Preface to Murder

the leather jacket and grabbed her phone from her desk.
‘Oh,’ said Jake. This was certainly news. And not exactly welcome. Not that he entertained any designs on Ffion himself. Obviously he didn’t. And he could hardly expect her to lead the life of a nun just because she was no longer going out with him. That would be totally unreasonable. ‘Um…’ he said, following her out of the office.
‘What is it?’
Good question. What was his problem, exactly? ‘So, um, who’s the lucky guy?’ he asked, although he really didn’t want to know.
She turned and leaned against the doorframe. ‘Her name is Marion and she’s a junior research fellow at the university.’
‘Oh right, yeah, good,’ said Jake, trying to wrap his brain around this latest piece of information. He had – of course – known that Ffion was bisexual. She had told him often enough. Yet somehow, until this moment, he’d never really taken onboard the reality of that fact. There was probably a word for blokes like him, but he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t think he wanted to. ‘Well, have a nice evening.’
Ffion was already on the move again. ‘You too,’ she called over her shoulder.
Me too, right.
But what did Jake’s evening hold in store for him? A takeaway curry, a couple of beers, and another night slumped alone in front of the football. Plenty of action, he thought miserably. Something exciting with a good twist at the end. He needed to be more careful what he wished for. This story had certainly sprung a surprising twist, and he wasn’t at all sure that he liked it.

10
‘So you still have nothing,’ concluded Grayson.
By the time Bridget had returned to Kidlington, everyone had gone home except for the Chief Superintendent, who had stayed behind to hear her report. She gave him a verbal summary of her meetings with the various members of Diane Gilbert’s family, her literary agent, and the head of department at the Blavatnik, as well as itemising all the actions she had assigned to her team members.
Grayson seemed distinctly unimpressed.
‘That’s hardly fair, sir,’ she countered. ‘We’ve covered a lot of ground in one day.’
‘Yet all you’ve really got to go on at the moment,’ said Grayson, ‘is the unusual method of killing, and the controversial nature of her book. Plus the death threat.’
‘I’m still waiting for forensics to get back to me on that. And for the post-mortem to establish the cause and time of death. And for SOCO to work out how the murderer got into the property.’
Grayson lifted his pen from his desk, but thankfully there was no tapping this time. ‘Let’s hope we get all that soon. In the meantime, what’s your gut feeling about this? Do you think this was a domestic matter?’
‘Her son didn’t like her, and has a clear financial motive in wanting her dead, but as far as I know he was in London yesterday. As for the other members of her family, they have no motive and seem to have got on perfectly well with her. Even her ex-husband had an amicable relationship with her by all accounts.’
‘What about her work colleagues?’
‘Her boss clearly held a strong dislike for her personally, and didn’t approve of the direction of her academic research or her book, but that hardly seems like a strong enough motive for murder.’
‘So what does?’
Bridget took a deep breath. ‘Diane’s agent suggested to me that her killing might be the work of the British security services.’
Grayson raised a steely eyebrow. ‘Is that what you think?’
‘In all honesty, I don’t know, sir. The death threat… the way the murderer broke into Diane’s house when it was under the watch of the police… the unusual method of her killing… and of course the nature of her book. They all support the theory that she might have been assassinated by a foreign government or some other powerful party. But of course that’s just speculation,’ she added hurriedly, unwilling to offer Grayson any reason to doubt her judgement.
To her surprise, Grayson didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. ‘National security. It’s a possibility that we have to consider. If that’s the case, you’re going to need some help.’
‘Sir?’
‘Leave it with me. I’ll follow up via the official channels. See if I can find out anything.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Bridget. ‘I appreciate that.’
He dismissed her with a grunt and a wave of his hand. Grayson, she realised, just didn’t know how to handle gratitude. Perhaps that’s why he was so bad at expressing any himself.
*
Bridget drove back to Wolvercote just as the sun was disappearing from view, turning the sky over Port Meadow a pink salmon, and casting deep shadows across the village green. Sounds of cheer and laughter escaped from the brightly-lit interior of the White Hart and drifted over to her, but when she let herself into her darkened cottage, a still silence met her like a wall. She had never imagined that such a small house could feel so empty, but with Chloe still away, the low ceilings seemed to be pressing down, and the cheerful disarray of the kitchen felt chaotic and cluttered.
She switched on all the downstairs lights and put The Marriage of Figaro on the CD player in an attempt to bolster her fragile mood.
Why was she feeling so low? It wasn’t just Diane’s murder and the pressure she was under from Grayson to solve the case. It wasn’t even that she was missing her daughter. Something deeper was stirring, and she had a creeping sense that her life was about to be upended.
The root cause of that unease was her ex-husband.
Why should it matter so much to her that Ben and Tamsin were getting married? She had faced the pain and heartache of his infidelity many years