Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

‘There are eight flats in the side road opposite the car park. I spoke to residents of five of them in person, and managed to contact two others by phone. Obviously, I asked them about their neighbours too, so that I could cross-check the evidence. There are just two men and one woman who appear to jog. A couple who by all accounts always go out together in matching navy blue tracksuits, and a man who admits to running in the mornings before he goes to work, and who says he never wears tracksuit bottoms, merely shorts, because he doesn’t like to overheat. He’s about five feet eleven, so size rules him out anyway.’

‘So, there’s no one living there who matches our mystery jogger?’ Holden asked for confirmation.

‘No.’

‘What about you, Sergeant?’

‘Interesting developments, I think, Guv.’ He paused as he sought to organize his thoughts, but this provoked a glare of irritation from Holden. ‘That is to say, Guv, that Blunt twice made phone calls to Sarah Johnson’s mobile, on the Sunday and then the Tuesday before her death. The first one took about two minutes, the second about three. I’ve also spoken to Adrian Radcliffe and he said Anne did have a grey tracksuit.’ He stopped, having said all he had to say.

Silence descended. Each of them was temporarily lost in private, yet similar, thoughts. Blunt had known Anne Johnson too. Blunt had known about Bicknell’s plans. Blunt. It all led back to Blunt.

‘OK,’ Holden said eventually. ‘I’ll say it how I see it, and you shoot me down. The question, first, is quite simple: did Sarah Johnson commit suicide or was she murdered? And if she was murdered, was it Blunt or her sister who did it? Suicide has been presumed because of Sarah’s mental health issues. The timing of her death may be explained by Bicknell’s blue plaque, or by the distress caused by the early morning visit of her sister with whom she didn’t get on. However,’ Holden continued, ‘a case for murder can equally be made out. First, we have an unknown person dressed in a grey hooded tracksuit leaving the scene of the murder. This person was not a local resident. The side-street from which he or she emerged is a cul-de-sac. Either this person is a genuine jogger who ran into the cul-de-sac – but how likely is that? – or this person was someone who had just participated in or at least watched Sarah’s death? From a size point of view, the figure is too slight for Blunt, so my best guess is that it is Anne Johnson. What do we know about Anne Johnson? That she lies when it suits her: she denied being in Oxford at all until we produced cast-iron evidence from the car park CCTV; that she didn’t get on with her sister; that her sister, who owned a flat worth a considerable amount of money was planning on changing her will, probably to Anne’s disadvantage. This gives Anne motive for murder, quite apart from any sibling relationship problems that the two of them may have had. But to this we have to add Bicknell. Bicknell, we now know, told Blunt all about it, even down to discussing when exactly he should do it. Blunt killed four persons who were involved in the death of his girlfriend, and the fifth one was Sarah. Yet when I asked him if he killed Sarah, he denied it, and when I asked if he was there when she fell, he laughed. We also know Blunt made two phone calls to Anne. He could have met her; maybe it was Anne whom Danny saw kissing Blunt, not Sarah. Personally, I believe these are connections, not just coincidences. How did Blunt find out about who was in the vehicle that caused the death of his girlfriend? Well, from Sarah, surely. Eventually, she had to tell someone, and Blunt seemed a safe man to tell. Only he wasn’t. Around the same time, he is put in touch with Anne by Sarah. They speak on the phone, and maybe they meet too and develop a relationship. Blunt also comes across Bicknell, and learns about his plaque idea, and suddenly he realizes he has an opportunity to get rid of Sarah and make it look like suicide. So he helps Anne set up her alibi. She arrives and then leaves from the car park. Probably she parks a distance away down the Iffley Road, pulls a hooded top and tracksuit trousers over her other clothes, and goes back to the car park. She rings her sister saying she can’t find her car keys. Her sister finds them hidden under a magazine or something, and heads for the car park. She stops at the suicide plaque – where Bicknell, of course, photographs her – and finally gets to the top, where Anne, perhaps helped by Blunt, pushes her over the wall. Anne goes down the stairway, and goes out into the cul-de-sac to avoid the CCTV, but is caught on Bicknell’s other camera.’ Finally Holden stopped talking, and looked around for a response. Fox immediately took the lead.

‘It’s a good theory, Guv. Hell, it’s so good, I think I believe it, but the only problem is the evidence. It’s all circumstantial. What is the evidence? An intention to change a will? A not very good photo of a hooded person? An alibi that we can undermine, but not disprove. The fact that Blunt kissed and may have had an intimate relationship with Sarah, or was it Anne, and the witness of this is in any case a man with a history of paranoia. Hell, it just won’t wash in a court of law.’ He paused. ‘Sorry,’ he added, ‘but I have to say it how I see it.’

Holden nodded, and then looked at the others. ‘Wilson, Lawson, how about you?’

Wilson looked down, unwilling to enter the fray. Lawson, sensing it, took up the challenge. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m afraid I think Fox has got it about right. Sarah was murdered, but we can’t prove it.’

‘Quite,’ Holden agreed. ‘The only person who knows for certain what happened is Anne.’

‘So we need to apply some pressure,’ Fox said. ‘We’ve come all this way. We can’t just leave it.’

‘Look!’ said Lawson eagerly. ‘Anne doesn’t know that we know that she and Blunt know each other. She probably doesn’t know that we know about Blunt and Bicknell. Maybe that’s where we can apply some pressure?’

Holden pursed her lips. ‘OK,’ she said eventually. ‘let’s give it a try.’

‘So, how can I help you?’ Anne Johnson asked mildly. She sat one side of the table in the interview room, directly opposite DI Holden, arms folded neatly on her lap, her face a picture of unconcern. DS Fox sat on Holden’s right, but no one sat on Anne’s left. With a quizzical smile she had politely declined the opportunity to have a solicitor present. ‘I don’t suppose this will take long, will it?’ she had said.

‘Do you own a grey tracksuit, Miss Johnson?’ Holden didn’t see that anything could be gained by any pleasantries.

‘No!’ Anne replied.

‘Are you sure?’

‘My tracksuit is red.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Yes, I wore it yesterday.’

‘Dr Adrian Ratcliffe tells me you have a grey one.’

‘I can assure you I don’t have a grey tracksuit.’ She spoke firmly, even confidently.

‘He’s prepared to swear a statement to the effect that you have.’

She laughed. ‘I gave it away.’

‘When?’

‘What does it matter? When a charity bag came through the door. It was getting scruffy, so I stuffed it into the bag along with a load of other clothes, and put it out to be collected the next day.’

Holden paused, and then glanced towards Fox. He pulled a photo out of a folder lying in front of him, and pushed it across the table. ‘Is this you,’ he said.

Anne looked at it carefully, then looked up, a smile across her lips. ‘Is that the best you’ve got? It could be anyone, couldn’t it? Well, not you, Sergeant. It’s obviously not someone as big as you. But out of the population of Oxford, I guess there would be thousands of possible suspects.’

He stared at her bleakly. ‘With modern digital techniques, you’d be amazed what detail we can get from a photo like this.’