Blood in Grandpont (DI Susan Holden 2)

‘So, where did you get it?’

‘That’s my business.’

It was the sort of sullen response that was designed to irritate. Holden’s mouth tightened, and the vein down the left side of her head began to throb. She leant forward and spat her words like a burst from a sub-machine gun. ‘It’s my business too, until I decide it isn’t! So don’t mess me about, Joseph. Where did you get the money from?’

‘You haven’t been selling drugs, Joseph?’ Alan Tull broke in. ‘You promised me you wouldn’t.’

‘No, Dad, I haven’t!’

‘So where did you get the money?’ Holden insisted. She would like to be doing this without Alan Tull in the room, but he had resisted that suggestion, and the key thing was to get some answers out of Joseph now.

‘I was given it.’

‘By whom?’

‘A family friend.’

Holden stood up suddenly, and walked away from the sofa towards the door that led through to the hall. She leant with her back against it, but said nothing. Alan Tull was watching her, alarm in his eyes, while Joseph sat unmoving, resisting the impulse to look round at her, determined to win this battle of wills.

Eventually Holden spoke, quietly but firmly. ‘So you were blackmailing this family friend?’

‘No!’ Joseph twisted round as he said this. ‘I asked her and she gave it to me of her own free will.’

Fox laughed raucously, as if Joseph had just told a crude joke. ‘That’s what they all say, sonny!’

Joseph twisted round, suddenly furious. ‘My name’s not sonny!’ he snarled, as if that was the worst thing that anyone could possibly have said to him.

Holden strode back across the carpet and sat down opposite Joseph Tull again. She wanted to regain control, and she wanted some straight answers, and she wasn’t sure any more winding up from her sergeant would help. She’d stick with the softly, softly approach, at least for now.

‘Look, Joseph,’ she said, ‘you do have to explain to me exactly how you obtained this money. If you prefer to do it without your father present, or indeed with a solicitor present down at the police station, then that is your choice. Otherwise, I’d like you to tell me who gave you the money, and how and why that was.’

‘OK,’ he replied. His lifted his left hand and pushed his long sweep of blond hair back off his face.

‘So, first of all, who gave you the money?’

‘Sarah Russell.’

‘And she gave all £700 of it in one go, did she?’

‘No, she gave me £400 initially, and another £300 later on.’

‘And this was payment for some sort of service that you rendered?’

He laughed. ‘What are you implying? That she was paying me for sex?’ And he laughed again. ‘You must be bloody joking!’

‘I wasn’t implying anything, but it’s a lot of money.’

He smiled, ‘I’d call it guilt money.’

‘Guilt money?’ Holden smiled back. She was making progress. ‘Perhaps you can explain exactly what you mean?’

‘It’s not what you think it is. You see, the fact is I wanted to prove a point. I was out one night, with Hugo Horsefield. He got thrown out of Cornforth, and he was moaning that he just been kicked out of this bar job after only a week because this other guy thought he was a stuck-up git. So I told him he needed to get smarter. And he said what did a tosspot like me know about being smarter. And I said that sometimes you just need to get some leverage on people, and he told me I was talking a load of horse shit, and what did I know about earning money. Anyway, there was a bit more of that sort of thing, and in the end I said that

I bet I could raise more money in a month than he could, no sweat.’

He paused, and looked around as if to assess how what he was saying was being received.

Holden was watching him, her eyes unblinking. She leant forward even more. ‘That’s all very interesting, Joseph, but what about Sarah Russell?’