The Partnership

The Partnership 

She leans back on the tatty couch, conjuring the colour red behind her closed lids. Red for blood. His blood, ribbons running down his face. His broken body on the rocks. Dead, at last. The brakes would fail. Tyrone, the only one he trusted to work on the Porsche, had done his work. Dirk planned to take the cliff road today, flinging his car at the bends too fast as always. She looks sideways at Tyrone, mechanic, lover, partner in crime ... and now a liability. How could she have found romance in this seedy little flat, with the stained couch and frayed carpet? The power of contrast, perhaps, she muses. The attraction of the raw man …

He gets up and returns with a bottle and two thick glasses. 

"What's this?"

"Something to celebrate," replies Tyrone. "It's past six now, and he left at three. It's done."

They clink their glasses, her mind busy with options. Trust him to buy cheap sparkling wine. She looks with distaste at her drink in its smudged tumbler. Getting rid of Tyrone should not be too hard. His appeal after all had been his skills with his hands, not his brain.

Her phone rings. Dirk's name appears. They both stare at the screen.

“Pick it up!” hisses Tyrone.

Trapped, she thinks, now I’m stuck with both of them. She takes a breath and conjures up the honeyed voice she saves for Dirk.

“Darling! Where are you? I was getting worried!”

“You’re not going to believe it. This bitch of a Porsche had a blowout. So much for those special rims they go on about. I was at the start of the pass, and I was going to give her a real rocking ride round the bends, and …”. She zones out as his voice drones on, enumerating his driving skills with ‘his girl Silver’ on the roads and on the track, occasionally digressing into the sums of money he has spent on customizing her. She wants to scream. She remembers how impressed she had been, briefly, in the beginning – it was for his money, after all, that she had married him, carefully luring him into the quickie civil ceremony, giving him no time to think as she maneuvered her way past his family and any talk of a prenup. It had taken all her wiles to restrain him and convince him that she believed in the saving of intimacy for the sanctity of marriage. Now she is used to the high life – the luxuries, the travel, the carefully curated home and the view over the shimmering ocean. Memories of her childhood in that stuffy and cluttered little house smelling of cabbage are hidden deep under the layers of her reinvented and elegant self. But oh, the boredom of his pompous pedantic voice, his whining that he doesn’t get the respect he deserves from his fellow Board members in his father's companies, his clumsy and drunken advances …. She returns to the present with a jerk as she hears her name.

“Marianne? Are you listening to me? I need to be fetched. I’m at the Peak Hotel at the bottom of the pass. Come now please.”

“Yes of course, darling, what a shame! I’ll be there shortly!” she says soothingly and ends the call.

“Crap!". She looks accusingly at Tyrone. “Couldn’t you have made sure that everything else was in order? Now what do we do?”

“Well, it’s not my fault that he probably got taken by some con man for the so-called special rims,” he says sulkily. “I’d better come with you – we’ll tell him his precious will be safer going on my flatbed to the shop, we don’t want anyone else looking too closely at that car. I always said the brake thing was too risky. But would you listen to me? Noooo.”

She looks at him with dislike, but then softens her features into a pout. She gets up and twines around him. She still needs Tyrone.

“Sorry baby. You’re right. We’ll have to figure out a different way. But just think … all that money! I have to keep him sweet now for a bit longer, we don’t want him rushing off to change his will or anything like that, now do we? Let’s go pick him up and calm him down.”

They drive in silence, through the late sunset light towards the ocean side of the city. Dirk is waiting, petulantly nursing a gin and tonic on the sweeping porch of the hotel. 

“About time! I see you’ve brought the truck. Let’s get some of these guys to help.” With the palming of a few notes to willing staff who think nothing of leaving their posts, the Porsche is swiftly loaded on to the flatbed. Marianne finds herself squeezed in between husband and her lover in the front of the cab. Both live up to their dispositions, Dirk droning on about his ruined afternoon spin and Tyrone giving the occasional grunt. The two had always got along – so much so that Tyrone had become Dirk’s personal mechanic, in charge of his fleet of luxury cars. Through sheer boredom Marianne had begun to take an interest in the various sleek and shining vehicles that Dirk loved so, followed swiftly by an interest in Tyrone. After one thing had led to another, she cautiously hinted at her desire to free herself from Dirk – and to be rich as well as free. Tyrone was receptive.

Tyrone lets Dirk’s words wash over him as they drive towards the large estate further down the coast. Easily able to switch off, he had never found Dirk too annoying. Marianne, though, she had become a different matter. The initial buzz of seduction and the titillation of having her classiness in his, let’s face it, rather squalid hideaway had begun to wear off. He could deal with her bossiness, as he enjoyed watching her rein herself in when she remembered what she needed from him. But he was tired of the role now, and he resented her increasingly apparent disdain for his intellect. Did she really think he would be so stupid as to tamper with the brakes of the Porsche? Although an accident on the notorious cliffs of Chapman’s Peak might not be investigated too closely – especially with a speedster of Dirk’s reputation – still, you never knew, and who but the mechanic would come under the spotlight? Marianne had seriously underestimated both her own charms and his intelligence. Tyrone had seen some potential benefits when Marianne first approached him, but he never intended to be anyone else’s murder-tool. As they drive through the glimmering dusk, Tyrone considers his next moves.

The next day Dirk and Tyrone sit in a secluded corner of Dirk’s favourite coffee shop. Tyrone’s tone is jocular; Dirk’s head is bent towards him.

“So now you know. She’s been playing you for a fool all along, mate. I thought you needed to know, and anyway I’m done with her. And I have photos, and videos where she says some pretty harsh things about you. Not that I believe them for a second, mind, I have too much respect for you. But maybe I can show you a sample – and there are more – but on a different phone, just saying.” He looks on with enjoyment as Dirk views the clip of a half-naked Marianne, stretched out on his couch, embarking on a long tirade about Dirk’s winging, his clammy hands, his love of luxury cars as a compensation for so many deficiencies …. He had selected this one with care, looking for a bit of payback for the occasional pulling of rank and class that Dirk liked to indulge in. 

Dirk is red in the face, a blue vein pumping in his neck, spluttering.

           “That bitch! I’ll get her for this. I’ll see that she’s a pariah, I’ll divorce her and cut her off without a cent, I’ll make sure her name is filth …”.

           “Hold on, brother,” Tyrone cuts in smoothly. “Aren’t you forgetting something? I’m the one who has the videos, she doesn’t even know. But a man of your stature wouldn’t want it to get out and about to your society mates – or your father and his Boards and all that lot – that she’s been having it off with your mechanic, now would you? Or let them hear what she really thinks of you – and some of these details are really not so flattering to you, hey?”

           Now Dirk goes pale as the implications of Tyrone’s words sink in.

           “What do you want?” he croaks.

           “Here’s where I’m at. I’ve had enough of this place and have a fancy to go travelling. You can buy all the footage from me – I have a sum in mind – to fund my travels and retirement far away from here and I will be out of your hair forever. And as a free bonus I will throw in this advice. With the vids and pics I have for you, you’ll be holding the power over the lady. Trust me, she won’t want this stuff going around anymore than you will, losing her Insta following or whatever that rubbish is, having her society friends look down their long noses. You can make her jump through your hoops for a change. That’ll make you feel better, for sure!”

           Dirk appraises Marianne as she dresses for their night out at the opening of the new hot spot in town. Everyone will be there, and they will soon see what an adoring wife is always on his arm.

           “So what is this surprise you have for me, darling?” she asks, a trace of impatience filtering through her usual tone. “You’ve been dangling it in front of me for days!”

           “Oh, don’t worry, my sweet. Once you hear this, you’ll realise – we have all the time in the world!”