Michael Dibdin - Dirty Tricks

‘I couldn’t see any other honourable way out. Perhaps I’m old-fashioned. Perhaps I should have been frank with her, admitted honestly that I didn’t love her and that if she insisted on marrying me she would be condemning both of us to a joyless union. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I honestly thought she loved me so much that she’d been prepared to get herself pregnant to trick me into marriage. However badly she’d behaved, it was my duty to stand by her and the child. Telling her the truth about my feelings, or rather the lack of them, would just have made our life together even more intolerable.’

To harmonize my body language with Alison’s, I turned to look out of the window. As our eyes met in the glass, I realized that she was not admiring the flaking stone blocks opposite but using the window as a mirror. It was me she had been looking at all that time, but secretively, like a girl.

‘It was Karen’s idea to keep the wedding quiet,’ I went on. ‘She claimed people might be shocked at her remarrying so soon after Dennis’s death. The real reason was that she was afraid of what I might find out. She couldn’t know who Dennis might have told, man to man, after a few drinks. If I had learned her secret before the marriage was legal, all her devious schemes would have come to nothing.’

‘What secret?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Know what?’

‘In my worst moments I thought everyone knew, except me.’

‘Knew what, for heaven’s sake?’

I fixed her eyes.

‘That Karen has had a hysterectomy.’

Alison looked suitably appalled.

‘Two weeks after we were married, I asked how her pregnancy was going. She turned red and started stammering. Then she burst into tears. I tried to comfort her. She said she’d lost the foetus. It sounded as though she’d left it on a bus or something. Then she started laughing at the top of her voice. I thought it was just hysteria. Living with her, day in day out, I was beginning to realize how unstable she is. Her mood swings quite frighten me sometimes. Anyway, to calm her I said not to take it so hard, we could always try again. It was then that she told me about the hysterectomy.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Like a fool, I told her that the only reason I’d married her was because she’d told me she was pregnant. You can imagine the reaction that got.’

‘But she had deliberately deceived you!’

‘Exactly! She tricked me, Alison. That little bitch tricked me! Forgive my language, but I think I have every right to feel bitter. Not only am I forced to share bed and board with a woman for whom I feel nothing but disgust, but for my pains I have been branded a disreputable opportunist by all and sundry. And worst of all, I have lost the respect of the person I hold most dear in all the world.’

I fell silent, my head bowed in exhaustion and despair.

‘I’ll divorce her, of course. But it will take time. She’ll fight every inch of the way. She’s crazy about me, for some reason. And what will everyone think? They’ll say I took advantage of a widow’s grief to marry her for her money, then cold-bloodedly ditched her as soon as I had a chance. It’s all so hopeless! Why on earth did this have to happen to me? What have I done to deserve it?’

This sort of feeble whining goes down a treat with women like Alison. They like their men to be useless. It gives them a purpose in life.

‘Well it’s not for me to advise you, of course …’

‘On the contrary! If I thought that I might be able to count on your friendship, despite all that’s happened, then … Well, that would make an enormous difference. It would make all the difference.

‘Then I think you should separate as soon as possible. The sooner the situation is clarified, the better for everyone concerned.’

She gathered her shopping together.

‘And now I must be going. I have to collect my youngest from Phil and Jim.’

Outside in the street I took her hand for the first time.

‘It’s been such a comfort talking to you, Alison. You don’t know how it’s helped. Will you …?’

‘I’ll do everything I can ,’ she said, freeing herself.

I nodded meekly.

‘Don’t look so glum!’ she added. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’

And off she went to collect her son from St Philip and James Primary School.

Strange the tricks that life plays, I mused as I drove home, popping the tape of madrigals into the player. A few days earlier I had been thinking of calling my doctor to assess the chances of having my vasectomy reversed in order to save my marriage to Karen. Now I would be calling a solicitor to see how I could get it dissolved on the best possible terms. The last thing I wanted was to make some hasty move which might invalidate my claims to a large share of our joint estate. But these were mere details. The main thing was that my intuitions about Alison had been confirmed. She was far from indifferent to me, I felt sure of that, but neither would she contemplate carrying on an affair with a married man. That was fine. I didn’t want to have an affair with Alison. My intentions were entirely honourable. Whoever would have guessed it, though? What a tease life was, to be sure! What a little caution. With a fol-rol-rol and a hey-nonny-no.

Much to my surprise, Karen greeted me at the front door with a glass of champagne in her hand and, still more unusual, a smile on her face.

‘Guess what?’ she said archly.

Not best pleased at being awakened from my reveries, I shrugged impatiently. Karen threw her arms round my neck, spilling champagne everywhere.

‘I’m pregnant!’ she shrieked.

A dense mental fog, known locally as a Kidlington Particular, grips the city, casting its Lethean spell over Members and non-Members of the University alike. Stupefying vapours shroud the environs of that ubiquitous old hostelry ‘The Temporary Sign’. Within, a throng of potential witnesses studiously ignore the two men huddled in furtive confabulation. One is short, swarthy and stout. He wears a filthy poncho, a wide-brimmed hat and spurred boots. Cartridge belts criss-cross his chest and he picks his teeth with a razor-sharp dagger. The other man is tall and saturnine, with brilliantined hair and a cruel smile. He is dressed in a white double-breasted suit and slip-on patent leather shoes and is smoking a Turkish cigarette in an ivory holder.

I — you have of course penetrated my feeble disguise — drawl languidly, ‘I want you to kill my wife.’

‘ Si, senor! ’ grins Garcia (for it is he).

Bundles of greasy banknotes change hands and both conspirators disappear into the night. The next moment the pub itself has vanished, together with its faceless regulars and anonymous landlord. Only the fog remains, an impenetrable wall of obscurity and confusion, dense, dim and very, very thick .

What do you mean, you don’t believe this? Are you aware that no lesser an authority than Her Majesty’s Home Secretary has given this scenario his seal of approval, and that it forms the basis of the extradition proceedings currently before this court? What’s that? You find no mention of a poncho? Very well, I’ll waive the poncho. Strike the poncho from the record. The fact remains that I am accused of conspiring with a person or persons unknown to murder my wife.

There is one point which needs to be made right away, which is that instead of providing me with a motive for murder, the discovery that Karen was pregnant removed any interest I might otherwise have had in her death. So far from the jealous fury wished on me by the press, my feelings were of quiet satisfaction. Had I not been wondering how to rid myself of Karen without prejudicing my financial position? Now all my problems were resolved: I had Karen exactly where I wanted her. She was no longer the woman who had been taken advantage of, but a common adulteress. I was no longer a ruthless and cynical adventurer, but the deceived husband. Since I was demonstrably not responsible for inseminating Karen, all I needed to do was find out who was. Once the identity of the lucky donor was revealed, I could start divorce proceedings. The proof of my wife’s treachery was alive and kicking in her belly, and a paternity test would prove beyond a shadow of doubt that Mr X was indeed the proud father. After that, the hearing would be a mere formality. Karen would be packed off to make the bed she had lain in while I wept all the way to the bank.