DCI Elaine Bell, with DS Alice Rice now following in her footsteps like her shadow, strode towards the bed in Gavin Brodie’s room. The bedroom shutters had been partly opened and the man himself lay motionless, his head tilted backwards, a crescent-shaped cut dividing his exposed neck in two. Blood, spurting from the wound, had been pumped by his heart onto the wall behind him, its final contractions creating a sprayed arc until, the pressure diminishing, it landed on the headboard and sides, the hoist, his pillows and his own head. A glass of water on the bedside table was stained a deep, dark red, and a framed photograph of a little boy playing on a beach had been showered too.
The face of the dead man was unnaturally pale, waxen, as if all blood had been siphoned out of the overly skull-like head. Clad in his light blue-and-white-striped pyjamas he resembled, Alice thought, one of the starved inmates of a concentration camp. Sharp bones protruded through his yellowish skin, and between his cracked lips his teeth were bared like a dog. She had seen worse, but not often, and at least if it had been in the open air, the fresh air, the smells of death would have dispersed. Here a strange cloying aroma enveloped them, as if the air itself was diseased.
As the two women bent over him, their heads a few inches from the glistening slice in his cartilaginous neck, a couple of photographers entered the room, one with a video camera at the ready, nattering to each other while awaiting their instructions. With her eyes still fixed on the wound, Elaine Bell said crisply, ‘Get a move on, boys. Do Homes and Gardens… the whole house, outside and in. And I want mid-range and close-ups in here − the body and all the blood-spatters. All of them, mind. And…’ she added, after a moment’s hesitation ‘get all the exits and entrances too. Doors and windows.’
‘Alice?’ she said, straightening up and raising the bed covers for them both to peer inside and inspect the whole cadaver.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ the sergeant replied, shifting her gaze from the emaciated torso to her boss’s face.
‘See what the constables have learned so far, eh? One of them should have spoken to Mrs Brodie by now. I’ll need to talk to her myself later in the station, but get the rough sequence of events from them. I need to speak to the Super again. Our friend, the Prof, is due to arrive soon. Keep an eye out for him. Oh, and the Fiscal too, and bring them here the minute they come.’
PC Rowe was sitting stiffly at the wooden kitchen table, made uncomfortable by the heavy silence but unable to break it, and he glanced up as the sergeant approached. He looked fidgety and ill at ease, and as she came towards him he rose from his chair, relief transforming his features. In truth, he had no experience of the effects of shock and was embarrassed in the presence of grief, unable to think of anything to say, his limited repertoire of comforting platitudes having long since been exhausted. Any further questioning of the widow seemed unthinkable. She seemed unaware of his presence, remaining from minute to minute completely motionless, staring into space through sightless eyes.
‘Could I see you for a second, constable?’ Alice said, smiling at the woman as if asking her permission to borrow her companion for a moment. She did not look up, and showed no sign that she was aware that someone else had joined them. Without further invitation the young man raced out of the kitchen, closing the door behind him.
‘Have you spoken to her yet?’ Alice enquired.
‘Not really. Just a quick chat when we first arrived.’
‘And?’
‘She found the body…’ he began breathlessly. ‘She went into his room. She’s got her own one. Opened those shutter things as usual and found him lying there. Dead an’ all. She got on the phone to us straight away. She reported it.’
‘And you were the first on the scene?’
‘Me and him,’ he said, pointing to the passing figure of the other constable.
At the sound of approaching feet they moved away from the hall door to allow a group of SOCOs to enter. Alice caught sight of a rotund, freckle-faced man ambling behind them, weighed down by an oversized black attaché case. Seeing her he beamed cheerily in her direction, adding a wave for good measure, and noting the constable’s curious expression she said, ‘That’s the Crime Scene Manager, an old pal of mine. Now, did Mrs Brodie say when exactly she last saw her husband alive?’
‘Yep. She saw him at about 4.30 p.m. yesterday. She spent the evening out and she didn’t look in on him after that.’
‘Anyone else see him after her, as far as she knows?’
‘Erm…’ the constable hesitated, and then said apologetically, ‘I hadn’t quite finished speaking to her, so I’m not sure about that one.’
Despatching a slightly crestfallen PC Rowe to see if the pathologist had arrived, Alice re-entered the kitchen, and sat down opposite Heather Brodie. A huge vase of red roses obscured her view of the woman’s face. As she moved it to one side, she said, ‘They’re lovely − a present?’
‘Yes, a gift,’ the woman replied, looking at them. ‘From… ah, my mother-in-law.’
‘The constable who was with you, PC Rowe, says you last saw your husband at about 4.30 p.m. Would anyone else have seen him after that?’
Such a long silence followed the question that Alice was just about to pose it again, when in a dull voice the answer came.
‘Una, I expect. She’d have given him his supper, his bath. Tidied him up…’
‘And when would Una have done that?’
Another long pause followed, then the woman said, ‘Seven… Quarter-past, maybe, that’s her usual time.’
‘And who is Una, exactly?’
‘She’s…’ the woman hesitated, ‘his carer. Una Reid, my husband’s carer. We employ her. She comes from Abbey Park Lodge… you know, the home, the place in Comely Bank.’
DCI Bell swept into the kitchen, accompanied by a giant of a man with a pale moon-face, which rounded off, unexpectedly, into a luxuriant auburn beard. Once inside he stood erect, fingering his moustache-ends nervously, fashioning them into points by twirling their ends to and fro between his thumbs and index fingers.
‘This is Thomas Riddell, our Family Liaison Officer, Mrs Brodie,’ Elaine Bell announced, feeling the need to introduce him to the widow but not herself, she, apparently, needing no introduction. Sitting down next to the woman, and without any preamble, she started to fire a burst of staccato questions at her.
‘Anything gone from this room? Anything sharp, like a knife, for example?’
‘No.’
‘You’ve checked then?’
‘No, I haven’t… I’ll just check now, will I?’ Heather Brodie asked, seeking the policewoman’s leave before, looking slightly dazed, she got up slowly and walked towards an old-fashioned Welsh dresser, rummaging inside both its drawers before saying, almost apologetically, ‘I don’t think anything’s missing from here. But,’ she paused briefly, ‘… a knife’s gone from the block. Usually there are five in it. Now it’s only got four. I can see the space for it from here.’
‘Could it be in the dishwasher, the sink, somewhere like that?’ the DCI responded immediately.
‘No,’ Heather Brodie answered. ‘I never use those knives. They were given to us as a wedding present, but I didn’t like them, so I never used them.’ For the first time she lifted her deep blue eyes and looked directly into the Inspector’s face, being met by an unblinking, rather stony, gaze.
‘Have you noticed anything else missing − anything shifted, disarranged… out of place, as if a stranger had been at it?’
The woman nodded.
‘Well?’ the DCI shot back, not troubling to disguise her impatience, the need for further elaboration blindingly obvious to her. Riddell, the liaison officer, threw his boss a reproachful glance, wordlessly reminding her that shock could cause confusion, but he got no expression of understanding or remorse in return.