Blood on the Marsh (DI Susan Holden 3) - Page 39

‘And you took that to mean there hadn’t been any building work over the last few weeks?’

‘Yes!’ Lawson was not someone to duck out when the going got tricky, and Holden’s implicit criticism was criticism of them both. ‘That was exactly what he meant.’

‘So how do you explain this?’ Holden waved some sheets of A4 paper in the air. ‘These are the invoices that we found in the flat. For building work done on the cottage. This is for work done in September, and this for October, and this,’ she said with added emphasis, ‘for work done in the month of November, when, according to your informant, it was as quiet as the grave. You see, that’s what I mean by there being something odd.’

She slid the invoices across to them, and waited for a response. The three of them huddled round to get a proper look. Fox was as keen as the two constables to take another look at the invoices, and it was he who spoke first. ‘Do you see that? In September, it was for the installation of a kitchen; in October it was for decoration of the kitchen, downstairs, living rooms, and downstairs toilet, but the one for November doesn’t specify anything. Look! “General building and maintenance work”. It could be anything.’

‘Or maybe nothing,’ Lawson added.

‘Quite!’ That was what Holden had decided for herself the previous evening. ‘So now we’ve got two good reasons to make another search of Greenleaf’s cottage. To find his laptop, and to check out Jim Wright’s building work. And, of course, if we can, to have a chat to his neighbour, whatever his name might be.’ And she flashed a sarcastic smile at her constables. She didn’t want them to repeat the error – ever.

It took Lawson very little time at all to find the laptop. As before, Wilson took the downstairs and she took the upstairs. She started with the main bedroom, and stood in the doorway, scanning methodically from left to right. She had already been through the wardrobe, and found it hard to believe she would have missed a laptop if it had been stowed away there. Ditto the chest of drawers. The only other piece of furniture apart from the double bed was the bedside table. She had looked in the single drawer in that too on her last visit. Which left the bed. She advanced and pulled the cover and then the duvet back. She removed the four pillows, but there was no laptop under them. She shrugged and looked around. Where else could it be? And then it occurred to her. Not in a piece of furniture, but under it. She knelt down on the floor, to the side of the bed, and saw it almost immediately, not under the bed, but on the far side of the room, almost hidden in the shadow under the free-standing wardrobe. She wasn’t sure it was a laptop until she’d crossed the room, and felt underneath. But her hand told her even before she saw it that she had hit the jackpot.

She handed it over to Wilson. Though it grieved her to admit it, he was better than her when it came to IT, and he had already informed her in the car that he’d brought along some password-cracking software just in case. Frankly, she was happy to let him have a go. It was enough to have found it. She wandered through to the kitchen. Fox was there, sitting at the table with the three invoices in front of him.

‘So you found the laptop?’

‘Yeah!’

‘Good stuff.’ Fox wasn’t exactly a compulsive giver of praise, but he was in a good mood. And the reason for that quickly became apparent. ‘I’m not sure what the deal was with Jim Wright and Greenleaf, but none of these invoices really add up. Look at this one. Nearly five thousand quid for a new kitchen! Well whatever he did in here, it didn’t involve renewing the kitchen. There’s some new tiling over near the sink, and that cupboard there by the door is new, but if you look, it doesn’t quite match, not in colour or design. The flooring shows a lot of signs of wear and the work surfaces are scratched in several places. As for the decorating that he is supposed to have done in October, the only bit of new painting seems to be around the new tile work, and the toilet. Nothing like the four thousand quid he charged. And then, of course, there’s all the general maintenance work he invoiced for at the end of November.’

‘If he came here in November, he was damned discreet about it.’ Holden had materialized at the doorway as if Scottie in Star Trek had just beamed her there. ‘His neighbour, in case you are interested, is called Benjamin Croft. I have just been speaking to him, and he’s

adamant that it is more than a month since the builder was here.’

‘So whatever Greenleaf was paying him for, it wasn’t his building and decorating skills.’

‘Indeed.’ Holden was pleased. They were making progress, real progress. If Detective Superintendent Collins rang to ask if she was getting anywhere, she at last had some ammunition. They needed to pull Jim Wright in, and give him a proper grilling at the station away from his wife. But not quite yet. ‘Did you find a laptop, Lawson?’

‘Yes, Guv. Under the wardrobe. Wilson is taking a look right now.’

At that very moment, as if waiting in the wings for his cue, there came a shout from the living room. ‘I’ve found something!’ Wilson’s voice was high and excited. ‘Look at this!’

‘This’, as the others soon saw, was a photo, or rather a series of photos. The subjects of the photos were two girls, or at any rate two females dressed as girls.

‘Isn’t that Ania Gorski?’ Fox said. He had sat through two interviews with her, and although she was dressed very differently from when she was at work, he was pretty damn sure that it was her.

‘I think so,’ Holden said, though she was having to peer to make sure. The figure was smiling rather unconvincingly at the camera. Her hair hung either side of her head onto her shoulders in plaits, and she was wearing the sort of uniform that all girls used to wear at school.

‘So who’s the other one?’ Lawson said. The other one was dressed similarly, though her plaits were longer and blonder, and her grin more natural, and her face was flushed. She was, it seemed, enjoying it much more than Ania.

‘I don’t know.’ Holden scratched her head. ‘But she looks younger if you ask me. A real schoolgirl as opposed to Ania’s pretend one.’

‘So was Greenleaf into girls?’ Fox asked the question that had popped into each of their heads. He laughed. ‘Maybe Ania could only pull his bell when she was dressed in a pinafore dress and long socks?’

‘In Ania’s case, it’s not a crime.’ Holden said this firmly, though she felt slightly sick. ‘But if this girl is as young as I think, then it most certainly is.’

‘Should we go and pick Ania up, Guv?’ Wilson had gone rather pale. The pictures themselves were little more than titillating, and yet they hinted at something altogether darker.

‘Later. I think we’ve got a bit more to do here first. You, Wilson, see what else you can find on the laptop. I’ll stay with you. Fox and Lawson, I want you to go and ask around the neighbours. See if they can confirm or add anything to Mr Croft’s evidence. I’m especially interested in any visitors who may have come, especially at weekends, which is when Greenleaf seems to have spent most of his time here. Men, women and, of course, any girls.’

It was just gone 1.15 p.m. when the four detectives arrived back at Sunnymede. The interviews of the locals had done little except underline the reliability of the beady-eyed Mr Croft. Greenleaf was rarely in the village during the week. He turned up almost without fail on a Friday evening, and stayed through until Sunday night, or occasionally Monday morning. He had a girlfriend, a Polish woman who, the publican of the local confirmed, was indeed called Ania. ‘Not sure how you spell it, mind you,’ he’d said. ‘She was quiet, but she had a nice smile. Sometimes, he’d bring friends in for a drink, or maybe even food on a Saturday night. And his mother sometimes for Sunday lunch. That was always without the girlfriend, mind you. I don’t suppose she would have approved, him screwing a woman half his age.’ And he had laughed. Fox had reported this conversation in detail, and with some relish, though Holden began to feel queasy as she listened. If Greenleaf’s predilections were for women half his age, and then he liked them to dress as if they were still at school, it didn’t seem at all funny to her.

Once at Sunnymede, Holden ruthlessly suppressed the urge to smoke a cigarette. She had realized as they drove back that she hadn’t had one all day, and by the time they had pulled up on the gravel, the desire had turned into a craving. But there was too much to do. She needed to see Fran Sinclair for a start. If Fran did indeed fancy her, then Holden had no scruples about making the most of it. She found her not in her own office, but in what had been Greenleaf’s.

‘That was delicious coffee, this morning, Fran,’ she gushed. ‘Absolutely delicious. I hope it was fair trade, but if it wasn’t I’d rather not know. I’ll pretend it was.’

‘Actually, it was,’ Fran lied. It was a harmless lie, she reckoned. ‘From Nicaragua.’ That was true, at any rate. For a moment the two of them looked at each other. Fran wondered if possibly the detective fancied her, but decided even as she did so that Holden was way out of her league. Whatever else she had doubts about, she knew – had known from her teenage years – that she was attractive to neither male nor female.

Tags: Peter Tickler DI Susan Holden Mystery
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