Free A Twist of the Knife by Peter James Page B

each with a very different agenda in their hearts and minds to the ones they’d had on those heady days of their honeymoon and the years that followed.
    He planned to murder her here in Venice. He’d planned last year to murder her during a spring weekend break in Berlin, and the year before that, in Barcelona. Each time he had bottled out. As a former homicide detective, if anyone knew how to get away with murder, he did, but equally he was aware that few murderers ever succeeded. Murderers made mistakes in the white heat of the moment. All you needed was one tiny mistake – a clothing fibre, a hair, a discarded cigarette butt, a scratch, a footprint, a CCTV camera you hadn’t spotted. Anything.
    Certain key words were fixed in his mind from years of grim experience.
Motive
.
Body
.
Murder weapon
. They were the three things that would catch out a murderer. Without any one of those elements, it became harder. Without all three, near impossible.
    So all he had to do was find a way to dispose of her body. Lose the murder weapon (as yet not chosen). And, as for motive – well, who was to know he had one? Other than the silly friends Joy gossiped with constantly.
    The possibilities for murder in Venice were great. Joy could not swim and its vast lagoon presented opportunities for drowning – except it was very shallow. There were plenty of buildings with rickety steps where a person could lose their footing. Windows high enough to ensure a fatal fall.
    It had been years since they’d torn each other’s clothes off in the hotel room when they’d arrived. Instead, today, as usual, Johnny logged on and hunched over his computer. He had a slight headache, which he ignored. Joy ate a bar of chocolate from the minibar, followed by a tin of nuts, then the complimentary biscuits that came with the coffee. Then she had a rest, tired from the journey. When she woke, to the sound of Johnny farting, she peered suspiciously over his shoulder to check if he was on one of his porn chat sites.
    What she had missed while she slept was the emails back and forth between Johnny and his new love, Mandy, a petite divorcee he’d met at the gym where he’d gone to keep his six-pack in shape. He planned to return from Venice a free man.
    The Bellinis in their favourite café had changed, and were no longer made with fresh peach juice or real champagne. Venice now smelled of drains. The restaurant was still fine, but Johnny barely tasted his food, he was so deep in thought. And his headache seemed to be worsening. Joy had drunk most of the bottle of white wine and, with the Bellini earlier, into which he had slipped a double vodka, seemed quite smashed. They had six more nights here. Once, the days had flown by. Now he struggled to see how they could even fill tomorrow. With luck he would not have to.
    He called the waiter over for the bill, pointing to his wife who was half asleep and apologizing that she was drunk. It could be important that the waiter would remember this.
Yes, poor lady, so drunk her husband struggled to help her out . . .
    They staggered along a narrow street, and crossed a bridge that arced over a narrow canal. Somewhere in the dark distance a gondolier was singing a serenade.
    ‘You haven’t taken me on a gondola in years,’ she chided, slurring her words. ‘I haven’t felt your oar much in years either,’ she teased. ‘Maybe I could feel it tonight?’
    I’d rather have my gall bladder removed without an anaesthetic,
he thought.
    ‘But I suppose you can’t get it up these days,’ she taunted. ‘You don’t really have an oar any more, do you? All you have is a little dead mouse that leaks.’
    The splash of an oar became louder. So did the singing.
    The gondola was sliding by beneath them. In it, entwined in each other’s arms, were a young man and a young woman, clearly in love, as they had once been. As he was now with Mandy Brent. He stared down at the inky water.
    Two ghosts stared back.
    Then only