She supposed there were others she could call, MacKenzie thought while she chewed her bottom lip, but did she really need them? She would only be conducting a follow-up interview, she reasoned.
Decisively, she walked across the street and headed for the large semi-detached house bearing an ornamental placard with the number ‘32’. With only a slight frisson of unease, she rang the doorbell and heard it chime loudly on the other side of the thick oak door.
She heard footsteps followed by a slight pause while she was scrutinised through the peephole. There was a further pause, before the locks were opened and the door swung open.
Colin was the epitome of an average man. His brown hair was combed into a classic, conservative style, with no gel in sight. He wore a plain cotton shirt, tucked into straight-leg, mid-wash jeans, which looked like they had been pressed to form a sharp crease at the front.
“Can I help you?” He took a full appraisal, from the top of her red head, to the tips of her boots.
Denise smiled in what she hoped was an unthreatening way.
“Mr Hart?” she even hammed up her accent, relying on its natural charm to soften him up. “My name is Detective Inspector Denise MacKenzie. I was hoping I could ask you a few follow-up questions regarding the body you found the other morning?”
She drew out her warrant card, which he examined.
“I’m not really sure what else I can tell you,” he began, hesitantly. “But feel free to come in, anyway. I’m afraid I must ask you to be quiet; my mother is asleep in her room upstairs.”
“Of course.”
She passed through the hallway with its highly-polished floorboards and lingering scent of lavender, which she guessed came from the excessive number of dried flower arrangements which topped every available surface. She thought briefly of a funeral parlour.
“Can I offer you some tea?”
“No, thank you, I’ve just had some,” MacKenzie lied easily and took a seat on one of the sofas he indicated. Glancing around, she saw a large room decorated in varying shades of cream and white. Shelves were stacked with books, arranged in what appeared to be militant alphabetical order. There were no trinkets or ornaments, no dust catchers of any kind. Her eye fell on several large textbooks of criminology and an extensive collection of small paperback books detailing the lives of famous criminals. She told herself not to draw conclusions from it; after all, she had several copies of the same books on her shelves at home.
On the other hand, she was a police detective. It was her business to investigate murder and she had completed a masters’ degree in Criminology. As far as she knew, Colin Hart worked in finance and, before that, in research. She had done her homework.
Colin noticed the direction of her stare and fiddled with the cuff of his shirt.
“I find it so fascinating, don’t you? That’s probably a stupid question,” he carried on inanely. “Of course you do, you’re a detective.”
MacKenzie gave him another empty smile, which didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“The reality of murder can be very different from the reports you read in those books,” she murmured.
“Oh, I’m sure,” he agreed eagerly, perching on the sofa beside her. Ordinary social graces would have led many people to take the chair on the other side of the coffee table, leaving a healthy gap between them. As it was, MacKenzie was now seated uncomfortably close to him, almost able to count the freckles on his nose.
She made a conscious effort to appear unaffected.
“I’m sure that your experience yesterday morning was quite sobering,” she said conversationally.
“Mmm.” He drummed his fingers against his thighs. “I, ah, I don’t need a solicitor or anything, do I?”
MacKenzie adopted a surprised expression.
“You are always entitled to have one present, but I’m not conducting an interview with you under caution, Mr Hart. I’m merely here to ask some follow-up questions.”
She should have consulted his statement, before barging in gung-ho, she thought with a sinking heart. Her mistake was becoming more and more obvious.
“That’s all right, then,” Colin said, leaning even further towards her.
MacKenzie’s spine was now painfully straight and the inclination to lean away from him was palpable. She cleared her throat.
“How did you feel, when you found the body?”
Colin looked momentarily confused.
“I suppose I felt intrigued. It was really quite a spectacle,” he answered. “More than I imagined it would be.”
Denise frowned.
“When you say, ‘more than you imagined’, what do you mean by that?”
“Oh, you know, when you read about true crime, you think it’s going to be a real fright,” he said. “But it was only an initial shock, the kind you might feel with someone jumping out at you and shouting ‘boo!’”