Bridge of Sighs

by Priscilla Masters

  Another reason for gratitude. If it didn’t need to be shared then it would stay within these walls and his sergeant’s head.

  ‘Her habit was to watch television fairly solidly in the evening. She’d flick through programmes.’

  ‘And you, sir?’

  ‘I used to sit in the front room. I preferred to read – or look at stuff on the computer.’

  Talith frowned. Oh, shit. ‘What sort of stuff, sir?’ Both men were well aware they had not seized the DI’s computer.

  But Randall laughed it off. ‘Oh, just stuff on iPlayer, you know. Radio plays, serials I’d missed.’ There was not a trace of embarrassment. All looked honest and true. As one would expect.

  Talith cleared his throat. ‘Go on, sir.’

  ‘Well, round about eleven I heard Erica switch the TV off. It was the normal time for her to go to bed.’ His face changed then to a look of anguish, embarrassment and something else which Talith thought he could read. The inspector and his wife didn’t sleep together.

  ‘She took …’ Randall drew in a deep breath. ‘She took quite a lot of prescription pills. Anti-depressants and some tranquilizers.’

  ‘We’ll be speaking to her doctor, sir.’

  Randall showed the first leak of irritation. ‘I know that, Talith. I’m just explaining about that night.’ He continued. ‘She would take them and then settle down to go to sleep.’ His good humour had returned. ‘They seemed to do the trick. Usually she’d be out like a light until morning.’

  Talith waited, wanting to prompt the DI with a, But?

  ‘I stayed downstairs.’ DI Randall’s tone was clipped, his gaze abstracted, far away. ‘I was listening to “From Our Own Correspondent” on iPlayer.’ He smiled briefly. ‘It’s one of my favourite radio programmes. But then I heard the noise. Bump, bump, bump. I knew what it was.’

  Talith asked his first question. ‘So you were downstairs, you say?’

  Again, Randall’s response was terse. He’d picked up on the sergeant’s doubt. ‘Yes, Talith, I do say.’

  Talith moved on quickly. ‘She’d fallen before?’

  His inspector’s eyes seemed to bore into him. ‘No,’ he responded, irritation bubbling up. ‘She hadn’t. If she had we would have moved to a bungalow. But the sound of someone falling down a flight of stairs is quite distinctive.’

  ‘Did she cry out?’

  Randall squeezed his eyes shut. ‘A sort of strangled scream. I ran out but she’d hit her head on the corner of the wall and wasn’t moving.’ He was frowning now. ‘Her head was at a strange angle. I thought it best not to move her in case her neck was broken.’ He couldn’t hold back a shudder as he spoke. Maybe the thought of a mad paraplegic wife would, finally, have been too much for him. ‘I dialled the emergency services.’ A wisp of humour. ‘I would think you know better than I the exact sequence of subsequent events.’

  Talith did. He’d heard the transcript. Once the call had been documented the wheels and recorders had been set in motion. The 999 team had logged his call at 12.15 a.m. His wife had fallen downstairs. She wasn’t breathing; she wasn’t bleeding. He thought her neck was broken. They had sent an ambulance crew plus the police.

  Alex Randall leaned forward, his eyes locked on to his sergeant’s. ‘Talith,’ he said, and knew there was something his sergeant was holding back. ‘Talith?’

  But the sergeant’s eyes flickered away.

  6.30 p.m.

  Mark Sullivan had finished the post-mortem. He stood back. ‘Well,’ he said, ripping off his gloves. ‘Now that is interesting.’ He spoke to his assistant. ‘Get those samples off to the lab. I don’t want to start speculating until we’re sure.’

  Peter Williams grinned. He knew the ways of the pathologist only too well. They’d worked together for years.

  ‘We’ll keep this under our hats for now. Eh?’

  Mark Sullivan was rarely a hundred per cent certain of the events which had led up to a person’s death. Pathology can be an inexact science. Usually he simply gave the facts, sometimes adding in an opinion. This time he was ninety-nine per cent certain he had an answer.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Wednesday, 5 April, 9.45 am.

  Martha was motionless, as she had been since she had arrived at work that morning.

  Hit by a sledgehammer of inactivity. She needed to remind herself: Erica Randall was not her responsibility. She needed to do her job. And so, in a determined mood, she picked up the file on Gina Marconi and read it through again, searching for some explanation.

  She didn’t need to dwell on the injuries detailed by Mark Sullivan in the post-mortem. Multiple injuries were the inevitable consequence of a high-impact crash and no seat belt. She wanted to find answers and the only way would be to approach Gina’s mother, her son Terence, or Julius Zedanski. One of those would surely give her a clue.

  She needed to formulate a plan. Some structure.

  She would also visit the scene of the crash to at least get a clearer picture of the geography. It might help her to be more certain whether this had been premeditated or a spontaneous impulse. Crash scene investigators had estimated her speed had been around sixty miles per hour. Bloody fast to go flying into a wall, Martha muttered. She knew that road out of Shrewsbury and had braked round that very same corner. Going at sixty round that bend was suicidally fast. She’d had a narrow miss when she had hit a patch of black ice late one night when she had been driving home from a night out in Ellesmere. Even so, if Gina’s seat belt had been on she would almost certainly have survived the impact. Unbuckling her seat belt – or leaving it off – had surely been the clearest indication as to her intention. Unbuckling it had removed any chance she would survive.

  Martha started by listing the indisputable facts: it had happened at three a.m. No witnesses.

  Next, she leafed through the forensic report of the car.

  Gina had, it seemed, driven straight and true. The damage to the car – and to the wall – had been symmetrical. There was no sign she had braked. There had been no brake pedal marks on the sole of her left foot. And Martha knew in high impact the brake pedal patterned the sole if the person had his or her foot on the brake pedal.

  The only mark on Gina’s sole was on the right shoe, the clear imprint of the accelerator which had likewise mirrored the sole of the shoe. Everything pointed to suicide – except there had been no note and no indication that anything was wrong. In fact, the reverse was true. All the evidence and statements indicated Gina had been going through a happy period in her life.

  Martha was thoughtful and disturbed. Before finding the verdict she needed to satisfy herself that this had been a deliberate suicide. And she realized that meant asking twin questions. Not only why, but also why not? Not just why a beautiful and talented woman with a future ahead of her wanted to kill herself, but why had she not left her nearest and dearest some explanation? Why leave them to forever wonder and suffer?

  Gina had been a barrister – a profession that articulated actions in terms clear enough to convince a judge and jury. This obfuscation just didn’t fit, which meant she should consider an alternative. Was there the remotest possibility that she had been unable to sleep, had been heading somewhere, ended up impacting the wall by accident? As coroner, this was Martha’s job. Her decision. Could she honestly find an accidental verdict? Duck the issue by finding the death unexplained? All her instincts screamed at suicide and yet she would not find that verdict unless … She could not be a hundred per cent sure without that note, without some stark reason, some benefit, some sign that Gina’s Teflon life was not quite as it seemed. She needed to find that ‘not quite’. Was it possible that, unable to sleep, perhaps fizzed up at the thought of her impending wedding, she had by some godawful chance found herself fatally distracted and bang? So why no seat belt? Was it possible her distraction had extended to that? It was all most unsatisfactory.

  She picked up yet another report. Toxicology. Gina’s blood alcohol level was 10 milligrams pe
r 100 millilitres of blood – less than the equivalent of one small glass of wine. Well under the legal limit. Hardly pissed. ‘Don’t tell me that would have impaired her judgement,’ Martha muttered, her mind taking an unexpected left turn. It wouldn’t even have softened the impact. She had not taken the cowards’ way out, anaesthetizing herself first with a bottle of whisky, but had suffered the full impact. Punishing herself, leaving no way out. She had left her mobile phone at home, carefully placed on the bedside table. Martha needed to be sure and Gina wasn’t helping her. She took a look at the photograph and recalled the laugh she had heard ringing that night.

  She read through the police description of the scene. One hundred feet behind the wall was a neat and symmetrical Georgian house. The owner slept in a front bedroom and had heard the impact, felt a shudder in the house, heard the bang, the crashing of glass, the tearing of metal, the dreadful sound of violent impact, the sound of death. No scream. Though he must have realized this was a catastrophic impact, he had initially peered through the curtains and, when he’d seen the carnage, had wasted no time in dialling 999. The ambulance had arrived first to a dead woman trapped half in and half out of a crushed car, radiator steam still puffing out, headlights angled into the night sky. The fire engine had arrived with cutting equipment and then, with the police, had removed the body straight into a body bag. There was no need for a police surgeon to confirm death. These days a senior policeman could do it just as well.

  The scene had been sealed off and the wheels of forensic investigation began.

  She sighed and returned to her train of thought. Leaving her phone behind meant no Where are you? phone call or text, as well as no fatal distraction. But no phone could also mean something else: no chance for a last-minute funk or goodbye message. More than ever Martha wished Alex was here, by her side, so they could comb through the facts together as they usually did and try and come up with some rational explanation. Having someone to test her ideas on, bounce around various scenarios, had been more useful than she had realized. Truth was, she was missing him.

  It was strange to think that only a few days ago he had been here, in this room, so familiar with its beige carpet, cream walls, bookshelves. Her eyes drifted towards the bay window and the armchairs close to them. He had been sitting in that very chair, long bony frame, legs stretched out in front of him, that familiar frown as he tried to work something out, that particular mixture he held of angst and relaxation, of reassurance and provoking questions, at the same time asking and answering them. It was he who had coloured in the picture made from observation at the scene, that Gina had initially gone to bed that night. His theory was that she had made the decision only minutes before she had left the house.

  And yet she must have staked out the spot.

  It had been Alex who had further painted the picture of her bedroom. The covers had been thrown back, the phone placed squarely on the bedside cabinet (a mark of determination), but the nightdress tossed on the bed. He had accompanied this comment with a sly glance at her. ‘An expensive garment,’ he’d said, and when he’d noticed the curse of the redhead – a deep blush on her cheeks – he had described it further. ‘Purple satin trimmed with real lace.’

  She had made the only response she could. ‘Really?’

  Which had provoked a wide grin quickly smothered.

  He had gone on to describe the contrast in Gina’s heavily bloodstained apparel. ‘Jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt with trainers. No socks, no knickers, no bra.’ And the hint of boudoir had been blown away. They were clothes one would pull on hurriedly if unable to sleep, clothes you would wear to creep out of your house, leaving your eight-year-old son asleep, your mother safe in her bungalow and leave the house to kill yourself. So, DI Randall had surmised, and she had agreed with him, Gina had gone to bed and been unable to sleep. Troubled by thoughts, perhaps? She had come to a decision and then, agitated, she had got up, dressed and left the house, apparently without leaving a suicide note.

  Martha had interjected then. ‘Only one in six suicides do leave a note, Alex.’

  But both had come to the same conclusion – that Gina Marconi was a lawyer. She would have wanted to leave things neat and tidy.

  Or perhaps that was the subtlety of a lawyer’s mind. Leave them wondering, why don’t you? Martha started to plan. She had some ideas.

  She wanted to interview Bridget Shannon again and, with her permission, Terence. But she had to be realistic. If Gina’s mother had known nothing, what did she think an eight-year-old could possibly know? Was she inferring Terence was more perceptive than his grandmother? Maybe. It was not impossible. Sometimes children are. Sometimes they see things others do not. Sometimes they blurt out statements or observations that adults would hide.

  Martha frowned. To have any insight into this case she needed to escape her office and visit the scene of the crash, preferably with a police escort. That brought her up short. Admit it, Martha, you’re really missing him. You want to know how Alex is.

  She stood up, tossed the papers aside, picked up the phone, connected with Monkmoor Police Station and asked if someone could drive her out to the crash site.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Forty minutes later PC Gethin Roberts arrived. She liked the young PC, his gawky manner, his huge feet, his obvious pride in the job only equalled by his ability to introduce the subject of his adored Flora into every conversation, though not so much recently, she’d noticed. Roberts was an endearing sort of fellow, an oversized, clumsy, Some-Mothers-Do-’Ave-’Em sort of guy, always bumping into things, knocking his head, stubbing the great toe on the end of his size elevens. But lately, even Alex had commented, as PC Gary Coleman had become increasingly excited over his impending nuptials, Roberts had done the opposite. Something of his spark seemed to have been extinguished. The bouncy exuberance that had marked him out had all but abandoned him, but she didn’t know why.

  She glanced across at the young officer’s face. ‘You all right, Roberts?’

  He nodded, didn’t look at her, his face set and focusing hard on the road ahead. He wasn’t talking so she changed subjects, putting forward one of her weaker theories. ‘Do you think it’s possible Ms Marconi couldn’t sleep, went for a drive, was distracted?’

  He still kept his eyes on the road, hands steady on the wheel, frowned and shook his head. ‘Not a chance, Mrs Gunn.’

  ‘And you say further checks on the car turned up nothing? Brakes OK?’

  ‘Yeah. So far they’ve found nothing wrong with the car.’ He took a swift glance at her, opened his mouth then clamped it shut again.

  She would have loved to be able to ask Roberts what the trouble was, but it wouldn’t be appropriate. And he probably wouldn’t confide in her anyway. And now she couldn’t even discuss it with Alex, so she said nothing.

  But she continued her musings in silence.

  Maybe Flora had dumped him.

  Maybe he no longer wanted to get married to her.

  Maybe he’d just fallen out of love with her.

  Surely not. They were one of those simple couples who meet, fall in love, stay in love, get married, have children, grow old together.

  The crash site was a silent ten-minute drive from her office and about the same distance from Gina Marconi’s home. Fifteen if she’d been driving slowly. But according to the one image they had captured on CCTV she had been doing fifty miles an hour even through the centre of the town.

  As a few spots of rain leaked out of the sky they reached the spot, still marked nearly a month later. Police warning signs, weathered now, had been erected along with an appeal for witnesses. None had come forward so far except the unlucky Graham Skander. His wall was still reduced to a pile of bricks. Obviously the insurance company hadn’t settled yet.

  On a mossy triangle beyond the crash site there was still a bank of flowers, most well past their best, in sodden cellophane wrapping, raindrops looking like tears shed for the dead woman, silky ribbons dirty and sopping wet.
Life and flowers do not last. Traffic cones shielded the narrow pavement and the demolished wall behind.

  Roberts parked the car in a lay-by fifty yards beyond, switched his blue light to flash and together they walked back to the scene. The pavement was narrow, not wide enough for them to walk side by side, so she went first. The police tape that marked off the area was a flimsy, ineffectual barrier. The wall was ahead of you when you manoeuvred the right-hand bend. She’d forgotten how sharp the corner was, and how the uncompromising wall confronted you. Skid marks were still clearly visible, marked and measured by the crash investigators. Debris also marked the spot: splinters of glass, and silver paint marks on the scattered bricks, even a few dark splashes of blood. There was the usual road kill to the side. A grey squirrel, a blackbird, eyes already picked out by hungry crows. The kerbstone was low. Easy for an out-of-control car to mount. Martha peered over the stones at Graham Skander’s house. Very nice, she thought. Mellow Georgian brick with the pleasing symmetry of the late eighteenth century. And the bricks that lay on the ground looked old too. No wonder he was so angry at it being destroyed again. Had this been her house, she reflected, and her problem, she would have accepted the council’s offer of bollards to protect the wall. But Skander had struck her as a stubborn man.

  The car and its driver had come off worse than the wall. It could be rebuilt but not them. Gina and the four-month-old Mercedes had been written off. She looked around carefully, committing the scene to memory. Sometimes visiting the scene of an incident provided answers. At others there was no sense of death or drama. And here? It reflected the Americans’ description of what the English call a ‘car accident’. The Americans call it a ‘car wreck’. At her side, in his clumsy way, Roberts tried to help. ‘She went at it at sixty, Mrs Gunn,’ he said. ‘Straight at it. Never turned the wheel to even try and take the corner. Straight in.’ There was almost a note of admiration in his voice. She turned to look at him, read the bleak unhappiness that made his comical features even more misshapen, his nose appear larger, his eyes droopy and bloodhound-like, his forehead creased with lines of anxiety, his hands great big agitated spatulas by his side. The rain came down harder.