“MY, HOW TIME flies!” wrote Annette Bigsby, as she sat down on December 13 to compose the round-robin that, immaculately word-processed, would accompany her Christmas cards to friends and relations all around the world.
“This last year has been one of all sorts. Some of the usual, which my correspondents will recognize: holidays in Majorca and Las Vegas, visits to Brighton, London and Morocco, and then some of the unusual to balance them.
One high spot of the unusual occurred in May. What could be nicer and more heartwarming than opening the door to a relative unseen for more than fifteen years? And how lovely that we could immediately strike up a rapport! That’s what happened with my second cousin Malcolm Watts – only a teenager, but wise and generous beyond his years.”
Annette put down her pen. She would have to say more of Malcolm, but she wanted to strike the right note from the beginning. On reading it through she thought she already had struck a nice balance (as she would have put it) between the true and the misleading.
When she opened the front door on that memorable day in May 2007 her main emotion was not the surprise which her letter, quite cleverly, led her readers to assume she felt. She had already had contact with Malcolm through the Families United website. She had responded unwillingly to his appeal, and in fact had only done so because it had been made clear that if he did not get the facts of his birth from the website he would get them from his adoptive mother, who was obviously as weak and indiscreet as Annette had always feared.
“More than fifteen” was also true but misleading. It was over seventeen years since mother and baby had been allowed home from hospital, three days after Malcolm’s birth. After overnighting at cousin Caroline’s home she had kissed the boy goodbye (cousin Caroline seemed to insist on it) and gone back to her own home in Peterborough.
“Am I what you expected?” asked Malcolm in his eager-puppy way.
“I’m not sure … I don’t think I expected anything.”
“I thought I might remind you of my father.”
“Oh dear – that’s so long ago. He was dead before you were born.” And in truth Annette could hardly remember anything about him.
“Dead? He must have been very young. How did he die?”
“It was a car crash. Tragic. Absolutely tragic.”
“But you’ve married since?”
“Been married. At the moment I’m in a relationship. We’re planning to marry, but we’ve just not got around to it yet.”
“And you’d rather he and I didn’t meet.”
Annette flounced a little.
“I don’t know why you say that.”
“Because you specified times when I could come so exactly. They were obviously when he was at work.”
“Well … well yes. I didn’t think Grant was quite ready yet.”
“Ready?”
“Ready to be told.”
Annette licked the tip of her Uniball pen and continued writing.
“Professionally – on the job front, I mean – everything has gone like a dream. I am now well entrenched as head buyer at the Peterborough M and S, and enjoying enormously the work and the challenge. So much has been done in the last year or two to improve and brighten the store’s women’s clothing, and I am happy and proud to have been part of this. Grant, in his challenging and demanding job in securities, goes from strength to strength, and both of us seem to be on a steep upward curve.”
“Who was round here today?” Grant asked, when he got in in the early hours.
“Round here?”
“There were two cups and saucers on the draining board.”
“Oh, that. That was Peggy Hartley from marketing. She’s been on to me to see the house, because she’d love to move to this area.”
“What’s so fucking special about these houses?” Grant asked. He had never so much as nodded to any of the neighbours, or shown any consciousness that they lived in a desirable neighbourhood. “It’s just a fucking house.”
“Well, it’s two or three steps up from anything Peggy Hartley can afford. We do very nicely, Grant.”
Grant grunted, and got down to what he did very nicely.
Annette nearly swallowed her Uniball before she got down to the first crux in her account of 2007. This needed careful handling.
“So those are the main outlines of my year. One of the joys has been the way the two strands have meshed. No sooner did Malcolm and Grant meet than they seemed to form a partnership – both taking enormous pleasure in each other’s company. Grant has no family to speak of, unlike most Londoners. He has lost them through emigration, death and spending long periods away.” (She thought, then crossed out the last six words and inserted an “or” before “death”). “So it was a particular joy to see how one of my few remaining relatives got on with the man who will be my husband. Goodness! We must make arrangements for the wedding soon!”
When Annette got back from work at twenty past five one July evening, Grant and Malcolm were eyeing each other up like two dogs meeting each other for the first time in a park. This time what she noticed about Malcolm was not his puppyishness but his incipient manhood. The moment she came in Grant started getting together his gear for work: the tightly-buttoned suit jacket over the padded waistcoat and the swagger stick. There was no sign of any refreshment having been offered to Malcolm.
“You’ve got a visitor,” said Grant, pausing bulkily by the door, an expression of disgust on his face. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“We can manage,” said Malcolm.
“Yes, I’ll give Malcolm a cup of coffee and then I have a lot of work on my plate for tomorrow. Be careful, darling.”
“Oh, I’ll be careful. Ain’t I always? If I wasn’t I’d be on Disability, and I wouldn’t be able to keep you in the manner to which you are accustomed.” He leered. “Have fun.”
Annette busied herself in the kitchen to get her thoughts together, then brought coffee into the lounge.
“You arranged this, didn’t you?” she said accusingly. “Coming here at a time when you knew I would be at work and Grant would be at home.”
“How would I know that? You never told me he was a night worker.” Seeing her thoughts Malcolm changed his tactics. “All right, all right. You told me when not to come. And I kept watch on the house.”
“What did you do that for?”
“To be able to come and see Grant in his natural habitat.”
“I would have asked you to meet him eventually.”
“You’d have given him directions how to behave, covered over all his rough edges.”
“Does Grant look like somebody I could tell how to behave?”
“He might have made an effort. I wanted to meet the real him.”
“Well, now you have.” She didn’t ask what he thought of him, but he told her just the same.
“Mum—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“We’re alone, Mum. And I didn’t tell him. I’m your cousin Caroline’s son as far as he’s concerned. He’s a violent man, Mum. There’s aggression bubbling away under the surface the whole time. Does he hit you?”
“No, he doesn’t! The idea!” lied Annette.
“Well, I wonder at you. You’ve got loads of class, and he’s just a common nightclub bouncer.”
“Casino. That’s quite different. He’s in charge of security at a very well thought of casino, part of a chain.”
“Well, swipe me. Actually, Mum, I don’t give a damn what he does for a living. What I care about is the atmosphere of violence he carries around with him. He’s an eruption waiting to happen. And then he spouts a lot of nonsense about keeping you in the lap of luxury.”
“He earns a very good wage. It’s a dangerous job. And the house takes a lot of upkeep. It’s the age when the plumbing and the electricity start going wrong, and the Council Tax is horrendous.”
Light dawned.
“It’s yours, isn’t it, Mum? Your house.”
“Yes. What of it? I got it with my divorce settlement – with a mortgage to match. If it hadn’t been for Grant I’d have had to sell it.”
“How did you meet him?”
“At the casino. It’s a nice place to go. You don’t have to be a big gambler. There’s a really good restaurant, and it’s the same to them if you bet high or if you’re cautious, like me. I like it there.”
Malcolm came over and took her in his arms.
“Mum, you were lonely, weren’t you? After your divorce. You were just a well-off widow waiting for some lounge lizard to get his claws into you.”
“Grant is not a lounge lizard,” Annette said weakly.
“A lounge Rottweiler then.” Malcolm pushed her away so that he could look into her eyes. “Mum, I worry about you. I don’t care how violent he is towards the other punters—”
“Don’t be silly. You’re ignorant. How could he be violent towards the casino’s best customers? He’d be out on his ear in no time.”
“All I’m saying, Mum, is: you need someone to protect you. I’m glad I came along in time.”
Annette smiled satirically.
“Malcolm dear, you’re seventeen. I’m sure one day you’ll be a very capable man, but at the moment you’re not—”
“I’m not taking him on at all-in-wrestling, Mum. He’s got all the muscle. What I’ve got is brain.”
Annette said nothing. She really didn’t know about his brain one way or the other. Malcolm drew her closer to him.
“Mum, you’ve got me to rely on.”
“One sadness was Malcolm’s inability to come on our holiday with us. He was just too busy looking for a job. I know he’s going to find one where he will do well, and he’s quite right to be choosy, because he’s a very personable young man. We went back to Vegas – as I call it now – where we were so happy last year. It’s not the gambling that attracts us: Grant gets enough of that in his job. It’s the whole atmosphere, the feeling of something exciting going on all the time. So we don’t lose much money – in fact, Grant made a very nice ‘killing’ this year. But that’s not something we’d rely on doing another year – we’re not so daft.”
“This is better than having your tame puppy along,” said Grant as the plane neared the US coastline and he opened his third little bottle of whisky.
“He’s a very nice puppy,” said Annette, who was herself slightly squiffy from white wine.
“Tell me again what relation he is.”
“He’s my cousin Caroline’s son.”
“Legitimate is he? All fair and square? Not wrong side of the blanket, or adopted, or babynapped from some unsuspecting couple?”
“Of course he’s legitimate. What kind of daft idea are you getting?”
“Only when you’ve mentioned your cousin Caroline earlier, you’ve never mentioned any husband.”
“Can’t we give Malcolm a rest? You’ve gone on about him quite enough in the last few weeks. We’re off on holiday.”
“Right. And it’s going to be a cracker. I’m mainly going to watch. That’s how you become a winner in casinos. You keep your eyes open. I’ve got all the background now, from A to Z – or zee as those Yanks say. Just watch me!”
Strangely enough, his exultation did not make Annette feel happy.
But in the next few days she did what he’d ordered: she watched him. They played the tables a little, made a few friends among the English contingent in the hotel, and Grant kept his eyes open. By the second day he was concentrating on one of the croupiers, occasionally playing at his wheel, more often watching from a distance. It was slow work. They only had ten days, but it was the seventh day before Grant said to Annette, whose uneasiness had been growing.
“That croupier is bent.”
“Oh Grant! I’m sure he’s not. It’s the best-run casino in Vegas – everyone says so.”
“Makes no difference. He’s bent. And I know what he’s been doing.”
“But Grant – be careful! Please, please be careful. It could be dangerous. There could be large sums involved.”
“You’re mental, woman. Of course there are large sums involved. There better be. Why do you think I’m interested? Just do exactly – and I mean exactly – what I tell you. That, and nothing more.”
The following evening, when Annette was dressing for dinner, Grant said:
“Don’t bother to dress. You’re staying in this room tonight. I need you to be here.”
“But Grant, I—”
“Ring room service if you’re hungry. And make sure everything is packed. Yours and mine. Everything.”
“But Grant, it’s only Tuesday. We don’t go until—”
“DO WHAT I SAY! Can I be clearer than that? Do what I say and we’re made.”
And he left the room.
It was inevitable, only a matter of time, that she would follow him and find out what he was up to. If he had understood her better he would have known this, but he had known her mainly in bed, when he came home until she went to work, and on her occasional visits to the casino. She was already dressed, so she used half an hour to pack as he had ordered her to do, then thought it was safe to go out. She knew the table he would be watching, or playing at, and she stood in the shadow of a plastic marble pillar to watch. He was playing and he was losing. But he was not getting bad-tempered, aggressive, as he usually did. He was watching carefully, especially when the croupier’s eyes were turned away from him. He exuded, to Annette’s experienced eye, an air of enormous satisfaction.
The croupier changed at ten, and true to habit he went off to one of the many bars. Annette watched from a distance, and saw Grant nonchalantly follow him – casually, as if he could have chosen any other of the bars to go to. Annette went closer, and Grant, holding a glass of lager – he despised cocktails, and thought spirits dangerous when he was on a job – was apparently just having a breather between sessions. But in fact he was watching the croupier exchanging low words with a thickset man who seemed to talk with both his hands – an Italian, Annette felt sure. When he had said goodbye the croupier looked at his glass, seemed about to down it, but found a man by his left shoulder.
It was Grant. Annette, who had taken her eyes off him, was as surprised by his move as the croupier. Grant’s mouth went towards the man’s ear and he began talking. Annette saw the man swallow (his Adam’s apple did a high-jump), then she saw fear in his eyes, saw him clutching a brief-case, protectively, clearly fighting back but on a losing wicket.
That was the danger signal. Ten minutes later she was back in the hotel room, languidly seeming to read a book. Then minutes after that Grant was back, clutching a briefcase very like the croupier’s.
“OK. The hotel bill’s been settled up. We’re out of here. Taxi to the airport. Right?”
“Oh yes, Grant. But I don’t see why—”
“You don’t have to. No time for questions. We’ll get any plane going to Britain. Or to Europe if we have to. Right. Away.”
Two hours later they were on a KLM plane going to Amsterdam. Annette had not asked any more questions and Grant certainly had not explained unprompted. But once the plane took off he was in high good humour, drinking in moderation (a good sign) and chaffing the hostesses.
“We’re made,” he said, as once more they flew over the East Coast and out to the Atlantic. “Well, not made. But we will be. It worked!”
She still didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t need to.
“We were just settling down again, modestly enjoying our little windfall, and back at our dear old home – because we’re both home-birds at heart, in spite of demanding jobs – when Grant was selected for the sort of job that you can’t refuse, if you’re ever going to get ahead in the organization you work for. It was opening a new branch in Peking, which has a new name I can’t spell. We talked it over, back and forth, but in the end there was no choice: he had to go. It was upsetting, but I knew our love would survive a period of separation. I sobbed and I kissed him goodbye in a little patch of woodland off the A15, which meant a good deal to us. Malcolm drove me back home, sobbing my heart out.”
“Malcolm, it’s awful. I don’t know what to do. He’s so changed. It’s all this money. I keep warning him. What if they don’t accept what’s happened? What if they send someone after him? A – what do you call it – a hit man? He just shrugs and says it wasn’t that much money. But I’ve seen it in his briefcase. It’s thousands and thousands. I’m so afraid.”
“Would it be so dreadful if he did take off for a bit? Let things cool down?”
“Leaving me here if the hit man arrives. You hear of things happening – people being tied up and tortured for what they know.”
“You could insist he takes you with him.”
“Well … no. No, I couldn’t.” Ringing in her ears was Grant’s response to that suggestion: “Time I had a change. Swapped you for a newer model. Well past that time, if the truth were known.”
“Right. So the scenario is: you’re here terrified while he swans off to places unknown. He probably won’t even tell you where he’s gone. Safer …. I did warn you about him, Mum.”
Annette’s mouth had dropped.
“But that would be awful. If they were torturing me to find out where he’d gone, and I didn’t even know,” wailed Annette.
“Better for him, though. When’s he thinking of going?”
“End of the week. He wants to stay in with the casino people. He says that they’re the basis of his future prosperity.”
“Just leave it to me, Mum. Leave it to me.”
The next day Malcolm rang the front doorbell at two o’clock, just about the time, he knew, when Grant woke up to a new day.
“What do you want, squirt?” Grant asked, with elephantine jocularity.
“I’ve got a bit of a proposition for you,” said Malcolm.
“Oh yes? What kind of proposition would interest me, coming from you? But I suppose you’d better come in.” Once Malcolm was in the lounge Grant reluctantly asked: “Want a drink?”
“Coffee would be fine.”
“Oh? Too early in the day for a Scotch?” But he went into the kitchen and gave Malcolm the time to do what he had to do with the half-empty bottle of whisky on the shiny new bar in the corner.
“It’s instant. I can’t do with fucking percolators,” said Grant, coming back. “Now what’s this proposition?”
“Look, I’m only in this for my mother. I want to spare her heartbreak.”
Grant, pouring himself a Scotch, turned round with a sneer on his face.
“Heartbreak? Spare me the sobbing violins. I could ask you what dear cousin Caroline has to do with this, but I’ve always suspected. I’m not as dim as people think.”
“I knew you would have guessed. You’re very good at jumping to obvious conclusions I would think. Now, I imagine you’re going to slink out of here on Thursday or Friday, while Mum is at work, and I guess you have plans to take anything in the house that will fetch a bit of money. It would be against your nature to leave anything of value behind.”
Grant had downed his neat Scotch, and now poured himself another.
“Why would I bother? I’ve got the Vegas money.”
“Very nice, I’m sure. But when did having money stop people like you from wanting a bit more, if it was easy pickings? …. Are you all right?”
Grant sat down heavily.
“I don’t know … I’ve never—”
“No, I don’t suppose you have,” said Malcolm. He sat still and waited. There were coughs, heaving stomach, dribbles from the mouth, and Grant never regained anything that could be called consciousness. When he was at last undeniably dead Malcolm began the difficult business of dragging the body through the house then through the connecting door that led to the garage – making his task blessedly easier – then stuffing Grant on the floor of the back seat of the car, Grant’s own BMW. Everything was nice and tidy by the time Annette came home.
“Malcolm – what are you doing here?”
“Solving your problem.” He smiled, with the satisfaction of a young achiever. “He was never any good for you, was he, Mum? You got involved, and then you found you were up to your ears, and with no means of escape.”
“Well, I—”
“He used you and abused you. It’s been a nightmare for you. It’s over now, Mum. Now all we have to do is get rid of him.”
Annette swallowed.
“You mean the body, don’t you?”
“Of course I mean the body. It’s not going to be easy, digging the grave. The ground’s still hard. I shall need your help. Know any piece of land where we could be private?”
“There’s a bit of woodland, just off the A15. It has … associations. It was where—”
“Don’t go into that, Mum. It’ll be dark by half past five. We’d better leave it a bit later, though. It’ll be a piece of cake, you’ll see.”
And it was. They put on old clothes (cast-offs from the separated husband for Malcolm) and brought spades from the garden shed. Annette knew the way to the little wood by heart, and they had the grave ready after an hour’s digging. She kissed the lips of the corpse (an unnecessary touch, Malcolm thought), and they rolled him in and covered him over. Then Malcolm trailed brambles and ivy over the earth he had stamped flat, and they set off for home. Malcolm stayed the night, in one of the spare bedrooms.
“I thought I was going to be lonely, and of course I do miss Grant so very much, but, by coincidence, my nephew Malcolm has been doing work experience in Peterborough, in the dispensary of Boots the Chemist’s, and he has moved in, at least until Christmas, when he will have to make a decision about his future. He’s a lovely boy, and he’s invaluable about the house. He keeps saying he’s going to take care of me, and it’s lovely that he wants to!
It only remains to wish you all—”
Annette, as she wrote the last words, was conscious of a presence behind her, and she looked round to see a smiling Malcolm. He had just come down from counting, for the umpteenth time, the dollar notes in the late Grant’s briefcase. There were plenty of them, in fifties, but with the exchange rate having plummeted of late he wondered if there was enough to finance his plans, whether something else substantial, say property, might not be needed.
“That’s lovely, Mum,” he said when he had read through the letter. “We’d better cut out that bit about the A15, but you’ve got the tone just right. Everyone will be happy to receive that. And the last words are spot on. You’ve got me now, and I’m really going to take care of you.”
She felt his young hand caressing her shoulders and arms, and felt wonderfully, deliciously, safe.