Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

One might have expected – and Ruth almost certainly did – that Whiting would have told his employee how brown she looked and asked if she had a fabulous holiday. But in fact Whiting pushed past Ruth without so much as a greeting, and instead gave half a wave and all of his attention to the man standing on the far side of the room. ‘Sorry, Bicknell,’ he said. ‘I got held up. Just couldn’t get away.’

Bicknell looked at him with a face that told both Whiting and Ruth that he was not impressed: ‘I hope you’re not pissing me about, Whiting, because let me tell you that you’re not the only fish in the sea.’

‘Come, come!’ Whiting replied, as if he was soothing a small child. ‘The last thing I wanted to do was keep you waiting. Heaven forbid. Now, why don’t we go and discuss things over a drink. There’s a new wine bar just opened up the road.’

‘Hello Danny.’

Danny Flynn was sitting on a red moulded plastic chair, looking absent-mindedly out of the window. The voice, a female one, seemed to come from somewhere away to his left. He didn’t recognize it, so he knew it must be real. His own voices were, with one exception, always male, and nearly always harsh, demanding and insistent. This new voice matched none of these descriptions. For several seconds he continued to look out of the window while his mind – which seemed to have been operating in slow motion ever since he arrived here (wherever here was, he couldn’t quite be sure) – processed his thoughts. Eventually, he turned to see to whom the voice belonged.

He frowned. The woman who stood there was no one he recognized. Her hair was short and blonde, she was wearing a bright pink T-shirt and jeans, and she had a small gold-coloured handbag dangling on a long strap from her shoulder. She looked a bit like the girl who sometimes served behind the bar in the Cricketers, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t her. Or maybe she was the girl from the chemist, only she was always heavily made up, whereas the person standing in front of him was anything but. Not even lipstick, and certainly no mascara or whatever else it was that girls put around their eyes.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘I’m Jan,’ she said in that same soft voice. And she smiled. He liked that. It was a really friendly smile.

‘I don’t think I know anyone called Jan.’

‘No, we’ve never met,’ she said. She had decided that honesty – though she wasn’t sure about total honesty – was the best approach. It was certainly the approach she felt most comfortable with. That was her parent’s fault. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, conscious that she needed to steer the conversation. He looked, as she had been, at the white bandage that swathed the wrist and lower part of his left arm. He lifted it up and moved it slowly around while he inspected it. They had done a good job, Lawson concluded silently, not a trace of blood to be seen. Flynn allowed his arm to subside back to a resting position.

‘It aches,’ he said flatly. Then he leant forward. ‘I think,’ he said in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘they’ve given me something. You know, drugs or something.’

‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, Danny?’ she said, in that same caressing voice.

‘Are you from the social services?’ he asked.

‘No!’ she said.

‘So who are you?’

She paused, but only for a millisecond. What the hell? She was her parents’ daughter. ‘I’m in the police. A constable. Lowest of the low. I’m out of uniform because my boss reckoned you wouldn’t talk to the police. But what does she know? She’s only been in the force ten years.’

She fell silent and waited. If Danny freaked now, that would be it. Her first day out of uniform would be her last. A life of traffic control and male chauvinism beckoned. And all because she thought she knew better than DI Holden.

‘Open your bag,’ he said, his voice a little stronger than before.

Lawson bit back the urge to ask why. Instead, she slipped the bag off her shoulder and opened it. Then she stepped forward and gave it to him. ‘Take a look,’ she said, ‘but there’s nothing very exciting.’

He took the bag, and very carefully began to take the contents out one by one, inspecting each as he did so: a purse, which he opened and then, after a brief examination of its contents, closed; a pack of paper hankies; a tampon; a small bottle of toilet water; and a biro. It was this last item which interested him most – he clicked it one, two, three times, then ran it across the back of his hand to see if it worked (it did), before finally dismantling it, checking each piece, and then putting it back together. This took at least five minutes, and all this time Lawson remained silent. Finally he passed the bag back to her.

‘How do I know you’re not lying?’ he asked.

‘You don’t,’ she said. ‘But maybe this will help.’ And she pushed her hand into her back pocket, drew out her identity card, and handed it to him. He looked at it, this time only briefly, before handing it back.

‘You remind me of my sister.’

She nodded in acknowledgement. ‘What’s her name?’

‘She’s dead,’ he said.

‘Oh!’ Lawson was taken aback by this, and briefly at a loss to know how to continue.

‘A car accident,’ he said simply.

‘I’m sorry!’ She was conscious that this was a feeble response, but what else do you say? ‘Really sorry.’

But Flynn was already moving on in his head. ‘These questions you want to ask – are they on the record?’

‘No, definitely not. There’s just me and you, no one else to witness anything you say. It’s just a chat. OK?’ She paused, waiting to see how he reacted, but he sat there unmoving and silent. She frowned, and then she said something that as soon as she heard herself say it, made her flinch in surprise. ‘I promise you, on my heart.’ Where the heck had that come from? On my heart! What was she saying?