Preface to Murder

by M S Morris

  ‘I’m not sure, ma’am. It’s been difficult working with the Cayman Islands because of the time difference. They won’t be up for hours yet, and they don’t seem to have much sense of urgency.’

  ‘Okay, well keep trying.’ She turned to Ffion. ‘Any progress on the laptop?’

  ‘Not yet, but I have some ideas. I went back to Diane’s house yesterday and picked up a selection of books. I started reading through them last night. Diane seems to have been very interested in cryptography, and in steganography in particular.’

  ‘Too many long words for this time in the morning,’ quipped Ryan, stifling a yawn.

  Ffion gave him a withering look. ‘Steganography means “concealed writing”. It’s from the Greek.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Ryan. ‘Silly me.’

  ‘It’s the technique of concealing one message within another. For example, hiding secret text within plain text, or an image within another image, or a video within a video.’

  ‘How does this relate to Diane’s laptop?’ asked Bridget.

  ‘I’m going to see if I can use the method to work out her password.’

  ‘All right, good.’ Bridget decided to trust Ffion’s judgment and leave her to it. It wasn’t like she had any better ideas herself. ‘What about the cocktail of chemicals that was used to kill Diane? Phosphorous, magnesium and potassium. Where did they come from? Who could have got hold of them? Are we any further forward?’

  Ryan shrugged and even Ffion looked blank.

  Harry raised a tentative hand. ‘Ma’am, you find them in multivitamins. They’re important for bone health.’

  ‘Bone health,’ repeated Bridget, making Harry look embarrassed. ‘Well, it’s a start, I suppose,’ she added encouragingly. It was certainly more than anyone else in the team had managed. ‘Ryan, why don’t you see if you can find out any more? We have a world-class university in this city. There must be someone who can help us out.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Ryan, but he didn’t sound too hopeful.

  ‘Andy, I’d like you to look into the finances of the publishing company that published Diane’s book. Find out if it has any problems.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘And Harry’ – Bridget’s gaze came to rest on the most junior member of her team – ‘help out with anyone who needs you.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘In the meantime,’ she said, ‘I’m going to see Diane’s agent, Grant Sadler again. He was one of the people who advised Diane to take the death threat seriously. I want to see if he can shed any more light on the matter.’

  *

  A Deadly Race might be on its way to becoming an international bestseller, but Grant Sadler had apparently resisted any temptation to upgrade his accommodation from the splendours of the Travelodge on the Abingdon Road. When Bridget phoned him, he was just leaving the hotel’s reception. ‘I’m about to catch the bus into the centre of Oxford,’ he told her. ‘I want to call in at Blackwell’s to stock up on some books before heading back to London.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Bridget. ‘I can meet you there.’

  Located on Broad Street between the White Horse pub and the Weston Library, and directly opposite the Sheldonian Theatre, Blackwell’s was Oxford’s academic bookshop. The rather quaint exterior of the old, four-storey town houses that comprised the shop – shuttered, box-sash windows and dormers in the attic – belied its expansive interior. Bridget had spent countless hours there as a student, browsing the shelves of the history and literature sections and wishing that there was more time in the world to read all the books that vied for her attention.

  When she arrived, she found the ground floor bustling with the usual mix of booklovers and tourists. This was where the bookshop pandered to popular taste and did its best to extract as much cash as possible from Oxford’s large number of visitors. Books shortlisted for literary prizes competed with the latest thrillers from household names. Being Oxford, there were tables piled high with anything with a local connection. Books by Tolkien, C.S Lewis, Lewis Carroll and Colin Dexter were in abundance. A table near the front of the store was stacked with copies of Diane Gilbert’s latest book, a newcomer to the ranks of bestsellers, attributable, as Bridget knew, as much to the circumstances of her death as to its readability.

  Grant Sadler had told her that she would find him in the Norrington Room, and so Bridget steered a path past stacks of Alice in Wonderland and Harry Potter, and headed towards the stairs that led to the lower levels. Most tourists never made it this far, but they didn’t know what they were missing. Never mind Alice in Wonderland, the basement of Blackwell’s, named after Sir Arthur Norrington, one-time President of Trinity College, was simply a wonderland of books. The vast underground chamber, arranged on multiple levels, always made Bridget’s spine tingle with excitement, as if she were entering a cathedral of words.

  She descended a flight of stairs, following the black and white subject signs that hung from wires in the ceiling, searching for Grant Sadler amongst the book shelves. After passing through a corridor whose walls were towering bookcases she turned a corner and spotted him in the lowest part of the room and took a second staircase down to meet him.

  Up close, his appearance was even worse than the previous time Bridget had encountered him. His hair stood on end, his face was unshaven, and his eyes were enclosed by dark rings. He looked as if he’d had no sleep and had tumbled straight out of bed.

  ‘Mr Sadler?’

  He was engrossed in a book and hadn’t noticed her approaching. He jumped at the sound of his name and a slip of paper fluttered to the floor near Bridget’s feet. She stooped to pick it up. The paper held a shopping list of book titles. His arms were already full of books.

  She was about to hand the paper to him, but something held her back. She stopped to study the list of titles. There was nothing remarkable about the titles themselves, but that wasn’t what had caught her attention. It was the handwriting. She studied it closely to make sure she wasn’t mistaken. But no, there was that distinctive curling of the capital “C”, the rightward slope of the cursive script as it hurried across the page, and the final flourish on the end of letters like “g” and “y” that looped below the line. There was no need to be a forensic handwriting expert. The likeness was plain enough for anyone to see.

  Grant Sadler was the author of the death threat. He hadn’t even bothered to disguise his handwriting.

  He looked at her expectantly, a nervous smile twitching his lips. ‘Does there seem to be a problem?’

  ‘Grant Sadler,’ she said. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Diane Gilbert.’

  26

  Grant Sadler sat across the table from Bridget, a quivering mass of nerves. His fingers trembled and his hands moved repeatedly to scratch at his face or push back his hair. Beneath the table, his knee bounced up and down so violently she could hear it knocking against the wood. His head turned at the slightest sound from the corridor outside the interview room.

  Bridget felt no sympathy.

  His lawyer sat at his side, his hair neatly combed, his hands folded in front of him, a model of stillness and neatness in contrast with Grant’s manic display of untidiness.

  ‘So,’ said Bridget, pushing a pair of clear plastic evidence bags across the tabletop. ‘Here we have two handwritten documents. The first, a list of books that you were planning to buy from Blackwell’s bookshop this morning. The second, a letter that was sent to Diane Gilbert, threatening to kill her if she proceeded with the publication of her book. According to our expert the handwriting is consistent in the two cases. Even to a casual observer they look the same. The letter was sent with a London postmark, and I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that you live and work in London.’

  Grant said nothing, but if anything his hands began to shake even more. He withdrew them from view and hid them in his lap.

  His lawyer leaned forward to study the evidence, a pair of reading
glasses perched on his long nose. The expression on his face didn’t bode well for Grant’s chances.

  At Bridget’s side, Jake cleared his throat and Grant jumped as if he’d been struck. ‘Mr Sadler, would you agree that these two documents were written by the same person?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Grant, refusing to make eye contact.

  ‘And can you tell us who wrote them?’

  A pause. ‘I did.’

  ‘So you admit that you wrote and sent the death threat to Diane Gilbert?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked up, his face holding a desperate appeal for Bridget’s compassion. ‘But I didn’t kill her. You have to believe me!’

  Bridget wasn’t moved by his plea. ‘Why should we believe you? All the evidence points to you.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I never wanted to harm Diane. I certainly didn’t want her to die. She was my client! I had nothing to gain from her death.’

  ‘Except for fifteen percent of all the revenues from her book sales. Which looks to be a considerable amount of money now that the book is becoming a bestseller.’

  ‘I know!’ cried Grant in anguish. ‘I know how it looks. But it was never meant to happen like this.’

  ‘You didn’t want the book to become a bestseller?’

  ‘Of course I did! That’s why I sent her the death threat, but you have to believe me, I didn’t murder Diane. I never had any intention of harming her.’

  Jake leaned across the table. ‘I think you’d better explain.’

  Grant ran both hands through his hair, lifting the unkempt tufts to new heights. ‘All right, this is how it was.’ He breathed deeply, calming himself down. When he had himself back under control, he began to speak. ‘Diane and I cooked up the death threat plan between us. It was my idea, but when I suggested it to her, she was enthusiastic. I wrote the letter and sent it to her, and when she received it, she showed it to her sister and to Jennifer, her publisher.’

  ‘Are you saying that they were in on this plot too?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. They both thought the death threat was genuine.’

  Bridget frowned. ‘According to Annabel and Jennifer, Diane was dismissive of the letter. Initially she didn’t even want to report it to the police.’

  ‘Yes, but don’t you see? That was all part of the act. Diane had to respond to the letter just as she would have done if it had been genuine. In other words, with her usual contempt. She needed to convince Annabel and Jennifer that it was real. That would make it more credible when she did eventually agree to take it to the police.’

  He was starting to look embarrassed, as if he’d pulled a schoolboy prank that had gone too far.

  ‘And what precisely was the purpose of this hoax threat?’ demanded Bridget. ‘A publicity stunt?’

  ‘Exactly. It’s a cut-throat business, the world of publishing. And the truth is that I’ve been finding it hard-going these past few years. I’ve had a string of bad luck, you might say. Authors that showed promise, but whose careers came to nothing.’

  Bridget looked at the dishevelled man across the table from her. She pictured the budget hotel where he was staying at the far end of the Abingdon Road, the bus journeys he was having to make in and out of town each day, and the way that he had dodged paying for his coffee at the coffee shop. That his financial situation was dire – here was a fact she could believe.

  ‘So,’ he continued, ‘I came to see Diane in Oxford to discuss plans for the book launch, and we were chatting about how to get more sales. She was saying that her appearance at the Oxford Literary Festival was a waste of time. I told her that was nonsense. It was an honour to appear at the festival, but she said there would only be a small audience for her talk at the Divinity School – it wasn’t as if they’d offered her the Sheldonian – and she wasn’t particularly keen on meeting readers anyway. She said she would hate answering their stupid questions and signing books for them.’ He raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘You know what Diane was like.’

  Bridget nodded. That was exactly the kind of remark she could imagine Diane making.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Grant, ‘I said that if she wanted more publicity, then we needed to make the most of the controversial nature of her book. Half-jokingly, I suggested the idea of the death threat. I told her that if word got out that she had been threatened, we could use the story to generate more publicity for the launch. To my surprise, she thought it was a great idea, and so we agreed to do it. You know, I didn’t really think it would work, but when the police took the letter seriously and offered to provide round-the-clock protection for Diane, I knew that we’d struck gold. It was going to make a great story.’

  Bridget was furious. ‘So you used the police simply to generate hype for a book?’ If Grant was telling the truth, not only had she wasted her time accompanying Diane to the literary festival, but he had completely muddied the waters of the investigation and squandered yet more valuable time. And if he was still lying to her… ‘How can you prove that what you say is true?’

  Grant’s lawyer glanced sideways at his client, perhaps wondering the same thing. But the nervous energy that had animated the agent throughout the telling of his tale suddenly drained away and his face seemed to crumple. He stared back forlornly across the table. ‘How can I? The only witness who could corroborate my story is Diane, and she’s dead. You just have to believe my account.’

  ‘But why should we? Even if what you say about Diane being party to a publicity stunt is true, you might still only be telling us half the story.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Maybe it was all going so well that you decided to go the extra mile. Let’s say for the moment that you hadn’t originally intended to kill her. But once you saw that you had the potential for a bestseller on your hands, you decided to take it to the next level.’

  ‘No,’ gasped Grant.

  ‘A hoax death threat might have gained you a few column inches in the literary press, but by proceeding with the murder, you ensured that every newspaper and news channel in the country would give prime coverage to Diane and her book.’

  ‘No!’

  Bridget sat up straight in her chair, lending added conviction to her accusation. ‘You were in Oxford on the night of Diane’s death, you had a clear motive for killing her, and you’ve admitted to sending her a death threat. Unless you can come up with a more convincing account, it’s very likely that we will be charging you with her murder.’

  *

  Bridget left the interview fuming. She couldn’t be certain whether Grant Sadler was telling the truth, or if he was lying desperately to save his skin. At the very least, she was going to charge him with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress. Not to mention making threats to kill. Both were serious offences. But if the death threat really was a hoax as Grant claimed, then she was no closer to finding the identity of the murderer. In fact, the new information threw everything they had been working on into doubt.

  ‘What do you make of him?’ she asked Jake. ‘Do you believe him?’

  ‘It’s hard to believe a word he says.’

  ‘Agreed. But if he is telling the truth…’ She left the sentence unfinished, and stormed into the incident room, needing to put some space between herself and her suspect before she fully lost her temper with him.

  In the office, all was calm, and everyone seemed to be busy with their tasks. Ffion was at her desk, her head buried in a book. In fact books were spread chaotically all over her normally tidy desk.

  Bridget peered curiously over the young detective’s shoulder. The books appeared to be the works on cryptography from Diane’s house that Ffion had mentioned earlier. The page that Ffion was currently reading was incomprehensible to Bridget, full of complex diagrams and strange symbols. She leaned in closer and saw the word “steganography” highlighted in yellow marker. Bridget quickly moved on, leaving Ffion to her task.

  Andy looked up from his computer screen as she approached, a spark of excite
ment animating his normally bland features. ‘There’s been a development, ma’am.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s the CCTV from the Travelodge where Grant Sadler has been staying. We requested it last week, but hadn’t had time to look at it properly. It didn’t seem like a top priority. Besides, they have so much of it. Cameras in reception, cameras by the lifts, more in the car park –’

  Bridget didn’t really care where the hotel placed its cameras. ‘Have you found something?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, yes. I’ve been working through it while you were conducting the interview, and the results are pretty interesting. On the night of Diane’s murder, Grant Sadler didn’t stay in his room watching TV like he claimed. The footage clearly shows that he didn’t get back to the hotel until a few minutes before midnight.’

  Bridget felt her anger beginning to rise once more. Was there no limit to the number of lies the unscrupulous literary agent had told her?

  She spun on her heels and marched straight back into the interview.

  27

  Bridget took her seat across from Grant and studied his ashen face. Were his crumpled features an acceptance of his guilt at last, or simply a blind fear of his prospects? She waited to see how he would respond to her return.

  He leaned towards her with a pleading look in his eyes. ‘Please don’t charge me with Diane’s murder.’

  ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Because I’ve told you everything I know. You simply have to believe me.’

  ‘Is that the best you can offer? Because I now have fresh evidence that I would like to put to you.’

  If it was possible for a man who looked like he had lost everything to take on an even more deflated appearance, Grand Sadler did just that.

  ‘When I spoke to you the day after Diane’s death,’ said Bridget, ‘you told me that after leaving the literary festival, you stopped for a quick pint at the White Horse and then went back to your hotel.’