Need You Dead

19 Wednesday 20 April

The sign on the green machine read: BRIGHTON AND HOVE COUNCIL. PAY & DISPLAY PARKING. CONTROLLED PARKING 9 A.M. — 8 P.M. ALL DAYS.

It was now 10.23 p.m. A heavy shower was coming down. Good. Another sign that Lady Luck was with him. And a further sign was that he still had his golf bag in the boot of his car, from his regular game on Sunday. He tugged out the old black umbrella with one broken spoke, the one that lived in the golf bag, and put that up.

Keeping the umbrella down low over his head, clutching the bin bag, he hurried from the side street where he had parked, headed down to the seafront, turned left and made his way along to the apartment block. He let himself in through the side entrance on Vallance Street, listened carefully for any of the other occupants, then closed the umbrella, sprinted up the three flights of stairs, unlocked the front door of the flat and stepped into the semi-darkness.

And stood still, listening. Shaking and sweating heavily again. What if—?

Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no way she has got out of that bathtub.

Even so, it took some moments before he dared step forward and switch on the torch again. Swallowing hard, he walked up to the bathroom door and stopped, scared to go inside. He inched forward, shuffling, then took a bold step and shone the beam straight at her. And froze.

She was staring back at him.

‘Shit!’

He dropped the phone onto the linoleum floor and backed out of the room, colliding clumsily and painfully with the door. His heart was jumping all over the place.

Surely her eyes had been shut when he’d left her?

Calm down, calm down.

He knelt and picked up the phone and saw to his relief the screen wasn’t broken, then pointed the beam back at her. She lay in the position he had left her. But had her eyes been open? He tried to remember, to think back.

They must have been open.

Must have been.

No way could she have opened them after—

No way.

He went back out into the living room. Get a grip. He went over to the table where the ashtray was. With trembling, gloved fingers, he opened the bin bag, then tipped the butts out into the ashtray. Lorna did not smoke, she had given up some years ago, but told him that Corin was a heavy smoker. He mashed each of the butts in turn into the ashtray, making it look as if they’d been stubbed out there. Then he realized there was no ash.

He lit a cigarette and smoked it hard and fast, tipping off the ash after each long drag. He stubbed it out and put it in his pocket. He lit another and smoked that too, and again put the stub in his pocket.

Next, he tipped the contents of the ashtray into a carrier bag he found in a kitchen drawer. Then, with his gloved hands, he pulled out the two beer cans and also placed them in the carrier bag.

Come on, think clearly! Focus!

He put the printed circuit board on the floor just under the bed, out of sight.

He peered back into the bathroom. Shone the beam across Lorna one more time. Then at the cable from the plug socket into the bath. Then at Lorna again.

How had this happened?

He perched on a chair, thinking again. Trying to wind the clock back.

Please could he wake up tomorrow and find this had all been just a terrible dream? He would give anything, anything in the world, for that to happen. But it wasn’t going to happen. He was going to wake up tomorrow — if he could even sleep a wink tonight — and nothing was going to be changed.

Lorna would still be dead.

Murdered.

By her husband?

Or suicide?

The electrician would most probably discover her. And then?

Had he covered his tracks well enough? Enough to put Corin in the frame rather than himself?

Could he ever really get away with this? Or live with himself?

He shone the beam all around the bathroom again. Above him, very faintly, he could hear laughter. Some television show. He went back into the living room. What had he forgotten? Missed? What would a crime scene investigator find? A smart detective?

What damned trace?

It was on the wall, right in front of him. He couldn’t believe it. Could not believe he had been so careless, so stupid. Where had he parked his damned brain?

They’d always had two photographs of themselves in here. One he had taken and disposed of, the framed one of them at Wolstonbury, which had been standing on the table. The other hung on the wall, a selfie Lorna had taken at the beauty spot near Eastbourne, Beachy Head. They stood close together, his arm round her, both grinning, with the English Channel behind them.

The thought flashed through his mind that Beachy Head was the country’s most popular suicide destination. A sheer drop of over five hundred feet onto rocks. That was one option right at this moment. He could be there in half an hour.

Maybe that’s what he should do. Just bloody end it.

As long as he had everything covered, so his wife and daughter would never have to endure the shame. The shame of knowing what he had done.

He pulled the photograph off the wall and tucked it inside his jacket. Reaching the door, he placed the carrier bag on the floor, as if it was waiting to be taken to the dustbin. Then he hurried downstairs.

As he stepped out of the entrance porch and onto the pavement, he kept his head down. Glancing quickly around, he couldn’t see anyone.

But the man standing invisibly in his own shadow on the far side of the road could see him.

Not that he really cared now if anyone did see him. In an hour he could be dead.

All the same, as he headed towards his car, he emptied the cigarette butts from his pocket and tossed them onto the pavement. I’m a naughty litter lout, he thought.

But sod it.

One hour.

One hour and he might be out of here. Gone.

He’d be litter himself.