Peter James: The Perfect Murder

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 weeks’ pay for each of the sixteen years he had served. That worked out at six months’ pay.

Victor was so shocked that after work he drank five pints at the Font and Firkin, as well as four whisky chasers. He had intended to keep the news a secret from Joan but, arriving home blind drunk, he blurted it out.

That night, Joan screamed at him in rage, and told him how useless he was.

At his desk the next morning, Victor had a bad hangover. He worked out how many visits to the Kitten Parlour he could make with six months’ pay and the remains of his savings. He realized it would be a lot more visits, and more tips for Kamila, if he did not have to pay housekeeping money.

To save his money, Joan was going to have to go more quickly than he had planned. There was no option. There simply was not enough time for Plan A. He was going to have to go with Plan B.

The only problem was, he didn’t yet have a Plan B.

But Joan did.

Chapter Five

The solution came to Victor that night.

As happened most nights now, he was woken at about 2 a.m. by Joan hitting him on the chest and hissing, ‘Stop snoring!’

At 4 a.m. Joan woke him again, climbing out of bed and saying, ‘God, Victor, you are worse than ever! What do you keep up your nose and down your throat? Trumpets?’

He mumbled a sleepy apology. He heard her leave the room and slam the bedroom door behind her. Then he heard the slam of the door to the spare bedroom. All of a sudden, he was wide awake with excitement. He had an idea.

Joan was always moaning about the little spare room where she went to sleep when his snoring kept her awake at night. It was grotty, she said, and she was right. The walls were the colour of sludge and the thin curtains had moth holes in them. It was the one room they had never bothered to do up after they bought the house. To begin with, they had planned it to be their first child’s bedroom. But they’d had no children, of course. So it still had the old single bed which the previous owners of the house had left behind. It was a sad little room.

Every few weeks, Joan would have a go at Victor about it, telling him it was high time to do up the room. She said he should make it look nice in case they ever had an overnight guest. He could at least make it nice for her to sleep in when she couldn’t stay in their room because of his snoring. This had been going on for years and years.

Now he thought he had the answer to two problems at once! Making the room nice for Joan, and giving him his Plan B!

Unable to sleep any more he put on his dressing gown and went into the kitchen. Quietly, not wanting to wake Joan, he made himself a cup of tea. He was so excited. Then he went up to his den, switched on his computer and logged on to the Internet. He entered the word cyanide into Google.

As he had found before, there were hundreds and hundreds of web pages on cyanide poison. Tonight, he steadily narrowed down his search. He typed in cyanide vapour. Then cyanide gas. He read every word, greedily lapping it all up. The more he read, the more excited he became. Some things he read over several times because it was better to remember things than to write them down. That was Rule 52: Leave no tracks.

This is what he remembered: The extent of poisoning caused by cyanide depends on the amount of cyanide a person is exposed to.Breathing cyanide gas causes the most harm.Cyanide gas is most dangerous in enclosed places where the gas will be trapped.To some people cyanide smells like bitter almonds.Cyanide is present in some paints, such as Prussian blue.

Now he really smiled. Prussian blue had long been one of Joan’s favourite colours.