Blood on the Cowley Road

by Tickler, Peter

  ‘But if Sarah was depressed,’ Holden replied, ‘the last thing she might have wanted to do was talk to anyone, especially to someone who is pathologically cheerful.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Fox carefully. ‘But remember she then went across the road and looked at Bicknell’s blue plaque. Remember we’ve got a picture of her where she seems to be talking to two other people.’ He paused, wondering how his observations were going down with his boss.

  Holden frowned, then fixed him with a stare. ‘So what exactly, Fox, is your point?’

  Fox looked down, happy to give ground to his superior. ‘Only that if, by any chance, Wilson’s theory is correct, and that the woman in the mack was Anne, then of course Anne wouldn’t want to risk getting into conversation with Yousef when she didn’t know him, but realized her sister probably did. She didn’t want to risk giving herself away.’

  ‘In that case, why hover round the front of the shop at all?’ Holden said.

  Fox smiled: ‘To be seen, I guess.’

  Holden stood up and for a moment Fox was concerned he had misread her, and that he was about to receive a broadside of premenstrual venom. But when she spoke she was calm and complimentary.

  ‘Good teamwork. Good thinking. Both of you. You, Wilson, have firmly placed Anne Johnson in the area shortly before the death of her sister, when she claimed to be at home oversleeping after an overdose of sex with her head teacher. And you, Fox, have raised at the very least doubt about the identity of the woman in the long mackintosh.’ Holden stopped talking and walked over to the board from which the picture of Sarah Johnson stared out. ‘As for me, team, I have had a little chat with William Basham of Basham and Smith Solicitors. And Mr William Basham has confirmed to me that Anne is the sole beneficiary of Sarah’s will. Not exactly world shattering news, I know. However—’ Holden paused, and raised her right-hand index finger in the air, as if to ensure that she had their fullest attention. She had meant it when she praised them, and yet she was human enough to need both their attention and approval. Both men watched her intently, wondering what rabbit she was going to pull out of her hat. ‘However, Mr William Basham did also let slip another interesting fact, namely that Sarah Johnson was about to change her will.’

  ‘Change it?’ Fox gasped. Holden almost purred in appreciation of his reaction.

  ‘Indeed, they had a meeting arranged for later this week,’ said Holden triumphantly. ‘He didn’t know for sure what changes she wanted to make, but in my book this all adds up to a very substantial motive. If Sarah had told Anne that she was going to cut her out of her will altogether and bequeath all her worldly belongings – and that includes a flat that I reckon is worth at least 250,000 pounds – to the day centre or a cat’s home or maybe even to Jake Arnold, then Anne suddenly has a very pressing reason to drive over to Oxford and, when she couldn’t persuade her sister to change her mind, well, to take matters into her own hands. So I suggest the next thing to do is go and pick her up for questioning.’

  ‘Why do you say Jake Arnold?’ Wilson asked. ‘Is there a particular reason for suggesting him?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Holden. ‘But frankly if she was changing her will to another individual, then on the basis of what we know so far, Jake would be the most likely suspect. We know they had quite a strong relationship. It may not have been sexual, but from Sarah’s point of view at least, it was a very important relationship. Who was it she tried to ring the morning of her death? Jake.’

  She stopped and waited. Her theory provoked only silence, as each man tried to work out an appropriate response. This only irritated her.

  ‘Come on, gentlemen,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I’ve thrown a hunch up into the air, now is the time for you to shoot it down.’

  ‘So you’re suggesting Anne may have murdered both her sister and Jake?’ Fox said cautiously.

  ‘Ah, I can see you are not convinced, Fox. But why not? She could have killed her sister because of the imminent will change. And Jake because he must have known about the imminent will change and might otherwise have told us police about it. Or maybe she just thought he was a creep. If you can kill one person, why not a second one?’ Again she stopped, and waited for a reply. It came from Wilson, gingerly taking his turn.

  ‘But there is a problem, isn’t there, Guv, with the time Anne’s car left Oxford. We have it on CCTV leaving the car park at 8.30. That is some three-quarters of an hour before Sarah’s death. It’s one thing to suggest Anne’s visit caused Sarah to commit suicide, but it would be very hard to argue without other evidence that she pushed her sister off the top of the car park.’

  Holden smiled, but her response to Wilson was uncompromising. ‘That’s the key, Wilson. More evidence. I mean, imagine you are Anne Johnson wanting to establish an alibi. What do you do? She knows there are CCTV cameras at the car park, so she drives out at 8.30, and goes and parks it somewhere else. She then lures her sister up to the top of the car park, and pushes her over the edge. Then she leaves by the stairs, and walks to her car. But now, of course, she’s got to get to Reading. It’s a good hour’s drive at the best of time, and probably more at that time of morning, so she has to cry off her first lesson. But that isn’t a problem because Dr Adrian Ratcliffe, her amorous headmaster, is hardly going to make a fuss, now is he?’

  ‘No, Guv,’ Wilson agreed. ‘No, he isn’t.’ But he wasn’t entirely convinced.

  It was at this point that Holden’s stock-taking session came to an abrupt end. There was a knock on the door, which opened immediately. The face of Sergeant Tolman appeared, his hand raised as if in apology, or perhaps to ask permission to speak. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Ma’am, but I thought you’d like to know. They’ve just found a dead body. Down at the allotments in Meadow Lane. A garden shed went up in flames last night apparently, and some old boy discovered a charred body in it this morning. It’s a bit of a mess, apparently, so ID may take a time, but the allotment belongs to a lorry driver. Name of Martin Mace.’

  Holden resisted the temptation to drive straight over to the Meadow Lane allotments. There was little to be gained, she reckoned, from rushing round there at breakneck speed. Uniform would be looking after the site, and Dr Pointer had already been summoned. Better to give them a bit of space and time first. Besides, there was still the death of Sarah Johnson to be followed through. First with a phone call to St Gregory’s, Reading.

  ‘Dr Adrian Ratcliffe, please?’ Holden said to the woman who answered the phone.

  ‘He’s rather busy,’ came the automatic response of the head teacher’s personal rotweiler. ‘Can I take a message.’

  ‘No, you can not take a message,’ snapped Holden, who was still in no mood to take prisoners. ‘This is Dectective Inspector Holden of the Oxford police, and I need to speak to Dr Adrian Ratcliffe now.’

  ‘One moment,’ came the flustered response of a guard dog whose bark was clearly worse than her bite. Several seconds of silence, then a crackle and a man’s voice spoke.

  ‘Dr Adrian Ratcliffe here. How can I help you?’

  The soft, polished tone of his voice served only to goad, not soothe. ‘You can help, Dr Ratcliffe, by getting into your car and driving over here to the Cowley Police Station in Oxford.’

  ‘I’m sorry, what do you mean?’ came the blustering reply. ‘I have a school to run and—’

  ‘You’ve a choice,’ Holden snarled back. ‘Either you can get yourself to this police station by 10.30 a.m. or I’ll arrange for a marked police car to drive into your school to collect you. And I’ll ask them to arrive with blue lights flashing. Do I make myself clear?’

  Having dealt with one problem, Holden addressed the issue of Anne Johnson. ‘Right, Wilson. I want you to go round and pick up Anne Johnson. Take WPC Lawson with you. I want someone to be with her at all times. She’s not under arrest yet, but I don’t want her making phone calls we aren’t aware of. Once you’re back, you can express surprise that I’ve had to pop out. I want her to sit and sweat a bit. All right
?’

  ‘Yes, Guv.’

  ‘And if, Wilson, you happen to let slip to her the information that we are also pulling Ratcliffe in for questioning, then that won’t matter to me. Understood?’

  ‘Absolutely, Guv.’

  It was almost 9.30 a.m. when Holden and Fox arrived at the allotments and the first thing Holden noticed was the smell. A smell of badly burnt meat that still drifted through the air along with the flecks of ash being disturbed by the freshening morning breeze. The blackened remains of Martin Mace’s shed and the immediate area around it had been surrounded by a makeshift barrier of garden cane and police tape. Four uniformed police, two men, two women, stood uneasily at its four corners, eyes firmly fixed on the crowd of rubbernecking locals and press who had been drawn by the news of unexpected excitement. Cameras clicked as Holden and Fox pushed passed them. They both fought a temptation to scowl, wishing they could get on with their job without interference, yet knowing only too well that violent death both alarms and compels.

  ‘Is it Martin Mace, Inspector?’ one of the reporters called out. Holden recognized the rather high-pitched male voice as belonging to Don Alexander, a reporter at the Oxford Mail. ‘It’s his shed, you know.’

  Holden turned. ‘We will be giving a press conference in due course, Don. I’m sure you don’t want me to speculate and give you misleading information. Now, if you don’t mind all moving off, we’ll try and concentrate on investigating this death.’

  Holden waited and watched as the onlookers began to retreat reluctantly from the scene.

  ‘Hey!’ she said suddenly to Fox. ‘Over there, on the left, in the black jacket. Isn’t that—?’

  ‘Danny Flynn!’ Fox said, completing her sentence. ‘It certainly bloody is.’

  ‘Well!’ she added. ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’

  ‘Not so odd, if you ask me Guv.’

  Reluctantly, Holden pulled her eyes away from the now fast-retreating Flynn, turned and resumed her walk towards the tape barrier.

  ‘Good morning, Dr Pointer!’

  It was several seconds before one of the two figures in white protective suits stood up and turned towards the two detectives.

  ‘Not a good morning for this chap.’

  ‘Do you have an ID?’

  ‘Martin Mace is his name. Probably. I understand this is, or rather was, his shed. The fire has done a lot of damage, but the contents of his wallet have survived pretty well. So I think we can say with some considerable expectation of accuracy that either this body is that of a pickpocket, or that he is, indeed was, Martin Mace.’ Pointer smiled. ‘And the next question?’

  ‘Without wishing to commit you to one hundred per cent at this stage, Doctor,’ Holden said, ‘can you tell us how Martin died.’

  ‘Well, I think I can say with some certainty that he was alive when the fire started, so I guess we can safely say he burnt to death. His hands had been tied behind him with wire. So had his feet. There are traces of a plastic covering which has burnt off it, so I imagine the killer used garden wire. Plenty of it here,’ she said gesturing towards the immaculately cared for plants and canes. ‘Also, there was tape round his mouth.’

  ‘To stop him shouting? So he was conscious as well as alive?’

  Dr Pointer frowned, then pulled something out of the pocket of her overall. ‘I guess so. But the tape had another purpose too. To keep something in his mouth.’ She lifted the plastic bag in her hand up high. ‘Look! It’s amazing how well it has been preserved. But then his mouth was firmly shut.’

  ‘Money?’ Holden said in surprise.

  ‘Do you fancy a few new clothes, inspector,’ Pointer said with a laugh. ‘Maybe we could go fifty-fifty. There’s plenty of it.’

  ‘How much?’ Holden asked, but without even a hint of humour.

  Pointer shrugged. ‘I need to keep it for tests, obviously, but its all twenty pound notes. We reckon £500.’

  ‘This is more like it!’ WPC Jan Lawson said as Wilson manouevred the car carefully out of the cramped car park at the back of the Cowley Police Station. ‘A proper murder case!’

  Wilson said nothing. He was trying to concentrate on avoiding the riot van parked immediately to his right.

  ‘Is this your first?’ she continued, but he again made no reply beyond an indeterminate grunt as he swung cautiously left past the Chief Superintendent’s BMW.

  The smile on Lawson’s face hardened into a pout. Normally she had little difficulty in getting a man’s attention, so Wilson’s indifference irritated her. It wasn’t that he was that dishy, but when she set her sights, however temporarily, on a man, she expected him to show an interest. She decided to try a different tack.

  ‘I bet you’re a virgin.’

  The different tack worked: the car lurched suddenly forward then rocked to a halt as Wilson’s attention was well and truely grabbed.

  She laughed. ‘Oops! Steady, Constable. Not the best way to impress Dectective Inspector Susan. Crashing in the car park on the way to arrest a murder suspect! You’ll be back on bike duty if you’re not careful.’

  ‘We’re bringing her in for questioning, not arresting her,’ Wilson said pedantically.

  ‘Whatever!’ she said, before lapsing into silence. Wilson, who was having trouble finding a gap in the traffic on the Oxford Road, was relieved about that, but no sooner had he slipped out in front of a Morris Traveller than WPC Lawson resumed.

  ‘Anyway, by virgin, I was merely thinking in terms of murder. Your first time investigating one. Nothing else. All right?’

  ‘All right,’ Wilson replied, who had hoped that this particular line of conversation had already ended.

  ‘Mind, you,’ she continued cheerfully, ‘there’s nothing wrong with a man being a virgin in my book. Nothing wrong at all.’

  Wilson tried to concentrate on the road.

  ‘Not at your age, anyway.’

  Wilson felt himself going red, and hoped against hope that she would stop.

  ‘So,’ she said, with an effortless change, ‘did she do it? This Anne Johnson. Did she kill her sister, do you think?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I do hope so. It would be so much more interesting than a suicide.’

  ‘Bloody tractor!’ Dr Adrian Ratcliffe was last in a queue of ten vehicles – eight cars of various colours and two white vans, to be precise – moving at twenty miles per hour behind the object of his fury. ‘Why can’t it get off the main road?’ he demanded of the empty passenger seat of his Saab. It had not been a very good trip; there were too many lorries on the road for that, not to mention roadworks at Shillingford which had delayed him for a full ten minutes. Even in a good mood Ratcliffe was an aggressive driver, always anxious to get there sooner (wherever ‘there’ might be). Today, though, he had a genuine reason for such anxiety: if he didn’t get to the Cowley police station by 10.30, then that bloody DI woman would be on the phone to school asking where he was or, even worse, sending round a pair of clodhopping coppers to cause maximum embarrassment.

  ‘Get on with it!’ he shouted, as the car at the front of the column pulled out and then passed the tractor. ‘And you!’ he urged as the next car edged slowly to the right, only to lurch back again as a BMW, having just escaped the 30 m.p.h. zone in Nuneham Courtenay, accelerated towards them. ‘Damn!’ he snarled.

  In truth, Dr Ratcliffe still had some thirty minutes to get to his destination, which ought to have been more than enough given that the rush hour had passed, but he was finding it difficult to think rationally. For the fact is that he was worried. Very worried indeed. What if this went to court? What if his relationship with Anne Johnson came up. What if, God forbid, she used him as an alibi in open court? His imagination went into overdrive.

  ‘Miss Johnson, did you visit you sister the night before her death?’

  ‘No, My Lord, I was in bed.’

  ‘Can anyone vouch for that.’

  ‘My headmaster can.’

  ‘Really, and how is that Miss Johnson.�
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  ‘Well, my Lord, we were fucking.’

  ‘Between what times?’

  ‘About 7.30 till maybe 11.00.’

  ‘Really. He must have a remarkable stamina!!’

  ‘Actually, it only took three minutes, but that’s men for you!’

  The whole jury titters, while in the gallery the press hacks rub their hands in delight.

  He tried to shake free of his imaginings, but cold reality was no better. If this came out, Alice would never forgive him. That would be it. Finished. Caput. End of story. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. It was a cliché, but one which summed up Alice to a tee.

  ‘So, who do you want to be?’

  Wilson, who had just pulled up in Marston Street, looked across at his companion with puzzlement writ large across his face. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Good cop, or bad cop?’ WPC Lawson said flatly.

  Puzzlement was replaced by alarm. ‘What on earth are you talking about? We are only going to bring her in for questioning, not force a confession out of her.’

  Lawson grinned. ‘Hey, Constable, lighten up.’

  Wilson tried to smile back, but somehow his face wouldn’t cooperate. He tried to think of some appropriate response, but his brain wouldn’t cooperate with that either. In the end he just nodded, before getting out of the car.

  ‘Is that it?’ Lawson said, indicating a red door immediately opposite them across the road.

  ‘Yes,’ Wilson replied.

  ‘Right,’ she said, marching towards it. ‘I’ll be the bad cop, then.’

  Wilson locked the car and strode anxiously after her. What the heck was she going to do?