Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

The first thing that would have struck a visitor was the neatness of the room. Apart from the slightly faded pattern of the duvet cover, the bed might have been part of a window display: the two pillows were plumped, the duvet was rumple free, and a towel lay folded into a square at its foot. On the small chest of drawers next to the bed there stood a lamp with a pale-green lampshade and a small black alarm clock. Nothing else. A three-door wardrobe dominated the wall to the right of the bed (as Flynn looked at it), and the long mirror on the central door showed not a single mark (Flynn had cleaned it just before going to sleep the night before.) Next to it was a doorway that led to the shower room and toilet, as well as to the front door of the bedsit. And next to that were bookshelves that covered the wall right up to the front of the room. Flynn frowned, and moved forward. He peered at two wooden figures, Norwegian trolls, which stood in the centre of the shelving as if they were guardians of all the books and magazines that were stacked above, below and to either side of them. They were squat figures, with cheerful faces and bulbous noses, but Flynn was not satisfied. He grunted, and then moved the male figure a few millimetres backwards. He stepped back a pace, grunted again, stepped forward, and this time moved the female figure slightly to the right. He stepped back again, surveyed the figures, and this time nodded in satisfaction. He continued then with his 360-degree sweep of the room, looking for anything that had gotten out of place. Eventually he nodded again, before advancing towards to the side of the wardrobe closest to the doorway. He removed a ring with three attached keys from a hook screwed into the wood and thrust them deep into his right-hand pocket. There was a second hook. On this there hung a Swiss Army knife. Flynn ran the thumb and first finger of his left hand down its red casing. When Fox had visited, he had noticed it hanging there; in truth Flynn rarely removed it from its place. But on this particular morning Flynn picked it gently off its hook and examined it closely. Then without a sound he put it into his left-hand pocket, before flicking the two light switches upwards and opening his door to leave.

Jake Arnold’s flat was a mess. Even before the intruder had been in and tossed things around it had been a mess, and no one had been allowed to put anything back. Although it was smaller than Mace’s house – a double bedroom, a small guest bedroom, a very snug bathroom, and a large open space that served as a sitting and dining area, with galley kitchen off to the side – finding football programmes and other memorabilia proved a much more exacting task for Wilson and Lawson. He had bookshelves, built in either side of the fireplace, but most of the contents of them were on the floor.

‘Maybe you could sift through these,’ Wilson suggested, with a wave of his hand, ‘while I go through his drawers.’

‘Of course,’ Lawson said mildly, but with a flash in her eyes. ‘Whatever turns you on.’

The drawers did not, however, prove in any sense exciting. They had already been half ransacked, and it didn’t take Wilson long to discover that Jake Arnold hadn’t stashed his football programmes under his pants or his pullovers. A box at the bottom of the wardrobe briefly offered hope, but it turned out to contain a collection of gay magazines much too explicit for the rather prudish detective constable. Wilson found himself wishing he’d chosen the shelves.

‘Nothing here,’ Lawson called through.

‘Nor here!’ he shouted back, and shut the wardrobe door firmly. He walked back through to the living room where he found Lawson standing with hands on her hips and a frown on her face. ‘Do you think he threw his programmes away?’ she asked.

‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ Wilson replied with a shrug.

‘Maybe he didn’t bother buying them. Maybe he just borrowed someone else’s,’ Lawson suggested, and then added dryly. ‘In my experience, men can be very ti

ght with their money.’

‘And in my experience,’ Wilson said, trying not to rise, ‘men who go to football like to buy a programme. They like to make a note of who played and who came on as a substitute, and who scored. And then they keep those programmes. For a while, at least.’

‘So where are Jake Arnold’s?’ Lawson demanded.

Wilson shrugged. ‘Well, unless there’s a roof space that I haven’t spotted, there’s the kitchen and the bathroom.’

‘I’ll take the bathroom,’ Lawson said hastily, conscious that she had drunk too much coffee that morning. ‘If that is OK with you, that is?’ she added.

Wilson made no comment. He moved slowly towards the doorway of the small kitchen and looked in. His attention was immediately drawn to a row of several books in the corner behind the kettle. The name of Delia Smith on a spine of the nearest confirmed the obvious – that they were recipe books. He picked up each one in turn, flicking through each methodically in the hope, futile he knew, that Jake Arnold had kept his programmes tucked inside for some obscure reason. Well, Delia was famously a supporter of Norwich City FC. But no. Nothing. He then started to go through the drawers and cupboards. Cutlery, crockery, glasses, tinned food, dry food, saucepans, a wok, another kettle, still in its box.

‘Alleluia!’ Wilson turned, surprised by the sudden and high-pitched shout of his colleague. She was standing just behind him in the doorway, and her right hand brandished her discovery. ‘Six programmes, all from last season.’

‘They were in the bathroom?’ Wilson felt a little cheated that it had not be he who found them.

‘Four home games and two away. They were on the chest of drawers by the loo. Under the leaflets on depression, self-harm and hearing voices. A choice of reading for the happy crapper!’

Wilson grinned despite his unreasonable irritation. ‘Two down and one to go then.’

When DI Holden’s phone rang only ten minutes after her brief conversation with Don Alexander, her first reaction was to ignore it, but she knew she couldn’t. On the third ring she picked it up and immediately heard an all too familiar voice. She immediately began to count silently to ten. ‘Sorry darling,’ her mother gushed. ‘You know how I don’t like to bother you at work but, well, I’ve had an idea.’

Her daughter, who had now reached ten, continued her silent count on towards twenty.

‘Hello?’ her mother had said. ‘Can you hear me Susan?’

Fifteen ... sixteen ... ‘Yes Mother, I can hear you.’

‘Well do you want to hear my idea? Its about your case!’

Nineteen ... twenty. ‘Yes Mother,’ she fibbed, ‘I’d like to hear your idea. But,’ she added, still in untruth mode, ‘I do have a meeting very shortly.’

‘Well, assert you authority,’ she barked. ‘Make them wait. They’ll respect you more for it. Anyway, this is my idea. Only, I bet you’ll think it’s a silly one.’

Susan recognized the game. ‘Tell me mother, just tell me.’

‘After all, who am I but a silly old woman who knows nothing of the world of real crime and—’

‘Cut the self-pity, Mother, and just tell me your idea.’ Again, there was silence – at both ends of the phone conversation. Susan took in a deep breath of air through her nose, held it, and then expelled it through her mouth. ‘Please!’ she added firmly.

‘All right,’ came the grudging reply. ‘If you’re sure.’ But this time there was no further dramatic pause. ‘I woke up in the middle of the night, three o’clock it was, and so I got up and made a cup of tea. There I was, sitting at the kitchen table nibbling on a ginger nut, when it came to me. You see, there are three deaths. The first one may or not have been suicide, but the second and third ones were murder. And they were both killed by the same person. We can be certain of that because the murderer then went and searched both their homes. Now, all three dead persons were connected by the day centre but one was a worker, another attended the day centre as a patient or client or whatever you call it, and the third one went along to the anger management group. They weren’t all three best buddies or anything. Sarah had a dependent relationship with Jake. Jake had a fling with Martin.’