Not Dead Enough

person to smile back was Alfonso Zafferone. But there was no humour in the young detective’s expression; it was more a smile of pity.
    ‘Thank you, Norman,’ Grace said coldly, annoyed with Potting for being so crass and insensitive. He did not want to digress from the typed agenda in front of him, which he had carefully prepared with Kim Murphy and his MSA earlier that morning, but he decided to seize the moment to put Norman back in his box. ‘Perhaps you’d like to start this morning off for us with your evidence to back up this assertion.’
    Potting straightened the clumsy knot of his Sussex County Cricket Club tie, which was as frayed as his hair, looking rather pleased with himself. ‘Well, I think I’ve got a bit of a result in another direction.’ He continued working on his knot.
    ‘We’re all ears,’ Grace said.
    ‘Katie Bishop was having an affair!’ the veteran DS announced triumphantly.
    And now forty pairs of eyes were on him in sharp focus.
    ‘As some of you may recall,’ Potting continued, glancing down at his notepad for reference, ‘I had ascertained that a BMW convertible, registered to Mrs Bishop, was recorded by CCTV camera. It was at a BP petrol station on the A27, two miles west of Lewes, just before midnight last Thursday – the night she was killed,’ he reminded them all needlessly. ‘And I subsequently identified Mrs Bishop on the video footage at the petrol station. Then, in an examination of said vehicle at the Bishops’ residence on Friday afternoon, I found a pay-and-display parking ticket, with a time of –’ he checked his notes again – ‘five eleven on Thursday afternoon, issued from a machine in Southover Road, Lewes.’
    He paused and fiddled with his knot again. Grace glanced at the window. Outside the sky was blue and clear. Summer was back again. As if yesterday afternoon had been a small glitch in the weather, a wrong lever pulled by someone.
    ‘I called in a favour owed to me by John Smith in the Telecoms Unit here at the CID HQ,’ Potting continued. ‘Got him to come in yesterday to examine the mobile phone belonging to Mrs Bishop. As a result of a Lewes number found stored in the mobile phone’s speed-dial memory, I was able to identify a Mr Barty Chancellor – a portrait painter of some international standing, I understand – at an address in Southover Street, Lewes.’
    Potting now looked even more pleased with himself. ‘I went to question Mr Chancellor at four yesterday afternoon, at his premises, where he admitted that he and Mrs Bishop had been seeing each other for about a year. He was in a state of considerable distress, having read the news of Mrs Bishop’s death, and seemed quite pleased – if that’s the right way to say it – to have someone to pour his heart out to.’
    ‘What did you learn from him?’ Grace asked.
    ‘Seems like the Bishops weren’t quite the happy golden couple that the little local world thought they were. According to Chancellor, Bishop was obsessed with work and was never around. He didn’t seem to understand that his wife was lonely.’
    ‘Excuse me,’ Bella Moy interrupted angrily. ‘Norman, that’s just so typical of a man trying to justify an affair. Oh, her husband doesn’t bloody understand her, that’s why she fell into my arms, that’s the truth, gov! ’ The young DS looked around at the team, her face flushed. ‘Honestly, how many times has everyone heard that? It’s not always the husband who’s at fault – there are plenty of women who are real slappers out there!’
    ‘Tell me about it,’ Potting said. ‘I married three of them.’
    ‘Did Bishop know?’ Glenn Branson interrupted.
    ‘Chancellor doesn’t think so,’ the DS replied.
    Grace wrote the name down on his pad thoughtfully. ‘So now we have another potential suspect.’
    ‘He’s quite a good painter. Mind you, he should be,’ Potting said. ‘Charges between five to twenty grand for a painting. Could buy a bloody car for that! Or a house, where my new missus comes from.’
    ‘Is that significant, Norman?’ Grace queried.
    ‘These arty types, some of ’em can be a bit kinky, that’s what I’m thinking. Read about Picasso still shagging women in his nineties.’
    ‘Oh, he’s a painter, so he must be a pervert. Is that what you are saying?’ Bella Moy was in a seriously bad mood with Potting today. ‘So he must have stuck a gas mask on Katie Bishop’s head and strangled her, right? So why don’t we