Blood on the Marsh (DI Susan Holden 3)

She slammed the door of her locker shut, turned the key in it, put it in her pocket, and turned round. Her audience, she couldn’t help noticing, was still there. ‘How can it be worse for me, you arsehole? You’ve got me suspended. If you’re going to threaten me, you’ll have to try a bit harder than that.’

‘You’ll be unemployable if I’ve anything to do with it.’

‘Really?’ she said, and then allowed her eyes to look past him. She saw alarm register on his face. He turned and saw what she saw.

‘Can I help?’ he snapped angrily, all the veneer of politeness stripped from his voice.

‘So what was that all about?’ Holden was sitting in the staff room, and Greenleaf was opposite her. She had already heard Lawson and Wilson’s versions of the incident. They had been able to agree most of what was said, despite the fact that at the time neither of them had fully understood the potential importance of what they were hearing – because neither of them had encountered Bella Sinclair before. Right now the two of them stood as observers on either side of the room. Only Fox was absent, ensuring that Bella Sinclair stayed put until Holden had had a chance to speak to her too.

‘As you know, Bella is suspended. She shouldn’t have been here. We were just having a few words.’

‘From what my colleagues say, it was more than a few words.’

‘We were both a bit on edge. What do you expect?’

‘You threatened her.’

‘In what way?’

‘To make her unemployable.’

‘If she’s found guilty of theft and mistreatment of patients, then she will be unemployable. That’s pretty much a fact, not a threat.’

‘It sounded more than that to my colleagues.’

‘Look, we were both shouting. Sometimes it sounds worse than it is.’

Holden frowned, and worried at her bottom lip with her forefinger. She didn’t believe him. ‘I understand Bella turned down your advances.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Holden worried a bit more with her forefinger. He knew damned well what she was talking about. He was playing the innocent, playing for time. ‘I’m talking about the time you went round to her flat unannounced, and ended up in bed with her.’

For a moment, he looked bemused, and then his face creased into a smile. ‘Is that what she told you?’

‘Actually,’ Holden continued quickly, ‘she also said that when you suggested doing it again another day, she laughed at you.’

His smile turned rueful, and he himself gave his own brutal laugh. ‘There are two things you need to know about Bella. First, she’s a pathological liar; she wouldn’t recognize the truth if it stood up and bit her on the nose. And second, it was she who hit on me. We slept together a couple of times, in her flat. When I went round there that day, it was to tell her it was over. End of story.’

Five minutes later, and it was Bella Sinclair who was sitting in the chair opposite Holden. Her red hair was tied back tight behind her head, exposing the whole of her face. This did not, Holden reckoned, do her any favours, for it accentuated the lines across her forehead, the darkness under her eyes, and the creases at either corner of her mouth. The anger that Lawson and Wilson had witnessed had disappeared. Bella seemed tired, as if the encounter with Greenleaf had drained her of her spirit.

‘I’d like to ask you what was so important in your locker that you came in this morning to get it even though you’re under suspension?’

Bella shrugged. ‘There was a ring I wanted, and a book I hadn’t finished reading, and I thought why shouldn’t I come in and get what belonged to me.’

‘Can I see the ring?’

‘If you want to.’ There was no resistance, no reluctance. She pulled it off the third finger of her right hand and passed it across to Holden. ‘It belonged to my mother. It’s not very valuable, but it’s important to me. I always take it off when I’m working, and last week I forgot to put it on again at the end of the shift.’

‘And the book?’

Bella dug into her bag, removed the copy of Unless from it, and passed it over.

‘Is it any good?’

‘So far, yes.’

Holden began to flick through the pages. ‘Where have you got to?’