Treading carefully, he returned to the front of the house and slipped the Yale into the keyhole, gambling that it would be the only lock engaged while Marco Mather was at home expecting his wife to return from work. It turned and the door swung silently open. He stepped inside confidently, for the benefit of anyone glancing out of their window on the way to bed. And he breathed in the smell of her home, nosing it like a wine connoisseur, relishing the faint scents of cooking herbs and the heady notes from the vase of lilies on a recessed windowsill. Yes, she had the basics of good taste, even if the lilies were a little florid for his liking.

Down the hall and into the generous dining kitchen. It was clearly the heart of the house, the sort of kitchen where cooking was observed like a religious ritual. A well-used batterie de cuisine was on parade and ready for use, a small array of battered cookbooks on the windowsill alongside pots of thyme, basil and oregano. His heart lifted. She was going to be the one. She’d cook like an angel and fuck like a whore.

The door to the garage was closed. He moseyed across the kitchen, helping himself to a baby tomato from a bowl sitting on a butcher’s block. He popped it into his mouth and burst it with his teeth, enjoying the sudden explosion of flavour, sharp and sweet. Oh yes, this was going to be special.

There were no surprises on the other side of the door. Marco Mather was lying in exactly the same position. Only now he could see Marco’s face. There was no doubt about it. The guy was definitely dead. And from the looks of him, there had been nothing peaceful about it. Heart attack, at a guess. Fat bastard on an exercise bike, what did he expect? Greedy twat couldn’t resist her excellent cooking and look where it had got him.

The beauty of it was that there would be no 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.