Blood on the Marsh (DI Susan Holden 3)

Of course the thought had occurred to Susan Holden, and the fact that it had occurred to her mother too gave her no satisfaction. She and her team had, in fact, searched all the lockers that afternoon, but if ever there had been a case of shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted, that had been it.

‘The problem with this case is that the more you look, the more the possibilities open up. You see, we also bumped into Jim Wright at Sunnymede today.’

Her mother frowned, her recall of the detail of the case suddenly falling short. She was finding that more and more these days. Sometimes she knew a name, and yet when she twirled it round the computer of her brain, its significance failed to register.

‘Jim Wright is Nanette’s son,’ her daughter said softly. ‘Her only son, in fact, and he’s rather short of money.’

‘Of course he is.’ Mrs Holden was cross with herself. ‘So what was he doing there?’

‘It turns out he’s been doing odd jobs at Sunnymede. Greenleaf hired him to help out with the maintenance. What with the review of the place, there’s been quite a bit to bring up to scratch, and so Jim has been helping out their regular man of all trades on the staff, Roy Hillerby.’

‘Oh dear,’ her mother said. ‘I don’t think I remember a Roy either.’

Her daughter leant across and gave her a comforting pat on the arm. ‘Actually, Mother, I don’t think I’ve mentioned him before. Mind you, he may be important. The gossip is, according to Lawson, that he’s been pursuing Bella Sinclair ever since she started at Sunnymede.’

‘So this Bella must be attractive.’

Her daughter swallowed the last of her coffee. ‘Yes, she is.’ She got up then, thanked her mother for supper, gave her a prolonged hug, and left. She could have talked more about the case, but suddenly tiredness had hit her, and she felt sure that if she could just get home and collapse into bed, she would sleep, despite the coffee. Thoughts and theories were spiralling around inside her like crazy bees, so as she walked slowly along Chilswell Road, she began to silently utter her own private mantra, in the hope that this would empty her head of at least some of them.

CHAPTER 6

She was there again at George and Delila’s, and she had already chosen me a mango and passion fruit ice cream when I arrived. She said she was having one too. It was nice, though I would have preferred a chocolate nugget one. But I didn’t tell her that. Instead I said, ‘This is nice, Bella.’

‘Do you remember what we agreed yesterday, David?’

I wasn’t sure what she meant. ‘No,’ I said.

‘You were going to call me either Mum or Mother.’

I looked at her. I wondered if I should call her Mum, but when I thought of Mum, it wasn’t her I thought of. It was difficult. ‘I’ll call you Mother,’ I said.

‘Thank you, son,’ she said. ‘That sounds really nice.’

I ate my ice cream until it was all gone. Mother kept looking at me. I felt embarrassed. I don’t like being watched.

‘I think I’d better go,’ I said.

‘I’m so pleased we found each other,’ Mother said.

I didn’t know what to say. But I did want to ask a question. It had been battering my brain ever since our last conversation, but I was frightened. So I shut my eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again. Then I asked my question: ‘Why did you abandon me, Mother?’

‘Oh David,’ she said, in a voice like velvet. ‘I didn’t abandon you. Don’t think of it like that. I had you adopted because at the time that was the best thing for you.’ There were tears in her eyes, and she wiped at them with one of the paper napkins on the table. ‘Your father died in a car crash, and I got ill, David. I couldn’t look after you. So I had you adopted to keep you safe. But now I’m back. And I’ll never go away again.’

‘I think we should tell my mum.’ I looked at her. There were tears in her eyes again. ‘I mean my adopted mum. Maureen.’

‘Not yet, David. It’s too soon. One day, when we’ve got to know each other better, then we will tell her everything. It will come as a shock to her, David, and we don’t want to upset her, do we?’

‘No,’ I said. Mother was right, I didn’t want to upset Mum.

She looked at me and smiled. She has a nice smile. ‘Just remember, I never stopped loving you David,’ she said. ‘Just remember that.’

I looked at my watch. ‘I have to go now,’ I said.

‘This is fun.’ DC Lawson’s voice was pure sarcasm, but DC Wilson appeared not to have heard. For the last hour and a half, the two of them had been poring over the controlled drugs register of Sunnymede Care Home. Or, to be precise, Wilson had done most of the poring. He thrived on detail and order, and the painstaking task of tracking each batch of every morphine product as listed in the book, and comparing the balance against the actual drugs in the wall cabinet, was one that absorbed his every fibre. Lawson, however, was already bored. She knew the potential importance of the task: if they could identify a missing dose or two of morphine, that would be a huge step forward in the tracking of Nanette Wright’s killer, and yet she had already abdicated responsibility to Wilson. She merely checked out each batch of drugs when Wilson called out a number, confirming the number of pills or capsules left. But her mind was elsewhere, turning and twisting the detail of the case as she currently knew it, and formulating theories about possible motivations for killing an old lady. Had it been an accidental overdose or a deliberate act of murder? What sort of woman had Nanette Wright been – a dear old lady, or a vicious old cow? Why would someone have wanted to kill her? Her gut feeling was that it was family, most likely her son and daughter-in-law trying to hurry her to an early death in order to get her money, but her imagination conjured up an alternative scenario, a warped mercy-killer stalking the care homes of Oxford, seeking victims to release from their mortal coil. Was this going to be the first of many? Were there other deaths in the offing, or indeed were there others already committed and yet undetected? The idea of being involved in a case of that magnitude excited her, conjuring up absurd romantic images, with herself as one of the key figures at the centre of the media scrum that would inevitably occur, and which would lead – equally inevitably – to her own promotion.

W

ilson was working his way through the final page of the register, checking the doses of morphine given to a Mrs White. These had been regular daily doses, and the reduction in stock levels all added up. A last batch had come in a week before she died, and the dosage had been increased on a couple of days as – he presumed – the pain got worse, but there was no obvious discrepancy and nothing to set alarm bells ringing. When she died there had been eighty millilitres of morphine left, and these had, according to the list, been handed over to Oxford Waste Ltd, the licensed waste disposal company that Sunnymede used.