Dirty Tricks (21 page)

The boot of the Lotus contained Clive’s overnight bag and a slurry of EFL promotional material. We transferred this to the back seat and pulled the spare wheel out of its housing. I told Garcia to dump it among the rocks on the far side of the quarry. As he rolled the tyre away I opened the boot of the BMW. The lid slid smoothly up on its hydraulic supports. I almost screamed aloud at the sight that met my eyes.

Seven hours earlier, back at the house on Ramillies Drive, I had carefully packaged Karen’s body for the journey. I had taped her arms and ankles together, then fetched the roll of plastic dustbin-liners from under the sink and worked one bag over the head, shoulders and chest and another over the legs, hips and stomach. I then wrapped a third bag around the overlap between the other two and taped the whole issue together in the manner approved by the Post Office for large and bulky objects of irregular shape. I was amazed at how easy it was to think of Karen as a large and bulky object of irregular shape. Her death didn’t mean anything to me. In my heart, I believed she was upstairs in our bedroom, snoring in the way which Dennis had so graphically described on another occasion. In the morning we would greet each other grumpily over breakfast as usual. Meanwhile I had this body to dispose of.

I picked up the bundle, lifting carefully from the knees so as not to do myself an injury, and carried it through to the back hallway. The BMW was still on the gravel sweep at the side of the house where I’d parked it when I came home that afternoon. The same streetlight that illuminated the tree in the bedroom window fell on the car, and I didn’t want any insomniac neighbour noticing that Karen was leaving home horizontally, so I let off the handbrake and pushed the car round the corner into the shadows at the back of the house. The boot was filled with all the miscellaneous junk I had rented or bought for my now-aborted project with Garcia. I transferred the portable generator to the garage and the rest to the back seat, then returned to the house, picked up my homemade body-bag and loaded it into the boot. This amorphous, impersonal package was what I’d been expecting to see when I lifted the lid again at the quarry. Instead, I was confronted by a dishevelled mass of torn plastic through which Karen’s feet, elbows and horribly distorted face projected like a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis.

I touched her cheek. It was almost cold. She was dead now all right, but apparently she hadn’t been when I put her there. At some point she must have regained consciousness, only to find herself entombed in a cold steel vault. Perhaps she had called out. She had certainly struggled hard to free herself, but all she had been able to do was muss up her plastic shroud a little and prepare a nasty surprise for me, a surprise which had used up the precious seconds I needed to do what had to be done. Already Garcia was on his way back.

‘Not there!’ I called to him. ‘Further away! In the bushes!’

Once his back was turned again, I picked up the corpse and carried it over to the Lotus, dumped it in the boot and ripped the remains of the plastic sheathing off. I then snipped through the tape bindings with the scissors and let the limbs fall freely and naturally into place. I soon realized that Karen’s delayed death had actually worked to my benefit, since rigor mortis had not set in before I could remove the tape. I then carried over one of the broken concrete fence-posts I had noted among the construction waste on my first visit to the quarry and laid it out next to Karen. I hurriedly added her suitcase, coat and handbag. By the time Garcia returned, the Lotus was closed and locked and I was lining the boot of the BMW with plastic bin-liners split and taped together.

The next shock was that Clive was no longer on the front seat where we had left him. A moment later I saw him grovelling helplessly about among the driving pedals, his back bent at a painful angle over the gear housing, calling for help in a voice muffled by the sponge-bag. I bent down and struck the garishly swaddled head hard with my fist.

‘There’s no one here to help you, Clive. There’s no one here but me, and I’m not going to help you. Do you know what I’m going to do? I’ve got a pair of garden shears here, Clive. I’m going to use them on you. I’m going to prune you. You’ve been getting a bit
rampant
lately, Clive, a bit rank and luxuriant. I’m going to have to cut you back, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to
dock
you.’

I paused.

‘Or there again I may not. It all depends. It depends on so many things. On my mood, on the weather, on the number of magpies, black cats and squashed hedgehogs we pass, on whether I can pick up anything worth listening to on the radio and whether my piles are giving me gyp after a day in your shoddy little bucket seats. It depends on all that and more, far more than I could ever express in words. But one thing all those ineffable factors have in common is that there isn’t a single solitary effing thing you can do about them. You would therefore be well-advised to make the most of the one way in which you can attempt to influence the eventual outcome, Clive, which is by SHUTTING THE FUCK UP!’

The hooded figure was silent and still. I took Garcia to one side – it wouldn’t do for us to be heard conversing in Spanish – and told him to put Clive in the boot. I’d had enough of humping bodies about for one morning.

When I had planned out the day’s activities earlier that morning, the drive to Wales had appeared as a sort of
entr’acte
between the strenuous and demanding dramatics before and after. To them I had devoted intensive care and detailed scrutiny, but I’d hardly given a thought to the journey itself. Time was not a factor. We could do nothing until darkness fell anyway. Since the Lotus and the BMW were too distinctive to risk them being seen together on the little-used cross-country roads, I had planned a roundabout route using motorways as much as possible. Garcia’s instructions were very simple. He was to maintain a constant speed of 60 mph. I would remain some distance behind, keeping the BMW always in view. As we approached each junction, I would accelerate past and lead him to the correct exit.

Foolproof, eh? I certainly thought so. But I hadn’t done any motorway driving since returning to Britain, so I was unaware that in practice the 70 mph limit now indicates a
minimum
speed, barely acceptable even in the slow lane. Poor Garcia did his best to obey my instructions, but what with the queue of irate and contemptuous drivers building up behind him, and the exciting responsiveness of the BMW to the slightest pressure of his foot on the accelerator, he was very soon out of sight. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could about it, because Clive’s fancy little roadster turned out to be underpowered, badly tuned and apt to ramble all over the road if you took your mind off the driving for a second. It was while I was staring gloomily at the speedometer that I noticed the needle of the fuel gauge leaning over like a drunk against a bar, deep inside a red zone marked EMPTY.

Objectively speaking, the fifteen minutes which followed could hardly have been more banal, but they were in fact the most stressful part of the entire day. As I said, my plan was constructed on a series of strict exclusion zones. I was in one of these and Clive’s Lotus in another, and never the twain should meet. I had been extremely careful to avoid leaving any traces of my presence in the car, but all that would count for nothing if I broke down on the motorway and had to be rescued by the police. Even if they didn’t happen to open the boot and find the remains of a Caucasian female, the incident would be logged, and the link between me and the Lotus thus become a matter of official record. By keeping speeds low and coasting down any hills I managed to keep the Lotus going through a seemingly endless tract of motorway without turn-offs or signs of any sort, but when an exit finally appeared I knew I was going to have to take it. Apart from anything else, there was far less chance of attracting the attention of the police once I was off the motorway. As for Garcia, I tried not to think about what he might be getting up to all on his own.

I found petrol almost right away, on one of the roads leading away from the junction roundabout. I hastily filled up and returned to the motorway. A few miles further on I had to slam on the brakes when I caught sight of the BMW parked on the hard shoulder with the hazard flashers going, the doors wide open and Garcia standing there in his bouncer’s outfit and rapist’s gloves having a smoke and admiring the scenery. The only thing missing was a large sign saying BOOT SALE HERE TODAY.

After that things went relatively smoothly. I kept Garcia in sight to the end of the motorway, just beyond Telford, and then overtook to lead him along the country roads to our destination. Dusk was just falling as we left Llangurig along a verdant valley in which one of those squeaky-clean Welsh streams was fleetingly visible. After about ten miles we turned right up a narrow mountain road which climbed steeply to a pass and then dropped into the high valley of the Elan river, at this point little more than a shallow stream artificially widened by the dammed waters of the upper reservoir. I parked the Lotus by the roadside and walked back to join Garcia in the BMW. I was no longer worried about the cars being seen together. Apart from a few neurotic-looking sheep, there was no one to see them. We ate the rest of the food I had brought while the darkness gathered. From time to time there was an occasional thump from the back of the car. I mentally drafted a letter of complaint to BMW. ‘Dear Sir: On long trips my wife and I are frequently disturbed by the weeping and wailing of our Filipino maids, who travel in the boot. It is quite intolerable that a car of this supposed quality …’ Sign it with an Arab name and an address in Knightsbridge.

When we had finished our snack I gave Garcia further instructions. They were brief and simple. He was to wait one hour exactly, then drive on along the road until he saw me. I left him there with a pack of chocolate digestives, a can of Coke and a rather faint and crackly German pop station he had managed to find, and drove off in the Lotus.

The road ran for several miles along the hillside overlooking the upper two lakes, before dipping down into a wood and zigzagging across the overflow stream to hug the eastern bank of the lowest and largest of the three reservoirs. It was dark by now, but I remembered the scene clearly from the walk Karen and I had taken on the last day of our stay in the Elan Valley. I particularly recalled Karen’s shiver as she looked at the black waters far below.

I continued along the bank of the reservoir and across the narrow viaduct of roughly finished stone carrying a forestry trail off into the mountains on the other bank. When I reached the far side I turned the car around, then drove part of the way back. It was pitch-dark and had started to rain, a steady hushing which merely seemed to intensify the silence. I opened the boot of the Lotus and propped the torch on the support strut. Karen showed no further signs of undead activity. There was no doubt now that I was dealing with a corpse, pale, cold and stiff, the back of the legs and neck a nasty greyish-blue colour, as though posthumously bruised by bumping around in the Lotus’s boot. I’d always assumed that there was a big difference between the living and the dead, some glaring and obvious distinction, but apart from the cosmetic details I’ve mentioned, a sort of accelerated ageing, Karen seemed much the same person I’d known and loved all along. If there was something missing then it certainly wasn’t anything I’d cared much about in the first place. For most men, I suppose, sex rarely amounts to much more than necrophilia with the living.

Rigor mortis was fairly advanced by this stage, so instead of trying to wrap Karen’s arms around the concrete post I laid it along her spine. I had originally intended to tie the body to the post with the lengths of electric wire I’d bought for the torture session, but among the miscellaneous items in Clive’s boot was a tow-rope, so I naturally used that instead. I wound it round and round the two rigidities and tied the ends together in a no doubt excessive number of knots.

The next step was to hoist the corpse on to the broad parapet which ran along the bridge to either side at about chest height. As soon as I tried to do this I realized that I had made a mistake in roping it to the post first. I simply couldn’t lift Karen
and
the length of reinforced concrete. But I simply had to. At the first attempt we both ended up lying in the roadway, me on my knees and Karen flat out in the gutter. By leaving one end of the post there, I was able to hoist the other on to the edge of the parapet, with Karen roped to it like Joan of Arc at the stake. It was at this point that a pair of headlights appeared on the other side of the reservoir.

The vehicle circled round in the parking area at the far end of the bridge and drew up facing the water. It had to be the local Water and Sewage Authority officials, I reckoned. I couldn’t see what anyone else would be doing up there at that time of night. They would no doubt feel the same, and drive over to investigate. It was too late to heave the body over the side without being seen and apprehended, if only for contributing to the state of the nation’s water supplies which has led to an understandable confusion in many people’s minds between the two activities for which the Authorities are responsible. No, I was just going to have to bluff my way through it. ‘Good evening. Just admiring the view. This is my wife. Yes, she’s rather poorly, I’m afraid. Well in fact she’s dead, but we don’t like to mention it in front of her.’

Fear lent me new strength. I heaved the other end of the post up on to the parapet, slid it across, and shoved the whole issue over the edge. A moment later there was a satisfyingly loud splash. I opened Karen’s handbag and added the single ticket to Banbury I had bought that morning, then threw that in along with her suitcase and coat. I slammed the boot shut, got back into the Lotus and drove it hard into the parapet, denting the wing and scraping a bright patch of yellow paint off on the stonework. Another clue. The cops were going to love this one.

As I slowed to turn off the bridge I caught sight of two pale faces peering out at me through the misted glass of the parked car. Just a courting couple out for a Saturday night snog. I drove fast along the bank of the reservoir, over the stream and up the winding road through the forest to the bare moors above. There were only ten minutes left of the hour I had allowed before Garcia came looking for me. I must have been feeling a bit light-headed. It had been a day of uncommon stress and responsibility, following an almost sleepless and extremely fraught night. At any rate, I totally misjudged one particularly sharp and inclined hairpin, and the Lotus spun off the road, hit a tree and bounced off into a large patch of mud.