‘And the only place the smoke was escaping was through that window?’
Nigel nodded.
‘Thanks,’ she said, heading back out the kitchen with a couple of questions in her mind.
What had Helen been trying to hide if she was planning to kill herself anyway? If she didn’t care enough not to kill her two youngest children, why did she care what her two eldest learned after she’d gone?
She stood silently at the kitchen door, lost in thought.
‘All the doors and other windows were locked, guv,’ Bryant reminded her, as though sensing the direction of her thoughts.
‘I know that,’ she snapped. They all knew there was no evidence of outside involvement. The pathologist was sure, she was sure, her boss was sure enough that he was planning in twenty minutes to announce to the world that Helen Daynes had murdered most of her family.
‘Okay, we believe that Helen set her books on fire in the bin?’ Kim asked.
‘Correct,’ Bryant answered.
She walked towards the stairs.
‘Let’s assume she already had the gun. She walked upstairs. She looked in the rooms of both of her children and made the conscious choice of shooting Lewis first because Rozzie was wearing headphones.’
Bryant walked behind her nodding, and Leanne was close behind him offering nothing at all.
Kim crossed the hall.
‘There was a pause between shot two and three while she reloaded the gun. William heard the shots and was getting out of bed. She was standing around here, and her husband was on the right side of the bed.’
‘Yep,’ Bryant agreed.
‘She shot him, and then used the last bullet on herself.’
‘Exactly as Della Porter said,’ Bryant added. ‘Shot one, shot two, pause, shot three, pause, shot four.’
Yes, it was exactly as Della Porter had said.
She closed her eyes for a second and then glanced around the room with fresh eyes.
She had viewed the scene yesterday with the presumption of events. What they’d been told matched everything they’d suspected. Everything had been locked and deadbolted.
‘Bryant, we have a couple of problems.’
‘Of course we do.’
‘If Helen lit the fire before she got the gun, why did Della hear shots around three? Her son saw the smoke while out running at 7a.m., but we know it only burned for a total of half an hour.’
‘Maybe Della got confused.’
‘That’s not all,’ Kim said, stepping further into the room. She could still remember every detail of the bodies as if they were still lying there. ‘Helen was wearing her nightdress. She was ready for bed. Her denture is still in a glass on the bedside cabinet. Is that normal behaviour for someone who’s about to shoot their family?’
‘That entire sentence is a contradiction. What is normal behaviour if you’re planning to do such a thing?’ he argued. ‘The word normal doesn’t enter into it. Helen may have gone to bed as normal. Fallen asleep then woke up later and had the compulsion for whatever reason to do what she did.’
She searched her memory again as a feeling formed in the pit of her stomach.
‘Slippers and pockets.’
‘Guv, what the hell…?’
She looked at her watch. It was four minutes to six.