Chapter Twenty-Six
It took me some time to get to sleep that night, but eventually I nodded off and I dreamt of berries, mushrooms, and cakes.
I woke the next morning knowing the deadly nightshade would have done some work on James, but would it have done enough?
I listened for the sound of him getting up and going to work at the usual time, but the house was silent. By quarter to eight, it was beyond a late start. In all the years we’d been married, I’d never known James get up later than seven. I rose and went to his room.
I was glad I hadn’t been there. Judging by the expression on his face, he had not gone gentle into that good night and I would not have liked to have heard what was going on.
It might even have prompted me to call an ambulance.
I thought of all my hopeless plotting and scheming, and in the end he did the job himself.
I lifted his arm, rigor mortis hadn’t set in, he was still quite warm, but I’d have to get a move on.
I went to the lounge to think and soon afterward went back to his room with his phone. I unlocked it with his fingerprint and began to scroll through. I started with his WhatsApp.
I scrolled down his many contacts until I found messages between him and Lennie going to and fro, often laced with expletives. The essence of them was much the same as the conversation I’d had with James when I asked for my money back:
Lennie wanted to make a withdrawal.
James said that was fine, but he’d be making a big loss.
Lennie said he only wanted a little bit.
And James said, yes “but it affects the baseline differential, which impacts the foundational basis of the investment and will impinge on the ultimate, optimum return potential.”
That didn’t make any sense to me and nor did it to Lennie, and I think that was the point. As Lennie said in his reply, Does that mean anything, or are they just random words you’ve chosen? GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK!
The messages went on, for days, until Lennie announced he was going to the police, unless James a) gave him the money he’d asked for, and b) made a substantial donation to his hospice appeal.
Right. Fine, James wrote back. As a gesture of goodwill, with no admission of liability, I shall make the payments. How much?
￡50,000 to me and ￡500,000 for the hospice. So, Lennie really was a saint and James had paid nearly half of the money raised for the hospice on the night of the accident. That must have stuck in his craw.
There were no more messages for a while and I thought Lennie would exit stage left at that point, but in a final twist, there was one more WhatsApp message from him, sent on the morning of the party.
I’M STILL GOING TO THE POLICE, YOU CHARLATAN!
Was that the WhatsApp that sealed his fate?
If so, the moral of Lennie’s story was that blackmailers should stick to their side of the bargain.
Although at that point, none of us knew I was going to run him over.
That was just a lucky break from James’s point of view.
When it happened, he spotted his chance to get rid of Lennie and set me up to take the fall.
If the police had seen those messages between Lennie and James, it would surely have sent them in James’s direction. It seemed fair to assume that was why James had taken the phone.
So, Lennie had also had trouble getting his money back from James.
I had imagined that if I were cleverer or stronger or more assertive I would have persuaded James to return the funds I had invested.
I thought that if I were the kind of person who understood phrases like “baseline differential” and “foundational basis,” I would be able to talk him round.
But no, not even a man as successful as Lennie could get blood out of the stone that was James without threatening him with the police, which was something I would not be well advised to do.
Although judging by the way he’d been selling property and cutting costs—the Bentley, the redundancies, and, I was sure, his watch—some people had. I wondered what they’d had to do.
I looked through other apps and found a list of his clients.
Most of the names I didn’t recognize; they were wealthy people, and most of them had put in at least a million pounds.
After a while, I found a copy of my own, then I found investments for a Gordon and Margery Fisk, a more modest ￡125,000 each.
That must be Margery from the party and her husband.
Next, I found documents for the Faulkners, the Chamberses, Mary Bishop, the Thrussells, and the Thorpes. I found entries for most of the rest of the village. The amounts they’d invested mostly ranged from fifty to one hundred thousand.
Near the bottom I found one for a Mr. Lennie Green, ￡250,000.
And then, Eric and Brenda Billings for ￡20,000. Their nest egg.
I would have liked to have told Tarquin about what I’d found on James’s phone, but he no longer had any interest in the matter.
I wondered if it would put things in a different light with Parker and Khan, but I had a dead body to deal with now, and that made the new evidence something of a sideshow.
***
I opened James’s account and went on a spending spree.
I bought the basics you would need for a new life: clothes, shoes, toiletries, towels, bed linen, crockery, and pots and pans.
Then I had them delivered to an address I picked at random, somewhere in Greater Manchester, and I addressed them to Mr. George Strange.
I spared a thought for the poor soul who was about to receive it all, but at least, when James was declared missing, it would point the police away from the idea that he had died in his bed.
Next, I drove down to the SPAR, and as I arrived, I paused, opened the car door a sliver, and dropped James’s phone on the ground, just outside the carpark.
I went inside, bought a few things I had been known to buy before: chips, chicken nuggets, crisps, crisps, crisps, crisps, crisps, and more crisps, now that I was no longer restricted by James, plus chocolate.
Then I left, taking care not to run over the phone as I drove away.
I was trusting in the honesty of Upper Iffley shoppers to hand it in when they saw it.
It was not a stunt you could pull in Great Beadington—they’d be off with it quicker than you could say “lost property.”
I went back to Langley Hall to face the issue of the body.
I’d previously shied away from killing him in the house because of the difficulties I’d encounter in moving him anywhere.
Circumstances had overtaken me now, but that still didn’t mean I was strong enough to carry him out of the house.
I imagined getting him as far as the car, but not being able to get him off the ground and into the boot, then being found by the postman, a leafleteer, or a Jehovah’s Witness.
And anyway, where would I take him? Digging a hole somewhere was too risky, and I’d already learned that floating him down the river was not a good way to go about it. I could’ve done with James’s help; in fairness he would have had a cool head and some useful ideas.
I was left with dismemberment, which I had already rejected as being too gruesome, but it was starting to look like Hobson’s choice.
I couldn’t see myself cutting through joints and scattering limbs around the district, but I had an idea for a variation on the theme. A bit of searching on a vividly illustrated primary schools’ educational website soon gave me all the information I needed.
You take the brain out through the nose.
You have to stick a hook up through the nostril first and mush it all up.
I went to my sewing box and took out the tools of abandoned projects: crochet hooks and knitting needles.
I tried a crochet hook first, but it wasn’t quite long enough and I had to get started with a knitting needle.
It worked better than expected, though, and the mess could be cleared up with a few towels.
After that, I went out into the garden to reset.
It was a gruesome job, and it wasn’t going to get any nicer.
After clearing my head, so to speak, I headed back in, passing through the kitchen, where the rest of the deadly nightshade cake was still on the worktop.
I shoved it deep into the bottom of the bin.
I wandered through the house looking for something to put under the body.
Eventually, I found a huge blue IKEA bag in a dark corner of Mr. Billings’s shed.
It must’ve been his own because most of our furniture was antique, and what wasn’t was custom made.
I hoped he wouldn’t mind me borrowing it.
If he knew what I was borrowing it for, he probably would.
Still, I couldn’t really go on and put in an order for polyethylene sheeting. For a start, next-day delivery would not be soon enough. And I couldn’t go to the shops and look for it myself. What if I met someone I knew?
“Ooh! That’s a lot of polyethylene, Daisy!” they’d say. “Are you cutting up a body?”
So I took the IKEA bag upstairs, laid it on the floor, and pulled James down from the bed onto it. Next up was internal organs.
I cut his clothes off and he lay naked on the sheet.
It was the first time for many moons I’d seen him like that.
I hadn’t missed it. My mind wandered to Arty, but I got a grip and focused on the task in hand.
The instructions said to make a slit along his side, but that made no sense to me, he had ribs all the way along his side.
I decided to do it along the front—after all, the instructions were a guide only.
I’d already skipped step one, where I was supposed to wash him in either wine or water from the river Nile, and I would not be storing the organs in animal-shaped jars, which was step four.