Asking For Trouble by Ann Granger Read Free Book Online

in another part of town. I never saw any sign of it.’
    Janice abandoned that line of questioning and the tone of it, becoming conciliatory again. ‘I’d like, if I may, to ask you about the dogleash. The dog belongs to the one you call Squib, is that right?’
    ‘Yes. The leash just lies round the house. The dog’s very well trained and it isn’t often he put it on a leash.’
    ‘So anyone could have got hold of the leash? Is that what you’re saying? We can expect to find all your fingerprints on it?’
    The question hit me with an unpleasant jolt to the solar plexus. So this was why they’d been in such a hurry to take our fingerprints, before we could object. The sick feeling below my chest intensified.
    I didn’t want to say anything else to make her more suspicious of me. But I’d been told by someone who reckoned he knew that there still wasn’t any really reliable way of taking clear fingerprints off rough surfaces. Not clear enough to stand up in court, anyway. To be used as evidence, so the person who told me said, there had to be sixteen points of similarity between a print taken at a scene of crime and one taken off a suspect. And that’s an awful lot. That dogleash was a scuffed-up bit of old leather. They’d be lucky to get sixteen points of similarity off that.
    She was still giving me that steely look. I countered it with one of my own.
    ‘I don’t think I should answer any more of these questions without a lawyer.’
    ‘My goodness,’ she said. ‘First Porter, now you. What’s your reason for wanting a legal adviser, Francesca?’
    ‘Simple. You indicated you only wanted to ask about the circumstances leading to our finding Terry’s body. You did say there were a few things puzzling you. But this line of questioning seems to me far more than is necessary for a suicide. I’m not daft. You think you’ve got yourselves a case of murder.’

Chapter Three
     
    When they realised I really wasn’t going to answer any more questions, the interview came to an abrupt end – for the time being. They weren’t keen to see any more of us legally represented, even by the most incompetent of lawyers, at that stage. They didn’t know for sure they had a murder case. For that they’d await the final report of the post mortem. Janice thanked me icily for all my help and murmured that they might need to talk to me again. What was my address?
    I pointed out they knew. She said, still smiling, she understood we were about to be evicted within the next few days. I told her it was still the only address I had, and suggested she ask the council what it meant to do about us. I was asked to wait outside.
    Eventually someone came to tell me they’d been in touch with the council and understood it meant to rehouse me – though not Squib or Nev. All this was news to me. The police must have put pressure on and succeeded where all else had failed. But it made me uneasy, as it turned out, rightly so.
    They also brought me a transcript of everything I’d told them. I signed after I’d read it a dozen times because I wanted to be sure what I was putting my name to. Then I asked, ‘Can I go now?’
    They weren’t happy about it but they let us all go. We trailed back to Jubilee Street to find a gallant specimen of the Old Bill was guarding the entrance to our house. He wouldn’t let us in. We told him all our gear was in there and, as far as we were concerned, it was still our home. He told us we’d have to wait till someone told him officially he could let us inside. After some argument, he let us know that the forensic team was busy in there, and nothing had to be disturbed.
    ‘What are they looking for?’ Squib asked, as we walked away. ‘They got the body. They took photos of the place.’
    I didn’t want to worry Nev, so I just said that the police were like that, pernickety.
    Squib made what, to his mind, was a joke. ‘They think we strung her up, do they?’
    He cackled away happily and I