The Long Drop To Eternity Read online

The Long Drop to Eternity

  Richard Quinn

  Copyright © Richard Quinn 2014

  The Long Drop to Eternity

  Richard Quinn

  Celia Banks looked uneasy. She felt uneasy. And it was hardly surprising considering the man she had been having a two-year affair with had just suggested murder. It shocked her to think that Dennis was serious – deadly serious. To look at him he didn’t seem the dangerous kind. He was slim and dapper and intelligent. He was thoughtful and caring and was everything that Simon wasn’t. She had fallen for this man’s charm and his ability to listen to her He made her feel special and when he spoke to her it was like she was the only person in this whole lousy world that mattered. Dennis made her feel secure and happy. He was the man that she should have married. He was kind and considerate. But the man that sat across the table from her now looked different. His eyes were different. His composure and body language was different. Dennis wasn’t sat there at all. It was like he had been taken over and replaced by something malevolent. It was like sitting with a stranger; a murderous stranger, cold and callous.

  “You can do this,” said Dennis calmly. “It’s not an issue. You know you detest the man, so why not do this?”

  Celia swallowed nervously as she drank her coffee. She was so fired up with nerves that she couldn’t even taste it. It was nothing more than lukewarm dishwater swilling across her tongue, dark and flavourless. Fear can do that to a person. It can negate certain senses and logic, just as love can arrest the sense of right and wrong. For her it was the sense of taste. So she put the cup down and lowered her eyes. She had had enough coffee. She had had enough of being sat in this diner out in the middle of nowhere with this stranger and his cold eyes boring into hers.

  “You’re the beneficiary of his will – the whole lot, you said. Am I right?” said Dennis without a spark of emotion. “You told me that yourself, Celia. Simon told you that.”

  “I know he did. I am his wife and I am his main beneficiary. But to kill him? This is madness – it’s sick.”

  She spat out the word ‘sick’ under her breath, making certain it was inaudible. There were two other customers in the diner, both run-down people hunched over long forgotten empty cups of coffee. The waitress was sat perched on a bar stool. She looked tired and well past her prime. She eventually drifted back towards the kitchen. Closing time was in ten minutes. She was getting ready to close up. But Celia was still careful enough to keep her voice down.

  Dennis drew back with a look of contempt in his eyes. An uncomfortable silence passed between them; Celia feeling that she was growing paler by the minute.

  “People like you want it all ways, and always in your favour,” said Dennis as he fumbled for a cigarette and a lighter. “You want me and yet you still want him and his damned money. You’re like a fat greedy kid that wants her cake and eat it, then wants more. I’m sick of being used.”

  “But no one is using you,” whispered Celia, a tone of protest in her voice. “What we have for now is good. It works.”

  “Does it?”

  “Yes.”

  A furrow of scepticism creased Dennis’s forehead. He was a man that wasn’t content with remaining in the shadows. He had been there for far too long, and the coldness of that position was getting to him. He wanted Celia, wanted her for good. A cheap motel and an occasional rendezvous had been agreeable at first, but now it had ran its course. They were wasting time, letting the good times pass them by. They could go on like this for years. Dennis was scared of being filled full of regrets. It was now-or-never, and his mind was set. It was either get rid of Simon or move on and find someone else as this relationship was going nowhere. Secret sordid meets and passing encounters was not a relationship but a farce. The insanity of the situation angered him. He rose from the table and moved towards the door. He let Celia pay for the coffee. If she wanted to mess him around at least he deserved a coffee out of it.

  He lit his cigarette outside. The night was clear and the distant church spire looked clearly etched in silhouette, imperious amongst a clump of trees.

  He inhaled and waited. Celia joined him in the car park and put on her coat. There was a distinct chill in the air. Maybe there was, and then again, maybe there wasn’t. Dennis may have been the source of it. Celia had never felt so disturbed in her life.

  “He’ll never give you a divorce, and you know it,” Dennis said, his face in partial shadow beneath the neon light of the diner. “He’ll make you suffer for years. Do you want that, Celia?”

  The tip of his cigarette glowed as he inhaled. She could see that he was in some sort of deep thought, the cogs churning away. And it didn’t take a genius to know what he was thinking.

  Celia knew that he was right. Simon was a bully, an inveterate pig that loved to emotionally blackmail her when the occasion arose. He was a devout Catholic, just as his mother had been, and they didn’t take divorce lightly. To them it was shame, not something that was even discussed. Catholics toughed the lousy times of marriage out. That’s what Simon’s mother had instilled in him.

  Dennis was pushing, and he was clearly pushing again. The cigarette tip glowed again before he flicked the spent stub into the nearby field, and then blew out a narrow stream of smoke. Celia watched it disperse into the night air. She knew in her heart that Dennis was right. She had married Simon for security, for his money, but it had all come at a huge price – their combined misery.

  Celia wanted out. Two nights ago she had threatened to leave him and the next thing she knew she was on the sofa, nursing a split lip. Simon didn’t like any backchat. And he wasn’t afraid nor governed by the chivalrous maxims that only cowards struck women. In fact, he saw it as his place to strike Celia. To coldly chastise her when he felt she needed to be chastised. That was what his position was. He was the head of the house, the breadwinner, the patriarch. What he said was gospel and woe-betide the wife who challenged him. His father had held the same view. He had worn the trousers, not his wife.

  “Do you want to be treated like a punch-bag whenever that sick bastard can’t get his way?” said Dennis as they walked back towards his car. “Abuse never stops, Celia. But we can do something about this – I can finish this.”

  “But murder?” said Celia as she leaned against his Austin Healey sports car. “What if something goes wrong? What then?”

  Dennis smiled thinly. It was only a slight expression but chilled her to the bone. “I’ve planned this all out. I’ve thought of nothing else these past few weeks,” he said. “I want you and this is the only way we can be together; together forever.”

  “I’m still unsure about all this,” said Celia as she got into the car. “There are so many ways how this can go wrong.”

  Dennis started the car and drove out of the car park. The neon light was turned off as the diner closed, plunging the small building into a bulky darkness. The headlights cut into the night, washing across the road as Dennis swung the car onto the lane.

  “You and Simon are going to a dinner dance that is organised by your husband’s business partner. You’re going this coming Tuesday, right?” said Dennis as he accelerated, playing notes with the tuned engine.

  Celia nodded. “We are. The man is a crashing bore but I tend to leave Simon to his money-talk with Roger and I just mingle. The whole atmosphere there is dreadful. A dreadful four hours with equally dreadful people.” The melancholy was heavy in her voice. Just the tone alone told Dennis the whole story. “But what is worse is that Simon always gets drunk and I have to drive. And when we get home he becomes irritable and violent. He hates me talking to other men.
He gets so jealous. I detest the aftermath of those damned dinners.”

  “There is a lonely stretch of country lane between the village and the main town route, and that presents an ideal opportunity to take him out,” said Dennis calmly. “I know there is. I’ve driven the route in a friend’s van five times this last month. It’s perfect.”

  Celia looked at her lover. His face was in a dreamlike state, as if he was playing a scene over and over again in his mind. “Kill him. Just deal with it,” she said. “You’re right. This madness has gone on long enough.”

  The sheer venom of her words jolted Dennis from his reverie. Celia had clearly had enough, and now she was ready to see this through.

  “We had better plan this out impeccably,” said Celia sternly. “This can work. I know it can. And I have just the plan worked out.”

  Dennis smiled and held her hand. “It will work, darling,” he said as he let out a yell of delight. “It will work.”

  Celia leaned across and kissed him. He almost lost control of the car at a bend, the tyres squealing their protest. Dennis swore and turned into the skid, correcting it.

  “Wow – a close call,” said Dennis. They both laughed as they drove into the night. The atmosphere was alive with murder in mind.