Blood on the Marsh (DI Susan Holden 3)

‘I only needed to hit him once. He went down like a sack of potatoes.’

‘And then what?’

‘I thought he was dead. I dragged him onto the rails. I wanted to be sure. I wanted to watch him be obliterated.’

She fell quiet, and a smile crept across her face as she remembered. She shook her head as if she could barely believe what she was remembering, and she laughed. ‘Then he gave a groan. Christ, he didn’t half make me jump. If I’d had the hammer with me still, I’d have given him another thump, but I’d had to put it down while I dragged him onto the tracks, the fat bastard. What I did have in my pocket was some garden wire. In case I’d needed to tie his hands with it. It’s very handy stuff, garden wire. So I pulled his stupid bloody woollen hat over his face in case he opened his eyes, and I looped the wire under a sleeper and then round his leg several times. His left leg I think it was. And then I sat on top of him. I could hear a train, so I waited, and when I saw its lights and I knew for sure it was coming straight for us, I got off him and walked over to the bushes. It was dark, but I could see enough. I saw him clutching at his hat, trying to pull it off his face. I saw him stagger to his feet, and I saw and heard him die.’ She had a faraway look on her face, the look of someone remembering, and enjoying the memory.

She rocked forward. ‘Is that enough detail, Inspector?’

Holden flinched. ‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Is that it, then?’

‘Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?’

Maureen frowned. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Did you kill Nanette too?’

The question seemed to startle her. ‘Nanette, no of course not. Why would I?’

‘Money, maybe?’

Maureen eyes narrowed. They were hard eyes, Holden reckoned, behind which a formidable woman lay. A tough woman, capable of who knows what. Lying certainly. And more if necessary. ‘If,’ Maureen said, ‘you want my opinion, I think Jim did it.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Like you say, money. Jim was short of it, whereas his mother had money in the bank. The only problem was the nursing home fees were racing their way through her savings like a bush fire.’

‘So you knew this, but said nothing?’

‘Hey, that isn’t what I said. I don’t know. It’s just that it makes sense.’

‘I need proof.’

Maureen considered this for at least ten seconds. She sat back and massaged the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. ‘Not proof. Intuition. Woman’s intuition.’

‘Intuition doesn’t tend to stand up in court.’

‘Well it bloody well should do.’

Holden smiled. ‘I agree. But unfortunately I don’t make the law. I merely enforce it.’

Maureen grunted, unimpressed. An uncertain silence descended.

Holden looked down and inspected her fingers. Not that there was much to inspect on them. She wore no rings, the nails were cut short and were unpainted, and there were no discernible spots or lumps that might have been worth inspection. Eventually, she raised her head: ‘You see, Maureen, I have another theory. Would you like to hear it?’

Maureen shrugged. ‘If you want.’

‘My theory is that you are lying through your teeth.’

Maureen returned Holden’s stare. If there was any emotion in her face, it was well hidden. She said nothing. Cat and mouse watching each other, though who was cat and who was mouse was hard to say.

‘My theory is this,’ Holden continued. ‘That you are lying to protect your son. That you know that it was he who put the morphine in the whisky flask. I also have a theory that it wasn’t you who killed your husband or Greenleaf, but David. And you know that too. And yet you are prepared to lie for him, and to take his punishment, to prove that you love him.’

Maureen shook her head in an exaggerated gesture of disbelief. ‘That’s plain ridiculous. You haven’t a shred of evidence to link David to any of the deaths. And why on earth would he have killed Greenleaf? What’s his motive, Inspector?’

‘Love for his mother, of course, Maureen. That is to say, love for his birth mother, Bella.’ Holden let this sink in for several seconds, and wondered if perhaps Maureen really hadn’t considered this as a possibility. Then she continued. ‘Greenleaf got Bella suspended from work after she laughed off his sexual performance. She told David about it, and he killed Greenleaf for her. It seems a strong motive to me.’