‘Gradually, inevitably, our conversation turned to that interesting night when Stefan won the money and gave it to me. I assumed he wanted money, people generally did. So I said that if he had financial difficulties, I would gladly give him the money I owed him. If only it had been that simple.
‘“Your money? You think I want your money? I could have had your whole life, don’t you see that?” he said. He seemed very angry. “You’re so stupid you don’t see it. We were the same age, we looked alike, we had the same prospects. In those days, if we had looked in the mirror, we’d have seen each other! Now look at us. But I lacked something you had. Tell me what I have, George. What am I good at?”
‘I said that, from what I knew, he was good at gambling, and had a superb analytical brain, also a photographic memory.
‘“And what else does a gambler need? What else does everyone need in life? What divides the haves and the have-nots more than any other factor in the world?”
‘“Money,” I said.
‘“No.”
‘“Charm. Good breeding. A secure childhood in the Garden of England. A resemblance to an international film star.”
‘He took me by the shoulders. “Luck.”
‘I shrugged. I couldn’t believe he meant it. Luck happens, I said.
‘“Yes,” he said. “But only to those who are genetically predisposed to it.” He punched the wall, rather alarmingly, grazing his knuckles. And then he added: “Like you.”’
Stefan (or George) took a long swig of wine while Linda put another log on the fire. A high wind raged outside. Unspoken between them was the knowledge that Belinda, upstairs, had been avidly reading this sort of Gothic story for the past three years and making it her speciality. Were she ever to know the truth of Stefan’s background, or that he had shared his narrative with the cleaning lady, she was likely to gnaw off her own leg with rage.
‘So why was Stefan telling you all this?’ asked Linda. She had curled herself small on the sofa, and was holding a cushion across her chest as a kind of shield. If something nasty was going to happen in this story, she wanted to hide behind the maximum amount of upholstery.
‘Well, he was mad, you see,’ said Belinda’s husband, matter-of-factly. ‘Quite insane. He started to outline his research, how for years he had been working to prove luck was genetically transmitted. In opposition to Darwinian orthodoxy, he argued that luck alone was the basis of evolutionary selection. So we talked on, and the bar grew hotter, and every so often he would pull at my hand or my arm, literally pinching bits of flesh. Once he picked a hair off my jacket and laughingly said, “Can I keep this? It might help me get safely across the road.”
‘I couldn’t make him see things differently. Rational counter-argument simply incensed him. He said, quite simply, that I had the luck gene, and that it would be his life’s achievement to locate it. Which was when I lost my temper, finally. I stood up and threw down some money for the bill. Luck gene? I said I’d had enough of this. “You’re raving mad,” I told him. And I marched outside into the cool night air, with Stefan scampering behind me.
‘Walking into the main square, I calmed down. Children played in a fountain, women laughed. It was all so normal that I thought fondly of Stockholm, and how I would be home again next morning. This sad, grey man at my side would be soon forgotten. If not, his crazy ideas would provide amusing chat for a dinner party, nothing more. It occurred to me to feel sorry for him. Being the object of envy has its consolations. Though he might want my DNA, he simply couldn’t have it, could he? I certainly couldn’t give it to him. His envy was therefore a merely futile, self-sabotaging emotion. The more he hated me, the more he hurt himself.
‘“Will you come to my house?” he said. “Ingrid would like to meet you. I told her you looked like a movie star.”
‘“Did you?”
‘“Yes. She’s looking forward to it.”
‘And so a susceptibility to flattery was my real undoing. I already had a soft spot for Ingrid, since she disapproved of her husband’s work, and so did I. But I went to see her, if I’m honest, because I believed she would find me good-looking, and after the abysmal evening I’d had with Stefan, I needed a boost. Also, having lived in Sweden for twenty years, I recognized what a rare honour it was to be invited home.
‘“Where do you live?” I asked, as we headed south again. Despite the influx of immigrants changing the shops, despite the substantial rebuilding of the city, familiar landmarks were passing. In the darkness ahead, I spotted those awful naked bums and the boulder, and I can’t say the sight reassured me. We were in the Möllevången Square, once more.
‘He produced a key, opened a door, and there was Ingrid, finally. We found her in the sitting room of their anonymous ground-floor apartment – a dull little woman, dark-haired, sour, and I knew at once the mistake I’d made. She was not a Terence Stamp fan. She just looked up at me without much interest, and said to her husband, “You were right. This one’s better-looking.” And when I turned to Stefan to ask him what she meant, he struck me on the head with a Carl Larsson reproduction he had snatched from the wall. I staggered, and he struck me again. I saw blood on my shoes before I passed out. I have never liked the saccharine work of Carl Larsson, incidentally. This scene, as you can imagine, did very little to boost him in my estimation.
‘Concussed, I was bundled into a makeshift laboratory in the cellar, where – well, where I was subsequently kept imprisoned, the subject of innumerable experiments, for the next eighteen months. Yes, eighteen months in a room that stank of rat poison and surgical spirit! My life snapped shut on that night in Malmö. I guessed Stefan would kill me, sooner or later, because his experiments would fail. How I survived those terrible times is a miracle to me, even now.’
Belinda’s husband had been staring at the fire as he spoke. Now he turned to Linda, who shut her mouth when she realized it was hanging open.
‘You don’t believe me,’ he said. ‘You think I’m making it up.’
‘Stefan,’ she said gently, her face contorted with pity. Tears were in her eyes. ‘Oh, how terrible. Condemned to death by your own luck!’ She reflected on it and patted his hand. ‘What an irony!’
‘Mm,’ he replied. He had stopped being struck by the irony of it quite some time ago. ‘I never understood the science of his work, but suffice to say the luck gene stayed lucky. It evaded all Stefan’s attempts to find it. I soon realized that Ingrid had been the cause of his obsession with genetic defect – hardly blessed by her own genetic inheritance, she had nevertheless refused to reproduce with a man who had no lucky aspect anywhere in his double helix. I think, to her, DNA was something like astrology. Since I was mostly shackled, I was obliged to converse with her for hours by the clock, and I can honestly say I never met anybody so unpleasant in my life. She was selfish and moody, and got her own way by crying. “Oh, Stefan,” she would weep to her husband, “I’m so unhappy!” God, I hated her. She started to fall in love with me, of course. Wanting my babies was what this was all about from the start. “How lucky is this?” I wanted to point out to Stefan. “Your dwarfish wife now lusts for my helpless body! How bloody lucky is this?”
‘I don’t know what they did with the bits they cut off. To be fair, they were clever and discreet in removing only tiny little bits that wouldn’t show – from the back of the ear, or the inner thigh, or the underside of a toe. All I know is that Stefan would go out to test his luck after injecting himself with something derived from me – and come back every time poorer, or beaten up. Once he was so sure he had isolated my luck gene that he played chicken with the traffic and got run over. My luck was simply not transferable, it seemed. Meanwhile Stefan still went to great lengths to convince me of his theory, making me read his thesis on the biology of chance and testing me on it. Oddly, he seemed to place no value on his work if I didn’t subscribe to it. Ingrid alternately provoked and pouted – taunting him in front of me, and then weeping when he hit her. And when we were alo
ne together, she would paw my face and caress my body, saying she never stopped thinking about me, she loved me, she wanted me.
‘I suppose I had been there a year by then. Kept mentally alive by Monty Python reruns that they let me watch on the telly. Entertained by watching the rats die, and by observing that Stefan’s cuts and bruises were generally far worse than mine. They gave me reindeer sandwiches every day, which I can never forgive. Can you imagine what it’s like, day after day for a whole year, trying to think of a joke that starts “I’ll have a reindeer sandwich and make it – what?” You wouldn’t think so, but it was this chronic inability to make a joke out of a reindeer sandwich that, throughout my captivity, brought me closest to despair.
‘My own identity, meanwhile, had been easily disposed of by Stefan. I was dead, found in the canal two weeks after my visit. Somebody else’s body, of course, I don’t know whose. Anyway, when this corpse turned up, Stefan, being the police’s favourite consultant pathologist, made extremely short work of the genetic fingerprinting. There was a small piece about my funeral in the papers, which Ingrid thoughtfully pasted beside my bed. My estate was claimed by Stefan – he made me sign a phoney will – my ageing parents grieved, which caused me terrible anguish. Meanwhile Stefan brought home to Malmö a Ferrari from the auction of my effects, and taunted me with the keys. He really was a sad case, Stefan. He deserved to have terrible luck, I mean it. Despite his undeniable genius, he deserved to be outwitted, as he subsequently was, by a man totally at his mercy.
‘Because one day I put it to him, the answer to this conundrum of life. The time was right. Ingrid was getting unbearably frisky, and Stefan had just sawn off a quite visible piece of my elbow, and I suppose I thought enough’s enough.
‘“Look, Stefan,” I said. “This grand guignol thing has been going on long enough. I’ve had a much better idea.”
‘Stefan laid the piece of elbow in a sterilized dish, and folded his arms. “What?” he asked.
‘“It’s obvious,” I said. “The time has come for me to kill you and take your identity.”
‘“Why?” he said.
‘“Because this outcome alone will confirm your theories of survival and be the crowning achievement of your work. Moreover, by transferring all my lucky genetic material into the identity of Stefan Johansson – instead of tiny, ludicrous slivers of it – we can ensure that the Johansson work will become famous and win prizes. Johansson will be a struggling, luckless nobody no more! He will be handsome and charming and his wife will adore him, and the world of science will fall at his feet.”
‘I held my breath, waiting for Stefan to burst into maniacal laughter and saw my leg off. But he didn’t. He was genuinely struck by this idea. He could see the logic in it. His mind raced, as he considered the implications. I would have to work abroad, of course, where nobody knew Stefan’s face. I must learn enough about Stefan’s work to persuade people. I must learn to love Ingrid.
‘Of course, I agreed to everything.
‘“But let’s not tell Ingrid yet,” I urged him. He agreed. He said it would be a wonderful surprise for her, to find herself married to me. And, as he started fiddling with my sore elbow, I smiled and said I had a feeling he was right.
‘“What are you doing?” I asked.
‘“Shouldn’t I sew this back on now?” He held up a sliver of flesh, the size and shape of an anchovy.
‘“Keep it,” I said. “I’ve got loads more where that came from.”
‘Stefan looked at me admiringly. “I wish I could be like you,” he said.
‘“You’re soon going to be exactly like me,” I said. And we hugged, man to man, in the one-way fashion available to people who are not equally free to move their arms.
‘You can imagine my surprise that my ruse had been so successful. I even started believing in my luck gene. For a week or two, I was convinced he would wake one morning and realize he’d been tricked. But he didn’t. Because he hadn’t been tricked, not really. Genetically, my suggestion made excellent sense to Stefan. I was bound by my genes to do this thing. And if there was one thing Stefan never argued with, it was biological destiny.
‘Actually, our conversations over the next six months about how I’d kill him and replace him were our very best times together. How we laughed! Stefan would banish Ingrid to the sitting room, and bring some beers, put Abba on his portable stereo. The words to “Waterloo” were particularly apt in the context, funnily enough; it’s about fate, you know. He’d free one of my hands, which was nice. And then together we’d discuss the merits of various homicidal methods. I favoured shooting, for example, because it was quick and noisy, and because I might not have the stamina for strangling after such a long time horizontal. He fancied something more drawn out and Scandinavian.
‘It was rather a bizarre situation, I suppose. I knew he was in earnest, though. He started to buy clothes for me. He bought a forged passport. He even registered my DNA as Stefan Johansson’s, opened an account at IKEA and registered my signature on a new bank account with all our joint money in it. He was more animated than I had ever seen him. In planning all the details of how I would supplant him, he was illuminated by a kind of mad joy.
‘And then one day Ingrid ruined it all. Just a week before the day marked on the laboratory calendar with a hangman’s noose, the bitch came in and released me. It was a Saturday afternoon, Stefan had popped across to Copenhagen to buy me a last, parting gift – a rather nice briefcase I’d picked out from a catalogue – and she saw her opportunity. “Go away,” I begged, when I realized what was happening. But by now she was mad for me, you see. Gagging. And what could I do? It was all frightfully embarrassing. She brought candles and arranged them around the room. She called me “big boy” if you can believe it. Drunk as a skunk, of course. She comes in, turns the light out, and climbs on top of me, and then starts moaning, “Hold me, hold me.”
‘“Ingrid,” I say, fighting for breath and squirming, “I can’t hold you. I’m tied up. Control yourself. You’re sitting on my diaphragm.”
‘“I love you,” she says. “And I’m so unhappy.” At which point she starts unbuttoning my pyjamas and caressing my privates in what I can only describe as an electrifying manner.
‘“You’re always unhappy,” I point out, through gritted teeth, as my neck flushes and my ears catch fire. “You can’t blame me for that. You’re Swedish.”
‘“Hold me, hold me. Don’t you love your Ingrid?”
‘“Get off me,” I squeal. “Think of Stefan.”
‘“Stefan!”’
‘And then the unthinkable happens. With an ugly pout, which I assume she intends as coquettish, she unties my hands and puts them on her chest. I can’t believe it. My hands free, after all this time. I waggle and flex them against her puddingy, jiggly breasts, as I try to absorb this enormous change in my circumstances. Suddenly, after all this time, there is only a drunk, lascivious small woman interposing her body between me and freedom. Moreover, all I have to do is push. I press tentatively, and she moans. I press harder, and she makes a bloodcurdling noise, like the miaow of a cat. I press again and she licks my face.
‘“More,” she whispers.
‘So I gather all my feeble strength and push as hard as I can.
‘“Take that, bitch!” I cry, as she slides drunkenly off my bed and on to the floor. She says, “What?” but that’s all the resistance she offers. Once on the floor, she passes out.
‘Blood thumps in my ears. I don’t know what to do. I can hardly shackle myself to the bed again before Stefan gets back. Shall I run for it? I surely won’t have the energy. Besides, when I stand up my pyjama bottoms fall down, revealing that I have been fully aroused by these exhilarating proceedings. At which point, as I dither half naked and priapic above his supine wife while candles twinkle romantically around the room, Stefan enters, waving the new briefcase, only to be frozen to the spot as he surveys the scene.
‘“Ingrid, what has he done to you?” he
cries, sinking to his knees. She lies before him, evidently lifeless. Oh, the times I have recollected this train of events! So many tragic turns!
‘“Ah, Stefan, glad it’s you,” I bluff cheerfully, as I try to pull my trousers up. “Look, the first thing you need to know is that this needn’t ruin our plans. This isn’t at all the way it looks. I can still kill you exactly as we arranged with the rat poison. In fact, why don’t I do it now?’
‘“No!” he shouts. “Ingrid, are you all right?”
‘“Of course she’s all right,” I snap.
‘“I’m so unhappy, so unhappy,” she whimpers from the floor.
‘“There you are,” I protest. “Perfectly normal.”
‘But he’s not listening. He’s distraught. And although he’s unaware of it, his pony-tail has just caught light from one of the candles. As he turns away from me, I see that the flame is travelling up his old brittle pigtail like a fuse on a stick of dynamite.
‘“Stefan!” I yell, and hurl a glass of water at him.
‘He turns to look at me, nonplussed by such a strange and puny act of violence. I will never forget that quizzical look on his face, not as long as I live. Especially when we both realized the water was in fact pure alcohol, used for disinfecting my wounds.
‘“Bugger it, your hair’s on fire, Stefan,” I say, apologetically. And with a final cry of “Ingrid! You see? You see how unlucky I am?” Stefan Johansson goes up in flames.’
Belinda’s husband paused for a breather. He had been talking solidly for an hour, and when he turned to look at Linda, he discovered she had all her fingers crammed in her mouth.