Dead to Me

by Pamela Murray

  The photographs, sent separately from the CSI team, showed Maria Turnbull slumped down on the back seat of the cab. They could clearly see the blue colouration that Adamson had described and shown them during the post mortem.

  ‘Strange one,’ Burton muttered.

  ‘What are we thinking about this?’ Fielding always picked up on her partner’s nuances, and she could tell something was already going around in his head.

  ‘It’s just that, if she was poisoned,’ he speculated, ‘it seems feasible to think that it was done last night, although I have to confess, I’m not all that keyed up about poisons.’

  ‘There can be slow-acting ones, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, and then there’s this blueness about her; that’s what’s got me curious.’

  ‘Well, Dr Adamson seemed to think it was down to hypothermia,’ she reminded him.

  ‘You see, that’s the thing. Hypothermia isn’t slow-acting, is it?’

  ‘I’m not really sure, Joe. Perhaps we should get back to him for clarification?’

  ‘Yes, we should,’ he agreed, ‘but if Adamson’s right and she was poisoned, then that’s not by accident, is it? If poisoning is proven, could she have been poisoned during the course of the evening, or could it have been going on for some time and just caught up with her last night?’

  ‘Suspects then?’ Fielding asked.

  Burton sighed. ‘Well, looking at it logically, if it was during the evening, then her companions would have to be suspects. If she’d been poisoned long-term over time, then her husband, I guess.’

  ‘What about the fortune teller they visited?’

  ‘You never know.’

  ‘I’ve just had another thought,’ Fielding was surprised that they hadn’t considered it earlier. ‘We’re right in treating this as suspicious, under the circumstances, but what if this was self-inflicted?’

  ‘What, you mean that she could have poisoned herself, if indeed poison was the cause?’ Burton confessed that it hadn’t occurred to him, but he had to admit that it was a possibility.

  ‘Should we call in the team, or is this something we can leave until the morning?’ Fielding asked.

  Burton reflected. ‘I think we can leave it until tomorrow, and see what the test results bring back. I’m afraid that there’s little we can do in the meantime, as at this juncture a suspicious death is just conjecture. I mean, it could just be a natural death, but if the doctor’s concerned about that blue discolouration, then I think we should be too.’

  ***

  Even though they now had the rest of the day to themselves, they had difficulty leaving the case at the office. Burton had taken note of the names and addresses of the friends who had accompanied Maria Turnbull on their evening out, and decided to contact them to arrange interviews for the following day. He also rang her husband to organise a meeting with him, but found that his telephone was turned off.

  ‘Perhaps we should leave him until tomorrow,’ Burton suggested, thinking that he’d still be in shock. Fielding agreed.

  Appointments made, they spent the rest of the day at Fielding’s apartment, venturing out for lunch and then going for a walk around Heaton Park. Fielding had taken up running again, having bought a pair of trainers some time ago. She’d started to enjoy it. The current spell of fine weather helped, of course. So much so that the park was her favourite spot to go running when she had the time and energy after a long day’s work.

  Being a warm, sunny day, the place was filled with people out and about enjoying the June weather, and she took pleasure in just strolling around taking it all in rather than going at her usual upbeat pace. It was, of course, made even better by the fact that she was accompanied by Joe Burton, who could not be described as a runner or even a jogger. Although he kept himself in good physical shape, it was certainly not through that kind of outdoor activity. His exercise of choice was a local gym, lifting weights and using the exercise equipment, where, like his partner, he ventured when time and energy permitted.

  After their walk he’d stayed with Fielding until around eight, then went home to prepare for what was to come the next day. Somehow, and for no apparent reason, he felt that this case was going to be a challenging one. After he left, Fielding had a quick bath, then settled down with her cats for a couple of hours in front of the television before heading off to bed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Monday morning arrived as it usually did, with all the team in early apart from one; Sam Wayman was into his second week of annual leave on the sun-drenched Greek island of Corfu. As DCI Ambleton was currently out of the office too, and scheduled for a meeting with the Chief Commissioner at 11 a.m., Burton and Fielding couldn’t speak to her until she would return in the afternoon. So, prior to going out to interview Maria’s friends, and trying to get a hold of her husband, they gathered their team together and briefed them on the case. Burton wondered if it was presumptuous to even call it a case, as they were still waiting to get the results back from the lab. Until then, they weren’t even sure if it was a suspicious death. But, even so, despite that, they would still have to gather statements from Maria Turnbull’s friends, as well as her husband.

  As DC Jack Summers would be stepping in to partner Sally Fielding when Burton was promoted, he was tasked with organising things within the incident room while the statements were being gathered. Summers had proven himself well in the homeless man case, which had not gone unnoticed by his superiors. Burton didn’t have any qualms about leaving Summers in charge while he and Fielding were away interviewing the deceased woman’s friends and family. In fact, he didn’t have any qualms about leaving him in charge of anything. Summers would make a good partner for Sally Fielding when he could no longer be there for her in his role as her DI.

  ‘Right then,’ Burton instructed, ‘see what you can find out about Maria Turnbull and the others, and we’ll add to it after we’ve spoken to everyone.’

  ‘Right boss.’ Summers felt proud to be given the responsibility. Like Fielding, he too was studying for the next-level exams, in his case the sergeant’s. Hopefully, he’d be a fully qualified detective sergeant when he would team up with Fielding. It was going to be unusual at first. All of the team, and not just him, had been used to the Burton/Fielding team-heading dynamic of the past few years, so having a change-about would feel strange for a while.

  Burton deserved his promotion. His leadership was second-to-none, and Fielding would step into his shoes perfectly in the same way that he would step into the retiring DCI Ambleton’s ones. Summers had enjoyed working closely with Fielding while they were undercover, and had recognised her unfailing dedication to the job. She and Burton were very much alike in their attitude towards their work, which was most probably why they were together now on a more personal level . . . thankfully. He and the team had seen that coming for a long time, even when the pair had perhaps not seen it themselves. Everyone was delighted they were a couple. Despite keeping it very professional and not unnecessarily displaying their new-found relationship, the look in their eyes when they spoke to one another said it all, and revealed a new and exciting side to them.

  ***

  John Turnbull’s phone was now turned on, but callers were met with a recorded message from his mother. It gave her name and number for anyone to call her rather than speak to him, which Burton did. She sounded overwhelmed when he spoke to her, but gave him her address and agreed to let him come over, though stressed that her son was ‘not very well, as you will appreciate.’

  Maria Turnbull’s husband John was still in shock when Burton and his partner went to see him at his parents’ home in Didsbury village. After hearing the news the previous evening, Tim and Marion Turnbull had immediately got in the car and driven over to see him. They found him highly intoxicated, having downed half a bottle of whisky before their arrival. They decided it best to take him immediately back to their house. While his mother had gone upstairs to the bedroom and packed a few
things, his father tried his best to console his son but all his attempts were to no avail. They struggled to get their son into the back seat of their car. As soon as they arrived back home, they’d called their doctor to attend to their grief-stricken son.

  ‘He’s not doing well, as you can imagine,’ Mrs Turnbull told the two detectives with red-rimmed eyes. She looked as if she’d been up all night crying. Her husband, who sat quietly in a wing-backed chair staring down at a space on the floor just past his shoes, didn’t look that well either.

  ‘If we can, may we see him?’ Fielding asked, taking a kindly approach. It was never easy talking to relatives following the death of a family member, and this was going to be as difficult as any other.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Mrs Turnbull attempted a smile, but it only resulted in more tears. ‘I’ll take you up to see him,’ she said in a broken voice.

  While Fielding was talking, Burton took the opportunity to glance around the room and noticed a lot of photographs on display. He saw a few of their son with their late daughter-in-law taken on their wedding day, but the vast majority were of them as a family, taken over the years at various holiday destinations around the world. Judging by the exotic and far-away locations he recognised, Burton presumed that the family was not short of a bob or two. There was also one of John, possibly in his teens, appearing in what seemed to be a school or college play. A Shakespearean one, by Burton’s reckoning, judging by the costumes worn. Fielding would have been able to tell him about it, and probably been able to name the play, being the Shakespearean buff that she was.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Fielding asked gently, drawing his attention away from the photos and back to the matter in hand, and together they followed Marion Turnbull up the stairs into a room at the back of the house. John, was sitting upright on the far side of the bed with his back to them. He was looking out of the window and staring at some point in the distance, completely oblivious to their arrival.

  ‘John, darling,’ Mrs Turnbull began, somewhat tentatively, ‘there are two police officers here to see you.’

  John Turnbull turned his head around in their direction. His face was the colour of clay, drained of all its normal pigment. He pushed himself up with both hands and moved slowly around the bottom of the bed to the other side before stumbling back down onto the mattress again. His mother moved to help him, but he held up a hand to stop her.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ he managed. His voice sounded hoarse through lack of sleep, and quite possibly dehydration from the alcohol he’d consumed the previous evening. He looked a mess; whisky stains covered his shirt, and his hair was wild and untamed. His parents must have brought him up the stairs as best as they could and simply left him on the bed where he’d fallen. By the time the doctor arrived, it was likely that he hadn’t moved much, if at all.

  ‘Do you feel up to this?’ Burton asked, feeling the man’s pain. He contemplated that if he ever lost Fielding then this was probably the kind of state he’d be in.

  Turnbull nodded unconvincingly. He looked as if he’d throw up any second.

  ‘We’ll be quick,’ the detective assured him. ‘Tell us if you can about last night.’

  John cleared his throat and began to relate the events leading up to his wife leaving with her friends to go out for the evening.

  ‘She hadn’t been happy when she was told where they were going, as I recall.’

  ‘Oh, why’s that?’ Fielding asked. She saw her partner take his notebook from his inside jacket pocket and scroll through to find a blank page, earmarking it with the elastic closure. His ‘trusty book’, she called it as he and it seemed inseparable. He’d had it, or one just like it, for as long as she could remember.

  Turnbull sighed. ‘One of her friends, Caroline, said that she’d booked a session with some kind of fortune teller. She knows that Maria . . .’ He paused at the mention of her name, gulping hard, before composing himself again and carrying on. ‘She hated anything like that. Caroline should have known it, so I don’t know why . . .’

  ‘It’s okay, you’re doing very well, Mr Turnbull,’ Fielding reassured him.

  ‘Anyway,’ he cleared his throat again, ‘she agreed to it in the end. They left to go, and I gave her a kiss, and that was the last I saw of her.’

  ‘And what about Maria’s parents?’ Burton asked.

  ‘They both live in Spain,’ Mrs Turnbull offered. ‘We contacted them as soon as we heard, and they’re coming over as soon as they can arrange a flight. They should be over in the next day or two.’

  ‘What do they do?’

  ‘They both took early retirement a few years ago, detective inspector,’ she continued. ‘Maria’s father ran a highly successful investment business, but then sold the company so that he and his wife could spend more time together. They already had a villa out there, so went to live there permanently. They were so looking forward to the possibility of grandchildren, as were we . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

  At that point John Turnbull broke down, and his mother rushed forward to sit next to him. He didn’t stop her this time.

  ‘Do you need to ask him anything else, detectives?’ she pleaded with them, to which Burton replied that they did not.

  As Mrs Turnbull cradled her son in her arms, Burton and Fielding decided to leave them alone. Stopping by the living room door to tell the father that they were now leaving, they found him sitting in the same position as before. He looked up and nodded slowly, before continuing to stare hopelessly at the spot which fascinated him so much on the carpet.

  The two detectives let themselves out the front door, closing it behind them and leaving the family to support themselves in their shared sorrow.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Before telephoning Maria Turnbull’s friends the previous day to arrange an interview with them, Burton had decided that it was probably best to meet them all together in one place, as that way the detectives could get their reactions simultaneously. In their job, anyone connected to a dead person had to be considered a person of interest until proven otherwise, and with the three women having been with the deceased in the hours before her death, it would be amiss not to consider them as such. Of course, if she had been poisoned, as Dr Adamson had speculated, then it would be necessary to determine exactly when that had taken place and with what. Had Maria been poisoned quickly with one large dose, or had it been done over time? That was something that needed to be determined by the pathologist.

  Caroline Watkins had suggested that they use her house as a meeting place, so that was where Burton and Fielding headed immediately after leaving John Turnbull’s parents’ home.

  ‘Everyone’s here,’ she said, after answering the front door. ‘We’re all in the living room.’

  She opened the door for them enter and indicated with a wave of her hand the first room on their right. As it was already ajar, Burton pushed his way through first, followed closely by Fielding, with Caroline coming in behind them.

  The detective sergeant took note of her surroundings. The room, like the house’s exterior, was modern and bright, and filled with expensive-looking furnishings. Her interior designer sister would have most likely categorised this as contemporary due to its clean, slick lines and unadorned appearance. Burton, she thought, probably hadn’t even noticed. But then again, he might have; he could still surprise her even after the years they’d known one another. It kept things fresh between them, not that they were in any way stale, especially now that they had taken their relationship from a professional one to something more personal.

  The other two women were sitting on the sofa and stood up as soon as the detectives entered. Caroline introduced them as Selena Douglas and Barbara McKay, both of whom still looked shocked. Only Caroline herself appeared to be holding it together, but Fielding detected that it could all be a front on her behalf. Caroline’s smooth exterior was far too primed and perfected for her liking, and was probably only for show.
The detective assumed it to be her way of supporting her grieving friends, as it was more than likely she was falling apart on the inside as much as the other two.

  Burton and Fielding were asked if they would like something to drink, but they declined, and sat on the two chairs opposite the sofa. Caroline sat down beside her two friends.

  ‘Can each of you tell me in your own words exactly what you did yesterday evening prior to meeting up, and then how everything played out after that?’ Burton’s notebook was already out of his pocket to record their answers.

  Caroline took the lead. ‘Well, I was here getting ready, then Selena and Barbara arrived in a taxi at about seven . . . wasn’t it?’ She looked at the other two for confirmation. They both nodded. ‘Then we all went over to Maria’s house. John was there, of course; he let us in and we waited until she came downstairs from getting herself ready. I’d booked something special for the evening . . .’ Caroline’s voice trailed off as she realised the connotations of that. It had proved to be far from the ‘special’ evening she’d intended for them all, even before Maria’s untimely death.

  ‘Sorry,’ she continued, composing herself again before speaking. ‘I’d booked an appointment for all of us to go and see a fortune teller I’d read about. Thought it would be a good night out for us, a good laugh. I wish I hadn’t now, under the circumstances.’

  ‘You weren’t to know, Caroline,’ Selena comforted her, ‘who would have?’

  ‘She wasn’t too keen on going, I know and I’m sorry now for pushing her, but I didn’t think it would upset her so much that she’d have a heart attack though.’