Blood Is Thicker Than Water

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Her voice broke and Warren told her to take her time. The tissue in her hand was sodden and starting to shred, so Warren fished out a small packet from his inside jacket pocket. After a few deep breaths, she continued. “He was lying face down in the fireplace. I knew as soon as I saw him he was dead.” Her voice cracked, but she continued, “You just know, don’t you? He was too still. His eyes were open, staring at me.”

“Did you touch him at all, or move anything?”

She shook her head. “I felt for his pulse—” she touched her throat “—but there was nothing. I walked out and called an ambulance.”

She was looking tearful again and so Warren decided to move away slightly from the discovery of the body. The follow-up interview could answer any other questions. He cast about for the right choice of words. “Did your father require help with his more…intimate…personal care?”

“No fortunately. Dad was quite insistent about that. It took him a while, but he could pretty much dress himself and we had one of those sit-down showers fitted. He needs a bit of help with fiddly things, like his tie and button-up shirts if he’s going out to the British Legion for the day, and about once a week we’d give him a proper wet shave instead of using his electric razor.”

“You said ‘we’. Do you have any other help?”

“No, just my brother, Tommy, and my husband. We split the rest of the duties between us: cleaning, shopping, odd jobs. We took it in turns to make him dinner.” Her mouth twisted. “Dad had a good job and was always very careful with his money, so he doesn’t qualify for any state care. He was—reluctant—to pay for help whilst my brother and I live so close.” The speech was delivered in careful, neutral tones, but her eyes gave her away. Warren filed away her reaction for future analysis, if need be.

“Has Tommy been told about what’s happened?”

“I phoned him about half an hour ago. He’s on his way. He works in Stevenage.”

“What about your husband?”

“His phone’s off, but he’ll pick up his messages when he finishes work in an hour or so.”

“You said your father needed assistance walking?”

She nodded. “He could move around the house on his own and we got him one of those wheeled Zimmer frames with a tray fitted, but that’s about it. His left leg was affected by the stroke and he wasn’t very steady.”

“So he was mostly housebound?”

She nodded again. “He didn’t like going out. For some reason he was ashamed of his disability. He hated using a wheelchair.”

“But he used to go to the British Legion?”

“About once a week. Funnily enough, he didn’t mind that. I think it’s because several of the others need assistance as well. They have a minibus that picks them up. I guess they’re all in the same boat.”

Nothing she had said changed Warren’s mind about what had happened. Charles Michaelson had been unsteady on his feet; he’d either collapsed or tripped, possibly on the rug in front of the fireplace, and cracked his head against the stonework.

“When did you last see your father?”

“Last night. It was my turn to make him some dinner.”

“What time was that?”

She thought for a moment. “I put the kids to bed about eight, then came straight around. I live about five minutes away.”

“And how was your father?”

“A bit quiet. He’s been a bit tired and under the weather for the past few days. He didn’t say very much; he was watching some documentary on TV. He doesn’t eat much in the evening so I just made him some sandwiches and a cup of tea and gave him his pills. I did a spot of ironing, then left.”

“What time was that?”

“A little after nine, I guess.” She paused for a second. “Yes that’s about right. Whatever he was watching had ended and he’d changed channels to watch something else. Programmes usually start on the hour don’t they?”

“And you went straight home?”

“Yes, Ian, my husband, leaves for work about ten. He works nights. I have to get back to look after the kids.”

She suddenly looked exhausted. Warren wasn’t surprised. Young children—an eight o’clock bedtime suggested they were probably still at primary school—an infirm father and a husband working shifts. Kathy Mackay had a hard life. There was nothing overtly suspicious here he decided. He’d get DC Gary Hastings to conduct a follow-up interview after the post-mortem.

Expressing his condolences again, he headed for the car. If the traffic was kind he’d make the tail end of the meeting. If he timed it right he’d miss the death-by-PowerPoint that finance loved and still manage to nab a custard cream.

* * *

Charles Michaelson’s death remained a tragic accident until late that evening.

“Harrison here, sir. I’m out at the Michaelson death.” Crime Scene Manager Andy Harrison’s Yorkshire tones were clipped, his voice slightly tense. “I’m not happy with the scene.”

* * *

The smell from the late Charles Michaelson hadn’t improved any since the morning, even though the body had been removed to the morgue, pending autopsy. CSM Harrison and his team had been working in the small room for nearly three hours. Warren assumed that their noses had become used to the smell. Hopefully his would soon become accustomed to it also.

Harrison had turned up at the scene with his current trainee, expecting a routine unexpected death. He’d been anticipating an opportunity for Shaniya to try out some basic techniques in a low-risk environment, where there’d be no danger of jeopardising a prosecution.

“It’s a combination of a few small things, sir.” Harrison had photographed the body in situ before covering the hands in plastic bags to preserve evidence, then sending it away.

“First, I’m not happy with the positioning of the body.” He pointed at the upturned rug. “If he’d tripped and gone straight down, I’d have expected the body to have landed a bit further back. He’d have still hit his head on the stone hearth, but probably missed the mantelpiece.”

“He could have stumbled, caught himself, then gone down,” suggested Warren, playing devil’s advocate.

Harrison shrugged. “It’s circumstantial, I agree. But I’m not happy about him tripping in the first place.” He pointed to the far end of the room. “He’s supposedly unsteady on his feet and needs assistance walking. So why didn’t he use his Zimmer frame?”

Warren gauged the distance between the chair and the wheeled frame. “It looks as if it was beyond arm’s reach. Did he knock it out of the way in his sleep?”

Harrison shook his head. “No chance. Look at the design: two wheels at the front, rubber stoppers at the back. That’s not going anywhere unless it’s moved deliberately.”

“OK, so somehow the frame is out of his reach. He was a stubborn bugger from all accounts. Maybe he chose to walk unaided, to prove to himself that he could do it?”

“But why not use his walking stick?”

Warren thought for a moment, before seeing what Harrison had already spotted. “It was hanging off the left-hand side of the chair.”

“Exactly. Michaelson supposedly had no use of his left arm. He’d have had to twist around to hang it on that side. Why would he do that, when he can more easily hang it off the right side, which is where he usually placed it?”

Stepping over to the wing-backed armchair, he showed Warren a faint indentation in the overstuffed velvet.

“He hung his walking stick here for years, I’ll bet. Within easy reach of his right arm. There’s even photographic evidence.” He pointed to a picture sitting on the TV stand and another one on the windowsill. Both were family shots, taken a couple of years apart. Both in the same room. In one he was holding a newborn baby in his lap, his face split by a huge smile. In another, he was flanked by a younger version of Kathy Mackay and a clearly related man of a similar age. An oversized badge proclaiming “70” and a coffee-tableful of greetings cards identified the occasion. In both pictures he was seated in the same wing-backed chair, the wooden cane clearly visible hanging off its right wing.

Harrison was right, the scene wasn’t quite as one expected, but then they rarely were. He said as much to the veteran crime scene investigator.

“Again it’s very circumstantial, Andy. I agree it’s weird that he hung his walking stick off the back of the chair, pushed his frame out of the way then decided to walk unaided. But it’s pretty clear his bowels were full. Maybe he got caught short and decided he didn’t have time to shuffle to the bathroom? People do silly things all of the time.”

Harrison still looked unhappy. The man was a highly experienced CSI and Warren could see the man’s gut was troubling him, and that troubled Warren.

“You said on the phone that you had some concerns about the body as well?”

Harrison led Warren over to the broken fireplace. “Look at the pool of blood. What do you see?”

The puddle was larger than Warren had initially thought, the body having hid some of it. The blood gleamed, wet and shiny against the stonework.

“This probably happened in the very early hours; his temperature was already down slightly when the surgeon measured it mid-morning.”

“It’s still wet.”

“Exactly. It should be sticky by now.”

Warren thought for a few moments. Now his own gut was uneasy.

He was the senior investigating officer; it was his call.

“Let’s call it an unexplained death for now and treat this as a potential crime scene.”

* * *

By eight a.m. the following morning, Middlesbury CID was buzzing. The death was still classified as unexplained, but Warren was under pressure to try and decide if it was suspicious or not by the end of the day. His decision would determine how much manpower and resources would be thrown at the investigation. If Warren declared it a suspicious death, then the cost could run into hundreds of thousands or even millions of pounds, perhaps for nothing. If he decided to be conservative and treat it as non-suspicious and it turned out to be the result of foul play, valuable clues could be lost and prosecutions placed in jeopardy. In either case, Warren would find himself in front of the chief constable explaining himself. Warren had been promoted to DCI less than a year ago—he didn’t want the chief to even know his name this early into his career.