The Ability to Kill Read Online Free Page A

scattered about the country that his income, substantial though it was, was insufficient even to meet the maintenance obligations he had incurred by court orders. He had never disputed paternity, and had always tried to do his best for both women and children. There were just too many of them.
    The crisis came the following year.
    In the spring, he seduced a young Welsh nurse, a probationer in a London hospital. This was a mistake. Hitherto, he had had no trouble dealing with outraged fathers or avenging brothers; it is not hard to elude the economically impotent. He now discovered, however, that this girl’s father was a colliery owner of some importance. When she became pregnant, it seemed prudent to let her write to her father and tell him that she had also become Mrs Rouse. The pair then went to Wales so that Rouse could meet the family. The familyaccepted philosophically what they thought to be the situation, and it was arranged that the daughter should stay with them until the new house, which Rouse said he had just bought for her, was ready for occupation. That would be early in November.
    It was then June. He returned to London a worried man. He had managed to lie his way out of an awkward situation; but he knew that the relief was only temporary. To add to his troubles, another of his women, who had already borne him one child, was expecting again. That would mean more maintenance to pay. And then there was the one in Southampton, the one in Birmingham, the one in Leicester—the list was endless. If he did not keep the promises he had made in Wales and the angry colliery owner started an investigation, anything might happen.
    He had been jolted, probably for the first time, into some sort of recognition of his total predicament. As he began to cast about for ways of getting out of it, the regressive process accelerated.
    That same month he read in a newspaper of an unsolved murder case. It set him thinking—from now on we can use some of his own words—’It showed that it was possible to beat the police if you were careful enough.’
    He goes on: ‘Since I read about that case I kept thinking of various plans. I tried to hit on something new. I did not want to do murder just for the sake of it.’
    Naturally not; but what murder had he in mind at that point? He was, as he explained, ‘in a tangle’; and, ‘there were other difficulties … I was fed up. I wanted to start afresh.’ Then, why did he not do as so many others have done; simply run away from the whole mess; just go abroad and disappear?
    His confession gives no coherent answer, only the glassy stare of a decision made. In order to be re-born he had to die;or, rather, someone else had to die in his place. He had hit on something new. He would steal a life.
    Early in November, he picked up an itinerant down-and-out in a public house near his home in Finchley.
    ‘He was the sort of man no one would miss, and I thought he would suit the plan I had in mind. I worked out the whole thing in my mind and … realised that I should do it on November 5th, which was Bonfire Night, when a fire could not be noticed so much.… When I said that I intended to go to Leicester on the Wednesday night he said he would be glad of a lift up there. This was what I thought he would say.’
    On the Wednesday night, the two met at the public house as planned. Rouse bought the man a beer, and a bottle of whisky for the journey. He himself drank only lemonade. They set out.
    ‘During the journey the man drank the whisky neat from the bottle, and was getting quite fuzzled.’
    By two in the morning they were on the outskirts of Northampton.
    ‘I turned into the Hardingstone Lane because it was quiet and near a main road, where I could get a lift from a lorry afterwards. I pulled the car up. The man was half-dozing—the effect of the whisky. I looked at him and then gripped him by the throat with my right hand. I pressed his head against the back of the seat. He slid