clothing, and delivery notes that proved that the drugs matched those in a consignment delivered to the Conway Unit's pharmacy. In the absence of any forensic evidence suggesting a violent struggle, DI Wallace was in no doubt that Jacobs had taken his own life.
Jenny said, 'There is a suggestion in the pathologist's report that the body may have been turned over some hours after death occurred. Do you have any idea how or why that happened?'
'I don't believe it was the two kids who dialled 999. They claimed they were too frightened to go very close and I have to say I believe them.'
'So it's possible someone else disturbed the body beforehand?'
'Yes. Most likely they rolled him over, realized he was dead and took fright. It might even have been whoever he had sex with.'
Avoiding Mrs Jacobs's gaze, Jenny said, 'Do you have any idea who that person might have been?'
'None at all, I'm afraid. Internal swabs were taken, but the DNA profile didn't match any currently held on the national database.'
'Were you able to establish Mr Jacobs's movements after he left home?'
'We just got a piece of information through this morning - he bought petrol at Easton Road at four-thirty in the afternoon. He used his MasterCard. We asked the filling station for any CCTV footage but it gets overwritten every day.'
'That means he was heading south from his home towards the city centre. Where was his car found?'
'Around the corner from the church. The tank was nearly full so I assume he didn't drive far.'
'Do we know when he obtained the phenobarbital?'
'According to the pharmacist, it could have been any time in the last two weeks, but definitely not Saturday. The unit has an electronic entry system; the computer log had no record of him having returned after he left work on Friday afternoon.'
Jenny made a note that Jacobs had obtained the drugs at some point during the two weeks before his death. It was looking increasingly as if he had been secretly fighting a devastating wave of depression. In common with most suicides, he could have been managing a low-level condition for some time and his part in Emma Derwent's death had probably pushed him beyond the limits of his ability to cope.
Jenny said, 'You took Mr Jacobs's laptop computer from his home but returned it wiped blank. Can you explain how that happened?'
'I have apologized to Mrs Jacobs,' DI Wallace said. 'It's nothing sinister, but I admit it doesn't cover us in glory. We employ a private contractor to carry out our data retrieval. He removed the hard drive from the laptop, uploaded the contents to his machine, and then accidentally confused Mr Jacobs's drive with others containing illegal images which he had been asked to reformat.'
'That seems a rather basic error.'
'It happens, unfortunately. I've arranged for the copied contents to be handed back to Mrs Jacobs if she'd like them. The data, such as it was, contained nothing of relevance. Mr Jacobs seemed to use his laptop chiefly as a diary and for browsing the internet.'
'Did he visit any sites in particular?'
'Sports ones mostly. I think I'm right in saying he was a football fan.'
Mrs Jacobs smiled for the first time that day.
Jenny found it hard to believe that a man wrestling with his sexuality wouldn't have explored it online. He would be in a saintly minority if he hadn't. Perhaps DI Wallace was acting out of compassion for the widow, but it seemed unlikely. She would have expected that from a comfortable detective sergeant with no eye on promotion, but Wallace gave every impression of still being on the way up, and of going about his business strictly by the rules. Nor could she see him covering up the fact that a dangerous psychopath had been negligently released from the Conway Unit, or that Jacobs was suspected of having an affair with a former patient.
No, DI Wallace simply didn't seem the type to save others' feelings.
It was left to the quietly spoken Daniel Randall to suggest, in faintly embarrassed tones, that the police had conspired with Deborah Bishop and others to disguise the fact that the dead man was drugged and sexually assaulted, most probably by a former patient, who should have remained under lock and key.
DI Wallace said, 'He swallowed twenty-four pills, possibly without water. There were no other drugs in his system. He was six feet two inches tall and weighed fourteen and a half stone. Tell me how it could have