Blood in Grandpont (DI Susan Holden 2)

‘Do you want a rinse, Karen?’

Opening her clenched eyes, she realized Geraldine was talking to her. She leant to her side, took a sip from the plastic cup, and swilled the minty green solution around her mouth, before spurting it out into the white whirlpool bowl.

‘Nearly finished, darling. Just lie back while I do a final check.’

She lay back. That was it. She hadn’t thought of that. The cuts were neat and clinical, just as the stab wounds to Maria’s heart and neck had been. They weren’t the emotional slashes of a man who had decided to blow his brains out, surely? It had to be murder. She must tell Susan, give her a ring. It might help. Only Susan didn’t want hunches or guesses from her. She wanted evidence, something definitive. And that was something she couldn’t currently provide.

‘All finished!’ As soon as Geraldine had uttered these words of release, Karen sat up like a jack-in-the-box, anxious to escape the confines of the chair. Geraldine stifled a giggle. ‘Steady up, I’ve just got to lower the seat.’

Karen waited obediently, then clambered out and wiped her mouth with the tissue that Geraldine offered. She turned round to look for a bin, but as she did something happened behind her eyes and a surge of dizziness struck her. She staggered and gave a tiny yelp. Geraldine Payne, alerted, grabbed her with her left arm before she could fall.

‘Steady!’ Her other arm wrapped round her patient, and she pulled her towards herself. They stood there for barely two or three seconds, locked together. Geraldine could feel Karen’s breasts, soft against her own. She smelt the beguiling scent of her freshly shampooed hair, and memories resurfaced. Then, reluctantly, she released her.

‘Are you all right?’ she said hastily. ‘Look, you’d better come and sit down for a few minutes. Lucy can make you a cup of tea. I know it’s been an ordeal for you. But Susan will never forgive me if I let anything happen to you in my surgery.’

Karen Pointer nodded, her head still reeling. ‘Sorry if I was rude earlier.’

‘Forget it,’ the dentist replied brusquely, leading her by the arm. ‘Let’s get you sat down. Then I’ve got more patients to see.’

‘Dr Tull.’ Holden paused, wanting to be sure she had got Alan Tull’s attention. ‘We’re trying to trace what Maria did on that last day, just in case it gives us any clues. I know you were at work, but I wonder if you know what she had planned for that day. Work appointments, or a visit to the hairdresser, maybe?’

‘Gosh, there’s a question. To be honest, I don’t know. Not for certain. She might have been going to see Dominic. They’d been as thick as thieves since she returned from Venice. I noticed that. Not that I told Maria I’d noticed. I didn’t like it. It was all to do with stuff she’d sourced for him in Venice, I expect, but I didn’t like it because Dominic wasn’t exactly the straightest pencil in the pack, if you know what I mean.’

‘Did Maria keep a diary?’ However interesting Tull’s comments were, Holden wanted to keep on her chosen track.

‘Oh, yes, a little blue one.’

‘Do you know where it is?’

Tull frowned. ‘Wasn’t it in her bag? You know that nice bag from Venice that you haven’t yet returned to me.’ It was sharpest comment that Holden had heard him say.

‘You will get the bag back, in due course, sir. But the diary wasn’t in it when we found it. Maybe it’s lying around the house somewhere.’

‘I suppose it could be,’ Tull replied, though he sounded doubtful.

‘Your wife used a computer, did she?’

‘Yes, I bought her a laptop last Christmas.’

‘We need to look at it, if you don’t mind.’

‘Look at it? What on earth for?’

‘In fact, we need to look around generally.’

‘Ah!’ Dr Alan Tull hadn’t become a very respected and successful GP by being a complete fool. ‘So that’s why you’ve come in force. Don’t you need a search warrant?’

Holden nodded, and looked sideways at Fox.

Fox held his hand out. ‘I’ve got one here, actually, sir.’

Tull’s face hardened, and the softly spoken politeness drained from his voice. ‘Well, damn you!’

‘This is so embarrassing. I must be your worst patient.’

‘I wish you were.’

Karen Pointer was sitting on an upright dining chair in a little room off the main waiting room. It was equipped with a kettle, a tray with four mugs on it, a small fridge that hummed away in the corner, and a sink. There were cupboards on the wall facing her, made of stripped pine with frosted glass doors that obscured their contents. Below them were pine shelves, piled with magazines to the left and formidable dental tomes to the right.