by Kim Newman
McKinnell will probably be out of action for days. So you needn’t think too much about him.
Shane Bush works for Hackwill. It’ll take a while for Shane to get surly, but it’ll come. One of the features of your method is that it gets juniors to speak their minds when their bosses try to force them to do stupid things. In the business world, it’s theoretically a bad thing for the company if subordinates are too cowed to speak up; but no boss you have ever dropped in a shit-pit has ever taken kindly to being trampled under by his executive secretary.
You set six places at the dinner table and cook a vat of stew. Mary’s team sit, waiting to be fed.
‘I’m afraid the losers have to go back to Colditz now,’ James announces.
It’s starting to drizzle outside, and it’s dark. Hackwill makes no move. He can smell the stew. You begin doling out the food.
‘I can’t eat,’ says McKinnell.
Hackwill makes a move to replace McKinnell.
‘Against rules, I’m afraid,’ James says.
‘Are you going to stop me?’
‘Read the contract, Councillor. If you break rules, you’re liable to a ten-thousand-pound fine. For each violation.’
Usually, it’s £1,000.
Hackwill freezes in a mute fit of cold rage. Mary’s team, except McKinnell, tuck into their stew.
‘This is really good,’ Sean says. ‘My compliments to the chef.’
Reg whimpers.
‘I’ll save you some, love,’ Shearer says to Warwick.
Hackwill is outraged. ‘Is that against the rules?’
You and James shrug. It is, but you see potential in letting it slide.
‘Victors can dispose of spoils as they see fit,’ you say.
‘Fine,’ smiles Hackwill. ‘We split the food evenly.’
Sean protects his bowl as if in a rowdy school dinner hall. Hackwill used to extort food from smaller kids, you remember.
‘No,’ says Mary. ‘Councillor Hackwill, you lost. You have to go by that.’
Hackwill’s face is purple. What game is Mary playing?
‘Rye,’ Hackwill demands, ‘give me your stew. I’ll pay fifty pounds.’
Sean barks laughter. ‘Not bloody likely, Robbo.’
‘I’ll break you, Rye.’
‘This was your idea,’ Sean reminds him.
‘Enough argument,’ James says, clapping once. ‘Losers, outside. Now.’
Hackwill fumes out, banging the door behind him. Reg, Warwick and Shane follow.
Shane looks back, at Mary. He must have fancied his chances this week. He used to think he was Napoleon Solo, the prat. Now, he’s Napoleon No-food.
You finish your meal without conversation.
‘Congratulations, winners,’ James says.
You hand round cigars. Sean, Shearer and Mary light up. Even McKinnell perks up a bit, thinking things are better.
The next day of the course is the chain-gang game. There’s no way Mary can cheat on that. Hackwill’s team comes out the winner. The prize this time is that the team can elect one of their number to sleep inside the cottage, in a warm bed.
The election is where the fun starts.
‘By the way,’ you explain, ‘you can’t vote for yourself.’
Hackwill sits back, confident. After all, he’s won a few elections.
‘I vote for Rob,’ Reg dutifully toadies.
Warwick gets to vote next. He’s sulking because Hackwill called him a ‘useless poof’ when he took a tumble, dragging the whole team a couple of yards down the mountainside. He thinks it over and votes for Shane.
Hackwill wastes his vote on Reg and looks at Shane. Shane ought to vote for his employer. But coming on this course wasn’t his idea and he’s fed up. He votes for Reg, bitterly.
Hackwill bristles and looks at Reg.
Reg, momentarily wistful about a warm bed after two nights in Colditz, suggests a recount. James says the decision is final. You know Reg is pleased. And you know Hackwill wants to fire Shane.
The next day, everyone gets up to find that their boots have disappeared. Those who didn’t sleep in their socks — Sean, Kay and Reg — lose them too. Your boots are gone too, and so are James’s. You assume James is responsible for this especially fiendish bit of cruelty.
You assemble everyone by the minibus to drive them across country to the mud-pit assault course. The engine won’t start.
‘This is part of it, isn’t it?’ Warwick says.
James frowns. It’s not part of the plan. You look at the engine. Tubes have been pulled out and taken away. It’s obvious sabotage.
‘So, someone’s displaying initiative,’ you declare, looking at the other eight people. With the exception of the Zen-serene Mary and the smug-stupid Reg, everyone looks guilty. It hits you that with two teams of four and you and James, there should be nine other people.
‘Where’s McKinnell?’
‘The shits again,’ Warwick says.
‘Find him,’ you order.
No one volunteers to go.
‘Shane,’ you say, ‘you find him.’
Shane still doesn’t like taking orders from the snotnose who threw a fit about school custard, but hops to it. He just wants to get off the mountain and look for a new job.
Your mind races. What’s going on? Is it James? Has he escalated the revenge programme without consulting you?
Shane comes back.
‘You’ve got to see this, Marion,’ he says.
He leads you and James toward the pens. Hackwill strides along after you, trying to keep up. The rest of the pack, like sheep, drift in your wake. Sean hops a little, bare feet on icy ground. Only Mary isn’t interested, and when she’s alone by the minibus even she shifts herself.
Ben McKinnell is slumped in a hollow in the earth, throat cut. The blood on his chest is frozen and dewy, like a crimson, crystalline Santa beard.
Sean gasps.
Your heart leaps.
Is James surprised?
‘How far to civilisation?’ Mary asks.
‘Two days’ walk, maybe three,’ you say.
‘In Wales? Nothing’s two days’ walk away.’
‘It’s up and down mountains. We bought the place because it was the arse-end of nowhere.’
‘And you don’t have a telephone?’
‘No, Mary, we don’t,’ James says.
You have a mobile and James knows it. You don’t contradict him. Everyone else was banned from bringing portable phones. No one speaks up to claim they’ve broken that rule. This once, the fine might be waived.
‘We should walk, then,’ Hackwill says. ‘To the police.’
‘There’s a problem,’ you say.
Hackwill looks disgusted. ‘Come on, out with it.’
‘Frostbite. How do your toes feel?’
He looks down at his stockinged feet. His socks are wet and heavy. Your own toes are dead.
‘Where are the fucking shoes?’ Hackwill asks James.
James shrugs. In that shrug, you realise how deep the shit is. Either you can’t trust the only person here you could trust yesterday, or someone else has crippled the lot of you. And someone must have killed McKinnell.
‘My feet are freezing,’ Sean says, redundantly.
‘We couldn’t walk for more than an hour without shoes,’ Mary says. ‘At the end of two days, we’d just have blue stumps at the ends of our legs.’
‘We have one pair of boots,’ James says.
You’ve worked that out too. You wonder whose feet are cold enough for the option to be tempting.
‘Who has boots?’ Hackwill demands.
James points at McKinnell. He has died with his boots on.
If you take the boots yourself, go to 190. If you stand back and let someone else claim them, go to 203.
172
After a pause, Sean flies out of the open window. His arms and legs wave as he falls. He arcs a little, as if thrown with considerable force. You think he’s going to cru
nch down on the windshield but he falls short. He lies face down, like a broken starfish.
Mary comes out of the house.
‘Overcome by grief and guilt, in a spasm of self-hatred at his own worthlessness, Mr Rye threw himself …’
Sean groans and tries to get up on his knees. He can’t make it. Mary takes his belt and pulls him up, then heaves him over her shoulder in a fireman’s lift.
‘Finding himself still alive but resolved to end his useless life, Mr Rye dragged himself back into his house, crawled painfully up the stairs and, for the second time, defenestrated himself.’
You stand frozen and Mary carries Sean indoors. You are impressed that she has used the word ‘defenestrated’ in a spoken sentence.
This time, Sean falls vertically, head first, and his neck goes.
Mary appears at the window. ‘Mr Marion and myself stood by helpless,’ she shouts.
You look at the leaky bag that used to be Sean.
‘By the way,’ Mary says, ‘welcome home, Keith. Your brother would have been proud of you.’
And so on.
Begin again?
173
The problem you have is that you can remember things, so it’s difficult to keep your story straight. You’re asked hundreds of questions about your life and it’s hard to keep answering that you don’t know when you do.
Asked the names of your children, you want to say ‘Josh and Jonquil’ but have to get over the hesitation with a pretence of searching empty memory banks.
Dr Cross makes cryptic notes. You know he knows you’re faking. But you also manifestly don’t know anything about Keith Marion.
Dr Cross asks you a question in Japanese. You shrug. He makes a note.
‘Where did you go to school?’
‘Sedgwater,’ you answer.
‘Which schools?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Dr Marling’s and Ash Grove?’
‘Hemphill and Ash Grove,’ you correct, instinctively.
Dr Cross makes a note. You’ve just shot yourself in the foot.
‘I have you down in the records as a Marling’s boy,’ the doctor says. ‘Hum the theme from Top Cat.’
‘Pardon?’
‘The TV cartoon.’
You hum the song.
‘Well, something’s imprinted on your memory. That’s good.’
‘I think I’d rather remember my wife’s birthday than the Top Cat song.’
‘I sympathise with you.’
Your family treat you as if you were an alien. Dr Cross puzzles at the case but can’t make it out. People seem afraid of you. Rowena is nervous about undressing in front of you, but you start having sex. The children keep forgetting you don’t know things. The business is on hold.
You have medical insurance. Dr Cross thinks you’re trying to pull off some con, but can’t understand why. It turns out you are already rich enough to retire.
You walk on eggshells. You keep making mistakes. But the truth is so far beyond belief no one gets near it.
The problem is that your cover story starts coming true. The more Dr Cross questions you, the easier it is not to know the answers.
When asked your children’s names, you answer ‘Jeremy and Jessica’. Of course, you knew this even in the first session. The point is the slight hesitation as you dredge up information that should be instinctive. That hesitation is gone, which the doctor approves.
Thinking about it, you can’t really recall Josh and Jonquil. They are the phantoms, receding behind the cobweb curtain. The life you are forgetting is your own.
But the new one is still not quite convincing.
You try, once, to undo the trick. You lie in your living-room, shut your eyes, and try to picture in detail the flat you shared with Marie-Laure. You run through Vince’s comics, your chipped crockery, Josh’s Ninja Turtles, Marie-Laure’s blouses.
But the shift doesn’t come. And you can’t remember anything about Jonquil. Bloody silly name.
You’re stuck here.
You have to leave. Ro takes it well and you let her have the house, custody and most of the money. It’s not really yours, anyway.
You spend some time with Mum. She’s still the same, but even here there are subtle, jarring dissonances.
You set out to wander the world, away from the lives of both Keiths.
Here, you can be someone new, someone who owes nothing to any of his past selves.
Born anew at thirty, you look for a life.
And so on.
Begin again?
174
‘Him,’ you say.
Laraine presses the barrels against Sean’s forehead. His eyes are still alive, but he’s in too much pain to say anything.
The blast explodes his head like a watermelon.
‘Now what?’ she asks.
You can’t think of a way to sell this.
Hackwill and Sean attacked you and Laraine, and she defended herself with a gun wrested from Hackwill. No, not when forensic science will reconstruct her head-blasting of a severely wounded, helpless, harmless Sean.
Hackwill and Sean shot each other. With the same gun? They struggled over it? Hackwill wounded Sean, Sean killed Hackwill … Then who killed Sean? And what about reloading? How could Sean reload without his shoulder?
There must be another story.
Mystery Man blasted Sean and Hackwill, left the gun with Laraine — who isn’t wearing gloves and must be leaving fucking fingerprints all over it — and headed off across the moors.
Can you fix up that toad Reg Jessup as Mystery Man? It’s not good, but it’s something.
What about powder burns? It’s too late for Laraine to go and wash her hands. Besides, soap and water won’t fool the tests they have these days.
Cars are coming. Flashing blue lights.
How about Laraine went mad and killed Hackwill and Sean? It has the advantage of being fucking true.
Can you write yourself out? You didn’t kill anyone. (Though you told Laraine to shoot Sean, which she’ll remember.) At worst, you’re an accomplice. If you turn queen’s evidence, you might get off.
Get off on murder. But incest will come out. Laraine’s off the deep end and she’ll be a talker.
Without her, you could handle this.
Laraine shoots it out with the cops and goes under in a hail of bullets? No, this isn’t Texas. It takes a while for British police to get guns.
‘Put the gun down, Mrs Rye,’ says a policewoman. It’s Mary Yatman.
Laraine is puzzled. She hasn’t been thinking. She whirls round, aims the gun at Mary, and pulls the triggers. Mary throws herself forward. The gun clicks. Laraine has dropped the hammer on used shells.
A rugby scrum falls on your sister. If her neck breaks, you’re home free. Well, in a position to work up a story. You’ll have to say Hackwill brought his gun with him. Somehow, Laraine got it from him.
The police scrum sorts itself out. Laraine is alive and gunless. Mary wipes dirt off her knees and skirt.
The bodies are found. Neighbours are shooed away. Every copper in Somerset is in Sutton Mallet. Handcuffs are clamped on Laraine.
There are ambulances here, too. Lots of flashing lights. The doctors can’t do anything for Sean and Hackwill. They look at Laraine’s bruises. She gets all the attention.
Beyond the carnival, the moors are dark. You can walk away. Vanish, get amnesia, start a new life somewhere, with no name, no money, no home and no job.
If Laraine talks, you’re going to be famous. Still, it’s your best bet. You back away, working between police cars.
‘Keith,’ Mary says. ‘At last, someone with sense.’
Your way to the moors is barred. You’re part of the carnival. Soon, you’ll be the high-wire act.
‘Keith, what’s the story?’
Your throat is dry. You can’t speak.
And so on.
Begin again?
175
You gently push Mum a
nd Phil aside and roughly grab Sean by the lapels. You see fear and surprise in his eyes and enjoy it. You think like James. Mary’s job is to stop you. She’ll hesitate, but she’ll do it. You have to be quick and efficient.
You nut Sean, ramming your forehead against his nose. You break his red-framed yuppie glasses and feel cartilage scrunch against your hard skullbone.
You knee Sean in the goolies, doubling him up; you chop his neck with a double-handed thump, laying him on the floor; you kick him in the ribs, again and again and—
Mary lays a hand on your shoulder. You stand back like a boxer pulled out by the referee. Sean hears the count and doesn’t try to get up. Blood pools under his face.
‘All right, game over,’ you tell Mary, raising open hands.
She stands away. You turn and put one last kick into Sean’s face. Mary grabs you round the waist and throws you at a chair.
Mum and Phil are appalled. They don’t understand.
‘Obviously, there’s a story here,’ Mary says.
‘That bastard hurt my sister,’ you say. ‘Put her in hospital.’
‘Are you alleging?’
‘I’m accusing my brother-in-law of criminal assault, or whatever.’
‘No,’ Mary says.
‘You don’t understand.’
‘You’re the one who doesn’t understand. There was a witness. Mrs Rye fell or threw herself out of a window. Mr Rye was in his car, on the way home.’
… or threw herself …
‘He did it.’
‘It was an accident, Keith,’ says Mum.
You shake your head.
Someone examines Sean, turning him over amid groans.
‘I don’t care if it was an accident. He did it.’
Mary reads you your rights.
Sean doesn’t want to press charges. After a night in a cell without your belt or tie, you are let go.
‘We seem to have been here before,’ says Mary as she shows you the way out of the police station. ‘Why doesn’t anyone want to take the Marion boys to court?’
Outside the police station, bright sunshine strikes Mary’s blonde bun. Her blue eyes seem white.
