Blood in Grandpont (18 page)

‘Love you more!’ Karen had replied, slipping into a cherished teenage game.

‘Love you much more!’

‘Love you the mostest!’ Karen replied, terminating the conversation.

It was 8.31 a.m. when Lawson and Fox walked into Holden’s office, Fox carrying two steaming polystyrene cups, and Lawson some cardboard folders. Holden looked at her watch. ‘We’ll wait for Wilson. He’s just checking something out for me. In fact, since we’re not quite ready, how about getting a coffee for him, and for me too. And tell him to get a move on, while you’re about it.’

At 8.36 a.m., or near as damn it, the two of them returned with two more white cups and Wilson in tow.

‘Sorry if I held you up!’ Wilson said. Apologizing wasn’t so much second nature to Detective Constable Wilson as hard-wired into his reflex system. Holden raised her head and looked at him. His skin was red and scarred by a ceaseless adolescent battle against acne, and his ears protruded too much. He would look a lot better if he grew his hair a bit, she thought, or if he used gel on it to provide a distraction. But she looked on him in the way that she imagined mothers looked on their gawky sons – the ones who were never going to make the football team or get the straight As – with a fierce and protective pride.

‘You haven’t held us up,’ she said, gesturing towards a chair. She
waited until they had all settled. Even now, she wasn’t quite sure where to start. ‘I need your help.’ She paused. It was a ridiculously personal way to open the session. She should have gone straight to the detail of the case. ‘Point one!’ But she felt alone and exposed, and the anxieties of the night had begun to bubble up to the surface again. ‘We aren’t making fast enough progress on the case. Three dead bodies, and God knows how many more to follow if we don’t pull our fingers out. So I want us all to start with a blank sheet of paper. Discard all your assumptions and look afresh at everything. OK?’

She stopped and looked around. Three heads nodded in acknowledgement. ‘So let’s start with Maria Tull’s phone.’ This startled Fox and Lawson. Simple observation told her that, and she felt glad. Whatever else, she had their full attention now. Wilson, of course, knew about her interest in Maria’s mobile. He looked pleased.

‘Fox, you were there yesterday when we interviewed Geraldine Payne. She told us she tried to phone Maria.’

‘Sure. She said she tried to ring Maria on the night of her death. A bit after six, I think she said. She wanted to know when her lectures on Venetian art were starting. But Maria didn’t answer, so she left a message asking her to ring back.’

‘Accurate, but only in so far as it goes.’ She spoke without malice, but the words were bound to hurt. Fox looked back at her, giving no sign. ‘Wilson has been taking another look at this for me,’ she continued, and turned towards her constable.

‘She did ring. At 6.21 that evening. And she left a message. As Sergeant Fox said, she asked about—’

Holden cut in. There were no favours this morning, not even for Wilson. ‘Let’s have it verbatim, Wilson.’

Wilson looked down at his notes. His face was even redder that normal. He began to read. ‘Hi, Maria. Geraldine here. How’s tricks? I’m sure your famous lectures are about to start any day. Do remind me of the details. I completed failed to make a note of it. Byeee!’

‘Thank you Wilson.’ Holden took a sip of coffee. She looked around the semi-circle of faces again. She had got their attention all right.

‘So why didn’t Maria ring her back?’

‘She never heard the message,’ Wilson said. ‘I was checking back in my notes. I went through the mobile in the normal way. Incoming calls, outgoing-calls, missed calls, text messages, and voice messages. This was the only unread voice message. I did write it in my notes, but—’

‘We should have followed it up,’ Holden said firmly. She believed in taking responsibility.

‘We were distracted by the photo of Jack Smith,’ Lawson said. The blame had to be shared. ‘All of us were.’

‘One missed phone call,’ Fox joined in. ‘It’s not like it was a big deal.’

‘Unless, of course, it turns out that it is a big deal.’ Holden knew that now with absolute certainty. It was the biggest deal. Maybe the key, even. ‘Maria didn’t get the message and she didn’t ring back. But she had the mobile on her. We know that because we found it in her coat pocket.’

‘Maybe she had just turned it off,’ Lawson suggested. ‘She was starting a series of lectures. Maybe she didn’t want to be bothered by anyone. I mean, she would definitely have turned it off before the lecture—’

‘But it wasn’t turned off when Geraldine rang her.’ Fox had caught up now, and knew exactly where the Guv was going with this. No wonder she’d been so bloody sharp with him. ‘Geraldine told us the phone rang several times before it went into the answering service.’

‘Six times,’ Holden said quietly.

‘So it must have been turned on then,’ Fox concluded. ‘Or it would have gone straight into the messaging service.’

‘If I can play devil’s advocate for a minute?’ This was Lawson’s insurance, in case she was shot down in flames. ‘Perhaps she was in the car, driving. That would explain why she didn’t pick up at the time. And then, when she got there, she was too rushed or preoccupied to listen to it and ring back.’

‘It’s possible,’ Holden admitted, ‘but her car does have a hands-free
kit. We checked.’ That is to say, Wilson had checked. ‘Which means, in the scenario you are sketching out, Lawson, she gets the call while driving to St Clement’s, doesn’t bother to answer it, and then doesn’t bother when she has got there to check who had rung her and why.’

‘That’s a bit of a loaded way to put it.’ Lawson didn’t like her ideas been abandoned quite so obviously. ‘To say that she couldn’t be bothered.’

‘I know, Lawson. But the bottom line is we have to make some judgements. Anyway, let’s put Fox and Wilson on the spot. What do you two think of the scenario Lawson has proposed. Probable, possible, or unlikely?’

‘Possible,’ Fox snapped back. ‘But on the unlikely side.’

‘I agree,’ Wilson chimed. ‘I wouldn’t want to put too much weight on it.’

‘So Wilson, suggest an alternative scenario.’

The young man shifted in his chair. He didn’t like being the centre of attention, but he had had more warning of Holden’s thinking than the others, and he knew the answer because she and he had already discussed it. He spoke softly. ‘Perhaps, when she was rung, she didn’t have the phone with her.’

‘Exactly!’ Holden leant back in her chair, and sipped slowly at her coffee. She felt elated. She wasn’t sure when the idea had first formulated in her brain, but she felt sure the seed must have been sown when she almost missed the call from Karen that morning. At any rate the idea had materialized by the time she’d pulled into the station car park, so she had been able to slip it into her briefing of Wilson. And now it was out there in the ring, fighting its corner.

She put the cup down, and looked around. ‘Well? It is the obvious answer. Maria didn’t answer the call because she never knew it had been made. We can’t prove it, but let’s run with it as an idea. OK?’

‘OK,’ Lawson nodded, though there was reluctance in her voice. ‘So the next question would be where was the phone when Geraldine rang, and how come you found it in her coat pocket in St
Clement’s car park?’

‘I agree. But let’s look at it from a different perspective, with a long lens and not a microscope. What, from the point of view of the investigation, is the importance of Maria’s mobile phone.’

Lawson, typically, jumped in again. ‘The photo of Jack Smith. It put us on to his affair with Maria Tull.’

‘To call it an affair may be an exaggeration,’ Holden said, remembering what Geraldine had said about Maria’s attitude to sex. ‘He claimed it was only a one-off, and I’m inclined to believe him. She wanted to get her hands on the painting, so she did what she felt she had to do to achieve that, and she took a photo to make sure he cooperated.’

‘There was a photo on Jack Smith’s mobile too.’ Three pairs of eyes turned towards Wilson. ‘Of a painting that had passed into Dominic Russell’s hands.’

‘And now Dominic Russell’s brains have been blown out.’

‘With the painting which Jack Smith handed over to Maria lying by his dead body.’

‘Slashed with a knife, the same knife that killed Maria and Jack.’

‘Whoa! Just a minute.’ Holden raised her hands to emphasize her words. Her team were in danger of careering out of control. ‘First of all, there is no certainty that the knife that damaged the painting is the weapon that killed Maria and Jack. We need to wait for Dr Pointer to confirm that. And second, you’re jumping forward mighty fast. Maria’s phone had a picture on it that pointed to Jack Smith. He is murdered and his mobile had a picture that pointed to Dominic Russell. Then Dominic is murdered or commits suicide, only there’s no mobile, but there is a painting with him that we know Maria and Jack took possession of. So question one is: are these two mobile phone pictures part of the same pattern or are they coincidence?’

There was a silence. Holden’s desk phone rang, but she ignored it. ‘Well?’

Lawson volunteered again. ‘I doubt it’s a coincidence.’

‘So what is it?’

‘They’re clues. Deliberately left by the killer.’ Lawson’s words were emphatic. ‘Maybe to taunt us, maybe to lead us off the track.’

‘So to go back to my earlier question, how come Maria didn’t answer the mobile, yet we found it in her pocket in the car park?’

‘It was planted,’ Fox interrupted. He had just caught up. ‘By the killer.’

‘Quite. So where was Maria’s phone when she rang? The answer is: in the hands of the killer, who naturally didn’t want to answer it when it rang.’

‘But if someone had stolen it and Maria had noticed, she’d have reported in stolen.’

Holden turned towards Wilson, who had now become the expert on Maria’s mobile phone. ‘Well? Was it reported Wilson?’

‘No, Guv, it wasn’t.’

She turned back towards the others, but her gaze settled on Lawson. ‘How long would it take you to notice if your mobile was missing, Lawson?’

The features of her face tightened on concentration. ‘It depends. A few hours at most, I’d say. Unless I’m really busy, and then I might not get time to check it. But normally, I’d maybe check it at lunchtime, and as soon as I get home, so I’d notice then if I couldn’t find it.’

‘So let’s assume the killer took Maria’s mobile off her sometime on the day of her death, either in the afternoon or early evening.’

‘Damn!’ Wilson, who had been scrabbling through the file of papers on his lap, swore as they suddenly slipped from his grasp and descended in a shower on to the floor. ‘Sorry!’ he said, the compulsive apology springing to his lips. Down on his knees he grabbed one piece out of the pile, and held it aloft. ‘I was just checking. Maria’s last call out on her phone was 13.35 that day. To Dominic Russell. So she had the mobile then for sure.’

‘Not absolutely for sure.’ It was Lawson again. ‘Wilson is probably right, and I’m not saying he isn’t—’

‘Get to the point, for God’s sake.’ Holden had had enough of ifs and maybes and buts. They had to make assumptions somewhere
along the line.

Lawson lifted her hands, palms upwards, as if in supplication. ‘It’s just that there’s no certainty that the killer didn’t make that call.’

Fox, conscious he was in danger of being sidelined, broke in. ‘Well, we can’t ask Dominic, can we!’

‘Thank you, Sergeant.’ Holden’s reply was heavy with sarcasm. She sank her head in her hands and tried to think. Don’t panic, don’t let it overwhelm you! She could hear her heart pounding, reverberating between her hands and her temples. Faster than it should be. Don’t let me be overwhelmed, she pleaded, getting as close to prayer as she ever did. Please don’t!

She raised her head, and spoke. ‘The people who most obviously had access to her mobile are her family. Namely Alan Tull, Lucy Tull, and Joseph Tull. Any one could have pocketed it in the house. None of them has a watertight alibi. So we could start with them, but we also need to find out what she did and who she saw that afternoon. Did she have any work appointments? If she rang Dominic Russell at lunchtime, maybe it was because she wanted to see him in the afternoon? Did she go to the dentist or the hairdresser, or to the Ashmolean for a last-minute piece of research on the art of Venice? Did anyone visit her at home that afternoon and pocket her mobile then? Otherwise, we’re looking at the Tulls.’

She scanned the faces of her three colleagues. Wilson and Lawson shone with excitement, with the sense that they had made a breakthrough and the hunt was truly on. Even Fox had jettisoned his natural look of surly diffidence, and when her stare remained focused on him, he took the hint and responded: ‘So we’re going to interview them again?’

‘Yes and no. I don’t want to alert them. I’ll give Dr Tull a ring and suggest I need to chat, make it sound more an update on the case than an interview. I can ask him what his wife did on that day easily enough. I can ask if she kept a diary or wrote appointments on a calendar? We play it as casually as we can. But I want us to turn up there with a search warrant in our proverbial back pocket. Because
the bottom line is we need to check computers, hand-held devices, pen drives, mobiles, whatever they’ve got, for the photo of Jack Smith and the painting we found on Jack Smith’s mobile, not to mention anything to do with Maria. So if the good doctor objects, out comes the warrant. Any other questions?’

‘Yes,’ Lawson said hurriedly. ‘What about the Judas painting?’

‘Ah, good point,’ Holden said. ‘Thank you for reminding me.’ She turned towards Fox and Wilson. ‘I assume you’re up to date on this?’

They nodded.

‘Any thoughts? It just that Lawson and I had a long chat yesterday and. …’ She faded to a halt. Her right hand, Lawson noticed, was pulling at her collar again. ‘Come on, Wilson. Any ideas?’ It was unfair, she knew. If she was going to apply pressure, apply it to Fox. Hell, he was much more experienced.

‘Maria got it off Jack Smith because she thought she could make money on it.’ Wilson had clearly been thinking about it a lot, for he spoke carefully, as if he was recalling lines he had just learnt for a school play, but without having the confidence to apply any variation in tone or emphasis to them. ‘She gave it to Dominic because she thought he could help her get the best price. The killer murders her, then Jack Smith, and then arranges to meet Dominic. Dominic realizes too late that the person he is meeting is the killer, and damages the painting to make it worthless and save his own life. But the killer shoots him because he knows too much.’