Looking Good Dead

him with a gloved hand. The woman either had not heard him or was ignoring him. As he walked slowly across the room towards her, she began unfastening her pearl necklace.
    The man pulled something from inside his leather jacket which glinted in the light, and Tom craned forward in surprise when he saw what it was: a long stiletto blade.
    In two quick strides the man reached her, jerked an arm around her neck, and plunged the stiletto between her shoulder blades. Frozen by the surreality, Tom watched the woman’s gasp of shock, unsure whether she was acting or this was for real. The man pulled the blade out, and it was covered in what appeared to be blood. He stabbed her again, then again, blood spraying from the wounds.
    The woman fell to the floor. The man knelt, tore away her dress, then slit her bra strap with the blade, pulled the bra away, and brutally rolled her onto her back. Her eyes were rolling, her large breasts falling to one side. He slashed through the top of her black tights, then pulled them completely off, stared down at her naked, exquisite body for some moments, then plunged the knife into her belly just above her Brazilian-cut pubic hair.
    Tom stared, sickened, about to exit the site, except curiosity kept him watching. Was she acting, was the knife fake, was the blood gouting from her belly stage blood? The man plunged the knife in again and again, savagely.
    Then Tom jumped as the door behind him opened.
    He spun round in his chair to see Kellie standing there, holding her wine glass, clearly tipsy.
    ‘Did you find us anywhere nice, darling?’ she asked.
    He swivelled back round, and slammed down the lid of the computer before she could see what was on the screen.
    ‘No,’ he said, his voice quavering. ‘Nothing, no. I . . .’
    She put her arms around his neck, slopping some wine onto the laptop. ‘Ooops, sshorry!’
    He tugged out his handkerchief and dabbed it off. As he did so, Kellie slid her free hand down inside his shirt and began to tease a nipple. ‘I’ve decided you’ve done enough work for today. Come to bed.’

    ‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘Give me five minutes.’
    ‘I might be ashhleep in five minutes.’
    He turned and kissed her. ‘Two minutes, OK?’
    ‘One!’ she said, and retreated from the room.
    ‘I haven’t walked Lady.’
    ‘She had a long walk this afternoon. She’s fine; I already let her out.’
    He grinned. ‘One minute, OK?’
    She raised a mischievous finger. ‘Thirty seconds!’
    The moment she closed the door, he opened the lid of his computer and tapped a key to wake it up.
    On the screen appeared the words:
    Unauthorized access. You have been disconnected.
    For some moments he sat, thinking. What the hell had he just seen? It had to have been a movie trailer, it must have been.
    Then his door opened again and Kellie said, ‘Fifteen seconds – or I’ll start without you.’

5
    It was the best birthday present ever, in all her life, in all fifty-two years of it! Nothing had ever come close before, not within a million miles. Not the MG sports car wrapped up in a pink bow that Don had given her for her fortieth (which he hadn’t really been able to afford) nor the silver Cartier watch he’d given her for her fiftieth (which she knew he couldn’t really afford either) nor the beautiful tennis bracelet he’d just given her yesterday for her fifty-second.
    Nor the week at Grayshott Hall health farm that her two sons Julius and Oliver had clubbed together to buy her – fabulous indulgence but did they think she was overweight or something?
    Whatever. Hilary Dupont was beyond caring, she was walking on air, all twelve stone of her, floating out the front door, jangling Nero’s lead, proclaiming to herself, ‘A handbag, Mr Worthing? A handbag ?’
    Peacehaven, the suburb where Hilary lived, was part of the eastern urban sprawl of Brighton, a wide cross-hatch of residential streets stretching back from the cliff-top coastal road to the edge of the rural South Downs, densely filled with bungalows and detached houses all built since the First World War.
    A wide expanse of farmland began just one row of houses back from Hilary’s street. Any neighbour chancing to glance out of their window shortly before ten o’clock on this cloudy June morning would have seen an overweight but strikingly handsome blonde woman, dressed in a smock over a spotted leotard, her feet clad in green gumboots, talking and gesticulating to herself, being followed