Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

CHAPTER 3

‘So, where are we with Sarah Johnson?’ said DI Holden as she finally turned away from the urgent e-mail she had been composing, and looked across at DS Fox and DC Wilson. The sudden question caught Wilson off guard. It was not that he had been dreaming (he was not given to that sort of thing), nor that he was thinking about his girlfriend (he didn’t have one) or even his boyfriend (not his sort of thing). Rather he had been practising his observational skills on the new Detective Inspector’s office. He had exchanged barely a dozen words with her in the six weeks since he’d taken up his post in the Cowley office. Most of the time he had been tagging along behind DS Fox or DS Roberts as he ‘got to know the ropes’. Twice he had heard comments made about Holden – one respectful, the other distinctly sexist – but he liked to draw his own conclusions from his own observations. He had always been good at observing things; even before he was of school age, he had demonstrated a knack for finding items that his mother had lost at home. By the time he was eight he started to turn that observation towards people. This started shortly before the end of the autumn term, one in which his poor work (he was later diagnosed as mildly dyslexic, but not until he was half way through Middle School) and worse behaviour had somewhat strained relations between him and his form teacher, Miss Turner, and his mother. After a difficult meeting at the end of school one Friday, he had felt relieved to be packed off to his grandma’s house across town. But he had hardly curled up in the large musty chair in front of the television before his grandma marched in, switched it off, and stood over him with hands on her hips in a manner that made him shudder.

‘So, young man,’ she said, ‘what has been going on at school? Your mother is at the end of her wits.’

‘It’s not fair,’ he protested.

‘It’s not fair on your mother, young man,’ she said firmly. ‘That much I do know.’

‘Miss Turner hates me,’ the eight-year-old said plaintively.

‘Does she now?’ said the seventy-year-old, unconvinced.

‘So does Mrs Wallace.’ (Mrs Wallace was the classroom assistant.)

‘Well,’ his grandma said, taking a deep breath as she did so and bending down till her face was opposite his. ‘In that case, what you have got to do,’ and she poked him gently in the ribs as she said this, ‘is make them like you.’

If the boy had had ears that could prick up, they would have pricked up. ‘How?’ he said. ‘How Grandma?’

‘What is Miss Turner’s favourite colour?’

‘Blue,’ he said, without hesitation. ‘She likes to dress in blue.’

‘Does she wear jewellery?’

He paused, envisaging in his mind Miss Turner. ‘Yes,’ he said finally, ‘she wears earrings. Little ones usually. But when we have a special day, she always wears long dangly ones. Once she wore a moon in one ear and a sun in the other.’

‘And what can you tell me about Mrs Wallace?’

‘Muck!’ he said triumphantly. ‘She likes white muck.’

For a minute the old lady was puzzled. ‘Muck?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I saw it last week. She took a spray thing out of her bag, and I read the words “white muck” on its label.’

Wilson’s grandma laughed. ‘White musk. You mean white musk!’

‘Why do you want to know, grandma?’ he asked.

‘Because,’ she said, suddenly serious again, ‘tomorrow we are going to buy them each a Christmas present that they will really like. And every time they use that present they are going to think about you and they are going to say to themselves, maybe that boy Colin Wilson isn’t so bad after all.’

‘So will they like me when they’ve opened their presents?’ he asked.

His grandmother smiled. ‘It may not be that simple or quick. But if you do as I say, we’ll get them to like you, by hook or by crook.’

And so Colin Wilson began the task of Making His Teachers Like Him. It wasn’t always easy, and it didn’t usually involve giving presents (except on suitable occasions) but it did involve him making observations and then acting on those observation. When Miss Turner mentioned one Friday that her father wasn’t very well, he made a Get Well card and gave it to her the following Monday. When she lost a parrot earring, it was he who found it under her desk. And when he once arrived early in class and found her already there, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, he withdrew silently, shut the door firmly behind him, and stood on guard, refusing to let anyone else in until Miss Turner herself came and opened the door.

So the greenhorn Detective Constable who sat in the Inspector’s office that morning was a man who had learnt to observe and notice both objects and people. He noticed that there was no picture on the rather bleak desk, and he wondered if that meant that DI Holden had no partner (or did she prefer not to advertise her private life). He took in the dark, discreetly striped trouser suit, the white blouse and the stud earrings, but drew no particular conclusions about her from them. He recognized the scent she was wearing, but couldn’t quite place it. And, looking around the room, he observed that she had made no attempt to stamp her personality, her ownership on it. Was it just a matter of not having had time over the last week, or was it significant of something in the way she viewed work and her work environment?

‘So where are we with Sarah Johnson?’

If Holden’s words had taken Wilson by surprise, the same could not be said of Fox. ‘We’ve interviewed the student Bicknell, and her sister, Anne Johnson. Bicknell claims not to have spoken to her, but he has given me copies of all the photos he took that morning, including three of her looking at his plaque.’

‘And the sister?’ queried Holden, with a hint of impatience in her tone.

‘She confirmed that Sarah was a manic depressive. She admitted that she hadn’t actually spoken to her for about three weeks, and hadn’t seen her for some time, but she did say that Sarah had been in reasonable spirits three weeks prior to her death.’

‘Three weeks,’ Holden echoed. She pressed the first finger of her left hand on her forehead between her eyes, and shut her eyes briefly, trying to focus on this information. ‘What do you make of that, Wilson?’ she said, again catching Wilson off guard.