by Peter James
Joan loved so much about Don. She admired that he had moral principles. This was something Victor lacked. She loved that Don thought outside the box. The egg box!
Don liked his booze and one night Joan came home a little drunk. She told Victor it was disgusting that he made his living out of supplying a trade that was cruel to animals. She demanded to know what he was going to do about it.
‘I am not the moral keeper of the nation,’ Victor replied. ‘If I stopped, someone else would make them.’ Besides, he went on to tell her, people were losing their jobs all over the country at the moment, with all the cutbacks. This was not a good time to start looking for new work.
As her love for Don grew, Joan began to hate weekends more and more, especially Sundays. She knew Don was at home with his wife and kids, while she was stuck at home alone with Victor. She couldn’t find a way to make the weekends pass faster, but she did at least find a way to really irritate Victor! She bought the DVD of the film Chicken Run, about a hen that escaped from a brutal battery farm. She would interrupt Victor’s detective show or football game, and play it on the TV.
Each time she played it, Victor got more angry.
So she played it more and more.
Chapter Four
These past couple of years, Victor had hated Sundays every bit as much as Joan did, because it meant he could not see Kamila. He would spend some of the day pottering around in the garden, or with his vegetables in the greenhouse. Or he would sit in his shed, staring at his dusty bottle of cyanide. Killing time. In his mind, he was killing Joan. For him, the only good thing about Sundays was that at least he had Mondays to look forward to.
On this particular Monday morning, in February, Victor got up as usual at half past six. Joan was still asleep. He showered and shaved, humming The Dam Busters tune to himself. The theme from the old war film was his favourite piece of music, and he always hummed it when he was in a good mood.
On Monday mornings, these days, he was always in a good mood.
He carefully applied roll-on on his armpits and sprayed cologne all over his flabby white body. He adjusted his comb-over, and put on fresh underpants, his best suit and smartest tie.
He knew that for some reason The Dam Busters always annoyed Joan more than any other tune. This made him hum it even more loudly as he brought her a cup of tea in bed and switched on the television for her. Then he told her she would have to cut down. No more spending. They had to make ends meet. He left for work before Joan was awake enough to argue back. He was still humming.
The Stanley Smith factory was a two-storey building on an industrial estate in the north of Brighton. Victor greeted a few of his colleagues when he arrived, then poured himself a coffee and stole a biscuit from a packet someone had left out. He trotted along happily to his little office.
Alone in there, quietly and without Joan’s knowledge, he used some of the last of his savings to buy a life insurance policy for her. It would produce a nice cash sum on her death. Enough to pay off his debts, with plenty left over for a new life.
A very nice new life indeed, with Kamila!
Although Victor Smiley’s business card said ‘IT Manager’, that was a grander title than the job deserved. He was the costings clerk and the payroll clerk. He produced the monthly accounts. Much of the time he didn’t actually have anything to do at all. Most of the egg box production was done by machines. Most of the people who worked for the company were here to look after those machines. No one noticed that he had plenty of spare time in his job, because he was always careful to look busy.
Of course, Victor Smiley really was very busy indeed. He was spending most of his days learning about stuff on the Internet. Stuff that was connected to his plans. Stuff like case histories of frauds on life insurance companies.
It quickly became clear to Victor that life insurance companies were not stupid. If a husband took out a big policy on his wife, and his wife died a few weeks later, the insurance company would investigate. Most people who had tried that kind of scam ended up on trial for murder.
Victor realized it would be smart to wait, however hard that might be. He would have to be patient. He decided that he would wait a year before killing Joan. Kamila was going to have to be patient too. The big plus was that this would give him plenty of time to think and plan.
One whole year to plan the perfect murder.
So every day, after he had dealt with any urgent business to do with his job, Victor would search websites, typing the words perfect murder into Google.
Then he moved on and began Googling poisons.
Then, detecting poisons.
Everything he wanted was right there, normally just one click of his mouse away. He made careful notes, building up a file. Finally, he had a long list of rules that needed to be kept, to commit a perfect murder. There were fifty-two rules in all. These were some of them:
Rule One: Don’t have a criminal record.
Rule Two: Don’t have a motive that is clear for all to see.
Rule Three: Plan carefully.
Rule Four: Bloodstains are hard to remove completely. Avoid.
Rule Five: Poisons can be found in postmortems. Avoid.
Rule Six: Suffocation with a plastic bag is clean and quick. No mess.
Rule Seven: Get rid of the body.
Rule Eight: Don’t tell anyone. Ever!
Rule Nine: Remember that thousands of people go missing every year.
Rule Ten: Be ready to deny anything. No body, no proof.
Rule Eleven: Act as if you are missing her.
Rule Twelve: Don’t appear with your new lover too quickly after the murder.
Victor was eagerly looking forward to ticking each box when the time came. The plan was taking shape nicely inside his head. He began to write it down, bit by bit by bit. Each time he read it over he hummed proudly to himself. It was a good plan. Genius!
He named it Plan A.
Then one day, without any warning, his boss came into his office. His boss was the son of the founder of the Stanley Smith factory. He was the & Son of Stanley Smith & Son. Rodney Smith was a big, unpleasant tosser, who drove a gold Porsche. According to office gossip he was screwing his secretary. Smith told him that he was sorry but sales were down, costs were up, savings had to be found. Victor would have to go. He was being made redundant.
He would get severance pay based on the time he had worked for the company. He would get one and a half weeks’ pay for each of the sixteen years he had served. That worked out at six months’ pay.
Victor was so shocked that after work he drank five pints at the Font and Firkin, as well as four whisky chasers. He had intended to keep the news a secret from Joan but, arriving home blind drunk, he blurted it out.
That night, Joan screamed at him in rage, and told him how useless he was.
At his desk the next morning, Victor had a bad hangover. He worked out how many visits to the Kitten Parlour he could make with six months’ pay and the remains of his savings. He realized it would be a lot more visits, and more tips for Kamila, if he did not have to pay housekeeping money.
To save his money, Joan was going to have to go more quickly than he had planned. There was no option. There simply was not enough time for Plan A. He was going to have to go with Plan B.
The only problem was, he didn’t yet have a Plan B.
But Joan did.
Chapter Five
The solution came to Victor that night.
As happened most nights now, he was woken at about 2 a.m. by Joan hitting him on the chest and hissing, ‘Stop snoring!’
At 4 a.m. Joan woke him again, climbing out of bed and saying, ‘God, Victor, you are worse than ever! What do you keep up your nose and down your throat? Trumpets?’
He mumbled a sleepy apology. He heard her leave the room and slam the bedroom door behind her. Then he heard the slam of the door to the spare bedroom. All of a sudden, he was wide awake with excitement. He had an idea.
Jo
an was always moaning about the little spare room where she went to sleep when his snoring kept her awake at night. It was grotty, she said, and she was right. The walls were the colour of sludge and the thin curtains had moth holes in them. It was the one room they had never bothered to do up after they bought the house. To begin with, they had planned it to be their first child’s bedroom. But they’d had no children, of course. So it still had the old single bed which the previous owners of the house had left behind. It was a sad little room.
Every few weeks, Joan would have a go at Victor about it, telling him it was high time to do up the room. She said he should make it look nice in case they ever had an overnight guest. He could at least make it nice for her to sleep in when she couldn’t stay in their room because of his snoring. This had been going on for years and years.
Now he thought he had the answer to two problems at once! Making the room nice for Joan, and giving him his Plan B!
Unable to sleep any more he put on his dressing gown and went into the kitchen. Quietly, not wanting to wake Joan, he made himself a cup of tea. He was so excited. Then he went up to his den, switched on his computer and logged on to the Internet. He entered the word cyanide into Google.
As he had found before, there were hundreds and hundreds of web pages on cyanide poison. Tonight, he steadily narrowed down his search. He typed in cyanide vapour. Then cyanide gas. He read every word, greedily lapping it all up. The more he read, the more excited he became. Some things he read over several times because it was better to remember things than to write them down. That was Rule 52: Leave no tracks.
This is what he remembered:
The extent of poisoning caused by cyanide depends on the amount of cyanide a person is exposed to.
Breathing cyanide gas causes the most harm.
Cyanide gas is most dangerous in enclosed places where the gas will be trapped.
To some people cyanide smells like bitter almonds.
Cyanide is present in some paints, such as Prussian blue.
Now he really smiled. Prussian blue had long been one of Joan’s favourite colours.
Chapter Six
Joan wondered what had come over Victor. That weekend, he didn’t watch his detective shows or potter around in his shed or his greenhouse. He spent the whole of Saturday and Sunday in the spare bedroom. He was busily decorating it for her.
‘For you, my angel!’ he told her. ‘You are quite right. This room has been in an awful state for far too long. Now I’m going to make it beautiful for you.’
He would not let her in while he was at work. He wanted to surprise his angel, he told her. She could not go in until it was finished!
Every now and then he came out coughing and spluttering. He had a breathing mask pushed up onto his forehead, and wore a white, hooded, paint-spattered boiler suit. It reminded her of the paper suits that she saw Scene of Crime Officers wear at murder scenes on the TV news.
‘It’s your favourite colour!’ he told her.
‘Prussian blue?’
He beamed at her. ‘How did you guess? Have you peeped?’
She simply pointed at him. ‘It’s splashed all over you!’ she said with a scowl.
‘I’m putting up new blinds too,’ he told her.
‘They’ll probably fall down,’ she replied. ‘Everything you put up usually falls down after a short while.’ Just like your tiny weeny dick, she nearly added.
Victor did not react to her rudeness. It no longer mattered. After a few nights sleeping in the spare room with the windows shut, she wouldn’t be saying anything rude to him ever again.
They would find the cyanide in her at the post-mortem, of course. But the makers of the paint would be blamed. They would be in trouble for making a rogue batch of Prussian blue with too much cyanide in it. He just had to make sure no one ever found the tins he used, but getting rid of them would be easy.
On Sunday night, when he had finished, he left the spare-bedroom window wide open. He told Joan it was to let the paint dry. She would be able to start using the room from Monday night onwards, whenever he snored. And blimey, was he planning to snore tomorrow night! He would snore like he’d never snored before. He would snore for England!
Joan watched Victor drive off to work the next day in his usual cheery Monday morning mood. He was even more cheery than usual, she thought, despite the fact that this was the start of his last week at work.
She had too much on her mind to dwell on this. She busied herself with the household chores. Later it would be time to catch the bus for her afternoon shift at the supermarket. She needed to put on a good show of normality, so she gathered all Victor’s dirty underwear from the laundry basket to do a wash. She was a little surprised that his boiler suit was not in there. She hunted everywhere, wondering where he might have left it, but she could not find it.
Never mind, she thought, with a wicked smile. With her plan, he wouldn’t need it again. Not where he was going . . .
Chapter Seven
Every human being has a weak spot. Victor’s was his diabetes, Joan knew. Too much sugar and he would fall sound asleep. Then he would snore like an elephant, keeping her awake all night. Her plan was simple. All she needed to do was to swap the insulin in his needle for sugar and he would go into a deep sleep. A very deep sleep.
While he was asleep she would inject some more sugar. Then some more still.
Until he stopped snoring. Until he stopped breathing.
She had it planned, to sweet perfection.
On this Monday evening of his last week at work, Victor arrived home and opened the front door with his latch key. He was surprised by what he found. His wife was stark naked, except for a black lace bra and a matching thong, and she was standing in red high-heeled shoes. She reeked of perfume.
‘Aren’t you cold?’ he said. It was mid-February.
‘I thought you might like a blow job, my darling husband!’ she said.
‘Actually, not really,’ he replied. He did not add that he’d just had one at the Kitten Parlour. ‘I think I’d prefer a beer. You look cold. You’ve got goose pimples.’
‘I can warm you up, my darling,’ she replied.
‘I’m warm,’ he said. ‘But I’m worried about you.’
She brushed up sexily against him, and pressed her fingers against his crotch. ‘Let’s go to bed, my angel,’ she said.
‘Thanks, but Poirot’s on at nine o’clock.’
‘We can record it.’
‘I’d rather watch it now.’
She kissed him. ‘Tell me, my angel, if you were to be hanged in the morning, what would your last meal be?’
He thought for a moment, then answered, ‘Prawn cocktail, rib-eye steak, mushrooms, tomatoes, chips and peas. Followed by hot chocolate pudding with hot chocolate sauce. Why?’
‘Well, that’s a coincidence!’ she said. ‘Guess what’s for supper?’
‘Don’t tell me you have all that?’
‘For my darling Victor, nothing less would be good enough!’
Joan thought that the hot chocolate pudding with hot chocolate sauce would mask the amount of sugar.
Victor wondered if she had been drinking. Maybe she had been taking drugs. Or perhaps she wanted a car of her own instead of having to share his?
In your dreams! he thought.
Soon after finishing the meal he fell asleep on the sofa, with Poirot busily solving a crime in front of him.
She texted Don, as planned.
Twenty minutes later, Don arrived at the Smileys’ front door. But the frown on his face was not part of their plan.
‘There’s a problem,’ he said.
Chapter Eight
‘I’ve just been watching CSI,’ Don said, removing Joan’s arms from around his neck.
‘I like CSI,’ she said. She liked it because Victor did not. It was too modern for his taste.
‘Yep, well, you wouldn’t have liked this one tonight. It was about diabetics. Right?’
; Something about the way he said it made her shiver. ‘Tell me.’
‘Several diabetics have been murdered by people giving them overdoses. In some cases they give too much insulin, in others they give too much sugar. They have new forensic ways of testing. We can’t risk it! We’re going to have to get rid of the body.’
‘No!’ she said. ‘That’s not the plan! We agreed I would call the doctor in the morning, after he’s nice and cold. That’s the plan.’
‘It doesn’t work any more,’ Don replied. ‘They’ll know he’s had a massive sugar overdose.’
‘I could tell them he’s been depressed since losing his job. I could forge a suicide note,’ she added helpfully.
‘Too dangerous.’
‘No one will know!’ Joan replied. ‘How will they know?’
‘Handwriting experts!’ Don hissed. He looked down at Victor and was startled to see his eyes struggling to open. Hastily, he stepped back, out of sight.
‘But where would we put the body?’ she said.
‘Did you say something about a blow job?’ Victor slurred.
‘A blow job, my darling husband? Coming up!’ Joan said. ‘Just wait two minutes for the blow job of your life, my darling!’
She hurried into the kitchen and pulled on her yellow rubber gloves. Then she dashed into the garage where Victor’s tools were hanging neatly from their hooks. She selected a medium-weight claw hammer and hurried back into the lounge. Holding the hammer behind her back, she said, ‘Would you like your blow job now, my darling?’
Victor nodded. ‘Yerrrr.’
Before Don even noticed what she was holding, Joan brought the hammer down hard on the side of Victor’s forehead. She had never hit anyone on the side of the forehead with a claw hammer before, so she did not know quite what to expect.
Looking at him as soon as she had hit him, she thought that she would not need to hit quite so hard another time. Her stomach heaved and shockwaves pulsed through her. She took one more look at him, then ran into the kitchen and threw up in the sink.