Cold Heart

The bullet blew off virtually his entire face. He was naked, but he appeared to be wearing swimming trunks because of the band of untanned skin which they usually covered. His arms and legs were spread open and his body floated face down. She watched with sick fascination as the blood continued to spread like the petals of a poppy, wider and wider; he was brain dead, but his heart still pumped, and continued for longer than she had calculated. Suddenly his outstretched arms jerked, his fingers clenched and unclenched, and he gave a strange guttural snorting sound, as if his throat were clogged with blood. A few seconds more, and she knew he was dead. Only then did she move away from the edge of the pool.

The bentwood sun chairs were replaced neatly, his towel folded. His sunglasses she put back in their case, and his half-smoked cigarette she left in the ashtray to smoulder and die — slowly, as he had. She wrapped her hand carefully in the edge of her floating silk chiffon wrap to remove the glass she had used, slipped it into the deep pocket of her jacket, then walked soundlessly across the velvety lawn, past the sheets of lead and lumps of rock that Harry Nathan had considered to be sculpture, to enter the house through the garden doors. She took the glass from her pocket, rinsed it and replaced it in the kitchen cabinet. She was fast, meticulous, knowing every inch of the kitchen, even wiping the taps in case she had touched them inadvertently. She surveyed the immaculate kitchen, making sure nothing was left out of place, and then, still barefoot, she returned to the garden the way she had come. By now, Nathan’s cigarette had burned itself out, the ash extending for a curved inch and a half in front of the butt. She made her way round the edge of the pool, not even looking at the body, which still floated face down but was now drifting almost in the centre of the deep end. She looked round furtively before picking up the weapon, a heavy Desert Eagle, still wrapped in a silk headscarf. Then she hurried towards a small shrubbery, full of topiary trees clipped into strange geometric shapes that were clearly meant to echo the sculpture. She was careful not to step on the soil but to remain on the grass verge. She fired the gun into the shrubs then quickly tossed it free of the scarf, to land just in front of the first row of plants.

A bird screeched as the sound echoed of the weapon firing, and she thought she heard someone scream in the house, but she didn’t go to investigate, didn’t even glance back, intent on getting out of Nathan’s estate and knowing it would take her at least five minutes to reach her car, parked further down the avenue. She did not put on her shoes until she was standing beside the Mitsubishi jeep. She bleeped it open with the alarm key and gave only a brief, guarded look around to make sure she had not been seen by anyone before she got inside and inserted the key, her hands rock steady as she turned it. The engine sparked into life and she drove off. Harry Nathan was dead and she was now a wealthy woman, about to regain everything he had taken from her and more. She would savour for ever the look in his eyes when he had seen her take out the heavy gun, seen him step back, half lifting his hands in submission, and then, as she pulled the trigger, there had been a second when she saw fear. She would relish the fear, because she believed that, without doubt, she had just committed the perfect murder.