Evanly Bodies - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,44

more than one person in the room. While I'm talking you can notice things-what the room looks like, how she reacts to questions. I've always found it's very useful to have extra men hanging round, apparently doing nothing."

So now Bragg was trying to make him into an ally-two against two. Evan stomped behind him up the stairs.

The door at the top of the stairs was not locked and led to a small, square hallway. Ahead of them was a living room. Evan poked his head in and looked around. Shabby, old fashioned. Carpet that had seen better days. A hand-crocheted afghan thrown across the back of the sofa. A lurid print of an Italian street scene on the wall. A new big-screen TV in one corner. There had been a TV set in the kitchen, too. It was clear where Luigi's priorities lay.

"In here, Evans," Bragg barked a summons. Evan followed him into the adjoining room, which was a front bedroom. The curtains were closed. Only a fringed pink lamp beside the bed was on, illuminating the figure in the bed, but plunging the rest of the room into deep shadow. A woman was lying propped up on pillows, wearing a purple satin robe. She was rounded but not fat, with bleached blonde hair, already showing traces of dark at the roots. She must have been quite a looker in her younger days, Evan thought, but now she'd started to sag. And there were plenty of worry lines too.

"Mrs. Alessi?" Bragg said softly. "May we come in?"

"Oh yes. Of course." She pulled up the covers instinctively as they came in.

"Sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Alessi," Bragg said. "We're police officers from the Major Crimes Unit. I'm Detective Inspector Bragg and this is Detective Constable Evans. We'd like to ask you a few questions if you're up to it."

"Yes, I think I'm all right now," she said. It was hard to pinpoint her by her accent. "I was so zonked out earlier. I've no idea what I said to that other officer. Then I went right back to sleep. Can you believe it? Those bloody pills do that to me."

"How often do you take them?" Bragg asked. He looked around for a chair and found none. "Evans, be a good lad and bring me something to sit on."

"Yes, sir." Evan went through to the unit's tiny kitchen and brought back a lime green plastic-and-chrome kitchen chair. Bragg pulled it up close to the bed and sat.

"There, that's more comfy. Now you were saying about your sleeping pills."

"I've been taking them every night recently. The doctor prescribed them because I was having such trouble sleeping. I haven't been well lately."

"Really, what's been wrong?"

"My nerves," she said. "Luigi said it was the change. I'm getting to that age, you know. He may be right. Doctors don't really have time for you these days, do they? They just hand out prescriptions and want you out of there."

"So he prescribed sleeping pills, did he? How long ago?"

"I've been taking them for about a month," she said.

"And they knock you out until eleven in the morning? That can't be good for you."

"Well, you see I don't take it until I have a cup of cocoa around nine. Then I fall asleep around eleven and usually I wake about nine the next morning. Luigi doesn't like to wake up too early, seeing as he's never done cleaning up downstairs until at least midnight, and then he has to watch some telly to wind down."

"So tell me about last night," Bragg said.

"I took my pill as usual around nine," she said. "I fell asleep soon afterward because there was nothing worth watching on the telly. Then I woke up to go to the loo. I often have to go in the middle of the night. When I got back from the bathroom, I looked at the clock and it was almost three, and Luigi wasn't in bed. He falls asleep watching TV in the living room sometimes, so I went in but he wasn't there. So I went downstairs and the light was off in the kitchen. I switched it on . . . and . . . and he was lying there. I went over to him and saw the blood. Blood all around him. Blood on the floor. My head was still so groggy that I couldn't think straight, but I did manage to call the police."

"What did you think when you saw him lying there