Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

‘OK’, he said, pursing his lips. ‘Ask away.’

‘Thank you, Danny,’ she said quietly, while her mind desperately sought for the right words. ‘I was wondering, my boss was wondering, well in fact we were all wondering why it was that you were so upset with Jim Blunt.’

Flynn didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he shut his eyes, screwing them tight while he tried to concentrate on that question. Jealousy? Mistrust? Hatred? Well, the first two of those certainly. But hatred? Did he hate Blunt? Yes, perhaps he did. But was that what she wanted to know, this woman with the nice face? Flynn opened his eyes, and looked across at her.

‘They were lovers,’ he said.

‘Lovers?’ Lawson replied, taken by surprise. ‘Who were?’

‘Blunt and Sarah.’

Lawson did not immediately respond. Whatever it was she was expecting Danny to say, it wasn’t this. If he had told her that Blunt was a spy, she would have smiled politely at his paranoia and started to execute a polite exit strategy. But this was

much more unexpected to her, and thus more plausible.

‘Is that what you said to Blunt, that you knew they were lovers?’ she asked.

‘Not exactly,’ he replied. ‘I just told him I knew there was something between them because I’d seen them together two nights before Sarah died. He got really angry.’

‘Danny,’ Lawson said in a confidential tone. ‘I really need you to think very hard about this and to tell me in as much detail as you can about what you saw.’

‘So, you believe me?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said without hesitation, ‘I do. That’s why I want you to tell me all about it.’

‘I saw them at his house. He lives in Bedford Street, and I went round there on the Wednesday night before she fell from the top of the car park.’

‘Why did you go there, Danny, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Because whenever I went to the day centre, he was watching me. Like he was spying on me. Waiting to catch me unawares. So I thought I’d go round and watch him, you know, to get my own back. That Wednesday was the third night I’d been round. There’s a derelict house opposite, which some builders are doing up, so I hid in the front garden behind the hedge and watched. The first night he wasn’t in. I stayed a couple of hours, but he didn’t come home. The next night he was already home when I got there. I saw him through the windows, but he stayed in all evening. And then the next night, he was in as well, only I realized there was someone else there too, and about ten o’clock they came to the door, and I saw them kissing. Him and Sarah. And then she left and walked off up the hill.’

‘Did you follow her Danny?’

‘No!’ he said. ‘I was worried he might see me, so I stayed hidden behind the hedge for maybe ten minutes, and then I went back to my flat.’

‘It must have been quite dark, Danny. Are you absolutely sure it was Sarah?’

‘His hall light was on. I could see them. Don’t you believe me?’

‘Yes,’ she said quickly, too quickly maybe.

‘You don’t believe me, I know,’ he said in a now much raised voice. ‘You think I’m a paranoid nutcase. You’re just like all the others!’ He shouted these last words, and then began to rock backwards and forwards in his chair, hugging himself as he did so. A nurse, alerted by the noise, appeared like some genie in the doorway. ‘It’s time you left,’ he said firmly.

‘So, how did it go?’ The four of them, Holden, Fox, Wilson and Lawson, were sitting in a circle around Holden’s rectangular desk. It was Holden asking the question. She had called Lawson and Wilson in when she heard their animated voices in the corridor, and had summoned Fox via the phone. ‘You start, Lawson,’ she ordered. ‘Tell us how you got on with Danny.’

‘Pretty well, I think.’

Holden made a face. ‘Pretty well? What exactly do you mean by that? It’s not an expression that fills me with confidence.’

‘We got on fine, thank you, Guv,’ Lawson replied, trying but not quite succeeding in looking Holden full in the face. ‘Though to be honest,’ she continued, her eyes now flicking down, ‘we didn’t end that well. In fact, Danny freaked a bit and the nurse suggested that I leave, but before that—’

Holden lifted both hands in the air, as if surrendering. ‘Please, Lawson, why don’t you cut out the bad bits and confine yourself to the good news, such as whatever it was that Danny told you about Blunt, because I assume that with all your charm you managed to hold a conversation with him before he, as you so delicately put it, freaked.’

Lawson swallowed. She glanced across at Wilson, but if she was hoping for some moral support, she was out of luck. He was staring fixedly downwards as if pretending that he wasn’t there. She shrugged, and looked back at Holden. ‘Danny told me that he saw Sarah Johnson at Blunt’s house two nights before her death.’

Holden’s ears pricked up, metaphorically at least. ‘And?’

‘I thought that might be significant.’