Preface to Murder

by M S Morris

  After several hours trawling through Twitter, Jake realised that he was in danger of becoming mired in defamation and loathing. There was only so much antagonism a guy could take, even when it was directed at someone else. He yawned, stretched, and switched off his computer. He’d put in a long shift the previous day too, watching Diane Gilbert give her talk at the Bodleian, and then he’d been called unexpectedly early that morning with the shocking news that she was dead.

  He couldn’t help feeling a little responsible for the writer’s murder. They still didn’t know how the killer had gained access to the property. Had the murderer secretly been hiding somewhere inside the house – perhaps even in one of the rooms that Jake had searched? He shuddered at the idea that his own negligence might have led to a woman’s death. But, no. The intruder hadn’t been lying in wait. They’d broken in through the back door during the night. If anyone was to blame, it was surely those two constables who’d been watching the house. Diane’s murder had taken place right under their noses. As uncomfortable as he might feel about the situation, Jake was very glad he wasn’t in their shoes.

  On the other side of the incident room, Ffion snapped shut the big, hardback edition of Diane Gilbert’s book that she’d been reading. She’d been totally absorbed in her task all day and hadn’t noticed Jake surreptitiously watching her. At least he didn’t think she had. Her green eyes had remained firmly on the book, flicking across the words at lightning speed, and the rate at which she turned pages was astonishing. How could she absorb so much information so quickly? These days Jake hardly ever read a book at all. The last proper book he remembered reading from cover to cover was John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men which he’d had to study for his English GCSE. He’d done a play as well – An Inspector Calls – and had quite enjoyed it. It might even have been one of the reasons he’d decided to become a police officer. Righting the wrongs of the world, and all that. He hadn’t got on so well with Shakespeare though – too many words that weren’t proper English. Now he lived in a city where books outnumbered people a hundred-fold. Even Ryan, that dark horse, had lent him a thriller to read, but it was still sitting on his bedside cabinet, unopened. At nearly six hundred pages long, it was likely to stay there until Ryan asked for it back. At least Of Mice and Men had been short.

  Ffion stood up, stretching her arms above her head, and Jake found his eyes drawn inexorably to her long, slender, catlike form. Green eyes. Leather trousers. Spiky blonde hair. He knew the details by heart, but still couldn’t turn away.

  ‘Good book?’ he ventured, not wanting to be caught staring at her with his mouth open and nothing to say.

  His working relationship with Ffion was back on a more even keel in recent months. Things had lurched briefly off course after a short-lived and ultimately disastrous romantic detour and for a while they had barely spoken. In fact he had seriously considered leaving Oxford entirely and moving back north to Yorkshire. He was still feeling his way tentatively through the minefield of their relationship, and any suggestion of anything more than friendship was strictly off limits, but for the most part he and Ffion could hold normal conversations again. Although with Ffion, no conversation was ever completely normal.

  ‘Diane Gilbert argues her case well,’ she said, lifting the heavy book off the table and brandishing it in Jake’s direction, ‘although she uses long words when shorter ones would do just as well, and her sentences are unnecessarily convoluted. That’s why the book is so long. I think she could probably have said everything in half the number of pages.’

  ‘You wouldn’t recommend it as bedtime reading?’

  ‘I prefer books where the author’s personal biases aren’t so evident.’ Ffion rattled off a list of books that she’d read recently and that Jake had never heard of. The titles sounded heavy-going. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘What do you like to read?’

  Was she teasing him? She must have noticed during their brief time as a couple that his flat wasn’t exactly stuffed with works of literature. Or books of any kind, in fact.

  ‘I like, um…’ he offered lamely. What did he like? He liked to watch a football match on the telly. ‘Plenty of action,’ he suggested. ‘Something exciting with a good twist at the end.’ Maybe he ought to try that thriller Ryan had recommended. He might surprise himself.

  ‘I prefer non-fiction,’ said Ffion. ‘I like learning new things and challenging my preconceptions.’ She started to pull on her green biker’s jacket.

  Jake rose from his seat. ‘Off home? I was just leaving too.’ He hesitated. Wisdom cautioned him not to say any more, but when had wisdom ever been any fun? ‘Are you doing anything tonight? Do you fancy a drink? Just as friends, I mean. You could tell me what I should be reading.’ He ventured a half-smile of encouragement.

  ‘No, sorry,’ said Ffion. ‘I’ve got a date tonight.’ She zipped up the leather jacket and grabbed her phone from her desk.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jake. This was certainly news. And not exactly welcome. Not that he entertained any designs on Ffion himself. Obviously he didn’t. And he could hardly expect her to lead the life of a nun just because she was no longer going out with him. That would be totally unreasonable. ‘Um…’ he said, following her out of the office.

  ‘What is it?’

  Good question. What was his problem, exactly? ‘So, um, who’s the lucky guy?’ he asked, although he really didn’t want to know.

  She turned and leaned against the doorframe. ‘Her name is Marion and she’s a junior research fellow at the university.’

  ‘Oh right, yeah, good,’ said Jake, trying to wrap his brain around this latest piece of information. He had – of course – known that Ffion was bisexual. She had told him often enough. Yet somehow, until this moment, he’d never really taken onboard the reality of that fact. There was probably a word for blokes like him, but he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t think he wanted to. ‘Well, have a nice evening.’

  Ffion was already on the move again. ‘You too,’ she called over her shoulder.

  Me too, right.

  But what did Jake’s evening hold in store for him? A takeaway curry, a couple of beers, and another night slumped alone in front of the football. Plenty of action, he thought miserably. Something exciting with a good twist at the end. He needed to be more careful what he wished for. This story had certainly sprung a surprising twist, and he wasn’t at all sure that he liked it.

  10

  ‘So you still have nothing,’ concluded Grayson.

  By the time Bridget had returned to Kidlington, everyone had gone home except for the Chief Superintendent, who had stayed behind to hear her report. She gave him a verbal summary of her meetings with the various members of Diane Gilbert’s family, her literary agent, and the head of department at the Blavatnik, as well as itemising all the actions she had assigned to her team members.

  Grayson seemed distinctly unimpressed.

  ‘That’s hardly fair, sir,’ she countered. ‘We’ve covered a lot of ground in one day.’

  ‘Yet all you’ve really got to go on at the moment,’ said Grayson, ‘is the unusual method of killing, and the controversial nature of her book. Plus the death threat.’

  ‘I’m still waiting for forensics to get back to me on that. And for the post-mortem to establish the cause and time of death. And for SOCO to work out how the murderer got into the property.’

  Grayson lifted his pen from his desk, but thankfully there was no tapping this time. ‘Let’s hope we get all that soon. In the meantime, what’s your gut feeling about this? Do you think this was a domestic matter?’

  ‘Her son didn’t like her, and has a clear financial motive in wanting her dead, but as far as I know he was in London yesterday. As for the other members of her family, they have no motive and seem to have got on perfectly well with her. Even her ex-husband had an amicable relationship with her by all accounts.’

  ‘What about her work colleagues?’

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nbsp; ‘Her boss clearly held a strong dislike for her personally, and didn’t approve of the direction of her academic research or her book, but that hardly seems like a strong enough motive for murder.’

  ‘So what does?’

  Bridget took a deep breath. ‘Diane’s agent suggested to me that her killing might be the work of the British security services.’

  Grayson raised a steely eyebrow. ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘In all honesty, I don’t know, sir. The death threat… the way the murderer broke into Diane’s house when it was under the watch of the police… the unusual method of her killing… and of course the nature of her book. They all support the theory that she might have been assassinated by a foreign government or some other powerful party. But of course that’s just speculation,’ she added hurriedly, unwilling to offer Grayson any reason to doubt her judgement.

  To her surprise, Grayson didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. ‘National security. It’s a possibility that we have to consider. If that’s the case, you’re going to need some help.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Leave it with me. I’ll follow up via the official channels. See if I can find out anything.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Bridget. ‘I appreciate that.’

  He dismissed her with a grunt and a wave of his hand. Grayson, she realised, just didn’t know how to handle gratitude. Perhaps that’s why he was so bad at expressing any himself.

  *

  Bridget drove back to Wolvercote just as the sun was disappearing from view, turning the sky over Port Meadow a pink salmon, and casting deep shadows across the village green. Sounds of cheer and laughter escaped from the brightly-lit interior of the White Hart and drifted over to her, but when she let herself into her darkened cottage, a still silence met her like a wall. She had never imagined that such a small house could feel so empty, but with Chloe still away, the low ceilings seemed to be pressing down, and the cheerful disarray of the kitchen felt chaotic and cluttered.

  She switched on all the downstairs lights and put The Marriage of Figaro on the CD player in an attempt to bolster her fragile mood.

  Why was she feeling so low? It wasn’t just Diane’s murder and the pressure she was under from Grayson to solve the case. It wasn’t even that she was missing her daughter. Something deeper was stirring, and she had a creeping sense that her life was about to be upended.

  The root cause of that unease was her ex-husband.

  Why should it matter so much to her that Ben and Tamsin were getting married? She had faced the pain and heartache of his infidelity many years ago, and long since moved on from the wreck of her marriage. She was proud of what she’d achieved with her life since leaving him. She’d brought up a daughter single-handedly, and built her own career. It shouldn’t make any difference what Ben did with his life.

  But it did, and Bridget knew why.

  Despite her best efforts, despite everything she’d done to protect Chloe and to build a wall around the painful past, slowly but surely Ben had succeeded in worming his way back under her skin, reaching out for Chloe, and reclaiming his daughter for himself. Now she was with him in London, going out to expensive restaurants, trying on dresses, having fun with her future stepmother.

  She is my daughter! Mine!

  The Mozart played on, but its uplifting melody was out of tune with her own discordant thoughts.

  I am getting this out of proportion.

  She breathed deeply, seeking to bring her runaway emotions back under control. Whatever Ben was up to, Chloe was still her daughter, and there was no question that she would ever move to London to live with her father. Tamsin, the wicked stepmother, surely wouldn’t want it. So Bridget just had to learn to share. Chloe was old enough to make her own decisions, and Bridget would have to trust her.

  She paced the kitchen restlessly. It would be so much easier to face this if Jonathan was at her side. What time was it in New York? Bridget found that she didn’t really care. She picked up her phone and dialled.

  Soon Jonathan’s reassuring voice was on the line, and Bridget felt her problems begin to melt away.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘How’s it going?’

  Terribly. ‘Oh, you know. Missing you. How’s New York?’

  ‘Great. But it’s exhausting. Galleries, exhibitions, auctions. I’ve only just got back to the hotel after dashing around all day.’

  It sounds wonderful. ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘What about you? How’s that writer you’re looking after?’

  Bridget groaned. ‘Please don’t ask.’

  ‘Okay. Then tell me what you’re doing right now. Where are you?’

  ‘Home. Alone.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Chloe will be back soon. And so will I.’

  ‘Yes.’ Just the thought of his return was giving her the strength to carry on. ‘So what are your plans for tonight?’

  ‘I’ve got a restaurant booked for eight. A couple of gallery owners offered to take me out to this great new Peruvian place in the East Village.’

  ‘Sounds amazing.’

  ‘What about you?’ he asked brightly. ‘Are you cooking tonight, or getting a takeaway?’

  Bridget swung open the door of her fridge with one hand and took a quick look at its contents. Half a block of Cheddar cheese, some limp slices of ham, a pint of milk well past its use-by date, and a mouldy lettuce. She’d planned to go shopping after escorting Diane back from her radio interview.

  ‘A takeaway, I think.’

  ‘Good choice,’ said Jonathan knowingly. ‘Anyway, I have to go now. Take care. I’ll call you tomorrow. Love you.’

  ‘Love you.’

  She hung up, already feeling better for hearing Jonathan’s voice. And while she couldn’t depend on him to solve all her problems, at least she now knew how to fix her most immediate concern. She dialled again and was soon placing an order for home-delivered pizza with garlic bread and a tub of pistachio ice-cream.

  Life always looked better from the other side of an ice-cream tub.

  11

  It was a Saturday morning but there was to be no time off while Diane Gilbert’s killer was still at large. Bridget waited for her team to assemble in the incident room, eager to hear what each member had to say. Once the last of them had taken a seat, mug in hand, she rose to her feet and invited them to give their reports.

  Andy and Harry had little to report from their door-to-door enquiries in St Margaret’s Road and the nearby streets.

  ‘Nothing doing, ma’am,’ said Andy apologetically. ‘We got the impression that most people in that road don’t really know who their neighbours are. They certainly didn’t know Diane. She seems to have kept herself to herself. And no one heard or saw a thing last night, not even the people next door.’

  It was disappointing, but Bridget thanked them for their efforts and turned to Ryan. He had spent the previous day at the house trying to work out how the intruder had gained access to Diane’s property.

  ‘I took a bunch of constables with me up to the house, ma’am. We carried out a fingertip search of the entire grounds – front garden, rear garden, garage and outbuildings.’

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing. No dropped items. No footprints in the soil. No signs of a ladder being used to climb over the wall. The shed in the back was padlocked, and the garage was secure. The windows were all locked too. There was no forced entry, apart from the back door of the house itself.’

  ‘So how did they get into the garden and out again under the nose of the constables?’

  ‘Could someone have already been hiding inside the house when you dropped Diane off?’ queried Andy.

  Bridget noticed Jake squirm in his seat, and perhaps not surprisingly. He had been the one who had searched upstairs, while Bridget checked the downstairs rooms of the house. It was conceivable that an intruder had concealed themselves so well that they had escaped discovery, but the possibility simply raised more unanswerable q
uestions. How had they gained entry to the house? And more pertinently, if they had already been inside, why would they have smashed the back door open? It didn’t make any sense.

  ‘No,’ said Bridget. ‘The house was clear. The killer broke in some time after we left Diane for the night.’

  ‘That’s what I figured,’ said Ryan. ‘But if they didn’t get in the back way, they must have come in from the front. The only scenario that makes any sense to me is if those two constables nodded off, or slipped away to grab a quick coffee. Diane’s killer might have been watching them, and nipped in when he saw his chance.’

  ‘That would also explain why they didn’t hear the glass in the back door being smashed,’ said Jake.

  Bridget nodded reluctantly. She had believed the two officers’ account, and hoped that her trust in them wasn’t misplaced. ‘It’s a possibility. But it still doesn’t explain why Diane herself didn’t hear the glass break and wake up.’

  ‘Heavy sleeper?’ suggested Ryan.

  ‘Her ex-husband said not.’ Bridget gave a summary of her own investigations, recounting what the various family members had told her about Diane, and also telling them about the strong personal antipathy that her boss at the Blavatnik School had harboured towards her.

  ‘Does that give him a sufficient motive for murder?’ queried Ryan.

  ‘Professional rivalry?’ said Bridget. ‘We’ll need something more compelling than that before we consider Professor Al-Mutairi to be a suspect. Jake, did you check Ian Dunn’s alibi?’ An ex-husband was always an obvious suspect in any murder enquiry, even though on the face of it Ian Dunn had come across as quite charming.

  Jake referred to his notes. ‘I spoke to two of the guests who were at the party Ian attended in Thame. They both confirmed that he and his wife didn’t leave until after eleven o’clock.’