Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

‘Not must. But there were the phone calls to Jake the morning she died. He admitted she sounded very stressed. And then there was that student with his plaque about suicide.’

‘True,’ Holden conceded. ‘But how can we know that someone didn’t just push her over the edge. How do we know she wasn’t murdered?’

‘Look at the wall,’ Wilson said. ‘It’s what, four feet high, maybe a bit more. It wouldn’t be easy to push someone over that against their will.’

Holden stepped back from the wall and looked at it as if seeing its bulk and ugliness for the first time. She frowned, much as Wilson had shortly before. ‘OK, Wilson. Maybe you’re right. But I want to try something out. Just climb up on the wall and sit facing me?’

‘Climb up?’ Wilson said with an air of alarm in his voice.

‘Yes, Wilson,’ Holden said, her voice sharp and hard. ‘Climb up on the bloody wall. Now. And for God’s sake get a move on.’

Wilson looked at her uncertainly, but one look at her face convinced him that now was not the time to confess to a fear of heights.

‘Look,’ she continued, suddenly back into a gentler, coaxing mode. ‘There’s an old milk crate over there. Use it as a step, there’s a good chap.’

Wilson breathed deeply, walked over to the green crate, picked it up, and moved back to the wall. Trying not to think of what was over the other side of the wall, he put all his concentration into the task: placing the crate firmly against the wall, testing his weight on it, then stepping up and pulling himself slowly up onto the top of the wall. He realized as he was doing it that the wall was wider that he had thought, and suddenly sitting down on it didn’t seem quite like sitting on the edge of a precipice.

‘There,’ said Holden, still coaxing. ‘That wasn’t too bad. Even for someone who doesn’t like heights.’ This comment took Wilson completely by surprise, and it showed clearly across his face.

‘In your file,’ Holden smiled. ‘And don’t worry, I’m not going to make you stand up. I can’t afford to lose a third of my investigation team at one stroke!’

Wilson smiled uncertainly back. If she was trying to get him at his ease, she had at least partly succeeded.

‘Oh, look. I think your shoe lace is loose. Let me tie it up.’ She moved forward and bent down to where his feet dangled. ‘Keep still,’ she said. For several seconds her hands untied and then retied the lace of Wilson’s left hand shoe. Then she looked up at Wilson and smiled, her hands gently resting on his shoe. ‘Now, before you get down Wilson, I want you to think about this moment in time. I want you to picture it in your head. You sitting up on a wall seven storeys above a very solid pavement. You didn’t want to be there, but you are. You are relaxed. You are off your guard – somewhat. You are anxious, but only because you don’t like heights. You are not anxious about me. I am your boss. I can be trusted. Yet my hands are on your shoe. At any moment, as I was tieing up your shoe laces – they weren’t undone, by the way – my hands could have tightened on your shoe, and I could have pushed upwards with all my strength, and by now you would in all probability be lying dead on the pavement below. But fortunately for you, Wilson, I am not a murderer, so you can now carefully get down off the wall and drive me to the office.’

‘Sorry, Wilson.’ They were driving along the Cowley Road, and Holden was wondering if she hadn’t perhaps gone a bit far. ‘I’m not a sadist, at least not normally. But I want you to think. Think hard. Outside the box, as well as inside. The chances are that Sarah did jump. Voluntarily. A suicide. Pure and simple. Only suicides are never pure and rarely simple for the person involved, I imagine. I just wanted to demonstrate that there are options. If someone wanted to get Sarah up on that wall, they could have. They might, for example, have said they wanted to photograph her there, against the Oxford skyline. She might have been flattered by the suggestion. They might have helped her up, held her shoe to give her a leg up, but after giving her a leg up, they could have given her a push. Goodbye Sarah.’

‘I’d like to try and take stock of what we know.’ It was some half an hour later, and DI Holden was addressing her small team in her office. It felt more cramped than it had the previous Monday morning, not so much because Wilson was there as well as Fox, but more so because a large free-standing noticeboard, which had materialised along the Oxford Road side of the room, cut off much of the natural light that would otherwise have come in through the window. In the middle of the board was a large head and shoulders photograph of a smiling Jake Arnold, surrounded by four slightly smaller ones, each showing his dead body from a different aspect. To the left was a single picture of Sarah Johnson; like Jake she was smiling, though to Wilson’s eye the smile was more forced than natural. He was struck more by the darkness round the eyes, and sense of sadness emanating from the whole. Or was that him projecting his own feelings. He wasn’t sure. She was wearing round her neck a small heart-shaped locket on a fine gold chain, and he wondered who had given it to her. Was it a recent gift? Or was it, he suddenly thought, a gift from herself to herself. He did hope not.

‘Jake Arnold died some time last Thursday evening, after leaving the Iffley Inn. He left there at about 10.00 p.m. according to the barman, and his body was spotted in the river by the lock round about 10.45 p.m. He had been hit over the back of the head with a heavy instrument, hard enough to be dead before he entered the river. The weapon used might well have been a mooring spike.’ She paused, and took a sip of coffee. ‘Wilson. The mooring spike?’

‘Yes, Guv. On Friday afternoon, I came across a man with a narrowboat moored up that side estuary that leads from the main river down toward the western end of Donnington Bridge Road. He had lost a mooring spike the night before.’

‘Lost?’ Holden cut in sharply.

‘Well, no, not lost,’ Wilson fumbled ‘Stolen. Apparently.’ Wilson felt his assurance seeping away. He looked across to Fox for reassurance, but the slight smile that flickered across his face was anything but reassuring.

‘When, precisely, Wilson?’ Holden spoke each word separately, a pause in between each, asserting her authority over her young charge, but the tone of voice was softer, and she finished with a smile that was designed to encourage.

Wilson consciously paused, trying to compose his thoughts and his words. ‘While he was out getting his supper. Roughly between about 7.15 and 9.00. Though he di

dn’t seem too sure of time.’

‘And how long would it take a person to walk from there down to, say, the Iffley Inn?’ Holden asked.

‘Fifteen minutes, I’d say, but you could do it quicker if you wanted.’ Wilson replied.

‘So what do you think, Fox?’ Holden turned to her Detective Sergeant now, as if to reassure him that although she might be giving Wilson a lot of attention, when she needed the wisdom of experience, Fox was very definitely her man. ‘Is this a premeditated killing or a casual one?’

Fox pursed his lips while he pondered the question. ‘It could have been premeditated. The man – or woman – nicks the mooring spike and wanders off down the river. He could walk along the river bank, as long as he had some means of hiding the mooring spike. They are quite long, so maybe a sports bag or something like that. If he knew Jake, he would have known Jake lived in east Oxford. He could have waited for him to come along the path. It would be very dark. However ...’ Fox paused and took a slug of coffee. ‘There is an alternative scenario. The mooring spike could have been stolen by a casual passer-by. Maybe a yob who fancies a bit of vandalism. Maybe he’s had a few drinks. He wanders down the river towards the Isis, sees Jake mincing along the towpath, and before you know it he’s whacked him over the head, and knocked him into the river. He throws the spike into the river too, and then gets the hell out of it.’

‘So which of those do you fancy Wilson?’ Holden said.

Wilson nervously smoothed the side of his hair. ‘Well, I suppose, either,’ he said with obvious uncertainly.

‘Make a choice,’ Holden interrupted brusquely. ‘Based on what we know. On the facts.’

Wilson smoothed his hair again. ‘Premeditated!’ He spoke firmly now. ‘The time factor definitely points that way. The latest it was stolen was 9.15. Probably earlier. Jake didn’t leave the pub until round about 10 o’clock. Would a vandal really have taken three-quarters of an hour or more to cover a distance that would normally take a fit man only fifteen minutes? And there have been no reports of any vandalism taking place on Thursday evening. I checked with the duty officer this morning.’ Wilson paused, now looking his senior officer full in the face. She nodded.