Interesting. Does she actually care about this guy?

“They’ll never make the charges stick. Not without proof she has been harmed. Corpus delicti, Megan. If there is no crime, there is no perpetrator. We have the body, remember. They’ll let Tom go soon enough. At worst they’ll think he’s a peeping tom. Hint’s in the name, huh! Although, I could make the police think there was some foul play. If you step out of line.”

“He’s your insurance policy.” Her voice is flat. I think the penny has finally dropped.

“Exactly, Meggie. You got there in the end, didn’t you?”

Chapter Eighteen

The next night I give Megan an extra-large dose of Nytol, disguised by an even larger glass of the Koskenkorva. She has developed a bit of a taste for it.

Earlier that day I was busy washing up. We took it in turns to clean up the kitchen after each meal and today I was rostered on for good-husband duty. Our sink is ceramic and deep—the sexy estate agent called it a butler sink. The plug is no longer attached to the bit of metal chain. It’s the kind of thing you should fix; the chain serves a specific purpose, allowing you to run the water out without fishing into the soapy depths. I had filled the sink with suds and begun the noisy task of washing up. I could see her standing outside the window, sucking on a cigarette as if her life depended on it and watching a series of small clouds labor across the pale blue sky. Although I had wanted to rip the disgusting thing from her fingers, I cut her some slack. This was a trying time for all of us. I waited until she walked back into the house before I dropped the highball glass into the water.

As expected, she came rushing to my aid like a well-trained poodle, to find a cut on my finger dripping crimson into the sink so full of watery soap it was almost overflowing. She plunged her hand in to remove the plug. I went to grab her hand away from danger, then feigned horror when she withdrew her hand to show me a slash on the fleshy heel part of it, about two inches long. I apologized profusely and sat her gently on the sofa with a tea towel wrapped round her hand.

The gash was ragged and fairly deep. I probably should have taken her to the hospital for stitches. But in the midst of a pandemic you don’t want to overwhelm an already stretched-to-breaking-point health service. Or at least that was how I convinced poor Megan to suck it up and douse the flame of the pain with paracetamol and a healthy slug of delicious Koskenkorva.

So now she is knocked out, I unwind the bandage from her hand and score the wound with the tip of the sharpest knife in the kitchen. I feel the muscles of her hand contract slightly. Even asleep, the body responds to pain stimulus. Crimson beads begin to form, and I carefully hoover them up with the tiny pipette that came with a brand of oral mouthwash for exceptionally bad gingivitis. I have always had great teeth and gums, but I thought it might be bad form to buy a random pipette from Amazon. Preparation and caution are the cornerstones of any plan.