Blood on the Cowley Road (8 page)

‘You're just guessing, Martin!' Sexton said.

‘Suppose,' persisted Mace, ‘suppose that just this once, I am right. What then?'

‘You've as much chance of being right as Paul Wanless has of lasting 90 minutes,' Smith laughed. ‘Now, are you going to get your round in before the game fucking starts?'

Susan Holden emerged slowly into a state of semi-consciousness and emitted a low groan. She never had been good with alcohol, and the three glasses of uninspired Chardonnay consumed in front of the TV the night before had left her with a low-grade headache. She had drunk it while watching The Graduate. She had seen the film before, but when the alternatives were Match of the Day, a third-rate reality TV show, a film starring Sylvester Stallone, or a fuzzy Channel Five ‘investigation' into sexual problems, a youthful Dustin Hoffman was going to win out every time. In actuality, she had struggled to stay awake throughout, but she had been determined to see the end – that was the best bit – where Hoffman escapes from the church with the bride (not his, of course) and grabs a lift out of town on a bus full of bemused onlookers.

The upshot of all this was that she had gone to bed somewhat inebriated, totally exhausted, and without drawing the curtains. As a consequence, on Sunday morning the grey intrusive light of an unpromising day had slowly prodded and cajoled her into a state of, if not wakefulness, then at least one of fitfulness. She had resisted its summons, pulling the duvet up over her head, but even the duvet could not deaden the sounds of her father's clock. It sat in splendid isolation on a small table in the short space outside her room which masqueraded as corridor. Ding dong, dong ding, it rang, and then repeated itself, before beginning to chime out the hour: boom, boom, three, four. Holden found it impossible, even in her semi-conscious prostration, not to count the hours as she had loved to as a child. Seven, eight, nine. Then silence. Then: ‘Shit!' Holden rolled to her right and scrabbled around on the side table until her hand found the alarm clock. She
picked it up and squinted at its digital face. 09.01. She was late.

It took her five minutes to shower and brush her teeth. Then three more to dress and two more to find her handbag, which had mysteriously secreted itself under the sofa (fortunately a trailing handle gave it away). All of which meant that by the time she was ringing the No. 6 bell at Grandpont Grange (‘Luxury accomodation for the older generation'), she was only 15 minutes late.

‘Had a late night, my dear?' beamed her mother. Susan Holden, who was expecting a verbal barrage on the importance of punctuality and the neglect of the elderly by the younger generation, was taken completely off guard. The woman looked like her mother. She dressed like her mother. She was even wearing her mother's favourite perfume.

‘Lucky you,' the imposter continued. ‘If I were twenty years younger, I'd be out there clubbing with you!'

Holden, who at the age of 32 considered herself long retired from the clubbing scene, grinned at the improbable thought of her morphed mother and herself at the Park End. ‘Mmm, I smell coffee,' she said, as she pulled her shoes off in the hall, and placed them tidily in the corner.

‘It's been ready for ten minutes, actually,' her mother said firmly, as if to remind her daughter that she had not had a personality change.

‘Sorry I'm late.' The words came out automatically, and the Detective Inspector was a little girl again, failing to meet the expected standards.

‘Doesn't matter,' said her mother, though of course it did.

‘Wow!' Again the response was automatic, but this time it was genuine. Holden was standing, her mouth literally gaping, in the doorway to the kitchen diner. Since she had last been to see her mother four days previously, the room had been transformed. The avalanche of objects that had emerged from the packing crates had disappeared. A few prized objects were on display, but chaos had been replaced by an almost minimalist order. The table was covered with a crisp white cloth, and on it were laid two places. Two glasses of fruit juice had been poured out, four croissants lay neatly on a central plate, and a selection of miniature packets of cereal stood neatly in line, recalling special breakfasts of childhood. Holden felt herself going gooey round the edges.

‘Sit down,' her mother instructed, and she did. They ate in verbal
silence, broken by the crunching of cereal, clinking of utensils, and the rustle of newspapers. It had always been the rule in the Holden house that you could read the paper at breakfast on Sundays, but never on other days, because meals were social events. Quite how and why this rule had been instituted, Susan had never discovered. Of course, her mother bought the
Sunday Telegraph
, which her daughter had long since rejected, but Susan found looking through the colour magazine a far from pleasureless task, and she even made a couple of mental fashion notes – a smart new dress and some shoes to match were promoted silently to the top of her list.

‘So where would you like to go today?' daughter asked mother as she finished her second mug of coffee. She had promised her a trip out earlier in the week, by way of a placebo for not being able to help more with her move, and Wallingford, Henley and Thame had all been discussed then.

‘I nearly rang you,' her mother purred, ‘but then I decided it would be a nice surprise. Guess what. We've been asked out for lunch.'

‘That's nice,' her daughter replied.

‘After church,' added her mother.

‘Church?' her daughter exclaimed, amazement apparent not just in her tone of voice, but every aspect of her features. This reaction obviously pleased the alien who had clearly taken up residence in her mother's body. A smile of triumphant delight erupted across the width of her face.

‘St Marks, in Marlborough Road. You've been living here for two years. You must know it.'

‘Only from the outside,' her daughter admitted.

‘Well, in that case its high time you went to a service.'

Her daughter peered across the table, and a smile began to spread across her face too. ‘Have you been bitten by the God bug, mother? Been born again. Because from memory you only go into churches for Christmas, weddings and funerals.'

‘Doris asked me. Mrs Doris Williams. It's her who asked us to lunch. Lives on the next floor. She's been a great help. Got her fifteen-year-old grandson to help me sort out this place, put things in the high cupboards, and some in the communal storage room. I think the least we could do is go to church with her.'

And so it was that DI Susan Holden and Mrs Jane Holden (widow of five years) went to their first service together since the funeral of the late Mr John Holden.

That evening, Susan Holden circumspectly poured herself a small glass of wine from the now depleted bottle of Chardonnay, tipped the remainder into the sink, and then consigned the bottle to her green recycling box. Then she sat at the kitchen table, and tried to form a conclusion about what had happened in church. Not the service itself, though she'd found it both very different from what she'd experienced as a child, and rather invigorating too. But after the service. Immediately it had finished, she found herself being engaged in earnest conversation, first by a young woman – well mid-twenties, anyway – and then by a retired man with a grey bread, a bad taste in ties, and an archtypical twinkle in the eye. Clearly, being Christian didn't preclude gentle flirting with women half his age. When he was buttonholed by a tall, thin young man wearing a brightly striped T-shirt and an anxious frown, Holden found herself suddenly alone amid the babble of voices which signified that the members of St Mark's were ‘sharing fellowship' with a will. She was looking around, wondering where her mother was, when suddenly she felt someone touch her shoulder. She turned.

‘Hello, there!' The speaker was a short man, short enough that she found herself looking down on him. He wore jeans, trainers and a dark blue jacket zipped up to his neck. There was a sheen of sweat on his face, and Holden couldn't fail to notice the rather unpleasant smell that emanated from him.

‘I know you,' the man said.

‘Oh?' said Holden, trying to place him.

‘You were at the day centre on Friday. You're a policewoman aren't you.' He pointed at her, not in an aggressive manner, but as he might have at other times have pointed at a flower or bird he had just recognized. ‘Have you arrested anyone yet?' he continued. ‘For Jake's death?'

‘No,' she said. ‘We haven't.'

‘Do you have a prime suspect?'

Holden smiled, and wondered bleakly why Doris or her mother couldn't suddenly appear at her shoulder and rescue her. ‘I'm afraid I
can't talk about the case.'

‘Don't you want to question me?' His finger had now turned and was pointing directly at his own chest.

Again she smiled, and gestured with her left hand (her right hand still held her mug, not yet emptied, of weak tea) around her. ‘In church?'

‘Why not,' he replied instantly. ‘The perfect place. For the truth. For confession.'

With the tiniest shake of her head, Holden abandoned all hope of rescue. There was only going to be one way out of this. ‘Is there something you know? Something you want to ... to confess?'

‘Me?' The man laughed. ‘Not me. Jake. It's Jake's confession you need to know.'

Holden, despite all her reservations about the man in front of her – he hadn't yet told her who he was – felt a surge of interest, even excitement. ‘Did Jake tell you something?'

‘Yes, he did.' The man's left hand moved up and grasped the zip of his jacket. He pulled it down two or three inches, then up again, nervously. ‘On Thursday. About 4 o'clock in the Cowley Road. It can only have been a few hours before he was killed. He must have just come out of the day centre. I'd gone and bought an
Oxford Mail
at the corner shop. He was standing outside, smoking a cigarette. That was odd, cos I'd never seen him smoke before. I asked him if he knew when Sarah Johnson's funeral was. She was the woman who jumped from the top of the car park. Perhaps you know about it.'

Holden made some sort of encouraging noise. ‘Yes, I do, but carry on. What did Jake say?'

‘He said something very odd. I thought it was really odd at the time and the more I've thought about it, well, the more I got worried about it. You see, he said he didn't know when the funeral was because there had to be an inquest, and I said wasn't it terrible that she got so depressed that she jumped, and then he said this. He said, maybe she didn't jump. And I said what do you mean, and he said something like, well we can't be sure it was suicide. And then he said that he had to be going. And he walked off down the road. That was the last I saw of him.'

‘Did Jake say why it might not be suicide?'

‘No. That's all he said.'

‘You're sure?'

The man's hand came up again, and like some remotely controlled weapon, pointed at her, aggressively this time. ‘Of course I'm sure. I've got a good memory for detail. Just you remember it.' And with that, he had turned and walked away.

Sitting there on the sofa, her glass of Chardonnay in her hand, Holden tried but failed to come to a conclusion about this encounter. The man's name, as Doris had confirmed, was Alan. He was a regular face at the 10.30 service, though beyond that she wasn't too sure. He often came along to the Wednesday morning communion and the drop-in lunch which followed it. He didn't appear to have a job. ‘I expect he's on benefit,' she had said. ‘Probably can't hold down a job.' She had pulled a face as she said this, and then – Holden had decided – immediately regretted it. ‘Still,' she had added quickly, ‘isn't it marvellous how he comes to church.' Then with a broad smile, as if to demonstrate the generosity of her spirit: ‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways!'

He does indeed, Holden said to herself, as she brushed her teeth. A day that she had expected to spend humouring her mother had turned out ... extraordinary. There was no other word for it. To begin with, her mother had been nice! She had gone to church. She had, even more extraordinarily, found herself enjoying it. And she had met a man who might have been one of the last people to talk to Jake Arnold. The only problem was to know what on earth to make of his evidence.

 

Wilson pulled the car up outside DI Holden's terraced house in Chilswell Road at 7.23 a.m. He had been surprised both to receive a call from her the previous night and by the instruction that he should pick her up from home no later than 7.25 a.m. No explanation. Just a curt set of instructions followed by a slightly less curt ‘Good Night'. Leaving the engine running, he got out of the car, only to see that Holden was already out of the front door. He got back in, turned the radio off and waited for her to get in. ‘Morning, Guv,' he said.

‘Morning Wilson. Now, we'll take the scenic route to the office. Down the High Street if you please.'

Again Holden offered no explanation, and Wilson, learning fast,
drove without question. It was only when they had crossed Magdalen Bridge (‘Look at the mist, Wilson. Perfect backdrop for a murder mystery'), entered the (‘second exit on the roundabout, Wilson') Cowley Road, and (‘left here into the multi-storey, then keep going right to the top') turned into the car park that things began to become clear to Wilson. ‘This is where—'

‘Yes Wilson,' Holden said in a tone that implied that it was too early in the morning to be making statements of the obvious. ‘This is where Sarah Johnson plunged to her death.' Wilson flushed, and tried to concentrate on getting to the top.

He had barely brought the car to a halt before Holden was out of her seat and marching across the empty tarmac to the concrete wall that ringed the top storey. Wilson turned the engine and side lights off, and hurried after her. Holden was leaning over the wall, looking down.

‘Why have we assumed that Sarah jumped, Wilson?'

Wilson frowned. ‘Well, everything points to it, I suppose.'

‘For God's sake Wilson! Everything! Everything? Don't flannel. What are the facts? And,' she said, and then paused, ‘what are mere assumptions?'