Peter James - A Twist of the Knife

He called the waiter over for the bill, pointing to his wife who was half asleep and apologizing that she was drunk. It could be important that the waiter would remember this. Yes, poor lady, so drunk her husband struggled to help her out...

They staggered along a narrow street, and crossed a bridge that arced over a narrow canal. Somewhere in the dark distance a gondolier was singing a serenade.

‘You haven’t taken me on a gondola in years,’ she chided, slurring her words. ‘I haven’t felt your oar much in years either,’ she teased. ‘Maybe I could feel it tonight?’

I’d rather have my gall bladder removed without an anaesthetic, he thought.

‘But I suppose you can’t get it up these days,’ she taunted. ‘You don’t really have an oar any more, do you? All you have is a little dead mouse that leaks.’

The splash of an oar became louder. So did the singing.

The gondola was sliding by beneath them. In it, entwined in each other’s arms, were a young man and a young woman, clearly in love, as they had once been. As he was now with Mandy Brent. He stared down at the inky water.

Two ghosts stared back.

Then only one.

It took Joy some moments to realize anything was wrong. Then she turned in drunken panic, screaming for help, for a doctor, for an ambulance. A kindly neurosurgeon told her some hours later, in broken English, that there was nothing anyone could have done. Her husband had been felled by a massive cerebral aneurysm. He would have been dead within seconds.

Back in England, after Johnny’s body had been repatriated, Joy’s troubles really started. The solicitor informed her that he had left half of his entire estate, which was basically the house they lived in, to a woman she had never heard of. The next thing she knew, the woman was on the phone wanting to discuss the funeral arrangements.

‘I’m having him cremated,’ Joy said.

‘He told me he wanted to be buried,’ Mandy Brent insisted. ‘I’d like that. I’d like to have somewhere I can go and sit with him.’

All the more reason, thought Joy, to have him cremated. But there was another bigger reason she had been thinking of. Much bigger.

The following year, on what would have been their thirty-sixth wedding anniversary, Joy returned to Venice, to the same room in the dilapidated former palazzo. She unpacked from her suitcase the small grey plastic urn and put it on the windowsill. She stared at it, then at the view of the Grand Canal beyond.

‘Remember what we said to each other, Johnny? Do you? That promise we made to each other? About coming back here? Well, I’m helping us to keep that promise.’

The next morning she took a water taxi across to Murano. She spoke to the same courteous assistant in the glass factory, Valerio Barbero, who had helped them every year since they had started coming. Signor Barbero was an old man now, stooped and close to retirement. He told Joy how very deeply sympathetic he was, how sad, what a fine gentleman Signor Jones had been. And — as if this was quite a normal thing for him — he accepted the contents of the package and her design without even the tiniest flicker of his rheumy eyes. It would be ready in three days, he assured her.

It was. Joy could barely contain her excitement on the water taxi ride back to the mainland. She stopped in St Mark’s Square to gulp down two Bellinis in rapid succession — to get her in the mood , she decided.

Then she entered the hotel room, hung the ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the door and locked it from the inside. She untied the pretty blue bow around the tall box and carefully opened it, removing the two contents.

The first item was the plaster-of-Paris mould she had taken of Johnny’s rude bits, all those years ago, when he had been particularly drunk and even more aroused than usual. The second was the exquisite glass replica, now filled with the grey powder from the urn.

Slowly, feeling pleasantly tipsy from the Bellinis, she undressed, then lay on her back on the bed. ‘Remember, Johnny?’ she whispered. ‘Remember that promise we made each other that very first time we came here? About coming back and making love here in this room every year forever? You were worried, weren’t you, about not being able to get stiff enough for me after you were dead? Well, you really shouldn’t have concerned yourself, should you?’

She caressed the long, slender glass. Hard as rock.

Stiff as a gondolier’s oar.

Just like she remembered him.

Wealthy guy, 39, non-smoker, tall, GSOH, good-looking,

WLTM lady for fun, friendship and possibly more...

It isn’t actually that I am being unfaithful to my wife at this moment, as I sit in my small den, at 3 a.m., logged on to a dating agency on the Internet, while Alison sleeps in the bedroom on the other side of the wall.

Because, you see, it is not really me at all who is online. Not debt-ridden Clive Talbot, with my credit cards all maxed out, my BMW about to be repossessed, and my mortgage company weeks away from foreclosing. They say if you haven’t made it by forty, you aren’t going to make it, ever. Well, I’m just six months short of that big birthday and I’m determined no one is going to hold that two-fingered ‘Loser’ sign up against my forehead.

No, sir.

Only problem is that, at this moment, my sole possession of real value is the gold Rolex on my wrist, which I bought years ago after a big poker win. In truth, my only ever big poker win. It is a very classy watch, but it’s not much to show for a lifetime of hard work, is it?

So, now let me introduce Sebastian DeVries, cool, suave, man-about-town entrepreneur, who is at this moment talking to one hot, seriously rich dame, whose name is Maria Andropoulos. For the past hour she has been pouring her heart out to me — sorry, to Sebastian — about her terrible marriage to one of those new Russian oil oligarchs. Tired of his constant philandering and bullying, she is in search of an affair — and, who knows, perhaps true love — with someone with whom she can settle down and enjoy the divorce settlement she will undoubtedly get from him. Of course, the latter is just my interpretation of where things could go — if I play my cards right...

And so far, so good — she likes everything she has seen and heard about Seb DeVries! And we have a date — lunch at her regular table at one of the coolest restaurants in London, the Wolseley, in three days’ time.

I’ve just met her on ParkLaneIntroductions.com. This is a dating agency with a difference — it is only for the very wealthy. Rich men and women in search of affairs. What better place to pull a rich woman? A client of mine told me about it — he said that because there is a surplus of women registered, eligible men can have six months’ free-trial membership. And I assure you that Sebastian DeVries is eminently eligible!

And, hey, Sebastian and I are not really that dissimilar. People always tell me I look like Daniel Craig. I think they’re right, although, actually, I think I’m better looking — more sophisticated. I have class. I’m really much more the guy Ian Fleming had in mind when he wrote those Bond books than Daniel Craig will ever be. I was educated privately — well, for a couple of years anyway, until my dad went to prison for fraud and my mother had to take me out because she had no money to pay the fees. But that’s another story.

It’s raining outside. The wind of an autumn equinox gale throws the droplets at my windows, clawing at the glass like the letters I get daily from the debt collectors that claw at my soul. The truth is, I’m just not living the life I was born to live. I have a failed business behind me, and now I’m working as an independent financial advisor, for a crook who never pays me the commission I’m due for the life insurance policies I sell, the dubious tax schemes I hook people into and the useless pensions I dupe my clients into buying.