Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

Smith snorted. ‘Have you seen the scarf, Inspector?’

‘No,’ Holden admitted. ‘We’ll be doing that later.’

‘Well,’ he said with a sneer, ‘when you do, you will notice that the scarf is not an official Oxford scarf. It is very obviously a hand-knitted job – blue and yellow stripes. He told me his mother made it.’ He paused and gave a large leering smile. ‘I reckon he was a right Mummy’s boy, if you know what I mean. Still attached to the apron strings. Flapped his hands around like a seal on amphetamines.’

‘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.