Blood on the Marsh (DI Susan Holden 3)

‘How’s your mother?’ he replies.

‘She’s home. I’m here with her. I’m going to stay in the spare room for a few nights, and her friend Doris is organizing a rota for the days, just until Mother’s a bit more mobile. But what I want to know is what you’ve been up to.’

‘There have been some interesting developments.’ He pauses.

‘Well?’ she snaps. Patience is not one of her virtues.

‘Dr Featherstone visited Sunnymede on the day of Nanette’s death. He was in the building between roughly four and half past five. A Mrs Jones had been taken ill – a chest infection, it turned out.’

‘And he was there for an hour and a half? That’s quite a time for one patient.’

‘That was my thought too, Guv. And there’s another interesting thing. Mrs Jones’s room is in the same corridor as Nanette Wright’s. In fact it’s only two doors away.’

The jogger moved steadily round the Cowley Marsh Recreation Ground. He was a familiar sight to the footballers, dog walkers and sundry others who used the rec on a regular basis. Not that many would have known who he was, but the flapping hair, silver trainers, and red tracksuit were enough to make him notable. That and his strict adherence to his training pattern. He jogged, almost without fail, on Mondays, Wednesdays and (less reliably) Fridays. He arrived, almost without fail, a few minutes after five o’clock, winter or summer. In December, this meant it had been dark for some time, but this never appeared to worry him. He was rarely on his own, for even at this time of year there were always one or two people trailing their dogs whatever the weather after a day at their office or work place. Absolutely without fail, he would run three anti-clockwise circuits around the rec, or to be strictly accurate two and three quarter circuits, because before completing the third he would veer right onto the path that runs along the northern edge of the rec and beat his way remorselessly along it until it became Barracks Lane. From there he would force his way up the hill, as far as the junction with Hollow Way, before turning round and accelerating with relief back down the hill, and then straight through the rec, this time keeping to the path. That was the pattern a keen-eyed stalker might have observed. And that was the pattern he followed this dank Monday, as if there was no other alternative. On this occasion, however, the imaginary stalker would have noticed that when he reached the Hollow Way Road, he stopped, looked at his watch, and for some thirty seconds waited, looking round, and jogging intermittently on the spot. Then with a sigh, he began to retrace his steps down Barracks Lane and into the rec.

And it was here, at this eastern entrance to the Cowley Marsh Recreation Ground, where bushes and trees press on either side, that he ran into a wire stretched tight across the path. It caught him full in the neck, and catapulted him off his feet. If this had been a cartoon it would have been comic: a man spinning in mid-air, his feet going forwards and upwards, while his head rushed the opposite way, until it cracked against the unyielding pavement. Kerpow! The man would have got up, staggered, groaned loudly, and then within seconds have miraculously regained all of his faculties, except for the common sense that he never had. But this was brutal reality. For a moment the jogger lay still. The back of his skull was exploding with pain, but that was nothing compared to the multitude of nerves screaming in his throat. He wanted only relief from the agony of the moment, to be engulfed by oblivion, but the survival instinct is an overriding one, and with unconscious effort he pushed himself up onto his knees. He tried to suck in a breath, but the inferno of pain in his throat only intensified. Then – somehow – he became aware of someone else, someone who had pushed through the shrubbery and now stood looming above him. He looked up, trying to focus, trying to understand, but too late. He barely saw or even sensed the claw hammer which smashed into his right temple, and sent him sprawling onto to the ground again. Five, six, seven times, the tool bludgeoned his skull, shattering bone and gouging flesh. But there were no screams of agony and no yelps of pain, and long before the assault ceased, Paul Greenleaf lay still and twisted on the path, undeniably and irreversibly dead.

It was not until halfway through the following morning that Paul Greenleaf was identified, although he had been found almost immediately. Less than five minutes after he had breathed his last, a cyclist had to take sudden evasive action to avoid running over his inert body. The police were on hand less than six minutes later, but identifying him was not an easy task. This wasn’t because his face was a serious mess – though it was. And it wasn’t because nobody missed him – because one person most certainly did. It was essentially because he was carrying absolutely no ID. He carried no wallet with tell-tale plastic cards, because what need was there for them on a run? He carried a key, but the ring to which it was attached gave away no information about him save that he was a supporter of Help the Aged. He also, like many joggers, carried an iPod, but that offered no clues either, not even of his musical tastes, for it too had been smashed irretrievably in the frenzied attack.

Greenleaf lived in a flat at the back of Sunnymede, and given that he was not on duty that night, there was no reason for other members of staff to wonder where he had got to. His mobile phone rang twice later in the evening. On the second occasion, the caller merely left a short and brusque message, and gave up on him. She had been messed around by Paul Greenleaf before.

Only at round about 9.30 a.m. on the Tuesday morning – when he was half an hour late for a meeting, and when three attempts to raise him on his mobile had failed – did Fran Sinclair get sufficiently irritated to go looking for him. She started in the kitchen, in case he was cadging a late breakfast there (it wouldn’t have been the first time!). Then she made a sweep through Primrose Wing, but he wasn’t there either, and no one had seen him. So she made her way to his flat, and knocked loudly on his door. There was no reply. She tried the handle on the door. It was locked.

Fran Sinclair rang Greenleaf’s mobile again, scratching her nose as she did so. She was inclined to leave an even stronger message than her previous one, but she realized that she could hear his mobile ringing inside his room. She killed the call, and unhooked her keys from her belt. There were nearly a dozen of these, including two master keys. These gave her access to every lockable door and cupboard in Sunnymede, in case of emergency, and that included Greenleaf’s flat. It wasn’t something she had ever discussed with him, but that was how it had always been in the eight years she’d been assistant manager. She fitted one of the keys in the lock and opened the door. She had, to be fair, never misused her powers of entry to the flat. The only other time she had entered it in his absence was when a plumber had needed access to replace the shower, and Greenleaf had been away on holiday. As she stood in the small hallway, she took a slight intake of breath, as if she had suddenly realized the possibilities that her unsolicited entry might present. She called his name once, and then again more loudly, but there was no reply. There were three doors off the small hallway in which she was standing. She pushed open the left-hand one, which she knew was the toilet and shower room. There was no sprawled body there, nothing out of the ordinary. She then opened the middle door into his living room. Again there was nothing to catch her attent

ion and no sign of a mobile phone. She turned round, retreated to the hall, and tried the third door, his bedroom. On his double bed lay a disordered pile of clothes – faded jeans, navy-blue polo shirt, vest, navy-blue socks. The bed itself was tidy enough, the duvet straight and unrumpled, the pillows plumped and in place. There was no sign of the mobile. She pulled her own out of her pocket, and rang his again. A ring tone sounded from the pile of clothes. She let it ring, lifting the shirt and then the trousers, pushing her hand into first his left pocket then the right, extracting the mobile, a wallet, a coin purse, and an electronic card key. But no flat or other keys. Not that that was a surprise. He had gone out somewhere, so he would need his key to get back. But without his wallet? She scratched her nose again. He had a house in Charlton-on-Otmoor, and he might have gone there for some reason, but if so, how come his car key was here? Maybe he had gone jogging? That was the simple answer. He was well known for his jogging. But that was invariably at the end of the day’s work – Mondays, Wednesdays and sometimes Fridays. He had explained it to her once. It was his way of de-stressing. But if he had gone out jogging that morning, what had made him do that? And why wasn’t he back for work? It wasn’t like him. Whatever the bastard was, he was very committed to the job. She opened the wardrobe. It was one of those full-length ones, floor to ceiling, with lots of space to hang and fold and stuff everything out of sight. But she was only interested in shoes, and they were arranged on the floor – brogues, slip-ons, black lace-ups, but no trainers. She looked around the bedroom again, then went and scanned the rest of the flat once more – the hallway, the bathroom floor, the living room, the galley kitchen. Still no trainers. That settled it. He must have gone jogging. So why the hell wasn’t he back yet?

Fran Sinclair let herself out of the flat, shutting the door firmly behind her. She would just check his office again, and then she would … well what? Wait and see for a bit longer? She was still considering this as she rounded the last corner on her trip and almost collided with DI Holden and her sergeant.

‘Mr Greenleaf has gone missing!’ she said all in a rush. ‘It’s most peculiar.’

It didn’t take Fox and Holden long to look round Greenleaf’s flat and agree that it was peculiar. They had been wanting to ask Fran Sinclair questions about Dr Featherstone, but that now got put on the back burner.

It also didn’t take Fox and Holden long to put two and two together and come up with four. They had heard about the murder of a jogger in Cowley Marsh when they had called in at the station first thing, and by the time Fran Sinclair had finished her account, they both had their suspicions. They checked with her what Greenleaf’s jogging clothes looked like, asked about the key and key ring – not that Fran knew what his key ring was like – and then they made their way to the mortuary. And there, to their own satisfaction, they identified the dead man as Paul Greenleaf. Not that it was entirely straightforward – his face had been smashed violently into a bloody pulp – but there really wasn’t any doubt in their minds by the time they stepped into the spitting rain. Holden, oblivious to Fox’s desire to get in the car, lit up her first cigarette of the morning – she had managed not to have one when she woke up – and sucked that first gulp of smoke into her lungs.

‘Christ!’ she said. ‘This certainly changes things!’

‘Do you think the deaths are connected?’ Fox said after a pause.

Holden said nothing, and instead took another drag on her cigarette and then another. ‘Why don’t you ring up and find out where the hell Wilson and Lawson have got to. And tell them to get to Sunnymede a.s.a.p.’

‘I hope you two aren’t going to go walkabout on me again this week?’ Wilson and Lawson were sitting down in the staff room drinking coffee when their DI stamped in, exuding foul temper. ‘Fox and I have spent our weekend arranging another death for you, so I hope you’ll do us the courtesy of staying around to help in its investigation!’

‘We heard, Guv. We didn’t want to start barging in until you were back and had briefed us.’ Wilson had risen apologetically to his feet up as he spoke, spilling some of his coffee into his saucer. ‘Do you think the two deaths are connected?’

‘Do I look like Mystic bleeding Meg?’ she snapped. It was an unfair response. Fox had raised the same question and she hadn’t bitten his head off. But it was the obvious question. Could it be only a coincidence that an old woman had been overdosed and the manager of her care home had been beaten to death while out jogging? ‘What I mean, Wilson, is that I can predict that Fox is going to pour me a coffee within the next thirty seconds, but that’s where my psychic powers end.’ She pulled with her left hand at her blouse collar, a mannerism of which she was totally unconscious. Wilson noticed it, however, and he noticed too a slight twitch of the head as she sat down. He hadn’t appreciated her doing that before.

Wilson sat down opposite her, trying not to stare at her. He took a sip of coffee and then spoke casually. ‘Lawson and I have been talking to Fran Sinclair.’

‘I thought you said you hadn’t wanted to start barging around?’

‘We didn’t, Guv.’ Lawson had leant forward too, in automatic support of Wilson. ‘It wasn’t like that. Miss Sinclair brought the coffee in herself, and then she wanted to talk about it.’

‘Did she now?’ Holden took the coffee that Fox was offering her, and took a sip, her eyes watching Lawson and then Wilson as she did. ‘So, what did you learn, Wilson?’

‘The key thing is that he used to jog after work on a Monday as regular as clockwork.’

‘So I gathered,’ Holden replied quickly. ‘And Wednesday too, and often Friday,’ she added, to underline that none of this was new to her. ‘I imagine it was pretty common knowledge.’