He Looked Familiar

But it wasn't just the toothache that was making him nervous. There was something more sinister plaguing his mind.

It had suddenly hit him when he was driving home from Brenda's house.

'My husbands a Dentist... Philip Morton... Do you know him, she asked. "Do I know him? Do I fucking know him? Yes I fucking know him," the mantra kept repeating inside his head, almost losing control of the steering wheel.

He was flying to Malaga the next day and a toothache in Spain was the last thing he needed, so when the pain became too unbearable he had no alternative but to make the call.

Brenda was thrilled to hear his voice again, a little disappointed when he skipped the flirtatious telephone sex, surprised to hear that her husband was his dentist.

"You've got nothing to worry about," she said, with the confidence of a barrister. "His dental practice keeps him too busy. It was Philip who suggested that I meet the architect and discuss the design and building costs. Philip doesn't even know your name," she confirmed, ending the call with an invitation he couldn't refuse.

Philip Morton had been running his dental practice from an old terraced house in Gateshead for almost forty-years. After probing around inside too many disgusting mouths he was now looking forward to his retirement.

Always pleasant and courteous Philip greeted his next patient with a well-practiced smile that was probably meant to put him at ease. It didn't.

After a brief consultation he was leaning back in the dentist chair, with his mouth wide open and a bright light shining into his eyes.

"One of your teeth needs a filling," Philip confirmed, smiling with assurance. "This won't hurt, just a little numbing of the gum before I drill out the decayed areas," he said, raising the lamp a little and whistling cheerfully to Bizet's 'Chanson-du Toreador.'

"You can stay in the chair for a few minutes until were ready," he smiled, returning to the whistling tune, giving instructions to a pretty young girl wearing a white tunic moving busily around the room, filling water beakers and preparing metal filling.

The nauseating smell and the haunting noise of the drill grinding into a tooth made him shuffle nervously in the chair and open his eyes, Philips grey bushy eyebrows and unsightly nasal hair unflattering in the light, his penetrating eyes staring into his open mouth.

'Does he know that he'd just left his wife less than an hour ago, lying in his bed like a wet rag?

He choked back a lump in his throat, curling his toes at the very thought, memories of a classic film finding its way inside his head.

'The Perfect Murder.' his subconscious reminded him.

A dentist discovers that his wife is having an affair with one of his patients. The dentist carefully conceals the heart drug 'Digitalis' into a filling coated with a time-releasing gel. After a few hours it dissolves into the bloodstream causing cardiac arrest and finally death.

Philip's enthusiastic voice brought him back to reality.

"I note from your records that your last visit was almost two years ago. And I understand that you've had this problem for a few weeks," he confirmed, adjusting the lamp above his head and removing the protective gown. "You mustn't put off the inevitable, Mr Brand. Your teeth are far too important to neglect them," he lectured, as the young girl in the white tunic handed him a beaker of water and a paper tissue.

'I fucking know that. I've had to put up with this excruciating pain for weeks now because I've been fucking you're wife's brains out.'

"I've been busy," was all he could manage through a numbed mouth and aching jaw.