Blood on the Cowley Road (4 page)

Bicknell was floundering in unfamiliar waters. Policemen who thought they were tough was one thing, but this woman.... He sighed silently. Easier to go with it, wait for the storm to abate. ‘It was over there,' he said, pointing.

She turned, and moved three paces, and placed the flowers gently on the pavement. ‘Here?' She turned her face towards him, her voice now calm, wanting reassurance. He nodded. She turned back to the flowers, and maintained the position for some thirty seconds. A bus pulled past and stopped a few metres away. A young woman lugging a baby in one arm and dragging a folded carrycot with her free hand got off. She expertly opened up the carrycot with a single flick of her hand, put the infant in it, strapped it in, then walked past, looking with mild curiosity at the woman and her flowers. Finally, Anne Johnson stood up and turned towards the immobile Bicknell. ‘Come on,' she said, ‘I'll buy you a drink.'

 

As Detective Constable Wilson turned the corner and brought the unmarked police car gently to a halt, Detective Sergeant Fox, who was seated next to him, wondered – not for the first time – what genius it was that had come up with the name of the Evergreen Day Centre. Tucked away in a cul-de-sac off the Cowley Road, the two-storey
building showed few signs of lasting for ever and no sign of anything green. The overall impression it gave was of unutterable greyness; only the metal windows protected against this uniformity, but the white paint applied to them was not of recent memory. At least someone had decided to rail against this dank vision from the 1930s: a brightly painted board leant against the wall to the right of the double doors, bidding all comers ‘A warm welcome to the Evergreen Day Centre' in a mixture of reds, pinks and blues (but curiously not a singe splash of green). A group of three men, who stood smoking to the left of the sign, turned as one to survey Fox and Wilson as they approached. ‘Who the fuck are you?' The youngest of the trio spoke loudly, and Wilson flinched involuntarily. Fox, however, merely smiled: ‘Good morning to you, gentlemen. Is Jim Blunt around today?'

It was the oldest man who replied. He was a strikingly thin man, and had grey, wispy hair, and a smile which revealed teeth long overdue a visit to the dentist. He sported a faded tweed jacket, white shirt, and brown corduroy trousers. ‘Do you have an appointment?' he demanded in an aristocratic accent. ‘Mr Blunt is a busy man.'

‘And so am I,' replied Fox, walking past the trio and pushing open the twin doors which served as the entry pointy to the hidden world of the Evergreen Day Centre.

‘Well, well, well! If it isn't our favourite copper, Detective Fox.' The greeting from the squat man who stood in the middle of the room was every bit as mocking as had been that of Mr Tweed Jacket outside, but there the similarity ended. His hair was closely cropped, he wore a black polo style shirt, and black jeans, and his voice was pure Brummie. Where Mr Tweed Jacket was tall and thin, Jim Blunt was short and broad. The only common physical feature, Fox idly thought, was a total lack of loose fat anywhere on either man: Blunt was solid muscle, and Mr Tweed Jacket was solid skin and bone.

‘We need a few minutes of your time please, Jim,' said Fox conversationally. ‘This, by the way, is my colleague DC Wilson.'

Blunt flicked a glance at the uneasy young man standing at Fox's shoulder, but otherwise ignored him. ‘Follow me,' he ordered, and led them through a door in the left-hand corner of the room. A short corridor took them to a small room containing two armchairs. He waved
Fox to the dirty mauve one, and himself sat heavily down into the dirty red one. ‘Shut the door, lad' he said, pointedly not looking at Wilson. Wilson did so, and took out a notebook.

‘So,' said Blunt, ‘I guess you've come about Sarah.'

Fox nodded, but said nothing.

‘Can't say I'm surprised,' Blunt said suddenly. ‘But then, in this business nothing comes as a surprise. Mind you,' he continued without any apparent logical connection, ‘she'll be missed.'

‘By whom?' said Fox quickly. ‘Jake?'

Blunt frowned and pulled at a non-existent moustache. ‘Why do you mention Jake?' he asked, looking straight at Fox.

‘She tried to ring him the morning she died.'

Blunt pulled again at his invisible moustache, then nodded, apparently satisfied, and stood up. ‘I'll send him through. But don't keep him too long. He's cooking lunch today.'

Fox held up his right hand. ‘Just one more question for you. Would you say Sarah had been particularly low recently? I mean, we know she suffered from manic depression—'

‘Your bloody label, not mine!' Blunt cut in angrily, and the colour of his face turned a fierce red. ‘You're just like the doctors. Manic depression, bipolar disorder. Why is it that you want to stick fancy sounding labels on people with mental health problems. They're just people, with problems, right. People who need bloody help. Help they don't get from their fucking families, help they don't get from their fucking fair-weather friends. That's where we come in. But we're just people too. We're not bloody miracle makers.'

With that, Blunt wrenched the door open, and marched out.

A minute later, a young man appeared at the still-open door, and announced himself as Jake Arnold. He wore a plain, mid-blue shirt, rust-coloured whipcord trousers, and a pair of blue leather lace-ups of slightly darker hue than the shirt. A twisted leather band was just visible on his left wrist, and an unconvincing smile crossed his face.

‘We won't take much of your time,' Fox promised, once Jake was settled in the red armchair. ‘We are just trying to establish the state of Sarah's mind in the period of time leading up to her death. For the coroner's report. We understand that you knew her quite well?'

‘She used to come here a lot. So we saw each other then.'

‘And outside the day centre? Did you meet up with her in your private time?'

Jake Arnold chewed on his bottom lip as he considered this question? ‘Workers have to maintain a sensible distance between themselves and the members of the day centre.'

‘Quite,' said Fox, nodding and smiling in what he hoped was an encouraging manner. ‘But I imagine individuals tend to develop stronger relationships with one worker than another.'

Jake chewed again on his lip. ‘Yes,' he admitted finally, ‘I suppose Sarah did tend to turn to me rather than any of the others.'

‘So you were friends really?'

‘Yes,' he said with apparent reluctance. ‘I guess we were friends. We used to go to the football together sometimes. She was a United fan.'

‘So, do you have any idea why she might have killed herself?'

‘Not really, no,' he said.

There was a silence while Fox waited for Jake Arnold to expand on this uninformative response. Wilson, who had yet to write anything in his notebook, noticed with interest that just before Jake spoke, his right hand pulled briefly at the lobe of his ear.

When Fox did finally break the silence, his voice had a much harder edge to it. ‘You're not really being very straightforward with us are you, sir?'

‘Sorry,' said Arnold nervously, ‘I'm not sure what you mean.'

‘Oh, dear,' Fox said with theatrical weariness. ‘Have I got to spell it all out? On the morning of her death, Sarah made three phone calls. All those three calls were made to your mobile number.' He stopped talking, and waited.

‘My mobile was turned off. I never spoke to her.'

‘I see,' Fox said, taking a deep breath and wondering how hard it was worth pushing. ‘In my book, that makes you rather unusual. Most people seem to keep their mobiles turned on all the time – on the buses, in restaurants, while they are waiting for their nails to dry. My sister even takes hers to the loo,' he lied.

Jake looked up then, and a flash of anger rippled across his feminine features. ‘Are you saying you don't believe me? Are you calling me a liar?'

‘No, sir' Fox said calmly.

‘I kept it turned off because I was fed up with being rung up by Les Whiting. Les was my boyfriend, right. Was being the operative word. Only he kept ringing me up, hassling me, so I've been keeping my mobile turned off the last week or so. That's why Sarah couldn't get hold of me.'

He paused, slightly breathless, giving Fox the opportunity to lean forward confidentially. ‘Still,' Fox said quietly, ‘I expect she left a voice message?'

Jake Arnold chewed on his lip again. ‘Yes,' he said, uncertainly. ‘She just said she was trying to get hold of me.'

‘But you didn't bother.'

‘Look, I didn't pick up the messages until that evening, and of course I had heard about her death by then.'

When Fox spoke again, his voice was even quieter. ‘Jake,' he said, ‘The third phone call was over two minutes long. She must have said rather more than “Give me a call”.'

Wilson, standing to the side, couldn't help but notice for a second time that Arnold's hand plucked again at his right-hand earlobe. ‘She sounded a bit stressed,' Arnold admitted.

‘Just a bit?' Fox replied instantly.

Arnold, who had been hunched forward, now leaned back. ‘Very stressed. Very stressed indeed.'

‘Did she give any clues about what might be causing her to feel stressed?'

‘Jesus!' he said. ‘What does it fucking matter? She was bloody abusive because I hadn't rung her back. Maybe, if my mobile had been turned on, maybe things would have been different. Maybe she wouldn't be dead. But it wasn't. And she is. But at least she's got some peace now.'

 

Anne Johnson and Ed Bicknell sat opposite each other in a poorly lit corner of the Moonshine pub and, for the first time since they had sat down, both fell silent. The overall impression given by the pub, Anne had thought moments earlier as she stood at the bar while waiting for a second round of drinks to be poured (Ed, rather to her surprise, had insisted on buying the first round), was one of drabness and ‘couldn't-care-less-ness', a word she liked to employ at school sometimes when
work and attitude fell short of her expectations. The heavy red drapes and upholstery, which in their prime might reasonably have claimed to be sumptuous, were now worn and dirty. Looking down at the stretch of seating just to her right, Anne had identified no less than seven large stains. Had the lights been more penetrative, she had little doubt that many smaller marks would have become apparent. The heavy pattern of the carpet helped to disguise some of the stains on it, but almost bare patches, where the pile had been worn down to the backing, could not be hidden. As she walked over to the table, she noted five cobwebs decorating the three windows which were in her view. She noted too Ed Bicknell, his eyes trained on her.

‘Here you are,' she said placing a pint of Guinness in front of him, and sitting down in the seat she had vacated a few minutes earlier.

She took a long, slow sip from the top of her lager, placed it on the beer mat on her side of the table, and leant back. Bicknell's eyes followed her over the white foam of his glass, but he said nothing. She watched his throat pulse as he slowly lifted the glass towards the horizontal. She watched his head as it ever so gradually tipped backwards. Finally, when there was only white froth on the sides of the glass, he set it carefully down on the table and grinned. Anne looked away. Over to the right, a short woman with loose-fitting blue tracksuit trousers and pale, tight-fitting T-shirt – its colour was hard to determine in the warped light of the Moonshine – pulled unenthusiastically at a one-armed-bandit with her right hand, while her left hand held a half-smoked cigarette. A jangling noise signified a small win, but the woman showed no excitement beyond taking a pull at her cigarette. Anne, whose eyes had been focused on the large fold of stomach that separated the woman's trousers from her T-shirt, snorted audibly, and turned her attention back to Bicknell. His mouth, which had relaxed back into an emotionless slit, curved almost mechanically back into a smile. Suddenly, Anne felt irritated.

‘Do you have to stare?' She leant forward aggressively, with the consequence that he flinched backwards so sharply that he almost fell off the little stool he was crouched on.

‘Sorry,' he mumbled, once he had recovered. ‘I didn't realize—' He tailed off.

‘I find that hard to believe,' she said firmly. ‘Very hard.'

There was a silence. Another jangle of coins from the direction of the one-armed-bandit announced another small win for the woman with the midriff bulge.

‘Just to satisfy your curiosity,' Anne continued in slightly gentler vein, ‘I'm a 36D.'

Bicknell blushed and looked down. Anne leant back as far as her chair would allow. She consciously sat up as high as she could and pushed her shoulders back and down as she remembered being ordered to do as a school girl by a martinet teacher called Miss Knight. As a child, it had seemed a bore, but once she had reached sexual maturity and discovered that sitting very erect had the effect of accentuating her breasts, it had become altogether more interesting. A gentle smile flickered across her face, and she waited for him to look up.

It was about 10.45 on Thursday evening when Peter Mellor slipped out of Mill View Cottage in the village of Iffley, jogged gingerly down the hill with Gemma, his boxer dog, at his heel, and walked over the weir bridge. The two of them followed the narrow path as it swung sharply to the right, burrowing its way between the dark trees until it brought them to the big double lock gates. For two or three minutes, the man stood in the middle of those gates, looking down river into the blackness, where the Thames disappeared towards Sandford, and remembering a woman he had once known. Then, with a sigh, he turned round, called his dog, and started to retrace his steps along the path to the weir bridge. There he stopped, aware that Gemma was no longer with him. He whistled, then called her sharply by name. Gemma barked, once, then again and again. But she was not, as the man had thought, trailing behind him. She had, in fact, already crossed back over the weir bridge, and was perched on the edge of the bank, barking down into the shadows where the cold water spat and hissed.

‘What's up, girl?' the man asked, but the dog merely barked again. The man walked to where she was and looked down to see if he could see what she could see, but the darkness was intense and unforgiving. Only as his eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light did the shape that was attracting the attention of his dog became apparent: a circular object that bobbed around on the surface of the water. ‘It's only a ball!' the man said to his dog, trying to reassure himself as much as the distressed old bitch. ‘Let's just leave it.' But then suddenly whatever it was that had been anchoring the object in the swirling current released its restraining grip. With a violent jerk, a man's body leapt up vertically out of the water causing Peter Mellor to shriek and his dog to yelp. For
several moments it appeared to stand miraculously there on the water, before – almost in slow motion – it began to pirouette round like some grotesque ballet dancer. Finally it teetered, first backwards, then more savagely forward as it crashed face down into the darkness below. As one, the watching man and the watching dog turned and fled back up the hill towards Mill View Cottage.

 

At 8.45 the following morning, Detective Constable Wilson tapped on Detective Inspector Holden's half-open door.

‘Morning Guv,' he said tentatively.

‘What time of day do you call this?' Holden asked waspishly, without looking up.

‘Sorry, Guv. I overslept.'

‘And where the hell is Fox?'

‘He had a dentist appointment first thing,' he said defensively. ‘Broke a tooth yesterday,' Wilson elaborated. ‘He was in a lot of pain.'

‘Well, that's a bloody fine bit of timing,' Holden responded without sympathy.

‘Yes, Guv,' said the hapless Wilson, still standing there half in the room and half out, and wondering what the hell had happened to make the DI so sharp.

Finally, she looked up and locked eyes with him. ‘We have another dead body, Wilson,' she said. ‘Fished out of the river at Iffley lock last night.'

Wilson's thoughts at that moment should have been straightforward, curious, and focused directly on this news. And to give him credit he asked the obvious question: ‘Do we know who it is?' But it was the first time he had been on his own with Holden, and the scrutiny he suddenly found himself under from her caused his thoughts to be anything but straightforward. He hoped it didn't show.

‘Oh, yes,' Holden said with a thin smile. ‘We do indeed. The gentleman concerned had a wallet stuffed full of ID information. Debit card, credit card, library card, Blockbuster card. You name it, he had it. Very helpful was our Jake Arnold.'

‘Jake Arnold?' Wilson's whole face seemed to gape in surprise. ‘Shit!'

Holden smiled, pleased at the affect her piece of news had had on the young man. ‘As you so delicately put it, Constable,' said Holden. ‘Shit!'

Ted Smith was a big man, with thinning grey hair and sideburns that might once possibly have looked trendy in the valleys of Wales, but not within recent memory. He had a stomach which betrayed a fondness for too much of his own beer, and a rather melodious, deep voice which took Holden quite by surprise. ‘I've been expecting you lot,' he said, as he showed them into the Iffley Inn.

‘We just need to ask you a few questions,' Holden said. ‘Purely routine.'

‘Of course,' he said eagerly. ‘Fire away.'

‘I understand the dead man had been in the pub. Perhaps you can tell us what you can remember about his visit.'

‘Well, let's see. He came in about nine-ish. It was very quiet, don't you see, what with it being this time of year and a Thursday. So I was quite glad to see a new face. Hoped he might become a regular.'

‘So you hadn't seen him before?'

‘No, I don't think so. We've only been here three months, you know. Anyway, I pulled him a pint, and we exchanged a bit of football chat. His hat and scarf were in the Oxford United colours, so we talked about how rubbish they've been playing recently. Then Mick – he's one of my regulars – wanted another pint, so I had to deal with him and this boyo went and read the paper over there in the corner. Ten or fifteen minutes later he bought another pint, then he started chatting to this Yank tourist who had had a meal, and next thing was he was showing him how to play bar billiards. They must have had a couple of games, then the Yank said he had to be going, but he bought him a pint. So he sat drinking it over with the papers again. Then – I guess it must have been about ten o'clock – he brought his glass up to the bar, and I thought he wanted another pint, but he just wrapped his scarf round his neck, pulled his hat down tight on his head, and walked off without so much as a “Goodnight”.'

‘Did he eat while he was here?' Holden asked.

‘No, only a bag of pork scratchings. I remember because he wanted a second packet, but we'd run out.'

‘Did he appear to be OK? I mean, some people hold their drink better than others.'

Ted Smith rubbed his unshaven cheeks while he pondered this question. ‘He seemed all right,' he said finally. ‘I mean, he managed to play bar billiards without any problems. I keep an eye open for people who look like they might damage the baize, but he was fine. It was the Yank I was more concerned about. He looked as though he had never picked up a cue in his life.'

‘So what happened after he left?'

‘Well, we closed at the normal time. There was only Mick and a group of students left – it was bloody quiet really – and after a bit of tidying up, I went outside for a bit of fresh air and a fag, and that was when I saw all the lights up near the lock. So I walked up there and saw them pulling this body out of the water by the weir, and I noticed he was wearing a striped scarf. His hat was missing, but I was pretty damn sure he was the bloke in the pub, so I told one of the coppers there.'

‘How come you were so sure?' Holden asked. ‘Lot's of people must wear Oxford United scarves round here.'

Smith snorted. ‘Have you seen the scarf, Inspector?'

‘No,' Holden admitted. ‘We'll be doing that later.'

‘Well,' he said with a sneer, ‘when you do, you will notice that the scarf is not an official Oxford scarf. It is very obviously a hand-knitted job – blue and yellow stripes. He told me his mother made it.' He paused and gave a large leering smile. ‘I reckon he was a right Mummy's boy, if you know what I mean. Still attached to the apron strings. Flapped his hands around like a seal on amphetamines.'

‘Can we just stick to facts,' Holden said sharply, trying to regain control of an interview that had started to go into a spin, ‘and relevant facts at that.'

‘In my view it's a fact. He was a pansy, a poofter, a homo, call it what you will. And how do you know it isn't relevant? Maybe he looked in the mirror when he went to the loo. Maybe, he decided he couldn't stand what he could see in it. Maybe the beer had loosened his inhibitions, so he went out and jumped in the river.'

‘Thank you, Mr Smith,' Holden said with exaggerated politeness. ‘We will keep your theory in mind. In the meantime, I have just got one more thing to ask, then we'll be off. Did you hear or see anything after he left the pub? Any shouting from outside or anything?'

‘No,' he said.

‘You're sure? After all, it was pretty quiet in the pub. Maybe you—'

Ted Smith cut into Holden's probing with barely disguised irritation. ‘Look you here,' he said in a Welsh accent that had suddenly lost its musical charm. ‘I said no, didn't I. It's a simple word, and it has a simple meaning. So I'll say it once more. No! All right?'

 

When she was a seven-year-old, Dr Karen Pointer had wanted to be a magician. Now she was approaching her thirty-seventh birthday, something of that spirit lingered on. As the three of them stood around the shrouded corpse, she leant over, took one corner of the sheet with her right hand, and paused dramatically. For two or three seconds she waited, and only then, as if she was producing a rabbit from a hat, did she flick the sheet through the air with a flash of her wrist to reveal the naked body of Jake Arnold. Wilson, predictably, gave an involuntary gasp, while Holden, equally predictably, refused to react at all to the showmanship.

‘I haven't, of course, had time to complete a full examination and to carry out all the tests I would want to—' Pointer began.

‘Quite,' said Holden. ‘We understand that fully.' She spoke with a brusqueness born of anticipation and impatience. Dr Pointer had rung her on her mobile just after Wilson and she had left the Iffley Inn, and had suggested that since there were some ‘unexpected findings' in her examination of the corpse, Holden might want to pop along and have a chat. But now they had ‘popped along', the good doctor was in no rush to reveal her news.

‘So everything I say,' Dr Pointer continued carefully, ‘is said only on the understanding that these findings are provisional and therefore are subject to revision—'

‘Would you rather we came back another day?' Holden asked with ill-disguised irritation.

Dr Pointer smiled. ‘No need,' she said. ‘I think I can say with ninety-nine per cent certainty that Mr Jake Arnold was dead by the time he entered the river.'

‘How did he die?' Holden asked, doing her best to sound unimpressed.

‘From a blow to the back of the head,' Dr Pointer said before falling
silent again. After the magician's opening, she was now going to make the Detective Inspector ask for every bit of information.

Holden had no option but to play along with her game. ‘Any idea what sort of weapon the killer used?'

‘Of course I've an idea,' Dr Pointer huffed. ‘There's a long depressed fracture which suggests a long, thin but heavy implement – maybe some sort of metal bar.' Again she fell silent.

‘Um!' said Wilson trying to get the attention of the two women. Holden looked at him with irritation writ large across her face. Pointer, noticing, smiled her widest smile at the young man and immediately promoted him.

‘Yes, Sergeant?' she asked expectantly.

‘I was wondering,' Wilson said awkwardly, ‘if perhaps it might have been maybe like a metal spike that people use for mooring their boats. That's what we used when I was a kid and we went on a canal boat holiday.'

‘You used them for knocking people on the back of the head did you?' Pointer said, her smile cracking into gentle laughter. ‘Oh, dear!'

‘The constable's suggestion seems eminently sensible to me,' Holden retorted. Like some protective mother hen, she flew to the defence of her young charge. ‘Or perhaps,' she added caustically, ‘you can come up with a better idea?'

Dr Pointer's smile retreated before this onslaught. ‘It's as likely as anything,' she admitted.

‘Can you be absolutely sure he was dead when he entered the river?' Wilson asked, emboldened by his governor's support.

Dr Pointer looked across at him, but this time without a glimmer of humour. ‘Yes, I can be and indeed am absolutely sure, Constable,' she said firmly, demoting Wilson back to the ranks. ‘I wouldn't say so otherwise. If he had entered the water alive, there would be water in his lungs. As you can see,' she said, with a gesture towards the long slit down the centre of the corpse, ‘we have taken a good look inside, and in my expert opinion there is no doubt, even though we haven't yet had time to complete a diatom test. Which we'll make a start with now if you haven't any more questions.'

Holden gave a slight but unmistakable bow of the head towards Pointer. ‘Thank you, Doctor. No more questions.'