8th June 1995

Post date: 22-Aug-2015 06:05:56

Transcript

Johns asked me to attend St Luke's College to look into a suspicious death. for some reason he seemed to think it was important. It looked on the face of it to be a simple suicide, but his hunch turned out to be correct and it looks as if we've got a murder on our hands.

My main witness is a dreadful woman called Bernadette Fazakerley. She seems to have taken a personal dislike to me. Johns, who knows her slightly through his wife, tells me that it is because I suggested that her student might have committed suicide. He described her as having “a thing” about suicide due to on old boyfriend having topped himself years ago. She objected to me offering to drive her home after we returned from meeting the victim’s parent at Heathrow. She seemed to think that it was an insult for me to suggest that it wasn’t a good idea for a lone woman to cycle round the streets at two in the morning. I suppose she must be a feminist. She wears trousers, even in the college chapel, and has her hair cut short and talks in a loud Liverpool accent – very strident. Her only redeeming feature is the very kind way with which she treated the boy’s parents. She couldn’t do enough for them: arranging for them to stay in a room in the college, putting them in touch with the Muslim chaplain, leaving her phone number of them to call if they needed anything. I only wish she would be as co-operative with my enquiries!

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