Free The Burden of Doubt by Angela Dracup

sleeper,’ she said. ‘I was here in my study, keying in reports to my laptop.’
    ‘Alone?’
    ‘Yes.’ She gave a slight frown of impatience. ‘Will that be all?’
    He considered. ‘For now.’
    She led the way to the front door and pulled it open, letting in a rush of freezing night air. As Swift moved through the doorway she called him back.
    ‘I don’t mean to appear obstructive,’ she said. ‘This has been a traumatic shock for me. I need to think things through before I speak.’
    He lifted his eyebrows.
    ‘I’m not planning to tell you any lies, Chief Inspector. I simply want to be as truthful to Moira’s memory as I can be.’
    It was hard for him to keep the scepticism from showing in his face and she seemed to pick up on his doubts and to want to make amends in some way.
    ‘If it’s any help,’ she told him, ‘I can tell you categorically that Moira did not come to talk to me about her marriage.’ She took in a breath to speak again and then stopped.
    ‘I’ll be back to talk to you again,’ Swift said. ‘And I’d advise you to think very carefully about withholding any information which could be relevant to this investigation. Or indeed attempting to select what you consider relevant from what isn’t: I’ll be the judge of that.’ Without waiting for a response he turned and walked to his car.
    Back in his own apartment he poured himself a glass of red, slipped a fish curry into the microwave, punched in a cooking time of four minutes and telephoned his daughter.
    ‘Dad?’ Her voice came on the line, all clarity and crispness, and with a slight question on the upper inflection. It meant she would be in the middle of something absorbing and not really wanting to be disturbed. That was absolutely fine; he just needed to check inwith her from time to time and ensure she was safe and as happy as one could expect a twenty year-old student to be.
    ‘Nothing urgent,’ he said.
    ‘I’m doing OK,’ she said. ‘Just putting the finishing touches on an essay due in tomorrow. And you?’
    ‘The same. I won’t keep you from your finishing touches.’ he said. In his head he saw her pushing strands of dark hair away from her face, her eyes glinting, a witchy grin on her fine-boned face.
    ‘Hey, I hear you were on national TV this morning. Some of my friends caught it.’
    ‘Press conference,’ he told her. ‘A high profile homicide.’
    ‘Next thing you’ll be getting offers from Hollywood.’
    ‘I doubt it.’
    ‘Stay just as you are, Dad,’ she said, which was nice even though she said it in tones that gave the clear signal, ‘Got to go now’.
    He clicked off the connection just as the microwave began to beep. Sliding the carton from the oven, he smiled, reflecting that he could always rely on his daughter not to push up his phone bill too far.
     
    Swift slept fitfully. Just before he woke he had a dream in which Naomi somehow aged and metamorphosed into someone else, someone with the face and body of Moira Farrell. He pulled himself from the dream feeling on edge with anxiety – a poor way to greet the day.
    He stood under the shower for twice as long as usual, letting the hot water wash over his head and shoulders as he soaped himself, then turned the control to provide a final burst of cold to purge himself of the dream before stepping out.
    He made fresh coffee, black and strong, put bread in the toaster, then stripped the bed and stuffed the results into the machine. From the garden flat below there were sounds of joyful dog barking intermingled with strains from Radio 3: Schubert maybe, or Beethoven. He had new neighbours, a smiling, busy couple in their thirties. Self-involved and busy they gave him no worries, a welcome improvement on the former tenant, a widow of a certainage who had developed a brief infatuation for him and provided quite a number of concerns.
    Beyond the windows it was another grey, grim day, the sky the colour of ageing slate, ice gleaming and