First I case the joint. Familiarise myself with the categories and layout. Then I move closer: grazing book spines with my fingers as I go. I seize any title I think will come in handy and when the load becomes too heavy, carry them over to the most private reading table I can find. There are whole books dedicated to anthrax and letter bombs. The selection process having gone well, I make myself comfortable and start taking notes.
I pore over books with titles like Alchemy of Bones, An Almost Perfect Murder, Arsenic Under the Elms, Getting Away With Murder, In The Wake Of The Butcher, The Encyclopaedia of Murder, In Cold Blood, and Assassin!
I discover concepts like seppuku (Japanese ritual disembowelment, hara-kiri style). I discover the difference between hydrazine and chloroform.
When I’ve finally read all I can about bloody and bloodless ways to shuffle off this mortal coil, I decide to take the rest of the books home. The bug-eyed librarian glowers at me as she sweeps the barcode reader over the five books I’ve chosen. Her mouth is a small pink pucker. A cat’s bum. I think of my mother winking. I smile at her, which only seems to alarm her further, and skip out of there.
After two days of obsessive note-taking and more visits to the library I feel I have absorbed every relevant thing I can from the written word. Now it’s time to move on to popular culture. I go to my local DVD store and pick up a stack of murder mysteries, true-crime documentaries and enough microwave popcorn to stuff a horse. I pay very careful attention. I try to identify the mistakes the killer makes before the detective does. Sometimes I end up watching a scene over and over.
Nurse Daisy De Melker was caught only after poisoning her third victim. Before that she killed her previous husbands by sneaking strychnine into their daily fare. In those days pink strychnine was in fashion, which turned the bones of her prey pink. They hanged Daisy after finding evidence of arsenic in the thermos she prepared for her son the day he died.
‘Son of Sam’ mailman killer, David Berkowitz, despite being trained in Vietnam guerrilla warfare, made the mistake of parking his cream-coloured Ford Galaxy in the area where he shot those who were to be his last victims. In the car they found a loaded submachine gun and one of his infamous letters to the police. The lesson here is if you get away with too much, you get sloppy. Don’t get sloppy.
Over the years, Belle Sorensen Gunness (also known as the Black Widow) killed as many men as she could persuade to marry her and cashed in on the insurance. She also killed her ranch hands and some of her children. Her sister blamed Belle’s first husband who, in public, kicked the pregnant Belle in her stomach, resulting in her losing the baby.
Moses Sithole, South Africa’s most reviled serial killer, murdered over forty people, before making the mistake of using his real name on an application form to lure a victim. The court verdict took three hours and Sithole was sentenced to over two thousand years in jail.
Coral Eugene Watts used to drown women in baths to keep their spirits from escaping. Herman Mudgett lured people to his hundred-room torture castle where he would throw them down an elevator shaft and later dissect the bodies. He sold the reconstructed skeletal models to medical schools. Charles Manson loved the Beatles and made his spaced-out groupies call him Jesus Christ. Former boy-scout Richard Angelo injected his patients with Pavulon and then ‘saved their lives’. Sometimes the latter didn’t happen. Aileen Wournos, famous for killing at least seven men, was finally tracked down at a biker bar called The Last Resort.
Who were the killers that weren’t caught? Jack The Ripper, the bag-headed Zodiac killer, the Cleveland Torso murderer. And whoever killed Bubbles Schroeder.
I learn that in order to get away with murder there are some ground rules. Have a simple plan. Don’t have a motive. Have an alibi. Don’t boast. Don’t act creepy. Socialise as usual. Obey all other laws, especially on the road. Don’t leave DNA. Don’t keep the murder weapon. Get rid of the body: no body + no weapon = no murder.
Slowly, deliciouslyachinglyslowly, the plan comes to me, like chapters in a book. I write everything down. It’s not a novel yet, it’s not even the beginning of the novel. It’s the work I have to commit to paper before I write the first sentence. I don’t have a plot yet, or even a premise, but I have a good feeling about this. There is a thrill in my fingers. I think this will lead to my best one yet.
My cliché: I feel alive again.
I arrange to see my GP, ostensibly for my annual check-up but really so I can ask him questions. (His name is Doctor Olaf, I kid you not). Also, I thought it would be the clever thing to do after passing out in the shower for no particular reason.
The conversation goes something like this:
(SFX: rustling of papers as crazy-looking doctor speed-reads five pages of blood test results.)
Doc: “I’m happy with your cholesterol but you need to watch your blood pressure. You know what I always say about blood pressure.”
Me: “It’s the most important number.”
His face lights up. He has the energy of the eccentric professor in Back ToThe Future. His office is cluttered with promotional medical paraphernalia, as if he has promised to keep every freebie he has ever been sent. There is a stopped clock on the walclass="underline" an advert for a wrinkle cream.
Doc: “Yes! It can strip years off your life, you know.”
As if I don’t feel old enough.
Dr Olaf delights in facts. The more he can fit into the limited time we see each other, the better. I am fascinated by a gaudy model on the tangle that is his desk: a man’s severed torso holding internal organs. Pink lungs, green liver, yellow spleen. I have the inexplicable urge to touch them.
“Now, if you pass out again, you have to come back here for more tests.”
That seems like reasonable advice. He lifts his arms above his head and stretches.
“Everything else is good. Maybe don’t drink so much.”
That’s what he says every year, even though when he asks me, I always divide how much I really drink by a third. I don’t take his wrist-slapping too seriously: he has a year-round tan and always smells like cigarettes.
“So, Doc, I need to ask you something. It’s kind of private.”
“Your blood tests are fine! Whatever you think you picked up, you didn’t,” he winks.
“It’s not really about me, it’s a rhetorical question.”
“Ah. Your ‘friend’ has got a rash? Warts? Erectile dysfunction?”
I wish he’d keep his voice down.
“It’s a strange question.”
“Oh, believe me son, I’ve heard them all. They keep my job interesting! The stranger the better!”
“It’s for my new novel,” I say, savouring the sound of my words.
Doc doesn’t care; he is waiting for me to get on with the question.
“If you stab someone, in the heart, how long will it take for that person to die? Would it be quick?”
Now he is excited. Time to flex his medical brain. He does a two-step then begins talking with overt hand gestures.
“It would depend on a great deal of factors. If the knife is small it might only puncture the heart; if it’s blunt it might get stuck in the ribs and intercostals. A large, sharp knife would obviously inflict the most damage. And the knife should be removed afterwards, so that the heart can collapse. That would be the quickest and least painful way, if you choose the heart. If you choose something else, for example the throat, it would be even quicker.”