Blood on the Cowley Road (19 page)

Wilson made no comment. He moved slowly towards the doorway of the small kitchen and looked in. His attention was immediately drawn to a row of several books in the corner behind the kettle. The name of Delia Smith on a spine of the nearest confirmed the obvious – that they were recipe books. He picked up each one in turn, flicking through each methodically in the hope, futile he knew, that Jake Arnold had kept his programmes tucked inside for some obscure reason. Well, Delia was famously a supporter of Norwich City FC. But no. Nothing. He then started to go through the drawers and cupboards. Cutlery, crockery, glasses, tinned food, dry food, saucepans, a wok, another kettle, still in its box.

‘Alleluia!' Wilson turned, surprised by the sudden and high-pitched shout of his colleague. She was standing just behind him in the doorway, and her right hand brandished her discovery. ‘Six programmes, all from last season.'

‘They were in the bathroom?' Wilson felt a little cheated that it had not be he who found them.

‘Four home games and two away. They were on the chest of drawers by the loo. Under the leaflets on depression, self-harm and hearing voices. A choice of reading for the happy crapper!'

Wilson grinned despite his unreasonable irritation. ‘Two down and one to go then.'

 

When DI Holden's phone rang only ten minutes after her brief conversation with Don Alexander, her first reaction was to ignore it, but she knew she couldn't. On the third ring she picked it up and immediately heard an all too familiar voice. She immediately began to count silently to ten. ‘Sorry darling,' her mother gushed. ‘You know how I don't like to bother you at work but, well, I've had an idea.'

Her daughter, who had now reached ten, continued her silent count on towards twenty.

‘Hello?' her mother had said. ‘Can you hear me Susan?'

Fifteen ... sixteen ... ‘Yes Mother, I can hear you.'

‘Well do you want to hear my idea? Its about your case!'

Nineteen ... twenty. ‘Yes Mother,' she fibbed, ‘I'd like to hear your
idea. But,' she added, still in untruth mode, ‘I do have a meeting very shortly.'

‘Well, assert you authority,' she barked. ‘Make them wait. They'll respect you more for it. Anyway, this is my idea. Only, I bet you'll think it's a silly one.'

Susan recognized the game. ‘Tell me mother, just tell me.'

‘After all, who am I but a silly old woman who knows nothing of the world of real crime and—'

‘Cut the self-pity, Mother, and just tell me your idea.' Again, there was silence – at both ends of the phone conversation. Susan took in a deep breath of air through her nose, held it, and then expelled it through her mouth. ‘Please!' she added firmly.

‘All right,' came the grudging reply. ‘If you're sure.' But this time there was no further dramatic pause. ‘I woke up in the middle of the night, three o'clock it was, and so I got up and made a cup of tea. There I was, sitting at the kitchen table nibbling on a ginger nut, when it came to me. You see, there are three deaths. The first one may or not have been suicide, but the second and third ones were murder. And they were both killed by the same person. We can be certain of that because the murderer then went and searched both their homes. Now, all three dead persons were connected by the day centre but one was a worker, another attended the day centre as a patient or client or whatever you call it, and the third one went along to the anger management group. They weren't all three best buddies or anything. Sarah had a dependent relationship with Jake. Jake had a fling with Martin.'

‘Mother!' Susan Holden butted in. She was impressed and appalled at the detailed grasp of the whole business that her mother seemed to have gained from their chats over coffee and down the phone. ‘We talked all about this last night. Now I know you're keen to help, but I have got a lot of things to do, so if you could just get to your point!'

‘My point, darling, is that the key to this is the relationship between Sarah and Martin. Jake was the middle link if you want, but if you can find out what incident or common interest or emotional bond links those two, well, then your murder's solved.'

‘Yes,' said her daughter, conscious that she had to respond somehow. ‘Maybe.'

‘There's no maybe about it. You mark my words. Anyway, I must go
and get ready. I'm meeting Doris in ten minutes.'

‘Going shopping?' Susan asked, anxious to grasp any opportunity to steer the conversation away from her mother's big idea.

‘No!' came the scornful reply. ‘She's my prayer partner. Didn't I tell you? We meet once a week to pray for and with each other. Anyway, don't you worry dear. You're top of our list.' And with that, Mrs Holden terminated the phone call.

 

 

Les Whiting took the decision not to go into the gallery as he was standing on its doorsteps. He had walked there, as he did every morning. It had taken not much more than ten minutes of vigorous activity, and that had included a couple of enforced stops while he waited for the lights to change, first at the junction just beyond Folly Bridge, and then at the bottom of St Aldate's where one of the buses coming up from London had swung just a little bit too wide and caused him to nervously hop back a step. It was as he strained a bit harder up the slope to Carfax that his emotions began to pulse as hard as his body. Jake. It had all started so well. He had been attracted to Jake from the moment he had stumbled, wet and bedraggled, into his gallery. They had hit it off immediately, and very quickly their relationship became more than just friendship. For the first time in his life, Les had felt really at one with someone. He didn't believe in fate or there only being one guy out there in the world for him, or any rubbish like that, but Jake had been special, one in ten thousand if not a million. It had been magic, a real genuinely loving relationship, and Les had begun to dare that this would be the longed-for life partnership that had seemed so elusive.

It was then that there had been the incident at the day centre. Jake had come home from work late. It was almost seven o'clock when he turned up; typically he would be home long before that. And he had promised that he would cook that night, and yet when he came in he was reeking of alcohol and refused to answer any questions. Only later, after leaving half the supper that Les had prepared, and drinking most of the two bottles of wine he had opened, did he tell him about Jim Blunt. Jim bloody Blunt.

Somehow things had changed after that. Les couldn't put his finger
on why. He had listened for hours that night as Jake had told it and retold it, but the next evening, when Les had tried to discuss it again, Jake had blanked him and told him never to mention it again. After that, things between them had been.... What had they been? Different, certainly. Unease had slipped surreptitiously into Les's head. And close behind had followed suspicion. Les had found himself watching Jake, checking his post, and even sneaking a look at his text messages, and it was during one of these snoops that his suspicions had been justified. Jake was seeing someone else.

 

Les stood at the doorway. The set of keys for the gallery were in his right hand, but he made no attempt to use them. He looked at his watch. Ruth would be in shortly. Finally back at work after her two weeks in Portugal with that tedious boyfriend of hers. She could hold the fort for a while. Why not? He put the keys back in his right-hand pocket, pulled the mobile out of the left-hand one, and fired off a curt message. ‘Will be late. Take charge. LW' Then he was headed off down the High Street, though at a slower pace than before. He knew he had to confront Blunt – for the sake of his own peace if nothing else – but he was in no rush to do so. It was odd to be wanting so earnestly to protect a man with whom he had had such a bitter parting. Perhaps it was the guilt he felt that drove him forward down the slow curve of the High, guilt that he had somehow failed Jake when he had most needed him. It was easy to blame others – Blunt or Mace or Jake himself – but Les knew that the fault was his too. Now, as he crossed Magdalen Bridge, he realized that what he sought was redemption, and by hell if he couldn't obtain it, well it wouldn't be for lack of trying.

 

For the third time that week, Anne Johnson answered her sister's doorbell and found herself face-to-face with Detective Constable Wilson. His pushy WPC was at his back, but Anne Johnson had no intention of letting her force her way in. She smiled frostily as she stood firmly in the middle of the doorway. ‘Not you again!' She spat the words out as if they were the stones of unripened plums.

‘We need to have a look round your sister's flat again,' he said, holding her gaze.

‘It's not very convenient.'

‘We have a warrant,' he replied firmly. ‘We'll try not to make a mess.'

‘Don't just try!' she said tartly, but she knew she had no choice. Bicknell had departed with his cameras, so at least there wasn't the embarrassment of him hanging around in the background. She turned and retreated back inside.

Lawson and Wilson were in the flat less than five minutes. Three Oxford United programmes were quickly located on the bookshelves in the living room, tucked between a large format
Know your Lucky Stars
book and a coffee table book called, simply,
Paris
. It was Wilson who found them, and he left the flat absurdly pleased by this fact. Not, of course, that he could have admitted as much, but the fact was that he was beginning to feel distinctly threatened by Lawson.

 

Fox and Holden travelled from the Cowley Police Station to the Evergreen Day Centre in grim silence. Back at the station, they had disagreed strongly, and tension hung thick and heavy in the air between them. Holden leant back in the passenger seat, closed her eyes, and tried to concentrate on the case, but her mind was in noncooperation mode. It was only a few minutes after she had spoken to her mother that DS Fox had blundered in. ‘I need to speak to you, boss.'

‘Did you knock?' she had said caustically, but Fox had ignored the question and the other warning signs that a less insensitive man would have identified.

‘Maybe you're missing the obvious,' he had stated bluntly.

‘The obvious?'

‘The obvious suspect.'

‘And who would that be?'

‘The man who most obviously links all three of our victims together.'

‘And this man is?'

‘Danny, of course. Danny bloody Flynn.'

‘Why Danny?' She had spoken calmly, but in reality she was shaken by the blustering aggression of her sergeant. ‘Why not Les Whiting?' she followed up. ‘If Jake had an affair with Mace, then he had every reason to kill both of them. Or why not Jim Blunt or indeed one of any number of people at the day centre? Anyone in the anger management
group is potentially a suspect, I'd have thought.'

‘Danny Flynn was devoted to Sarah. Danny Flynn was jealous of Jake's relationship with her. Hell, he smashed his car when he saw it parked outside her flat.'

‘And Mace? What reason did he have for burning Mace to death?'

‘He was there, in the crowd of nosey-parkers that morning at the allotment when we found Mace's body. Maybe he was checking he'd done the job properly.'

‘The fact that he was there does not mean that he was the killer,' Holden said, but she spoke without conviction. Fox, conscious that he had made an impression, waited. Holden's brow crumpled in a frown of concentration. Eventually she looked up again at Fox. ‘So what about Sarah?'

‘Easy,' Fox said. ‘She killed herself. She felt abandoned by Jake. Remember how he refused to answer her calls or ring her back. Danny blamed Jake for not supporting her. So he killed him. And Mace – well, he must have done something or known something that so angered Danny that he killed him too.'

‘There's no evidence of that Sergeant,' Holden said, testily pulling rank, ‘only a lot of supposition. I can accept that Sarah killed herself and I can accept that Danny might have had reason to kill Jake, but there is nothing that we have found that would explain Danny killing Mace.'

‘He's a nutcase,' snorted Fox angrily. ‘It doesn't have to be a logical reason. Mace and Jake had a relationship. So once he had killed Jake, Danny wanted to complete the job by killing Mace. Maybe Mace had threatened him.'

‘The fact that Danny, as you so delicately put it, is a nutcase does not make him a killer.'

Fox shrugged, but he hadn't quite finished. ‘And the fact that he is a grade one nutcase doesn't mean we should back off from applying a bit of pressure. So why don't we just pull him in and search his flat?'

Holden hadn't replied. But now, as Fox steered them with exaggerated care down the Cowley Road, she felt almost sick with anger. Don Alexander, her mother and Fox – each had contributed to this, but above all her anger was born of her frustration with herself, that she had not been able to crack the case. And how much longer would she
be given by the press, or indeed the Chief Superintendent? Maybe she should follow Fox's demand, haul in Danny and see what happened. But why Danny? Why not Les Whiting? Didn't he have a stronger motive to kill both Jake Arnold and Martin Mace? The killing of Mace in particular was carefully and brutally carried out, surely more likely to be the work of someone like Les than the paranoid Danny? Or was she underestimating Danny, blinded by his presenting symptoms. She shut her eyes and tried to clear her mind, concentrating instead on the car, noticing each increase and decrease of speed, and the gentle pulling left or right as it changed direction. Eventually there was a much greater pull on her as the car turned sharply left and then after a few more seconds sharply to the right. The car slowed, and Holden knew that they had arrived. She opened her eyes reluctantly. A figure was coming out of the day centre, in a hurry, head down, and stumbling so violently that he almost fell over. The man grabbed at the back of the bench he was passing, to steady himself. As he straightened himself, his face came fully into Holden's view.