A separate search of the gardens near the house had unearthed Alice’s large black shoulder bag among the rhododendron bushes, which begged the question of why a woman intending to take her own life would choose to leave it in such an odd place unless it had fallen from her body in some other way.
Lowerson and Yates had taken detailed statements from every member of the household who was present, amounting to twelve in total. That number narrowed to eight when they considered who had remained on site at Cragside the previous day, after the rest of the staff were sent home. A cross-check confirmed that all eight had been at the party on Saturday night too.
There was always a margin of error, thanks to numerous available access points to the estate which might feasibly allow an intruder to enter and leave without being noticed, but the police could not legislate for that. It was at moments like these that Ryan wished for modern conveniences like closed circuit television.
Ryan scheduled the first briefing of ‘OPERATION LIGHTBULB’ for five o’clock and approved his rental cottage as an authorised police site, enabling them to use it as a base rather than travelling forty minutes each way to CID Headquarters back in Newcastle. Proximity was a definite advantage in close-knit communities like Cragside.
There was no better way to smoke out a killer than being right on his doorstep.
*
Back in the city, Denise MacKenzie braved the late afternoon shopping crowd to meet her friend for an al fresco lunch in the city centre. It felt good to be alive, she thought, as she strolled down Grey Street toward their chosen restaurant. She had walked these pavements so many times before and yet it was only after her visit to Cragside that she found herself looking at the architecture afresh. It was incredible to think that one man—admittedly, one man with a vast fortune—had built the city landscape as they knew it. Few people could lay claim to such a legacy and MacKenzie found herself considering the kind of legacy she wanted to leave behind when she was gone. What difference had she made to the world, really?
There was her family back in Ireland, her parents who continued to be as robust as ever. She loved them and enjoyed visiting but could she imagine living in the little village in County Kerry where she had grown up?
No, not any more.
Her life was here. Frank was here.
Then, there was her work. She had spent twenty years carving out a career in law enforcement and, with no false modesty, considered herself to be a damn good murder detective. She knew she had helped to prevent dangerous criminals from committing further crimes and without the long arm of the law, their deeds would have gone unchecked.
She smiled as a group of teenage girls wandered across the road, laughing raucously at some private joke known only to their generation. Without rules, without order, they would not be able to live so freely. Her smile dimmed and she was forced to admit that, even with all those rules and officers on the beat, there were still people out there for whom social laws meant nothing. For them, inflicting harm on others was a kind of blood sport.
Immediately, his face swam into her mind.
“Oh, no,” she whispered, and panic gripped her unexpectedly by the throat.
MacKenzie collapsed to her knees, right there in the middle of the city’s finest street, and shoppers slowed down to get a better look.
“Drunk,” one of them muttered.
“Drugs,” another said, with a superior smirk.
She saw them through the fog that covered her eyes and mumbled something unintelligible before the world slipped away.
*
“Denise?” MacKenzie came around a few seconds later to see a pair of sandal-clad feet hurrying across the pavement, then a set of neat, red-painted toenails came into view. Her body felt weak and shaky and there was a cut on her knee, burned through the material of her best jeans.
“Oh, my God. Denise, are you alright?”
Anna dropped down beside her friend and gave the crowd a scornful look, wondering what the world had come to.
“Have you hurt yourself?”
Now that the faintness had passed, MacKenzie felt a greater sense of embarrassment and pushed herself upward.
“No, no. I’m fine. I’m alright.”
But she swayed a bit and Anna wrapped an arm around her waist.
“Let’s find somewhere to sit down,” she suggested, looking around for a convenient spot but finding none.
“No, really, let’s just get out of here,” MacKenzie muttered, eyeing the gaping faces of the herd.
Anna started to move in the direction of the restaurant.
“Haven’t you got homes to go to?” she couldn’t resist calling out, and made MacKenzie laugh.
“Human nature,” she commented.
“Yeah, it’s a bitch.”
*
Just before five o’clock, Ryan returned to the cottage to set up a makeshift incident room. He knew Anna was spending the afternoon with MacKenzie and was heartened to see the two women growing even closer than before. Whether they admitted it openly or not, they needed each other. Entering the kitchen, he slid his navy blazer onto the back of a chair, removed his cufflinks and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to the elbows. He was eager to shed his suit altogether and exchange it for something more comfortable but there wasn’t time.
The kitchen boasted a supersized oak table with enough seating for ten or twelve people. He laid out a jug of water and some glasses, then disappeared into one of the bedrooms where they kept a printer to run off some copies of the reports generated so far.
The doorbell went as he was coming back downstairs, bang on five o’clock.
It was Melanie Yates.
“Come in,” Ryan said as he glanced over her shoulder. “Where’s Lowerson?”
“He said to tell you he’d be five minutes late,” she replied, slipping off her shoes. She looked for an MDF shoe rack but found instead a smart antique priest’s chair with purpose-built slots for shoes. “He’s, ah, sorting out the voluntary consent forms so we can take DNA swabs from everybody.”
Ryan led the way through to the kitchen and moved across to the kettle.
“Is anyone kicking up a fuss?”
“I think there were a couple of murmurs but, thankfully, everyone has complied without needing to get the lawyers involved.”
“Amen to that,” Ryan jiggled the kettle. “Want some coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
Yates lingered in the doorway for a moment and then stepped inside the room, casting curious eyes around the airy space.
“It’s a pretty cottage,” she remarked, taking in the Aga range and old beams, so unlike her parents’ modern, nineties house. She wondered what it would be like to settle down with a good book beside the fire in the sitting room, or to cook a meal in here.
Ryan spooned instant coffee into two mugs and added water.
“It’s only temporary,” he said, “but it’s been great for us to get out of the city for a while. Milk and sugar?”
“Milk, no sugar, please.” She licked her lips and wondered whether to ask a personal question. “Have you, ah, found somewhere more permanent?”
To her surprise, Ryan looked over his shoulder and tapped the side of his nose.