Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

They lapsed into amiable silence. Sunita, holding her mug in both of her delicate hands, was temporarily oblivious of the situation. Like Wilson only a few minutes earlier, she had slipped back into childhood: she was a little girl again, savouring the slightly naughty thrill of a few minutes out of class. A wistful smile spread imperceptibly over her face. Finally, Wilson leant forward.

‘Sunita,’ he asked quietly, as if unwilling to break into her reverie, ‘was he on his own?’

She turned towards the previously silent detective. Her brow furrowed slightly as she tried to recall. ‘I think so,’ she said eventually. ‘I mean there wasn’t anyone standing with him when I gave him the money. But there were several people behind him. It’s a small foyer, so maybe one of them had come in with him. I don’t know.’ Sunita gave a sudden shout – ‘Oh!’ – which she strangled as soon as she made it. Her hand came up, as if trying to attract the attention of the teacher in class. ‘He got a phone call!’ she squeaked excitedly. ‘While he was queuing. I’d just finished with one customer and I looked up to beckon him forward, and his mobile rang. I thought he’d turn it off, but he answered it straight away.’

‘Could you hear what he said?’ Wilson asked eagerly, a young hound scenting a fresh trail.

‘Oh, yes!’ Sunita said, excited by her own remembering. ‘He said something like, “I thought you were someone else,” and then he said something rather odd. Only, I didn’t think it was odd at the time, but of course it was.’ She paused, as if to get her breath back, and then turned towards Lawson, as if she was happier confiding in someone of her own sex. ‘The person who rang him must have asked him what he was doing, because he said he was paying money into his bank. But then of course, he came up to me and asked to withdraw some money. Now that’s pretty odd, isn’t it?’

‘You need someone to talk to, you know.’ Jane Holden dropped her pearl of wisdom casually as she placed a cup of black coffee in front of her daughter, and sat down opposite, with her own half-filled cup.

‘Since when have you been a fan of therapists?’ Susan said incredulously.

‘Therapists?’ came the wide-eyed, innocent’s response. ‘Whoever said anything about therapists? When I say someone to talk to, I just mean a friend. You know, someone you can pour out your day to – good, bad, or indifferent. Though of course it’s most important when you’ve had a bad day.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind,’ Susan said uneasily, suspicious of the way the conversation was heading.

‘A nice man, for example,’ Jane added.

‘Mother!’ Even though she was half expecting it, Susan Holden couldn’t help screeching her response.

‘Or a nice girl friend,’ Jane Holden continued calmly. She paused. Then recommenced even more casually. ‘If, that is, men are off the agenda for now!’

‘Stop!’ Susan held her left hand up to emphasize the word. ‘Stop right there!’

Her mother shrugged, said nothing, and took a sip from her coffee. The two women sat in a distinctly non-cosy silence for perhaps a minute, though to Jane it seemed a lot longer. Susan was glad of the peace, but her mother, then as so often, was uncomfortable with silence.

‘Well,’ she said abruptly, ‘What sort of day have you had? Because to judge from your mood, I assume it’s not been a good one?’

Her daughter shrugged.

‘For goodness sake,’ her mother said, exasperation evident in every syllable. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it? You obviously need to talk to someone, and right now the only person available is me. Pretend I’m not your mother. Pretend I’m Robin Williams, or Freud, or whoever you’d rather I was. Only don’t just sit there bottling it all up.’

Susan Holden exhaled an exaggerated sigh, and gave her mother her long, hard look. ‘Didn’t you see today’s Oxford Mail?’ she asked irritably.

‘No,’ her mother said defensively, before continuing untruthfully: ‘I have to economize somewhere.’

‘Did you watch the local news?’

‘No!’

‘Or listen to the Radio Oxford news?’

‘Did I miss something?’

‘A man called Martin Mace was murdered. He had been tied up and burnt to death in his allotment shed.’

Jane Holden gulped. ‘How horrible!’ she said. But her horror would not have registered high on any Richter Scale for such things. And indeed it was quickly engulfed by curiosity. ‘Is it connected to the other deaths?’

‘They knew each other. Mace was a lorry driver, but he had been attending anger management sessions at the day centre. Arnold was one of the facilitators.’

‘Gosh!’ Jane Holden said, as she tried to weigh up all this new information. ‘And I take it from your less than ecstatic mood that you haven’t arrested anyone yet?’

Susan responded by getting up from her armchair and walking over to the window where she looked out into the fading light. Grandpont Grange had been built with a deferential nod to the quadrangles beloved by Oxford colleges. Her mother’s flat was on the first floor of the southern side, near the eastern corner, and as she stood there looking diagonally across to the opposite corner, she pretended briefly that she was a student in college. Two old men were walking uncertainly towards her along the path that diagonally traversed the grass square, like two senior dons stumbling back towards their rooms after a large dinner and several glasses of port from the cellar.

‘No prime suspect even?’ Like her daughter, Jane Holden was not someone who gave up a line of questioning until she had exhausted it.

Her daughter turned and faced her, but stayed silhouetted against the window as she began to answer the question obliquely. She made no mention of the fruitless interviews with Ratcliffe and Anne Johnson, preferring instead to talk about what had happened since, for it was these more recent events that were dominating her thought processes as she struggled to derive some clear sense of direction out of them.