Excerpt from The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

For Woody, anger was cold. Cold and slow. But once it had started, it mounted gradually and he could think of nothing else. From the first, though, he knew he couldn't stay alive while those two were alive. Instead of sleeping, he lay awake in the dark and saw those hands, Anita's narrow, white hand with the long, pointed nails painted pastel pink, the man's brown hand equally shapely, the fingers slightly splayed. The third member of the family Woody was usually aware of. He doubted that Anita was. She ignored the child. Once he saw her run along the hall towards the front door and not see the little boy. She ran into him in broad daylight, knocking him over, not hurting him, but leaving him there to pick himself up and start to cry. He wouldn't miss his mother, glad to see the back of her, no doubt.

Before Woody did what he meant to do, he took the rest of the money out of the biscuit tin and put it in a smaller one that had once held cocoa. The biscuit tin had a picture of variously shaped shortbread biscuits on it and was quite big, maybe twelve inches by eight and three inches deep. It would be big enough, for their hands were small. Anita came and went, with the man in khaki and maybe also with the other man who wore civvies. Woody didn't care about him. He would disappear when Anita did and wouldn't call round asking for her. Mrs. Mopp came in and cleaned the house. She and Woody seldom spoke. There was nothing to say. The boy went to school and could go by himself; he knew he had to and arguing about it was useless. He talked to Mrs. Mopp and seemed to like her, but that was of no interest to Woody. He thought a lot about Anita's money; it took time, that thinking, and delayed his doing what he had to do. There had to be a way of getting her to transfer those thousands of hers, and there were quite a few thousands, into his bank account, but she had a suspicious mind.

"I'm not having a joint account with you, Woody," she said. "Why d'you want it? No, don't answer. It'll be some low-down thing, some monkey business. The answer's no."

Pity, but it wouldn't put him off. Nothing would do that. The best he could achieve was to get hold of her chequebook and write a cheque to himself for a hundred pounds. More would arouse suspicion. He had no problem cashing it and was rather sorry he hadn't made it out for twice as much. Now he had to do the deed before she got her bank statement.

Woody didn't think about their early days. He didn't think about what he had once called their "romance." He never harked back to even the recent past, saying to anyone who would listen, "It's over, it's not coming back. What's the point of dwelling on it?" However he did it, there mustn't be blood. Telling Anita he was going to stay with his auntie Midge in Norwich. She was ill and was likely to leave him her money—a motive for his visit his wife would be sure to believe. Once he was out of the way, he guessed Anita and the khaki man would share a bed, very likely his bed. He would return in the small hours.

Of course he was right. They were there and fast asleep. Having locked the door behind him, he strangled the man first because Anita was a small woman who was no match for him. Then chasing her round the room, he knocked her to the 6oor and used the same leather belt on her. It was soon over. The only blood was his own where they had both scratched him, and there was little of it. His slaughterman's experience was of great value to him in removing the right hand and the left hand. Before laying the two hands in the biscuit tin he took off Anita's wedding and engagement rings. This was a bonus. He had forgotten about the rings when he was calculating what money he could forage. Of course he could sell the rings. He could go a long way away, down to Devon or up to Scotland, and find a jeweller who would give him a lot for that diamond ring. Anita had bought it herself. She wanted a diamond ring and he couldn't afford to pay for it.

Excerpted from The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell. Copyright © 2014 by Ruth Rendell. Excerpted by permission of Scribner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.