The Perfect Murder

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 post-mortems. 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