Felix Francis - Guilty Not Guilty

He said nothing but his sidekick finally broke his silence. ‘Post-mortem.’

Oh, shit.

Too much information. I’d have been better off not knowing.

‘Don’t you need official identification first?’ I asked. ‘It may not be Amelia at all.’

‘We already have a positive identification,’ said the DS. ‘Joseph Bradbury, your wife’s brother, confirmed it was her.’

‘How come?’ I asked angrily. ‘What’s he got to do with it? He’s not her next of kin. I am.’

‘Formal identification of a body doesn’t have to be done by the next of kin. A close relative is good enough, and Mr Bradbury was there. He was the one who called the police. He says he went to visit his sister and found her lying dead on your kitchen floor.’

‘How did he get in?’ I asked with rising rage.

‘He said he looked through the kitchen window and saw her.’

‘And you believed him, I suppose?’ I shook my head in frustration. ‘He’s the man you should be questioning, not me. If I were you, I wouldn’t have confidence in a single word my brother-in-law says.’

‘Why is that?’ the DS asked with all seriousness.

‘Because the man’s a pathological liar. He wouldn’t know the truth if it punched him in the face.’

‘He told us where to find you.’

‘And I suppose he told you that I’d killed my wife.’

He nodded. ‘And he also said you’d deny it.’

‘Of course I deny it. Because I didn’t do it.’

He looked up at me. ‘Then answer my questions.’

‘Not without my solicitor being present.’

‘But you said there was no reason for you to need a solicitor. Changed your mind about that, have you, Mr Gordon-Russell? Why don’t you just tell us what really happened between you and your wife?’

The detective clearly believed I had murdered Amelia. It was plain to see in his manner.

‘I am leaving now,’ I said.

‘I could arrest you.’

‘What for?’ I asked. ‘Murder? You don’t have any evidence. If you did, you’d have done it by now.’

I stood outside Banbury Police Station in a bit of a daze.

I’d half-expected to be prevented from leaving but here I was alone on the side of the road, not quite knowing what to do next.

The detective sergeant had unhelpfully told me that I wouldn’t be able to go home as my house was sealed off and it would remain so for some time, maybe for days, or even weeks. And my car was still in the officials’ car park at Warwick Racecourse where I’d parked it that morning, with my overnight bag in the boot.

But at least I had kept hold of my mobile phone, in spite of the detective wanting to take it from me.

‘Have you got a warrant?’ I’d asked as he’d held out his hand for it.

The police may have been allowed to forensically search my house as a crime scene, but I was damned if they were going to do the same to my phone. Not yet anyway. Not without arresting me first.

I looked at its screen: 15.58.

Racing at Warwick would still be going on but there was no point in going back. My car would be quite safe in their car park. I would collect it when I felt a little better.

I called my brother. Not the to-be-earl. The other one.

‘Douglas,’ I said when he answered, ‘I’m in a bit of trouble. Can I come and see you?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘When?’

‘Right now.’

There was a slight pause from the other end.

‘Is it a big bit of trouble?’ he asked.

‘Huge.’

Another pause.

‘I won’t be home for another forty minutes.’

‘I’m still in Banbury,’ I said. ‘The train takes an hour to London. I should be with you about six.’

‘Come,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

I hung up.

Good old Douglas.

No ifs, no buts, no questions — just come .

Ever since I could first walk and talk, Douglas had been the port I had run to in a storm. Eight years my senior, he had always seemed to me to be so calm and wise, traits he now employed daily in the courts as a QC, a Queen’s Counsel.

I made my way through Banbury town centre to the railway station without really feeling my feet on the ground.

Amelia murdered.

It had to be a mistake or some sort of cruel joke.

The detective sergeant had said during the interview that I didn’t seem very distressed by her death and I had replied that I was devastated, but, in fact, I was totally numb. I didn’t feel anything.

It was as if this was happening to somebody else, like a drama unfolding on the television. It wasn’t like reality.

Except that it was.

I bought a train ticket from the machine using my credit card.

My cognitive brain was working fine — I could remember my PIN without a moment’s hesitation. But my emotional brain was in disarray, with synapses failing to fire as if anaesthetised.

I knew I ought to be sad, miserable even, or inconsolable and grief-stricken. I should be wretched and in despair, unable to bear the torment of my loss.

But I was none of those things.

If anything, I was angry.

I was angry with Amelia for getting herself killed but angrier with her brother, whom I was absolutely certain was responsible.

I stared out as the rolling green hills of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire gave way to the great metropolis of London, and the daylight began to dwindle towards darkness.

The second half of October.

It had never been a favourite time of the year for me. The clocks would go back in a few days and then we would be into winter, with many seemingly endless months to come before the re-emergence of spring. That in itself was depressing enough without the knowledge that I would now be spending them alone, cruelly deprived of my soulmate.

And, as if to add to my woes, it started to rain, beating loudly against the carriage windows. Hence I took a taxi from Marylebone to Chester Square in Belgravia where Douglas lived in a four-storey town house.

The rain was still hosing down as I climbed out of the taxi and I was pretty well drenched even by the time I’d walked across the pavement and pushed the doorbell.

Douglas opened the door almost immediately.

‘My God, William, you look terrible. Come in, dear boy. Come in.’

He led me through to his kitchen. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Can I have a drink? G and T. And make it a strong one.’

And to hell with DS Dowdeswell.

Douglas clinked ice into two tumblers, added generous portions of gin plus a splash of tonic water and some slices of lemon from the fridge.

‘There,’ he said, handing me one of the glasses. ‘Get that down your neck.’

I drank deeply, enjoying the effect of the spirit in my throat.

Douglas looked at me expectantly.

‘Amelia’s dead,’ I said.

His shoulders slumped but there was no look of great surprise on his face — more one of resignation. My brother was fully up to speed on my family situation. He had been quietly advising Amelia and me for months.

‘She was murdered,’ I said.

Now there was shock in his eyes. ‘Are you sure?’

‘The police told me she was strangled. And they think I did it.’

He looked straight at me. ‘And did you?’

I told myself it was the lawyer in him.

‘What would you suggest if I had?’

‘I’d call the best criminal solicitor I know and arrange to meet him, with you, at Charing Cross Police Station in half an hour.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I didn’t, so there’s no need.’

‘Good. I didn’t think so.’

I told him everything that had happened to me on that day and what I could remember from my interview with the detective sergeant.

‘You should have never allowed yourself to be interviewed without a solicitor being present, especially after the police cautioned you.’