Blood on the Cowley Road

by Tickler, Peter

Holden held up her hand, gesturing Fox to silence. ‘Let me just run over the scene. You ask Jake about the message. He admits to meeting someone else. He says it was just a one-off. You don’t ask who he was. You don’t ask where he met him, or when he met him or anything. You just say: “That’s OK, Jake, let’s pretend it never happened and why don’t we crack open a bottle of champagne to demonstrate how grown up we’ve been about it all.” Now, are you seriously expecting me to swallow that story? Because if you are I’ll stop right now and start following Sergeant Fox’s advice.’

  Whiting shut his eyes and lifted his hands to his face. Slowly he sucked in a deep breath and then noisly released it. He opened his eyes and looked with an air of resignation across at Holden ‘MM. That’s what his initials were. They were stored on his mobile. But he wouldn’t tell me any more about him. I swear. Not his full name or where he met him, or the colour of his underwear or anything. He was very protective of him. Maybe he was worried I’d storm round to where he lived and cause a scene.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No I didn’t. I don’t know where he lives. How could I?’

  Holden suddenly stood up. Fox followed suit. Whiting nervously did the same. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘No,’ said Holden. ‘We’re taking you down to the station.’

  ‘Why?’ Whiting replied in obvious alarm. ‘I’ve answered all your questions, and I’ve got a gallery to open up.’

  ‘Because,’ she said, ‘I need a formal statement. Martin Mace was brutally murdered on Monday night, and the way things are at the moment, your name is pretty much top of our list of suspects. And, of course, if my memory serves me right, you didn’t have an alibi for Jake Arnold’s death either.’

  Dr Karen Pointer was in her office, seated at her desk, her fingers moving deftly over her laptop keyboard.

  ‘Come in!’ she called in response to the knock on her door, but she continued typing, her eyes refusing to look up as DI Holden entered the room, though whether it was because it was Holden (she had seen her get out of the car that pulled up outside her window), or whether she was genuinely preoccupied with her report, only she herself knew. ‘Sit down,’ she said, but still her eyes and fingers remained committed to their computer task. Holden sat down silently, and waited. Eventually, Dr Pointer’s hands slowed down. Her right thumb and forefinger briefly moved to the bridge of her nose, alighting there for several seconds, before they moved to the screen of the laptop and firmly closed it down. Only then did she look up. When she spoke, it was with brisk efficiency.

  ‘I need to check a couple of things out, but otherwise my report on Mace is pretty much finished. I’ll get it over to you this afternoon.’

  ‘Thank you. I would appreciate that.’

  The two women eyed each other. ‘Good,’ Pointer replied, wondering why Holden had come over, and had come on her own this time. It was, she suddenly realized, the first time she had been alone with her since, well, since the incident.

  ‘I don’t mean to hassle you,’ Holden said apologetically, ‘but I need to know about the time of death. I don’t know how accurate you can be with a burning.’

  ‘8.45 p.m. Or thereabouts.’

  ‘Wow!’ she said, taken by surprise.

  ‘Actually, it’s not particularly clever,’ she said with a thin smile. ‘His watch stopped. Presuming it was the fire that did it, then I reckon that ties it down pretty tight. Certainly it is in accordance with the forensic evidence.’

  Holden made no reply. Silence hung between them, but – perhaps surprisingly – it wasn’t an oppressive one.

  ‘Does it clarify things?’ Pointer asked.

  Holden wasn’t sure that it did. She had been trying to weigh up the possibility of Whiting getting from his gallery to the allotment in time to commit murder, and all in all she reckoned he could have, albeit without much time to spare. But in any case Pointer’s question only lightly registered on her consciousness, for something else was oppressing her. This was an opportunity – with no one else here to witness it – that she ought to take. She cleared her throat noisily. ‘I’d like to apologize.’

  ‘Apologize?’ Pointer was puzzled.

  ‘For slapping you.’

  ‘Hell!’ she replied, and her eyes now locked with Holden’s. Then, curiously, she smiled. ‘I probably deserved it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Holden said, rather too firmly for Pointer’s liking. ‘Nevertheless,’ Holden continued after a brief pause, ‘I’m not sure I needed to do it with quite so much force.’

  Pointer smiled again. Her hand moved up to her left-hand cheek and stroked gently across the skin. ‘I can still feel it,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry!’ Holden said, and stood up to go.

  ‘It’s taken, love.’

  The woman, dressed in jeans, pink T-shirt and denim jacket, had just sat down. She turned and looked at the large man in the seat next to her. She smiled. ‘By me. Seat F28. That’s what it says on my ticket.’

  She was a looker, no question, maybe 22 or 23 to his 35, but the man felt uncomfortable. She was on all counts out of his league. Women like her just didn’t open conversations with him, eye him up, flirt. He felt himself getting flushed, and that made him aggressive. ‘It’s my mate’s seat!’ he insisted loudly. ‘He’ll be here any minute.’

  The woman smiled again. ‘Who’s your mate?’

  ‘What’s it to you? This is his seat.’ The man in the seat beyond him leant forward. Even though he was sitting down, it was obvious to the woman that he was shorter and altogether a less imposing a specimen of male, but he placed his hand lightly on his companion’s shoulder as if to calm him down. ‘He doesn’t mean no harm, dear, only we always sit together – him, me and Martin. So why don’t you just show us your ticket and we’ll sort out where you’re meant to be sitting. All right?’

  ‘All right,’ the woman said with a shrug. She unbuttoned the breast-pocket of her jacket, pulled something out of it, and then discretely displayed it for the two men. ‘If it’s all right by you, my governor would like a word.’

  ‘Fuck!’ they said, in perfect unison.

  ‘So what’s this all about?’ Al Smith demanded fiercely. ‘The game starts in ten minutes, and I’m not missing it, not for you and not for anybody!’

  ‘I’m not asking you to,’ the dark-haired woman said. ‘Just answer my questions, and you can get back to your seats.’

  ‘Is Martin all right?’ Sam Sexton asked. His eyes flicked around the room, alighting nervously on the face of each of the four inquisitors, only to move on to the next almost immediately – but if he was seeking reassurances, he sought it in vain. The blonde who had flirted with them in the Oxford Mail end was now standing by the door, all cheer wiped off her face. A young man – a detective constable presumably, though hell he hardly looked old enough – was standing in the corner on the opposite site of the room. His face, too, was swept clean of emotion, and his arms hung loosely by his sides. Immediately opposite Sexton and Smith – across a wood-effect table – sat the woman who had introduced herself as Detective Inspector Holden and a sour-faced man whom she had introduced as Detective Sergeant Fox. He was a big man, imposing even when seated, and Sexton felt himself shudder involuntarily. He moved his attention onto Holden, glad it was her who was calling the shots.

  ‘Why do you ask that?’ Holden replied.

  ‘He’s never bloody late for a game,’ Smith butted in. ‘And here you are asking bloody questions. So the fact is we reckon something must have happened to him. It stands to reason, don’t it.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that Martin Mace is dead.’

  ‘I knew it!’ said Sexton, his voice shrill with hysteria. ‘I bloody knew it!’ Holden’s eyes, though, were fixed not on Sexton, but on Smith. But whatever emotions Smith was feeling at the moment, he wasn’t showing them. His face was not so much blank as bored. He looked at his watch ostentatiously, then looked up at Holden. ‘So are you going to tell us what happened? Because if so,
perhaps you can get on with it.’

  Holden twitched her head. Fox leant down to his right, thrusting his hand into a bag, from which he drew out a newspaper. He placed it carefully in the middle of the table, so that the two men opposite could see its front page.

  ‘Didn’t you see Monday’s Oxford Mail?’

  ‘Only the back pages,’ Smith said casually, but his eyes were anything but casual. For several seconds there was silence, as Smith and Sexton took in the somewhat arch headline (‘The Allotment of Death’), the gloomy photo of the charred remains of the garden shed, and the first few lines of the article which accompanied them.

  ‘So, you’ve not arrested anyone yet then?’ Smith said, with a sneer in his voice. He was looking at Holden now, apparently having read and seen enough.

  ‘Where were you on Monday night,’ Holden asked.

  ‘Oh, we’re suspects are we?’ Smith replied aggressively. ‘Just because we’re his best bloody mates, you think we killed him?’

  ‘I don’t think anything,’ Holden said, her own voice louder in response. ‘But we need to know where you were at the time of Martin Mace’s death. So just tell us where you were on Monday from, let’s say, 6.00 o’clock onwards.’

  ‘I was working, wasn’t I, till about 7.00. On a house in Cornwallis Road. Doing an extension out the back for them. With Sam. Then I went home, had a shower, had a pizza out the freezer, then went to the Wellington in Between Towns Road. Sam was there.’

  ‘When did you arrive at the Wellington?’

  ‘About nine o’clock I’d say.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sexton said. ‘That’s right; I had only been there a couple of minutes when he arrived.’

  ‘And where had you been before that, Mr Sexton?’

  ‘I was with Al in Cornwallis Road till about five o’clock, but I left him to finish off cos I had another job to price up. I got home about six – my wife will confirm that, but she went out about seven; she works nights at the hospital Monday to Thursday – and I watched the telly and did the ironing.’

  ‘So between seven and roughly 8.45, you were at home, but no one else was there? Is that right?’

  Sexton, who appeared to have been starting to relax, suddenly lifted his right hand to his forehead and dragged it through his hair with such violence that he wrenched his head back. ‘Are you accusing me?’ He squealed the words. ‘I was his mate. A good mate. Why should I want to kill him? Why should anyone want to kill him?’

  ‘That’s what we want to know,’ Holden said firmly. ‘But the fact is that someone wanted to kill him, and did so. If we can find out why, then the chances are we’ll find out who.’

  It is impossible to know who had the idea first. And later, when discussing it in the pub after the case had been closed, both Wilson and Lawson acknowledged the part the other had played in the genesis of the idea. But one fact is as certain as can be: that the idea came very shortly after the final whistle. After Holden and Fox had finished questioning Smith and Sexton, the four of them had had a short debriefing before Holden signalled that their working day was over. Fox offered to drop his boss off at her flat, but Wilson said he thought he’d stay and watch the game. Lawson, rather to his surprise, had said that she’d keep him company. But it was, unfortunately, a distinctly uninspiring game. Oxford scored a minute after half-time, and then conceded a goal two minutes later. And that, in terms of goals and excitement, was pretty much that.

  ‘If that doesn’t put you off football, then nothing will,’ Wilson said to his companion gloomily. The two of them were still sitting in their seats, as they waited for the other spectators to disperse. Wilson opened his programme and began to read through the manager’s notes again.

  ‘Do you always buy a programme?’ Lawson asked.

  Wilson, engrossed, appeared not to have taken in the question. Over the tannoy, a disembodied voice reminded fans that there was another home game the forthcoming Saturday. As silence returned to the echoing roof of the stand, Wilson looked up and turned his head towards Lawson. ‘Why do you ask?’ he said warily.

  Lawson was equally cautious in her reply. ‘I was just thinking,’ she said.

  Wilson looked down at his programme, folded it carefully shut, and looked at her again.

  ‘About programmes?’

  ‘Yes.’ The thought, or maybe two identical thoughts, had now entered or been created within their separate brains.

  ‘Mace had loads of programmes in that room of his,’ Wilson said quietly, as if afraid that saying it loudly might somehow reveal a fatal flaw in his thinking.

  ‘So did Arnold,’ said Lawson. ‘On the bookshelves in his bedroom.’

  They looked at each other for several seconds in silence. The stand in front of them was now almost totally deserted except for a couple of stewards at the bottom of the steps.

  ‘What about Sarah Johnson?’ Lawson asked.

  Wilson tried to think back to the search he and Fox had made after Fox had interviewed Anne Johnson. The problem was they hadn’t been looking for anything like football programmes. Drugs and signs of depression and that diary that they had found, but football programmes? ‘I just can’t recall noticing,’ Wilson admitted. ‘And besides, there’s no real reason to believe she didn’t just commit suicide and—’

  ‘It would be a connection, wouldn’t it,’ Lawson said assertively. ‘Another connection besides the day centre. Suppose they always sat together—’

  Wilson, aware that Lawson was half a step in front of him, cut in angrily: ‘A programme won’t tell you that!’

  Lawson pursed her lips, while she considered her next sentence. A look of innocence emerged from her features, and from her mouth there came an equally innocent tone of voice. ‘When I was a kid and went to watch something – a pantomime, or an outdoor Shakespeare play, or once I went to Wimbledon – I always kept my programme and my ticket. Didn’t you?’

  CHAPTER 11

  He was eating breakfast when the call came, and he swore involuntarily. He was not a morning person. He would have admitted as much if he had been asked, though he would have expressed it differently given that he was a call-a-spade-a-bloody-shovel type of person. He slurped at his still-hot black coffee and grimaced. Only then did he flick open his mobile to see who the hell was calling him. A number flashed up on screen, a number which neither his mobile nor he recognized. His first impulse was to ignore it, but his curiosity was aroused, and instead he leant forward and picked it up.

  ‘Yes?’ he demanded.

  ‘It’s me!’

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘I’m ringing you up.’ The familiar voice spoke calmly. ‘I’d have thought it was obvious.’

  ‘We agreed, didn’t we. No bloody phone calls. If they were ever to check my mobile—’

  ‘I’m ringing from a phone box. I’m not an idiot.’

  ‘Where from?’ His voice was raised now and angry.

  But the caller ignored his question. ‘Can’t we meet?’

  ‘You must be fucking mad! We agreed. In six months time, maybe.’

  ‘I didn’t mean Oxford, stupid. But London or Bristol. Or Paris even. Where’s the risk in that.’

  ‘I’m not taking any risks for you,’ he said coldly. Then he pressed the red button on his mobile and swore again.

  Meanwhile, not so far away across the streets of Oxford, Detective Inspector Holden had just slumped down at her desk in the Cowley Police Station. On automatic pilot, she powered up her PC, and waited as it struggled into some semblance of life. She had slept badly, waking at 2.30 and again at 4.15, and then sleeping through the alarm. So she’d got to the station later than she’d wanted and tired. The logon screen had just appeared in front of her when the phone rang. She picked the receiver up, placed it against her left ear and spoke. ‘DI Holden here.’

  ‘Good morning,’ came the reply. She recognized the high-pitched voice, and immediately wished she had let her voicemail handle the call. It was Don Alexander, fro
m the Oxford Mail.

  ‘So what do you want this morning?’ she asked tartly. ‘Short of copy are you?’

  He laughed. ‘Just want to keep the public informed. That’s all, Inspector.’ Then the laughter had disappeared from his voice. ‘Look, people are worried. Hell, I’m worried. Even my cat is worried. So the question we need an answer to is, when are you going to arrest someone? ’

  ‘How long is a piece of bloody string?’ was her instant response, and immediately regretted it.

  ‘Is there a prime suspect?’ he pressed.

  ‘No comment,’ she replied. ‘And don’t quote me about pieces of string.’

  ‘What leads are you working on, Inspector?’

  ‘I can’t comment on that either.’

  He paused. Then continued more caustically: ‘Inspector, just for the record, how many more deaths have to occur before you do comment?’

  Holden had to choke back the impulse to scream into the phone. When she did speak – and this was very much to her credit – it was in an only slightly heightened tone. ‘Look, Don, I really do have a lot of work to do, so if it’s OK with you, or even if it isn’t, I’m going to put the phone down now. Good bye.’

  It took Wilson and Lawson most of Thursday morning to search again the accommodation of Martin Mace and Jake Arnold and Sarah Johnson. Mace’s was the quickest since his small third bedroom had been devoted to his sacred team. Football programmes, home and away, were carefully organized in date order on the shelves that lined the walls. Labels on each shelf indicated the season. They placed the programmes for the current season and all of the previous season into two cardboard boxes. Tracking the actual tickets Mace had bought and used proved no more difficult. A shoebox on the top shelf contained envelopes. Each was marked – ‘2001-2002 season’ for example – and inside each were two wadges of tickets, each with an elastic band around it. As a brief glance revealed, one consisted of tickets for home games, and one for away.