The Perfect Murder

by Peter James

  That was a big fib, of course. He’d come home blind drunk, telling her he’d just told his boss where to stick his job!

  ‘Are you worried that he might have killed himself, Mrs Smiley?’

  ‘Yes.’

  As she drove away from the police station, Joan was pleased with herself. She thought she had come across rather well as the desperate, sad wife of a missing person.

  PCSO Juliet Watts had a different opinion. ‘Not happy about this person,’ she wrote in her report.

  Chapter Twelve

  Yes, Joan thought, she did feel pleased with herself. She decided she had handled herself well. She had given a great performance. PCSO Watts had believed her. That was important. It was also important that the officer said she was marking Victor down as High Risk.

  Success!

  She could not wait to tell Don.

  She had to act normally first, so she did her afternoon shift, as usual, at the supermarket. But her mind was not on it and she kept making mistakes. Then at six o’clock, on the dot, she left and drove home. Not having to wait for the bus was a luxury in itself.

  When she turned into her road, the sight of a white van in her driveway sent a bolt of fear through her. The van was backed right up against the garage door.

  Joan parked in the street, hurried to the door and let herself in. Don was standing in the hall, in grimy jeans and a filthy T-shirt. Sweat was pouring off him. He was so covered in grey dust he looked like a ghost. ‘How did it go?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s the van? Whose is it?’ she blurted anxiously.

  ‘Calm down, love. Don’t I get a kiss?’

  Ignoring him, she repeated anxiously, ‘Whose van is it?’ As she asked she was looking at the hall table, to see if Victor’s mobile phone was there.

  ‘Relax! I borrowed the van from a mate. I’ll show you what I used it for in a moment. So?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, how did it go at the cop shop?’

  ‘It was a breeze!’

  ‘See, you’re a star!’ He hugged her and tried to kiss her on the lips, but she turned her face, so he kissed her cheek instead. Then she pulled away from him.

  ‘You’re all sweaty,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve been working, while you’ve been acting the star!’

  She did not feel like a star. She felt in need of a drink. She wanted a glass of wine. After that, she thought she would want another, and another.

  Then she would probably want one more.

  ‘I need to phone Victor,’ she said.

  ‘You’d get a shock if he answered!’

  ‘That’s not funny. The police officer asked if I’d phoned him. We should have thought of the phone. That was stupid. Why didn’t you think of it?’

  He shrugged and shook his head. ‘Dunno. Slipped my mind.’

  ‘Great,’ she said bitterly. ‘What else didn’t we think of? You had it all under control, you told me. You had it all planned. The perfect murder!’

  ‘I did,’ he nodded. ‘That was before we knew about the sugar, and before you hit him.’

  ‘You should have found out about the sugar sooner,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, well, now we have to deal with things as they are. Don’t worry, I have it all worked out.’

  She took her mobile phone from her bag and dialled Victor’s number. His Nokia, on the hall table, rang six times then stopped. She listened, and moments later she heard his voice message.

  ‘Hello, this is Victor Smiley. I’m sorry I can’t take your call at the moment. I’m not available. Please leave me a message and I’ll call you back.’

  It was strange hearing his voice. It made her feel all tingly, in a bad way. Feeling very self-conscious, Joan said, ‘Hello, Victor dear. Where are you? Please call me. I am so worried about you, and I’m missing you. Love you!’

  ‘Liar!’ Don said when she hung up. ‘You don’t love him!’

  Her face was burning, as if it was on fire. ‘You can’t lie to a dead person, can you?’

  ‘We need to hide his phone,’ Don said. ‘Remind me to take it later and ditch it somewhere. You shouldn’t have left that message. That was stupid. That was really stupid.’

  ‘It would have been even more stupid not to.’

  ‘It was stupid,’ he repeated. ‘You’re panicking. We mustn’t panic.’

  ‘I need a drink,’ she said.

  Don insisted they went to the garage first. They had work to do, he said.

  She followed him through the door that led from the hall to the garage. It was draughty in there and the concrete floor was cold under her feet. The air was so thick with dust she could barely see. It prickled her throat and she coughed.

  Normally, they parked the Astra in here at night, but there would be no room now. In the centre of the garage there was a hole that Don had been digging. It was about six feet long and three feet wide. Concrete rubble and earth were scattered either side of it. Stacked against the far wall were several sacks of ready-mixed concrete, a pick-axe, two garden spades and several more tools.

  ‘There we are,’ Don said proudly. ‘I’ve been busy today. I’m a one-man VDT.’

  ‘VDT?’ she said. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Victor Disposal Team!’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ she said.

  ‘Come on, love. You’re the one who wanted to do away with him. You asked me to help you. I’m helping you.’

  She looked down into the grave. It was about two feet deep. ‘It’s too shallow,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not finished. We’re going to put him down a good six feet. Don’t want the smell to start getting out when he decomposes.’

  Victor was the man she used to love and sleep with. Joan’s stomach suddenly churned at the thought of him rotting. ‘You’re not – you’re not serious? You’re going to bury Victor here?’

  ‘Too right.’

  ‘In my garage?’

  ‘It’s perfect! I used to be a bricklayer, remember? I can do a perfect concrete screed. No one will ever know.’

  ‘What about me?’ she said. ‘I will know.’

  Then the front doorbell rang.

  Both of them froze, looking at each other. ‘Who’s that?’ Don said.

  ‘I dunno.’ Joan raised a finger to her lips for him to keep quiet. She went out into the hall, closing the internal garage door behind her. She coughed again from the dust. As she went near the front door, the bell rang again.

  She hurried up the stairs and into the room that Victor used as his den. She peered down through the window.

  Two police officers were standing outside her front door.

  Chapter Thirteen

  They were both male, wearing their black uniform waistcoats and police caps with chequered bands. She studied them for a moment and could see they were looking impatient. Then she hurried downstairs to tell Don to wait quietly in the garage. As she opened the front door, her nerves were jangling. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, I – I was on the loo.’

  ‘Mrs Smiley?’ said the older of the two men, holding up his warrant card. ‘Sergeant Rose and PC Black from Brighton Police.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘hello.’ Then, quick as a flash, she added, ‘Have you got any news about Victor? Have you found my husband?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not, madam. We presume you have not heard from him either?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘May we come in?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. Thank you, thank you for coming.’

  She moved so that they could come into the hall. Both men took their caps off. Sergeant Rose was in his forties. His hair was short and black, with some grey. He had a pleasant face and a brisk but friendly manner. His colleague was in his mid-twenties. He was tall and rather gangly, with short blond hair gelled into spikes.

  As she led them through into the lounge, she noticed Victor’s phone sitting on the hall table. For a moment she felt panic, then she realized they would not know it was his.

  She po
inted at the settee and the two policemen sat down on it, holding their caps on their laps. She sat opposite them in an armchair and did her best to look sad.

  Sergeant Rose took out a notebook and the constable did the same. ‘Is that your van in the driveway, Mrs Smiley?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘The – the white one?’ Joan said, as if there was a whole line of vans parked in the driveway, in a range of different colours.

  The two police officers exchanged a brief glance, which made Joan even more uneasy.

  ‘The white one, yes,’ Sergeant Rose said.

  ‘No – er – that’s not mine – ours – er – that’s the plumber’s van.’

  ‘Got a problem with your drains, have you?’ the constable asked.

  Joan felt herself breaking out in sweat. She remembered a TV show that Victor had watched, about the serial killer Dennis Nilsen. Nilsen murdered young men and chopped them up in his kitchen. Then he flushed parts of them down the sink and parts down the loo. He was caught when the drains became blocked and the plumbing firm found human remains in them.

  Rising panic tightened her throat so much that her voice came out as a squeak. ‘No. No, nothing like that! Just – er – new bathroom taps and a new shower. Victor and I are having a bathroom makeover.’

  The sergeant nodded. There was silence for a few moments. Then the constable said, ‘For a workman, your plumber’s very quiet.’

  ‘He is,’ Joan said. ‘Good as gold! You wouldn’t know he was here.’

  ‘Apart from the van outside,’ Sergeant Rose said.

  Joan nodded. ‘Yes, well, of course, apart from that!’

  There was another silence, longer and more awkward than the last one. Then Sergeant Rose said, ‘We’ve come round, Mrs Smiley, because we have some concerns about your husband.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m very grateful.’ She took a handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed her eyes. ‘I feel so terrible,’ she said. ‘So terrible.’

  He glanced down at some writing in his notebook. ‘On the Missing Persons Report you stated that your husband is diabetic. Do you know if he had his medication with him?’

  ‘I – I would think so,’ she said. ‘He always had it with him.’

  ‘Have you checked whether he took it with him yesterday? Sunday evening was the last time you saw him, correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sunday evening, that was the last time.’

  ‘Can you repeat the events of Sunday for me?’

  She felt the heat burning her face. Her body felt slippery with sweat. She needed to make sure she said the same thing to these officers as she had said to the officer at the police station.

  ‘I wasn’t feeling well. Victor was home. I went to bed early and left him downstairs watching television. In the morning, he was gone. At first, I thought he’d left for work early, but it was strange because he always brought me a cup of tea before he went.’

  ‘What was his state of mind after losing his job, Mrs Smiley?’ the constable asked.

  ‘Terrible. He was in shock. He’d given the best years of his life to those sods at that company. It destroyed him, being let go like that. He was a broken man. He just sat here weeping in this room, night after night.’

  Joan paused, feeling a little more confident. She was calming down and getting into her stride. ‘He told me several times in the past few weeks that he didn’t want to go on living. He couldn’t face not being wanted any more. He was broken, totally broken.’

  The sergeant frowned. ‘We went round to the premises of Stanley Smith & Son on the Hollingbury industrial estate this afternoon. That’s where your husband is, or was, employed, isn’t it?’

  She nodded, not liking the sound of this.

  ‘We talked to several of his colleagues, trying to find out the state of his mind. Everyone we spoke to said he seemed very happy.’ He looked down at his notes again. ‘One said that yesterday, the first day of his last week with the company, he was humming and smiling a lot. He was telling them he felt free for the first time in his life. He said that he was going to enjoy himself. He said that life was too short to spend all of it in an office.’

  ‘That’s my Victor,’ she said, pressing her eyelids tightly together. She was trying to make herself cry or at least squeeze out a couple of tears. ‘He was such a proud man.’

  ‘Was?’ said the constable, sharply.

  ‘What am I saying! See what a state I’m in! Is. Is. My darling Victor is such a proud man. He wouldn’t let those sods think they had won!’ She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘Oh yes, he gave them all a good show, trying to let them think he didn’t care. But inside, he was broken. He just came home and wept and wept and wept. Please find him for me. Please find him. I’m terrified he might have gone and done something rash. My poor darling. My Victor. I couldn’t live without him.’

  ‘We’ll try our best,’ they promised as they left.

  At that moment, Victor’s phone began to warble. Joan closed the door, went to the table and picked it up. It was ringing and vibrating in her hand. Private Number showed on the display. She daren’t answer it, she realized. So she let it continue for several more rings until it stopped.

  Then she checked to see if the caller had left a message. But they hadn’t.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Downstairs, in the basement of the Kitten Parlour, was a rest room. It had comfy chairs and a television so that the girls could relax while they were waiting for clients.

  At seven o’clock in the evening, Kamila put down her mobile phone. She lit a cigarette, then took a sip of her coffee. She was worried about Victor. He hadn’t called or texted last night at all, nor all day today.

  He was constantly phoning, and leaving her text messages. He would usually send her two or three texts during the night, and he always called her from his office in the morning. This was not like him. Kamila badly needed to speak to him. Kaspar, her boyfriend, had found out she was in Brighton and he knew where she was living. He left threatening messages on her voicemail. Victor had promised to take care of her.

  She liked Victor. He was funny. He made her feel safe. The most important thing was that he was a very rich man! He would be able to get rid of Kaspar. He’d promised her that. He had contacts in high places. Kaspar would be history.

  Now he had vanished and she desperately hoped that it was not Victor who was history. She did not dare to leave a message, because Victor had told her never to do that.

  Nervously, she smoked her cigarette down to the butt. She was about to light another when the maid upstairs called her name on the intercom.

  ‘Kamila, you have a client!’

  She hurried up the stairs, hopeful that it might be Victor. It wasn’t, of course.

  Chapter Fifteen

  After the police left, Don drove off in the van. He couldn’t leave it in the driveway all evening or the neighbours would wonder about it, he said. He parked it a couple of streets away, then walked back. He was dressed in black and was barely visible in the darkness.

  At eleven o’clock, Joan came into the garage with about the tenth mug of coffee for him. By then, his head could hardly be seen. Earth was piled high on either side of the grave, and scattered across the garage floor. The smell of dust was less strong now. Instead, there was a musty smell of damp soil.

  Joan was cold and exhausted and covered in dirt. Her hands were blistered from when she had taken over the digging a couple of times, while Don had a rest.

  She was still not at all happy about burying Victor here, in their garage.

  ‘It’s the best place,’ Don said. ‘Trust me! If you look at how most murderers get caught, it’s because a body turns up somewhere. A body is found in a shallow grave in the woods, or washed up on a beach. Or they get caught trying to get rid of the body. If there is no body, then there is nothing for the police to go on. They’ve no reason to suspect you anyway, have they?’

  ‘No,’ Joan agreed. She did feel tha
t the police were just a little bit suspicious. But what Don said did make sense.

  So she stood and watched as he dug deeper and deeper. Slowly but steadily he was getting there, bit by bit by bit.

  A few minutes past midnight, Joan helped Don heave her husband’s body out of the freezer. Victor was hard and cold and his flesh was a grey colour, with specks of frost on it. She avoided looking at his face. She didn’t want to catch his eye.

  They half carried, half dragged him into the hall, and then into the garage. Then they hauled him over the mounds of freshly dug earth and into the long, narrow hole.

  For one horrible moment, Joan thought the hole was too narrow. Victor’s body fell a couple of feet, but his shoulders and stomach got wedged.

  Don sat down on the side and gave him a shove with his feet. Victor slithered and tumbled like a huge Guy Fawkes dummy. He landed with a hard thud in the wet earth at the bottom.

  ‘Have some respect,’ Joan said. ‘You shouldn’t have pushed him with your feet.’

  ‘Pardon me,’ Don said. ‘Why don’t you phone the sodding vicar and ask him to come round here? He could hold a proper burial service.’

  Joan said nothing. She stared down at the naked, ungainly heap that had once been the man she loved. She felt a whole raft of emotions. She felt sadness, fear, guilt.

  She felt no joy.

  She had thought that she would feel joy from the moment he was dead. She had expected her love for Don would be so much stronger. But she did not feel any love for him at all right now. In fact, she wished he would go away and leave her alone. She wanted to say a private goodbye to Victor.

  She knelt, scooped up a handful of earth and dropped it on the corpse. Then she whispered, so quietly that Don could not hear, ‘Goodbye, my love. It wasn’t all bad, was it?’

  Then she stood up and helped Don to shovel the earth back in.