The Man She Married (ARC)
Page 16
‘Going to tell them you’re a blackmailer, are you? Good luck with that.’
She shrugs. ‘I’ll risk it.’
* * *
It doesn’t matter how long it would take me to borrow against Waverley Gardens, because it’s not going to happen.
Although in the event of a divorce I could probably sue for half of the value of Waverley Gardens, at the moment the deeds are in Alice’s sole name. The house provides me with shelter and a degree of security, but in the short term it’s not a disposable asset. Although, as Alice’s spouse, it would pass to me if she died. Could I lay my hands on her passport and birth certificate and teach myself to replicate her signature? Yes, probably. But to turn a second mortgage around that fast would involve face-to-face contact and some sort of legal input. Which would make it blatantly obvious that I’m not Alice Palmer.
The other reason that it’s not going to happen is because I’m damned if I’m going to dance to Holly Galea’s tune. Not any longer. She indicated at our meeting that she intends to hang around in London until she’s got what she wants. Being on the spot makes her threat more real.
She underlines this point a week later by paying an impromptu visit to Waverley Gardens, to check out the real estate and to put the wind up Alice. She doesn’t blow my cover, but she does try to arrange to meet Alice. I don’t reckon she really wanted Alice to visit her. She was just dangling the possibility of a meeting with my wife to panic me into handing over the cash. Fortunately, I manage to convince Alice she’s a stalker from my past life. And to retrieve the phone number Holly left, which I chucked in the kitchen bin.
After this incident, I email her to tell her to back off. I explain I can get the half a million she wants, but it will take me a few days longer. To buy myself a little goodwill, I tell her I will transfer another couple of thousand to her account to cover her expenses while she waits. Then I text Holly’s number. She’s never had my British mobile number, so she won’t recognise it.
Can we meet this Friday for a chat? Around 6? On neutral territory would be best. I can borrow a friend’s place so D doesn’t know. Alice Palmer.
She agrees only too readily, so I give her the address of Dominic’s old studio in Acton, which I’m still servicing.
On the Friday, Alice and I are due to go to a fancy place in the Cotswolds to celebrate our second wedding anniversary. It gives me a cover story for driving out to West London if I’m seen and a cast-iron alibi for the following couple of days.
I was out of town, right?
* * *
I drive out to North Acton late on Friday afternoon, park a couple of streets away and let myself into the flat.
The doorbell rings dead on time. I lift the intercom handset, and through the linked video screen, I can see Holly standing on the pavement wearing an ugly black PVC raincoat and a disagreeable expression. I press the door buzzer. People are arriving back from work, and there are likely to be a few in the lobby waiting for the lift. There’s also a security camera opposite the lift doors. But the building is run-down and poorly maintained, and I happen to know that the camera hasn’t worked in at least a year. So there’ll be no permanent record of her being here.
Holly taps on the door.
‘Alice?’
I wait a couple of seconds, then release the latch and let the door swing open, standing out of sight behind it. I know I’m going to have to act super-fast. The contents of the bag I took to Ponteland are still here, ready and waiting, but if I stall even for a few seconds, Holly might be able to get back through the door. I have to take advantage of her surprise at seeing me rather than Alice, though really, if she’d thought it through properly, it’s obvious this would happen.
She gasps as I dart out from behind the door, but I’m prepared, and I’m too quick for her. I yank the belt from her PVC coat and before she can even turn round I’ve got it wound through my fingers and across her throat. The fabric has no stretch in it and it’s as strong as it is unyielding. The perfect tool, in fact. Her hands fly up to her neck, but I use my knee in the small of her back to yank her backwards and tighten my hold. With Pearl Liu and Dominic Gill, it all happened so fast. Of course, with Pearl I wasn’t even trying. But this seems to go on for ages. She’s bulky, and her fury is giving her super strength. Eventually, after what feels like a couple of minutes, her body goes limp.
I let her fall back onto the hall floor, and look down at her with contempt.
‘It’s your stupid fault, Holly,’ I tell her. ‘All your bloody stupid fault. You shouldn’t have gotten so greedy.’
I leave her there and head to the shops in Acton High Street. After buying some plastic sheeting and twine, I go back to the flat and, while her body is still soft, curl her into the foetal position and bundle her up as efficiently as I can. The heating hasn’t been on for ages and the flat is as cold as a fridge. I crack a window in the sitting room to keep it that way, then phone Alice from my parked car to explain why I’m running late. A road closure, I tell her. She’s pissed off with me, but right now that’s the least of my worries. Then I leave the flat, with Holly’s corpse still in situ. That’s a problem I’ll have to deal with later.
* * *
As an anniversary celebration, it could hardly have gone worse.
The weather is shit, Alice is in a horrible mood and there’s absolutely no sex. Yet I can’t help feeling strangely elated all weekend and have to spend hours in the gym burning off the excess adrenaline. I’ve dealt with Holly, the one person who knows my story, the one threat to my freedom. After chasing pointlessly and riskily to the other side of the globe, I’ve finally got the little vixen off my back.
On Saturday evening, Alice opts to watch a screening of Gone with the Wind without me. All four hours of it. She thinks she’s punishing me, when in reality she’s doing me a massive favour. There are drinks served before the movie, so, in theory, I should have nearly five hours. Ample time to drive back to London and deal with the problem in my flat.
I was flashed by a speed camera when I was haring out of London on Friday night. A blessing in disguise in a way, because it made me think about the potential for my car to be picked up by ANPR on this return trip. While I was idling in traffic on the A40, I pulled up my Amazon account and found some flash reflectors for number plates. ‘Off-Road Use Only’ the disclaimer read. Yeah, right. I chose the next-day delivery option and had them delivered to the Acton flat. Amazon delivery drivers will take the lift and leave parcels by the front door; I know because I’ve seen them do it a couple of times when I’ve been there.
Alice heads to the screening at five, and I’m back in West London by six thirty. Dominic Gill used an oversized suitcase the size of a trunk to move his stuff into the flat, and it’s still there now, taking up all the space in the hall cupboard. I heft the packaged body into it, along with Holly’s handbag – once I’ve removed her hotel room key card. The body’s still in the rigor mortis phase, and I can’t lie, it creeps me out. Dominic Gill hadn’t had the chance to fully stiffen when I tossed him into the Thames, and with Pearl and Patricia… well, I just walked away.
I think about taking the case down the fire-escape stairs but decide that will draw more attention if I’m seen. So I wheel the case into the lift and along to the quiet side street where I’ve left the car and, after heaving the case into the boot, I set about obscuring the plates with the reflective strips. My next stop is the Novotel in West Kensington. I’m hyper-aware that cameras might pick me up on my way to her room, but the godawful weather means it’s quite legit for me to be wearing a rainproof top with the hood pulled up. I stretch the top of my roll-neck sweater over my chin and mouth, obscuring my face even further.
I almost dismissed visiting her hotel as too big a risk and didn’t go at all. Just as well I took that risk, because if I hadn’t, I would have missed the incriminating typed note, spelling out in concise and legalistic detail exactly who I am and what I’ve done and left in the middle of her
bed for interested parties to find. Maybe she wasn’t so certain she was meeting with Alice after all, or maybe it was her legal training that prompted her to make a note of her actions. A thorough search fails to show up the laptop she used to write it, which is a concern. There’s a small room safe, but it’s empty. She must have used the terminal in the business centre, which means any document she printed off will almost certainly have been deleted by now.
I scrunch what turned out to be Holly’s final farewell into my pocket and head back to the car for the last leg. Even in light traffic, it takes over an hour to reach Thamesmead, by which time I’m rapidly running out of time. Fortunately, the weather is more like January than late March, and nobody in their right mind is out and about in the freezing horizontal drizzle. I shove a couple of rocks into the suitcase and chuck it into the water, near the spot where Dominic Gill’s body went in. As far as I know, they still haven’t found him. I stand and watch for a few seconds as the case sinks, the rain lashing my cheeks.
Just under three hours later, I’m back at Gray’s, by which time the movie is long over. I prepare my cover story about wanting to go out for some air, but after I’ve removed the reflectors from the licence plates and headed back to our room, I find Alice passed out in bed, no doubt aided by a skinful of champagne. Her mouth’s open and she’s breathing noisily. I feel a rush of affection for her. Dear old Alice. I lean across and pat her lightly on her backside, before going into the bathroom and using the matches thoughtfully provided for candlelit bathing to burn Holly’s note. I flush the charred remains down the toilet so Alice won’t find them in the bin.
‘What you don’t know, won’t hurt you,’ I whisper, as I climb into bed beside her.
Twenty-Five
Ben
Then
With the Holly problem solved, I enjoy a relatively peaceful few months.
I look on this as a period of consolidation. I finally give up renting the flat in North Acton, closing down the original utility accounts and paying a junk removal company to take away all of Dominic Gill’s belongings. The money I was paying towards the lease and bills every month, while not a huge sum, can now be funnelled into my offshore savings account; I’m still only sitting on a few grand, though.
In the autumn I suggest to Alice that we take out a joint life insurance policy. I’d insure her life without her knowing if I could, but modern industry safeguards mean that that’s no longer possible. The insured party has to consent to a medical, apart from anything else. We’ve no mortgage and therefore no endowment policy, and Alice takes care of the insurance on the house. I never even raised the subject when we first got engaged, but to cover my tracks now I suggest it as preparation for having a kid.
Of course, I don’t want a ruddy kid. But Alice is thirty-three now, so I reckon it will take a few months to happen, by which time I’ll be gone. I can’t risk leaving it any longer than that. Some of Dominic Gill’s friends are asking questions, and big brother Simon has been pushing to meet up when he comes down to London. In October I agree to a meeting, then cancel at the last minute, but he immediately tries to rearrange it for a few weeks later. He’s clearly not going to give up, and the more I flake, the more questions he’ll start to ask. So a million-pound death benefit now accrues on Alice’s death. Or on mine, naturally.
* * *
In December, when Alice goes for a consultation with a top gynaecologist and is given a fertility gold star, I panic slightly. I’ll do it today, I decide. The length of steel binding wire that was sitting around in Dominic Gill’s flat for a couple of years is now in my desk drawer at work, along with a lethally sharp five-inch bradawl. I pocket them and head to Comida’s office, stopping off at an outdoor sports outlet in Cheapside to buy a black fleece top, gloves, trainers and a balaclava. I buy a couple of skiing accessories too, so as not to arouse the sales assistant’s suspicion, then ditch them in the nearest bin.
Alice has texted me to tell me when she’s leaving, so it’s easy enough to follow her. She takes her usual route to the Overground station at Shadwell and I jump on the same train. Unfortunately, the train fails at Dalston Junction and we all have to get off. The scenes at the station are so chaotic that I almost lose sight of Alice, but eventually spot her bright red coat heading up the Balls Pond Road. She veers off in an incoherent direction, clearly without a clue where she’s going, but the narrower and more deserted the streets, the better from, my point of view.
I planned to grab her as she cut through Paddington Green Cemetery when she got off at her usual stop of Kensal Rise. The so-called West London rapist has carried out a couple of attacks round there and so obviously if something happened to Alice, the police would be led to the conclusion that this psycho was responsible. We’re now in the badlands of North East London, which isn’t quite as convincing, but then again, it is gang territory. So stuff can happen to people. Especially muggings and stabbings.
Alice has turned off into the Mildmay estate and clearly hasn’t a clue where she’s going. I speed up and get closer as we enter a no-through road, and I can tell she knows she’s being followed but is too scared to look back. I get to a few yards away and then I freeze, my fingers touching the cold steel of the wire in my pocket.
I can’t do this to Alice. Not like this. She’s my wife. I never fell in love with her, but I do still like her. I don’t think I could watch her suffering. Make her suffer.
I’m struggling to shake off this paralysis, to stick to my original plan, when there’s a deafening noise. It takes me a couple of seconds to realise what’s happening. The rape alarm. The one that interfering cow JoJo gave her last spring.
I turn on my heel and take off before anyone else gets near, sprinting back to Balls Pond Road and flagging down a passing black cab. The rush-hour cross-town traffic is frustratingly slow, but the taxi eventually drops me in Waverley Gardens before Alice has made it home. I race upstairs and grab suit trousers, shirt and tie and put them on so that it looks as though I’m just back from the office.
I plan to dispose of the top, gloves, shoes and balaclava outside in the wheelie bin, but as I’m heading towards the back door, I hear her coming up the front path and have to dart into the study. I shove the shoes to the back of one of the drawers of my desk, then put the clothes in after them. There’s just time to grab a bottle of wine with one hand and a corkscrew as she comes in through the front door and bursts into tears in my arms.
Twenty-Six
Ben
Then
Call me sentimental, but I decide to spend one last Christmas in Waverley Gardens.
Then, in the New Year, we have a heavy fall of snow and part of the roof collapses. Alice claims she doesn’t have enough money in the household account to cover it, and that the repairs will have to be funded from our savings account. The total will run to about fifteen thousand, which will more or less wipe out what I’ve siphoned off. I hand over the money because to refuse to contribute to the upkeep of my own home would not only make me look like an arsehole, but might raise Alice’s suspicions about my financial situation.
Which brings me back to my only get-out route. The life insurance.
If I’m going to claim on it, then Alice’s demise has to be as the result of an accident or natural causes. After my failed attempt to pass myself off as the West London rapist, I now know that I can’t go through with something that involves violence. Not where Alice is concerned. That was a lesson learned, at least. Also, having thought about it over Christmas, it would focus too much attention on me. The spouse is always the first to be suspected, right? If there was any question of me being to blame, the insurers wouldn’t pay out anyway.
But, simultaneously, a bit of a gift has dropped in my lap. Alice’s brother David and his wife Melanie came over on Christmas Eve, and while we were sitting in front of the fire drinking mulled wine and eating home-made mince pies, Alice asked David how the medical had gone.
‘Fine,’ David had said with a dismis
sive wave. ‘As far as they can tell, there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘You’re not ill, mate?’ I asked.
‘No, Al and I just have to have regular medicals because of the heart arrhythmia that killed Dad. It runs in families, so we have to be monitored.’
Alice tutted. ‘You already know about it, Dom. LQTS. That’s one of the things I had to discuss with the gynaecologist, remember?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, because I did remember then. It was one of the many things Alice wittered on about which I tuned out, but now it occurs to me how significant it is.
Once I’m back at work after the festive break, I use my lunch hour to visit a cybercafé and do some research. In this day of smartphones and Wi-Fi hotspots, internet cafes are dying out, but I manage to find one in the arse end of Canning Town. I discover that the main symptom of Long QT syndrome affects the heartbeat pattern. It runs in families and is a cause of sudden death in the seemingly young and fit. Especially sudden death while sleeping.
That’s it, I think, my mind running to a sort of Sleeping Beauty scenario. Alice drifts off peacefully in bed; no pain, no trauma, just blissful forever-oblivion. How fitting would that be? My mind frames it as my gift to Alice. The condition could get her at any point anyway, but this way she’s spared the angst of ageing and menopause and all the anxiety of the heart disease that killed her dad catching up with her.
More importantly, no one will question her dying like that. It seems all I need to do is to speed up her heart rhythm excessively with some atropine. I find some at a Mexican pharmacy, without even needing to resort to the dark web, and place an order to be shipped to the office. Syringes are easy to get hold of: I just pretend to be a junkie and pick some up at a charity-run needle exchange.