This story is set in the UK. I have tried to keep the police procedure and criminal law references accurate. Please forgive me if I've got some details wrong.
All sexual activity in this story (and there isn't much) involves adults over 18.
*
I'm going to admit at the outset, I wasn't in a good mood as I sat and ruminated that Monday morning a year ago. My wife, Sheila used to be as interested in sex as I was. When we both retired at sixty the previous year, her from teaching, me from the British Transport Police, okay, perhaps we weren't at it like rabbits every day; but we did it often; sometimes twice a day at first. By that Monday, a year later, I could barely remember the last time.
My wife said it was because I didn't have a hobby that I got bored; the boredom was leading to depression and the depression to lethargy. The end result being I was too tired for intimacy.
I had another theory. I was depressed because I wasn't getting laid, but suspected that she was. That was my conundrum. If she wasn't getting laid why wasn't she pining like I was? If she was getting laid, how and when the fuck was she doing it?
Take that Monday, for instance. She was in town meeting Sally, an old school friend, for their weekly gossip over a coffee. But was she? Yes she was. I only bloody tailed her and watched them meet up and go into their favourite café together. That had been the same story as the previous three weeks. And when she got back after an hour or so, she would have picked up some shopping on the way home and every receipt had the correct date, time and price code. I checked. I was a copper. It's what we do.
On Thursday evenings she went to a pottery class and I'd go to the pub. For those three weeks I went to the pub near the Community Centre and watched her go in and come out exactly on schedule. I even peeked in the fucking window and watched her making a pot. It was there, finished and glazed, on the fucking table in front of me, mocking me. There was no doubt she was genuinely doing the class, just like she said.
There were no other plausible opportunities for her to meet, fuck, shower and return without me being aware. So how come my every instinct was telling me that she was getting hers elsewhere?
It was the following Wednesday when the penny dropped. Well, I say penny, the resounding thud in my head when it hit me made it sound more like an anvil. It was the towels that gave me the first inklings.
Sorry. That made no sense at all. I'll explain. In our house Wednesday was washing day. On this Wednesday, as I dragged myself sleepily out of bed, Sheila came out of the en-suite carrying an armful of blue towels. "I'm putting these in the wash now," she told me. "Will you get the purple towels out of the cupboard and put them in both bathrooms, please?" It was a simple system. She changed the towels once a week and, by alternating the blue and purple sets, she knew they were all being turned over regularly.
"On it," I agreed, and did as I was asked, as she disappeared downstairs to the utility room. After breakfast, as I was putting my cup and plate in the sink, she shouted to ask if I could check to see if the washing machine had completed its cycle. I opened the door and looked in. No, I could see the towels through the glass hatch still turning in a blur of blue and white.
I set about helping her to strip our bed for the next load, pondering the same question that had bothered me for weeks. If she was cheating, how? As I worked, I was aware of a thought at the back of my mind, pushing itself to be heard but not quite getting through. We took a break for coffee at about eleven and, as we sat in the sun-lounge at the back of the house, I watched the first load of washing, the towels, blowing on the line. There they were, four blue bath sheets, four blue hand towels and, at the very end, almost out of sight close to the house, a white bath sheet.
The voice at the back of my mind was now jumping up and down, waving its arms and shouting obscenities at me in an attempt to be finally noticed. Cue the anvil. Why was there a white towel in the wash? It hadn't been in our bathroom laundry basket; I'd have noticed. It hadn't been used in either bathroom; there was no need. In fact, we only kept the two old white bath towels to use outside in the summer when the grandchildren were playing in their inflatable pool. It was March, and those white towels would have been put away, clean, months ago.
Was it possible that she'd been fucking someone in our own home, and it was easier to hide the evidence by doing it on the damn towels rather than leave visible marks on our bedding? It couldn't have been in our bed: I may have been a heavy sleeper lately but I think that even I would have noticed her fucking someone next to me. So... Then the other anvil dropped. Jesus! It's so fucking obvious. I wasn't lethargic because I was depressed. The bitch had been doping me!
"You're looking thoughtful, dear." Her voice broke into my thoughts.
"What? Oh, yes. I've been working on this puzzle in my head for a while and it was very frustrating, but I think it's starting to make sense now."
"That's nice dear. Got to keep your mind active," she observed, absently, like she couldn't give a fuck, and went back to her book as she finished her coffee.
"Oh, my mind's active all right." But I kept that thought to myself.
So here's my crime reconstruction. The suspect, her, roofies the victim, me, and then invites her lover, unknown subject, into the house and sex takes place, somewhere.
The roofie. It's so obvious now. Three months ago we moved to a new regime whereby she'd bring me a small whisky as a nightcap at about half past nine. Then at ten we would take our tablets: A mild sedative to help her sleep, a statin for my blood lipids and a multivitamin for both of us. She said she'd read that taking our medication last thing made it easier to remember and was more effective. I made a mental note to take a careful look at my tablets when I got the chance.
But, if I was right, I knew the how, roughly the where, but who? Who could she call on to sneak into the house at that time of night? Fuck, no! It couldn't be that irritating, oily little cockwomble next door, could it?
It may be that I glossed over the introductions when I started so, as the cast of characters seems to be increasing, perhaps it's time for more details. My name is Mark Smith. It used to be Detective Inspector Smith until I retired at sixty, two years ago. It would have been Chief Inspector by then but for an episode earlier in my career when a weaselly little tit laughed when I told him that he was under arrest for breaking his girlfriend's wrist. Unfortunately he then fell downstairs, twice.
Nothing was proven but it did rather dampen my career prospects, so the promotion from the county force to a Detective Inspector's post in the British Transport Police was the ideal way to spend my last five years of service. It helped my pension too.
I tried to stay fit, but the lethargy hadn't helped. If my suspicions were correct, though, that would be resolved soon. I'm six feet tall, not bad looking and I really don't like being fucked about!
