In the spring of 1988, two sisters, both in their late thirties, took a shotgun from an upstairs room in their terraced house in Preston and murdered their father. Each fired a shot at point-blank range into his chest as he lay in their sitting-room incapacitated by an epileptic fit. They then wandered to where the whisky was kept, and sat drinking and weeping with their mother. Eventually, one of them telephoned the police, and said: 'Someone has shot my husband in the head and I think he's dead.' It wasn't clear to the police, when they arrived, which of the women had made the call and which was in fact the wife.

LRB 23 September 1993 | PDF Download