Michael Dibdin - Dirty Tricks

This wasn’t quite what I told Dennis when he brought the matter up.

‘Clive tells me he’s had to let you go.’

I assumed a sphinx-like smile, as though my present situation were part of a long-term career strategy which would yield staggering results when it finally matured.

‘Let’s say we agreed to go our separate ways.’

‘So what are you up to now?’

‘On a day-to-day basis? I’ve gone freelance. A little angle I’ve worked out. Can’t say more at the moment. You know how it is.’

Dennis laughed knowingly.

‘Too right. Half my clients don’t even want to let me know what they’re up to. Think of me as your psychiatrist, I say. If you don’t tell me your dirty little secrets, how can I help you?’

He topped up our glasses.

‘Got a pension plan, have you?’

I admitted that I hadn’t quite got around to organizing that aspect of my life yet.

‘When you’re ready, just let me know. I know someone, doesn’t work for us, quite independent, nothing in it for me, don’t worry about that. Absolutely brilliant though. Put together a beauty for me, tailored exactly to my needs. Most plans are like off-the-peg suits, they fit everyone more or less and no one perfectly. With this bloke, it’s all bespoke. Costs a shade more now, but when it’s time to cash in you’ll be glad you did, believe you me.’

His fingers jabbed and sketched as he explained the details. Dennis was a genuine enthusiast for financial matters. A well-made pension plan inspired in him the same emotions as an estate-bottled single-vineyard wine of a good year, and about the same amount of waffle. I had to listen for a good hour while he burbled on about variably apertured annuity options and the like. But in his eagerness to demonstrate how wonderful the scheme was, he let drop the fact that in the event of his death Karen would inherit not only the house, fully paid-off under the terms of their endowment mortgage, but also a lump sum amounting to almost half a million pounds. He was unwilling to disclose the still more impressive amount accruing on his retirement at age fifty-five, but this was of purely theoretical interest to me. I didn’t really rate his chances of living that long. The fact is that I had already begun to give serious consideration to the possibility of doing away with Dennis Parsons.

I foresee that this statement will excite a certain amount of comment. Indeed, my legal representative has strongly advised me against making it. All I can say to that is that I have a higher opinion of your judgement than he has. A hundred years ago, most people would have violently and indignantly denied that they ever felt the desire to make love with anyone other than their marital partner. To do otherwise would have been tantamount to branding yourself an obscene, inhuman monster, an outcast from civilized society. Yet we now know that everyone has promiscuous sexual fantasies all the time. The people we worry about these days — the monsters, the ogres, the threats to society — are the ones who refuse to admit it.

The same applies, I believe, to the question under discussion, except that while our sexual desires are now the subject of free and frank discussion, our homicidal ones still dare not speak their name. It is striking that at a time when just about every other human value has been called in question, the value of life is still universally accepted as an absolute. Despite this, I have no qualms about admitting to men of your culture and experience that the demise of Dennis Parsons seemed to me to be jolly desirable. I just couldn’t work out how to bring it about. What it comes down to is that most people, myself included, are just not up to murder. We make a big show of our moral objections, but what really puts us off are the technical ones. Most of us couldn’t stick a pig either, but that doesn’t stop us eating pork. If we didn’t have butchers to do the necessary, we’d be vegetarians out of sheer ineptitude.

Perhaps it helps if you hate the intended victim, but I had no reason to hate Dennis. I rather liked him, in fact. My objections to his existence were purely utilitarian. I wanted to make large-scale improvements and extensions to my life, and to do so Dennis would have to be demolished. But how? It would have been easier if I could have discussed it with Karen. After all, it was in her interests as much as mine. If Dennis discovered that we were committing adultery, as he was bound to eventually, we would both end up in poverty. If he died before finding out, on the other hand, Karen got everything and I got Karen. So when she asked me where we’d be without him, my urge was to reply, ‘Rich.’ But despite her impeccable bed-cred, Karen was in most respects a very conventional person compared to someone like Manuela.

It’s really about time we tackled Manuela, who seems to have become a recurring reference point in this story. I met her on a colectivo here in the capital, standing face to face in the rush-hour crowds. What sort of face did she have? She must have had one. I’m sure of that. I’d have noticed if it had been missing. No question about it, she had a face, but I’m buggered if I can remember what it looked like. I recall her bum, though, in vivid detail. It was one of those long drawn-out Latin bums, the ones that start just above the knees and peter out somewhere round about the coccyx. Apart from that she was unremarkable, short and stocky, solid-breasted, round-shouldered, with sturdy hips and ankles, not yet fat but genetically programmed for early obesity. The foreknowledge of that fate gave her flesh a deliciously transient ripeness, a brief doomed perfection on which I loved to gorge myself. Her lips were satisfyingly full, tensed to one side as though expecting a blow at any moment. I expected her to limp slightly. She didn’t, but something about the way she moved confirmed my suspicion that she saw herself as damaged goods.

Even before we’d exchanged a word, I knew that she would let me do anything I wanted to her. Not that she would like it. She would hate it, and me, and herself most of all. But she wouldn’t say no. Manuela was the product of a relationship between the sexes firmly grounded in the realities of the marketplace. In the last resort, anything is preferable to spinsterhood. If you can’t get loved, get laid. If even that fails, get raped. That’s the bottom line. There were no doubt tribes whose females thought differently, but they died out. We’re the survivors. We may not be very nice, but we’re here.

Manuela no doubt had her personal preferences and tastes, like everyone else, but she didn’t make the mistake of thinking that they were of any importance in the matter. She knew that men were total shits, that there were no limits to their depravity, selfishness or filthy desires. But she wanted a man, so she knew she’d have to pay a price, any price. That was why I had to break off our relationship in the end. I had to live with myself for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to know what I was capable of, given the opportunity she was offering me.

But while Manuela was a mirror in which I glimpsed troubling facets of my own personality, hers presented no problems. Her licentiousness was entirely passive, reflecting not her own desires but those of the man she was with. What did she want? I never asked her, but I don’t imagine oral penetration figured as high on her list of priorities as it did on mine, and she could probably have done without the anal variety altogether. In fact at the risk of sounding patronizingly sexist, I would be prepared to bet that what Manuela really wanted was to get married, settle down and have lots of children. But she knew that no man was going to suggest that, not to her. The best she could hope for was that someone would come along and abuse her in various disgusting and incomprehensible ways. Then just possibly — there were no guarantees with this sort of investment — he might let her have a child in return, if only to give him someone to abuse when they both got older.