Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

‘Yes,’ he replied, speaking loudly and with exaggerated care. If this was someone offering him work, he didn’t want to lose it.

‘Martin Mace the lorry driver?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Can I help you?’ He spoke eagerly, too eagerly perhaps. He only had three days of driving lined up this week, and two the next. He needed more.

‘Martin Mace of Oxford?’

‘Yes.’

‘Martin Mace who lives in Meadow Lane, Oxford?’

‘Yes.’ But this time Mace’s voice was quieter. Something about this caller – he wasn’t quite sure what – was unsettling. He waited for a reply, but none came. Only anxiety came, creeping across the airwaves, out of the earpiece of his mobile, and down into his stomach like some invisible alien virus. And anxiety was closely followed by anger and aggression.

‘Who are you?’ He spat the question noisily into his mobile.

‘Five hundred pounds.’

The anxiety receded. A job. ‘You’ve got a job for me?’

‘That’s right. This is what I want you to do.’ The words came out slowly, deliberately. ‘I want you to go to the bank, withdraw five hundred pounds, and give it to me.’

‘Is that you Al? Because if it is, let me tell you it ain’t very bloody funny. You’re

pissing me off.’

‘Listen!’ The word was shouted down the line so loudly that Mace gave an involuntary start. ‘Because you are pissing me off, Mister bleeding Mace. This is serious. Deadly serious. I know you, and I know your dirty little secret. I know what happened on May the fifth, and I know that if you don’t get the money today, and leave it wherever I say, then I will be telling the police about it too. Do you understand?’

A shadow passed across Mace’s cab, as a large freighter from Poland pulled past, bumping and grinding over the uneven surface, as it sought a parking placing beyond the caravan.

‘Do you understand?’

Mace nodded his head, as if his questioner was directly in front of him. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, then more loudly, ‘Yes.’

Mace waited for a reply – for some sort of instructions – but all he heard was a click as the caller hung up. Beyond the caravan, the Polish freighter rocked to a halt as its air brakes were applied. Mace watched as its driver climbed down, walked back towards him along the side of his lorry, and then turned right towards the bushes, where he proceeded to straddle his legs and urinate. Mace sat unmoving, his face transfixed. The man pulled at his zip, turned, and looked up, suddenly aware that he was being observed. He lifted his right hand, thrust a V-sign defiantly at Mace, and walked back round his lorry and past it, until he reached the caravan.

Mace, all thoughts of coffee abandoned, placed his mobile back into its cradle, connected up his seat belt, and turned the key in the ignition.

‘He looks a bit rattled,’ Holden said to Fox as they pulled up in front of the Evergreen Day Centre. She was referring to Jim Blunt. She had rung up and warned him they wanted to come round and speak to him about Jake, and even though they were three minutes early, he was standing outside the front with two other men, ostensibly smoking, but in reality, Holden reckoned, watching. Before the car had come to a halt, he was moving forward towards them, waving a welcome. Gone was the studied insouciance of Friday, when he had made them wait while he addressed his day centre.

‘He’s probably feeling guilty,’ Fox said in a matter-of-fact tone.

‘Of what?’ Holden asked.

Fox turned the engine off, and turned to look at her.

‘Of what?’ Holden repeated. ‘He can wait,’ she added, her eyes indicating that ‘he’ was Blunt, who had now stopped, rather awkwardly, in front of the car.

‘When I was staying with my sister, we went out in the car one morning, to get some more paint. She was driving, and we were going along the main road when she suddenly said “There’s a police car behind us.” “Yes”, I said to her, “so there is, and there’s also a policeman sitting in the seat next to you!” I remember that I laughed. But you know what she did, she pulled into a bus stop about fifty metres in front of us, so that the police car would go past. I was going to laugh again, but one look at her face stopped me. “You probably think I’m silly, Derek,” she said, “but I can’t bear being followed by a police car. I feel I must have done something wrong, broken the speed limit, jumped the traffic lights, or knocked down an old lady without noticing. Even though I know I haven’t, I still feel guilty.”

Holden released her seat belt, and finally acknowledged Blunt’s presence with a brief wave. Then she turned her face back towards Fox. ‘What sort of creatures would we be if we never had feelings of guilt? Nothing more than animals, I guess.’ And with that, she opened the car door and got out.

Blunt took them not to the small room with the dirty armchairs, but to a slightly larger room that served as his office. The centre of the room was taken up by a large desk that had clearly seen better days. It was in its turn dominated by the usual paraphernalia of computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse and printer. The only other item on the desk was a nest of three wire filing trays, the top one of which was marked ‘In’, the middle one ‘Pending’, and the bottom one ‘Out’. It was behind this defensive wall that Blunt now sat, after briefly waving his visitors to a pair of red plastic chairs on the near side of the room.

‘So,’ he said, nonchalantly, and looking at Holden, ‘what was it you wanted to talk to me about?’

Holden turned and gave a brief nod of her head to Fox. She had no intention of giving Blunt an easy ride. And as she and Fox had discovered from experience, one of the best ways to start that process was to confuse the interviewee over who the interviewer was.

‘I’d have thought you would have guessed, sir,’ Fox said firmly.