No Sorrow to Die by Gillian Galbraith

Author:Gillian Galbraith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780857900319
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2011-10-06T22:00:00+00:00

Smelling the unmistakeable delicious aroma of chips, Alice looked round the murder suite in search of the source, ignoring for a moment the remaining soggy ham-salad sandwich in its triangular box on her desk. She had made a bad choice, but perhaps whoever had been to the chippy might be interested in a swap.

Thomas Riddell, the Family Liaison Officer, who was making one of his rare visits to the office, was glued to his computer screen and appeared to be making do with soup from a plastic cup. No luck there, then. At the other end of the room, Alistair Watt was leaning against his desk, carefully picking out lumps of apple from his fruit salad and throwing them in the bin.

‘Eleven sodding bits out of twenty,’ he complained, scowling in disgust at the pink, watery mess that remained.

Alone among the company, DI Manson was not having his lunch. He was standing with his back to them all, staring out onto Arthur’s Seat, and his sausage roll was getting cold on the window sill.

‘So, how did you and Eric get on this morning?’ Elaine Bell asked Alice, wiping grease from her mouth with a paper napkin. ‘Could Brodie have taken the stuff himself – tried to commit suicide or not?’

‘No,’ Alice replied, noticing that, unfortunately, it was her boss who had the chips, ‘probably not. But Dr Paxton wasn’t all that helpful. He left it all slightly open. It doesn’t sound as if it would have been impossible for him to take the stuff himself, just unlikely.’

‘Then let’s assume, for the moment,’ the DCI said, ‘that he couldn’t take the stuff himself then, where does that leave us?’

‘Someone must have given it to him, or forced him to drink it, I suppose. Probably someone in the family, or close to him at any rate. Maybe it was accidental, an accidental overdose by someone? Clerk’s never done that kind of thing, drug people I mean. Why would he, anyway? So perhaps someone close to Brodie thought they’d help him out or something? Fed him the stuff, knowing he wanted it, that he wanted to die but couldn’t manage it himself.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Thomas Riddell broke in, in his usual ponderous manner, tipping his cup to drain the last drop. ‘I’ve met all the family, got to know them, relate to them, and that wouldn’t be my impression. None of them would do that. Anyway, the children were together on the Saturday night and …’

‘And why not them, exactly?’ Eric Manson said, turning round and facing Riddell. ‘Who else would do it?’

‘Well, certainly not Heather,’ replied the Liaison Officer, taken aback by the fierce tone of his superior.

‘I think you mean Mrs Brodie,’ the Inspector corrected him, his mind temporarily back on his work. Bloody Liaison Officers! What a breed they were, more like social workers than policemen. Supposed to be the force’s eyes and ears in the family, but before you know it, they’d been turned, become the family’s eyes and ears within the force.

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