The Perfect Murder

  She went back and peered at him. Neither man had moved. Don stood still, his eyes wide open, his mouth open even more.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he gasped.

  Victor lay still, with his skull cracked open like a broken coconut, blood spurting in all directions. His eyeballs bulged, unseeing, from their sockets. His tongue had shot out and stayed out. An orange and grey goo of brains leaked through his shattered temple.

  Don said, ‘I think he’s brown bread.’

  Joan had heard cockney rhyming slang in gangster films. She knew what brown bread meant. It meant dead.

  She said nothing.

  There was hair and blood on the end of the hammer. She stared at it, as if she had just performed some conjuring trick. Now I have a clean hammer. Abracadabra! Now I have blood and hair on it!

  Now she had a dead husband.

  A dead husband leaking blood and brains onto the sofa.

  Leaking forensic evidence.

  She put the hammer down on the floor and started shaking wildly, as she began to realize just what she had done.

  She looked at Don in desperation. He was staring at Victor, wide-eyed, his mouth still open, shaking his head from side to side. ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Oh Jesus.’ Then he looked back at her.

  She had no idea what was going through his mind.

  ‘Why – why did you have to hit him so hard?’ he asked.

  ‘You’d have hit him softer, would you?’

  After some moments, Don said, ‘This is probably not the time for an argument.’

  Chapter Nine

  In the utility room off the kitchen, Joan had a big chest freezer squeezed in next to the washing machine and the tumble dryer. Victor had got angry when she’d bought the freezer. He told her it was a waste of money and where the hell were they going to put it?

  Joan had replied that it would pay for itself because of all the sell-by-date bargains she could buy in her supermarket. Now she stood over it, with the lid open and icy vapour rising. She was pulling out all those bargains she had been piling into it for the past year.

  Out came a packet of lamb cutlets with a Special Offer! sticker. Then came a big bag of frozen peas and a huge tub of Wall’s vanilla ice cream. There were three chocolate cheesecakes that she had been planning to eat by herself. She thought they were too good to share with Victor! She handed each item to Don, who placed them on the floor.

  Every few moments she would peer out of the window. They had drawn the curtains and blinds on all the other windows downstairs, just in case anyone happened to peer in. However, the blind on this window had fallen down months ago. Lazy Victor had never bothered to put it back up again.

  She could see the lights of the houses in the valley below and the dark outline of the Downs in the distance. She could see the stars and the rising moon. It was almost a full moon. In the light from it she could see the little greenhouse in the garden. She thought for a moment about the tomatoes Victor had planted. He was never going to see them, or eat them. Victor wasn’t even going to see daylight ever again.

  For a moment, just for a tiny moment, she had a choking feeling in her throat. Victor wasn’t so bad, she thought to herself. Not really so bad, was he? He had good points, didn’t he?

  Don’s voice cut harshly through her thoughts. ‘Come on, keep it coming, nearly done!’

  She stooped over, reached down to the bottom and pulled up a frozen sponge cake in its box. Then some Special Reduction pork chops.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘That’s it.’

  Then she peered in, nervously, all her thoughts in turmoil. What if he did not fit?

  Five minutes later, Don and Joan had removed all Victor’s clothes. They also took off his watch and his wedding band.

  ‘No point letting anything go to waste,’ Joan had said.

  Then they struggled to carry his fat, blubbery body through the kitchen and into the tiny utility room. They left a trail of blood spots and brain-fluid droplets as they went.

  It was lucky Don was strong because Joan felt she had no strength left in her. With some pushing and shoving, they got Victor up over the lip of the freezer. Then, to her relief, he slid down easily to the bottom. She just needed to arrange his arms and legs so they would not obstruct the lid. All the time, Joan avoided looking at his bulging eyes. In fact, she avoided looking at any part of him.

  She couldn’t help glimpsing his tiny penis, though. That’s the bit of you I’ll be missing least of all, she thought. Then she began to pile the frozen foods back in on top of him.

  ‘Hope he doesn’t wake up feeling hungry,’ Don said, as he finally slammed the lid down.

  Joan looked at him in shock. ‘You don’t think—?’

  He laid his big, meaty hand on her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. ‘He’s dead, don’t worry. He’s as dead as dead gets.’

  They spent the rest of the evening cleaning. They scrubbed the downstairs carpets and the kitchen floor. They had to scrub the living-room walls too, because they found spots of blood and brain fluid there as well. There were more on the ceiling and on one of the lampshades. A spot of blood was even on the television screen.

  ‘Hope Poirot doesn’t notice this one,’ Don said, wiping the tiny fleck from the screen.

  Joan did not smile.

  Chapter Ten

  Shortly before midnight, exhausted from cleaning, and shaking from too much coffee, Don had to go home. He would be back first thing in the morning, he said.

  Joan stayed downstairs for a long time. She stared at the dents in the armchair cushions where Victor had been sitting when she’d hit him. The house was silent. The air felt heavy, as if it was pushing down on her. She could hear the occasional tick of the fridge. But she didn’t dare go into the kitchen on her own, not tonight, not while it was dark.

  Eventually, she went upstairs. The bathroom smelled of Victor’s colognes and aftershaves. The bedroom smelled of him too, but not so strongly. There were a couple of strands of his hair in the basin. That was another thing that annoyed her about him. He was always leaving hairs in the basin, the lazy bugger. He could never be bothered to remove them. She scooped them up now with a tissue. It was the last time she would have to do that, she thought with some small joy, as she dropped them into the pedal bin. The lid shut with a loud clang that startled her.

  God, I’m jumpy, she thought. Hardly surprising.

  She drew the bathroom curtain, then went through into the bedroom and closed the curtains there. She hoped none of the nosy neighbours were looking out of their windows. They would think it odd that it was after two in the morning and she was closing the bedroom curtains. She and Victor were normally in bed by eleven.

  She took off all her clothes and put them in a black bin liner, as Don had instructed. He was going to take them to the municipal tip in the morning. He would also take Victor’s clothes and the hammer, which he had put into the bottom tray of his toolbox.

  After pulling on her nightdress, she swallowed two aspirins. She removed Victor’s striped pyjamas from his side of the bed and put them on the floor. Then she climbed into the empty bed, which smelled of Victor, and switched the light off. She switched it back on again at once. The darkness scared her tonight. So much was buzzing in her head. There was a list of things she had to do tomorrow, which she had worked out with Don.

  She stared at the blank television screen on the shelf just beyond the end of the bed. She looked at Victor’s brown leather slippers on the floor and at the Agatha Christie novel on his bedside table. She listened to the silence of the night. It seemed so loud. She heard a faint, tinny ringing in her ears. The distant wail of a siren from a police car, or an ambulance, or perhaps a fire engine. Then the screech of two cats fighting. One of them was probably Gregory, she thought. She watched her bedside clock.

  2.59 a.m.

  Then 3.00 a.m.

  Then 3.01 a.m.

  She turned on the television. There was a medium she recognized, talking to a studio audience
. ‘I have someone with me called Mary,’ he said. ‘Is there anyone here who has recently lost someone called Mary?’

  Normally, she liked these shows. But tonight it made her uneasy.

  She switched channels. Big Brother. Two young men and a fat blonde girl were sitting in a giant ashtray, smoking. She listened to their chatter for some minutes, then switched channels again. An old movie was playing. Glenn Close was in her house. Suddenly, a black, gloved fist smashed a window and opened the door from the inside.

  She hastily switched channels once more. Then looked at the clock again.

  3.14

  She needed to pee. All that damned coffee! She got out of bed, padded out of the room and into the bathroom. She peed, then went to the basin to rinse her hands.

  And froze.

  Two long, black strands of Victor’s hair were lying there.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘You imagined it!’ Don said when he came round at nine o’clock in the morning.

  ‘No, Don, I did not,’ Joan said. Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly open the tin of cat food. ‘I did not imagine it!’

  ‘Of course you did. Your nerves are all shot to hell!’

  Her eyes felt raw from lack of sleep. There was a tight band across her scalp. ‘I did not imagine it! I looked in the pedal bin and the hairs I took out were still there, in the tissue.’

  She scraped the stinky cat food out of the can into Gregory’s bowl and put it on the floor. As usual, the cat glared at the bowl, and then at her, as if suspecting poison.

  ‘You must have missed them, love,’ Don said. ‘We were both tired!’ He put his arms around her and hugged her tightly. Then he nuzzled her ear. ‘Let’s go to bed, I’m feeling really horny.’

  She pushed him away. ‘I did not miss those hairs. And we can’t go to bed. I have to go to the police, like you told me. And I have to go to work. You said we have to act normal.’

  ‘Yeah, normal! So let’s go to bed. That would be normal.’

  ‘Not with Victor in the freezer, no way!’

  ‘Come on, angel. We did this so we could be together.’

  She looked at him. ‘I can’t. It wouldn’t be right. I don’t feel in the mood. Okay?’

  They stared at each other in silence.

  ‘It’s all right for you, Don. You went home to your little wifey. I had to stay here alone with my husband in the bloody freezer.’

  ‘Yeah, right, so?’

  ‘So?’ she repeated, her anger rising. ‘So? Is that all you can bloody say?’

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘I love you too. We – we just have to—’

  ‘To what?’

  She shook her head. Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘You have to help me, Don.’

  ‘We have to stay calm.’

  ‘I AM BLOODY CALM!’ she yelled.

  He raised his big hands and stood there in front of her. A big tall guy, in his brown leather jacket over a white T-shirt, jeans and suede boots, he was all manly. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay!’

  ‘It’s not okay!’

  ‘So, we have to make it okay. Right?’ He held her in his arms again.

  ‘Right,’ she whispered. ‘The plan. We have to stick to the plan.’

  ‘We’ll stick to the plan,’ he said. ‘So you mustn’t get freaked out by two hairs you missed in your basin. Deal?’

  ‘Deal,’ she agreed glumly.

  Half an hour later, Joan drove to Brighton Police Station. Victor’s purple Vauxhall Astra convertible had been an eBay bargain three years ago. She parked at a meter and went in through the front door. There was a second door marked IN, with a short queue on the far side of it.

  She joined the queue, and as she waited she read some of the notices on the walls. One was headed MISSING PERSONS. There were several photographs, close-ups of faces, with the same wording at the bottom of each one:

  IF YOU HAVE SEEN THIS PERSON PLEASE CONTACT YOUR NEAREST POLICE STATION.

  Joan didn’t recognize any of them. She read another notice, warning about alcohol abuse, and another about drugs. Finally, she reached the front desk. A woman in her thirties, wearing a white shirt and a black tie, asked if she could help her.

  Joan was glad the woman could not see her knees. They were trembling. ‘I want to report a missing person,’ she said.

  ‘All right,’ the woman said. ‘Can you give me some details?’

  ‘Victor . . . my husband. He didn’t come home last night. I’m worried because . . . he . . . this . . . he . . . this is very unusual . . . I mean . . . not unusual . . . I mean . . . he has never in his life not come home . . . in the evening . . . after work.’ Joan felt her face burning. She was stumbling over the words. She felt hot and confused. ‘He doesn’t . . . you know . . . I mean . . . he always does . . . come home . . . my husband.’

  There was a brief silence. Suddenly, in this silence, all Joan could think about were the two hairs in the washbasin.

  ‘I see,’ the woman said. ‘And you are?’ She picked up a pen.

  ‘His wife,’ Joan said, dumbly, her voice trembling. She could feel sweat trickling down her neck.

  ‘Your name?’ the woman said patiently.

  ‘Yes, yes. I’m Joan. Mrs . . . er . . . Mrs Smiley.’

  The woman wrote this down. ‘If you could step aside and wait for a moment, I’ll get an officer to come and take down some details.’

  Joan stepped aside. The woman went over to the phone. One of her colleagues attended to the next person in the queue behind Joan. A young girl, who looked spaced out, reported she had lost her mobile phone.

  Joan took some deep breaths, trying to calm down. She watched several more people in turn step up to the counter. But she wasn’t listening to them. She was trying to rehearse what Don had told her to say.

  ‘Mrs Smiley?’

  Joan turned at the sound of her name, and saw a tubby young woman with short fair hair. She was wearing a black uniform waistcoat over a white shirt and black trousers. The officer was peering at the people in the room.

  Joan raised a hand. ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  The officer had a radio sticking out of her breast pocket. A badge on one side of her chest bore a police crest with the words BRIGHTON AND HOVE. A badge on the other side said COMMUNITY SUPPORT. ‘Would you come this way, please?’ she said.

  Joan followed her through the door, along a corridor and into a cramped, windowless room. There was only a metal table with chairs either side of it. ‘I’m PCSO Watts,’ she said politely, but very seriously.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ Joan replied. She was now drenched in sweat.

  The Police Community Support Officer asked her to sit down. Then PCSO Watts sat on the other side of the table. She opened a large notebook with a printed form on it. ‘Your husband is missing, is that right, Mrs Smiley?’

  Joan nodded.

  PCSO Watts picked up a biro. ‘Right, let’s start with his name.’

  ‘Victor Joseph Smiley,’ she said.

  The officer wrote this down, very slowly. ‘And his age?’

  ‘Forty-three.’

  ‘You are worried because he did not come home last night, is that correct?’

  Joan nodded. She did not like the way the officer was looking at her, studying her face intently. It felt as if she was looking right through her. ‘It’s very unusual,’ Joan said. ‘I mean, more than unusual, if you see what I mean?’

  The officer frowned. ‘I’m afraid I don’t, no.’

  ‘Victor’s never done this before. Not come home. Not ever in all the time we’ve been married.’

  ‘Which is how long?’

  ‘Nineteen and a half years,’ Joan replied. She could have added, three weeks, four days, sixteen hours and seven minutes too long.

  For the next quarter of an hour Joan felt she was on trial. The officer fired one question after another at her. Had Joan contacted any of their friends? Yes, Ted and Madge, but they had not seen him or heard fro
m him. What about Victor’s relatives? All he had was a sister, in Melbourne.

  The officer wrote each answer down, painfully slowly.

  Joan did her best to talk about Victor in a way she thought any loving wife would talk about her husband. He was the perfect man in every way. She adored him. He adored her. They had never spent a single day apart in all the years they had been married. Of course, they had their ups and downs, like any couple. She said that he was feeling very low after being made redundant. Very, very low.

  But he had never, ever, not come home. Until last night.

  Even after Joan said all this, PCSO Watts asked if this had ever happened before. Joan told her again that it had not. She repeated that he had been feeling low after being told he was being made redundant.

  PCSO Watts was kind and full of sympathy. ‘Have you tried phoning his mobile number?’ she asked.

  Joan went white for an instant. She felt her stomach churn like a cement mixer. The officer went in and out of focus. That stupid fool, Don! Why the hell didn’t he tell me to do that? How could I have been so stupid not to have thought of it?

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I try all the time. I keep phoning and phoning him.’

  ‘Are you worried about the effect that losing his job might have had on him and on his pride?’ PCSO Watts asked.

  ‘He is a proud man,’ Joan said. Well, she thought, that was better than saying he was an arrogant tosser.

  ‘Do you have a photograph of him we could circulate?’ Juliet Watts asked.

  ‘I could find one,’ she said.

  ‘That would be very helpful.’

  ‘I’ll drop one in.’

  ‘Look,’ the officer said, ‘I know this might be difficult for you, but is it possible that Victor is having an affair?’

  Joan shook her head. ‘No. He loves me. We are very close. We are very, very close.’

  ‘So, you are worried about his state of mind after losing his job?’

  ‘I am very worried,’ Joan said. Don had told her to focus on this. Don had told her to try to make the police think he might have killed himself. ‘Victor is such a proud man. He came home in tears and sobbed his heart out the day he heard the news.’