Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

“Nothing,” called another man from further away. “There’s no one else. Only a kind of study, with a computer and filing cabinets and magazines and things.”

“Magazines? What magazines?”

“Women’s stuff. Cosmo. Vogue. Things like that.”

He came closer and bent right down into my face. That’s when I saw he had a dark-blue peaked cap with a chequered headband and POLICE in neat white letters.

I began to breathe again.

“God, you scared me,” I said, and my voice was all high and quavery. I tried to toughen it. “Can I have my glasses, please? And a dressing gown?”

“Don’t move.” Three gun barrels came even closer to my face. And I heard the scrunch of glass. I don’t suppose they did it deliberately, but one of them mashed my new Armani specs under his heavy great feet.

That was enough to make me more cross than scared. Or maybe it was reaction. Shock or something. Anyway, whatever it was, I forgot their guns and not having any clothes on and I just yelled at them, in a voice even my grandmother would have admired. And no one was grander than my grandmother.

“Stop being so damned silly. You’ve got the wrong sodding address, like the sodding postman. You want the people in the flat across the road. Now let me get up and get my dressing gown. And stop playing silly buggers with those idiotic guns.”

The nearest man took a step back and I knew I’d won. After a bit, another of them handed me my dressing gown, smiling and nodding in a sloppy apologetic kind of way, like a bashful terrier. A minute ago he’d been holding a gun to my face; now he wanted to be friends? Mad.

He was sitting in the bathroom looking at her corpse, as if it were the most normal thing in the world…

The phone’s call was magnified by the dark of the night, a demanding intrusion that was not going to be ignored.

First there was a sigh, then a hand reached out for the phone and a deep, almost husky male voice asked, “Yes?” There was a pause. “Yes, that’s right… Where?” Another of the same. “Who?” This with some interest. “You’re sure?… Okay.” Once more, nothing was said, before, “No, don’t worry. I’ll contact her. I think she’s visiting her mother.”

The phone was placed back on its stand and there was silence again, as if the room were empty.

Then softly…

“Trouble?” This voice was female.

“Dead woman. Found in the bath. Apparently her wrists were slit.”

“Suicide? What’s it got to do with us?”

“It’s Kate Reed, the wife of Dr. Phil Reed.”

For the first time, there was a sense of interest in the room.

“Reed? The forensic pathologist?”

“The same. He was actually the one who phoned in with the call.”

After a moment, “I still don’t see why they have to phone a detective sergeant in the middle of the night.”

“They were after his detective inspector.”

“So they found her, although they don’t know that. I still don’t see why they were after either of us.”

An unearthly yowling sounded in the distance as fox called to fox between the dustbins, and with a sigh, the answer was given.

“Apparently he sat there and watched her do it.”

They spent the remaining hours of darkness at a very plush five-bedroom detached house in the suburbs, feelings of déja vu fighting with feelings of boredom. They had seen the body naked in the bath, the rose-pink water almost completely hiding her embarrassment, a pallid face showing a degree of relaxation that no living human could ever hope to assume. There was no evidence of a fight, nothing even to suggest an argument, a row, or even a small tiff. Their examination of the house had revealed no money problems, no evidence of extra-marital affairs, nothing that suggested anything other than an ordinary marriage.

“I still don’t believe it.”

“Believe it, Hannah. Believe it.”

“Phil Reed is not a murderer.”

Sam had learned to have great respect for Hannah Angelman’s abilities in the seven months he had known her, but this time he thought that she was wrong.

“But when she was found, he was sitting in the bathroom just looking at her corpse, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. The scalpel was on the side of the bath. He’d been drinking wine-had a couple of glasses. There was even a half empty glass of wine on the side of the bath by the body, as if to make out that she’d joined in.”

“But has he admitted to murder?”

“He hasn’t said anything much. He wants to talk to you.”

She leaned back in her chair, looking toward Sam as he stood in front of her desk, yet not seeing him.

“Are we sure the house was secure?”

“Completely.”

“So there was no possibility of third-party involvement?”

“None whatsoever.”

Another possibility excluded, she reflected that the options were running out for Dr. Philip Reed.

Outside the window of her office some seagulls, ranging far from their usual home around the Gloucester docks, called raucously as they hovered in the swirling spring air. As if called by them, she rose from her chair and went to stare out the window at the constant traffic of Lansdowne Road; the morning rush into Cheltenham was just beginning.

“It’s an odd way to murder someone… maybe it is suicide.”

“With him watching? Anyway, his fingerprints are all over the handle of the scalpel, which is clear evidence that he took an active part in things. I don’t know what else you need. Accept it, Hannah. He killed her.”

“Other than the cuts to her wrists, was there any evidence of trauma to the body?”

“The pathologist says the only thing he can find are two tiny puncture marks, one by each of the cuts.”

“Nothing else? No ligature marks? No head injury?”

“No.”

“That would suggest that she allowed him to do it.”

“Unless she was drugged. Perhaps that’s what the puncture marks mean; or perhaps he put something in her wine. We’ll only know for sure when we get the toxicology back in a day or two.”

Hannah turned back to him. “No, she was complicit. At worst this was assisted suicide.”

Sam snorted. “Assisted and spectated, then. She was naked in the bath, Hannah. He must have sat there and watched her die.”

“Poor sod.”

He couldn’t believe what he had heard. “Why do you say that? After what he’s just done, I don’t think he deserves any sympathy.”

“There’s a lot of history in that marriage, Sam.”

“I think he drugged her while she was in the bath-hence her glass of wine-then slit both her wrists and sat and watched her while she bled to death. That’s horrible, that’s unforgivable. No amount of history comes anywhere near to excusing that.”

“It might explain it, though.”

“I don’t see how.”

She turned abruptly around. “Why don’t we go and find out? Where is he?”

“Room three. Fisher’s with him.”

As they walked down the stairs to the interview rooms, Sam said, “He had everything. Large house, big car, beautiful wife, and now he’s thrown it all down the drain. What drives a man to do that? Surely it can’t just have been a row.”

“Which is why I’m having a problem with this. Something tells me that there’s more to this than is at present apparent.”

It was when they had nearly reached the interview room that Sam asked, “What did you mean by ‘history’?”

“They had a child, but it died after a few weeks. Internal abnormalities or something. It was a blessing, really.”