Michael Dibdin - Dirty Tricks

I knelt down beside Karen and shook her about a bit. She looked pale, but not any more than was to be expected after the amount she had drunk. There was a nasty-looking bruise, all puffy and yellow, high up on her right temple, just below the hairline. It was clear what had happened. After a further bout of solitary boozing in the living room she had headed for the stairs, intent either on sleep or another confrontation with me. In her maudlin stupor she had failed to notice the plastic-wrapped magazine, which had performed the same function as the banana skin in the traditional joke. Karen had toppled backwards and fallen head-first against the Spanish chest, knocking herself out.

I felt a heavy sinking of the stomach, as when the washing machine backs up and floods the kitchen, or the car breaks down in a contraflow on the M25. It never occurred to me that her injuries might be serious. All I could think of was the fuss and bother involved, the fact that I wouldn’t be able to go straight back to bed. What a bore!

I grabbed her under the armpits and dragged her into the living room. An open bottle stood on the side-table next to a fallen tumbler and a puddle of spilt whisky. I dumped Karen on the sofa. She flopped sideways, totally limp. I slapped her face a few times. I called her name loudly. There was no response.

After a while I became aware of another sound in the room, a mechanical whine I had hitherto associated with the fridge or central heating. After a brief search I traced it to the telephone, which was lying underneath the sofa. Had Karen just knocked it over, or had she phoned someone? And if so, who? I was half-way through making some coffee when I remembered that every conversation on that line was being monitored on the tape-recorder I kept in the spare bedroom. I raced upstairs and rewound the tape to the beginning of the last call.

‘This is Oxford 46933. I’m afraid I can’t make it to the phone just now, but if you want to leave a message I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Please speak after the tone.’

‘Clive? Clive? You know who this is, Clive? It’s me, Clive. Me, Karen.’

A long silence.

‘Why d’you tell him, Clive? You shouldn’t’ve told him. Now he hates me.’

Silence.

‘I don’t want to stay here, Clive. I’m frightened. Please come and take me away.’

Silence.

‘Please, Clive! There’s no love here. No love. It’s cold and dark, and things could happen.’

Silence.

‘Just for a few days, darling. Until things have settled down again. I don’t want to stay here. I’m frightened.’

This was followed by a dull thump, then a groan, and finally a click as Clive’s answering machine broke the connection.

I sat there in a daze for some time, replaying the tape again and again. Each time it sounded worse.

Back in the living room, Karen lay where I had left her. She looked utterly lifeless. I couldn’t feel any pulse in her wrist, she didn’t seem to be breathing, her skin was cold. For the first time I began to worry that she might have injured herself seriously. I recalled an article in the local paper about a child who had fallen off his bike. He seemed perfectly all right at the time, but the next morning had complained of a persistent headache. A few hours later he was rushed into hospital in an irreversible coma and they’d unplugged his life support machine a few weeks later.

Under normal circumstances I would have called an ambulance, but these were not normal circumstances. The message on Clive’s answering machine constituted apparently damning evidence against me. I knew that the thump on the tape must have been caused by Karen drunkenly knocking over the phone, but to the police it would sound like the blow inflicted with the traditional ‘blunt instrument’ by the jealous husband who had come into the living room to find his wife secretly phoning her lover. When it was revealed that Karen was pregnant with Clive’s child, and that they had been planning to go away together the following day, inverted commas would close in around the word ‘accident’ like a pair of handcuffs.

I gave Karen another brisk dose of the ‘Now stop all this nonsense and snap out of it’ treatment, but without the slightest effect. Suddenly I knew she was dead. What else did the word mean if not this maddening indifference, this infinite capacity for sullen withdrawal? The dead are so selfish, so irresponsible! They just piss off, leaving the rest of us to clear up after them. All the arrangements I had so carefully made would now have to be cancelled. Not only was there no hope of getting even with Clive, but I stood a very good chance of being accused of killing Karen into the bargain. A monstrous miscarriage of justice was in the making. It was so unfair, so totally unfair!

The alternative version which eventually began to take shape in my mind seemed at first nothing but a daydream, a childish fantasy of punishment fitting the crime. In an ideal world, if anyone had to take the rap for Karen’s death then it would be Clive . Quite apart from his unsavoury intervention in my marriage, he was a thoroughly unpleasant character who richly deserved whatever was coming to him. The day he was convicted, a resounding cheer would be heard throughout the EFL world as the victims of his dirty tricks celebrated their vicarious revenge.

At first, as I say, this vision remained purely abstract, but as time passed I began to speculate idly about how it might be put into practice. I fetched a pen and paper and started making notes, more and more excitedly as the scheme came together in my mind. Gradually the plan took on a life of its own, and by the time I had finished working out all the details I couldn’t have backed out if I’d tried. The thing demanded to be done, and there simply wasn’t anyone else to do it.

I had arranged to meet Garcia near his lodgings in Botley, a suburb of Oxford which sounds like a form of food poisoning and looks like its effects, gobs of half-digested architectural matter sprayed across the countryside with desperate abandon. I reached the rendezvous shortly after 8 o’clock, having stopped at the station to show off the BMW and buy a single ticket to Banbury. I’d only had a few hours sleep, and felt exhausted and depressed.

When there was no sign of Garcia at the grim thirties estate pub where we were to meet, a feeling of panic overwhelmed me. All my plans depended on his help, and by now it was too late to abort them. I drove past the pub and circled the area for a few minutes. When I returned he was there, squeezed into his jeans and leather jacket like one of the apes which spinsters proverbially lead in hell.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

‘Fine.’

‘Your wife …?’

‘All taken care of.’

I passed him one of the pairs of rubber gloves I’d brought and told him to put them on before getting into the car. The beauty of the plan I had worked out was that every one of its numerous and minute details were generated by a simple set of exclusion zones. I existed in the BMW but not in Clive’s Lotus. Karen and Clive existed in the Lotus but not in the BMW. As for Garcia, he didn’t exist at all.

On the back seat stood Karen’s suitcase, coat and handbag as well as a couple of Salisbury’s shopping bags containing a roll of bin-liners, an assortment of nails, scissors, a pair of Wellington boots, a navy-blue blanket, plastic food bags, a torch, a large sponge-bag, packing tape and a selection of food and drink to see us both through the day.

‘And the generator?’ asked Garcia.

‘There’s been a change of plan. We’re going to kidnap him instead. That’s almost as good, and far less risky. Twelve hours is a long time to spend bound and gagged in a car boot, particularly when you don’t know what’s going to happen when the car stops.’