Not Dead Enough

printout of notes in front of her. ‘I don’t have much so far,’ she said. ‘Katie Bishop was born Katherine Margaret Denton, the only child of parents living in Brighton. She married Brian Bishop five years ago – her third marriage, his second. No children.’
    ‘Any idea why not?’ Grace asked.
    ‘No.’ Bella seemed a little surprised by the question. ‘Bishop has two by his first marriage.’
    Grace made a note on his pad. ‘OK.’
    ‘She spends her weeks mostly in Brighton – usually goes up to London for one night. Brian Bishop has a flat in London, where he stays Monday to Fridays.’
    ‘His knocking shop?’ ventured Norman Potting.
    Grace didn’t respond. But Potting had a point. No children after five years of marriage, and substantially separate lives, did not indicate a particularly close relationship. Although he and Sandy had been married nine years, and they hadn’t had children – but there were reasons for that. Medical ones. He made another note.
    Alfonso Zafferone, chewing gum, with his usual insolent expression, had been detailed to work with the HOLMES analyst to plot the sequence of events, list the suspects – in this case, one so far, her husband. A full time-line needed to be run on Brian Bishop to establish if he could have been present within the period that Katie was murdered. Were there any similar murders in this county, or in others, recently? Anything involving a gas mask? Zafferone leaned back in his chair; he had shoulders so massive he must have worked on them, Grace thought. And like all the men in the room, he had removed his jacket. Flashy rhinestone cufflinks and gold armbands glinted on the sleeves of his sharp, black shirt.
    Another action Grace had assigned to Norman Potting was to obtain plans of the Bishops’ house, an aerial photograph of the property and surrounding area, and to ensure all routes by which someone could have got to the house were carefully searched. He also wanted from Potting, and then separately from the forensic scene manager, a detailed assessment of the crime scene, including reports from the house-to-house search of the neighbourhood, which had been started early that afternoon.
    Potting reported that two computers in the house had already been taken to the High Tech Crime Unit for analysis; the house landline records for the past twelve months had been requisitioned from British Telecom, as had the mobile phone records for both the Bishops.
    ‘I had the mobile phone that was found in her car checked by the Telecoms Unit, Roy,’ Potting said. ‘There was one message timed at eleven ten yesterday morning, a male voice.’ Potting looked down at his notepad. ‘It said, See you later .’
    ‘That was all?’ Grace asked.
    ‘They tried a call-back but the number was withheld.’
    ‘We need to find out who that was.’
    ‘I’ve been on to the phone company,’ Potting replied. ‘But I’m not going to be able to get the records until after the start of office hours on Monday.’
    Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays were the worst days for starting a murder inquiry, Grace thought. Labs were shut and so were admin offices. Just at the very moment you needed information quickly, you could lose two or three vital days, waiting. ‘Get me a tape of it. We’ll ask Brian Bishop if he recognizes the voice. It might be his.’
    ‘No, I checked that already,’ Potting said. ‘The gardener turned up, so I played it to him.’
    ‘He on your suspect list?’
    ‘He’s about eighty and a bit frail. I’d put him a long way down it.’
    That did elicit a smile from everyone.
    ‘By my calculations,’ Grace said, ‘that places him at the bottom of a list of two.’
    He paused to drink some coffee, then some water. ‘Right, resourcing. At the moment all divisions are relatively quiet. I want you each to work out what assistance you need drafted in to supplement our own people. In the absence of any other major news stories, we’re likely to have the pleasure of the full attention of the press, so I want us to look good and get a fast result. We want a full dog-and-pony show.’ And it wasn’t just about pleasing the public, Grace knew but did not say. It was about, again, demonstrating his credibility to his acerbic boss, the Assistant Chief Constable Alison Vosper, who was longing for him to make another slip-up.
    Any day soon, the man she had drafted in from the Met, and had promoted to the same rank as himself, the slime-ball