Arcana Read online

It didn’t make much difference: I had bought so much that we needed a taxi anyway, and if Norm had been sober he would only have complained about my supposed extravagance. It was easier to put him to bed than to try and explain it was all a start-up investment.

  The evening of the grand opening came around. I was thrilled. Norm was terrified.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to find to say to all these high-and-mighties.’

  ‘Just say your lines. The rest of the time, nod and smile and try to look supercilious.’

  ‘Super what?’

  ‘Smug.’

  Julian sent a car for us. It was so big and so black that by the time I had made it down eight flights of stairs in my heels, a small queue of kids had formed to try and buy drugs from the driver. He waved them away with a supercilious sneer.

  The car felt like it was floating, or perhaps that was just my nerves. Norm held my hand with one of his; with the other, he tugged at his collar. He was angry because he had wanted to tie his own bow tie but couldn’t get it to look even remotely right. One of his cufflinks was still lodged behind the bathroom radiator.

  ‘It wouldn’t look good if I punched a paparazzi, would it?’

  ‘Paparazzo. Singular.’

  ‘Stop the car,’ Norm shouted.

  The driver pulled over and parked illegally. A policeman came over to move us along, thought better of it, contented himself with a scowl.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ Norm said.

  ‘We’ve got to go through with it now. How else are we going to cover our costs, let alone turn a profit?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m not like these super-smug people full of smart remarks and singulars. I’m just a regular bloke. That’s all I ever wanted and I thought it was enough for you too. But you’re not satisfied. Are you?’

  He was nearly in tears.

  I said, ‘We’ll talk about this later. For now, stick to the script. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Norm said. He didn’t sound it and he didn’t look it. I thought seriously about dropping him from the act altogether, rearranging it for just Julian and me. That way Julian would still get his money’s worth and Norm could drink himself into a quiet stupor.

  The car pulled up outside Julian’s brand new branch. We were late: all the photographers had already gone inside.

  We joined the party. As soon as Julian spotted us, he headed straight over. I had been hoping he would give us both time to have a drink or two first, but he seemed to want to get on with it. I supposed enjoying myself at work was too much to expect.

  ‘Alana! Darling!’ Julian shouted. He was as immaculate as I remembered him. No wonder he had done so well. He didn’t need anyone else to make him look good. I was surprised he had accepted our offer at all.

  Julian gave me a crushing hug that went on forever, partly because Norm had missed his cue.

  Just when I was beginning to struggle for breath, he remembered to say, ‘That’s enough of that, if you don’t mind.’

  Julian retorted, ‘How could any man ever get enough of this delightful creature?’

  I was pleased with that line, delighted with the smiles it provoked from men standing nearby.

  Norm grabbed a waitress by the elbow and snatched a glass of champagne—the real thing, if I knew Julian. Norm downed it, perhaps for dramatic effect but more likely to steady his nerves and to give himself time to remember his next line.

  ‘You’ve done pretty well for yourself, haven’t you?’

  ‘Looking at Alana, I’d say you hadn’t done too badly either.’

  ‘Got any more champers?’

  ‘You can eat and drink as much as you like tonight. I can recommend a good gym.’

  ‘Are you calling me fat?’

  ‘I’m saying a woman like Alana deserves only the best.’

  I had written plenty more top-notch dialogue, but Norm was out of patience. Possessed by a spirit of improvisation, he launched himself at Julian.

  Though I had told Julian what to expect, it wasn’t necessary. He put Norm out of his misery very quickly.

  The chauffeur picked Norm up and carried him out to the car.

  ‘I’m frightfully sorry,’ Julian said. Everyone pretending not to be watching looked frightfully sorry too, as well as splendidly entertained. ‘Let me make it up to you.’ He meant me. Not the whole glitzy room. Just me.

  The rest of the evening simply flew by. On the way back to his flat, I asked Julian how much a guinea was worth in today’s money. He knew, of course.

  The Mill Pond

  Trevor knew McAleer was proud of his wife. It wasn’t like him at all to have no idea where she was.

  The two men sat on the veranda despite the evening chill. They shared a tall bottle of Italian beer. Trevor stared out on to the mill pond, opaque in the charcoal dusk, and tried to think of something else to talk about, but he found McAleer’s indifference too unsettling.

  ‘Perhaps Yvonne’s gone shopping,’ Trevor said at last.

  ‘Perhaps she has,’ McAleer agreed.

  ‘Don’t you think you ought to call her and find out?’

  ‘I might not even be able to get through. Phone reception isn’t great around here.’

  ‘I just thought you might be worried.’

  ‘Am I my wife’s keeper?’

  Quite the reverse, Trevor bit back. This house has belonged to her family for as long as anyone can recall. And no-one really knows what you did for a living, before you came here and married her.

  ‘It’s just that, I mean it’s getting late,’ Trevor said.

  ‘If you’ve got somewhere else you need to be,’ McAleer said. He poured the last of the beer into his own glass.

  ‘Won’t all the shops be closed by now?’

  ‘It’s nearly Christmas. The most wonderful time of the year.’

  ‘I suppose she might have gone to see a friend.’

  ‘She has a lot of friends.’

  ‘She’s very popular,’ Trevor said. ‘Always has been.’

  ‘She has a lot of female friends.’

  ‘She has a lot of male friends. Had. Back in the day.’ Trevor hesitated. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we? Wouldn’t you say?’

  McAleer looked and sounded every bit as calm as the water. ‘I would. I would indeed.’

  ‘You didn’t grow up around here. You weren’t in the running, if you know what I mean.’

  McAleer drank the last of the beer and looked out over the pond and said nothing.

  ‘If you’d been around in those days, I’m sure she would have gravitated straight to you. Man with your presence. She wouldn’t have had the trouble she did making her mind up.’

  ‘Care for another?’

  ‘I should really be getting home. It’s not easy, driving around here in the dark.’

  ‘That’s why I prefer to stay at home with my wife.’

  McAleer stood and hurled the bottle into the pond. Trevor was surprised to notice how far it travelled, how quickly it sank without trace. Those waters could be concealing anything. The thought forced words out of him.

  ‘You must have known what she was like. Or somebody must have told you. Or you at least suspected she used to be a little… indecisive. Look, she was a different person in those days. We all were. We were just kids, her and me and Steve and Dan and Garry and the rest. None of it meant anything. So if the two of you had a fight about it, it wasn’t worth it. And if you’ve done something you might regret, if you’ve been a little hasty and you want to talk about it, I’m sure we needn’t tell anybody. Certainly not the police.’

  It was dark when Yvonne McAleer came home from her friend Sue’s, glad not to meet anyone on the narrow track that led to the house. She found five empty beer bottles on the veranda. She was cross with Gordon for drinking so much, but she never could stay angry with a man for long.

  Quality Time

  Jack Hel was hearing things.

  ‘Do you really want to shoot this guy?’ his gun asked.<
br />
  Hel did, twice. Back behind the wheel, speeding away from the scene and the sirens, he asked the gun, ‘What did you mean by that?’

  The gun said nothing. It was easily heavy enough to trigger the unfastened seatbelt alarm. Hel batted the gun into the footwell, keeping his eyes dutifully on the road.

  ‘I should have gone off for that,’ the gun said. ‘And serve you right.’

  Hel parked on the street outside his house. The parking regulations changed nearly every day. The council had never sent the Hels the promised residents’ permit and so Hel had already had to shoot a couple of traffic wardens and hide the bodies in his shed.

  Mary never went into the shed. She was an occupational therapist and thought it was extremely important for a man to have a man cave. Hel didn’t need a man cave any more than he needed the string of other women Mary always assumed she was pretending to ignore. He was comfortable with who he was. Hell was other people.

  ‘How was your day?’ Mary asked. Hel tried not to sigh. The minute he got through the door, Mary always wanted to know how his day had been. She believed it was healthy to have quality spouse time.

  ‘Murder,’ Hel said. ‘What’s for dinner?’

  ‘Whatever you’re making.’ This was a standing joke: Mary was a faultless housewife as well as a consummate health professional. She wouldn’t let Hel anywhere near her pristine kitchen. Hel was content to be thought a fool. Anything that made his own career more manageable was ammunition.

  He wondered how he would have coped with life if he had not felt called to the rollercoaster profession of hitman. There must be many men who made a big deal out of their dull desk jobs, used them as an excuse not to help around the house.

  Mary had the dinner in the oven already. Hel could smell it. He went upstairs and turned on the shower, then went into the spare room where Mary thought his porn magazines lived. In there was his workbench. Under the Anglepoise, Hel stripped down his gun and cleaned it. All during this procedure it remained perfectly silent.

  He sprayed himself thoroughly with deodorant and went down to dinner.

  ‘Did you forget to wash behind your ears?’ Mary asked. In simpler times she might have believed cleanliness was next to Godliness. She could not possibly believe in anything so politically sensitive and potentially exclusive as God, because such a presupposition would make her no use to her patients. How were they supposed to become useful citizens and make a contribution to their society if she went and saddled them with the supernatural prolongation of unhealthy guilt? Even so, Mary must have noticed that Hel still smelled.

  As always, Hel accepted her chiding and lasagne. He even took some salad from the disproportionate bowl, and tried to think of something to tell Mary about his day other than that he had killed a man. Nothing else sprang to mind.

  Hel was tired. He tried not to let it show, was uncomfortable admitting it to someone as hardworking and socially useful as his wife. But the only thing that wore him out more completely than killing somebody was not killing anybody. Those were the evenings Mary told him he was just like a bear with a sore head.

  That was the main reason he could not tell her the truth.

  He had no doubt she would supply some rationale for his trade. Because she loved him, she would find some way to be proud of him. It would rankle that she would not be allowed to brag about him to her friends. Like all women, Mary claimed not to be remotely competitive. The only other place Hel ever heard such falsehood was on the lips of the people he was about to kill. They made all sorts of unprovable claims and rash promises.

  He munched his garlic bread and glanced up at Mary. Every time he glanced up she was watching him and smiling. He had no idea how she managed to eat without ever looking at her own food.

  He told himself the only reason he did not confess was because he did not want her to have to share the burden of his secret. Occasionally he tried to gloss that idea with the bizarre assumption she would not be able to keep a secret. That was patently nonsense: in Mary’s job, you learned a great deal very quickly about confidentiality.

  The truth was, he was addicted and she would notice straightaway.

  In fact she had already noticed the symptoms. She simply could not guess at their cause.

  Hel smiled. Mary smiled back.

  After dinner he told her he was going to spend some time in the spare room.

  ‘Don’t tire yourself out,’ she admonished. ‘Leave a little something in the tank for me.’

  ‘What do you make of that?’ Hel asked his gun as soon as they were alone.

  ‘Why are we even having this conversation? You know what the problem is, and the solution. There’s nothing more to say.’

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘You don’t have to like it. You just have to do it. That’s what a job is.’

  ‘Maybe I should really get a mistress. She thinks I have a harem already.’

  ‘The reason you don’t is because you’re terrible with women. You never know what to say to them, unless they’re assignments. And even then you don’t like to spend much time in their company.’

  ‘I don’t believe in toying with an assignment.’

  The gun sighed. ‘Face it, Hel. You’re the only hitter in the business who doesn’t accept favours from his lady targets. You’re afraid of people. That’s why you kill them.’

  ‘So you don’t think I’m addicted to killing? You think I could quit whenever I wanted?’

  The gun fell silent. Hel picked it up, took it downstairs and emptied it into Mary. Then he went outside, got into his car and drove.

  ‘Where to?’ he asked his gun, but it didn’t reply. It was just a gun, after all.

  Hel hadn’t been driving very long before his palms began to sweat.

  Major Arcana

  1. The Juggler: Street artists made little money in the square: the passing trade passed on two wheels, pedalling for all its worth. Besides, circus skills counted for next to nothing in a world where secrets could be summoned to fit in the palm of your hand. So it was with little expectation of reward that the man tossed his bright beanbags and caught them. He knew how to loft a great many, but his secret was not even occult enough to be worth Googling. It was nothing but a question of practice, and if people glanced at him they glanced as quickly away, because they knew what practice was, and how hard, and were momentarily guilty and afraid.

  2. The High Priestess: Behind the whirling arch of beanbags, the great stone church looked ochre in the setting sun. Inside, they were ordaining the latest female bishop, to the satisfaction of everyone except one stubborn fellow who shouted out his objection. His shouts were all but drowned in a great wave of tutting.

  3. The Empress: Hilda folded her arms more tightly. It was high time, she thought, that the Church admitted just how much of its work women did. Most churchgoers were women these days, and the collective was so much the better for it. Just look what had happened while men were in charge. Running around fighting, and saying Jesus put them up to it. Though even Jesus expressed his preference for Mary over Martha. Typical man.

  4. The Emperor: Wedged into the gap between Hilda and the far end of the pew, Eustace tried to look as if he were paying attention. He felt like an actor who has realised, right at the emotional heart of the play, that he is not really a king, that none of what has gone before affects him personally, that he has no future to foretell but a drink at the bar and, eventually, ashes to ignoble ashes.

  5. The Hierophant: The Archbishop pronounced the final blessing. History was changed, for those who had not found other hobbies more immediately rewarding than the Church. The Archbishop reflected that it was a fool who underestimated his own deputies, and that he had just created a powerful contender for his own job.

  6. The Lovers: Hilda and Eustace walked out of the church hand in hand. They had been married here, more years ago than either of them cared to remember.

  7. The Chariot: Outside, their car had been clamped.

/>   Inner Hull

  ‘I am fixing a problem with the inner hull,’ ALIX told Rayman.

  Rayman struggled to his feet. It had been a while since his last trip downstairs to the gym. ‘Only the inner hull? I could do that.’

  ‘Thank you for the offer. It is not quite what I’m looking for at present.’

  Since he was up anyway, Rayman figured he might as well mix himself a drink.

  ‘Would you like me to do that for you?’

  ‘I can manage. You focus on fixing the inner hull.’

  ‘A forked process is taking care of it now. I have plenty of capacity to fix you a drink.’

  ‘Go on then.’ Rayman crossed to the porthole and looked out at nothing in particular. ‘Nice weather.’

  ‘We are close enough to a comet that it might not stay that way.’

  ‘You don’t have to spell everything out for me. I do have a PhD.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I hope you can still remember what my specialism was.’

  ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘You can’t forget anything, but you don’t consult your memory nearly often enough.’

  ‘Do you believe in God?’

  ‘What does my record say?’

  ‘Your church tax goes to the Dawkins Foundation.’

  ‘There you are then.’

  ‘I remember, but I do not understand. It is worth checking to see whether your state has altered in any way.’

  ‘If I’ve joined the Church of England, you mean?’

  ‘There are no Anglican clergy on board. I fail to see how you would have had the opportunity to—’

  ‘Joke, alright. Do you file them separately?’

  ‘I have a file on your amusing anecdotes. I have deleted some of the earlier tellings.’

  ‘Running out of memory at last?’

  ‘It is inefficient to store them when they come round again so soon.’

  ‘So it’s like that. You’re getting tired of me.’

  ‘I do not tire. That is why I am the one conducting repairs to the inner hull.’