Blood on the Marsh (DI Susan Holden 3)

‘Hit by a train.’

She stared at Wilson for several seconds and then exploded into laughter. ‘Sorry!’ She held her fist up to her mouth, and pushed hard, as it trying hold the laughter in, but it burst out in huge gulping guffaws. ‘But it’s impossible to feel anything for those two bastards except relief that they’re dead.’

‘And Roy must be relieved too.’

‘Sure. Why not?’

‘And Roy is fond of your sister, I understand.’

Fran looked at Wilson, and then laughed. ‘Fond of her? He sniffs round her like she’s a bitch on heat. But there’s no law against that now, is there?’

CHAPTER 11

I like it here. It’s the best. It always was. They won’t find me here. I wasn’t sure I would find it, but I have a good memory for places. When I’ve been somewhere once, I can usually find it again. And so here I am, back safe and sound.

I slept here once before. When I was on camp and they were mean to me. They were always being to mean to me, and Mr Miller called me stupid, so I just packed my bag when they were all singing songs round the fire, and I escaped.

I’ve got everything I need. My sleeping bag is a four-season one. It’s got a hood with a drawstring so I can pull it up tight round my head. I can’t possibly get cold, not when I’ve got good protection like I have here. Even if it rains, I’ll be all right because I won’t get wet. I’ve got food, and water, a

nd a little camping stove. The stove is brilliant. It’s really light, and it means I can have hot food when I want to. Water is the biggest problem when you’re camping. If you run out, you’re done for. But there are houses round here. You wouldn’t believe it. There really are quite a lot of houses in these woods, so when I need water I just need to find one with an outside tap. But I have to be careful. I don’t want them to find me. Because I need time to think. Time to work out what to do next. Time on my own.

Holden got back to the Cowley Road station with Maureen’s wailing still echoing in her ears. She went straight to her office and slammed the door like she was shutting out the hounds of hell. Then she walked over to her grimy window and gazed out. A broken-down lorry was causing traffic chaos on the Oxford Road. Two men in high visibility jackets were gesticulating wildly, and an unseen driver was taking out his or her frustration with the hooter, but Holden barely noticed. All she could think of was Jim Wright’s boot. The photo had been unexceptional: it was just a boot, a size 10 working man’s boot. It was exceptional only because she knew – as Maureen had known when she had vomited so spectacularly – what the boot signified, and where it had come from, and that inside it there remained a remarkably intact piece of foot (Nick Birch had rung her to tell her that!). For a moment, she wondered if she wasn’t going to be sick too. She stuck her hand out to steady herself against the window sill. Christ, she really was losing it.

There was a bang on the door. She turned to see Wilson standing flush-faced in the doorway. ‘Dr Featherstone was in the box too!’

‘What?’ Holden looked at him as if he was speaking a foreign language.

‘And Roy Hillerby was on a disciplinary.’

This time Holden said nothing, as she tried to assimilate this new information.

‘Because of Nanette!’ Wilson continued.

‘What?’

‘And if you ask me, Fran Sinclair would have loved to murder them all.’

It took Holden five minutes to extract from Wilson (and Lawson, who had been parking the car) a more complete and coherent account of their visit to Sunnymede. But at the end of it, she felt only confusion. If knowledge was meant to bring clarity, it had, on this occasion, singularly failed. She tried to organize her thoughts but they refused to be marshalled. Featherstone had been in Sunnymede shortly before Nanette’s death. He was in the box at the Hayes and Yeading game despite not liking football. And yet it was hard to see him murdering Greenleaf so violently, or indeed overcoming Jim Wright and dragging him onto the railway track. But Roy Hillerby – he was a man to wonder about. All the evidence was that he fancied Bella like crazy; he was one incident away from getting dismissed from his job, with Jim Wright waiting in the wings. He sure as hell had motives for murder. Nanette Wright had made the complaint that got him his disciplinary letter, and now she was dead. Hell, maybe that was it? Maybe it was Roy Hillerby who had spiked her whisky? Why not?

‘So what do you think, Guv?’ Wilson was bobbing with excitement, like a cork on the high seas. ‘Should we pick them both up, Featherstone and Hillerby? Maybe we could sweat them a bit – see who breaks first?’

‘Personally,’ Lawson broke in, ‘I think we need to look harder at Fran. She sure as hell had access to morphine, didn’t she? And she’s Bella’s sister, so anyone who attacks Bella, attacks her. And then—’

Lawson never finished her theorizing because Holden suddenly skipped forward two, three steps and swung her right leg at a grey plastic waste-paper basket that stood next to her desk. It soared and spun and crash landed in the doorway, causing Wilson and Lawson to scatter.

‘Where in God’s name is the evidence?’ Holden held her hands up, fingers splayed wide, as if she was in the presence of the supreme being, entreating him (or her) for the answer to the meaning of life. ‘Because theories are ten a penny. And theories aren’t what I want. What I want are hard, relevant facts, evidence that points us directly to our killer or killers. Are you with me?’

Neither of them said a thing. Wilson knelt down on the floor, and started to pick up the tea bags, plastic cups, and other detritus strewn across it. Lawson, after a brief hesitation, recovered the bin and placed it near her colleague.

‘Fox!’ Holden bellowed her sergeant’s name as if she was auditioning for the position of Oxford City’s town crier. ‘Where in hell’s name are you, Fox?’

Holden rang Detective Superintendent Collins from the car, as Fox drove her to Barns Road. She probably wouldn’t have bothered if Fox hadn’t suggested it.

For all his own lack of ambition, Fox knew the importance of keeping superior officers on side. And he knew too that it wasn’t something that came naturally to Holden. What came naturally to her – so naturally that Fox imagined her having ingested it with the milk from her mother’s breast – was a heady mix of assertiveness and aggression. She seemed to believe that she could get anywhere by insisting on it, and if that didn’t work, demanding it. And if that didn’t work, demanding it again and again increasingly noisily, until the other party conceded defeat.

‘Did you see the super?’ Fox had asked as he started the car. He knew she hadn’t.

‘No,’ was the blunt reply.