A Fatal Verdict Read Online Free PDF Page A

at Tracy and Bill Rankin. ‘So, what do we make of that? She’s coming over, she wants him to be alone but not to get his hopes up, he starts to prepare a meal ...’ He glanced around the kitchen curiously, at the sliced vegetables, the half-finished glass of wine. There were drops of what looked like bloody water here and there on the floor. ‘Or at least one of them did. Was it him who did the cooking or her, do you think?’
    ‘Hardly likely to be her in the circumstances, sir, surely,’ Tracy said. ‘I mean, what are you saying - she stood here chopping vegetables and then thought, sod this for a lark, I’ll get in the bath and put an end to it all. Just like that?’
    ‘Not likely, is it?’ Terry agreed. ‘But then if it wasn’t her, it must have been him. He was standing here cooking while she was slicing her wrists in the bath. What sense does that make? Anyway, where’s the knife?’
    ‘Knife?’ Tracy gazed at him bemused. ‘In your hand, sir. In that evidence bag.’
    ‘Not this one, Trace.’ Terry waved an arm around the kitchen. ‘I mean the one in here. The one that chopped these vegetables. Where is it?’
    Tracy looked, and saw what he meant. There was no knife on the worktop, or in the sink, or on the floor. There was a knife block in a corner with three other knives in, but each, when she pulled it out, looked clean. There was one empty space in the block.
    ‘The knife that isn’t there,’ Terry said. ‘Now what does that tell you?’
    Tracy shook her head. ‘I’m not sure, sir. Either she was cutting the vegetables after all, or - what? She came in here to ask lover boy for a knife? Not very likely, is it? Can I borrow that for a moment, I’m in the bath and I need to cut my wrists? He must have known. Unless ...’ Her eyes met his, widening slightly as the same thought occurred to them both.
    ‘Unless he cut them for her,’ Terry nodded grimly. ‘It begins to look like that, wouldn’t you say?’
    ‘He wasn’t here, sir,’ the young constable interrupted.
    ‘What?’ Terry turned away, surprised.
    ‘He wasn’t here. He was out when it happened, shopping, then he came back and found her like this. That’s his story, anyway. He told us, over and over again. Couldn’t stop saying it. He went to the corner shop on Bootham and bought those flowers.’ He indicated the vase on the table in the living room.
    ‘Ah. I see.’ Terry walked back into the living room and inspected them curiously. ‘Which you wouldn’t do, of course, if you were about to kill your girlfriend. Would you, constable?’
    ‘Me, sir? No!’ Bill Rankin looked shocked.
    ‘Unless he bought them to put them on her grave, but that’s too soon,’ Terry murmured to himself softly. ‘He came in with the flowers and found her, you say?’
    ‘So he said, sir, yes.’
    ‘Then he rang 999. Did he try to help her first?’
    ‘So he said, sir, yes. He was burbling something about sticking a plaster on her wrists. As if that would stop it. The paramedics were right sick of him.’
    ‘So at what point did he do the flower arranging, do you think, Trace?’ Terry studied the flowers curiously, then lifted them out of the vase. Water dripped from their stems. ‘No sign of blood on these.’
    ‘It’s a regular domestic scene, sir, isn’t it? Meal prepared, flowers on the table, glass of wine, and then this ...’
    Terry gestured towards the bloody bathroom. ‘Does it make sense to you?’
    Tracy shook her head. ‘Not as a normal suicide, sir, no. I mean, if you really mean to kill yourself, why go over to your boyfriend’s flat and do it in his bath? While he stands in the kitchen cooking a meal?’          
    ‘Or goes out shopping,’ murmured Bill Rankin.
    ‘Maybe she didn’t like his ideas for the menu,’ Tracy suggested. ‘Or they had some kind of quarrel we don’t know about.’
    Terry shrugged. ‘So what are we looking at here? Cry for help, a serious attempt at suicide, or