Business is Business

Business Is Business

By Paul Diamond

Alice Willerby made three separate attempts to murder her husband but
failed with all three. Plaster of Paris in his breakfast porridge only
gave him several days of severe constipation. That was relieved by the
lime scale remover which she substituted for the liquor in a jar of
rollmop herrings culminating merely in an acute case of acid
indigestion. Poisoning having failed she tried to damage the steering
system of his Mercedes. But, not being very mechanically minded, she
only succeeded in putting the emergency flashers and the burglar alarm
on permanent alert. She decided that she was too nice a person to
succeed in her endeavour alone and she needed professional help. After
all she was not really a criminal. Any sensitive woman who had been
married to a brute and a bully like George Willerby for more than ten
years would have felt the same. Divorce was, of course, a possibility
but he was so mean that she knew that she would end up penniless and
she felt that she was owed compensation for all those years of misery.
There were no children so if he died she would inherit his considerable
assets, not just the business but hefty life insurance and property on
prime sites in the centre of town.

She discussed it with her friend the dentist. She visited him every
Thursday night after the
Line Dancing class. George thought the class finished at ten thirty.
The fact that it really finished
at nine thirty gave her an hour with the dentist, most of which was
spent in finding new ways of
pleasuring each other in his surgery chair. This was a versatile piece
of furniture and by no means
had they exhausted its possibilities. The dentist promised to think
about it. He had a very
wide spectrum of patients and was sure he could come up with somebody
who could solve her
problem for a suitable fee.

George Willerby wished he could think of an easy way of getting rid of
his wife. She
was a cold bitch whose only pleasure in life was spending his money.
Normal marital relations
were rare and unsatisfactory. The last time he had tried to make love
to her after a party on
millennium eve she had remained impassive throughout and when it was
over had merely remarked "You'd better send one of your men in. This
ceiling needs painting."

Happily his needs were catered for by his secretary, Cynthia Mowatt, a
thirty year old
divorcee who seemed just as enthusiastic about their activities as he
was. She was not a grasping
woman and asked for nothing. He though it only fair that besides a
generous salary he should pay her gas, electricity and telephone bills,
community charge and car tax and insurance and give her an account at
the town's best department store. The problem was that she lived with
her old mother so their Thursday night meetings when his wife went to
Line Dancing and he was supposed to be at a meeting of the Round Table
were confined to the office. He was too well known to go to 'The
Feathers' the town's only hotel. Cynthia prided herself on her dignity
and refused to do anything on the floor, even when he bought a thick
sheepskin rug. They tried once in the back of the Mercedes but his knee
locked and they had to abandon the attempt. He longed to exchange the
hurly burly of a hard office desk for the deep deep peace of a king
size divan. The desk was doing his back in. Cynthia suggested that he
install a couch or even a sofa bed but he decided that it would be
inappropriate in the office of a wholesale building materials company
and might cause talk.

He was thinking more and more of how he could dump Alice so that he
could install
Cynthia at home. He was so desperate that he was even willing to
accommodate her mother.
Divorce was out of the question. He could see the bitch now claiming
that when she married him
he'd had a small plumber's shop and his success was largely dependent
on the help and inspiration she'd given him over the years. She would
never agree to divorce by consent and the whole business could take
ages. He was not a vindictive man but he decided that the only answer
was murder.

For the sake of his health, and he hadn't been feeling too good lately,
he must get
rid of her. But how? One of the members of the Round Table, Charlie
Fenn, was a private
detective, an ex policeman who had resigned from the force under a
cloud with no pension. Most
of his business involved following erring husbands or wives, eventually
taking Polaroid
photographs or video tapes of them in flagrente which could be used in
evidence, or, more
profitably it was rumoured, used for blackmail.

Over a couple of lunch time scotches in a quiet corner of 'The
Feathers' George explained his problem. Charlie was sympathetic but
couldn't see what he could do. It was only when George mentioned that
it was worth ten grand to him that he began to devise ways of helping.
First he upped the ante to twenty grand. George agreed. "I think I know
somebody who can do the job for you. I'll need two big ones for me and
I'll set him up . After that you don't want to
know. I'll make all the arrangements with him. Anything goes wrong I
keep shtum you keep
shtum and he scarpers. Go home. I'll give you a bell when I've set it
up."

It was a week or more before the dentist came up with a possible
candidate to help Alice.
He still called himself Conko, Conko the clown, although it was years
since he had worked in a
circus. His name came from his clown make up which included an enormous
false nose, the conk.
Until a few years ago he had worked the occasional gig as an
entertainer at children's parties but
modern kids were not impressed by a scruffy old man who juggled three
tennis balls while
balanced on a rusty unicycle and he had got fed up with being booed and
even pelted with jelly
and blancmange flicked from dessert spoons. He accepted that he was now
a full time window
cleaner although nobody knew his real name. The trouble was that window
cleaning did not
produce enough to feed his two passions, whisky and gambling, so that
sometimes he did a little
illegal job which led to him being out of commission and the town
windows staying dirty until he
was released. His little crimes had resulted in little profits and
little prison sentences. The dentist
knew of his record and when he asked Conko if he could do the little
job that Mrs Willerby
needed done the clown thought it was way out of his league until he was
promised five thousand
pounds on its completion. That would keep him in whisky and betting
slips for a few months.
"I'll leave it to you." The dentist said. "I don't want to know how or
when. Nor does my friend.
You'll get your money as soon as the coroner gives her a death
certificate."

When he went to clean the windows in Charlie Fenn's office he was
surprised to get an
even better offer. Charlie knew Conko's reputation. The clown had even
done a couple of little
break ins for him. Now he wanted him to bump off the woman whose
husband the dentist wanted
him to waste. It seemed that they wanted to get rid of each other.
There was an advantage to
this offer though. Charlie said he could have two grand up front and
five grand when the job was
done. Conko remembered that the other job would only pay out after it
was done; no up front
money. He accepted and was told to come back in a week's time for the
gelt. In the mean time
he could spy out the land and work out how he was going to do the job
without a hitch.

As soon as Conko had left his office Charlie 'phoned George and told
him the job was on
but he had to pay ten grand to the hit man before he made a move. The
money was in his safe in three days. Meanwhile the clown went to case
the joint. The Willerbys lived on the edge of town in a big detached
house in a quarter of an acre. There was a semicircular drive to the
front and the garage was at the side with room for two cars. Nobody
takes any notice of a window cleaner with his barrow and ladders. even
when he comes to the front door canvassing for work, so Conko was able
to keep watch for a few days and note the couple's routine.

Every morning George left in his Merc. Alice had a ten year old Fiat
runabout
which was kept on the drive not visible from the road because a high
wall fronted the house. The
Merc went into the garage which had one of those remote control doors,
difficult to get in to. A
plan was beginning to form in Conko's head. He went to Charlie's office
and collected his two
grand. Charlie still didn't want to know how or when as long as it got
done.

In the early hours of the morning Conko on his bicycle went quietly to
the front of the
Willerby's house. It was pitch dark He had a small canvas bag with the
necessary equipment. He opened the driver's door of the Fiat, it was
locked but he had a universal locksmith's tool. One of his little
crimes had been stealing from cars. He opened the bonnet and with a pen
torch looked for the brake reservoir. In his bag he had a large plastic
syringe with a thin piece of flexible plastic tubing attached. He
syringed the brake fluid out of the reservoir and a little bit more
along the metal pipe which ran from it. Then with an electric
screwdriver and a fine drill he drilled a tiny hole in the underside of
the pipe. From the bag he took a candle and a cigarette lighter.
He
melted some candle wax and used it to seal the hole he had drilled.
Then he replaced the brake
fluid shut the bonnet, relocked the car and left. The whole job had
taken five minutes.

They say that if anything can go wrong it will go wrong. When George
was ready to go
to the office the next morning the Merc. wouldn't start. He'd driven
home the night before tired
and with a terrible pain in his back after a hectic session with
Cynthia. In his distress he'd
forgotten to switch off the headlights and the battery was flat. He
demanded that Alice drive him
into town. She told him to 'phone for the AA. He said that that would
take an hour. She said
'phone for a minicab. He said he didn't have time to wait for a minicab
and anyway what else did
she have to do. There was another row and it was gone ten before she
began to drive the car
towards the town centre.

They went about a mile before the heat of the engine melted the candle
wax sealing the
brake pipe. Another mile and enough of the brake fluid had dripped out
to kill off the brakes.
They were going down Church Hill to the T junction where it joined the
High Street. Alice put
her foot on the brake pedal and nothing happened. She banged her foot
down again and again but to no effect The Fiat careered across the High
Street and ran straight into the wooden wall of
'The Feathers'. It smashed through and flattened Conko who was sitting
on the other side
enjoying a double whisky. The clown was taking a little holiday having
earned his fee and was
starting with a session in the pub before spending the day in the
betting shop.

The local paper had a headline 'Triple Death in Car Crash Tragedy' and
a leader about the dangers of neglecting old cars. Charlie Fenn,
mindful of the ethics of his profession and with eight thousand pounds
in his safe, stuck by his promise. He kept shtum.

.

Business Is Business

By Paul Diamond

Alice Willerby made three separate attempts to murder her husband but
failed with all three. Plaster of Paris in his breakfast porridge only
gave him several days of severe constipation. That was relieved by the
lime scale remover which she substituted for the liquor in a jar of
rollmop herrings culminating merely in an acute case of acid
indigestion. Poisoning having failed she tried to damage the steering
system of his Mercedes. But, not being very mechanically minded, she
only succeeded in putting the emergency flashers and the burglar alarm
on permanent alert. She decided that she was too nice a person to
succeed in her endeavour alone and she needed professional help. After
all she was not really a criminal. Any sensitive woman who had been
married to a brute and a bully like George Willerby for more than ten
years would have felt the same. Divorce was, of course, a possibility
but he was so mean that she knew that she would end up penniless and
she felt that she was owed compensation for all those years of misery.
There were no children so if he died she would inherit his considerable
assets, not just the business but hefty life insurance and property on
prime sites in the centre of town.

She discussed it with her friend the dentist. She visited him every
Thursday night after the
Line Dancing class. George thought the class finished at ten thirty.
The fact that it really finished
at nine thirty gave her an hour with the dentist, most of which was
spent in finding new ways of
pleasuring each other in his surgery chair. This was a versatile piece
of furniture and by no means
had they exhausted its possibilities. The dentist promised to think
about it. He had a very
wide spectrum of patients and was sure he could come up with somebody
who could solve her
problem for a suitable fee.

George Willerby wished he could think of an easy way of getting rid of
his wife. She
was a cold bitch whose only pleasure in life was spending his money.
Normal marital relations
were rare and unsatisfactory. The last time he had tried to make love
to her after a party on
millennium eve she had remained impassive throughout and when it was
over had merely remarked "You'd better send one of your men in. This
ceiling needs painting."

Happily his needs were catered for by his secretary, Cynthia Mowatt, a
thirty year old
divorcee who seemed just as enthusiastic about their activities as he
was. She was not a grasping
woman and asked for nothing. He though it only fair that besides a
generous salary he should pay her gas, electricity and telephone bills,
community charge and car tax and insurance and give her an account at
the town's best department store. The problem was that she lived with
her old mother so their Thursday night meetings when his wife went to
Line Dancing and he was supposed to be at a meeting of the Round Table
were confined to the office. He was too well known to go to 'The
Feathers' the town's only hotel. Cynthia prided herself on her dignity
and refused to do anything on the floor, even when he bought a thick
sheepskin rug. They tried once in the back of the Mercedes but his knee
locked and they had to abandon the attempt. He longed to exchange the
hurly burly of a hard office desk for the deep deep peace of a king
size divan. The desk was doing his back in. Cynthia suggested that he
install a couch or even a sofa bed but he decided that it would be
inappropriate in the office of a wholesale building materials company
and might cause talk.

He was thinking more and more of how he could dump Alice so that he
could install
Cynthia at home. He was so desperate that he was even willing to
accommodate her mother.
Divorce was out of the question. He could see the bitch now claiming
that when she married him
he'd had a small plumber's shop and his success was largely dependent
on the help and inspiration she'd given him over the years. She would
never agree to divorce by consent and the whole business could take
ages. He was not a vindictive man but he decided that the only answer
was murder.

For the sake of his health, and he hadn't been feeling too good lately,
he must get
rid of her. But how? One of the members of the Round Table, Charlie
Fenn, was a private
detective, an ex policeman who had resigned from the force under a
cloud with no pension. Most
of his business involved following erring husbands or wives, eventually
taking Polaroid
photographs or video tapes of them in flagrente which could be used in
evidence, or, more
profitably it was rumoured, used for blackmail.

Over a couple of lunch time scotches in a quiet corner of 'The
Feathers' George explained his problem. Charlie was sympathetic but
couldn't see what he could do. It was only when George mentioned that
it was worth ten grand to him that he began to devise ways of helping.
First he upped the ante to twenty grand. George agreed. "I think I know
somebody who can do the job for you. I'll need two big ones for me and
I'll set him up . After that you don't want to
know. I'll make all the arrangements with him. Anything goes wrong I
keep shtum you keep
shtum and he scarpers. Go home. I'll give you a bell when I've set it
up."

It was a week or more before the dentist came up with a possible
candidate to help Alice.
He still called himself Conko, Conko the clown, although it was years
since he had worked in a
circus. His name came from his clown make up which included an enormous
false nose, the conk.
Until a few years ago he had worked the occasional gig as an
entertainer at children's parties but
modern kids were not impressed by a scruffy old man who juggled three
tennis balls while
balanced on a rusty unicycle and he had got fed up with being booed and
even pelted with jelly
and blancmange flicked from dessert spoons. He accepted that he was now
a full time window
cleaner although nobody knew his real name. The trouble was that window
cleaning did not
produce enough to feed his two passions, whisky and gambling, so that
sometimes he did a little
illegal job which led to him being out of commission and the town
windows staying dirty until he
was released. His little crimes had resulted in little profits and
little prison sentences. The dentist
knew of his record and when he asked Conko if he could do the little
job that Mrs Willerby
needed done the clown thought it was way out of his league until he was
promised five thousand
pounds on its completion. That would keep him in whisky and betting
slips for a few months.
"I'll leave it to you." The dentist said. "I don't want to know how or
when. Nor does my friend.
You'll get your money as soon as the coroner gives her a death
certificate."

When he went to clean the windows in Charlie Fenn's office he was
surprised to get an
even better offer. Charlie knew Conko's reputation. The clown had even
done a couple of little
break ins for him. Now he wanted him to bump off the woman whose
husband the dentist wanted
him to waste. It seemed that they wanted to get rid of each other.
There was an advantage to
this offer though. Charlie said he could have two grand up front and
five grand when the job was
done. Conko remembered that the other job would only pay out after it
was done; no up front
money. He accepted and was told to come back in a week's time for the
gelt. In the mean time
he could spy out the land and work out how he was going to do the job
without a hitch.

As soon as Conko had left his office Charlie 'phoned George and told
him the job was on
but he had to pay ten grand to the hit man before he made a move. The
money was in his safe in three days. Meanwhile the clown went to case
the joint. The Willerbys lived on the edge of town in a big detached
house in a quarter of an acre. There was a semicircular drive to the
front and the garage was at the side with room for two cars. Nobody
takes any notice of a window cleaner with his barrow and ladders. even
when he comes to the front door canvassing for work, so Conko was able
to keep watch for a few days and note the couple's routine.

Every morning George left in his Merc. Alice had a ten year old Fiat
runabout
which was kept on the drive not visible from the road because a high
wall fronted the house. The
Merc went into the garage which had one of those remote control doors,
difficult to get in to. A
plan was beginning to form in Conko's head. He went to Charlie's office
and collected his two
grand. Charlie still didn't want to know how or when as long as it got
done.

In the early hours of the morning Conko on his bicycle went quietly to
the front of the
Willerby's house. It was pitch dark He had a small canvas bag with the
necessary equipment. He opened the driver's door of the Fiat, it was
locked but he had a universal locksmith's tool. One of his little
crimes had been stealing from cars. He opened the bonnet and with a pen
torch looked for the brake reservoir. In his bag he had a large plastic
syringe with a thin piece of flexible plastic tubing attached. He
syringed the brake fluid out of the reservoir and a little bit more
along the metal pipe which ran from it. Then with an electric
screwdriver and a fine drill he drilled a tiny hole in the underside of
the pipe. From the bag he took a candle and a cigarette lighter.
He
melted some candle wax and used it to seal the hole he had drilled.
Then he replaced the brake
fluid shut the bonnet, relocked the car and left. The whole job had
taken five minutes.

They say that if anything can go wrong it will go wrong. When George
was ready to go
to the office the next morning the Merc. wouldn't start. He'd driven
home the night before tired
and with a terrible pain in his back after a hectic session with
Cynthia. In his distress he'd
forgotten to switch off the headlights and the battery was flat. He
demanded that Alice drive him
into town. She told him to 'phone for the AA. He said that that would
take an hour. She said
'phone for a minicab. He said he didn't have time to wait for a minicab
and anyway what else did
she have to do. There was another row and it was gone ten before she
began to drive the car
towards the town centre.

They went about a mile before the heat of the engine melted the candle
wax sealing the
brake pipe. Another mile and enough of the brake fluid had dripped out
to kill off the brakes.
They were going down Church Hill to the T junction where it joined the
High Street. Alice put
her foot on the brake pedal and nothing happened. She banged her foot
down again and again but to no effect The Fiat careered across the High
Street and ran straight into the wooden wall of
'The Feathers'. It smashed through and flattened Conko who was sitting
on the other side
enjoying a double whisky. The clown was taking a little holiday having
earned his fee and was
starting with a session in the pub before spending the day in the
betting shop.

The local paper had a headline 'Triple Death in Car Crash Tragedy' and
a leader about the dangers of neglecting old cars. Charlie Fenn,
mindful of the ethics of his profession and with eight thousand pounds
in his safe, stuck by his promise. He kept shtum.

.