Conversations 06

"Hryyyatch mnnnphh"

"No, you didn't. I would have remembered that. I know you complain that I don't remember half of what you tell me, but I'm pretty sure that would have stuck.

"Wait a minute, I drove the car yesterday, and there was nothing wrong with any of the windows. What's going on?"

"Mnhoort."

"Well, why would you get it fixed and not tell me about it?"

"Nrt?"

"Why would you be scared of me? You should never have to hide things from me. Well, most things. anyway.

"Okay, this non-stop chat is actually getting boring, so let's move along. A three takes me to orange, and that's a ...

"Another video clue, but this one a ... what is that? A receipt from the Rainbow being taken out of your handbag. Hang on, that's my credit card number on it. How did I end up paying for a room at the Rainbow? I'm going to have to think about that.

"Another throw. Just a one, but that puts me on purple with just one more square to go. So what's this clue? Aha -- an audio.

Voices boomed out. We all listened wide-eyed to the conversation. When it was over, I turned to my captive audience.

"That sounds like Clarissa saying to restrain someone called John. Oh -- my name's John. Does that mean you were supposed to restrain me?

"Well, I must say I'm fucking disappointed in the lot of you. You honey, ringing around our good friends and telling them to come over and restrain me by force, while you get my fingerprints onto the safe and take the gold certificates. Fuck, those were an inheritance from my grandparents. You had no right to those!

"Last move. I can't roll lower than a one, so the final square. Take the card, which says: WhoDunnit?"

I stood up. "So, taking all the clues into consideration, I'm guessing that the culprit is ... All four of you. You're all four fucking my fiancée; my dear, sweet ever-faithful fiancee. Sorry, that came out wrong. Damn you, autocorrect. I meant to say venal, thieving slut-bitch ex-fiancee."

"Mmmf mmmf"

"Well you might ask, Larry. Well you might ask. Why did I play this stupid game? Why does anyone play a game? To pass the time.

"And partly to show you knobheads that I knew all about you fucking my betrothed. To show that I knew all along about you meeting at the Rainbow for your little clusterfuck sessions. To show you that I'm not as stupid as you all keep telling each other I am. Just because you all agree, doesn't actually make it real, you know. The flat-Earthers keep telling each other the world is a flat disc, but just because they all agree doesn't make it a fact. In fact that's how religions are born, and look where that got us.

"You just couldn't wait until we were married, could you honey? You just had to get your hands on those certificates before the wedding so you wouldn't have to go through with it. From your point of view I can understand it, I suppose. You were already trading your body -- which wasn't as much cop as you thought it was, by the way -- to me on a highly rationed schedule in order to get those pieces of paper, and that must have been awful for you.

"Yes, I knew about the rationing, and your habit of noting on the calendar when you had sex. It wasn't really like trying to crack the Enigma Code. Not marked when we had sex, mind you -- just when you had sex. That Saturday with the boys must have been wonderful for you -- nine times? Who would have thought you had it in you... so to speak?"

"But you didn't want to hang around waiting any longer and have to fuck me while you could already be living it large. You wanted it all, and you wanted it now! So you changed who you were whoring yourself out to in order to sucker these four idiots into your plot. And then you phoned the four stooges -- but unluckily did it on a tapped phone. Oops, my bad.

"By that stage I didn't trust you to be honest even when you said good morning and I always checked outside as soon as possible. I recorded the whole plan -- to get your merry men over to restrain me and use my fingerprints to open the safe to get rich quick. I suppose I should be thankful you never thought of cutting my fingers off.

"You guys are all alpha males, clearly. You're big and strong and brave, real heroes. And so incredibly stupid. You were so sure you were going to put the horns on me. But you forgot; I'm a dentist! We're not the wimps you think we are! We're certainly not stupid. I figured out what was happening the first time one of those little dots appeared on that calendar when I hadn't had the dubious pleasure of my dearly beloved's body. I think for her it was like keeping track of what had been ordered in a restaurant, so she could tot up the bill at the end.

"And while you all were having a drink downstairs and marvelling to yourselves at just what a stupid cuck I was, all five of you were breathing in nitrous oxide that I brought home, which was acting on your nervous system, calming your excitement and slowing your eagerness to actually do the deed. We use it all the time in dentistry, remember? It's strong stuff. I have nose plugs I wear to prevent me being accidentally overcome by gas used on patients. You didn't. So you all just kept breathing it in while drinking my beer, ready to give me those shit-eating grins and clap me on the back, knowing that you were on the verge of getting rich quick and banging my beautiful fiancée like a gong, all while I was restrained and would have to look on while you were doing it.

"Well more fool you. My fiancée has a ticket out of here on a plane that leaves in an hour -- although it's now amongst my little stash of evidence, so it's highly likely that she'll miss it. If your plan had succeeded, she would have had those certificates in her bag and then slipped away like a wet bar of soap before you could whistle Howdy Doody. She would have been on that plane and disappeared to parts unknown where there is no extradition treaty. Venezuela, maybe.

"Which would have left you four to take the rap for kidnapping and unlawful restraint, theft and robbery, assault and rank stupidity. You were going down for a very long time under her plan. Unless you were going to kill me, although I think if you had you would all have been on death row within a week.

"You guys are too stupid to live, you know that? Three of your cars, alongside mine, which Larry cadged a lift in, all lined up outside the Rainbow Hotel, and you let them be photographed by the cops? You think the police wouldn't have picked up on that if I turned up dead? Clarissa reported that her bag had been stolen from the car, mainly to get a crime report number for the insurance company -- so there were photographs of the crime scene with your cars parked right next to hers. That robbery, right before my death, would have got them interested just in case the two were related, so the photos would have surfaced and there you'd be, right in the cross hairs.

"And if you didn't kill me, what were you going to do? Deny everything, I suppose. The certificates aren't listed so they couldn't be traced, and it would have been my word against all of yours. So, to prevent that, I showed the evidence to a very nice detective lady, who really wasn't very interested until she heard the tape of that phone call, and then she took a whole lot of interest in the rest of it as well. Enough that she agreed to let me get my great game afoot. Is that the quote?

"Why play the game? Partly to reveal that all your plots and conniving were the dumbest collection of fuckwit ideas ever, and partly to prove to myself and my sweet Clarissa here that I'm not a cuntstruck loser. But mostly I did it to pass the time until the police and your wives arrived, and in your case honey, until your parents and siblings got here.

"I'm pretty sure that they're all downstairs waiting. I left the door open with a note pinned to the door frame asking them to come in, have a drink and wait for me to come down while I finished a quick Skype meeting with my partners at the surgery. There's probably a party going on down there. Okay, I lied to them, but they all needed to be here to get a real close look at all this evidence. Besides, who else is going to cut the power to those electric chairs you're sitting in? Not me! Personally, I hope you all fry in hell.

"Honey, you are a miserable, manipulative cheat. You are an inveterate and irredeemable slut. You are a backstabbing liar, a whore and a thief -- and you really aren't even very good at any of those things. The wedding is off. The presents will not be returned. Your best friends think your wedding dress makes you look really fat and that your arse looks massive in anything you wear, your sister is fucking your bother, your father is a distasteful, alcoholic lecher and your mother is Satan's own bitch. Apart from that, you were a nice partner.

"You are all the guilty parties! Arrest them, detective. Take them away!"

All eyes turned to the door.

...

"Detective?"

I went to the door. I could hear the detective chatting to several women downstairs. Amongst the chink of tea cups, I could hear their voices sounding a little annoyed.

Resignedly, I collected the evidence and went downstairs, a little disappointed that my great denouement had gone unappreciated.

Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes never had the problem of the police, who were there to witness the grand reveal, getting bored and going off to join a tea party.

So perhaps my great game wasn't going to be a best seller after all.