I stop typing and read what I’ve written so far. It’s not tying together in the way I want it to. I need to convey who these people were and ask why anyone would want to hurt them. Maybe I should take out the bit about the police being perplexed. It might make them look ineffectual, even though when I spoke to DCI Ruthgow on the phone earlier that was exactly how he’d sounded. He more or less admitted they have no motive, no reason why Heather would shoot those two people. Just evidence: the shotgun she used to try to kill herself was the same one used to kill Deirdre and Clive, then the fingerprints, the type and size of the cartridges used and other forensic results they must have at their disposal, which I can’t report at this time. If Heather wakes up, will she plead temporary insanity? Did she do it because she was depressed? Had she, momentarily, lost a sense of reality? They are all things I’d love to ask Margot, but since she practically shut the door in my face on Monday I haven’t tried to speak to her again, though it’s only a matter of time before Ted sends me back.

And I refuse to give up on Margot until I get her story.

I re-read the article. I need to think of how to end it before filing it ready for the deadline tomorrow. It will be in the newspaper on Friday and I can’t write anything that Margot might read and disapprove of. Not if I want to get her on-side.

I flip through my notes. I’d spoken to Lisa and Norman Wilson this morning and they were very forthcoming on the phone. Lisa had cried, her voice sounding thick beneath her tears, as she described her grandmother. I look again at the photos she emailed. There’s a lovely one of Deirdre sitting in a garden at the end of last summer, a puppy on her lap. Its fluffy teddy-bear face makes me think it must be one of the Chow Chows Lisa described. Deirdre is wearing a straw hat and is smiling, surrounded by peach roses. She looks younger than her age, her eyes clear and blue, her white hair bobbed to her shoulders, her face plump and rosy-cheeked. She appears happy, contented. She looks like a lovely, kind, devoted grandmother. I wonder how she’d felt when Heather had burst into her home carrying a gun. Had Clive been shot first? Or her? The police didn’t say. I try to imagine her fear and shudder, feeling nauseous.