The Perfect Murder

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 pointed 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.