‘Shopping, and yes. I’ve got the credit card, but it’s maxed out. If you could—’
‘I’ll put five hundred on it as soon as I find my glasses.’
I spot them in the lounge through the half-open doorway, stretched over the armrest of the sofa.
‘Here.’ I hand them to him along with his phone.
‘Where would I be without you?’ he says, thumbing the screen to log onto the online banking app.
In a coffin a lot later than planned, I expect.
I study his thumb-strokes but after the 8 he turns so I can’t see him hit the final four digits.
He smiles and I let him draw me into a hug and inhale the white musk and jasmine perfume I’ve dabbed behind my earlobes. He sighs, satisfied when I don’t stiffen or pull away. ‘Drive carefully.’
I smile back and step on my toe with the heel of my shoe to stop myself from laughing at the irony of his ignorant comment.
I did a Google search using a burner phone I bought from a pop-up shop in Newport town centre six months ago. I dressed down, wore reactor-light glasses which I smashed up and doused in bleach before dumping in the river later, a wig and hat which I burned in a field several miles from home while Humphrey played golf afterwards, altered my facial expressions and mannerisms to match those of an actress I’d seen on EastEnders the night before, and inherited a northern accent. I ensured there were no CCTV cameras outside the shop by checking their locations on the council’s website, paid with cash and gave the man who served me some spiel about wasting paper to ensure he didn’t print off a receipt.
When researching how to get away with murder I discovered offenders get caught because they make mistakes or leave trace evidence at the crime scene.
Humphrey may be twice my age, but he’s fit and healthy. He’s never worked with toxic chemicals, doesn’t suffer from any known psychological or physical illness, has no history of criminal behaviour, is far too intelligent to get into a fight with someone and has the money to afford to pay a professional for services involving DIY. Which rules out industrial disease, Sudden Adult Death, suicide, murder and carbon monoxide poisoning.
After Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease, pneumonia, cancer, suicide and homicide, the sixth leading cause of death in men is accidents. Typically manufacturing, poisoning, or road traffic accidents.
I did some random searches using the burner phone – best places to visit in south Wales; places to stay off-grid in south Wales; longest road in south Wales; least used road in south Wales; highest road in south Wales; and road in south Wales with largest mortality rate – leading up to the question I needed answering: how likely is it that a person could survive driving off a bridge and onto a motorway?
The statistics were pleasantly bleak.
It turns out that the A470 route through the valleys is the most dangerous road in south Wales. And is notorious for what police term run-offs (vehicles drifting out of lanes and into oncoming vehicles or crash barriers).
Searching for the commonest causes of RTAs threw up the following results: being distracted; dangerous driving/recklessness; adverse weather conditions; potholes; tyre blowouts; and breakdowns. The conclusion being the majority of RTAs are due to human error.
While a post-mortem examination will reveal the injuries a victim obtains, investigations into RTAs by the Home Office are conducted by coroners via an inquest, the aim of which is to assess a range of contributory factors including negligence and illness, considering vehicular maintenance and insured risk against what is often the primary cause of an individual’s fatality – mechanical failure or automotive malfunction – to determine the cause of the accident. When a serviceable fault is found the individual’s death will be reported as thus: accidental, an incident no one could have predicted would have occurred.
The number one avoidable cause of mechanical failure is braking, followed second by electrical systems. It seems logical that if you add a dash of drunkenness, a sprinkling of fog and a spritz of dark sky, a man unused to the effect of alcohol on his bladder and who is prone to speeding while distracted by the loud music emanating from the speakers of his car is unlikely to notice the warning light on the dashboard alerting him to a problem with his premium drive.
Next, I Googled how to cause a car crash. It’s surprisingly easy to cause a blowout with a set of low tread tyres and misaligned wheel camber. Add some faulty brake lines to ensure either the cables or master cylinder is leaking fluid. Decrease the vehicle’s stopping power with some corroded or distorted brake discs and worn pads. Perhaps include a rusted, debris-laden calliper piston that intermittently sticks. Supplement this with a loose axel joint or loss of steering fluid to compromise performance of the suspension and tracking. The addition of a headlight bulb that needs replacing or a set of worn windscreen wipers during heavy rain will also affect the driver’s visibility. But I needed to stage an accident on a one-year-old car, so I settled for a fault with the Anti-Lock Braking System.
The ABS sensors attached to the wheels can be damaged by impact, electrical overload or extreme temperature changes. But without involving someone else to detect and interpret the hidden fault codes then erase them from the Engine Control Unit my only option was to play amateur auto-electrician.
A YouTube video showed me where the unit was situated and how to remove the fuse that modulates the braking pressure within the Traction Control System, preventing the tyres from skidding or hydroplaning, and replace it with a blown fuse that would cause the brake pedal to become unresponsive and seize during an emergency stop.
I could have rammed a car into Humphrey’s or forced his vehicle into someone else’s but the element of risk I’m undertaking increases in the unfortunate event of a witness describing the blonde woman who fled the scene. I’m not going to be in the car with Humphrey when it careens off the road, rolls over and lands upside down, there aren’t any ANPR-camera-free-zones nearby, and the nearest roadside clifftop or flyover is too far away from the house. So spiking his drink, waiting for him to lose consciousness, getting him into the car, driving him to the highest point of the valleys, dragging him onto the driver’s seat, wedging his foot onto the accelerator and releasing the handbrake isn’t feasible here.
As he has no heirs and no descendants Humphrey’s money would be kept by the government if an inquest concluded he died as a result of murder and I was suspected to be at fault. But the rule of forfeiture only applies to his estate, not the other properties he owns or the savings and investments in his Eastern bank accounts. So I figured a failproof two-pronged approach would protect me from legal ramifications by suggesting I sign a prenuptial agreement.
In my preparation I’ve provided Humphrey with a false sense of security. Playing the ditzy trophy wife to my generous, gullible husband has been marked off my internal rota as complete.
Now it’s time to implement phase two.
We’re staying in the holiday cottage he owns just a few miles south of Mount Snowdon next week. The three-year-old Mercedes-Benz Sprinter is only three and a half tonnes, so I don’t need a Category C licence to drive it. Which is just as well because although I have a driving licence, I’ve never taken a test.
The van is heavy, north east Wales is expecting a midweek storm according to the MET office, making the weather perfect for an accident, and practising on a similar engine one final time I’m positive I can tamper with the Sprinter in the dark, wearing gloves, in under a minute.
I need the brakes to lock and the fifty thousand pounds’ worth of steel body and titanium alloys to tip. Adding some lethal objects to the cargo should increase the level of injuries Humphrey sustains and decrease the possibility he will survive. Although Daimler’s German engineering is top notch and their commercial vehicles are built to withstand the toughest of terrains and the worst collisions, so I’ve got to stack the rear shelf of the cabin with bags of unmixed cement to ensure it at least tips, and preferably rolls over.
Six months in the gym three mornings a
week and I’m capable of hauling a sack truck containing four stacked 50kg bags from the house and wheeling them into the garage. Sixteen should do it.
Humphrey stands in the doorway waving as I speed off.
I glance into the rear-view mirror, watching the manor shrink in the distance.
It won’t be long before it’s mine.
DI LOCKE
Then
To identify a killer, you have to start with the body. Jane Doe’s hard tissue DNA didn’t match the profiles of any recorded missing persons in the UK. So we had to use other means to identify her.
While DC Winters compared Jane Doe’s demographics – sex, estimated age, ethnicity, and the evidence of childbirth and injuries common in victims of domestic abuse – against the medical records of missing persons in south Wales, DC Chapman compared known ex-convicts and registered sex offenders living in hostels or released from prison within a ten-mile radius of the crime scene, around the time the maggots found inside the suitcase were believed to have been alive.
None of the CCTV cameras in the area were close enough to the overpass to pick up anything significant, they were wiped every three months as they belonged to a private company across the street, and they only gave a view of customers entering and exiting the factory car park.
Jones was sitting in front of his laptop, staring at the screen, and making notes of every vehicle spotted on ANPR cameras that were near to the crime scene back in 2015, to check for repeat journeys. But as he had no idea what he was looking for – although we suspected a van was used to dump the body the suitcase could just as easily have been transferred in a car boot – he could only narrow the potential car down to 317; 209 of them belonged to locals, with a good knowledge of the area, and 198 of those could be eliminated based on mobile phone data, in-car Satellite Navigation signals, and alibis. Leaving 119 potential suspects. And that was only if the person who dumped the suitcase was the same person who’d murdered the woman inside it, and the individual hadn’t travelled to Carleon from elsewhere to dispose of her.
Sixty-six of them volunteered to give us saliva samples to compare to the skin cell traces of the unknown male DNA we found on the suitcase. Forty-four of them were already on the system, so we didn’t need their permission to compare their profiles to the four and a half million samples we have filed on the NDNAD database. Seven of them refused to give a sample, claiming it was a violation of their human rights. They changed their minds when we arrested them for obstructing a police officer which led to the extraction and retention of their DNA, allowing us to eliminate them from the investigation. One of the two we hadn’t been able to contact was a drifter. We managed to track him down to a squat in Cardiff. His DNA matched the profile taken from a burglary six months before, that left an elderly man battered and bruised, which resulted in his conviction. The final one led us to the Newport Butcher.
MELANIE
Then
I lay on the floor with my ear pressed to the thin carpet. A glass broke. My mother screamed something inaudible. Then my father’s deep voice bellowed, ‘Lying, cheating slag!’
Something got knocked over. My mother cried. My father lowered his voice.
I crept back into bed and shook beneath the sheet, chanting quietly. ‘Please don’t hurt Mummy… please don’t hurt Mummy.’
I fell asleep with my hands clenched into fists and my teeth bared.
I woke hours later to the sound of birdsong and the smell of pancakes, my fingers cramped and my jaw aching. I almost deceived myself into thinking that I’d dreamt what had happened the night before. Until my father slammed the front door, his car engine roared into life, the wheels span and the exhaust backfired. He left in a cloud of black smoke without looking back.
I pressed my hands against the cold glass and turned away from the window. I dressed, then padded downstairs.
My mother was stood at the sink with her back to me when I reached the kitchen. When she heard me enter her hands stalled on the dishcloth.
I sat on the chair closest to the door and furthest from her, where only I could see Maddison peering into the house at me from behind the hedge. I shook my head, mouthed ‘I can’t play today’ and she retreated.
The silence was physical. And when she eventually spoke it sounded like her mouth was full. ‘Why did you tell your father?’
‘Tell him what?’
‘About Jason.’
‘Who’s Jason?’
She threw the soapy plate into the sink and it broke into pieces. ‘The man you told your father I left you alone in the park to drive off with.’
‘Oh.’
‘Oh? Is that all you have to say?’ I didn’t recognise the woman who turned to face me. Her eyelids were puffy and black, one side of her face was swollen, and her upper lip was split.
‘You didn’t tell me not to tell him.’
‘Well, now he’s gone. Taken his things and left us. And he won’t be coming back,’ she lisped.
Although her eyes were mere slits, I felt her hatred burning through them.
‘Frosties or Coco Pops?’ she said. The wound to her mouth reopened and blood dripped down her chin and onto the lino.
I pointed at the Frosties.
She poured the sugared flakes into a bowl and added a splash of milk, then slid it across the table and threw a spoon next to it which clanged before landing on the floor.
When I’d retrieved it from under the table my mother had dashed from the room.
As I sat and ate, her footsteps shuffled around upstairs.
When she returned to the kitchen, she’d dolled herself up, but nothing could disguise the thumbprints around her throat or the look of terror on her face, double the size it should be, as the post fell through the letterbox and landed on the mat.
She flinched when I scraped the chair back to stand, wiping off my milk moustache with the back of my hand. Tears formed in her eyes and her mouth wobbled.
I left the table and plopped my empty bowl and spoon onto the counter.
She hobbled down the hallway and winced as she opened the front door and stood, head down, one shoulder drooping while tears trickled down her powdered face and dripped off her jaw, darkening the neckline of her brass buttoned top.
‘Can I have a double scoop this time?’
‘A double scoop?’
‘Ice cream.’
‘Ice cream?’ She shook her head. ‘We’re not going to the park.’
‘But you said yesterday w—’
‘You’re going to your grandmother’s.’
‘Where will you be?’
‘Here,’ she said, spreading her arms wide and twirling on unsteady feet.
I got the hint. She did look scary.
I left the house with my mother stood behind the door to hide her bruised face. I crossed the road past Mrs Galloway’s and took the shortcut I recalled my mother using on one of our rare visits to her childhood home together.
When I reached the familiar lane that led to the muddied path of Liswerry Pond I was hit with the sweet scent of cannabis. I turned my head to the group of older boys milling around on bikes, one of whom I recognised from school though I couldn’t recall his name.
His weekend attire was as scruffy as his school uniform. He watched me walk along the water’s edge. Two ducks, one making an odd puffing sound from its beak, the other flapping its wings swam towards me. A twig snapped and I heard someone cough, my spine tingling as the boys grew closer. I watched a swan waddle to its mate, hiss as one of the boys tossed his cigarette on the wet soil beside it, lurch to avoid a boot to its side, then plunge into the dark water and skim across it to the island where a capsized rowing boat had been left to rot.
‘Where are your parents?’ he said, surveying the area.
I stared up at his large frame eclipsing the sun.
One of his mates stepped forward when I didn’t answer. ‘I asked you a question,’ he said, pushing his face into mine.
‘My father
walked out on us this morning and my mum’s at home.’
‘So, you’re on your own?’ He smirked and poked my shoulder.
I jerked sideways, almost losing my footing.
I stared at a spot on his face.
‘What are you looking at?’ He reached for the rash of whiteheads that covered his forehead, nose, and chin.
I pointed at the patch of red circling a large spot on his left cheek. ‘That.’
He lunged for me but was drawn violently backwards. My eyes went from the boy to the old man with rotten teeth who held a bag of worms in his other hand. ‘You want to end up in that pike-infested water?’ he snarled, twisting the back of the boy’s T-shirt between his grubby fingers so that it tightened around his torso, exposing his plump midsection.
The boy shook his head, eyes wide.
‘Or maybe I should feed you some of these.’ He shook the bag and the worms clambered over one another, fighting to escape through the opening.
‘No!’ He tried to wriggle free and the old man smiled.
One of the boys reached out to grab the bag from the old man but he was elbowed away. ‘Did your mother never tell you not to pick on girls?’
The boy continued struggling while the old man wound the fistful of cotton in his hand until the neckline was taut across the boy’s throat and he began to choke. As he started to gasp the man released him, and the boy fell onto his knees, inhaling air loudly through his mouth. When he stood, his grey jogging trousers were grass-stained at the knees and his face was red.
The old man looked each of the boys in the eyes. ‘If I see any of you round here again, picking on a kid who’s smaller than you, I’ll let him off his lead.’ He motioned to a pit bull who sat unmoving on the reeds of the bank where a fishing rod bounced. He walked slowly backwards, reached behind him, and in one smooth move, withdrew the line, wound in the fish, removed the hook from its mouth, stamped on its body and clobbered it over the head with a mallet.
He held the fish out to emphasise his point and the boy and his mates were gone in a flash, kicking up dirt as they fled. The old man winked at me and patted the wild rye that bordered the pond. ‘Do you want a go?’
Kiss Me, Kill Me Page 5