“Did you see anyone enter your husband’s study? Anywhere in the house?”
Margaret shook her head. She felt dizzy.
“Don’t worry, ma’am. It’s alright.” PC Bright rushed to Margaret’s side.
The detective narrowed her eyes. She eyed the dress, then seemed to come to a decision. “Will you be comfortable in here, at least for half an hour or so? Then we can help you find somewhere else to go.”
“No,” said Margaret.
“Sorry?”
“I don’t have anywhere else.”
“No family, friends?”
Margaret thought of her grown-up children. She couldn’t burden them with this. Not in the middle of the night. Paul would blame her. And Winona…
She crossed herself.
“Do you have a neighbour you can go to?”
“No. There’s only here. I’ll stay here.”
The detective frowned. “We don’t normally…” She licked her lips then put on a false smile. “Let’s talk about it shortly, then we can work something out.” She gave the constable a look that made Margaret expect more questions.
“I want to stay here.”
“Like I say, we can work out what’s best later. You stay in here, for now. Please. There’s a settee, maybe you can make yourself comfortable.”
Margaret looked at the sofa by the window. She never sat there. That was Bryn’s spot, the place where he lounged while she made him drinks or served up his dinner. He would wait for it there, his beady eyes on her, then take it to his study. Leaving her to eat alone at the kitchen table.
“I’ll try,” she said.
The detective had been at the party. Newly promoted. Margaret knew Bryn’s death was an opportunity for her.
“Thank you.” The detective scanned the room again then clenched her fists. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Chapter Seven
No matter how long Zoe worked in the force, she never got used to the sight of a dead body.
She’d seen thirty-two of them in her seventeen-year career in West Midlands Police. Eighteen in her two years in uniform, and the rest in CID.
There’d been two she’d known. An old school friend in a road traffic accident and a frequent arrestee in a drug death. But in both cases, she hadn’t known in advance that she would recognise the body.
This was the first time she’d had to prepare herself to see the body of someone she’d met.
She’d only met him the once, and she hadn’t exactly warmed to the man. But she felt a kind of maternalism towards murder victims, and felt she had to do right by them. With Bryn Jackson, this was magnified by the fact he’d been her boss.
The study where Jackson had died was next to the kitchen. The door hung open and the lights were low. A lamp sat on the desk in the centre of the room, a modern reproduction of something you might have found in an Edwardian mansion. It was lit, along with a tasselled floor lamp in the corner by the window.
The room measured four to five metres square, with heavy, full height curtains at the back and a small side window. The window was open, just a crack.
Zoe ran through procedure in her head. Secure, protect, preserve. PC Khaled was at the front door to log anyone who came in and out. A back door led off the corridor that had taken her to the kitchen. She’d stopped to check it after speaking to Mrs Jackson. The key had been in the lock and it was bolted. She’d fished an evidence bag from her pocket and dropped the key inside. It was metal with a long handle, heavy in her pocket.
The only other entrance was through the doors which led into the garden from the study, behind those curtains. The killer could have come in that way, or they might have used the main door. Unless the killer had already been in the house.
She stood at the threshold, swallowing hard as she let her gaze fall to the body. Jackson lay on the floor where the paramedics had put him. His face was angled towards her, along with the wound that had probably caused his death. A deep gash in his neck, crusted with blood. Bloodstains blossomed on the white wing-collared shirt he’d been wearing at the party. The tie she’d seen draped around his neck was wound neatly on a sideboard. He’d had time to do that, then.
She turned to PC Khaled, at the other end of the Jacksons’ echoing hallway with its sweeping staircase.
“Have you been past this door?”
“Briefly. I had to pull Mrs Jackson off him.”
“Was that before the ambulance arrived?”
“Yes, ma’am. We were first here.”
“How did you get in?”
“The front door was open.”
She frowned and looked at the door behind him. It was blue and heavy, with an ornate knob in the centre.
“So you went in there, pulled her off, dragged her out, waited for the paramedics, and no one has been in there since?”
“That’s correct.”
“Has anything been removed?”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
She thought back to Mrs Jackson, in the kitchen with a cup of tea going cold in front of her. The beige dress she had been wearing at the party was heavily bloodstained, crusted in places.
“We need her dress.”
“PC Bright has already asked Mrs Jackson to leave it on her bed.”
“Tell me when that’s been done.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks.”
She turned back to the study. The blood smelled heavy and metallic against a background tang of wood and furniture polish. A pool of it settled under Jackson’s body and seeping into the wooden floor.
Zoe had a protective suit in her car. But she couldn’t step into that room until the Forensic Scene Manager arrived.
She leaned in to get a better view. A faint smear of blood ran across the floor to the doorway, maybe where PC Khaled had dragged Mrs Jackson away. It petered out before reaching the doorway. She noted that PC Khaled hadn’t left footprints.
The Assistant Chief Constable’s face was pale. It looked stark against all the blood. The tie on the chair looked incongruous, too tidy. The rest of the room was tidy too, although not as sparse as the rest of the house. The hallway was minimalist to the point of being museum-like, and the kitchen felt cold and bare. This room was well-ordered, but also well lived in. She wondered if he hid away here and his wife lived in the rest of the house.
On the floor about two feet from him lay what looked like an ornate hunting knife. An antique, maybe. It was smeared with blood but looked like someone had wiped it. Had the paramedics touched it, she wondered.
A knife like that, if it belonged to Jackson, would have been on display. This was that kind of room. Certificates lined the walls, with photographs of the ACC posing next to various bigwigs. Two of them currently in detention following the Canary case. And there were paintings, too, what looked like originals. But there was a space on the chimney breast, where a picture should have hung. A dark line marked its top edge, where the dust would have settled. A safe sat in the centre of the empty space.
Still in the doorway, she scanned the room for the picture. It could be leaning against the other side of the desk. But Zoe had a feeling it was gone.
A burglary gone wrong, maybe? The safe was closed, no obvious sign of having been unlocked.