Gallery Whispers

4

Even in the dark of the late autumn morning, Sarah reached Oldbams, finding her way along the twisting country roads which she knew so well, in only fifteen minutes. Nestling on the edge of a wood a mile south of the hamlet ofWhitekirk, it was one of a number of previously abandoned steadings throughout East Lothian which had been rescued by private developers and returned to use as homes.

In its transformed existence, the occupants were no longer farm workers; instead they tended to be city dwellers who had developed a middle-aged hankering for country life.

She could see the blue lights of the ambulance and the police vehicles ahead other as she steered her Preelander carefully along the narrow, tree-lined approach way from the A 198. She came to a halt next to a patrol car, its Day-glo flashes shining in her headlights until she switched them off.

The death house was at the end of one of three rows of terraced cottages, built of red stone blocks, with black slate roofs. Lights shone in all but one of the dwellings, which formed three sides of a rectangle, around an open green space. The fourth was a long barn, which had been adapted to provide covered parking. As she glanced around the small community, faces looked back at her from several windows.

Detective Superintendent Brian Mackie stood in the doorway as she walked up the path. 'Hello Sarah,' he said, nodding his bald, domed head in greeting. 'They always seem to happen at night, don't they. Your client's through in the back.'

She stepped inside, following him across the entrance hall and through a door at the other side, into a big farmhouse style kitchen.

There a figure sat, slumped in a varnished captain's chair, drawn up to a heavy oak table.

The woman had her back to Sarah. Her head, which lolled on her right shoulder, was covered by a clear plastic bag. Like the hood of a hanged man, it was tight around the neck; secured not by a rope, but by heavy black adhesive tape.

'When was she found?'

Mackie glanced at his watch. 'Just over two hours ago. They have a milk round out here, believe it or not. The guy was putting the pinta on the front doorstep, and looked through the window.' He nodded towards closed double doors behind him. 'Those lead through to the dining room. They were open, and he could look right through. There was enough light from that table lamp over there to let him see what had happened.

'Milkmen have mobile phones these days, so he called us right away. The two officers from the car outside broke in through the back door and found her.'

'So what made you ring the bell for a full-scale murder investigation?'

Taken by surprise, Sarah and the superintendent looked back towards the kitchen door, through which Andy Martin had come silently into the room. 'I've seen suicides that looked like this, plastic bag and all.'

'The black tape, sir,' said Mackie. formal in the presence of the uniformed woman constable who stood behind the Head of CID.

'Bright young PC Cowan here reckoned that if the woman had fastened the tape round her own neck, there would have been a roll of the stuff and scissors, lying on the table in front of her.

'As you can see, there isn't. PC Cowan even put on her gloves and had a look in all the drawers and cupboards. It's not there either.'

'Fair enough.' The chief superintendent nodded. 'Good work, constable,' he said to the girl at his side. 'Mr Mackie will make sure that your divisional commander hears of this.' He turned back to the other detective. 'Are Arthur Dorward's lot on the way?'

'Yes.'

'In that case we'd all better get our big feet out of here and avoid contaminating this scene any further. Doctor, can you certify death without disturbing the plastic bag? I want to leave her until she's been photographed.'

'Sure.' Sarah laid her small case on the table, opened it and took out a pen-light. What's wrong with Andy? she thought as she crouched down beside the body. He hasn 't called me 'Doctor'in years.

The dead woman's eyes were open. There was no flicker of reaction when she shone the torch on her pupils. 'There's no fear in her expression,' she said, quietly, to the two detectives as she worked.

'She looks perfectly calm.' She held her wrist for a few moments, confirming the absence of pulse, then looked closely at it, and at the other. 'No marks on her either; at least none that I can see. Nothing to indicate that she's been restrained while this was done, then untied afterwards.'

Sarah looked into the woman's face once more. In life she had been attractive, in her early middle age, with dark hair showing only a few strands of grey. Then something caught her eye; something so incongruous that she kicked herself mentally for not noticing it right away.

'Andy. Brian. She's wearing make-up.' She lifted one of the dead wrists and sniffed at it. 'And perfume too. If you look in her bedroom, you'll probably find a bottle or a spray of a fragrance called Joy.

'Whatever happened to this lady, she got herself dolled up for it.'

She leaned forward and peered closely at the plastic bag. 'Oh yes,' she whispered, 'that tells me a lot.'

She stood up and closed her bag. 'Okay,' she pronounced, her voice sharp and professional once more. 'You have formal certification of death. About four hours ago, I'd say; subject to autopsy confirmation.'

'The cause of death will turn out to be asphyxiation, I assume,' said Martin, as Mackie ushered them from out of the kitchen, to await the arrival of Detective Inspector Arthur Dorward and his squad of crime scene technicians.

'Don't assume,' Sarah replied. 'I could see no marks on the plastic bag. If she'd suffocated, I'd expect to find lipstick smears, from where she'd tried to suck in air.'

'Maybe she didn't try,' the Head of CID suggested.

'She didn't: but not because she had willed herself to stop breathing.

You can't do that; it's a reflex. There's something else here. I'd say that this woman died, or at least became deeply unconscious, before she had a chance to suffocate.

'I'll tell you the whole story after the autopsy. D'you want me to do it, or do you want Joe Hutchison in on this one?'

'You do it, Sarah,' said Martin. 'If you feel you need a second opinion, call him in, but you handle it in the first instance. You've picked up the ball, so run with it as far as you can.' He turned to Mackie. 'Who was she, Brian?'

'The owner of the cottage is a Mrs Gaynor Weston. I'm assuming that's her in there. But that's all I have for now. Maggie Rose should be here soon, with some CID reinforcements. She'll direct the interviews with the neighbours and so on. Once Arthur's people have dusted the place fully, I'll look for personal papers, and see what they tell me.

'The first thing we'll need to do is locate a next of kin.'

'Too right; the Head of CID agreed. 'When we do we'll need to be careful how much information we give. From the way this looks, the next of kin, or another close relative, could be the prime suspect.

'This woman was killed by someone close to her; someone she trusted.'

'And…' said Sarah, quietly, 'she was a willing victim.'

'So that means…'

She cut Mackie short. 'Yes, it means that this looks like an assisted suicide.'

'I agree.' Andy Martin frowned. 'But that's not what the Procurator Fiscal will call it. There's no such thing in the eyes of the law. The charge here will be murder, and the penalty will be life imprisonment.'

'How did it look out at Oldbams, Andy?' Skinner asked, as his Head of CID settled into a low chair around the coffee table in the Chief Constable's office, just after midday.

'Very neat and orderly, boss,' Martin replied. 'The victim is a fortythree year old woman, Gaynor Weston. She was a training consultant, self-employed. Lived alone; divorced from her husband, Professor Nolan Weston, seven years ago. Next of kin is Raymond Weston, her only son, aged eighteen, just started his first term at Aberdeen University.

'Mrs Weston was seated at her kitchen table with a bag over her head, secured tightly by black tape.