Blood on the Marsh (DI Susan Holden 3)

‘I wonder if you can help us with identifying the people in these photos?’ Wilson waved the photographs as he asked the question. Fran Sinclair leant back in the swivel chair she had inherited from her unlamented boss, and scowled.

‘I do hope this isn’t going to take long, young man. I have a business to run.’

‘Of course not. It’s just that you seemed the obvious person to ask,’ he continued. ‘We wanted to identify all the people who attended the Hayes and Yeading match in the Sunnymede box.’

‘Talk about a waste of money! If someone wants to give us a present of several hundred pounds, there are better ways they could spend it than splashing out on a football game, ways that would help lots of people here, and not just a few favoured workers.’

Lawson had already heard enough. She took the photographs from Wilson’s hand, and thrust them at Fran. ‘There are ten people in these photos. We know six of them – Paul Greenleaf, Ania Gorski, Jim Wright and his daughter, Roy Hillerby, and your sister Bella. Just tell us who the others are, and then we’ll get out of your hair.’

Fran took the two photographs and laid them carefully on the desk. Then she spent at least fifteen seconds studying them as it they were rare prints of some Oxford college rather than a pair of cheesy, slightly out of focus photo prints.

‘These two here,’ she said eventually, stabbing her finger into the centre of the left-hand picture, ‘are Mr and Mrs Thorpe, who paid for it all. And these two over here are Justin, who works in the kitchen, and Dr Featherstone.’

It was Dr Featherstone’s name which caught the attention of both Wilson and Lawson. They knew who he was, of course, but neither of them had been there when Holden interviewed him.

‘So Justin and Dr Featherstone are keen on their football, are they?’

‘Justin yes, he’s mad keen. But I wouldn’t have said so about Dr Featherstone.’

‘Oh?’ Lawson tried not to sound too interested, though obviously she was. She wasn’t much of an expert on football herself, but she was pretty damned sure that Oxford United versus Hayes and Yeading wasn’t exactly the match of the season unless possibly you were a football nut living in the flight path of Heathrow airport.

‘The good doctor has short arms and long pockets.’ The contempt in Fran’s voice was unmissable.

‘Sorry?’

‘I’ve told him more than once he needs to work on those arm-stretching movements, but he never changes. He’s game for anything if there’s a chance of a free lunch and several free drinks.’

‘And as a doctor?’ Again Lawson left the question hanging. In this mood, who knew what Ms Sour Face might say.

‘As a doctor, he’s getting near his sell-by date, and I sure as hell won’t be sorry when he reaches it.’

‘I see.’

‘This place needs a bit of fresh blood.’

‘You have plans, do you?’

‘I’m not in charge. Just holding the fort. But if I had it my way, yes there’d be quite a few changes.’

‘Like Jim Wright?’ It was Wilson who said this, keen to get a foothold in the argument. ‘He was fresh blood, wasn’t he? Brought in by Greenleaf to help Roy Hillerby. Yet I understand you didn’t approve.’

‘Jim Wright was a waste of money. Roy could have managed on his own. Would have done if we’d given him a bit of overtime. But Greenleaf and he fell out. Greenleaf even wrote him a disciplinary letter. He wanted to get rid of him, if you ask me, and then hire Jim Wright in his place. That was his long-term plan.’

‘So what was the disciplinary matter?’ This was Lawson again, trying to wrench control of the interview back from Wilson.

‘Nanette Wright complained about him. She claimed she caught him snooping through her cupboard when he was meant to be replacing a tap washer. Greenleaf believed her, and so Roy got a disciplinary.’

‘So what does that mean?’

‘It means one more incident and Roy would have been in serious trouble. Two strikes and you’re out.’

‘And Jim Wright would have been in? Thanks in no small part to his mother.’

‘I guess so.’

‘But now that Jim is dead …’ Wilson butted in, though he left the sentence unfinished. He wanted to see Fran Sinclair’s reaction.

‘Dead?’ The surprise in her voice sounded genuine.