Maliciously Administering

This story is set in the UK. I have tried to keep the police procedure and criminal law references accurate. Please forgive me if I've got some details wrong.

All sexual activity in this story (and there isn't much) involves adults over 18.

*

I'm going to admit at the outset, I wasn't in a good mood as I sat and ruminated that Monday morning a year ago. My wife, Sheila used to be as interested in sex as I was. When we both retired at sixty the previous year, her from teaching, me from the British Transport Police, okay, perhaps we weren't at it like rabbits every day; but we did it often; sometimes twice a day at first. By that Monday, a year later, I could barely remember the last time.

My wife said it was because I didn't have a hobby that I got bored; the boredom was leading to depression and the depression to lethargy. The end result being I was too tired for intimacy.

I had another theory. I was depressed because I wasn't getting laid, but suspected that she was. That was my conundrum. If she wasn't getting laid why wasn't she pining like I was? If she was getting laid, how and when the fuck was she doing it?

Take that Monday, for instance. She was in town meeting Sally, an old school friend, for their weekly gossip over a coffee. But was she? Yes she was. I only bloody tailed her and watched them meet up and go into their favourite café together. That had been the same story as the previous three weeks. And when she got back after an hour or so, she would have picked up some shopping on the way home and every receipt had the correct date, time and price code. I checked. I was a copper. It's what we do.

On Thursday evenings she went to a pottery class and I'd go to the pub. For those three weeks I went to the pub near the Community Centre and watched her go in and come out exactly on schedule. I even peeked in the fucking window and watched her making a pot. It was there, finished and glazed, on the fucking table in front of me, mocking me. There was no doubt she was genuinely doing the class, just like she said.

There were no other plausible opportunities for her to meet, fuck, shower and return without me being aware. So how come my every instinct was telling me that she was getting hers elsewhere?

It was the following Wednesday when the penny dropped. Well, I say penny, the resounding thud in my head when it hit me made it sound more like an anvil. It was the towels that gave me the first inklings.

Sorry. That made no sense at all. I'll explain. In our house Wednesday was washing day. On this Wednesday, as I dragged myself sleepily out of bed, Sheila came out of the en-suite carrying an armful of blue towels. "I'm putting these in the wash now," she told me. "Will you get the purple towels out of the cupboard and put them in both bathrooms, please?" It was a simple system. She changed the towels once a week and, by alternating the blue and purple sets, she knew they were all being turned over regularly.

"On it," I agreed, and did as I was asked, as she disappeared downstairs to the utility room. After breakfast, as I was putting my cup and plate in the sink, she shouted to ask if I could check to see if the washing machine had completed its cycle. I opened the door and looked in. No, I could see the towels through the glass hatch still turning in a blur of blue and white.

I set about helping her to strip our bed for the next load, pondering the same question that had bothered me for weeks. If she was cheating, how? As I worked, I was aware of a thought at the back of my mind, pushing itself to be heard but not quite getting through. We took a break for coffee at about eleven and, as we sat in the sun-lounge at the back of the house, I watched the first load of washing, the towels, blowing on the line. There they were, four blue bath sheets, four blue hand towels and, at the very end, almost out of sight close to the house, a white bath sheet.

The voice at the back of my mind was now jumping up and down, waving its arms and shouting obscenities at me in an attempt to be finally noticed. Cue the anvil. Why was there a white towel in the wash? It hadn't been in our bathroom laundry basket; I'd have noticed. It hadn't been used in either bathroom; there was no need. In fact, we only kept the two old white bath towels to use outside in the summer when the grandchildren were playing in their inflatable pool. It was March, and those white towels would have been put away, clean, months ago.

Was it possible that she'd been fucking someone in our own home, and it was easier to hide the evidence by doing it on the damn towels rather than leave visible marks on our bedding? It couldn't have been in our bed: I may have been a heavy sleeper lately but I think that even I would have noticed her fucking someone next to me. So... Then the other anvil dropped. Jesus! It's so fucking obvious. I wasn't lethargic because I was depressed. The bitch had been doping me!

"You're looking thoughtful, dear." Her voice broke into my thoughts.

"What? Oh, yes. I've been working on this puzzle in my head for a while and it was very frustrating, but I think it's starting to make sense now."

"That's nice dear. Got to keep your mind active," she observed, absently, like she couldn't give a fuck, and went back to her book as she finished her coffee.

"Oh, my mind's active all right." But I kept that thought to myself.

So here's my crime reconstruction. The suspect, her, roofies the victim, me, and then invites her lover, unknown subject, into the house and sex takes place, somewhere.

The roofie. It's so obvious now. Three months ago we moved to a new regime whereby she'd bring me a small whisky as a nightcap at about half past nine. Then at ten we would take our tablets: A mild sedative to help her sleep, a statin for my blood lipids and a multivitamin for both of us. She said she'd read that taking our medication last thing made it easier to remember and was more effective. I made a mental note to take a careful look at my tablets when I got the chance.

But, if I was right, I knew the how, roughly the where, but who? Who could she call on to sneak into the house at that time of night? Fuck, no! It couldn't be that irritating, oily little cockwomble next door, could it?

It may be that I glossed over the introductions when I started so, as the cast of characters seems to be increasing, perhaps it's time for more details. My name is Mark Smith. It used to be Detective Inspector Smith until I retired at sixty, two years ago. It would have been Chief Inspector by then but for an episode earlier in my career when a weaselly little tit laughed when I told him that he was under arrest for breaking his girlfriend's wrist. Unfortunately he then fell downstairs, twice.

Nothing was proven but it did rather dampen my career prospects, so the promotion from the county force to a Detective Inspector's post in the British Transport Police was the ideal way to spend my last five years of service. It helped my pension too.

I tried to stay fit, but the lethargy hadn't helped. If my suspicions were correct, though, that would be resolved soon. I'm six feet tall, not bad looking and I really don't like being fucked about!

Sheila, my wife, is about five feet eight, elegant and slender with shapely rather than generous boobs. Long dark hair and green eyes complete an attractive picture.

Our neighbours were, to our right an elderly couple who we rarely saw, and to our left, Julie and the cockwomble. Apparently his parents called him Justin, possibly so he would fit in with the other fucking useless parasites at his hedge-fund employers'. I thought of him as the cockwomble, despite my wife's insistence that he was really a lovely man, once you got to know him. Perhaps she knew him rather better than I had imagined.

Julie, on the other hand, was a gem. We only knew her first husband for a couple years before cancer took him. She did wonderfully well raising their twins on her own until they both left for university. After that, I think empty nest syndrome hit her hard, and within two years the cockwomble had moved into her life, her bed and then her house. He'd been living under his stone there for five years. They'd been married for three.

At the time, I guessed that Julie was probably within a couple of years either side of fifty. She was short, slim and easy to look at and talk to. I could listen to her smokey voice for hours. If she could sing she'd be a blues legend!

Justin was about five feet ten, and drove to the gym in his Audi to keep fit. What a poser! He cultivated a veneer of good natured charm but, if you listened carefully, he was a sarcastic, supercilious little bastard. He thought he was so much smarter than everyone else that we wouldn't notice. But I did. And I'd eaten smarter things than him. He had a polished shiny look, like a freshly laid dog turd. I think, on reflection, I didn't like him very much. To be fair, I don't think he liked me either.

So, I had a plausible theory of who, how and where, but no evidence. Checking the tablet situation would be simple; I hadn't died yet, so I'd carry on as normal, but on my terms.

On Thursday evening, my wife left home at six thirty, as usual, for her pottery class from seven until nine. She'd be back by about nine thirty. The minute that she left, I grabbed a pair of nitrile gloves from the box in the garage and searched my own home. What was I looking for? Anything. Something that should have been, or something that shouldn't. In day to day life, we rationalise things that are out of place: but when you're investigating, it's the oddities, however mundane, that lead the investigation.

I checked the tablets first. The one's that she'd been presenting to me as vitamins were, as I suspected, her prescribed sedatives. The enclosed leaflet warned against taking in conjunction with alcohol. I'd spit them out the previous night and I'd felt like a new man that morning

I turned every room over during the following couple of hours, making sure that I didn't leave any sign of disturbance. She didn't need to know I'd been busy. Eventually, I'd decided that there was no clear indication of sex in either of the spare bedrooms. The sheets were clean and, more significantly, looked freshly ironed. I knew that those sheets hadn't been laundered recently. They weren't using the bedrooms. Unfortunately, there was fuck all evidence of sex in our bedroom either, but that was why I was so pissed off.

I struck gold in the sun-lounge at the back of the house. Trapped between the seat cushions of the three seat sofa I found a piece of foil. It was part of the wrapper from a ribbed and dotted play condom. Not something I'd ever used. So now I knew where. They must have been fucking on the sofa, using the towel to catch any, fuck!, I don't want to say it; drips. Eugh! That's an image that'll take some shifting. Presumably she throws the towel into the wash and then comes back to my bed. Cunt!

My marriage was over. Not negotiable. I could divorce the cow without the requirement for any evidence of infidelity, but that was so, erm, unsatisfactory. Some twat was getting the sex that I'd been denied. Payback was required.

I've never really considered myself a petty man, I can rise above most trivial insults, but disrespect of that magnitude, no! That required the nuclear response. And I meant to invoke fucking Armageddon.

For the next few days, as I sat quietly planning my campaign, I noticed how disinterested my wife was in my mood and, now that I thought about it, me. I didn't give a fuck about her anymore either, but I was the only one of us who knew we were getting divorced. So, every night I smiled and took my tablets and every night I spit them out once her back was turned.

It was midnight on Saturday night, or Sunday morning if you prefer, when I was woken by her phone vibrating. I lay silent as I felt her shift and then get out of bed. She padded across our room to the door and slipped out. I heard her open and close the linen cupboard door on the landing and then, silence.

For all my bravado, I felt sick. I knew I could go downstairs to be certain she was cheating, but I really didn't want to see or hear it happen. I could burst in and interrupt them, confront them. It would be awkward for them but I wanted way worse than fucking awkward.

I could barge in and beat the little fucker to a pulp but then the pair of them would play the victim and yours truly would end up in jail. Remember, I used to be a copper. Every year inside would be 365 chances for some little twat to make a name for himself by shivving me. Anyway, knowing my luck the cockwomble would probably die and I'd be lucky to spend the rest of my life in protective isolation with the child molesters.

So, if I wanted a truly mighty revenge I needed them to think that they were still in charge. That meant letting the little prick fuck my wife until I was ready. Nah! Not gonna happen! I had the spare remote fob for the house alarm system taped to the underside of my bedside table. Sheila had to have disabled the system when she went down, so she could let the little twerp in. I gave them a couple of minutes to get comfy, I know, I'm a romantic at heart, then I pressed the panic button.

Well, I was the one who pressed the fucking button, and the mayhem that it unleashed inside the house shook the shit out me. What it did to Justin's erection is beyond imagining. It certainly fucked up his amorous ambitions for the evening as I watched him scuttle from the back of our house to the safety of his own.

The alarm shut off. Sheila must have dashed back to the master panel and overridden the panic button. I knew she was clueless how it worked, beyond arming and disarming it. I'd tried to explain it when we'd had the system installed but she glazed over and I gave up. I was fairly certain that she'd assume that she'd done something wrong and that triggered the alarm.

I heard her open and close the linen cupboard door before she came back to our room. I couldn't help trying to push her buttons. "Have just got in?" I asked her, faking how I would sound if I'd been roofied. "Where have you been? Is it late?"

"I had to go downstairs to turn the alarm off," she growled at me.

"What set it off?" I asked, innocently. "It doesn't go off unless there's someone downstairs. I'll go and look."

"No!" She yelled. "You can't go downstairs in your..."

She was going to say, "State." She knew if I'd tried to go downstairs, drugged, at best I'd end up in the back of an ambulance, at worst, a hearse. That could open up a whole can of worms, and she was bright enough to know it.

"I was already downstairs resetting the alarm and there was no-one there. I checked all the doors and windows too; so go back to sleep." she told me. So I did, and I slept like a baby.

Sheila managed to keep her legs together the rest of the weekend and I spent a painful ten minutes each time she was in the shower, reading the texts on her phone. I'd helped set up the lock screen so, although my fingerprint didn't work, I knew her back-up access code. They were so fucking arrogant that they were making midnight fuck-dates by text message. That told me two things; They were doping Julie too, and they were royally fucked.

By Sunday evening the whore and the cockwomble had recovered from Saturday night's psychological warfare trauma and arranged to meet at eleven thirty on Tuesday night. That suited me down to the ground. I had a plan that needed very little preparation, as long as I could speak to Julie first.

On Monday, Sheila went to meet Sally, as usual, and Justin's car was gone from next door's driveway. I just prayed that Julie was working at home as she usually did. She was.

"Hi Mark," she said with a lovely smile as she answered the door. Her smile faded as she saw the look on my face. "Is something wrong? You look so serious."

"Julie, I'm so sorry, but we have to talk and there isn't a lot of time."

"What's wrong?" She asked.

"I'll give you the short version now, but could we bump into each other, by accident outside the library at about half past two and chat longer?"

"Okay," she agreed. "But give me the short version anyway."

I did. I told her about the tiredness, the new whisky and tablet regime, the substituted sedatives and the sex.

"Bastard!" she hissed. "I knew he was fucking someone but I could never figure out how. Would you be surprised to find that Justin brings me a small sherry every evening to settle my nerves and a vitamin tablet to boost my immune system? No fucking wonder my head feels like fog half the time,"

"How angry are you?" I asked. "Because I want to bury the pair of them, but I'd be jailed if I hurt them as much as they deserve."

"I agree," she replied. Obviously, I can kick the little shit out, but I want to hurt him too. A lot!"

"I have an idea," I told her. "And if we do it right, we're the victims and they get what's coming."

"I'm in," she announced.

"I haven't told you it yet,"

"Don't care. As long as it rains misery and shit on them, I'm in."

This is the first time I've been alone with this woman and I love her already. Pretty, intelligent and vengeful. What's not to like? I told her my plan. It was simple, required no contrived situations, barely any lies, and the police would do all of the heavy lifting for us.

"Right," she said. "Give me the rest of the morning to think it through and I'll see you, accidentally, after lunch."

"Oh, by the way," I added, on my way out. "If the police ask you when we last spoke, this conversation was about a spare printer cable. I'll pop into town for one, after lunch."

She grinned at me. "Sorry I couldn't help you. See you later." And I left.

We did meet after lunch, and I showed her the cable I'd managed to buy. The old one must have been thrown out by 'accident'. There was, in fact, very little to clarify. My plan was simple and easy to execute. Our two biggest problems were managing not to do or say anything clever to our cheating spouses to make them think that we'd got wise to them, and agreeing to take our roofies on Monday and Tuesday nights, although on our terms, like the good little cuckolds that we were.

On Tuesday, I decided to tidy out the garage. I was getting increasingly angry now that I could see the signs that Sheila was preparing for another fuck-date in my home, so I tried to keep my distance and my temper. She'd vacuumed and tidied the sun-lounge and I'd noticed the white towel was front and centre in the linen cupboard ready to put on the sofa for them to rut on. I didn't contact Julie again, as it was important that everything we did was the same routine as usual.

That evening, at ten o'clock, Sheila brought me a generous glass of whisky and my pills. She watched as I swallowed them down and then went back to the kitchen for her own. I spit the tablets out and hid the sedative and then swallowed my statin with a sip of scotch. My toxicology analysis had to be consistent.

By ten thirty I should have been getting tired, so I whined for a bit about not being able to keep my eyes open, until she snapped at me to just go to bed. So I did, but I made sure not to doze off by focussing on why she apparently thought that treating me like this, with him, after nearly forty years and two kids, was okay. Not just cheating, but under my own roof, after drugging me. That was callous.

I heard her coming to bed about fifteen minutes later and I played dead. After checking on me she went into the bathroom and I heard the shower running, then she brushed her teeth. When I heard her flush the toilet I took the sedative that I'd saved and played dead some more.

At eleven thirty, her phone buzzed on the bedside table. I made sure to give slight snort, as though I'd been disturbed and then snuggled back down and slowed my breathing. I heard her slip out of bed, collect her cum towel from the cupboard and make her way downstairs. As on the previous occasion, she'd left her phone by the bed. Well, who was she going to call?