Monday, 3 April, 6 p.m.
Two and a half miles away, at Monkmoor Police Station, the interview was ongoing but DS Talith was going easy on his boss. He knew the DI had made every attempt to keep his home life a closed zone. The pain this exposure was causing him was just as bad as being blatantly accused of murdering his wife.
Which Talith had no intention of doing.
‘Just give me the events, sir.’ Talith was determined for his boss to maintain his position and dignity, something which DI Randall picked up on. He flashed his sergeant a look of gratitude.
He cleared his throat and prepared to lay bare his private life. ‘Erica, as you know, was not a well woman. She was extremely unpredictable.’ Randall’s eyes flicked across the room to the recording light. Off.
Another reason for gratitude. If it didn’t need to be shared then it would stay within these walls and his sergeant’s head.
‘Her habit was to watch television fairly solidly in the evening. She’d flick through programmes.’
‘And you, sir?’
‘I used to sit in the front room. I preferred to read – or look at stuff on the computer.’
Talith frowned. Oh, shit. ‘What sort of stuff, sir?’ Both men were well aware they had not seized the DI’s computer.
But Randall laughed it off. ‘Oh, just stuff on iPlayer, you know. Radio plays, serials I’d missed.’ There was not a trace of embarrassment. All looked honest and true. As one would expect.
Talith cleared his throat. ‘Go on, sir.’
‘Well, round about eleven I heard Erica switch the TV off. It was the normal time for her to go to bed.’ His face changed then to a look of anguish, embarrassment and something else which Talith thought he could read. The inspector and his wife didn’t sleep together.
‘She took …’ Randall drew in a deep breath. ‘She took quite a lot of prescription pills. Anti-depressants and some tranquilizers.’
‘We’ll be speaking to her doctor, sir.’
Randall showed the first leak of irritation. ‘I know that, Talith. I’m just explaining about that night.’ He continued. ‘She would take them and then settle down to go to sleep.’ His good humour had returned. ‘They seemed to do the trick. Usually she’d be out like a light until morning.’
Talith waited, wanting to prompt the DI with a, But?
‘I stayed downstairs.’ DI Randall’s tone was clipped, his gaze abstracted, far away. ‘I was listening to “From Our Own Correspondent” on iPlayer.’ He smiled briefly. ‘It’s one of my favourite radio programmes. But then I heard the noise. Bump, bump, bump. I knew what it was.’
Talith asked his first question. ‘So you were downstairs, you say?’
Again, Randall’s response was terse. He’d picked up on the sergeant’s doubt. ‘Yes, Talith, I do say.’
Talith moved on quickly. ‘She’d fallen before?’
His inspector’s eyes seemed to bore into him. ‘No,’ he responded, irritation bubbling up. ‘She hadn’t. If she had we would have moved to a bungalow. But the sound of someone falling down a flight of stairs is quite distinctive.’
‘Did she cry out?’
Randall squeezed his eyes shut. ‘A sort of strangled scream. I ran out but she’d hit her head on the corner of the wall and wasn’t moving.’ He was frowning now. ‘Her head was at a strange angle. I thought it best not to move her in case her neck was broken.’ He couldn’t hold back a shudder as he spoke. Maybe the thought of a mad paraplegic wife would, finally, have been too much for him. ‘I dialled the emergency services.’ A wisp of humour. ‘I would think you know better than I the exact sequence of subsequent events.’
Talith did. He’d heard the transcript. Once the call had been documented the wheels and recorders had been set in motion. The 999 team had logged his call at 12.15 a.m. His wife had fallen downstairs. She wasn’t breathing; she wasn’t bleeding. He thought her neck was broken. They had sent an ambulance crew plus the police.
Alex Randall leaned forward, his eyes locked on to his sergeant’s. ‘Talith,’ he said, and knew there was something his sergeant was holding back. ‘Talith?’
But the sergeant’s eyes flickered away.
6.30 p.m.
Mark Sullivan had finished the post-mortem. He stood back. ‘Well,’ he said, ripping off his gloves. ‘Now that is interesting.’ He spoke to his assistant. ‘Get those samples off to the lab. I don’t want to start speculating until we’re sure.’
Peter Williams grinned. He knew the ways of the pathologist only too well. They’d worked together for years.
‘We’ll keep this under our hats for now. Eh?’
Mark Sullivan was rarely a hundred per cent certain of the events which had led up to a person’s death. Pathology can be an inexact science. Usually he simply gave the facts, sometimes adding in an opinion. This time he was ninety-nine per cent certain he had an answer.