Blood on the Cowley Road

by Tickler, Peter

  ‘Don’t they teach you manners in the police kindergarten, then? Or at least the importance of making an appointment rather than just turning up unannounced on someone’s doorstep. Because if you had rung, at least I could have got my hair dry before you arrived with your notebook in your hand.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Wilson said, floundering in the torrent of her onslaught. ‘If you want, I can go away and come back another time when it’s—’

  His words faded into silence as she turned back into the flat. But instead of slamming the door in his face, she gestured him inside. When he paused, she snapped angrily. ‘Oh, for goodness sake, let’s just get this over and done with.’ She stood in the corridor, by the side of the door, leaving just enough room for him to enter. He did so by turning side on as he approached her, thus ensuring he could pass inside without risking brushing against her. His strategy had been to call on her unexpectedly in order to gain some element of surprise, but he knew that it was she who had outsmarted him.

  He made his way along the short corridor into the living room. As if drawn by some magnetic force field, he found himself walking over to and sitting down in exactly the same armchair where Fox had sat a few days earlier. He gestured towards the sofa opposite. ‘Would you like to—?’

  ‘No!’ she said brutally. ‘I’d rather stand.’ Wilson squirmed. ‘This won’t take long, will it?’ she asked, and again adjusted the towel round her hair, as if to say that in the scheme of things drying and caring for her hair came somewhat higher up the pecking order than humouring young coppers on the make.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘But I do need to check a few things out.’ He paused, expecting some sharp response, but she said nothing. He looked up at her. She had placed her right hand on her hip, and she was examining the nails of the left one without obvious interest – a picture of boredom. ‘Well?’ she snapped.

  Wilson swallowed. ‘I just wanted to check where you were on the morning of your sister’s death.’

  ‘What a curious question!’ she said, with a somewhat forced laugh.

  ‘Not really,’ Wilson replied, determined to wrest back some control. ‘You are her closest relation, and we are trying to establish the precise circumstances of her death.’

  ‘I was at work,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m a teacher at St Gregory’s in Reading.’

  ‘Can you be more precise please?’

  ‘Precise!? What do you mean? I was in the middle of a lesson when you lot rang the school to tell me my sister was dead. Is that precise enough or do you need to know what subject I was teaching, which class I was teaching, which outfit I was wearing, what I’d had for breakfast—’

  ‘No!’ said Wilson, firmly, alarmed by the hysteria in her voice. Then he made a mistake ‘It’s just that Dr Ratcliffe told me—’

  ‘Dr Ratcliffe!’ she snorted. ‘What has Dr bloody Ratcliffe been saying?’

  ‘Well,’ said Wilson, trying not to be distracted. ‘He said you were in late that morning. That you had trouble starting the car.’

  ‘It’s not a crime to be late for work is it?’

  ‘Who did you call?’ Wilson spoke casually, but he kept his eyes firmly on her face, anxious to see her reaction. ‘The AA? The RAC? Because they’ll have a record of the time and place.’

  ‘Neither.’ She said the word without emotion.

  ‘Someone else then?’

  Anne Johnson let out a sigh and smiled at Wilson. ‘I fibbed.’

  Wilson tried to hold a sudden surge of excitement in check. ‘I think you’ll have to explain. Please!’

  The smile had faded from her face, to be replaced by a look that Wilson hoped indicated anxiety, though he had a sense that Anne Johnson was still playing him. His unease was increased as she moved round the sofa behind which she had been standing, and sat down opposite him. She leant forward, and spoke quietly as if about to share a confidence with a best friend. ‘Actually I overslept. So I rang up the school and said I’d couldn’t get the car started. Just a little white lie.’

  Wilson in turn leant forward, refusing to be intimidated. ‘Why not say you overslept? Surely it happens occasionally. After all, it’s hardly a sackable offence.’

  She laughed softly. ‘I think Dr Ratcliffe preferred my white lie. Anyway, he was hardly going to argue. Not when he’d been round at my house the evening before. Fucking me. In fact he can confirm precisely where I was between 7.00 p.m. and 10.00 pm. But not, of course, after that, because then he went back to his lovely wife and children to play happy families.’

  ‘I see,’ Wilson said.

  ‘I doubt it,’ she replied bitterly.

  ‘Maybe he’s done a runner!’ Fox volunteered as they swung right into the Iffley Road. Holden said nothing. She had briefly shut her eyes, not because she was tired, but because she wanted to try and focus her thoughts. She wanted Fox to shut up, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say so. She felt the car brake, and heard Fox curse a cyclist who had apparently had the temerity to swerve out in front of him. She kept her eyes firmly shut, but focusing was proving elusive. She wanted to concentrate on Blunt, but it was Alan from church who she kept remembering. What was it he had said? ‘Jake said something very odd.’ The car accelerated, pushing her back gently into the seat. ‘He said, maybe she didn’t jump.’

  Now, why did Jake say that? Why?

  ‘There he is!’ For a moment Holden didn’t know who Fox was talking about. Then the moment passed, and her eyes snapped open.

  ‘On the left!’ Fox said, his voice betraying sudden excitement.

  ‘Steady,’ Holden said firmly. ‘We don’t want to alarm him. We don’t want him running off.’

  Danny Flynn didn’t look in the least bit like he was going to run off. In fact, in the time it took for Fox to pull the car over to the right-hand side of the road and bring it to a gentle halt opposite him, he didn’t seem to move a muscle. He was looking up, across the road, above them, one hand shading his eyes. Holden got carefully out of the car, looked left and right, and walked steadily across the road. Danny’s eyes flicked down, taking in her arrival, but then returned to their previous position.

  ‘There’s someone in there.’

  She looked up too, following his intent gaze.

  ‘Look, they’ve turned the light on,’ he said, and the hand that had been shielding his eyes now pointed at the window at the top of the house opposite. Danny’s flat.

  ‘Maybe you left the light on, Danny, when you left this morning.’

  ‘I didn’t.’ His hand lowered back towards his eyes. ‘Someone’s in my room.’

  ‘Do you want me to take a look?’ Fox had followed Holden across the road, and was standing just behind her.

  Danny’s eyes flicked again, this time across at Fox, but again only momentarily before returning to their aerial vigil. They squinted, trying to access the shadows beyond the windows. Danny moved his head, first left and then right, tilting it as he did, trying to get a different angle that might somehow reveal the unseen intruder. Finally, he turned and looked again at Fox. ‘At your own risk,’ he said. Then he put his right hand into his back pocket, pulled out a jangle of keys, and thrust them at the big detective. ‘It’s the purple one,’ he added.

  As Fox walked across the road, Danny lifted his head up again to resume his search for intruders.

  ‘Danny,’ Holden said quietly, standing at his shoulder, and looking up at the window too. ‘I need to ask you some questions.’ She paused. Danny said nothing. ‘About Sarah. And about Jake. It’s very important. ’

  ‘Shouldn’t you have called for back-up?’ Danny asked, his mind still anchored in the present. ‘Suppose he gets hurt.’

  ‘I’m the back-up,’ she said firmly. ‘But Detective Fox can look after himself, don’t you worry.’

  ‘I don’t want blood on the carpet,’ he said. ‘I’ll never get it clean.’

  ‘Do you remember where you were last Thursday night, Danny?’ She said it casually, as if the answe
r mattered not a jot. Danny, to her surprise answered immediately.

  ‘Of course. I was in my flat. All evening.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. That was when Jake died wasn’t it. I remember working out that I must have been watching Morse when he was killed.’

  ‘Morse?’ Holden echoed.

  ‘I’ve got the whole set on DVD. It was the Dead of Jericho, about this woman that Morse meets at a party and then she goes and gets hanged and there are two brothers and—’ Suddenly he paused, and then he lifted his right hand and wagged his index finger. ‘Ah! Mustn’t tell you any more. You might not have watched it? Do policemen watch Morse?’

  ‘Did anyone watch Morse with you, Danny?’

  ‘No,’ he said. Then he smiled at her, and again he waved his finger as if lecturing her. ‘That means I’ve no alibi, which is bad for me, but it makes it more interesting for you. But I didn’t kill him, so I’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  Holden decided to change tack. ‘Why do you think Sarah jumped from the car park?’

  The question had a dramatic effect on Danny. He twisted his body towards her and looked at her with a face which had crumpled into sudden grief. He opened his mouth, but only three strangled words came out. ‘I failed her!’ he said. ‘I failed her!’

  From their left came the sound of sirens. Automatically Holden turned, as two fire engines appeared from over Magdalen Bridge. She watched as they negotiated the roundabout, then accelerated towards her, sirens still blaring. Then they were passed, and across the road she saw the figure of Fox appearing through the front door. He was smiling and gave a thumbs up. ‘It’s OK Danny. There’s no one there.’

  It was 2.35 that afternoon that Wilson got called through to DI Holden’s office. He hastily locked his computer – on which he had again been trawling through the photos taken by Bicknell – and strode along the corridor. The door was ajar, but he knocked before he pushed it open.

  ‘Wilson, good of you to join us.’ The words, and even more the tone of voice in which they were expressed, flashed a warning across Wilson’s brain, but he ignored it.

  ‘Not at all, Guv. I mean, I was busy with something but—’

  ‘Fox tells me that you’ve been holding out on us,’ she said sharply.

  Wilson blinked, blushed and looked across to Fox, who was sitting casually in the chair to the right of Holden’s desk.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean, Guv,’ he said, turning back to Holden. But her face was hard and uncompromising, as were her words. ‘We are a team, Wilson. You, me and Detective Sergeant Fox here, we are a team. We may be three separate individuals, each with our own strengths, weaknesses and idiosyncracies, but we are first and foremost a team. We work together. We share. As far as an investigation is concerned, we share everything. Right, Wilson.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am,’ he said quickly.

  ‘So, Wilson, when your colleague asks you about an idea you have had, you bloody well tell him.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am,’ Wilson said again.

  ‘I prefer “Yes Guv”, Wilson, if it’s alright by you. But that’s beside the point. The point is that you will now share with both of us the idea that you refused to share with DS Fox this morning.’

  Wilson was now a picture of abject embarrassment, face flushed, hands twisting uncomfortably at his tie. ‘Sorry Guv,’ he mumbled. Then, more firmly, and looking across at Fox. ‘Sorry Sergeant. It’s just that ...’ He paused, trying to find the right words, ‘the fact is it may be a pretty stupid idea and—’

  ‘Spit it out, Wilson,’ Holden interrupted, though in a tone less sharp than previously.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was wondering if the woman in Bicknell’s pictures really was Sarah. I mean the two sisters are very alike, aren’t they, and I just wondered if maybe the woman in the photo was Anne.’ He stopped, and waited to see Holden’s response.

  Fox leaning further back in his chair gave a low whistle. Holden leant forward, her attention fully gained.

  ‘Can you fill in the detail a bit, Wilson? What makes you think Anne was even in Oxford? Doesn’t she work in Reading.’

  ‘At St Gregory’s,’ Wilson confirmed. ‘But she was in late that day. Missed her first lesson. Rang in and said she couldn’t get her car started.’

  ‘You don’t believe her?’

  ‘When I questioned her about it, and asked her if she had used the AA or RAC, she admitted she had lied to the head master. That’s Dr Adrian Ratcliffe, with whom she also has some sort of sexual relationship. She says she merely overslept. She said Ratcliffe had come round the previous evening and, erm ... and fucked her. That was what she said.’

  ‘What time did she get to school then?’

  ‘She was definitely in by 11.30, when she took a lesson, but there’s no written record of when she arrived. I suppose if we asked around the staff we might be able to tie it down.’

  ‘But the key thing,’ Holden said, ‘if I understand it correctly, is that Anne could have been in Oxford at the time of Sarah’s death.’

  ‘Yes.’

  For a moment the three of them were silent. Fox, still leaning back in his chair as if in one of his beloved multiplex cinemas, began to hum the first few bars of a half-forgotten song from his childhood, then suddenly stopped. ‘Sorry to be the wet blanket here, but the fact that Anne lied to her school doesn’t mean anything unless we’ve some evidence that she was in Oxford. Or have you something else you’re not telling us, Wilson?’

  The sharpness of his comment caused Holden to swivel in her chair and direct a glare hard at Fox, but she said nothing. Instead she turned back towards Wilson: ‘Well, Wilson? The sergeant may not have been to charm school, but he is essentially right.’

  Wilson swallowed. ‘No hard evidence, Guv,’ he admitted, ‘but I just got the feeling that Anne Johnson was lying. She was evasive, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘That’s not enough, Wilson,’ Holden said, leaning forward to make her point. ‘You need evidence which puts her in Oxford that morning. Let’s assume that she was in Oxford and let’s assume that she drove over and had some sort of row with her sister. Where did she park her car? Not much room in the street if she arrived early in the morning, or even the night before. More likely she used the car park. Have you checked the CCTV? There’s one on the entrance to the car park.’

  ‘No Guv, I haven’t,’ Wilson admitted.

  ‘Ideas are good, but evidence is better, Wilson. And then there’s motive. Plenty of motives between family members. Have you contacted Sarah’s solicitor about the will.’

  ‘No, Guv.’

  ‘Not to worry. I’ll deal with that. You concentrate on the CCTV. And Fox,’ she said swivelling again towards him, ‘maybe you’d go and visit the local shops with the photos Bicknell took, and see if they recall seeing her call in for a paper or anything that morning. In fact, give the Mail a ring and get a list of anyone they interviewed in connection with the suicide. Maybe one of them will remember something.’

  She paused, and Wilson started to get up to go. ‘Why were you suspicious of the photo?’ she cut in. ‘You never said.’

  Wilson pursed his lips. ‘It’s the coat she was wearing, Guv. A long fawn mackintosh. I just thought it was a bit odd. I checked the weather. There hadn’t been any rain, and there wasn’t any rain later. It was a warm night too. So why was she wearing it? And why had she buttoned and belted it up. Then I got thinking that if it was Anne pretending to be Sarah, a long coat was just what she needed to hide the fact that she was wearing different clothes underneath from what Sarah was wearing.’

  Holden leant back in her chair and surveyed Wilson coolly. Her right hand began to drum a pattern of notes on the desktop. ‘Hmm!’ she said finally, her eyes still fixed on her young constable. ‘You really have been holding out on us, Wilson. But in the circumstances, we’ll put it down to inexperience. Now, I suggest you chase up that CCTV.’

  CHAPTER 8

&n
bsp; William Basham of Basham and Smith, Solicitors, stood up as DI Holden came into his office. ‘Good afternoon, Inspector,’ he said. ‘And welcome.’ He gestured gently towards the leather chair which faced his desk. ‘Please!’

  ‘Thank you,’ Holden replied, and surprisingly she meant it. Old-fashioned courtesy was not something she came across too often in her working day, nor did she expect or want it. But somehow here, from this rather old-fashioned man, it seemed appropriate. The building in which Basham and Smith had set up business was a rather ugly 1970s construction, but inside Basham’s office it was all tasteful, almost genteel elegance and comfort, as if in defiance of the area in which it was based. William Basham’s clothes were also defiantly unmodern. The dark-grey pin-striped suit which hung loosely from his slight frame was discrete and, Holden judged, hand-made. She half expected to look round and see a bowler hat sitting on the side, waiting for his departure home, home not being, she was fairly sure, anywhere too close to Cowley.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Inspector?’ Basham continued, the exchange of courtesies not yet apparently complete.

  ‘Thank you, but no,’ Holden replied. ‘This should only take a few minutes, I hope.’

  ‘Of course, I am sure you are busy, Inspector, but in my experience sometimes one should force oneself to make ones day a little less busy, to take a breather, as it were, from the relentless pace of ones work.’

  ‘I’m sure you are right, Mr Basham,’ Holden said, nodding her head as if in deference, ‘and I acknowledge your greater experience, but the sooner I get this over with, the sooner I can finish work for the day. So I would prefer to skip the tea and move to the point of my visit. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘Ah, a woman of character, I can see,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Bravo. And to cut to the business, then, you said over the telephone that you were interested in my deceased client, Sarah Johnson, of Marston Street, Oxford.’