So Say the Fallen (Dci Serena Flanagan 2) Read Free Page A

had found the body, and the constable had been spared delivering the death notice. Flanagan remembered the first time she’d been given that duty, calling atthe home of a middle-aged couple whose son had lost control of his new car. Everyone has to do it some time, the senior officer had said, might as well get it out of the way. Even thinking about it now soured Flanagan’s stomach, and she had done dozens more since then.
    She stepped into the hall, past the young officer. ‘Where’s the sergeant?’ she asked.
    Wooden floors. A staircase with polished banisters rose up to a gallery on the first floor, cutting the hallway in two. Art on the walls, mostly originals, a few prints. Framed scripture verses. A large bible ostentatiously open on the hall table.
    Serious money, here, Flanagan thought. So much money there was no need for another penny, but still you couldn’t help but make more. And yet it didn’t save Mr Garrick in the end.
    ‘In the living room,’ the constable said, ‘with the deceased’s wife.’
    Flanagan looked to her right, through open double doors into a large living room. A stone fireplace built to look centuries old. No television in this room, but a top end hi-fi separates system was stacked in a cabinet, high quality speakers at either end of the far wall. A suite of luxurious couches and armchairs at the centre, all arranged to face each other. The widow, Mrs Garrick, red-eyed and slack-faced sitting with a man whom Flanagan assumed to be the clergyman, even though he wore no collar. Her hands were clasped in his. The other uniformed officer sat opposite them: a female sergeant she recognised but whose name Flanagan could not recall.
    She got up from the couch, and said, ‘Ma’am.’ She carried a clipboard, held it out to Flanagan.
    ‘Are you my Log Officer?’ Flanagan asked, keeping her voice respectfully low.
    ‘Yes, ma’am.’
    ‘Have you done this before, Sergeant . . .?’
    ‘Carson,’ the sergeant said. ‘A few times. I know the drill.’
    ‘Good,’ Flanagan said, taking the offered pen. She saw Dr Phelan Barr’s signature already scrawled on the 38/15 form. She signed beneath and handed the pen back. ‘DS Murray’s on the way. When he arrives, send him back, and I’ll come and speak with Mrs Garrick. Then I want you on the door to the room, understood?’
    ‘Yes, ma’am.’
    ‘Is there a clear path from the door to the body?’
    ‘Yes, ma’am.’
    ‘Okay, make sure anyone you let in knows to stick to that.’
    Flanagan looked over Sergeant Carson’s shoulder to see Mrs Garrick and the rector watching from their place on the opposite couch. Flanagan nodded to them each in turn. ‘I’ll be with you in a few minutes,’ she said.
    She walked along the hallway to the right of the staircase. On the other side, she saw the dining room with its twelve-seater table, and the kitchen, all white gloss and black granite. And here what had once been another reception room but now was a makeshift care unit.
    The Forensic Medical Officer, Dr Barr, stood over the corpse, writing on a notepad. Flanagan looked from him to the bed and the scarred ruin of a man beneath the sheets. She let a little air out of her lungs as she always did at the sight of a body. A tic she had borrowed from DSI Purdy.
    Barr heard and turned to her. A small man in his late fifties who always managed to look dishevelled no matter how smartly he dressed. He was known to have a drink problem, had lost his marriage over it, yet Flanagan had never so much as caught a whiff of it on him, he kept it so well hidden.
    ‘Ah, DCI Flanagan,’ Barr said. ‘Never a pleasure.’
    ‘Likewise,’ Flanagan said.
    A small joke they always shared over a body. Neither of them enjoyed the company of the dead, but it was when they most frequently met. Flanagan took a step inside the room, smelled the hospital smell, and the death.
    ‘Well?’ she asked.
    ‘I’ll call it suicide,’ Barr said, ‘unless something