Death at Rainbow Cottage by Jo Allen (novel24 TXT) 📕

He could hardly refuse. ‘Sure. Do you have any questions on the briefing note before we start?’

‘Not at all. It was admirably comprehensive.’ She bared her teeth just a little as she smiled, a sure sign that the smile was fake, and turned her cool gaze to Ashleigh. ‘Do carry on.’

Normally so confident, Ashleigh seemed to crumble under that stare, fumbling with her notes and picking them apart with such violence that the coffee mug at her elbow nearly went flying. ‘Her name is Gracie Pepper. Last night Chris and I went to Carlisle to break the news to her parents, and they told us as much as they felt able to about her. They were upset, so it’s little more than a broad impression, although I have some officers talking to her friends and colleagues to build up a picture of her. She’s thirty-one and she’s a nurse at the hospital, where she works in the elder care unit. She’s only been there a couple of months. She finished her shift yesterday at four o’clock but stayed on to help out because the colleague taking over from her was held up. She lives up in Greystoke Park.’

For Faye’s benefit, Jude got up and indicated the various locations on the map that Chris had pinned on the whiteboard. ‘That’s here. The hospital is here, up at Tynefield. The churchyard is here.’

She frowned at the map, as if processing the information. ‘All right. Carry on.’

‘We don’t know what she was doing in the churchyard. You can see it wasn’t on her way home. Jude’s briefing note tells you the sequence of events as regards the body. Claud Blackwell says he left his office to talk to a woman he mistakenly thought was his wife and the woman had gone, but he stumbled across what he thought was a body, lying against the wall of the church near a set of stones known the Giant’s Grave.’

‘A local curiosity,’ noted Jude, aloud. Faye, nodding, wrote that down.

‘He was joined by Phil Garner, a doctor from the hospital who, as it happens, knew her, although he says he didn’t recognise her immediately. Phil is married to Tammy Garner, who’s one of our CSIs, and their son is a probationary constable with us.’

‘How very coincidental.’

The gaze Faye fixed on Ashleigh was so steely that Jude felt obliged to intervene. ‘It’s no coincidence that Phil was there. It was Tammy’s birthday. She was having a quick drink with colleagues — all of us included — and he’d arranged to come and pick her up to take her out for dinner. He’d parked at the back of the church rather than get caught up in the one-way system, as they were heading up to Roundthorn for dinner.’ Tammy wasn’t on the CSI team still working away in the churchyard, and the investigation would be the poorer for it, because she was noted for her thoroughness and her obsession with detail.

‘Mr Blackwell said he thought Gracie was dead,’ Ashleigh went on, doggedly reading from her notes, ‘but according to Phil, when he got to her she was still alive, but bleeding heavily. He tried to staunch the bleeding, with Claud’s help, but he describes the haemorrhaging as catastrophic. There was nothing he could do to save her. She died in his arms about a minute after he reached her.’

‘There wasn’t anyone else in the churchyard at the time,’ Chris supplemented. ‘Or rather, neither of the witnesses saw anyone in that particular part of it.’

In response to Faye’s questioning look, Jude reached for a piece of paper and sketched a rapid plan. ‘The church is in a large curtilage, very enclosed. There’s no vehicular access to it, apart from about half a dozen parking spaces against the churchyard wall at the north eastern corner. There are buildings at the east end and a footpath connecting Burrowgate and Friargate runs between them and the churchyard. There’s a flight of steps that goes down from the south corner into King Street, and a passageway that goes from the west corner into the Market Square.’ There were photos on the whiteboard, retrieved by Chris from the internet in the small hours of the morning to give an interim picture of the scene in daylight. Someone had drawn every possible escape route on them.

‘It’s in the block between those that Claud Blackwell has his office. There are footpaths that cut across the churchyard itself, as well as those that go round it. The configuration is such that it’s very easy to be in one part of that close and not see something that’s going on in another. The body was found here.’ He slid the sketch across to her, and she frowned down at it, before passing it to Chris, who jumped up and pinned it to the board.

‘So far, we haven’t found anyone who saw Gracie in the churchyard, but she must have cut across one of the paths. Inquiries are ongoing and we may yet come up with someone who can shed light on what she was doing there.’

‘You’re treating Blackwell as a suspect, of course.’ Faye pushed her glasses up her nose and sighed. The rest of the diversity workshops would have to be put on hold.

Under the cloak of his tiredness, Jude bristled with irritation. ‘Yes. Anything else you can tell us about her, Ashleigh?’

‘I don’t yet know if anything’s come up from her friends and colleagues that may indicate motive. If there’s anything in her private life it’s not immediately obvious. She was relatively new to the area, though, so the people we’ve spoken to haven’t been able to shed any light on it. Her parents say she worked hard and came home often. Her mother has been unwell recently. As far as I know she got on with everyone.’ She shuffled the bits of paper around.

Faye fidgeted. ‘Of course