Dexter was cautious not to overstate the planned exploration into the circumstances surrounding Barbara Patchett’s death. He didn’t want to call it an investigation — he knew there weren’t the grounds for that, and he didn’t want to cause unnecessary distress to Barbara’s family — but he did feel it warranted looking into a little more closely, just to make sure.
He sat down with Detective Constables Sara Henshaw and Aidan Chilcott, as he often did on a Monday morning, to discuss any updates or progress from those who’d been working the weekend.
‘I had an interesting one yesterday,’ he said, suspecting he might have overdone the casual tone and given the game away immediately. ‘I attended the scene of a sudden death. Seventy-three-year-old Oakham woman by the name of Barbara Patchett. She collapsed during a church service at All Saints, after feeling a bit unwell beforehand. We’ve not exactly been snowed under recently, so I wondered if we might be able to have a little nosey around without alerting her loved ones.’
‘Suspicious circs?’ Aidan asked, his eyes narrowing.
‘Not that I can put my finger on,’ Dexter replied, bending the truth a little. ‘More of a general sense of things not quite adding up. She’d wet herself, for example. But not after she’d died. The husband reckons that’d happened while she was in the middle of singing a hymn and that’s what made her go to leave the church. No history of incontinence, apparently, so it’s a bit of a coincidence for it to happen the first time just seconds before she dies, isn’t it?’
‘It does sound a bit strange, but is it suspicious?’
‘I reckon so,’ Dex replied. ‘My sister’s a palliative care nurse. Last year she was doing a lot of work on an initiative into signs that people are approaching death. Basically, they realised they were spending a load of money propping up people who it wouldn’t make a difference to. She didn’t stop going on about it for months. That was one of the things she mentioned — that they either slow down or stop urinating completely, or develop incontinence.’
Aidan looked at Sara, then back at Dex. ‘So why’s that suspicious? Sounds like it’s entirely as expected.’
‘I think he means those changes would happen gradually over days, weeks or months,’ Sara said. ‘Not in the thirty seconds before death.’
‘Exactly that,’ Dex replied. ‘It might be nothing. Just a little something making me feel uneasy, that’s all.’
‘Probably that tie. It’s giving me a headache, too.’
‘Very good. In any case, I’ve specifically requested toxicology from the post mortem, and stomach contents analysis. The coroner’s in a good mood and has signed that off, so we’ll wait to hear back. Now, I got a bit side-tracked yesterday afternoon, but I did get round to running Barbara and her husband through the PNC and they’re clean, but there is reference to a son, Ross, who’s got a fair bit of history to say the least. His parents have an active non-molestation order on him.’
‘Well that seems like a good place to start,’ Sara said. ‘Do we know the terms of the order?’
‘Yep — no letters, texts or other communications other than through a solicitor, and no coming within one hundred metres of Barbara and Brian’s house. I’ve not got round to taking in the detail, but from what I can gather there was a pattern of increasingly threatening behaviour from Ross towards his parents, which appears to be the result of years of heavy drug use. It looks like he rocked up at the house one day and did a number on his dad, then followed up with a text threatening to kill them both.’
‘Lovely guy,’ Aidan said. ‘Anything else on his record?’
As Aidan spoke, Sara looked across the desk at him. She’d been keen on Aidan for quite some time, but had never plucked up the courage to mention it to him or ask him out. She’d been on the verge of doing so a few months earlier, only for Aidan to reveal that his boyfriend had just left him. Assuming he was gay, Sara had pushed her feelings back down, only to later find out Aidan had started a new relationship with a woman called Keira, who he’d been with ever since.
Keira seemed nice — unfortunately. Sara hated herself for saying it, and she loved to see Aidan happy, but she couldn’t deny there was a part of her that hoped Keira would do something really appalling so Aidan would dump her and leave the door open for Sara.
She was used to being on her own, but she yearned for company. She’d been adopted as a baby, her birth parents having been addicts and criminals. Even though her adoptive parents had been wonderful in so many ways, the knowledge they weren’t strictly related had always left a small gap in Sara’s heart. With her birth parents now dead — her mother only recently — that particular gap was one that would never be filled, yet she’d always felt that some form of deeper connection with another human was not only possible, but sorely lacking.
‘Put it this way,’ Dexter replied to Aidan. ‘The only reason I didn’t print out Ross Patchett’s PNC record was my concern for the rainforest. Almost all logged by Leicestershire, so he’s kept off our radar for the most part. He lives in the city, and seems to cause enough upset over there, so they can keep him. There’s nothing on him that’s been logged in Rutland since he decked his old man.’
‘Good job, too. Like you say, they can keep him. I imagine he’ll be tagged or tracked if he’s that well known. Can’t be too hard to find out if he’s been over this way at all recently. Surely someone would’ve said if he’d been at the church, though?’
‘Well, yeah,’ Dexter replied. ‘There’s nothing suggesting he was, but we definitely need to rule it out. Besides which, he might not have needed to be. If he’d mucked around with her medication or something, he could’ve caused the damage weeks ago. She might’ve just happened to have collapsed in church through pure chance.’
‘Either that or he was hiding at the back with a poison dart,’ Aidan joked.
‘Mmmm. Maybe he dressed up as a paramedic or a vicar so he could remove it before anyone noticed. Very Miss Marple. Although I did have half a thought that the dad might be covering for him, but I scrapped that idea pretty quickly.’
‘Yeah, I can’t see it,’ Aidan replied. ‘If you’ve had to take out an injunction against someone banning them from coming within a hundred yards of your property, you’re not going to cover for them if they bump off your missus, are you?’
‘It sounds like we might be getting a bit too far ahead of ourselves anyway,’ Sara interjected. ‘Especially if there aren’t any signs Barbara’s death was suspicious, other than the fact her son has a record of violence.’
‘And specifically threatening to kill her,’ Aidan added.
‘True, but people make those sorts of threats all the time, and people die all the time. It doesn’t mean the two are connected. But like you say, we’re not exactly rushed off our feet at the moment so it’ll be something to do.’
Dexter chuckled. ‘That’s the spirit. We should put that on a motivational poster or something. Everybody clear on what needs doing?’
Sara and Aidan nodded.
‘Good stuff. Let’s crack on then, shall we?’