Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

‘Do you have a prime suspect?’

Holden smiled, and wondered bleakly why Doris or her mother couldn’t suddenly appear at her shoulder and rescue her. ‘I’m afraid I can’t talk about the case.’

‘Don’t you want to question me?’ His finger had now turned and was pointing directly at his own chest.

Again she smiled, and gestured with her left hand (her right hand still held her mug, not yet emptied, of weak tea) around her. ‘In church?’

‘Why not,’ he replied instantly. ‘The perfect place. For the truth. For confession.’

With the tiniest shake of her head, Holden abandoned all hope of rescue. There was only going to be one way out of this. ‘Is there something you know? Something you want to ... to confess?’

‘Me?’ The man laughed. ‘Not me. Jake. It’s Jake’s confession you need to know.’

Holden, despite all her reservations about the man in front of her – he hadn’t yet told her who he was – felt a surge of interest, even excitement. ‘Did Jake tell you something?’

‘Yes, he did.’ The man’s left hand moved up and grasped the zip of his jacket. He pulled it down two or three inches, then up again, nervously. ‘On Thursday. About 4 o’clock in the Cowley Road. It can only have been a few hours before he was killed. He must have just come out of the day centre. I’d gone and bought an Oxford Mail at the corner shop. He was standing outside, smoking a cigarette. That was odd, cos I’d never seen him smoke before. I asked him if he knew when Sarah Johnson’s funeral was. She was the woman who jumped from the top of the car park. Perhaps you know about it.’

Holden made some sort of encouraging noise. ‘Yes, I do, but carry on. What did Jake say?’

‘He said something very odd. I thought it was really odd at the time and the more I’ve thought about it, well, the more I got worried about it. You see, he said he didn’t know when the funeral was because there had to be an inquest, and I said wasn’t it terrible that she got so depressed that she jumped, and then he said this. He said, maybe she di

dn’t jump. And I said what do you mean, and he said something like, well we can’t be sure it was suicide. And then he said that he had to be going. And he walked off down the road. That was the last I saw of him.’

‘Did Jake say why it might not be suicide?’

‘No. That’s all he said.’

‘You’re sure?’

The man’s hand came up again, and like some remotely controlled weapon, pointed at her, aggressively this time. ‘Of course I’m sure. I’ve got a good memory for detail. Just you remember it.’ And with that, he had turned and walked away.

Sitting there on the sofa, her glass of Chardonnay in her hand, Holden tried but failed to come to a conclusion about this encounter. The man’s name, as Doris had confirmed, was Alan. He was a regular face at the 10.30 service, though beyond that she wasn’t too sure. He often came along to the Wednesday morning communion and the drop-in lunch which followed it. He didn’t appear to have a job. ‘I expect he’s on benefit,’ she had said. ‘Probably can’t hold down a job.’ She had pulled a face as she said this, and then – Holden had decided – immediately regretted it. ‘Still,’ she had added quickly, ‘isn’t it marvellous how he comes to church.’ Then with a broad smile, as if to demonstrate the generosity of her spirit: ‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways!’

He does indeed, Holden said to herself, as she brushed her teeth. A day that she had expected to spend humouring her mother had turned out ... extraordinary. There was no other word for it. To begin with, her mother had been nice! She had gone to church. She had, even more extraordinarily, found herself enjoying it. And she had met a man who might have been one of the last people to talk to Jake Arnold. The only problem was to know what on earth to make of his evidence.

Wilson pulled the car up outside DI Holden’s terraced house in Chilswell Road at 7.23 a.m. He had been surprised both to receive a call from her the previous night and by the instruction that he should pick her up from home no later than 7.25 a.m. No explanation. Just a curt set of instructions followed by a slightly less curt ‘Good Night’. Leaving the engine running, he got out of the car, only to see that Holden was already out of the front door. He got back in, turned the radio off and waited for her to get in. ‘Morning, Guv,’ he said.

‘Morning Wilson. Now, we’ll take the scenic route to the office. Down the High Street if you please.’

Again Holden offered no explanation, and Wilson, learning fast, drove without question. It was only when they had crossed Magdalen Bridge (‘Look at the mist, Wilson. Perfect backdrop for a murder mystery’), entered the (‘second exit on the roundabout, Wilson’) Cowley Road, and (‘left here into the multi-storey, then keep going right to the top’) turned into the car park that things began to become clear to Wilson. ‘This is where—’

‘Yes Wilson,’ Holden said in a tone that implied that it was too early in the morning to be making statements of the obvious. ‘This is where Sarah Johnson plunged to her death.’ Wilson flushed, and tried to concentrate on getting to the top.

He had barely brought the car to a halt before Holden was out of her seat and marching across the empty tarmac to the concrete wall that ringed the top storey. Wilson turned the engine and side lights off, and hurried after her. Holden was leaning over the wall, looking down.

‘Why have we assumed that Sarah jumped, Wilson?’

Wilson frowned. ‘Well, everything points to it, I suppose.’

‘For God’s sake Wilson! Everything! Everything? Don’t flannel. What are the facts? And,’ she said, and then paused, ‘what are mere assumptions?’

Wilson gulped involuntarily, and tried to think. ‘She was depressive, Guv.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says her sister. Says, I mean said Jake. She went to the day centre because of her mental health problems, didn’t she?’

‘So she must have jumped?’