Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

‘Mother!’ Susan Holden butted in. She was impressed and appalled at the detailed grasp of the whole business that her mother seemed to have gained from their chats over coffee and down the phone. ‘We talked all about this last night. Now I know you’re keen to help, but I have got a lot of things to do, so if you could just get to your point!’

‘My point, darling, is that the key to this is the relationship between Sarah and Martin. Jake was the middle link if you want, but if you can find out what incident or common interest or emotional bond links those two, well, then your murder’s solved.’

‘Yes,’ said her daughter, conscious that she had to respond somehow. ‘Maybe.’

‘There’s no maybe about it. You mark my words. Anyway, I must go and get ready. I’m meeting Doris in ten minutes.’

‘Going shopping?’ Susan asked, anxious to grasp any opportunity to steer the conversation away from her mother’s big idea.

‘No!’ came the scornful reply. ‘She’s my prayer partner. Didn’t I tell you? We meet once a week to pray for and with each other. Anyway, don’t you worry dear. You’re top of our list.’ And with that, Mrs Holden terminated the phone call.

Les Whiting took the decision not to go into the gallery as he was standing on its doorsteps. He had walked there, as he did every morning. It had taken not much more than ten minutes of vigorous activity, and that had included a couple of enforced stops while he waited for the lights to change, first at the junction just beyond Folly Bridge, and then at the bottom of St Aldate’s where one of the buses coming up from London had swung just a little bit too wide and caused him to nervously hop back a step. It was as he strained a bit harder up the slope to Carfax that his emotions began to pulse as hard as his body. Jake. It had all started so well. He had been attracted to Jake from the moment he had stumbled, wet and bedraggled, into his gallery. They had hit it off immediately, and very quickly their relationship became more than just friendship. For the first time in his life, Les had felt really at one with someone. He didn’t believe in fate or there only being one guy out there in the world for him, or any rubbish like that, but Jake had been special, one in ten thousand if not a million. It had been magic, a real genuinely loving relationship, and Les had begun to dare that this would be the longed-for life partnership that had seemed so elusive.

It was then that there had been the incident at the day centre. Jake had come home from work late. It was almost seven o’clock when he turned up; typically he would be home long before that. And he had promised that he would cook that night, and yet when he came in he was reeking of alcohol and refused to answer any questions. Only later, after leaving half the supper that Les had prepared, and drinking most of the two bottles of wine he had opened, did he tell him about Jim Blunt. Jim bloody Blunt.

Somehow things had changed after that. Les couldn’t put his finger on why. He had listened for hours that night as Jake had told it and retold it, but the next evening, when Les had tried to discuss it again, Jake had blanked him and told him never to mention it again. After that, things between them had been.... What had they been? Different, certainly. Unease had slipped surreptitiously into Les’s head. And close behind had followed suspicion. Les had found himself watching Jake, checking his post, and even sneaking a look at his text messages, and it was during one of these snoops that his suspicions had been justified. Jake was seeing someone else.

Les stood at the doorway. The set of keys for the gallery were in his right hand, but he made no attempt to use them. He looked at his watch. Ruth would be in shortly. Finally back at work after her two weeks in Portugal with that tedious boyfriend of hers. She could hold the fort for a while. Why not? He put the keys back in his right-hand pocket, pulled the mobile out of the left-hand one, and fired off a curt message. ‘Will be late. Take charge. LW’

Then he was headed off down the High Street, though at a slower pace than before. He knew he had to confront Blunt – for the sake of his own peace if nothing else – but he was in no rush to do so. It was odd to be wanting so earnestly to protect a man with whom he had had such a bitter parting. Perhaps it was the guilt he felt that drove him forward down the slow curve of the High, guilt that he had somehow failed Jake when he had most needed him. It was easy to blame others – Blunt or Mace or Jake himself – but Les knew that the fault was his too. Now, as he crossed Magdalen Bridge, he realized that what he sought was redemption, and by hell if he couldn’t obtain it, well it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.

For the third time that week, Anne Johnson answered her sister’s doorbell and found herself face-to-face with Detective Constable Wilson. His pushy WPC was at his back, but Anne Johnson had no intention of letting her force her way in. She smiled frostily as she stood firmly in the middle of the doorway. ‘Not you again!’ She spat the words out as if they were the stones of unripened plums.

‘We need to have a look round your sister’s flat again,’ he said, holding her gaze.

‘It’s not very convenient.’

‘We have a warrant,’ he replied firmly. ‘We’ll try not to make a mess.’

‘Don’t just try!’ she said tartly, but she knew she had no choice. Bicknell had departed with his cameras, so at least there wasn’t the embarrassment of him hanging around in the background. She turned and retreated back inside.

Lawson and Wilson were in the flat less than five minutes. Three Oxford United programmes were quickly located on the bookshelves in the living room, tucked between a large format Know your Lucky Stars book and a coffee table book called, simply, Paris. It was Wilson who found them, and he left the flat absurdly pleased by this fact. Not, of course, that he could have admitted as much, but the fact was that he was beginning to feel distinctly threatened by Lawson.

Fox and Holden travelled from the Cowley Police Station to the Evergreen Day Centre in grim silence. Back at the station, they had disagreed strongly, and tension hung thick and heavy in the air between them. Holden leant back in the passenger seat, closed her eyes, and tried to concentrate on the case, but her mind was in noncooperation mode. It was only a few minutes after she had spoken to her mother that DS Fox had blundered in. ‘I need to speak to you, boss.’

‘Did you knock?’ she had said caustically, but Fox had ignored the question and the other warning signs that a less insensitive man would have identified.

‘Maybe you’re missing the obvious,’ he had stated bluntly.

‘The obvious?’

‘The obvious suspect.’

‘And who would that be?’

‘The man who most obviously links all three of our victims together.’

‘And this man is?’

‘Danny, of course. Danny bloody Flynn.’

‘Why Danny?’ She had spoken calmly, but in reality she was shaken by the blustering aggression of her sergeant. ‘Why not Les Whiting?’ she followed up. ‘If Jake had an affair with Mace, then he had every reason to kill both of them. Or why not Jim Blunt or indeed one of any number of people at the day centre? Anyone in the anger management group is potentially a suspect, I’d have thought.’

‘Danny Flynn was devoted to Sarah. Danny Flynn was jealous of Jake’s relationship with her. Hell, he smashed his car when he saw it parked outside her flat.’

‘And Mace? What reason did he have for burning Mace to death?’

‘He was there, in the crowd of nosey-parkers that morning at the allotment when we found Mace’s body. Maybe he was checking he’d done the job properly.’