Michael Dibdin - Dirty Tricks

‘And what is going to happen?’

‘Nothing. We just turn him loose in the middle of nowhere. By the time he gets to the police we’ll be home. There’s no evidence of any kidnap, no generator to trace.’

Garcia clearly thought that this was a pretty wimpy sort of vengeance, but as long I was paying he wasn’t going to argue.

Traffic was light and we made good time. A few miles south of Banbury I turned off the main road and let Garcia take the wheel. He had assured me that he could drive, which was true, in the sense that chickens can fly and horses swim. When it came to piloting military vehicles in a country where they enjoy absolute priority over all other traffic, Garcia’s roadcraft was no doubt perfectly adequate, but for the purposes of my plan he had not merely to get the BMW from A to B while avoiding collisions with other vehicles and the surrounding landscape, but also without attracting the attention of the police. It was too late to worry about this now, however.

After Garcia’s brief test drive we pulled over to review the practical arrangements. He pointed out that Clive wouldn’t be able to breathe through the waterproof lining of the sponge-bag I’d brought to use as a hood, so I stabbed a few holes in it with the scissors. Then we slid the front seats of the car forward, making room for Garcia to lie down in the back. I covered him with the blanket and we set off.

The station car park was full of rows of commuter cars, but apart from a few taxis there were only two vehicles outside the station building. One was a florist’s van, the other Clive’s yellow Lotus sports car. I gave a sigh of relief. My greatest anxiety had been that Clive might have replayed the messages on his answering machine, suspected that something was wrong and stayed away. I parked on the other side of the florist’s van. The train from Oxford arrived six minutes late. The passengers dispersed rapidly on foot and in the taxis. The van driver emerged with three flat cardboard boxes of flowers. He gave the BMW an incurious glance before roaring off.

Inside the station building, Clive was just hanging up the receiver of one of the public telephones when he caught sight of me. He glanced away again, as though it might be one of those embarrassing cases of mistaken identity. I walked over to him. He looked again. This time there was no mistake. It was me all right. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear.

‘I think we’d better have a little talk,’ I said, gesturing towards the BMW.

Clive followed without demur. He knew there was no point in trying to bullshit his way out of it. If I was there, it could only be because Karen had confessed.

We got into the car. Clive adjusted his nifty blouson and chinos and sat there like the player he was, waiting for me to pitch. Already he was looking calmer, more his old smarmy self.

‘I know what’s been going on,’ I said.

‘Do you?’

His tone was aloof, almost scornful.

‘You’ve been stuffing my wife.’

Clive regarded me with distaste.

‘Yes, I suppose that is how you’d see it.’

I would have hit him there and then, but an ageing Morris Marina had just pulled into the slot vacated by the florist’s van. A bald man wearing a baggy cardigan and trousers with perpetual creases emerged from the Marina. He looked around with a vaguely benevolent smile and then toddled off into the station.

‘Where is Karen?’ Clive asked.

I was terribly tempted to tell him!

‘She changed her mind about this weekend. There’s a message on your answering machine. Didn’t you check it?’

He shook his head.

‘I was out pretty late last night.’

‘Quite right too. Make the most of your freedom while it lasts.’

He looked at me and frowned.

‘Pardon?’

‘Oh, didn’t she tell you? You’re going to be a daddy, Clive.’

In the rear-view mirror I could see the bald man returning with an elderly woman who was walking with the aid of an aluminium frame. I just had to keep the conversation going for a few more minutes. Then they would be gone, and Clive’s brief reprieve would be over.

‘She’s … pregnant?’ he breathed.

‘That’s right. And I opted out of parenthood several years ago. I don’t affect the tie, but I’m a fully-fledged member of the cut-and-run club. Which leaves you holding the baby.’

He sat staring straight ahead through the windscreen.

‘Did Kay know that?’ he said eventually.

His use of the past tense startled me, until I realized that it referred to the implied continuation ‘when she married you’. It’s little things like that which can be so tricky to explain to a class.

‘About my vasectomy? Of course. You don’t think I’d keep a thing like that from my wife, do you?’

His face lit up.

‘Then she did it on purpose!’

He sounded disgustingly moved.

‘Of course she did!’ I retorted. ‘To trap you into marrying her.’

‘Trap me? I’ve been begging her to marry me for years, but all she’s ever done is go out with me a few times when the marriage wasn’t going well. But this proves she’s changed her mind!’

‘All it proves, Clive, is what everyone already knew, namely that you’re a first-rate prick.’

I had raised my voice, which unfortunately attracted the attention of the Marina owner, who was still loading Granny into his wallymobile.

‘I’m sorry,’ Clive replied in a soothing tone. ‘I forgot how painful all this must be for you. How did you find out about us? Did Karen tell you?’

‘Not in so many words. I overheard her talking to you on the telephone the other day. Do you know how that felt?’

‘I can imagine,’ he murmured sympathetically as the Marina drove away.

‘No, you can’t. But you don’t need to. It felt like this.’

And I hammered my fist into his groin.

From behind the wheel of the Lotus, the entrance to the quarry looked bumpier than I had remembered. The possibility of the low-slung sports car grounding out occurred to me for the first time. I revved up and took a run at it. There were one or two loud metallic sounds like waves slapping the bottom of a dinghy, then I was inside the quarry. A few moments later the BMW appeared, cruising with ease over the uneven ground. Everything was going my way. A patina of the Lotus’s underbody paint would remain like lichen on the rocks at the entrance to the quarry for the forensic experts to find, while the high-riding BMW would leave no trace of its presence.

The quarry had not been in use for a long time, and owing to the friability of the local stone and the thick covering of weeds and undergrowth it might have been mistaken for a natural feature except for the perfectly level floor of reddish earth. That brick-red soil interested me, because I knew it would interest the police. It was distinctive, characteristic and definable. It could be weighed, measured, subjected to chemical and spectroscopic analysis and then produced in court in a neat little plastic bag marked ‘Exhibit A’. In short, it was a clue .

That’s why I’d brought the wellies for Garcia. He was going to drive the BMW, and since the BMW had never been to the quarry, we couldn’t have any of the distinctive red soil ending up inside it. He parked alongside the Lotus, as I’d instructed him, revving up the engine in the best macho fashion before switching off. I opened the front door of the BMW. Clive was lying in a foetal crouch forward of the front passenger seat, the sponge-bag tightly laced around his neck. The bag was a sporty model for jocks on the trot, sheeny acrylic with a go-faster stripe. It complemented Clive’s outfit so well he might have chosen it himself.

Our departure from Banbury had gone very smoothly. While Clive was still writhing, a blanket-draped form had risen from the back of the car like the awakened kraken to apply the coup de grace . Garcia’s idea of ‘a little tap on the head’ consisted of a vicious blow from what looked like a salami wrapped in a sock. It certainly did the trick. Clive collapsed like a marionette whose strings have been cut. Garcia explained the construction of the weapon — a sand-filled hemp bag covered with cotton and a plastic sheath — and assured me there would be nothing to show. It was all his own work, he added proudly, right down to the motto inked into the cotton underlay: TRADICION, FAMILIA Y PROPIEDAD.