes.

  ‘I feel so much better,’ you say, ‘now it’s decided. Now it’s set.’

  ‘Poor old Keith.’

  ‘It was ripping me up, knowing what I know, not knowing what to do.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Vanda fusses in the kitchen. You swing back and forth, long legs dragging on the lawn.

  You hear a car drawing up outside the house. Vanda answers the door before the bell can be rung.

  You are calm, ready. You know what to say.

  Vanda escorts someone through the house, out to the garden. You get off the swing and stand up. You straighten your jacket, brushing invisible dirt off the lapels.

  You turn and put out your hand. And an iron bar smashes across your cheek. Pain explodes in one side of your skull and your neck is wrenched.

  You are on your knees.

  The iron bar smashes again. Sideways, you see Vanda watching, smoking, looking away. Someone stands over you, raising the killing bar.

  It comes down.

  Go to 0.

  147

  The noise is incredible. The gun — which you’ve never fired before — slams against your shoulder like a rubber bullet. A double circle of shot the size of two dinner plates splatters Sean’s head against the door. He’s driven back into the house and goes down. There’s no doubt he’s dead.

  You don’t have time to think. Headlights are coming.

  Laraine tugs your lapel to get your attention and taps her chin, as if she wants to be kissed.

  You swipe her with the stock of the gun. You hit harder than you intended. It has to seem real. She staggers and falls. You’re afraid you’ve snapped her neck and ruined it. But she’s alive. She’s not even unconscious, though an angry black bruise is rising on half her jaw.