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Chapter 11
‘Theshout came in yesterday evening,’ Tai-young Lee said. ‘The location’s a bit rural so it was twenty minutes before uniform got there. They secured the scene then called it in. I was duty DCI and was there within the hour. Uniform had held the paramedics at the outer cordon as it was obvious the victim had wounds incompatible with life.’
‘Who was the victim?’
‘Professor Doyle’s father, Elcid.’
‘Manner of death?’
‘Nothing official yet, obviously, but I can tell you there was a bullet hole in his head and two more in his chest. He was still in his chair.’
‘Witnesses?’
‘None.’
‘Who called 999?’
‘She did.’
‘Who, Estelle?’
Lee nodded.
‘She was there?’ Poe said.
‘She says she found him.’
‘Go on.’
‘Nothing more really,’ she said. ‘We conducted some enquiries then arrested Professor Doyle for the murder of her father.’
Poe shook his head. ‘You haven’t arrested the most gifted forensic pathologist in Europe just because she discovered her father’s murder,’ he said. ‘You have more. What aren’t you telling me?’
Lee eyed him shrewdly. ‘We’re getting into disclosure territoryhere, Sergeant Poe,’ she said. ‘Some of this hasn’t been shared with the suspect yet.’
‘I’m a cop front and centre, ma’am. If you have evidence then tell me. I won’t share it unless you tell me I can.’
She hesitated, and for a moment Poe thought she was going to refuse. Instead she said, ‘The early line of enquiry was that Elcid Doyle had interrupted a burglary. He’s a wealthy man and the family home is full of antiques and valuables. Early evidence supported this.’
‘Such as?’
‘Manner of entry was a broken window.’
‘But …?’
‘If he’d interrupted a burglary, why was he sitting down?’
‘I can think of thirty reasons right off the top of my head,’ Poe said. ‘The killer could have forced him. He might not have interrupted him at all, he could have been expecting the house to be empty and walked into the room while he was having a nap.’
‘What do you know about glass analysis?’
‘Not much.’
‘But you know that direction of impact is determined by the angle of the fractures, right?’
Poe nodded. He didn’t understand the physics, but he knew when determining if a window had been broken from the inside or the outside, CSI technicians looked for conchoidal fractures, the ridges found on the edges of broken glass. They govern the side that the force was applied.
‘The glass was broken from the inside?’ he asked.
