Blood on the Cowley Road

by Tickler, Peter

  ‘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.’

  As Wilson brought the unmarked car gently to a halt in exactly the same spot as he had some fifty-one hours earlier, he was surprised to see that there was no one outside the Evergreen Day Centre. ‘Where’s the smoking brotherhood?’ he quipped as the three of them got out. ‘Have they got some new bike sheds to hide behind?’

  Both Holden and Fox had been silent throughout the short journey from the station. After they had met up with Fox at the station, Holden had given him a quick, but thorough briefing on developments, before they had set off on the short trip to the day centre. Neither Fox, still feeling somewhat morose after his dental treatment, nor Holden was inclined to talk. Holden sat in the back, trying to concentrate on the task before them, but she found her thoughts being drawn by some invisible and undeniable force back to her mother. Her beloved, bloody-minded, point-scoring, I-know-better-than-everyone mother.

  ‘Why can’t you take some time off to help me get organized?’ she had demanded on the phone the night before.

  ‘I’ve already taken four separate days off in the last two months,’ Holden had snapped tetchily.

  ‘Oh’ came the wounded response, ‘you’re keeping a tally are you.’

  ‘No!’ she had retorted, although she was. ‘It’s just that I do want to take some proper holiday sometime. And besides,’ she had added, playing her trump card, ‘I’ve got a death to investigate.’

  ‘A murder?’ said her mother with sudden curiousity. ‘How exciting!’

  ‘Actually, a probable suicide,’ she had had to admit.

  ‘A suicide?’ The disappointment was evident even down a not very good line. ‘And suicide is more important than a mother’s needs?’

  It was at this point in the Detective Inspector’s replay of her conversation with her mother that Detective Constable Wilson had brought the car to a halt and made his joke about smoking and bike sheds.

  Holden lurched back into the present, unamused. ‘Wilson,’ she said sharply, ‘this is not the place for jokes. Your task is to listen, take your lead from us, and, if in doubt, to keep your mouth closed. This is a murder investigation, not a day out to Blackpool.’ With that, she nimbly exited the car and started off towards the Evergreen Day Centre, as if trying to shake off the pursing fury of her mother.

  No one greeted them at the door, and only when she had pushed through the outer pair, and then the inner pair did she realize why. Based on past experience (well, only two visits in four years if the truth be told), she expected to encounter a roomful of people arrayed around a series of functional tables on a varied selection of plastic upright chairs and seen-better-days armchairs and sofas. The last time she had had to call in, there had been a group making non-religious Easter cards in one corner, a couple of men, encirled by an intense group of spectators, involved in a silent chess duel in another corner, while a third group argued noisily over a Scrabble board. This time, however, everyon
e present was seated in a haphazard circle, which Jim Blunt was addressing. He noticed Holden immediately, and held up a hand – whether in greeting or as a warning she wasn’t quite sure.

  ‘Well,’ he said, looking round the members, ‘I think this is a good time to stop. The police have arrived. No doubt they’ll have more news of poor Jake. Obviously, I’ll keep you all informed, but for now try to carry on as normal. I know that’s going to be difficult, but as long as we support each other, we’ll all be OK.’

  Blunt led his three visitors into the same cramped room that Fox and Wilson had entered two days earlier.

  ‘So,’ he said, after he had shut the door and sat down, ‘can you tell me any more about it. We’ve got a lot of very concerned members out there. Jake was popular.’ He paused, but only to catch his breath, and before Holden could respond he had started off again. ‘It must have been an accident, right? I mean you can tell if he’d been drinking too much. It’s just that someone asked if he’d committed suicide. And after what Sarah did, well, I wanted to be able to assure everyone that it was just an unfortunate case of too much drink.’ Blunt dribbled to a halt, looking from Holden to Fox to Wilson and back to Holden, searching for reassurance.

  Holden, who was sitting bolt upright, leant forward, her face wiped clean of emotion. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that in the light of what the pathologist has told us, we are treating the death of Jake Arnold as neither an accident nor suicide. Jake was murdered. Last night, after leaving the Iffley Inn. I don’t want to say any more about how it happened at this stage, but we have, of course, got to conduct interviews, here, today, which will obviously be disruptive for your day centre.’

  ‘Shit!’ Blunt spat the word out like a piece of sour fruit. ‘Damn and hell!’

  ‘Perhaps we can start with you. Then you’ll be free to break the news as best you can. After that, I think we should interview all your other colleagues. While Wilson and I are doing that, Detective Sergeant Fox and you can draw up a list of members, and try and prioritize those who had a relationship, good or bad, with Jake. And of course with Sarah Johnson.’

  Blunt, whose eyes appeared to have half shut, raised his head with a jerk. ‘Sarah?’ he exclaimed. ‘You think Jake’s and Sarah’s deaths are connected? She committed suicide, right? So what possible connection—’

  ‘I think nothing at this stage,’ Holden said firmly. ‘I keep an open mind, and try to consider all possibilties. And one of those possibilities is that the deaths of Sarah and Jake, who seem to have had at least a friendship, are in some way connected.’

  Blunt’s mouth was open. Twice he tried to say something, and twice he failed. Holden noticed the side of his neck pulsing like a steam piston, and she wondered if he was going to lose it. She couldn’t seem him crying – he didn’t seem the type – but sometimes those who held themselves together most tightly could behave in unexpected ways. A third time Blunt moved his mouth, and this time words came out. ‘Are you saying Sarah’s death wasn’t suicide. That she was murdered too.’

  Holden leant back now, and gave a deep exhalation of breath. ‘Sarah’s death was most probably suicide. We can’t be certain. But as far as your members are concerned, there is no need to alarm them by suggesting it wasn’t.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, and gave a single nod.

  ‘In a minute, I’d like you to go and break the news about Jake to them, but first I have to ask you a couple of questions.’

  Blunt drew his hand across the top of his head. Wilson wondered if this was a nervous reaction. Holden waited deliberately for a few seconds before continuing.

  ‘How did you get on with Jake?’ she asked with studied casualness.

  ‘Well enough,’ Blunt said, but he made no elaboration of his answer. Holden looked at him carefully. She frowned. She too was in no rush.

  ‘Well enough ... for what, I wonder?’ She spoke softly, dreamily almost, looking up at the ceiling as she did so.

  Blunt waited for her eyes to focus back on him before reacting. And when it came, it was a measured and assertive reaction. ‘Just well enough. Nothing more, nothing less. I was his boss. I had to tell him off occasionally, and challenge him too. He was a bit idle, if you want my honest opinion, and sometimes he needed a metaphorical kick up the arse. Generally, he took it well. But we weren’t pals or anything. It’s not a good idea from my point of view to get too pally with colleagues.’ He stopped talking, and again his hand passed unconsciously across his head.

  Holden held his gaze, and for several seconds said nothing. Only when he adjusted himself in his chair, and his hand for a third time flew low across his almost hairless head did she ask the obvious final question. ‘Where were you last night? Between eight and eleven o’clock?’

  ‘In my flat. Watching a DVD, until I fell asleep in the armchair.’

  ‘Can anyone vouch for that?’ Holden asked evenly.

  ‘No,’ said Blunt firmly.

  Holden smiled. ‘You appreciate that we have to ask’

  Blunt smiled back. ‘O yeah, detective, I’ve seen it on the TV!’

  Holden waited until he was almost out of the room. ‘One last final question, Mr Blunt, if you don’t mind.’

  He stopped and turned. The smile was still plastered across his face. ‘That’s what they all say, isn’t it? Who do you model yourself on? Frost, Morse, or maybe you’re more of a Columbo. Just missing the crumpled raincoat.’

  ‘What was the DVD?’

  ‘Why? Are you into films?’

  ‘For the record, Mr Blunt.’

  ‘Coen brothers. The Man Who Wasn’t There? They got the wrong man. You’d like it.’

  The two workers whom Holden interviewed (with Wilson silently taking notes) turned out to be very different from each other. Her first thought when Tim Wright walked into the room and folded himself into the chair which Blunt had previously occupied was purely sartorial. ‘Nice shirt!’ popped instantly into her mind, but fortunately not out of her mouth. But she couldn’t make the thought disappear. The fact was that it was a nice shirt. Never mind that it didn’t look as if it had ever come even close to contact with an iron. Or that the blue and white stripes would have looked more at home under a dark suit than above a pair of mid-blue jeans. Holden felt immediately irritated with herself, but Wright had already started to speak.

  ‘Such a shame about poor Jake,’ he was saying, in a soft public school voice which matched all of Holden’s expectations. ‘Not exactly my sort of chap, but—’

  Holden cut in, the striped shirt already firmly relegated to a metaphorical bottom drawer. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ She spoke sharply, and Wright’s eyes blinked in sudden alarm.

  ‘Well, you know,’ he said, trying to buy time. Holden found her eyes becoming fixated on his Adam’s apple, which contorted itself like some alien intruder trying to burst its way out of his neck. ‘Like different backgrounds, different expectations, different styles of dressing, different in so many ways.’ This time Holden let him peter out.

  ‘He was gay, yes?’ she said finally, but in a tone of voice that suggested she was making a statement more than asking a question

  ‘I believe so,’ Wright replied warily.

  ‘I suppose that would have put him at risk from some people?’ Holden continued.

  ‘We are very hot on homophobia here,’ Wright replied, this time in a more confident tone, though Holden couldn’t help noticing that he was unconsciously twiddling the wedding ring on the third finger of his left hand. Or was it unconsciously? ‘Very hot on discrimination of all kinds. Anyway, as a motive for murder, I do wonder if you’re barking up the—’

  ‘Motive!’ Holden spoke sharply, angrily, jumping in before he could finish his wondering. ‘Ever hear of queer-bashing?’ she demanded. ‘Ever seen the body of a man kicked to death because he was gay?’

  Wright’s ring-twiddling went into overdrive. He looked down and made no reply. Only when he looked up again did Holden continue. ‘I have
. He didn’t have a face left when we found him. My colleague found his eyeball – his left one I think it was – several yards away in the gutter. Imagine how hard you have to kick a man to do that. And when they’d finished kicking him, one of them took out a knife and ... well, I expect you can imagine the rest.’

  Wright had gone pale, a rather sickly non-colour, and Wilson, who had stopped writing, was fast revising his assessment of his boss. Holden meanwhile leant back in her chair and watched. Wright, whose breathing was now heavy and noisy, pulled a puffer from his pocket and took two deep sucks on it.

  ‘Do you want a glass of water?’ Holden asked without sympathy.

  Wright looked across at her and shook his head. ‘I’ll be fine.’ Slowly his breathing calmed down, and a semblance of colour returned to his features. ‘Do you mean that Jake had been—’

  ‘No,’ said Holden quietly. ‘No multilation. Just a cracked skull. You may have rules here. But I was trying to point out that not everyone plays by the rules. Killers certainly don’t. Which is why we need your help. Are you aware of anyone here who didn’t like Jake? For any reason.’

  Wright ran his hands down the front of his shirt, as if he was suddenly aware of its creases. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I can’t say everyone liked him all the time. It’s the nature of the work that you have to draw boundaries, and if people try to cross the boundaries you have to stand up to them, And then, of course, for a while at least, they don’t like you. Jake was quite a gentle man, tried to get on with people, but he didn’t shirk his responsibilities. When he had to be, he could be very unpleasant. I always felt safe when he was around.’

  ‘Any recent incidents that you can think of? Anyone that he might have upset recently?’

  ‘I’ve just had two weeks on holiday. So, the answer is no.’