Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

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bsp; William Basham of Basham and Smith, Solicitors, stood up as DI Holden came into his office. ‘Good afternoon, Inspector,’ he said. ‘And welcome.’ He gestured gently towards the leather chair which faced his desk. ‘Please!’

‘Thank you,’ Holden replied, and surprisingly she meant it. Old-fashioned courtesy was not something she came across too often in her working day, nor did she expect or want it. But somehow here, from this rather old-fashioned man, it seemed appropriate. The building in which Basham and Smith had set up business was a rather ugly 1970s construction, but inside Basham’s office it was all tasteful, almost genteel elegance and comfort, as if in defiance of the area in which it was based. William Basham’s clothes were also defiantly unmodern. The dark-grey pin-striped suit which hung loosely from his slight frame was discrete and, Holden judged, hand-made. She half expected to look round and see a bowler hat sitting on the side, waiting for his departure home, home not being, she was fairly sure, anywhere too close to Cowley.

‘Would you like a cup of tea, Inspector?’ Basham continued, the exchange of courtesies not yet apparently complete.

‘Thank you, but no,’ Holden replied. ‘This should only take a few minutes, I hope.’

‘Of course, I am sure you are busy, Inspector, but in my experience sometimes one should force oneself to make ones day a little less busy, to take a breather, as it were, from the relentless pace of ones work.’

‘I’m sure you are right, Mr Basham,’ Holden said, nodding her head as if in deference, ‘and I acknowledge your greater experience, but the sooner I get this over with, the sooner I can finish work for the day. So I would prefer to skip the tea and move to the point of my visit. If you don’t mind.’

‘Ah, a woman of character, I can see,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Bravo. And to cut to the business, then, you said over the telephone that you were interested in my deceased client, Sarah Johnson, of Marston Street, Oxford.’

‘Yes, as part of our investigation, I need to clarify the terms of her will.’

‘I suspected as much,’ William Basham said, opening a folder on his desk. ‘After you telephoned, I took the precaution of reading through her testament again to remind myself of its terms.’ He slowly turned the pages of the document within it, as if a single re-reading was not sufficient. Finally, he closed the folder and looked up.

‘It’s all very straight forward,’ he said. ‘She left everything to her sister, Anne.’

‘When did she make her will?’

‘Three years ago.’

‘And she has made no changes to the will since first drawing it up?’

Basham frowned briefly. ‘No, but—’ He didn’t finish his sentence, instead opening the folder again.

‘But what?’ Holden said, irritation with the ponderousness of William Basham beginning to show in her tone of voice.

‘She was due to come and see me on Thursday.’

‘Oh!’ said Holden, her interest suddenly raised. ‘And why was that?’

‘She wanted to make some changes to her will.’

‘Really?’ Holden said, fighting to keep her sudden excitement at this development under control. ‘I wonder if you could tell me what these changes were?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ he said, with a slight shake of the head. ‘You see, that’s what we were going to discuss on Thursday.’

‘Didn’t she give any clue when she rang up? I mean, do you think it is possible that she going to cut her sister out of the will?’

Basher leant back and smiled, enjoying his position of strength. ‘Who knows? Maybe she just wanted to leave fifty pounds to the local cat sanctuary. But as one reflects on it, one can’t help but find it a bit odd.’

For a brief but brilliant moment, Holden wanted to grab the self-satisfied ass sitting opposite her by the lapels and shake him as she had once seen a Jack Russell terrier shake a rat till its neck was well and truly broken. Not that she wanted to damage him, merely to shake the mannered pomposity out of him. But instead she counted silently to five, and then said in muted tones: ‘Tell, me, Mr Basham. What precisely do you find odd.’

Basham leant forward, the smile still fixed to his face. ‘Well, the fact that a person might kill herself days before she was about to make a new will. Somehow, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense.’ His smile widened even further. ‘Does it, Inspector?’

Tracking down someone who had seen Sarah, or her sister pretending to be Sarah, shortly before she had plunged to her death proved, in the event, a straightforward task. But first Fox decided to try and recreate for himself the route she would have taken from her flat in Marston Street to the car park. Along Marston Street she would have walked, then left at the corner as far as the pedestrian crossing, then across the Cowley Road and left again for fifty metres, and then there was the car park. The obvious option for a pedestrian, Fox told himself, was to walk along the front of the car park, past where the student Bicknell had set up his senseless experiment that morning, and then use the stairwell in that far corner of the building. However, suppose, just bloody suppose, that Wilson was right. That the person in Bicknell’s photos was not Sarah en route to her death, but Anne? Suppose, Fox thought, that they had both originally gone to the car together. And suppose Anne had wanted them to avoid Bicknell and his camera, then she could have turned right down the side of the car park as soon as they reached it, and led her sister in by the door near the entrance for cars. When they got to the car, parked on the top level, Anne could then have made an excuse – say, she’d forgotten her car keys – and asked her sister to stay with her bag at the car while she returned to get it from the flat. Only she didn’t go to the flat, but merely came back down to the street before returning to Sarah. Only this time, she took care to use the more obvious entrance, walking past the student and looking at his plaque for long enough to make sure he would remember her (or, even better, photograph her). So what were the complications in all of this? There was the coat. How the hell did she get that coat onto her sister after she had gone back up to the car? It was this detail that was bothering Fox as he stood at the top of the car park looking down. Whose coat was it in the first place, he suddenly wondered. Sarah’s? In which case Anne could just have borrowed it that morning to walk to the car. Or was it Anne’s? Did she offer her sister to try it on, or even give it to her as a parting gift? And then what? They look over the car park wall together. Maybe Anne says: ‘Look at that student artist down there. You won’t believe what he is doing!’ Sarah leans over further to get a better look, and then a quick push and she is screaming and falling to her death.

Fucking hell, Fox thought as he made his way down, Wilson really could be right. He really could. But the problem was they had no evidence. They needed a witness.

Yousef Mohammed owned the little general stores shop on the corner of Marston Street and Cowley Road. Did he recognize the woman in the picture, Fox enquired. Of course he did. It was the poor woman who jumped from the car park. So sad. ‘She was a regular customer,’ Yousef continued proudly. ‘Miss Johnson was always popping in for this or that. I think she must have shopped for most things at Tesco’s, but like many people if it’s just a pack of eggs or a pint of milk you need, then it’s easier to call in on your local shop. I may be a bit more pricey,’ he grinned, ‘but I provide the personal touch, and I am very convenient. And, of course, she always bought her newspaper here.’

‘Always?’ Fox interrupted. ‘Did she have an order with you then?’

‘Oh, no,’ he said, still smiling. ‘She just called in most days and bought one.’