Blood on the Marsh (DI Susan Holden 3)

‘Are you?’ The smile flickered briefly again across his face and then was gone. ‘I take a broader view. Anyway, as I was saying, she was a nice old lady. She came here about six months ago. There was nothing that was immediately terminal with her, no tumours, no cancer, just the onset of heart failure that would have eventually ended in death.’

‘Did you give her any morphine?’

‘No.’ His reply was emphatic. Perhaps too much so.

‘A significant level of morphine was found in her system.’

‘I do know that,’ he said sharply. ‘I’ve read the autopsy report, and I know the significance of the level found.’

‘So how did it get there?’

‘How on earth should I know?’

‘So you didn’t prescribe her any morphine?’

‘There would be a record if I had.’

Holden changed tack. ‘What was the quality of her life, would you say?’

‘Not as good as it should have been.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Quality of life isn’t just about physical health. It’s about emotional and mental health too. She wasn’t loved, Inspector, not by her son and not by her daughter-in-law. If they had loved her …’ He paused, and scratched at his ear, from which, Holden had already noticed, there grew a substantial amount of hair. ‘There was no real need for her to come here when she did. Not in my view. With the right level of support from her family, she would have been fine outside, but they couldn’t be bothered.’

‘Did she sometimes get pain?’

‘I expect so, yes. Certainly discomfort. She had her good days and her bad days.’

Holden stood up, and walked over to the window, looking out again at the cars. The doctor’s was an old Volvo estate, P-reg. She had seen him drive it in. She turned to face him.

‘How often do you prescribe morphine for patients?’

‘Only when they are in pain.’

‘And you never prescribed it for Nanette?’

‘I thought I had already made that clear.’

‘But she got some, didn’t she? That’s a fact. That’s why she’s dead.’

It was Featherstone’s turn to stand up now. He was barely taller than her, and they stood face to face, like two boxers sizing each other up. ‘I do hope you’re not accusing me of anything?’ He almost hissed the words.

‘Certainly not,’ she replied.

It wasn’t until three o’clock that afternoon that Fox and Holden stood at the main entrance to a block of flats in Blackbird Leys Road. It stood tall and graceless in the grey light, overlooking the much maligned Blackbird Leys estate, convenient for the buses into Oxford city centre, for the community centre across the road, and for the parade of shops at the end of Cuddesdon Way. Fox pressed the number 13 bell, and when a disembodied and almost indecipherable female voice answered, he pushed open the door. They took the lift, but said nothing as they rose to the fourth floor. There was graffiti on the walls and the light in the ceiling flickered erratically. Fox smiled. His Uncle Jim had lived here in the 1980s, a fat jovial man with serious body odour problems, and a passion for fish and chips, liberally sprinkled with vinegar. Fox could almost smell them, pungent and compulsive.

The lift juddered to a halt. Fox led the way out, and knocked on a tired green door immediately opposite them. Several seconds passed before there was a scrabbling sound from within. The door opened to reveal a woman of almost identical height to Holden. Her hair was thick and red, there was a stud in her right nostril, and she wore a black three-quarter-length coat. A striped red and grey scarf was draped around her neck.

‘Sorry,’ she gasped, as if in explanation, ‘I only just got back.’

Holden presented her ID. ‘I presume you’re Bella Sinclair?’

‘Yes.’ She turned without any further comment, leaving them to make their own way in. She sat down on a black sofa – a DFS special, Fox reckoned, from at least ten New Year sales ago – still in her coat, and waited. The flat, Fox couldn’t help noticing, smelt, not of smoke or food or burnt toast, but of an indecipherable flower smell. Was that what she had been doing while she kept them waiting, spraying air freshener in the hope of convincing them that the flat really wasn’t that dirty?

Holden was already making a start. ‘We need to ask you a few questions about Nanette Wright.’

‘So you said on the phone. But why? She just died, didn’t she, like old people do?’