Murdoch's Wife

by Peter Sellers.

"How much does it cost to have somebody killed?" Murdoch asked.
"How long is a piece of string?" Kieran replied.
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means," Kieran said, "that it depends."
"Depends on what?"
"Depends on who it is. You want me to whack the guy runs the bar down your street, it'll cost you X. You want me to whack the prime minister or the captain of the Leafs, that's something else entirely and it'll cost you Y. And I really don't like having to kill women. So if you want me to whack a chick, I either won't do it or I'll do it but I wouldn't feel right taking money for it. So who do you want me to cap?"
"I want you to kill whoever's fucking my wife. How much is that going to cost me?"
"Were you not listening, my friend? That depends entirely on whether your wife is getting her ass bounced by the guy who runs the bar down the street or the captain of the Leafs or the Prime Minister or another chick. So who is it?"
"How the hell should I know? You think she gives me names?"
"Ah. Well, that creates some difficulty. You see, I'm a craftsman, not a clairvoyant."
"Yeah, well that's the other part of the job. I want to hire you to find out who the bastard is before you whack him. I don't care how you do it. I just want him dead."
"But you need me to find out who this person is first."
"Yeah."
Kieran sipped some beer and thought for a minute. "That'll cost you extra," he said. "I'm a craftsman, not a private detective."
"Charge me X plus Z, I don't care. I want him found and I want him popped. And there's one more thing I want."
"And what might that be?"
"I want you to bring me the guy's fucking head."
"That," Kieran said, "will definitely cost extra."
Murdoch raised his hands in front of him, fingers splayed, in an expression of mock surprise. "What a shock," he said. "And since we're on the topic of dough, there's one other thing. Now, it's not that I'm of a suspicious or untrusting nature. I'm not. But there's nothing to say that you couldn't go out, pick any poor dumb prick off the street and whack him and cut off his head and bring it to me and tell me it was the guy."
Kieran thought about the chances that he might do this and decided they were slim at best. "I'm a craftsman," he said, "not a psychopath."
"Yeah, well that's as may be, but I'll still need proof that the guy whose head you bring to me is the same guy's been getting head from my wife."
"I'm assuming you mean a videotape or photographs or something."
"Yeah, or signed affidavits from a bunch of witnesses, which seems less likely to me. How much do you reckon all that'll cost me?"
Kieran smiled. "How long," he asked, "is a very long piece of string?"
Two hours later, Kieran said to Murdoch's wife, "Your husband wants me dead." They were lying in bed in the loft of the two-storey north Toronto apartment that Kieran had rented under another name so that he'd have a quiet and private place to spend afternoons with Murdoch's wife.
"How do you know this?"
"He hired me to find the guy you're screwing and kill him."
"So he hired you to kill yourself, basically. Oh, brother. What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to think on it," Kieran said. "Now turn around."

*********

For a professional killer, Kieran kept his life as ordinary as possible. He shopped at the local markets and he said hello to his neighbours. He paid his parking tickets on time and he made regular donations to a variety of charities. He kept normal hours, waking every morning at seven, and he never played his stereo too loudly. The last thing he wanted was to stick out by seeming mysterious, peculiar or unusually aloof. When anyone asked what he did, Kieran told them he was in marketing, self-employed, specializing in strategic and concept development and execution. He figured that was at least partly true.
Then one day a neighbour said that the board of the telephone crisis line he was on was looking for a marketing person. They were already hip-deep in accountants and lawyers but someone like Kieran, with a marketing background, could be really helpful in fund-raising and helping recruit phone volunteers. Kieran thought about it for a day or two. He realized that, much as he had no problem with people having their lives ended abruptly by others, he did see the need for those considering self-destruction to have somewhere to turn. So he accepted. Kieran liked to think that, for a killer, he had a very highly developed social conscience.
It turned out that Murdoch's wife also sat on the board. And when she walked into the room during Kieran's first meeting and he saw her for the first time, his stomach twisted in an unfamiliar way. And every time he saw her after that, the reaction was the same.
Over the course of several board meetings, Kieran and Murdoch's wife talked and were increasingly drawn to one another. Soon they were having lunch together. And, although she told him emphatically that she was not unhappy in her marriage, they were in bed together within a matter of weeks.
"I've thought about it," Kieran said to Murdoch's wife two days later. It was Friday afternoon and the sun was very bright through the skylight above Kieran's bed. "There's only one solution."
"And I'm guessing it isn't suicide."
"I'm really not the type," Kieran said.
"I can see that," she said.
Kieran looked at her with a smile. "No, the answer is you'll just have to sleep with somebody else. We'll film it or something. And then I'll kill him. Your husband will be happy. I'll get paid, so I'll be happy. And we can carry on as usual. So you'll be happy."
"So everybody's happy."
"Yeah. Except the dead guy. He won't be too thrilled, I don't expect. But at least he won't notice."
"The only thing I'm a little unhappy about is that you basically want me to sleep with someone I don't know."
"Only once. And it doesn't have to be someone you don't know."
He reached up and pushed the dark hair out of her eyes. "I'm sure lots of guys you know would jump at the chance."

**********

Kieran was not sure if he had ever been in love. But weeks before he first took Murdoch's wife to bed, he felt himself falling in love with her. Whenever he entered a board meeting his eyes sought her out. He had never been one to wait for a phone call before, but he felt small pangs of anticipation build in him when he thought she might call and equal measures of disappointment when the phone rang and it was not her. When he considered it logically, he was not sure why he felt the way he did about her. She gave no indication that she would leave her husband. She frequently promised to do things that remained undone or cancelled plans he was very much looking forward to with excuses that Kieran knew were not true.
She had cancelled out on theatre tickets, on summer weekends at cottages north of the city and winter weekends at country inns. It was obvious to him that her emotional commitment was less than complete. Still, he wanted her. And as he waited, he watched her behaviour and his own with growing irritation. And he played by her rules.

**********

"I know who you can kill," Murdoch's wife said.
"Who might that be?"
"He's a doctor. His name's Lackman."
"Why him?"
She turned over on her stomach. "Rub my back," she said. As he did so, she explained, "I went to see him a few times about this little problem I was having a year ago or so, and he lives near my house, and we've run into each other on the street a few times, and he's always really friendly. Anyway, at some point, my husband became convinced that we were having an affair. Mmm, down a little. There. That's good. He actually has come on to me a couple of times. It was pretty subtle, but I know he'd like to have a fling. He stands too close to me and he touches me a lot. Getting him into bed shouldn't be any problem. Anyway, he's not totally hideous. And he's already a suspect in my husband's mind, so that will help when you bring in his head."
"And you never fucked this guy?"
"Don't be ridiculous," she said.

**********

Murdoch's wife had been sleeping with Doctor Lackman for about seven months. She did it some Tuesday mornings and most Thursdays over the lunch hour. Days when she was not seeing Kieran.
"I want you to do something for me," she said to the doctor as they lay beneath the ceiling fan.
His eyes were closed but his mind was racing. "Anything."
She traced irregular shapes on his chest with her fingernail and said, "I want you to kill someone."
"What?" His eyes popped open and he turned and propped himself up on an elbow.
"I want you to kill someone," she repeated. "And then cut off his head."
"What?" He stared at her, thinking he must have misheard.
"You're a doctor," she said. "You know about this. You can cut off his head. I've heard about these anatomy classes medical students all take, where you cut up derelicts and people who sign that form on their driver's licence. This will be no different."
"What?" he said again. "No different? You're asking me to kill a man and cut off his head. That's substantially different in my book."
"Why? In school, didn't you cut off someone's head?"
"Yes, but..."
"And I know you've killed a couple of people."
His face turned a shade redder. "I didn't kill anyone. Those people just died, and it was during surgery. Nobody could prove I did anything wrong."
"Yes, but you know in your heart things might have gone better if you'd been a little less hungover."
"Why?" he asked. "Where did this come from? One minute I'm lying here all relaxed and the next minute you're talking about murder."
"Here's where it came from. My husband thinks I'm having an affair," she said. "And he's going to hire someone to kill my lover. That, my darling, is you. Now my husband tends to do the things he says he'll do, so I believe him. And I'd hate to see anything happen to you if it could be avoided. So I need you to kill someone, in order to save your own skin."
Lackman thought about this for a minute. Murdoch's wife could almost feel the wheels grinding round. "So you want me to kill the guy who's been hired to kill me."
Murdoch's wife laughed. "Oh, brother," she said. "That would be the worst thing you could do. Because the guy who's been hired to kill you has to report back to my husband with your head in a box or a bag or something. No. If you kill him, my husband will know something went wrong and he'll just hire somebody else. No. We have to make a deal with the killer to take my husband's money and leave you alone. Then we find somebody else, I take him to bed and you kill him." She smiled at him sweetly. "Then you give the head to the killer and he takes it away. My husband's happy. The killer's doubly happy since he got paid and didn't actually have to kill anybody. And we can carry on just like always."
"Why don't we just pay the killer again to kill someone other than me?"
"We could do that, but it's very expensive." And she told him how much Kieran was going to charge her husband for the job. She inflated the price considerably, sensing that Lackman would not know how to begin to check. And also knowing he was tight with a dollar, and wanting to discover how much he was willing to do for her.
Lackman responded true to form. "So I have to kill a complete stranger."
"Not necessarily. There must be a colleague or two that you'd like to see dead. Or I could find someone."
"Yes, I think that's a good idea. But isn't this plan awfully complicated?"
"Oh," she said, "you're a doctor. I'm sure you can figure it out."
Then she reached out towards him and Lackman felt the breath thickening in his throat and knew he would do exactly as she wanted.
"Oh," she murmured into his throat, "there's one other thing. Do you own a video camera?"

**********

Kieran was sitting at his usual table at the back of the bar when Murdoch walked in. The room was large and virtually deserted. "Good afternoon." Kieran smiled and waved a hand at the opposite chair.
Murdoch said, "How much?" as he sat down. Kieran told him.
"What?" Murdoch said very loudly.
"Please be more discreet," Kieran said, "or I'll have to ask you to look for another supplier."
Murdoch leaned forward across the table and continued in a stage whisper. "That's an incredible amount of money."
"What you're asking me to do is an incredible thing. You want me to videotape a man having sex with your wife, then kill him, which means doing it in front of a witness, then cut off his head, then transport it across town like a candied ham. And after it's over I presume you don't want to get arrested for it. And I know I don't. That takes an extreme amount of caution, preparation and attention to detail. And also an extreme amount of money. And it's all up front. Take it or leave it."
"Can I give you a cheque?"
"Sure," Kieran said.
Murdoch's expression told Kieran that he had meant the question as a joke.
"I'll just invoice your company," Kieran explained. "That way you can write it off." He'd done this before and it didn't bother him at all. He considered it a good idea to have a record of revenue and regular tax payments.
"Yeah, right. And what do you invoice me for?"
"Consulting on strategies to eliminate a competitive threat," Kieran said.
Murdoch thought about this for a moment. "Okay," he said. "Back date the invoice a month and I'll pay you right away."
"I'll send a courier tomorrow," Kieran said.

**********

Murdoch's wife was in a state of some confusion. Ever since Kieran told her what he did for a living, she had felt some unease. Given her background as a social worker, it made her frequently uncomfortable to be so close to a man who earned a handsome living by killing other people. Her friends, who did not know about Kieran at all, told her she had changed. She felt she had lost some of the focus in her life. And she felt a gentle pressure from him. It was obvious he wanted more than twice weekly trysts but, much as she had told he she had longed for someone like him, she really didn't want anything to change. There was a large part of her that felt it was time to say goodbye to Kieran. She had already begun detaching herself.
Lackman was a different matter. He wanted nothing but sex. He was too self-centred and shallow to offer anything more. The only disappointment for Murdoch's wife was that, unlike Kieran, the doctor was a pedestrian and mediocre lover and, despite considerable practice, he didn't seem to improve. But he was not frightening to her in the way that Kieran was. And she got the sense that ending a relationship with Kieran needed to be done on a permanent basis. He felt much too dangerous to leave alive.
Unfortunately, permanence was not a strong suit of hers. She was counting on Lackman to help her out.
Sometimes she thought she should just dump them both and work it out with her husband.

**********

Kieran made an appointment to see Doctor Lackman. He fabricated symptoms and, on the scheduled day, went and sat in Lackman's waiting room for half an hour, pretending to read an old Toronto Life while surveying the room and the other patients as they came and went. Kieran was successful because he was thorough. He never killed anyone without first getting to know them. Their habits and their patterns. Unlike others in his profession, he was not averse to meeting with future victims on some pretence or other. And he was quite curious about the doctor.
Finally, Kieran was called into an examining room where Lackman measured everything that could be measured and explored every place that could be explored. "You're healthy as anything," he said. "You must take really good care of yourself."
Kieran looked Lackman right in the eye and said, "I plan to live for a long time."

**********

Kieran followed Lackman closely for several days, becoming fully acquainted with the doctor and his comings and goings. Then, on the next Friday, he said to Murdoch's wife, "Start getting your man primed."
"When are you going to do it?" She felt a shiver of excitement.
"Next week. We'll sort that out in a minute."
"How are you going to do it?"
Kieran shrugged. "I'll work that out. Don't worry, you won't get any blood on you. But we have to do it someplace anonymous. I want you to bring him here."
"Here?"
"Yeah. Bring him here."
"How do I do that?"
"Tell him it's an apartment you borrowed from a friend. I don't know. You'll think of something. Just get him here and I'll take care of everything else."
Murdoch's wife suggested the following Thursday at noon, and Kieran agreed.

**********

In the apartment that Kieran rented under another name, there was an electrical outlet in the wall at the head of the bed just above the top of the mattress. The first time they'd used the apartment, Murdoch's wife had touched the outlet and said, "Isn't that dangerous?"
Kieran shook his head. "Only if you stick a fork in it. Even then, I guess not. Power's controlled by that switch." He pointed to the switch on the wall next to the door of the room. "I thought your husband was an electrician or something. You oughta know something about it."
"Why? That's what he does. We don't talk about it much."
On Thursday morning, Kieran opened the breaker panel in the apartment and threw switches until he found he right one. Then he went upstairs to the bedroom and pulled the bed away from the wall. With a small screwdriver he undid the plate covering the outlet and went to work. When he was finished, he pushed the bed back into place. Then, one corner at a time, he raised the legs of the bed and placed round rubber feet under them. He readjusted the carpet on the hardwood beside the bed, then took out four tacks and a small hammer and fixed the mat to the floor. Then he went downstairs, turned the power back on and went out to have a cappuccino.
From his seat in the window of the caf‚ across the street, Kieran watched Murdoch's wife arrive at the front door of the building. She let herself in and disappeared behind the glass and up the stairs. Ten minutes later, Kieran watched Dr. Lackman arrive. The doctor buzzed, the door opened and he too vanished inside.
When they were together the day before, Kieran told Murdoch's wife that a friend who knew about these things had set up a hidden video camera that would go on automatically. Then Kieran would give Lackman and Murdoch's wife time for a good, healthy romp before he let himself into the apartment and subjected the good doctor to an extreme case of coitus interruptus.
He looked at his watch and signalled the waitress for a refill.
In the apartment, Lackman was clearly agitated as Murdoch's wife pressed into his hands the pistol belonging to her husband that she had taken from the house. "I'm not sure about this," he said. "Look at my hands." They were shaking considerably.
"Don't worry. He'll be naked and lying down and focused on me. You can do it. Just stay in the closet until I get up to go to the bathroom. He'll watch me walk there. He always does. That's when you come out and shoot him."
Lackman gave her the same look of comprehension you see on the face of a dog that's just been told how to mix cocktails.

**********

When his coffee was finished, and he felt he had given the happy couple enough time, Kieran reached into his pocket and left several large coins on the table. Then he walked slowly to the corner and crossed the street with the light. Taking out his key he let himself into the building, whistling softly. He climbed the stairs with one hand lightly on the banister and when he let himself into the apartment all he could hear was Dexter Gordon playing "I'm a Fool to Want You".
He went up the stairs to the bedroom on the second floor and stood in the doorway, with one hand resting on the door jamb.
"Where is he?" Kieran asked to Murdoch's wife, who was alone in the bed.
"He cancelled on me," she said without missing a beat. "Come here."
Doctor Lackman didn't like being in the closet. He'd never liked enclosed spaces and he found that being cooped up, coupled with the prospect of killing another man, was causing him to tense up. Breathing slowly and deeply, he tried to fill his mind with happier thoughts. From somewhere he could smell the musk of her perfume. He realized the closet held clothes of silk and cotton, all she ever wore next to her skin. He imagined her standing before him, the fabric slipping off her body. The he started to wonder what her perfume was doing on clothing in a stranger's closet.
He was distracted by the sound of his victim entering the room. He heard footsteps and a few words exchanged but they were muffled and indistinct. His hands began sweating and he switched the gun from one to the other, alternately wiping his palms on a crisp white blouse.
He leaned forward to try and hear what was being said more clearly. The panic was building in him. It must have been long enough. He wasn't looking forward to shooting an unarmed man in the back, but it was rapidly becoming preferable to spending any more time entombed in someone else's closet. It was time to get out.
"Come on," Murdoch's wife said again, "Come to bed."
At that moment, the doors of the walk-in closet slapped open and Lackman stepped out. He was wearing boxer shorts and he looked very slight and insignificant despite the pistol clenched in his two delicate hands. From the bed, Murdoch's wife groaned, "Not yet."
"I'm going to kill you," Lackman said, voice wavering. Then he paused and peered at Kieran more closely, "Wait a minute, I know you."
Since he didn't pull the trigger right away, and was obviously going through the Rolodex in his head to figure out why he recognized Kieran's face, it was obvious that the doctor was not a true killer. So Kieran took the time to look at Murdoch's wife, lying on the bed, half covered by the tangled flannel sheets. "I really wanted you," he said. "Before he shoots me, get out of bed so I can have one last good look at you."
Murdoch's wife hesitated for a moment but then she began to get out of bed. She rose as she always did. Languorously, dropping her slender legs over the edge of the bed. Then placing a hand on the head of the metal bed frame and setting her feet squarely on Kieran's mat. As her feet touched down, Kieran reached up and threw the switch on the wall. Instantly, the current streaked along the wires to the outlet at the head of the bed, then raced along the copper wire Kieran had installed that led from the hot wire in the outlet to the metal bed frame, then the current surged through the frame into the sleek and beautiful body of Murdoch's wife and through her body into the metal plate Kieran had placed beneath the worn carpet at the side of the bed. On which her small, soft feet rested.
Lackman had never seen a person being electrocuted before and he did as Kieran thought he would. He lowered the gun and turned to watch the bed and the spasms of its occupant. Kieran took his own pistol out and shot the doctor through the head. Then, after giving Murdoch's wife a few extra seconds of juice, he switched the current off. He had never seen anyone electrocuted either and he found it very educational.
He knew it would take the cops about a minute and a half to make a connection between the electrocuted woman and the dead doctor and the electrician husband turned cuckold. By then, Kieran would be back home, talking to neighbours and shaking his head along with the rest of the board. He could imagine, too, the reactions of her friends. Murdoch's wife hideously murdered in a secret love nest. Who would ever have imagined such a tawdry thing of her?
He left the doctor's head attached. There was no real need anymore. He took one last look at the crumpled woman on the floor. Then he went downstairs, locking the door behind him. It was too bad about Murdoch's wife. Oh well. At least the cheque had cleared.