Shaking Hands
By Martin Nichols (c) 2011
By Martin Nichols (c) 2011
Mordaunt was different, I have to say. I’ve never believed in that hocus-pocus. The wife eats it up, ever since her mum died. Clairvoyants, she calls them – all con artists of course – usually called Doris and is there anyone in the audience tonight called David, or Dave or Davina?
My editor sent me to interview Mordaunt who, according to his press release, was proudly presented at the Assembly Rooms next week. The wife was envious. ‘Sneer if you want, but he’s the genuine article’, she said.
He wasn’t what I expected, not a drippy Doris or a conjuror in a cape. Backstage at the Alhambra in Bradford, he had a morning of interviews lined up and I was third on. He shook my hand briskly. He was, what, fifty maybe, going a bit grey, but sharp, definitely. I ran through a routine set of questions, based on the factsheet his agent had emailed us. We’d filch the JPG and reprint the blurb, topped and tailed by yours truly.
As we ran through the interview, Mordaunt became increasingly twitchy. I supposed he was entitled, as this was his third of maybe ten sessions that morning. Nothing of consequence passed between us then, but as we finished, he shook my hand again and his showbiz smiled faded.
‘I just wanted to confirm it,’ he said. ‘Forgive me.’
‘Confirm what?’
‘What I felt when I first met you. The feeling.’
‘And what did you feel? Am I coming into money, or will I meet a tall dark stranger?’
‘I wish you were. I’m not sure I should tell you, but you ought to know. Have to know.’
‘You’re a creepy one,’ I said. ‘Am I ill, is that what you see?’
‘It’s you. You’re going to commit a murder. Within a month.’
I filed my story straight from my iPhone in the car park, and drove back to the next one, a golden wedding with a difference. Why, I don’t remember anymore. I think they might have been penpals. On a local paper you have to do a bit of everything. I tried to forget the queer prediction that had caused me to swear at Mordaunt like that, even though I’d apologised and he said it was only natural, like. I tried to forget everything, but it pushed its way back in.
So I googled Mordaunt. Wikipedia praised him. Bloggers were impressed, even FakeMediumHaterdotcom thought he was the hardest to disprove. Mordaunt seemed quite modest. He’d helped the police find missing children and refused rewards. He kept only a modest sum from the gate at his shows, and gave the rest to major charities. He was often right. If he seemed not to be right, it was usually because the vision had been misinterpreted.
Did I become obsessed? I did. I mean, me, murder someone? Hardly my style. I didn’t know anyone I’d even let the tyres down in, let alone want to murder. After twenty years as a reporter on the Evening Star, there were always going to be some people I would have been perfectly content to hear had died, but I had hoped that car crashes and heart attacks might do the trick. I didn’t intend to be the culprit.
The wife and I saw Mordaunt at the Palace in Huddersfield – the show at our Assembly Rooms was already fully booked. He was impressive on the stage, I must say. The spotlight swung out to various people and he knew all about the ones who were thrust into its glare for their fifteen seconds of fame.
Then the spotlight swung towards us. ‘Oh, hello, Doug, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘And this is your wife. She believes, don’t you Maxine?’ I’d not told him the wife’s name. ‘Doug and I have met before, haven’t we?’ I nodded for the benefit of the audience. ‘Although he’s still around in spite of what I told him, aren’t you Doug?’ Nod, nod.
After the show, the wife and I waited at the stage door in the puddling rain to meet Mordaunt. Maxine gushed. I tried to look flinty. Mordaunt shook her hand and even gave her a peck on the cheek, but managed to miss shaking my hand again. He believed, and I did too.
Who could I kill, though? The only bloke who came to mind was my editor. Nobody would suspect me. I wasn’t going to be set up to follow him. There’s younger, better qualified and shorter skirted individuals lined up. If anyone were suspected, it wouldn’t be me.
I poured weed killer from my garden shed into an orange squash bottle, and a couple of days later, during an editorial meeting when I was sent out to make the tea, I dropped a lot in. He took it strong with five sugars anyway, so I didn’t think he’d taste anything and anyway he was always so stressed that we all expected him to blow something sooner or later. He swilled it down but nothing much happened. He patted his assistant editor, Ruth – his Girl Friday, he called her – slightly too high above the knee and told her she was a good girl. But nothing more. He was probably like that ancient Greek king who took a little poison every day and became immune. I’d have been doing poor Ruth a favour, truth be told, but no go.
Then there was Maxine’s Uncle George. I never liked him – bit too keen on the bottle – and after all, he was eighty if he was a day. Maxine doted on him, though and we saw him too often for my liking. We popped over – I mind that it was raining the proverbial that evening – and Maxine even made him his tea, fairly spoiling him, if you ask me. I slipped him quite a lot of household bleach in his Bovril, then said I had a bit of a headache, so we left soon after.
Sure enough, two days later, Auntie Lil, his estranged wife (or as he used to call her, his ‘strange wife’) called Maxine to say Uncle George had ‘passed into the next room’, quite unexpected like. She’s a Spiritualist – I think it must be her the wife gets it from, all that mumbo-jumbo. At first I thought she was saying Uncle George had moved bedrooms or something in that huge old house of his. Then I twigged it; I’d murdered him. So my shoulders relaxed, I can tell you. Mordaunt’s prediction had been lifted.
‘Was it his heart, Auntie Lil?’ the wife said. No, I killed the old bugger with Drane-Eze, I said, in my head like. Mordaunt’s prediction, his curse you might say, was off me, and what did it matter, anyway? George was old and sick so a quick death was probably a blessing.
‘Lord, no,’ said Auntie Lil. ‘He fell out of the Mason’s Arms – you know, on the High Street – this afternoon, three sheets to nowhere he was, tripped in the street and got mown down by the DHL man. Lovely fella, he was. The DHL man, I mean.’ The weight of Mordaunt’s curse came back down on my shoulders right there and then.
The month was nearly up, so I knew I had to talk to Mordaunt, right after the Assembly Room show. The wife was up at her aunt’s, picking headstones, something between a hobby and a spectator sport in her family. Mordaunt was in his dressing room, taking off the little bit of stage makeup he used.
‘Hello again, Doug. Still at liberty, then?’
‘We have to talk,’ I said.
Do we? Why not? It’s a fine evening, now the rain’s stopped. I’m staying at the Kipper Inn down by the river. D’ye know it? We can have a drink and a chat there, if you like.’ So we did.
He bought me a lager and lime from the hotel bar and took a schooner of sherry for himself. I’m not much of a drinker, me. Never got the taste for it, you might say. We took our drinks out onto the river terrace because nobody was around at this time of night. The river was swollen from those rains we’d had recently over the Pennines; quite a downfall it had been.
‘You said I’d murder someone within a month,’ I said. ‘Do you remember?’
‘Of course, it’s not the sort of vision I get every day. Mostly I tell people things like the tests will come out all right, your daughter will call soon. So I’m not likely to forget.’
‘Could you be wrong?’ I said.
‘I’m never wrong. If I see it, it happens.’
‘Really? So it doesn’t matter?’
‘Like it or no, you’re a killer. You’ll kill. Soon.’
‘Then I’ll be fine?’ He nodded.
‘I only saw you’d kill. Nothing after that.’ I set my lager and lime on a table, one of those things with an umbrella growing out the middle.
‘Does it matter who?’ He shook his head.
‘We all end up dead eventually. Who is a footnote, to my way of thinking.’
It was then I pushed him backwards, with both shaking hands. He simply pivoted back over the railing into the swollen river. His sherry schooner went flying and caught the night time lights of the city as he hit his head on part of the quay; he spun around and entered the river face down. I watched as nature dispatched him for me.
Then my mobile went. The wife, back from her Auntie Lil’s.
‘I knew it was going to be you,’ I said.
‘You must be psychic,’ she laughed.
‘Maybe’.
‘When are you free?’
‘Right now, as it happens,’ I said.
