Preface to Murder

ago, and long since moved on from the wreck of her marriage. She was proud of what she’d achieved with her life since leaving him. She’d brought up a daughter single-handedly, and built her own career. It shouldn’t make any difference what Ben did with his life.
But it did, and Bridget knew why.
Despite her best efforts, despite everything she’d done to protect Chloe and to build a wall around the painful past, slowly but surely Ben had succeeded in worming his way back under her skin, reaching out for Chloe, and reclaiming his daughter for himself. Now she was with him in London, going out to expensive restaurants, trying on dresses, having fun with her future stepmother.
She is my daughter! Mine!
The Mozart played on, but its uplifting melody was out of tune with her own discordant thoughts.
I am getting this out of proportion.
She breathed deeply, seeking to bring her runaway emotions back under control. Whatever Ben was up to, Chloe was still her daughter, and there was no question that she would ever move to London to live with her father. Tamsin, the wicked stepmother, surely wouldn’t want it. So Bridget just had to learn to share. Chloe was old enough to make her own decisions, and Bridget would have to trust her.
She paced the kitchen restlessly. It would be so much easier to face this if Jonathan was at her side. What time was it in New York? Bridget found that she didn’t really care. She picked up her phone and dialled.
Soon Jonathan’s reassuring voice was on the line, and Bridget felt her problems begin to melt away.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘How’s it going?’
Terribly. ‘Oh, you know. Missing you. How’s New York?’
‘Great. But it’s exhausting. Galleries, exhibitions, auctions. I’ve only just got back to the hotel after dashing around all day.’
It sounds wonderful. ‘I can imagine.’
‘What about you? How’s that writer you’re looking after?’
Bridget groaned. ‘Please don’t ask.’
‘Okay. Then tell me what you’re doing right now. Where are you?’
‘Home. Alone.’
‘Don’t worry. Chloe will be back soon. And so will I.’
‘Yes.’ Just the thought of his return was giving her the strength to carry on. ‘So what are your plans for tonight?’
‘I’ve got a restaurant booked for eight. A couple of gallery owners offered to take me out to this great new Peruvian place in the East Village.’
‘Sounds amazing.’
‘What about you?’ he asked brightly. ‘Are you cooking tonight, or getting a takeaway?’
Bridget swung open the door of her fridge with one hand and took a quick look at its contents. Half a block of Cheddar cheese, some limp slices of ham, a pint of milk well past its use-by date, and a mouldy lettuce. She’d planned to go shopping after escorting Diane back from her radio interview.
‘A takeaway, I think.’
‘Good choice,’ said Jonathan knowingly. ‘Anyway, I have to go now. Take care. I’ll call you tomorrow. Love you.’
‘Love you.’
She hung up, already feeling better for hearing Jonathan’s voice. And while she couldn’t depend on him to solve all her problems, at least she now knew how to fix her most immediate concern. She dialled again and was soon placing an order for home-delivered pizza with garlic bread and a tub of pistachio ice-cream.
Life always looked better from the other side of an ice-cream tub.

11
It was a Saturday morning but there was to be no time off while Diane Gilbert’s killer was still at large. Bridget waited for her team to assemble in the incident room, eager to hear what each member had to say. Once the last of them had taken a seat, mug in hand, she rose to her feet and invited them to give their reports.
Andy and Harry had little to report from their door-to-door enquiries in St Margaret’s Road and the nearby streets.
‘Nothing doing, ma’am,’ said Andy apologetically. ‘We got the impression that most people in that road don’t really know who their neighbours are. They certainly didn’t know Diane. She seems to have kept herself to herself. And no one heard or saw a thing last night, not even the people next door.’
It was disappointing, but Bridget thanked them for their efforts and turned to Ryan. He had spent the previous day at the house trying to work out how the intruder had gained access to Diane’s property.
‘I took a bunch of constables with me up to the house, ma’am. We carried out a fingertip search of the entire grounds – front garden, rear garden, garage and outbuildings.’
‘What did you find?’
‘Absolutely nothing. No dropped items. No footprints in the soil. No signs of a ladder being used to climb over the wall. The shed in the back was padlocked, and the garage was secure. The windows were all locked too. There was no forced entry, apart from the back door of the house itself.’
‘So how did they get into the garden and out again under the nose of the constables?’
‘Could someone have already been hiding inside the house when you dropped Diane off?’ queried Andy.
Bridget noticed Jake squirm in his seat, and perhaps not surprisingly. He had been the one who had searched upstairs, while Bridget checked the downstairs rooms of the house. It was conceivable that an intruder had concealed themselves so well that they had escaped discovery, but the possibility simply raised more unanswerable questions. How had they gained entry to the house? And more pertinently, if they had already been inside, why would they have smashed the back door open? It didn’t make any sense.
‘No,’ said Bridget. ‘The house was clear. The killer broke in some time after we left Diane for the night.’
‘That’s what I figured,’ said Ryan. ‘But if they didn’t get in the back way, they must have come in from the front. The only scenario that makes any