Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

‘Don’t they teach you manners in the police kindergarten, then? Or at least the importance of making an appointment rather than just turning up unannounced on someone’s doorstep. Because if you had rung, at least I could have got my hair dry before you arrived with your notebook in your hand.’

‘I am so sorry,’ Wilson said, floundering in the torrent of her onslaught. ‘If you want, I can go away and come back another time when it’s—’

His words faded into silence as she turned back into the flat. But instead of slamming the door in his face, she gestured him inside. When he paused, she snapped angrily. ‘Oh, for goodness sake, let’s just get this over and done with.’ She stood in the corridor, by the side of the door, leaving just enough room for him to enter. He did so by turning side on as he approached her, thus ensuring he could pass inside without risking brushing against her. His strategy had been to call on her unexpectedly in order to gain some element of surprise, but he knew that it was she who had outsmarted him.

He made his way along the short corridor into the living room. As if drawn by some magnetic force field, he found himself walking over to and sitting down in exactly the same armchair where Fox had sat a few days earlier. He gestured towards the sofa opposite. ‘Would you like to—?’

‘No!’ she said brutally. ‘I’d rather stand.’ Wilson squirmed. ‘This won’t take long, will it?’ she asked, and again adjusted the towel round her hair, as if to say that in the scheme of things drying and caring for her hair came somewhat higher up the pecking order than humouring young coppers on the make.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘But I do need to check a few things out.’ He paused, expecting some sharp response, but she said nothing. He looked up at her. She had placed her right hand on her hip, and she was examining the nails of the left one without obvious interest – a picture of boredom. ‘Well?’ she snapped.

Wilson swallowed. ‘I just wanted to check where you were on the morning of your sister’s death.’

‘What a curious question!’ she said, with a somewhat forced laugh.

‘Not really,’ Wilson replied, determined to wrest back some control. ‘You are her closest relation, and we are trying to establish the precise circumstances of her death.’

‘I was at work,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m a teacher at St Gregory’s in Reading.’

‘Can you be more precise please?’

‘Precise!? What do you mean? I was in the middle of a lesson when you lot rang the school to tell me my sister was dead. Is that precise enough or do you need to know what subject I was teaching, which class I was teaching, which outfit I was wearing, what I’d had for breakfast—’

‘No!’ said Wilson, firmly, alarmed by the hysteria in her voice. Then he made a mistake ‘It’s just that Dr Ratcliffe told me—’

‘Dr Ratcliffe!’ she snorted. ‘What has Dr bloody Ratcliffe been saying?’

‘Well,’ said Wilson, trying not to be distracted. ‘He said you were in late that morning. That you had trouble starting the car.’

‘It’s not a crime to be late for work is it?’

‘Who did you call?’ Wilson spoke casually, but he kept his eyes firmly on her face, anxious to see her reaction. ‘The AA? The RAC? Because they’ll have a record of the time and place.’

‘Neither.’ She said the word without emotion.

‘Someone else then?’

Anne Johnson let out a sigh and smiled at Wilson. ‘I fibbed.’

Wilson tried to hold a sudden surge of excitement in check. ‘I think you’ll have to explain. Please!’

The smile had faded from her face, to be replaced by a look that Wilson hoped indicated anxiety, though he had a sense that Anne Johnson was still playing him. His unease was increased as she moved round the sofa behind which she had been standing, and sat down opposite him. She leant forward, and spoke quietly as if about to share a confidence with a best friend. ‘Actually I overslept. So I rang up the school and said I’d couldn’t get the car started. Just a little white lie.’

Wilson in turn leant forward, refusing to be intimidated. ‘Why not say you overslept? Surely it happens occasionally. After all, it’s hardly a sackable offence.’

She laughed softly. ‘I think Dr Ratcliffe preferred my white lie. Anyway, he was hardly going to argue. Not when he’d been round at my house the evening before. Fucking me. In fact he can confirm precisely where I was between 7.00 p.m. and 10.00 pm. But not, of course, after that, because then he went back to his lovely wife and children to play happy families.’

‘I see,’ Wilson said.

‘I doubt it,’ she replied bitterly.

‘Maybe he’s done a runner!’ Fox volunteered as they swung right into the Iffley Road. Holden said nothing. She had briefly shut her eyes, not because she was tired, but because she wanted to try and focus her thoughts. She wanted Fox to shut up, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say so. She felt the car brake, and heard Fox curse a cyclist who had apparently had the temerity to swerve out in front of him. She kept her eyes firmly shut, but focusing was proving elusive. She wanted to concentrate on Blunt, but it was Alan from church who she kept remembering. What was it he had said? ‘Jake said something very odd.’ The car accelerated, pushing her back gently into the seat. ‘He said, maybe she didn’t jump.’

Now, why did Jake say that? Why?

‘There he is!’ For a moment Holden didn’t know who Fox was talking about. Then the moment passed, and her eyes snapped open.

‘On the left!’ Fox said, his voice betraying sudden excitement.