Not Dead Enough

them to be recovered and forensically examined by an expert, rather than the old method of dialling 1471. He called out to a scene of crime officer in the next room and reminded him to ensure all the phones were collected up.
    Then he did what he always liked to do at a potential crime scene, which was to wander around the area, immersed in his thoughts. His eye was caught, momentarily, by a striking modern painting on the wall. He peered at the artist’s name, Helen Steele, wondering if she was famous, and realizing again how little he knew about the art world. Then he went into the vast, en-suite bathroom and opened the glass door of a shower big enough to live in. He clocked the soap, the gels hanging on hooks, the shampoos. The mirrored cabinet door was open and he checked out the pills. Thinking all the time about the cleaning lady’s words.
    Missa Bishop no here wik time. No here lass night. I know no here lass night, I have to make supper Missy Bishop. She jus salad. When Missa Bishop here, he like meat or fish. I make big food.
    So if Brian Bishop wasn’t here last night, having kinky sex with his wife, who was?
    And if he killed her – why?
    An accident?
    The ligature mark shouted a very distinctive ‘No.’
    As did his instinct.

12
    Like many of the products of the early post-war building boom, Sussex House, a sleek, rectangular, two-storey building, was not ageing particularly well. The original architect had clearly been influenced by the Art Deco period and the place looked from some angles like the superstructure of a small, tired cruise liner.
    Originally constructed in the early 1950s as a hospital for contagious diseases, at that time it had occupied a commanding, isolated position on a hill on the outskirts of Brighton, just beyond the suburb of Hollingbury, and the architect could no doubt have seen his vision in its full, stand-alone glory. But the ensuing years had not been kind. As the urban sprawl encroached, the area around the building became designated as an industrial estate. For reasons no one today was clear about, the hospital closed down and the building was bought by a firm that manufactured cash registers. Some years later it was sold to a freezer company, which subsequently sold it to American Express, which in turn, in the mid-1990s, sold it to the Sussex Police Authority.
    Refurbished and modernized, it was opened in a blaze of publicity as the flagship, high-tech headquarters for Sussex CID, positioning the county’s force at the very cutting edge of modern British policing. More recently it had been decided to move the custody centre and cell block out there also, so these were built on and annexed to the building. Now, despite the fact that Sussex House was bursting at the seams, some of the uniformed divisions were also being moved here. And with just ninety parking spaces for a workforce that had expanded to 430 people, not everyone found the place lived up to its original promise.
    The Witness Interview Suite was a rather grand name for two small boxrooms, Glenn Branson thought. The smaller, which contained nothing but a monitor and a couple of chairs, was used for observation. The larger, in which he was now seated with DC Nick Nicholl and the very distressed Brian Bishop, had been decorated in a manner designed to put witnesses, and potential suspects, at their ease – despite two wall-mounted cameras pointing straight down at them.
    It was brightly lit, with a hard, grey carpet and cream walls, a large south-facing window giving partial views of Brighton and Hove across the slab-like roof of an ASDA supermarket, three bucket-shaped chairs upholstered in cherry-red fabric, and a rather characterless coffee table with black legs and a fake pine top, which looked like it might have been the last item to go in a Conran shop sale.
    The room smelled new, as if the carpet had just been laid minutes before and the paint on the walls was still drying, yet it had smelled like this for as long as Branson could remember. He had only been in here a few minutes and was perspiring already, as were DC Nicholl and Brian Bishop. That was the problem with this building: the air conditioning was crap and half the windows did not open.
    Announcing the date and time, Branson activated the wall switch for the recording apparatus. He explained that this was standard procedure to Bishop, who responded with an acquiescent nod.
    The man appeared totally wretched. Dressed in an