A Twist of the Knife

by Peter James

  Driving home from the station some days, he found himself starting to envy his neighbours more and more. Not their houses or their cars – his large, hybrid Lexus was up there with any of them, and so was Shirley’s convertible Mercedes SL – no, it was what seemed to him to be their contentment. Couples actually happy to be with each other. In truth, he did not look forward to coming home very much.

  It tended to be much the same most nights. Shirley, in some shapeless tracksuit or onesie, lying back on the sofa, stroking the cat, which had become as fat as her, watching some rubbish on the box and stuffing her face with some confection from a chocolate box lying on the sofa beside her, and swigging it down with Chardonnay.

  She’d raise a hand, as if to warn him to be silent and not interrupt her programme, and say, ‘Dinner’s in the microwave – give it three minutes.’ Then she’d pop another chocolate in her mouth, take another swig of wine and return her intent gaze to the screen.

  Once a week they made love. A perfunctory, clinical function of mutual relief that rarely involved kissing, more a quick groping around each other’s erogenous zones, the right movements discovered and fine-tuned over two decades, then it would be done and she would return to watching the television and he to the papers or a book.

  On Saturdays in winter he went to watch his football team, The Albion, when they were playing at home, or else he watched television. On the days at the stadium when it wasn’t his turn to drive, he’d enjoy a few beers with his mates, and then a few more, inevitably arriving home later than he had promised, to be greeted by an angry Shirley, all dolled up, tapping her watch, telling him they were embarrassingly late for some dinner they were going out to.

  Up in the bedroom, getting changed to go out to dinner, frequently with Shirley’s closest friend and her husband, neither of whom he particularly cared for, he would think to himself, dismally, is this it? Is this my life? Is this how it’s always going to be?

  Is this all it’s ever going to be?

  And increasingly, late on Saturday night when they returned home, while Shirley went to the bathroom to begin her ritual of removing her make-up, and then putting on her bedtime war paint, he would nip into his den and go online. To the DreamWife website.

  And read, and dream.

  DreamWife Corporation will genetically engineer the perfect wife. All you have to do is describe every detail of your perfect woman, have your brain scanned and downloaded, and DreamWife.com’s computerized technology will do the rest. Using advanced, accelerated genetic development, your woman will be created at the age you specify, and come to you complete with all the memories of your actual married life implanted in her brain, but with the bad stuff edited out by cunning search-and-replace technology. She will be everything you had hoped your wife would be, but never was. Delivery is just twelve months. Full refund if not satisfied.

  *

  At a mere £550,000, it was a bargain. Or would be, if he happened to have a spare £550,000 sitting around – and no wife.

  Then late one Saturday night, Clive had a light-bulb moment. He realized that the two things could, actually, be elegantly combined – and how it could be done. While Shirley slept, looking like a ghost, with her face caked in anti-wrinkle mask, he lay awake, thinking, planning, scheming, hatching.

  First thing on Monday morning, in the office, he phoned his IFA and told him he felt it was sensible for him to have a life-insurance policy. He did his best to make it sound innocent and altruistic. If anything happened to him, he wanted Shirley to be able to continue in the lifestyle she currently enjoyed. So the policy should be big enough to pay off the mortgage, and provide her with a continued decent income.

  ‘Well, Clive, if you are going to do this, might I suggest you also take a policy out on Shirley. Just in case, you never know . . .’

  ‘Well that’s a thought,’ Clive replied.

  ‘You share the house. If anything should happen to her, you’ve no idea how you might react. You might be too grief-stricken to carry on with your work. It happens. You’d be wise to take precautions.’

  Clive knew what his IFA’s motivation was. Simple. The fat commission. And that suited him down to the ground. It was a small price to pay for the benefits to follow. He decided to follow the sound advice and take precautions.

  A month later, after he and Shirley had completed all the forms and been visited by a doctor from the insurance company for medical examinations, the policy was in place. Both their lives were now insured for two million pounds. Now all he had to do was bide his time. Idiots got caught by not waiting long enough after taking out a policy on a loved one, before killing them. He had read about that in newspapers and in crime novels, and had seen it in crime shows on television. He had to give it plenty of time. Allow clear water between taking out the policy – and then claiming on it.

  Clear water.

  Another light-bulb moment!

  The more he thought about clear water, the more he liked the idea. Water. The sea. Big, deep oceans. And it was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in a little over a year’s time. What better way to celebrate than by going on a cruise? Shirley would like that. She could eat all day long. And all night long. What better place for a sloth?

  A really nice, long cruise. In a nice big ship. Across a big, deep ocean.

  Perfect!

  Shirley was thrilled to bits when he told her it was all booked. In fact he could hardly remember a time when she had looked more pleased. Within minutes of springing the surprise on her, she was on the phone to her friends, telling them all about the fantastic cruise he was taking her on. One of the best cruise lines, all around the Caribbean. Utter pampered luxury. An hour later she was on the internet, starting to buy her cruise wardrobe. Even though it was still almost a year away.

  Without telling Shirley, he remortgaged the house, giving him the extra money he needed to pay the DreamWife deposit. When he had completed the formalities, he received by courier a large, heavy wrist-watch. It contained a micro-scanner and camera, which, he had been informed, would download all the memories from Shirley’s brain and implant them in his new wife. It was accompanied by detailed instructions on when to activate the camera – in the presence of any woman he met or saw, either in the flesh, on television or in a movie, whom he fancied; elements of her would then be incorporated in the manufacture of his dream woman. You just had to remember to switch it off after the download was complete or else it would continue to download going forward.

  It was a very long year, in which Shirley talked about the cruise almost daily until he was heartily sick of it. They would be visiting twelve islands, including Barbados, St Barts, St Lucia and Antigua, and she regularly showed off to him, with her increasingly fat and dimpled body, the twelve different daywear outfits she had chosen and the twelve different evening dresses. With, of course, the twelve different pairs of shoes and the utterly essential matching handbags. And with each new outfit, he stared with increasing gloom at the monthly credit card bills. Within the first six months she had spent more than the entire cost of the cruise on her bloody outfits.

  Way back in the early, heady days of their relationship, when he had been head over heels in lust – and in love – with Shirley, she would often show off a new dress to him when he came home from work. And back then, each time she did so, he would hold her in his arms, kissing her neck and gently reaching around behind her to unzip or unbutton the dress, until it slid down to the floor. Then he’d nuzzle her ear and tell her that the dress a man most liked to see on a woman was the one he most wanted her to take off.

  That was then. Now, when he saw each new one, he desperately wanted her to keep it on. All night if possible. Even in the bath.

  But Clive was sustained by his plans. The ones he carefully nurtured for life after the cruise. The plans for his new life. While Shirley continued relentlessly shopping for her cruise wardrobe, Clive wrote down another list altogether. His secret list. The requirements that he would b
e giving to the DreamWife Corporation.

  And finally the big day arrived!

  *

  On their first night at sea, as the SS Gloriana sailed from Southampton, Clive and Shirley – who was wearing a particularly slinky first-night-at-sea gown – found themselves sharing a table with a grim couple. Plump, bald and boastful, Harry Tucker, was a self-made mail-order-cutlery tycoon, and his even ghastlier wife, Doreen, a peroxided sixty-year-old blonde who wore a frou-frou miniskirt and high-heeled leopard-skin bootees.

  ‘Nice watch!’ Harry Tucker said to him admiringly.

  ‘Thank you,’ Clive said, and dutifully admired back the large chunk of male bling attached to the fat man’s wrist, realizing it was almost identical to his own.

  ‘We’ve obviously got the same taste in watches,’ Tucker said. ‘I collect them, actually.’

  ‘I like watches, too,’ Clive said evasively.

  ‘I’ve got two Breitlings. A Tag. A vintage Rolex Oyster, three Cartiers and a Patek Philippe.’

  ‘Very nice,’ Clive replied, not wanting to get drawn into a conversation about the provenance of his own watch.

  Helped by the fact that Clive had secretly been lacing Shirley’s drinks, in the hope that she would pass out later before making any demands on him in bed, she began flirting shamelessly with Harry – while Doreen started flirting with him. Clive became a little worried about where this might be going. The ship’s photographer, who had already taken one snap of Clive and Shirley entering the dining room, now took another of the happy foursome at the table. Well, to be strictly accurate, happy threesome.

  Their first night at sea was calm. For a change, it was Shirley, in an alcoholic stupor, who kept Clive awake by snoring, instead of the other way around. But he was fine with that. It gave him the excuse, not that he needed one, to dislike her even more intensely. They awoke to a gentle Atlantic swell, and when they were showered and dressed, they went down to breakfast. Shirley ate modestly for a change, just a few mouthfuls of a chocolate-coated cereal, her complexion a tad pale, while Clive happily munched his way through a full English. They whiled away the morning, checking out the geography of the ship, with Clive showing a particular interest in the stern, before having a Bridge lesson, accompanied by their new best friends, Harry and Doreen.

  Clive couldn’t help noticing that Harry seemed to have taken a bit of a shine to Shirley, and she to Harry, and that was fine by him. Flirt away, baby, he thought.

  By lunchtime the swell had increased. Shirley, increasingly pale now, managed a few mouthfuls of chicken salad, while Clive ate a lobster, followed by fillet steak and chips and then chocolate cake. In the afternoon they sat through a dull lecture on the Caribbean islands. Clive ate a hearty tea, while Shirley managed to down a cuppa and a solitary mouthful of dry toast.

  By early evening, as they headed out towards the mid-Atlantic, the weather had deteriorated to a Force 7 gale. Shirley, lying back on their bed, her face the colour of alabaster, said, ‘Clive, darling, maybe you should go to dinner on your own.’

  ‘Nonsense, my love! Get dressed and a stiff brandy will sort you out!’

  Holding her pudgy hand, he helped her up to the bar, where they met Harry and Doreen, both of them already quite smashed on Martinis. ‘Shirley’s feeling a bit off-colour!’ Clive announced.

  ‘A stiff brandy’s what you need! Brandy and ginger ale!’ Harry told her, and insisted on buying her a very large one. Followed by another. And then another. All of which was perfect, Clive thought. Harry was, unwittingly, doing his work for him. A short while later, in the dining room, Harry and Shirley were engrossed in conversation, and that was fine by Clive, too, as they downed first a bottle of fine white burgundy, then a bottle of red. What was less fine was the ghastly Doreen’s legs entwining themselves around his ankles, and her constant winking at him.

  He played along with it, happy to see Shirley so distracted, drinking more and more as the Atlantic swell worsened. All around them, one at a time, people were getting up from their tables and staggering towards the exit. One old man fell over and had to be helped up and out by two Filipino waiters. As their puddings arrived, a huge, silver-haired woman, wearing what could best be described as a chiffon wigwam, fell over close by them and vomited on the carpet. As the stench reached their table, Shirley turned towards him and slurred, ‘Clive, darling, I shink I need shome fresh air.’

  Excusing himself, he helped Shirley to her feet and escorted her, holding her tightly, towards the exit and up the stairs. Then he took her out onto the blustery deck in the pitch darkness.

  ‘Better, my darling?’ he asked.

  ‘Sh’I’m not shure.’

  Slowly, steadily, he escorted her towards the rear of the ship, until they reached the stern rail. Below them was the turbulent wake, with flashes of phosphorescence dancing on it. He could feel the pitching and yawing of the great ship, its stabilizers increasingly ineffective against the rough sea. After a couple of hundred yards, the wake became invisible in the inky, moonless darkness.

  ‘Stare at the horizon, my love,’ he said, looking around at anything but. He was checking out the deck behind and above them. Checking carefully. Oh so carefully. Making sure there were no witnesses.

  ‘I – I shhhcnan’t see it,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe this will help,’ he replied, lowering his arms down to her waist. Then, with one swift movement, he hefted her heavy body up in the air and pitched her over the rail. She vanished without a sound. He listened for the splash, but never heard it. He stared down at the wake, but could see no sign of her. He stood for several minutes, shivering with cold, then turned around, looking about him, then up and around him again.

  Then, stealthily, avoiding his face being seen by any crew or passengers, he made his way back down to their deck and along to their cabin.

  In the morning, after a mostly sleepless night in which the sea had become even rougher, he climbed out of bed, showered and shaved, picked up the daily copy of the Gloriana News that had been slid under their door, hung the DO NOT DISTURB notice on the door handle, then made his way along to the dining room, where he found Harry sitting on his own at their table, tucking into bacon, sausage and black pudding, despite the now quite violent motion of the ship.

  ‘Morning, Clive!’ he greeted him chirpily. ‘No Shirley?’

  ‘She’s feeling a bit green this morning,’ he replied.

  ‘Doreen, too!’ Harry said. ‘No sea legs, these women!’

  ‘Too right! She spent most of the night vomiting.’

  ‘Just like Doreen!’

  Clive had little appetite, but managed to down a couple of pieces of toast and a poached egg.

  After breakfast the two men joined in the Bridge class once more and were paired up with a couple of doughty elderly women. After the session they went to their respective cabins to check on their spouses, then met in the bar for a couple of large gin and tonics, and lunched together.

  ‘She’s a tasty lady, your Shirley,’ Harry Tucker said.

  ‘Doreen’s very beautiful,’ Clive lied.

  ‘She is. I’m a lucky man,’ he replied.

  ‘You are indeed!’

  *

  The following morning, Clive decided, was the time to raise the alarm. The ship’s motion was still very uncomfortable as he staggered along to the purser’s office on B deck and informed the officer, ‘I’m worried about my wife. She’s been feeling sick as hell for the past day and a half. I woke up this morning and she wasn’t in the cabin. I’ve searched the ship high and low and can’t find her. Could you please help me?’

  An hour later, after the crew had searched every inch of the Gloriana, the captain made a decision to turn the ship around, and also to send out a Mayday signal for all ships in the area to look out for someone in the water. Although, the captain told Clive, the chances of surviving for any length of time in this cold water were not good.

  ‘Even someone fat?’ Clive asked.

  ‘T
hat might give them a few extra hours,’ the captain told him. ‘I’ve done my best to calculate the current, and we’ll retrace our steps as close as possible to where she might be. There’s also an RAF Nimrod search plane on its way.

  For the rest of that day, Clive, accompanied by Harry Tucker and a large number of the ship’s company, stood around the bow rail, several of them with binoculars, staring down at the ocean or towards the horizon dead ahead. For several hours the Nimrod flew low above them. But all any of them saw were occasional bits of driftwood, a half-submerged container that must have fallen overboard from a vessel and a school of dolphins. At dusk, as the light began to fail, the captain abandoned the search.

  Clive Marples was inconsolable.

  As his mother said to him much later, at least if they found her body, there could be some closure. Tearfully, he agreed with her.

  *

  Eight months on, after a good show of mourning, much sympathy from everyone he knew and copious quantities of alcohol downed with his friends and frequently on his own, attempting to obliterate what he had done, one rainy Thursday morning in early June, Clive Marples’s phone rang. It was from a cheery lady at DreamWife.com telling him that Imogen was ready for collection. When would be convenient?

  The following morning, Clive threw a sickie from work and spent much longer than usual in the shower. He inserted a brand-new blade in his razor and shaved extra carefully. He rolled on deodorant and sprayed himself liberally with his favourite cologne. Then, with his iPhone playing his favourite music through the car’s hi-fi, he headed off from his house in Brighton, the satnav in his Lexus, programmed for the DreamWife Corporation’s headquarters, near Birmingham.

  He sang along to his favourite tracks all the way, feeling in a great mood, if a tad apprehensive about just how Imogen would turn out. He felt he was on the verge of a whole new adventure, the start of his new life. He could not wait!

  In truth, he was a little disappointed when he reached the address. He wasn’t sure quite what he had been expecting to find, but certainly swankier and more glamorous premises than the address he pulled up outside. It was a large, but very ordinary-looking unit in an industrial estate, sandwiched between an exhaust-repair outfit and a timber warehouse. But there was no mistaking he was at the right address: There, beside the door in small letters, were the words ‘DreamWife Corporation’.