Blood in Grandpont (DI Susan Holden 2)

‘God!’ Lawson said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Taking the name of the Lord in vain, that would have met with her father’s loud disapproval. But there was no mistaking what the artist had depicted. ‘It’s a noose.’

‘So?’

‘Judas hanged himself.’

‘Don’t tell me I am in the presence of a policewoman who attended Sunday school. That would be unusual.’

Lawson was tempted to tell her that Sunday School was a rather old-fashioned expression, but she knew it wouldn’t be polite. Children’s groups was what they had been called where she had come from. Instead, she shrugged and merely said, ‘My father was a vicar.’

‘Ah!’ Dr Bennett took off her oval glasses and rubbed them with a handkerchief that manifested itself as if by magic in her hand. ‘You didn’t want to become a woman of the cloth?’

Lawson made a choking noise that could have been a laugh killed at birth, and her faced flushed red.

‘I doubt this scene is one you’ve ever come across in Sunday School, though,’ Dr Bennett continued.

‘No,’ Lawson said. She was leaning forward again, her attention fully directed towards the painting. She would have liked to be able to answer the question, but she was stumped. She turned towards her mentor, and rather irritably admitted defeat. ‘So if one of the women is his mother, who is the other one?’

‘Ah!’ Dr Bennett said again. She was looking, not at the painting, but at Lawson, a twinkle in her eyes. She liked the girl. She liked her enthusiasm, and intensity, and even her impatience. Her uncle had this expression that he would trot out: the wildest colts made the best horses. Well, it applied to fillies too.

‘I believe,’ Dr Bennett said eventually, her voice betraying her considerable excitement, ‘she is Mary, the mother of Jesus.’

‘That’s not in the Bible,’ Lawson said firmly.

‘No,’ came the soft reply. ‘I don’t suppose it is.’

Later, after she had returned Elizabeth Bennett back to her house, where she guiltily accepted the offer of a cup of tea with a piece of leftover birthday cake before returning to Cowley Station, Detective Constable Lawson brought her boss up to date. Holden listened without interruption, her concentration intense. Throughout it, her right hand fiddled incessantly with the left collar of her blouse. It was a mannerism Lawson had never noticed before, and she found it oddly disturbing. When Lawson fell silent, Holden nodded, fmally let go of her collar, and leant back, straightening her shoulders and stretching herself.

‘You haven’t said who the artist was?’

‘Dr Bennett didn’t know. Whoever painted it didn’t sign it. Maybe, because of the subject matter, he wanted to be incognito.’

‘Or she!’

‘Or she,’ Lawson repeated, accepting the correction. ‘Technically, it’s not of the greatest quality. Looking at the frame, she thought maybe nineteenth century.’

‘To cut to the chase, how much does the estimable Dr Bennett think the painting would have been worth in its undamaged state?’

Lawson straightened herself in her seat, subconsciously mimicking her superior. ‘She didn’t want to be tied down to that. She’s says she an art historian, not a valuation expert, but you’re talking at least four figures, possibly five. Sterling.’

‘I see. And in its current state?’

‘Less, obviously. She said it’s amazing what a top-notch restorer can achieve. To you or me, it could be made to look like it had never happened. But you’re probably talking about five to six thousand for a top-quality repair job.’

Holden stood up and walked over to the window. The Oxford Road was surprisingly quiet. She placed her hands behind her neck, then pressed her elbows back, trying to release some of the tension in her shoulders. It was valuable enough for Maria Tull to have wanted some of the action. She could see that. But was it worth murdering for? Was it really valuable enough for someone to kill her and Jack Smith and maybe Dominic Russell too? She couldn’t really see it. But what was the alternative? Dominic murdered Maria Tull and Jack Smith to get the painting, and then had such guilt that he slashed the picture and committed suicide? That seemed even less likely. Which left what? She turned round, to be confronted by Lawson, still sitting there, her hands gripping the hand-written notes at which she had been glancing throughout their meeting.

Holden looked at her watch. ‘OK, bring your colleagues up to date will you, and remind Fox he’s driving me to Geraldine Payne’s later on. And ask him to allow time for a stop at a florist’s on the way.’

‘So you want to know about Sarah and me, do you? Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. Everyone likes a bit of gossip, don’t they!’

Geraldine Payne asked the question almost before they were sat down. Holden and Fox had agreed to interview her at her flat, or rather – as she had made clear – the flat she was renting just until her house in Brook Street was ready for her to move in. Last time, when she had wanted something from the police, she had stormed down to the Cowley station like a heat-seeking missile homing in on its target, but now that the boot was on the other foot, she had insisted on them coming to her. ‘Not to my surgery!’ she had stated, as if it was up to her to set the boundaries or what was and wasn’t possible. ‘I don’t want you upsetting my patients. Come to my flat. Lucy can re-jig my appointments so I get off a bit early. Let’s say 4.30 in St Thomas’s Street.’

And so, here they were at 4.35 p.m. with Geraldine Payne doing her damnedest to call the shots.

‘You could start by telling us about Saturday,’ Holden replied evenly. She wasn’t flustered by the woman, and she wasn’t fooled either. Geraldine knew perfectly well from their earlier telephone conversation why they had come to question her. And Holden had no doubt that Geraldine and Sarah had spoken to each other, discussing tactics, agreeing times, and all that sort of thing. Even so, she still needed to interview her, and get her evidence down on the record. And you never knew what else might pop up. But that ironically was what Holden was worried about. Geraldine was part of the lesbian and gay network that Karen had long been part of, and Karen and she had even had a brief relationship. So Holden couldn’t help but wonder if Geraldine might not exploit that if things got tricky.

‘She came to see me,’ Geraldine began. ‘She arrived at about eight o’clock, and she left just after nine thirty. She said she was going to see Alan Tull.’

‘And why did she come to see you?’