Killer Women by Wensley Clarkson Page B

really moral indignation that sparked their comments. More a combination of jealousy – because many of them thought Gail was a very attractive woman – and a sense of protectiveness towards Graham Jones, whom they all considered to be a ‘good bloke’.
    As is so often the case, it was the husband who was the last one to realise that his wife’s friendshipwith the barman had blossomed into an out-and-out affair. But when he confronted her with his suspicions, she looked him straight in the face and said, ‘Don’t be daft, Graham. I wouldn’t do that to you.’
    ‘But everyone’s saying it and I’ve seen the way you look at him.
    ‘How can you even take any notice of bar gossip? Who d’you believe most – a bunch of customers or your own wife?’
    Graham Jones hesitated for a moment. The choice was simple: gossip or denial.
    ‘Well, you, of course.’
    No sooner had he said it than he knew he would grow to regret it. If only he had known that he had just sealed his own fate …
     
    ‘You must be bloody joking.’
    Rod Tillotson thought he was hearing things when Gail Jones first suggested they should murder her husband. They were sitting in a little coffee shop a few miles from the Belle Vue, snatching some time together, when she said it.
    ‘We’ve got to do it.’
    He could see from the coldness in her eyes that she meant business, but he had no intention of committing the ultimate crime.
    ‘Forget it. Why don’t we just run off together?’
    Gail Jones dropped the subject for the moment. But she knew the time would come when her secret lover could be persuaded. In actual fact, it took a few more sex sessions and a whole lot more emotional blackmail to do it.
    Then the handsome barman did more than just agree to help her commit murder, he came up with a fail-safe idea that he was convinced would help them get away with ‘the perfect crime’.
    Graham Jones was poring over his vast stamp collection when he heard a shout from the bar downstairs, where he’d left Gail and Tillotson to run the tavern while he retired early.
    ‘Gail’s fainted. Can you help, Graham?’
    The barman’s plea for assistance seemed perfectly reasonable, and Graham bounded down the stairs to help revive his pretty wife who lay slumped at the foot of the steps.
    As he leant down to check her pulse, he did not even see the pick-axe handle swinging ominously in his direction. The first blow crushed his skull as if it were putty. As Graham Jones turned, he just caught a glance of Tillotson before he smashed the wooden weapon into his head a second time.
    Blow after blow came crashing down on Jones’s skull. At one stage, the pick-axe handle got wedged in between the cavities of his brain and Tillotson had to pull it as if it were jammed in a piece of rock. Aftereach crushing blow, he stopped for a few seconds to recover his composure before continuing. It must have been mentally as well as physically agonising for Jones because each time he struggled up, in the vain hope that the attack was over. But it was not going to end until he was well and truly dead.
    Upstairs the Joneses’ two innocent daughters slept on – completely unaware that their mother and her secret lover were cold-bloodedly taking the life of their beloved father.
    Downstairs, the twelfth and last blow was being inflicted as Graham Jones lay in a puddle of his own blood, his head cracked open in little pieces like an eggshell. In silence, Tillotson disappeared upstairs to change his clothes so that there was no evidence to link him to the killing. Meanwhile, Gail emptied the bar till as part of their carefully planned charade to convince the police they had been the innocent victims of a robbery that had gone tragically wrong.
    Tillotson then returned downstairs with orders for Gail that truly tested her love for the well-built barman.
    ‘Make sure you hit me really hard. This has got to look good.’
    Gail shut her eyes tightly and started to smash that same