Blood in Grandpont (DI Susan Holden 2)

‘We think it’s Jack Smith,’ Holden had said on the phone. Pointer understood the reason for that note of uncertainty as soon as she walked into the kitchen area. Whereas the death of Maria Tull had been a remarkably tidy affair – two clean knife wounds and no huge emission of blood – the sight which greeted her was diametrically different. The body of Jack Smith, if Jack Smith it turned out to be, was lying twisted and sprawling on his back, and his blood was everywhere. It had spurted, splashed and run across the floor like some childish work of abstract art; in addition, a gigantic crimson rose appeared to have burst through his T-shirt, and two pools of blood had formed a macabre pair of oversized sunglasses on his face. For several seconds Pointer stood and looked, not because she needed that length of time to plan her strategy, but because she was trying to absorb the ferocity of what was in front of her and then cast it aside, so that she could get on and do her work. She knew she would never get used to brutal death. At least she hoped so, for if she did, what would that say about her own state of mind? She wanted always to feel, and yet her job demanded detachment. Perhaps, she told herself silently, this was not a job to do for life. But right now, this was what she did, so she put her black case down on a dilapidated work surface, next to a drill, and opened it with a click. ‘I’ll need a bit of time with this one,’ she said firmly, ‘and I could do with some extra lighting too.’

‘Sergeant Fox will deal with that,’ Holden said. ‘I’m going to talk to Geraldine.’

Geraldine Payne was in the front room, sitting on the edge of a brown leather sofa, the only substantial piece of furniture in the room. An empty pine bookcase stood to the left of the chimney breast, and otherwise the only other pieces were two wooden kitchen chairs, on one of which Detective Constable Lawson was sitting. Lawson stood up, but Payne continued to stare fixedly at the Victorian fireplace, apparently unaware of Holden, who walked over to the empty chair, moved it nearer Payne, and sat down.

‘Would you rather we talked later?’

There was no reply, though Payne’s eyes did flicker briefly.

‘Or shall we get it over with now?’

‘Let’s get it over with,’ came the whisper.

‘OK,’ came the unhurried response. ‘Tell me what happened.’

Again the eyes flickered, but this time with alarm. ‘What do you mean? He was dead when I arrived!’

‘I know,’ Holden said firmly, mentally kicking herself as she did so. ‘What I meant was tell me what you can about the circumstances. What time did you arrive? Was the door locked or unlocked? Did you notice anything unusual?’

In response, Payne emitted a sudden, hysterical laugh, and began to rock forwards and backwards on the sofa. ‘You mean, apart from a dead body?’

‘Just take your time.’

For maybe thirty or forty seconds, Geraldine Payne did just that, stumbling erratically from laughter to sobbing to silence, but when finally she did speak, it all came rolling out in the proverbial torrent, words crashing and bursting until there was no energy left. ‘I left the surgery at five-thirty. I wanted to call in here and see how he was getting on. Well, I don’t trust him any more, not since he fucked that Italian whore and gave her my painting. But I was damned if he was going to leave me in the lurch. He’d agreed to re-plumb the house, and he was damn well going to, and when he was finished I was going to withhold half his fee to teach the bastard a lesson. I didn’t tell him, of course, but that was what I was going to do. It would have served him right. But first I popped across the road to the Playhouse and got a couple of tickets for the Chekhov, and then I walked here. It’s not too far. Twenty minutes maybe, and I needed the exercise after a day bent over patients. When I arrived, the lights were on and the front door was unlocked. Well, do workmen ever lock front doors? I thought he must still be working, but when I got in the hallway and called him there was no reply. So I went through to the kitchen because I could see the lights were on through there.’ She stopped and gulped, as she recalled the moment. ‘And he was there, on the floor, and there was all this blood. Christ!’ She shuddered.

Holden waited for a few seconds, allowing her time to recover, and then gently probed again. ‘What did you do next?’

‘What do you think I did?’ There was sharpness in her voice, a sharpness which reminded Holden of their previous encounter, in the police station. ‘I rang 999!’

‘Did you touch the body? Check it for a pulse maybe?’

Geraldine Payne looked across as her questioner, with a look which made it clear that she thought the woman must be out of her head. ‘It was patently obvious he was dead. I didn’t need to check for a bloody pulse.’

‘Quite,’ Holden agreed. There was nothing more she was going to gain by prolonging the interview. ‘Do you know his wife?’ she said as she stood up.

‘His wife?’ There was a pause, then a short incredulous laugh. ‘Why? Do you think she did it?’

Holden didn’t answer the question at the time, but later, as Lawson drove her across town to Jack Smith’s house, to break the news to his wife, she tossed the question around in her head. Her first assumption was that his death must be connected to the missing painting, but on the other hand Maria and Jack had had an affair, even if it had been the one-off fling which Jack Smith had claimed. But suppose his wife had found out, then that sure as hell gave her a motive to have killed them both. It would be interesting to see how she reacted to the news.

Dinah Smith was a big woman. When she opened the front door, her body filled its frame, blocking much of the light from within so that Holden and Lawson both stood in her shadow, briefly nonplussed. Everything about her was big, from her broad shoulders and her voluminous breasts to her bulbous hands and tree-trunk legs. She was a woman whom you could imagine mud wrestling or playing in the scrum in a woman’s rugby team in her spare time, while in working life she was built for the role of prison warder, one who could control the most troublesome of female prisoners – or male ones too, come to think of it – with a single terrorizing glance. Which was why it seemed so incongruous to Holden that she took the news of her husband’s death so badly. It wasn’t that Holden expected her to react with indifference, but the wailing she emitted when she was told that her husband had been murdered was of extraordinary intensity. Holden felt herself almost physically engulfed by the blizzard of

her grief. There was nothing to do except wait for the storm to pass. Eventually it did, but when Lawson offered Dinah Smith a handkerchief, she waved it away.

‘Who on earth would have wanted to kill him?’ she said, in an incredulous tone of voice. ‘Do you think it was a thief?’

Holden’s first thought was that this was a curious thing to say. She had told Dinah that her husband had been stabbed with a knife, but she had deliberately given no more detail. So why didn’t Dinah ask more about how he died? That’s what she would have expected someone in her position to ask, normally. Except, she told herself, this wasn’t a normal situation. Being told that your husband has been murdered is in no sense normal. Holden knew that really, but even so she logged the woman’s response away in her head for future consideration, and then answered her question. ‘There’s no sign of anything having been stolen. And to be honest, there’s not much in the house worth stealing. A few pieces of furniture, but nothing in the way of ornaments or silver or electronic devices.’

‘But who would have wanted to kill him?’ She repeated the question in a voice that implied absolute incomprehension. ‘Who?’

Holden cleared her throat. She ought to leave this till the next day, till the woman had had a chance to get over her shock, assuming it was shock, but this was a second death and there were no prizes to be won by being nice, or skipping awkward questions. ‘We understand your husband had an affair with Maria Tull.’

Dinah looked at her, her mouth half-open in astonishment. Then, as if in slow motion, it began to close until the upper and lower lips met, compressing against each other until they had twisted into a snarl. At the same time, the wide-open eyes narrowed into the darkest of slits. In a matter of seconds, she was transformed.

‘You think it was me.’ The words hissed out of her mouth, and she stabbed a finger at Holden. ‘You bloody cow! You think I killed my own husband. What sort of woman are you?’ She was shouting now, and on her feet, and towering over Holden.

‘I don’t think anything.’ Holden tried to speak in a calm, reassuring voice, but she wasn’t at all sure she was managing it. ‘I can assure you of that. I know this is difficult for you—’

‘You know shit!’ she snapped, cutting across Holden. ‘You know nothing about me and Jack, nothing about our relationship.’