Journey's End in Lovers Parting

They have put me in a holding cell. I guess they will want to take a statement from me, but since I admitted the crime in my first 999 phone call, I guess there's no great urgency. Meanwhile, I am lying here on the firm, dunlopillo mattress with its waterproof (for water read urine) cover, looking at the whitewashed walls and the heavy metal door with its central observation grill. I am quite calm. Indeed, relieved is the best word I could use for my mental state. Glad that the hard part is over and the hammering in my skull has abated.

My wife's lover is an Estate Agent. He deals with lettings for Countrywide Lettings in their Leicester office. His name is Bruce; he is in his late twenties, tall, slim and athletic, with tightly curled dark hair that reminds you of Persian lamb. His eyes are dark too, and he has a ready smile with white, even teeth. I can see that he would be attractive to women, my forty-year old wife being no exception.

We met him together one Saturday morning. We were making an enquiry about a bed-sit close to Royal Holloway College for our daughter Henny, who starts at Uni in the Autumn. He promised to phone their agents in the area and let us know. Beatrice said she would pop in after work one evening and pick up anything he had. Well, it seems she picked up a good deal more than that.

I found out about their affair a couple of months later. I have no idea how long it had been going on, but one lunchtime I was in Leicester visiting a difficult client. I was walking down Charles Street and I saw Beattie walking out of the shop arm in arm with him. I followed them at a distance until they went into a small Bistro restaurant with curtained windows. I could not do any more at that time, and walked back to work with a deep sense of foreboding.

A week later I knew that it was a full-blown affair. She had given up her Wednesday and Friday afternoon volunteering at the Oxfam bookshop, and was spending them in his apartment. If I had not known, I should never have suspected from her behaviour. Superficially our relationship was unchanged. What had changed was that I was hypersensitive to every nuance in behaviour and language, and finding it harder and harder to smile and chat amiably.

Beattie had gone to bed, with her usual injunction,

"Don't be too long coming up. And don't bang about in the bathroom and wake me up when I've dropped off. You know how hard it is for me to get back to sleep."

I sat and pondered.

I had to come to a decision. Should I, could I, just walk away from the wreck of my marriage? Well, yes, to an extent. I am that stereotype of subtle villainy, the Tax Inspector, and, although I live in my home town of Leicester I work out of the Inland Revenue offices in Nottingham. It is a thirty minute train journey, and I find the time on the train is always profitably employed. It would be very easy to find a flat in or around Nottingham and shake the dust from my feet. On the other hand, why in hell should I?

Could I continue as I am, and come to an accommodation? No. Not in a million years. In the week since I discovered the affair I had come to realise that I was a deeply angry man. Yes, maybe suffering more from severely bruised self-image than a broken heart. How could she do this to me?

Should I force a confrontation? Maybe I could get some balm for my wounds by spewing out to her my hurt and humiliation. No! Not my style at all. All my working life has conditioned me to be the spider, waiting for the flies to fall into the trap. I read, listen, correlate and analyse, and find the weak spots.

Besides, after twenty years dealing with tax delinquents, frauds, embezzlers and forgers, listening to their feeble attempts at self-exculpation, I have developed a sort of grudging respect for recalcitrance, and a wholehearted contempt for people who commit the crimes and then grovel when caught. If she were to say; "well fuck you. Since when have you cared a fart for what I do?" I would be hard put not to cheer her on. So, no confrontation with her.

How about Curly Locks? Maybe a meeting with him might be a possibility. Could I scare him off? Maybe not. He knew she was married on that first meeting. It was no accident, no mistake that he was shagging her months later. He was unlikely to be moved by a sorrowing husband and father.

How angry was I; how vengeful? At that moment, not as much as I would become later. I was comfortably numb, as if I were floating in a sensory deprivation chamber. As the night wore on, my mind going round in pointless circles like a gerbil on a wheel, I got angrier and more bitter. I don't claim to be the best husband in the world. Maybe I was a bit lacking in passion, but so was Beattie.

She it was who decided that twice a week love-making was excessive in a couple with a teenage child, and once or twice a month was more age-appropriate. She started to wear a long brushed cotton nightie after decades of sleeping nude, and nagged me until I endured the discomfort of pyjamas. This thought made me sit up straight in my chair. She had been weaning me off sex for a couple of years, and now I discover she has a lover. She had really pulled the wool pulled over my eyes, the adulterous cow. Rage was overcoming me.

Three a.m gave way to four, and still I was stoking up my rage. I was going to confront him, not at civilized midday, but at the hour before dawn beloved by the Gestapo and the KGB. And I was not going to go empty-handed. My brother had recently given me the Walther P 38 pistol our father had looted from an SS officer in the last month of the war; along with a dozen 9 mill. bullets. Just the thing to scare the shit out of curly locks. At that time of night, and in that mood, it all sounded so reasonable. I put on my jacket and shoes, collected my car-keys and went down to the garden shed where the pistol was hidden until I could dispose of it safely. I put it into my jacket pocket, leaving the bullets in the box. I only wanted to scare him, after all.

Ten minutes later I was driving to his flat, over the launderette on

the Narborough Road. I rang the bell, and immediately started banging on the door. A minute later and he was standing in front of me, sleep tousled hair and bewildered eyes, dressed in singlet and boxer shorts. I could see the lower half of a slim girl, dressed only in knickers, standing on the stairs above him. This was the final indignity

"You swine." I shouted, "Why are you fucking my wife? You can find plenty of crumpet your own age. You are just scum."

He started to close the door, but I pulled the pistol from my pocket and brandished it. With a flourish I slid back the cocking mechanism to make it look more intimidating. His eyes widened and he looked terrified. Any moment now, I thought, the police will arrive and arrest me, and then Beatrice and everyone else will see how my life has been poisoned. I grasped the gun convulsively, and then, to my utter horror, it fired.

The bullet caught him in the neck, and a jet of blood arced out and upward in a fountain, soaking me. I vomited up all the bile in my stomach, and he fell over backwards, convulsing and shivering as his life bled away on the cheep hall carpet.

I took out my mobile phone and dialled 999.

"Emergency services, which service do you require?"

"Police and Ambulance please. I have just shot a man. I think he's dying. Number 311a, Narborough Road. Please hurry."

A minute later I was repeating my statement to the police dispatcher, and being told to wait for a car to arrive. I put the pistol down on the mat and tried, ineffectually, to push a handkerchief into the wound, but the hole in the back of his neck was the size of a hen's egg, and it was clear that nothing was going to help.

So here I am in this cell, waiting for the CID officers to take my statement. One thing I am resolved upon. Nothing in this world will make me admit that the whole thing was an accident, and that I did not know that there was a bullet up the spout. A man has some pride.