Blood in Grandpont (DI Susan Holden 2)

‘We haven’t got the evidence,’ Holden snapped. She was angry that a brainstorming session was so quickly degenerating into a personal battle. Whatever their differences, they clearly hadn’t sorted them out in her absence. ‘That’s why we’re trying to bounce ideas around, preferably without you two scrapping like kids in the playground. But Lawson’s first point is a good one. So let’s run some checks against Dominic Russell and his business. See if there’s any evidence he’s got financial problems.’

She paused. She was tempted to bring the session to a premature close, but she was conscious there was other ground to cover. But in any event, Lawson had something else to say.

‘Guv, we’ve also got the evidence of Jack Smith’s phone calls.’

Holden looked at Lawson hard. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Sorry, Guv, but what with everything that went on yesterday, I only got round to going through his phone properly this morning.’

‘But you got it from Dr Pointer yesterday morning!’

Lawson swallowed. ‘Well, I suppose I got a bit distracted by the photo of the painting, and then we went to D.R. Antiquities, so I only did a thorough check this morning just before we went on the house to house.’

‘OK, Lawson, that’s enough excuses. So you’ve written your findings down, have you?’

‘I sent them to you by email, Guv.’

‘Do you think I’ve time to be checking my email every five minutes, Lawson. If there’s anything important, you should tell me.’

‘Sorry, Guv. It’s just that I don’t know if it’s important, but it is evidence of sorts.’

‘Lawson,’ Holden said, with a suddenly – and dangerously – quiet voice. ‘What is this evidence that you’ve emailed me? Do you think you could give us all a quick resumé or do I have to go and sit down at my PC in order to find out?’

Lawson flushed, and she replied with eyes not quite meeting her boss’s. ‘Jack Smith received a phone call from the Tulls’ home number on Wednesday at 7.55 a.m.’

There was not so much a silence at this point as a hiatus. The world, or at least the room, stopped dead for several moments as the three other detectives in the room assimilated this news into their understanding.

‘Hey,’ Wilson piped up, ‘that’s only a few hours before he was killed!’ On another day, or perhaps if they had been uttered from the lips of a less guileless person than Wilson, these words would have been petrol sprayed over a smouldering fire. But somehow there was no explosion. Fox jumped in, unusually sensitive to the currents swirling around in the room. ‘To be fair,’ he said in deadpan tones, ‘it could be nothing. If your heating has broken down overnight, or something’s leaking, that’s the time you’d ring your plumber.’

‘Or,’ said Holden, ‘it’s the time you might ring on a pretext in order to find out where your murder victim is going to be later that day.’

‘Agreed,’ he replied instantly. It was the first thought that he had had. ‘But we can easily check if the Tulls did have a plumbing problem.’

‘We can and we will,’ Holden concluded. ‘In fact, the Tulls are due a visit. None of them had a watertight alibi for Maria’s death, so we need to check their movements for the time of Jack’s death. That way, with a bit of luck, we might be able to rule some of them out.’

‘Do you want to do it here?’ Fox said.

Holden looked at her watch. ‘The chances are Dr Tull and Lucy are both at work, so why don’t we see if we can call round when they are all at home later this afternoon. Wilson, can you fix that? Start with Dr Tull, see if it’s OK with him, and then track down the others.’

In the event, Dr Tull turned out to have a 2.00 p.m. clinic that afternoon, and by the time Wilson rang there were only three patients waiting to be seen, so Dr Tull suggested the police come round to his house at 4.30. He insisted he would ring his children and make sure they were there too. He put the phone down with a sigh, conscious he had been slightly duplicitous; he had no intention of getting them home before 5.00 p.m. because he wanted to get his interview over and done with first.

‘So,’ Holden was saying, ‘we just need to know where you were between 12.00 noon and 2.00 p.m. yesterday.’

They were sitting in Dr Tull’s study – Dr Tull, DI Holden, and DS Fox, while the two detective constables waited in the hallway for Dr Tull’s offspring to arrive.

‘I see,’ Dr Tull replied, rubbing his cheeks between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. ‘I had surgery from 9 o’clock till about 11.15. I then made a couple of phone calls, following up on a couple of my patients, and then made a home visit on Cumnor Hill. A Major Johnson. It must have been about twelve by the time I finished, so I decided to go for a walk. My only commitment on a Wednesday afternoon is paperwork, so there was no rush to get back.’

‘Where did you walk?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I just put my case back in the car – in the boot that is, out of sight – and I walked.’ He paused, and then, as if realizing more was expected, continued. ‘I just needed some time out. On my own.’ There was another short silence. ‘Time not to think, as it were. After Maria’s death and everything, I just needed time out. Go walkabout. Isn’t that what the Australian Aborigines do?’ He took a white handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose.

‘Wasn’t it rather wet for walking?’ It was a casually asked question, but not a casual one.

He looked at Holden with a look of slight bemusement. ‘Probably. I’m not sure that was at the forefront of my mind. But I had my raincoat with me.’

‘Did you meet anyone you know while you were walking?’ Again a simple question, but with considerable significance. A significance that he would surely be aware of, Holden reckoned. She didn’t bu

y this puzzled, I-don’t-know-where-I-am-half-the-time act, not from a GP who was still attending his patients diligently despite his grief.