Preface to Murder, M Morris [best selling autobiographies TXT] 📗

Bridget didn’t know what she’d been expecting to hear, but it wasn’t this. She could tell that the others in the room were feeling let down too. She tried to keep the disappointment from her voice. ‘Books? Like A Deadly Race?’

‘No,’ said Ffion with a smirk. ‘Definitely not like that.’

‘What then?’ asked Ryan.

‘Well,’ said Ffion, obviously enjoying being centre of attention, ‘we already knew from Diane’s phone that she enjoyed reading hot romance books. What I found from her laptop is that she wrote them too, and published them herself online.’

‘She wrote romance books?’ repeated Bridget agog.

‘Hot romance?’ queried Ryan. ‘Do you mean –’

‘Whatever your fevered imagination is picturing right now,’ interrupted Ffion, ‘then, yes, all of that with bells and whistles on. Not to mention whips, handcuffs and all kinds of other accessories.’

She opened up the laptop to reveal a screen packed full of book covers featuring half-naked men and scantily-clad women. The titles of the books were suggestive, to say the least. Jake’s ears turned pink as he stared at the images.

‘So it would seem that Diane had two sides to her personality,’ continued Ffion. ‘And two jobs that reflected them. By day she was a serious academic, writing papers for journals, attending conferences and seminars, and publishing a book about governments and their shady dealings. By night she devoured steamy romance books, and wrote and self-published her own titles under the pen-name of Lula Langton. Obviously, she went to great lengths to keep the two facets apart. She even went to the trouble of encrypting her laptop to stop anyone finding out. We assumed it was because of her investigations into the international arms trade, but it was to protect her academic reputation.’

Bridget wondered what Professor Al-Mutairi might say if he found out about Diane’s flipside. Talk about bringing his department into disrepute. But she was still puzzled. ‘So where did the money come from?’

‘From sales of her romance books. She’s published several series in total, and judging from the number of reviews on Amazon, she has a lot of fans around the world – far more than have ever read A Deadly Race. The payments into her off-shore company are from e-book retailers.’

‘So, were her agent and publisher involved in this operation?’

‘No. She published her e-books directly online.’

Bridget had no idea that it was possible to earn so much from e-books. And to do it single-handedly without an agent and publisher working on her behalf. So much for Diane Gilbert’s socialist credentials – she had been a very successful entrepreneur.

Bridget thanked Ffion for her ingenuity and perseverance. But did this new information actually get them anywhere? Apart from clearing up the mystery of the off-shore company, Bridget wasn’t sure that it brought them any closer to solving the case. If there was nothing sinister behind the payments into Diane’s account, and if the denials of involvement by MI5 and the Saudis could be believed, then what remained? A hoax death threat by a down-at heel literary agent desperate to sell more books. Oh yes – and the persistent and unavoidable fact that a woman had been murdered in her own home while under police protection.

Who was it who said, You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending? There was something about this case that had been bothering her right from the start.

‘The broken glass,’ she muttered, ‘at the back door of the house.’

‘What about it, ma’am?’ asked Jake.

‘Jake, you come with me. And’ – Bridget searched the faces until her gaze came to rest on the youngest member of her team – ‘Harry.’

‘Me?’ His eyes lit up.

‘Yes, Harry. I think you’ll be perfect for this job.’

*

The crime scene at the back of Diane’s house looked much as it had the week before. The back door was still sealed off by crime tape fluttering in the breeze, but that wouldn’t stop Bridget carrying out the experiment she had in mind. On the way from the station, they had stopped off at a local hardware shop in Kidlington to buy everything they needed.

Beside her, Harry seemed nervous. ‘Are you sure this is a good idea, ma’am?’

‘Yes. I want to get to the bottom of this, once and for all.’

Harry lowered the pane of glass he was carrying to the ground and propped it up against the brick wall of the house.

‘Place it right next to the back door,’ said Bridget. ‘I want to try to reproduce the conditions on the night Diane was killed as closely as we can. Now where’s that hammer?’

Jake was carrying it. He passed it to Harry, along with a pair of safety glasses.

‘So,’ said Bridget. ‘Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll go and wait in my car out the front. Jake, you go up to Diane’s bedroom and wait there. Harry, we’ll text you when we’re both in place, and then you can smash the glass.’

Harry still looked dubious.

‘Would you rather Jake broke the glass?’ asked Bridget.

That seemed to make Harry’s mind up. ‘No, ma’am. I’ll do it.’

‘Good,’ said Bridget. ‘Now let’s all get into position.’ She left Harry at the back of the house with the hammer and the glass, and made her way to the front. The constable who had been guarding the house was no longer on duty. Jake let himself in with a key and disappeared upstairs. Bridget’s car was parked immediately outside, in the exact spot that Sam and Scott had been parked on the night of the murder. She climbed inside, texted Harry to say she was ready, and then waited.

The street was probably almost as quiet by day as it was by night. Although the nearby Banbury Road was busy at this time, here on St Margaret’s Road, screened by large houses,