It's Killing Jerry: A Comedy Thriller Read online

  “Shoes!”

  “Shoes? Yes, right, shoes.” God forbid he got dirt on the carpet. Jerry kicked off his tatty brogues and shuffled into the room. Isabell strode over to meet him and thrust the papers into his chest. “Is what I have to deal with!”

  Jerry leaned away from the smog of perfume and examined the credit card statement now in his hands. With grim curiosity he followed the alarming rise of the balance over seven pages, but was finally compelled to shake himself loose from the horror when fines for non-payment and exceeding the credit limit bumped the total into five figures. Jerry squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at his face. When he opened them again the bill was still there and it still had his name in the top corner. He felt around for the sofa, slid down the arm onto the seat and let out a wobbly laugh. “Isabell, this is quite something.”

  “Is nothing good for me. I have no clothes. I have no social life. How can I survive?” She flopped down next to Jerry and clutched her hands to her face.

  “Isabell, I can’t pay this, I’ll never pay this off.”

  “You must free space for me, make payment, big payment.”

  The unopened brown envelopes on Jerry’s kitchen table skittered across his mind’s eye. “It’s not a good month.” It was never a good month.

  “Then increase limit. One more thousand should do it.”

  That wobbly laugh again. “You were supposed to be paying it off. This isn’t what we agreed.”

  “All is different now.” Isabell squeezed at herself with folded arms. “I am alone.”

  “Still alone, yes.”

  “You have new wife and now baby.” Her bottom lip pulsed in a forced wobble. “I am alone.”

  “Ah, I see. This is make Jerry suffer for getting on with his life, isn’t it?”

  Isabell scowled.

  “Hey, we’re divorced now. You’ve got to sort out your own finances.” He pulled down the corners of his mouth in what he hoped looked like determination.

  “You are wrong.”

  “No.” Jerry tilted his head with confidence.

  “Yes. You give to me the money to pay mortgage and alimony. You pay credit card. Is no my finances, is your finances.”

  “Um.”

  “You no pay, you go to court. Besides, Jerry, if you no do this for me I will take to baby wife and show.” Isabell snatched the bill from Jerry’s damp hands and swiped him with it. “How do you like that?”

  Jerry did not like that at all. “Give it to me.” He made a grasp for the bill, but Isabell was too fast. The last thing he needed was Rachel finding out about all the money Isabell got every month. This was the kind of documentation that could really get a man in trouble.

  “No.” Isabell raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “You will have to prise it from my cold dead fingers.”

  “Ugh.” Jerry flopped back to the sofa, exasperated. “Does everything have to be so dramatic?”

  “No. Just make space on card.”

  “No.”

  Isabell abruptly stood, stuffed the bill into her back pocket and produced her phone. “I am telephoning Rachel.” She tapped at the screen with scarlet fingertips. Jerry leapt to his feet. “No!”

  “She will be very interest, yes?”

  “Stop it!” Jerry snatched at the phone and actually caught it. “Ha, ha!” Isabell grabbed at him with both hands and they seesawed back and forth, fighting for possession. Isabell grinned and kicked him in the shin. “Ow! I’m not letting go!” Isabell kicked him again, then pulled Jerry off balance so he flung out his hands to save himself and dropped the phone onto the floor. By the time he’d righted himself Isabell was stroking it in her palm.

  “Oh, Jerry, make payment, hmm?”

  Bloody Isabell. Everything was always a battle. He’d have to concede the phone round. Tactics, he needed tactics. He let out a long exaggerated sigh. “OK. You win. OK. I’ll call them.”

  “Good, Jerry. You know it is the right thing.” Isabell softened her stance a little.

  “I need to call the number on the bill,” said Jerry, thinking how he needed to get the bill and run away.

  “Yes, is at the top.” Isabell moved to tug the bill from her pocket and Jerry stretched out his hand to take it. There must have been something in his eyes: a glimmer of hope or a wrinkle of satisfaction. Whatever it was, it stopped Isabell short. “You are going to call them, yes?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “And make bigger limit?”

  “That’s right.” He wiggled his fingers to beckon the document of destruction to him. He really didn’t want this getting into the wrong hands.

  “I will call number for you.”

  “No, no, no need.” Jerry shuffled toward her on his knees, but Isabell was already tapping at the screen.

  “I’ll ring from home. If you could just give me…”

  “With Rachel?” Isabell tapped at the screen again, negotiating the automated call system.

  “From the office then.”

  “Have call for you. No problem.” She tapped at the screen some more. “Here, now you.” She thrust the phone to his ear. An operator asked for the first and fourth digit of his security code. He turned his back to Isabell and cupped his mouth to reveal the numbers. Damn, he should have got that wrong on purpose. It would have been the perfect out. Address? Yes, another chance. “10 Grove Gardens.”

  “15, Jerry.” Isabell called out.

  “Oh, yes, silly me. 15, of course I meant 15.” Jerry ground his back teeth together. Isabell walked around to look into his face. “Two thousand more, Jerry.”

  “What? Be quiet, I can’t hear what she’s saying.” Jerry flapped an ineffectual hand at her.

  “That’s right, yes. A credit limit increase, yes.”

  “Two thousand, Jerry.”

  “One thousand,” he said emphatically, with a scowl directed at Isabell. “Yes, that’s right.”

  Isabell pouted briefly, but her mouth crept up at the corners.

  “Yes, yes, to the bill address, yes. No, you have a nice day. Yes. Bye, bye.” Isabell snatched back her phone. “Thank you, Jerry. Now, as you are here, garden gate is broken.”

  Jerry looked down at his empty palm. “Gate?”

  “Yes, gate.” She pulled him to his feet and drove him to the front door. “Is best to go from side. Shoes.” Jerry scrunched his feet down into them and popped the backs up with his finger.

  “I have left tools.” She opened the front door and Jerry stepped through. “I’ll just have a look then, shall I? At the gate?” In a matter of seconds he’d gone from his knees in the lounge to literally out in the cold.

  “Yes. To the side.” She simulated walking with her fingers.

  “Right then.” Jerry backed off the doorstep and Isabell closed the door.

  SEVEN

  RACHEL CLUNG TO THE WOODEN BANISTER to stretch across the squeaky step. She wasn’t going to risk disturbing Peanut, not now when she was so close to a few precious minutes of peace.

  The kitchen door thudded shut too loud behind her and Rachel froze, listening and holding her breath.

  “No, no, no,” she pleaded, looking to the ceiling. Remembered shrieks of pain or hunger or plain old bad temper scratched at the back of Rachel’s eyes, waiting for their echo. They pulled up short the muscles in her chest and plugged her throat.

  “No more, please.” She pressed her forehead against the door and waited. Ten seconds passed without event. Twenty. Thirty. She dared to breathe and moved away.

  The kettle clicked and popped the water at its base and Rachel settled her bones at the kitchen table. Envelopes fanned in a toppled stack, all addressed to Jerry and unopened. Rachel slid the uppermost toward her and worried at its corner. Something from the council. Why didn’t Jerry open them?

  She tugged at her waistband and lamented the flesh still clinging to her stomach though the baby was long out. When would it ever go? The kettle rattled on, bubbles tapping at the sides. She stretched out both arms across
the table top and lowered her cheek to the cool smooth pine, just to close her eyes for a moment and then she’d make some tea.

  The train was longer than she’d realised. A narrow corridor that stretched on into infinity and curved away to places unseen. It rocked in a gentle rhythm that matched her stride.

  Clickerty-clack, clickerty-clack.

  She strode on, relaxed in its warmth and curious to see where the corridor led. A buffet car perhaps? She felt in her pocket for change, and found instead a handle, smooth and curved. She pulled it free. A long surprising blade glinted in the fluorescent light and a breeze whipped at her hair. It was hers, she’d always known it. Too long and sharp to negotiate back into her pocket, she let the knife hang limply by her side.

  The train lurched sideways, clickerty-CLACK and she had to raise her other hand to steady herself. Her palm pressed into the grubby wall, sticky fibres squelching up between her fingers. Rachel snatched her hand away, revolted.

  Clickerty-CLACK, it rocked hard again, but Rachel kept her feet, moving faster now, breaking into a run to find the end. Cold air rushed down the corridor toward her. Missing windows left great yawning holes, thick darkness outside.

  Clickerty-CLACK. There at the end, a door, at last. She grabbed the handle and yanked it up. The door fell away and she found herself so very high that sweat prickled on the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands.

  Clickerty-CLACK. A lurch too big to hold on and she was lost, falling, the knife gripped firm in her right hand. A noise too loud and her face pressed hard against the ground.

  “Rach? You asleep?”

  She lifted her head, clammy flesh peeling from the table top.

  “Anything to eat? I’m starved.”

  Jerry. Sleep hung heavily at Rachel’s shoulders and she blinked away its mist. Her hands were balled into fists that ached with tension. She uncurled stiff fingers and rubbed at nail marks pressed into her palms. The knife.

  “Something in the fridge,” she managed and Jerry turned his back on her to dig noisily through its shelves.

  “What time is it?”

  “Just gone midnight.”

  So late. What was she doing here? Her back complained as she tried to sit up. “You’ve just got in?”

  “Well, duh.”

  He’d been with Isabell all this time. “Why have you been so long?”

  “Well you know Isabell.” Jerry shifted from foot to foot and ran his fingers through his hair. He pulled a selection of things from the fridge to construct a sandwich. Rachel knew Isabell much more than she wanted to.

  “So what did she want?”

  “Nothing a handyman couldn’t have fixed,” Jerry mumbled through a mouthful of cheese.

  “Well that’s what you are, Jerry, hmm? A handy man.”

  Jerry shrugged, but kept his back to Rachel. “Her gate got whipped back by the wind and came unhinged.”

  “How appropriate.”

  Jerry snorted at that.

  “And this puts her life in peril, does it?”

  “Hey, I never said that, but you know how she is.” Jerry took a brief look over his shoulder at Rachel. She couldn’t summon up a scowl and just gazed back with empty eyes.

  “Looks like I might be in more danger,” he said just loud enough for her to hear.

  “Mmm.”

  Bloody woman. Was Jerry not aware of all the things that needed fixing around their own house? She felt her heart beat harder in her chest and with it came the energy of exasperation. The balance here was off.

  “Since when do you do DIY? Lots of life-endangering inadequacies here to fix, you know.” She rose from the table and paced the room to point things out.

  “The piece of skirting by the door that continually falls over and snags at your socks; the plumbing that hammers throughout the house every bloody time you use the tap; the holes in the wall where the cookbook shelf used to be; the sodding flap in the vinyl that catches on the back door every time you open it and the draught excluder that’s still in the damn pack.” Rachel waved the box at him with a flourish.

  Jerry took a large bite from his sandwich, gaze fixed on her the whole time.

  “Ugh. Why do I bother?” She squeezed closed her eyes and leaned back on the kitchen counter. She and Jerry side by side but disconnected, neither looking at the other. She drew in a breath to bolster her: there was something that had to be said.

  “The thing is, Jerry, I’m struggling here. Everything’s so… unstable. Peanut, well, I never know where I am with her.” Her throat clenched and she had to pause, not wanting to cry.

  “I’ve got no control of anything anymore. When I was working, it was different. There were goals to achieve, you know?”

  “Oh sure,” Jerry interrupted, “You knew where you were. How to achieve results.”

  “Right.”

  “Get that commission.”

  “Well no, not really that. I didn’t earn commission. I mean, I was someone. A real person.” Rachel stared down at the floor through a forming film of tears.

  “Now I just feel like I’m fading away.”

  Jerry munched beside her. “Go back to work then. Get a job.”

  Rachel shook her head. “I’m so tired, Jerry. I couldn’t do it.”

  It was all she could do to get through the day. The relentless baby timetable ruled her life and there was something more, an elusive element that made it so much worse: hours of crying after feeds that Rachel couldn’t find a way to stop. It ground her down, the first whimper taking her straight back to the end of hours spent trying to sooth, rocking and cooing, gnashing her teeth.

  She looked around the room to find a way to escape the subject and settled on the letter stack.

  “Jerry, why haven’t you opened those?”

  Jerry rubbed at the back of his head and turned away, back to the second half of his sandwich.

  “Is there a problem with money? You said it would be OK for me to stop working.”

  “Hey, no problem.”

  Rachel made her way back to the table and scooped up a handful of envelopes. “This is a problem, isn’t it?”

  “It’s OK.” Jerry didn’t turn around.

  “We’re not OK, are we? God, I could kill you sometimes!” She slapped at the table.

  “At least let me bump up the life insurance first, then you can pay off some debts.”

  “So there are debts?”

  Jerry rubbed at his face then pushed his shoulders back to stand taller. “No, course not,” he said, and then that laugh, too high and too long.

  “Oh, Jerry, you didn’t? You haven’t?” Her suspicions were true. “We’re in the shit, aren’t we?”

  “No, no, honestly, it’s fine.” Jerry bustled to the table, a sudden light in his eyes. He scooped the letters from the table and stuffed them into his work bag.

  “I’ll deal with them tomorrow. I promise.”

  EIGHT

  JERRY PEERED IN THROUGH THE MISTY KITCHEN WINDOW and clapped his arms around his body, trying to warm up. Rachel worked at tidying the kitchen, adding abandoned cups and plates to the gaggle of crockery crowded at the sink, waiting for attention. Baby bottles steamed in the sterilizer and Peanut slept in her Moses basket in the centre of the dining table.

  Jerry had to make up for last night. Rachel had reeled off an oppressive list for a DIY phobic like him and he could see that if he was going to get anywhere near the edge of the hook, he was going to have to tick some things off.

  She’d whirled around the house all morning: a dangerous mixture of raging hormones and sleep deprivation, so Jerry had decided on a job outside, just to get out from under the cloud of seething indignation.

  He eyed the kitchen window mournfully. It had been replaced by Rachel’s father, Bob, the day before, having rotted in the corner to wind-whistling effect. Replacing a window was way beyond Jerry’s abilities, but Bob was a very hands-on kind of guy. He’d encouraged Jerry to observe so he could do it himself next time.
Jerry knew this was a waste of time so he observed the footie from his favourite bar stool at the Dog and Duck instead and met Adam later at the gym to ease his conscience.

  Jerry ran his fingers down the smooth frame, pretending to appraise the work. Rachel stood at the sink on the other side of the window. She caught his eye.

  “What are you doing?” she mouthed, eyebrows raised. She plopped a couple of cups into the soapy water.

  “Thought I might give it a lick of paint,” Jerry shouted, “Finish the job off for good old Bob.” He couldn’t resist a little dig. Rachel pushed the window open a crack. “It’s uPVC, Jerry. Don’t touch it.”

  So it was. Jerry’s brain scrabbled for a comeback. He scanned around the window. The render surrounding the frame had been touched up, but the pebble dashing was not as dense at the window’s edge as it was on the rest of the wall.

  “The pebble dash is a bit gappy, maybe I’ll patch it up?” It was a statement with the tone of a question.

  “Maybe.” Rachel narrowed her eyes at him and Jerry took this as approval.

  “I’ll do that then. Finish it off for good old Bob.”

  Rachel sighed and closed the window.

  How hard could it be? He’d show Bob that he knew a thing or two. A bag of leftover pea shingle sat by the back door to his left and several blobs of render remained splattered onto the patio slabs at his feet. Jerry gave one a tentative poke with his toe and found that it was still pliable. When Rachel wasn’t looking, he dove into the kitchen, swiped a teaspoon from the cutlery drawer and returned to scoop a glob from the ground.