Free Blood is Thicker Than Water by Paul Gitsham

so ago.”
    That tied in with Kathy Mackay’s reports that her father had been a bit under the weather in the days before his death.
    “So what did you do next?”
    “I figured it would take a few days to get into his system. By Sunday he was complaining he felt tired. I offered to give him a wet shave and nicked him again. He bled like a stuck pig. Almost too much. It got to the point where I was worried that he was going to bleed out there and then. Fortunately I managed to stop it.”
    “So you decided he was ready?”
    Warren was careful to keep his tone neutral, matching the man’s dispassion with his own. He worried that if he introduced too much emotion the killer before him would dry up and stop the flow of information.
    “Yeah. It was now or never.” He paused again and took another mouthful of water.
    “I knew that he had a habit of falling asleep in the chair, watching the telly. The TV switches itself off to save power late at night so I figured that if I turned the lights off as well, the room would be pitch black.” He paused, his eyes glazing over slightly at the memory.
    “What happened on the night he died?” prompted Warren, careful to avoid emotive words such as “killed” or, God forbid, “murdered”.
    The man’s voice was dull, flat. “I turned up about eleven. I could hear the TV still going and the lights were on, but he snores something rotten. He’s half deaf, so it wasn’t difficult to let myself in without waking him. I needed it to look like an accident, so I turned up the corner of the rug in front of the fireplace, pushed his wheeled tray out of reach and moved his walking stick. Then I switched the lights off and turned the TV to standby.”
    “And then what?”
    The man’s voice lost its robotic edge and a tremble entered his speech. “I was going to leave him. Let nature take its course. But what if it didn’t work? So I sat down on the sofa and waited.”
    The man took another sip of water, spilling a few drops down his chin. He didn’t notice. “For over two hours I sat there. Listening to his breathing. Remembering what he did. About one a.m. I nearly called the whole thing off. I even went to put the light back on, so I could straighten the rug and move everything back to where it belonged. But then I remembered why I was doing it. For ten years our lives have revolved around that man, whilst he sits in that bloody chair on a pile of money that could solve everyone’s problems in one go, yet he’s too tight to pay a penny towards his own care, treating his own family like unpaid domestic help. He needed to be punished for what he did and to stop him ever doing it again.”
    The man paused, before continuing quietly. His lip trembled slightly. “And then there’s Callum. The fear and the way he gets upset and won’t talk whenever somebody mentions his granddad and I knew I had to go through with it.”
    Spent, he sat back in his chair. After a few seconds he started again. “It was getting on for half past one and I was beginning to wonder if it would ever happen. Perhaps he’d just sleep through until dawn. And then he woke up. My eyes had adapted to the darkness a bit, but I knew there was no way he could see me and he wouldn’t hear me.
    “He started sweeping the air with his hand, looking for his trolley and swearing about light bulbs. Then he gave up and started looking for his walking stick. When he didn’t find it, I thought he might just give up and wait for morning when Kathy arrived to do his breakfast, but he started muttering something about being found in his own piss and shit.
    “When he stood up, I thought he was going to turn the chair over, because he was leaning on one side. I hadn’t thought of that. But eventually he was on his feet, shuffling along the carpet. I could just about see him as he stumbled on the rug. But he caught himself, managed not to fall…”
    The man opposite the two officers fell silent. The seconds ticked by, but