The Dead Dog Day by Jackie Kabler

festivities started. They all knew it wouldn’t be much of a Christmas otherwise.
    â€˜I just need to get it all clear in my mind. Gary, can you recap what we know at this stage?’
    Detective Constable Gary Gilbert, young and slightly scruffy-looking in a check shirt, put down his pen and shuffled up to the whiteboard.
    â€˜Right.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Well, what we definitely know is that at approximately eight a.m. on Monday the eighteenth of December, that’s the Monday just gone, forty-two-year-old TV editor Jeanette Kendrick was found dying on the ground outside TV Centre. She was lying almost directly under her office window, which was open. Seven storeys up, that room is, and her injuries were consistent with a fall from that sort of height. In fact …’
    He paused for a moment, studying the scrawl on the board. ‘In fact she probably fell just before eight o’clock – say, 7.58, 7.59 – because the security guard who found her was very adamant that he always leaves on his eight o’clock rounds bang on time, and he would have taken a minute or so to check the front of the building and then make his way round the side to where she was. Probably got to her about, say, 8.01 or 8.02. Post-mortem showed she probably landed on her feet first, sounds weird to me but apparently it’s not uncommon, then bounced and landed on her head …’
    He flicked through a sheaf of papers. ‘Injuries – well extensive, as you’d expect. Multiple injuries to internal organs, multiple skeletal fractures, head injuries, spinal cord transected. Died of respiratory failure within a minute or two, but was amazingly able to mutter a couple of words, which may or may not end up being of some help to us. Coroner was amazed she could speak at all, vast majority of people would be dead as soon as they hit the ground, although he did say he’d heard of some incredible survival stories too, all down to how you fall and how you land I think. Anyway, he reckons she certainly wouldn’t have lived more than two or three minutes with those injuries, and she was just about alive when the guard found her.’
    Adam nodded slowly. ‘So – just before eight o’clock, she’s pushed out of her office window by a person or persons unknown. Definitely pushed, not suicide – tell us why, again?’
    â€˜Yes, definitely. There were signs of a struggle inside the office near the window – a vase knocked off, other bits and pieces. I mean, I suppose she could have knocked stuff over if she was jumping out, but there was other evidence of foul play too. It says here, look – small linear contusions on both arms. Grab marks, basically. Bruising. She’d tried to fight somebody off. And bruises also across the front of her thighs, probably from her legs being bashed on the windowsill. If she’d jumped by herself, those bruises wouldn’t be there. Also, there was a sticky substance on her face, consistent with her mouth being taped over at some point before she died. No sign of the tape though. Bit weird – maybe the killer wanted to shut her up for a bit but then ripped it off again before shoving her out? Anyway, somebody helped her out of the window, no doubt about it.’
    â€˜And the security guard saw nothing amiss on his rounds, did he? But the victim managed to speak those couple of words to him before she died. “Chris. Chris.” Any luck with finding anyone else of that name? Friends, family, workmates?’ Adam looked around the room.
    There was a general negative murmur.
    â€˜Forensics then. Very little, but we have some fibres on her body that definitely didn’t come from her own clothing. Black, wool. Like you’d get from a black jumper, or gloves. Some caught in her fingernails, as if she was trying to cling on to someone to save herself, poor woman. But a black top, or jumper – hardly unusual in