Tony Hill u Carol Jordan 08 - Cross and Burn

worried husband reporting his woman missing. No chance of some smart-arsed copper eager to make a name for himself connecting this to any other crime. Nobody would be looking for a woman who wasn’t missing. He could phone her office in the morning. Pretend to be Marco. Claim she was sick. That would buy him plenty of time.
    And he could use this to help bring her to heel. Once she saw Marco was dead, she’d know there was nothing to go back to. She’d have to make the most of what she had. It was bound to make her even more eager to please, to offer him the perfection he deserved. He was her future. He was her only future. She was a smart woman. She would understand.
    To ram home the point to her, he took out his phone and took half a dozen photos from various angles. He thumbed through them, making sure they left no room for doubt. Then he left, turning off all the lights behind him. Nothing suspicious to alert friends or neighbours.
    When he arrived home, he poured himself a Jack Daniel’s and Coke and sat down at the breakfast bar, scrolling through the pictures of Marco Mather. He slowly savoured both his drink and the photographs, deciding how best to play the upcoming scene. He uploaded the photographs to his tablet. ‘All the better to see you with,’ he said.
    At last, he rinsed his glass, dried it and put it away. Then he went through to the garage, snapping on the harsh white fluorescent tubes that bled life and colour from the scene. He unlocked the lid of the chest freezer and threw it open with a flourish.
    The woman’s face was a caricature of surprise and terror. Her hands jerked up to cover her eyes from the shock of the light. He could see her eyelids fluttering through the lattice of her fingers. Normally he liked to go on the attack right away, to catch them on the back foot. But for once, he was happy to wait, to enjoy the anticipation of her reaction.
    Gradually, she grew accustomed to the light. One hand slipped down from her face to conceal her breasts. She peeked fearfully at him through the fingers of her other hand. ‘You?’ Incredulity made her voice tiny and tremulous.
    ‘Here’s the deal. If you scream, I hurt you. And I tape your mouth up so you can never scream again. Is that clear?’
    Eyes wide, she bit her lip and nodded.
    ‘I am the husband. And you are the wife.’
    Tears brimmed and spilled from her eyes. ‘I have a husband.’ It was barely a whisper.
    He shook his head, smiling indulgently. ‘You used to have a different husband. Now you have me. There’s no going back.’

53

    T alking to Carol had left Paula too jazzed to go home. She hated to inflict her edginess on Elinor, especially when she was carrying particularly heavy burdens of her own. Like a bereaved teenage boy in the living room. So she’d headed into Temple Fields, where the gay village rubbed shoulders with the hookers and the lap-dancing bars. A lot of her colleagues thought of Temple Fields as Bradfield’s badlands, but Paula had always felt at home here. She was old enough to remember when being gay meant you were an outlaw, not the darlings of a coalition government desperately trying to make itself relevant to anyone under forty. In those olden days, Temple Fields had been one of the few places it was possible to be openly gay, and she still relished the bustle and buzz of its streets in spite of some of the more recent memories her job had overlaid on those streets.
    She headed for Darlings and pushed her way through the press of bodies to the bar. Armed with a bottle of Belgian beer, she pushed back through to the tiny patio at the rear of the pub. In the old days, it had been the yard where the empties were stacked. Now, it boasted outdoor space heaters and tall cocktail tables where the smokers could hang out even in the dead of winter. She spotted a couple of women she recognised and joined them, lighting up as soon as she’d put her beer down.
    They swapped gossip, took the piss out of a new lesbian sitcom and diplomatically refrained from talking about their jobs. Two cigarettes later, Paula drained her bottle of beer, made her apologies and left, feeling like she’d turned the stress dial down to manageable levels.
    The house was dark and silent when Paula let herself in. She dumped her bag and keys on the hall table then went through to the kitchen for another beer before bed. She took one from the fridge then crossed to the patio doors so she could go outside and smoke.