Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

‘Steady,’ Holden said firmly. ‘We don’t want to alarm him. We don’t want him running off.’

Danny Flynn didn’t look in the least bit like he was going to run off. In fact, in the time it took for Fox to pull the car over to the right-hand side of the road and bring it to a gentle halt opposite him, he didn’t seem to move a muscle. He was looking up, across the road, above them, one hand shading his eyes. Holden got carefully out of the car, looked left and right, and walked steadily across the road. Danny’s eyes flicked down, taking in her arrival, but then returned to their previous position.

‘There’s someone in there.’

She looked up too, following his intent gaze.

‘Look, they’ve turned the light on,’ he said, and the hand that had been shielding his eyes now pointed at the window at the top of the house opposite. Danny’s flat.

‘Maybe you left the light on, Danny, when you left this morning.’

‘I didn’t.’ His hand lowered back towards his eyes. ‘Someone’s in my room.’

‘Do you want me to take a look?’ Fox had followed Holden across the road, and was standing just behind her.

Danny’s eyes flicked again, this time across at Fox, but again only momentarily before returning to their aerial vigil. They squinted, trying to access the shadows beyond the windows. Danny moved his head, first left and then right, tilting it as he did, trying to get a different angle that might somehow reveal the unseen intruder. Finally, he turned and looked again at Fox. ‘At your own risk,’ he said. Then he put his right hand into his back pocket, pulled out a jangle of keys, and thrust them at the big detective. ‘It’s the purple one,’ he added.

As Fox walked across the road, Danny lifted his head up again to resume his search for intruders.

‘Danny,’ Holden said quietly, standing at his shoulder, and looking up at the window too. ‘I need to ask you some questions.’ She paused. Danny said nothing. ‘About Sarah. And about Jake. It’s very important. ’

‘Shouldn’t you have called for back-up?’ Danny asked, his mind still anchored in the present. ‘Suppose he gets hurt.’

‘I’m the back-up,’ she said firmly. ‘But Detective Fox can look after himself, don’t you worry.’

‘I don’t want blood on the carpet,’ he said. ‘I’ll never get it clean.’

‘Do you remember where you were last Thursday night, Danny?’ She said it casually, as if the answe

r mattered not a jot. Danny, to her surprise answered immediately.

‘Of course. I was in my flat. All evening.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. That was when Jake died wasn’t it. I remember working out that I must have been watching Morse when he was killed.’

‘Morse?’ Holden echoed.

‘I’ve got the whole set on DVD. It was the Dead of Jericho, about this woman that Morse meets at a party and then she goes and gets hanged and there are two brothers and—’ Suddenly he paused, and then he lifted his right hand and wagged his index finger. ‘Ah! Mustn’t tell you any more. You might not have watched it? Do policemen watch Morse?’

‘Did anyone watch Morse with you, Danny?’

‘No,’ he said. Then he smiled at her, and again he waved his finger as if lecturing her. ‘That means I’ve no alibi, which is bad for me, but it makes it more interesting for you. But I didn’t kill him, so I’ve got nothing to worry about.’

Holden decided to change tack. ‘Why do you think Sarah jumped from the car park?’

The question had a dramatic effect on Danny. He twisted his body towards her and looked at her with a face which had crumpled into sudden grief. He opened his mouth, but only three strangled words came out. ‘I failed her!’ he said. ‘I failed her!’

From their left came the sound of sirens. Automatically Holden turned, as two fire engines appeared from over Magdalen Bridge. She watched as they negotiated the roundabout, then accelerated towards her, sirens still blaring. Then they were passed, and across the road she saw the figure of Fox appearing through the front door. He was smiling and gave a thumbs up. ‘It’s OK Danny. There’s no one there.’

It was 2.35 that afternoon that Wilson got called through to DI Holden’s office. He hastily locked his computer – on which he had again been trawling through the photos taken by Bicknell – and strode along the corridor. The door was ajar, but he knocked before he pushed it open.

‘Wilson, good of you to join us.’ The words, and even more the tone of voice in which they were expressed, flashed a warning across Wilson’s brain, but he ignored it.

‘Not at all, Guv. I mean, I was busy with something but—’

‘Fox tells me that you’ve been holding out on us,’ she said sharply.