Asking For Trouble by Ann Granger

about the post mortem. ‘Is this or isn’t this a murder inquiry? If not, why do I need an alibi? If it is murder, I should be told so, outright. I don’t have to cooperate if I don’t know what’s going on.’
    She didn’t answer at once. She pulled over behind a stall selling curtain material, and twisted in her seat to face me.
    ‘It’s not that easy to answer your question, Fran. It wouldn’t be the first case where foul play has been suspected and then, after exhaustive and costly inquiries, it’s been decided the injuries were accidental or self-inflicted. People do harm themselves in a multitude of ways. I wouldn’t like to guess how often an investigation’s taken time, money and manpower, everyone’s got frustrated and tired, and still we’ve ended up closing the file. No one likes that. On the other hand, murder has been made to look like suicide before. The killer’s found it easier to try and fake a suicide than to fake an accident. In this case, we’ve an apparent suicide, but with so many inconsistencies about it that we have to be suspicious. Sergeant Parry, who was one of the first officers to see the body—’
    I interrupted bitterly, ‘I know what Parry thinks! He thinks we had something to do with it!’
    ‘No,’ she contradicted me. ‘You don’t know what Sergeant Parry thinks. Despite anything he may have said to you, he’s not leaping to any conclusions about this, nor am I. Parry is a very experienced officer. I, for one, respect his opinion. So, if we haven’t a suicide, what do we have?’
    Janice glowered through the windscreen at the billowing net curtaining strung along the trader’s stall ahead. ‘The worst is trying to explain all this to the family. Suicide appals most relatives. They want to believe it’s an accident. Even murder is more acceptable to them. They can’t be responsible for the accident or the murder – but the suicide leaves them with a personal burden of guilt. If I went to Theresa’s family today and said, sorry, folks, the murder theory was a mare’s nest. It was suicide, after all. You know, they’d be more upset than if I went to them and named a killer?’
    ‘But yourself,’ I persisted. ‘You think that, out there somewhere, is a killer?’
    ‘Personally and off the record, yes, I think so. But hunches, mine or Parry’s, aren’t enough, even when there’s circumstantial evidence to back them up. Eventually it has to be proved to the satisfaction of a jury. That’s not easy. Juries nowadays mistrust forensic evidence. They shouldn’t but they do. A couple of cases of verdicts declared unsafe which get wide media coverage, and there you are! Unsupported confessions are no longer accept-able. The boundaries of reasonable doubt get hazier every day. I think someone attacked her, that she was either naked or was stripped partially naked in the process, there was some struggle which took place on the floor and the splinters of wood entered her skin. She then received a blow to the head which rendered her either unconscious or semi-conscious. The attacker finished the job, making it look like a suicide. There’s evidence to support all that. But as yet, I don’t know why and I don’t know who.’
    ‘I don’t know who, either!’ I hadn’t missed the stressed pronoun.
    ‘You see why I keep asking about a fight,’ Janice said. ‘If the bruises were come by in an earlier incident, some significant physical evidence drops out of things.’
    ‘No fight,’ I said.
    She smiled. ‘I’m glad you didn’t invent one. It wouldn’t have helped – either of us. I think someone killed her, Francesca. But I need to be sure. I can’t afford a mistake.’
    I must have looked surprised because she flushed. ‘You have to understand, there are – certain tensions among police officers as amongst people working together in any job. I have – there are certain people who resented my promotion. They’d like to see me fall flat on my face.