That's him. He came into the room as if he didn’t know why he had, as we all do sometimes and wonder what it is we wanted. He looked calm and preoccupied but when he saw through the slightly open bathroom door two naked feet he stopped and stared. He didn’t know what he was seeing: two horizontal feet, still. He looked away and looked back again. They were still there. Oh, the look on his face: crumpled with prickly wonder and deep concern. He obviously thought he was alone with her. She, the victim, but then, what did that make him? If you saw his face without the context of what he was looking at, thinking about, expecting to see more of, you would laugh. I almost did.

    He moved slowly towards the door, seeing more of her: legs and then a torso, also naked. When he saw the first smear of blood, so red, so shocking it must have been, against the white tiles, he gasped. His frightening expectations were being fulfilled. He looked away and back again. What he was seeing was real. He must have known by then who she was. He started blinking wildly and his breath became quick and shallow. Was he doubting himself, his sanity? Was he trying to recall the last few hours? It was hard to see. He seemed stuck to the floor, only his torso moved this way, then that. Sweat glistened on his forehead. His hand went to his mouth. Finally he moved away from the sight. His legs seemed to be made of concrete. He stopped. He moved again. Stopped and turned. He stood rigid and then the blinking stopped: he had made a decision. He left the room and stumbled erratically down the stairs, thudding like a modern percussive. Thank god he didn't look behind him. In the foyer there was silence for a while; again he didn’t know what to do. Then he swore! His phone was out of credit, it seemed. This happens all the time. Foolish man!

    On the drive to the police station he sat staring at his hands in his lap. They were wringing themselves, Lady-Macbeth-like. He didn’t speak. He had moments of rapid blinking which he managed to control and ease. He paid no attention to the traffic which was horrible, not slow, just difficult.

    In the waiting room – it felt more like a dentist’s than a police station – we had to sit and wait. He seemed horrified by this. Every time he started to tell them what had happened, what he saw, they hushed him and said that he needed to speak to someone more superior. You would think this was reasonable given the seriousness of what he wanted to tell them but he only became more agitated. Two police officers at the back of the reception were obviously talking about him and when he noticed this he shouted at them. He was taken into another room for over an hour.

    On the way home he said that he wanted to go to my place. And then he was silent again. He had been told not to go back to the house until the police had completed their investigations. He obviously thought this was reasonable since he had no idea what he would do there. With a big scotch in his fist he paced my living room. He became very agitated when he remarked about some statistics he had heard somewhere, he didn’t know where, that eighty percent of wife murders were committed by their husbands. He seemed to be fixated on this piece of news and it turned over and over in his mind like a bad decision. It obviously made him physically sick. He threw up in the garden, all over the zinnias.

    Anyway, after it was cleaned up he calmed down a bit but still insisted on more scotch. He kept analyzing the questions the police asked him, searching their wording for clues of what they thought. It was clear he was almost convinced that they thought he had killed her. She was a wonderful woman; kind, popular, pretty in a clichéd kind of way, I thought, but there was something enigmatic about her; a little dark blot on her soul that would bubble to the surface every now and again and words of a particular cutting quality would spew forth and do their work. Of course, he didn't see it;  he wouldn’t hear of anything said against her: he believed her to be perfect. He saw this as a big problem as he most certainly was not. An unfaithful husband married to a wonderful woman who everyone loved. Only one or two of us knew about the other side of her. All of this was also playing on his mind, well, he said as much, and fueled his thought-train on the way to convincing himself that the police would charge him.

    When they did he looked almost relieved. All the air left him and he looked like a doll with all the stuffing removed. His frightening expectations being fulfilled, yet again. ‘Pathetic’ sprang to mind.

    He was finally tried and found not-guilty of murder but guilty of man-slaughter. Of course he was completely innocent but like the fool he was he made all the wrong moves, all the wrong decisions. He has always been conveniently predictable. Oh dear, all that bluster in an attempt to make them believe him. They didn’t.

    You probably have guessed by now who did kill her, but if you have not yet, you will, and then I will have to kill you too.