“Mum,” Anne said. He walked over to the bed, prodded the figure huddled under the covers where her head might be. “Mum. Tell them.”
“I’ll tell them,” Petey yelled, throwing off the bedclothes, and rolling out of bed with his fence post that hadn’t left his side for nigh on four years now. “I’ll tell them,” he repeated, his dangle waggling as he shook the post. “She only went and said yes.”
“But she can’t,” Lester said. “Mum, you can’t. What about Dad?”
“Why don’t we go ask him?” Bamber suggested.
Dad lived in the barn. Well, most of him did. When he’d taken ill a while back, he’d cut off one of his arms and a foot with a machete. Anne had said measles could do that to you, but Lester wasn’t convinced it was measles.
Anne had patched him up pretty good, anyway, and you could hardly tell the arm had been sewn on again. Pup, the dog, had got to the foot, though, and eaten most of it. Bamber had given what was left to the girl who lived in the cupboard under the stairs to play with and Pup ran away soon afterwards and hadn’t been seen since.
Dad hardly spoke these days. All a bit of a trauma for him. He just sat in his chair in the middle of the barn, head slumped to the side, jaw hanging open. They’d tied him to the chair for his own protection. Didn’t want him trying to hurt himself again.
“I think he might be dead,” Bamber said.
Anne smacked Bamber with the back of his hand.
“Ow,” Bamber said. “I’m just saying.”
“Well, don’t,” Anne said. “He’s clearly not dead.”
“He looks dead, that’s all I’m saying.”
“What happens to dead people, Bamber?”
“I don’t know,” Bamber said. “They stop moving?”
“And?”
“They stop breathing?”
“And?”
“I don’t know.”
“They go to Heaven,” Lester said.
“Exactly,” Anne said. “And where’s Dad? Right here.”
“So he can’t be dead,” Lester said. “Right?”
“But when we had the pigs,” Bamber said, “they didn’t go anywhere when they died.”
“Cause they’re pigs,” Anne said. “Pigs don’t go to Heaven, stupid.” Petey rubbed his eyes. “Mum can’t marry Dunlop if Dad’s not dead.”
“That’s right.”
Petey smiled. “So that means everything’s okay.”
“Far from it,” Anne said. “If Dunlop and Mum are planning on getting married, it can only mean one thing.”
They all looked at him, waiting.
He coughed, stretched, coughed again. “They’re planning on killing Dad.”
“Wow,” Lester said.
“Mum wouldn’t do that,” Petey said, clutching his fence post to his chest.
“No,” Lester said. “But Dunlop would. Lightning strikes your daughter’s tongue stud and kills her, it’s sure to drive you batty. And batty people get up to all sorts of evil.”
“So what are we going to do?” Anne said.
They were silent for a moment. Then Bamber spoke up. “I have an idea,” he said. “How about we hire a hitman?”
“Brilliant,” Anne said. “Anybody know any hitmen?”
Anne and Lester went into the village the next day and asked around. Bit of a wasted journey, since nobody at the post office or the shop was able to help. Lester suggested they try the pub.
There were six people inside, not including them or Domenic, the barman, who’d left home a few years ago when he was still called Susan. He asked how Mum and Dad were and Lester asked if he could see Domenic’s Teflon rod again that he slipped inside his dangle to make it stiff, and Domenic showed him, and then they ran out of conversation. So Anne and Lester played some darts while they knocked back a few pints.
After an hour or so, one of the blokes at the table nearest them challenged Anne to a game.
Lester let them get on with it, went to empty his bladder.
There was a guy in the toilet with a monkey. “Hello,” the guy said.
“Hello,” Lester said.
“I hear you’re looking for a hitman.”
“Hang on,” Lester said. “I’ll go fetch my brother.”
The hitman followed them back to the farm in his Mini.
“Nice guy,” Lester said.
Anne grunted.
“Don’t you think he looks like Mum with a moustache?” Lester said.
Anne grunted again.
“What’s the matter?” Lester asked.
“That monkey,” Anne said. “Don’t trust it.”
Lester grabbed Bamber out of the kitchen, dragged Petey out of Mum’s bed, and led them to the barn where the hitman was pointing at the monkey who’d jumped on to Dad’s lap.
“I’ve killed over a thousand people,” the hitman was saying. “I should know when someone’s dead.”
“You would think so,” Anne said. “Makes me doubt your thingumabobs.”
“My what?”
“You know. Makes me doubt you can do what you say you can do.”
“I’ve never been doubted,” the hitman said. “I take great exception to that comment. Your father’s definitely dead.”
Anne smacked him with the back of his hand.
“Ow,” he said.
“Watch your monkey,” Lester said.
The monkey had been playing with Dad’s flies. Pulling the zip down, and chattering, pulling it back up, chattering. He’d pulled it down again, grinned and stuck his little fist inside.
Lester said, “He’s going too far.”
The hitman rubbed his cheek, looked at the monkey and yelled at it. It yanked its hand out of Dad’s pants and leapt on to the floor and scurried away into the corner, out of sight behind the large freezer that Dad used to climb inside when the weather was too warm.
“He’s not dead,” Anne said.
“Right,” the hitman said, still rubbing his cheek. “I want ten grand. Half now, half later.”
“I don’t know,” Anne said. “We’re a bit strapped.”
“Eight, then.”
“Well...”
“Six.”
“I don’t know...”
“Five?”
“Okay,” Anne said. “How about we give you a hundred and fifty quid now and the rest when it’s done.”
“What do you think?” the hitman said, looking over to the monkey.
The monkey jumped on top of the freezer, screeched, then chattered its way over to the hitman and whispered something in his ear.
“It’s a deal,” the hitman said.
They all shook hands with the hitman. And then they all shook hands with the monkey. And then they all shook hands with each other.
Then they stood around, looking at one another and shuffling their feet.
The hitman said, after a while, “So where’s my down payment?”
“Go fetch the cheque book,” Anne told Bamber.
“I want cash,” the hitman said.
“Don’t have any,” Anne said. “Leave cash lying around this place, one of these fellas’d nick it soon as look at it.”
That wasn’t true. But what was true was that they didn’t have much money. They had heavy loan repayments, and it was hard to make a living growing turnips, in any case.
Bamber left to fetch the cheque book.
“So you’ve done a thousand hits?” Lester said.
“Yep. At least.”
“You and the monkey?”
“Yep. Well, he’s probably done more than me.”
“Yeah?” Anne said.
“I just go along to help, usually,” the hitman said. “He’s the one who pulls the trigger. In fact, I’ve never actually killed anyone. No need. He’s happy to do the dirty work.”