Blood on the Marsh

by Peter Tickler

  ‘The police want to interview me again.’

  ‘Do they?’ Fran wasn’t surprised. They were doing a lot of interviewing again after Greenleaf’s death. She’d had that bear of a sergeant asking her for a minute by minute account of her Monday afternoon and evening. To see if she’d got an alibi. Which of course, she hadn’t. She told them she’d been sitting at home on her own, but that didn’t constitute an alibi as far as they were concerned. She took a swig of her gin and tonic, and swilled it round her mouth like mouthwash, savouring the sharpness.

  ‘At Sunnymede,’ her sister was saying. ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Well maybe I’ll see you.’

  ‘I’m worried.’

  Fran giggled. The gin was doing its worst – or maybe best. ‘You’re worried? Why? Did you kill Greenleaf? Because if you did, you should be worried. And if you didn’t, then what’s there to be worried about?’ She giggled again. She was pleased with that response. It sounded smart. Clever. Much cleverer than she could usually manage.

  ‘He got me suspended!’ Bella persisted. ‘I’m an obvious suspect.’

  ‘In that case, you’d better get your alibi sorted!’ Fran belched, the tonic now taking its turn.

  ‘Are you drinking?’ Bella’s irritation was apparent even down the rubbish phone connection they had got. ‘Look!’ she said, her voice growing more strident with every syllable. ‘This is serious. What’s going to happen to me? Do you think I’ll get my job back now Greenleaf is dead?’

  Fran wanted to laugh again, but she was seized instead by a bout of wheezing and coughing that betrayed all too vividly her years of devotion to cigarettes. Only when it had subsided was she able to voice a response. ‘The police are investigating two suspicious deaths at Sunnymede, and you’re concerned about your job. How very single-minded of you, dear sister! But to answer it, yes I’d say that your chances have very much improved with Greenleaf’s death. But, of course, it is out of my hands. It’s Margaret Laistor who will be making the decision.’

  ‘But you will back me up, won’t you, Sis? Tell the saintly Margaret what a bastard he was?’

  ‘Sure I will. I’ll cover your back, just like I always do.’

  ‘Bless you, Sis.’

  ‘Bye!’ Fran killed the call. The credits were coming up at the end of EastEnders. Not that she cared that she’d missed some of it. There were more important things in life. Not to mention iPlayer and the Sunday omnibus.

  She tipped her glass, until she had drained it, and then burst into giggles again. Bella saying ‘Bless you’. Now that really did take the biscuit!

  CHAPTER 9

  Of course I put the whisky in Nan Nan’s flask that Sunday. I always did. She’d get cross if I didn’t, and when she was cross, she was really nasty. She could say terrible things. Not that I told the police that last bit. I don’t want them to think badly of her. Anyway it was my job to do it. I always come home on Sunday. Dad would go and get Nan Nan from the old folks’ home, and Mum would cook the roast dinner. When she arrived, I’d get her a drink, and she’d also give me her hip flask, and I’d top it up with whisky for her to take back to the home. Mind you, when I say top up, that’s not really true. Usually it was empty, so it’d be a case of fill it up, not top it up.

  ‘Did you ever add anything to the whisky?’ the lady detective asked.

  ‘Once,’ I said. ‘You see, once Dad told me to add some water. He told me she was drinking too much whisky. ‘She’s drinking me out of house and home,’ he said. So I mixed some water with the whisky, but she knew, and the next Sunday she didn’t half tell me off. I didn’t like that. So I never tried it again.’

  ‘David,’ the lady detective asked, really slow, as if I was some sort of idiot, ‘someone put some medicine into your gran’s flask before she died. Something to make her sleep better. Only it went wrong and she went to sleep and never woke up. Was that you, David?’

  Went to sleep and never woke up! Does the lady think I don’t know what death is? Does she think I am completely brainless? She was accusing me of killing Nan Nan. I went mad then. I started shouting and all sorts. ‘I didn’t!’ I shouted. ‘I didn’t! I didn’t! I didn’t!’

  Then Mum started shouting too, shouting at the lady detective, and it was terribly noisy, so I stopped shouting and put my hands over my ears until it had all gone quiet.

  ‘Sorry!’ the lady said. But she wasn’t sorry, I could see that. She looked at me like I was a dumb child. People often do. And she smiled a false smile. ‘I just need to ask you where you were this last Monday,’ she said.

  So I told her. ‘I went to work,’ I said. ‘I got there at 9 o’clock, and I had my lunch at 12 o’clock, and I went home at 4.30 p.m. like I usually do.’

  ‘And what did you do in the evening? Did you go out at all?’

  ‘No’ I said. ‘I stayed in all evening because I wanted to play on my new computer game. I also watched EastEnders. I like EastEnders.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘I’m going to be late for work because of you,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Mum. ‘I’ve already spoken to Jaz.’

  Doesn’t Mum understand? That’s not the point. I hate being late. I’m never late. Being late is bad.

  So I went and caught the bus to work.

  I’m not stupid. I know that the lady asked about Monday because that was when Mr Greenleaf was killed. Do I look stupid?

  Mother doesn’t think I’m stupid. She’s told me. I’ll send her a text. Perhaps she’ll buy me an ice cream at lunchtime. I’d like a blackcurrant one.

  ‘So, what do you think?’

  They were at the end of Littlehay Road, waiting to pull out into the Oxford Road. It wasn’t exactly a perfectly timed question from Holden, especially as it was Fox who was driving, and he was a man who liked to concentrate when he was behind the wheel.

  Holden shut her eyes. She wasn’t in a hurry for an answer, but she did want to hear what he had to say. The car lurched forward, and then very quickly stopped. It was well past rush hour, but the traffic heading into the city centre suggested otherwise.

  ‘He’s a bit odd,’ Fox replied.

  ‘Well, he has got Asperger’s,’ Holden said. ‘But that wasn’t really what I was asking. Do you think he could have put morphine in the flask with the whisky?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe? Is that all you’ve got to say about it? Maybe?’ Irritability had kicked in. Holden knew it, but felt unable to control it. Irritability was never far from the surface these days.

  The traffic in front of them suddenly awoke from its torpor. Fox released the handbrake and moved forward, and as if the traffic and his own thought processes were linked, the words began to flow. ‘It would be hard to prove, even if he did do it. And if he did do it, was it to kill her or maybe to help her? Maybe she’d been complaining about being in pain, and he got the idea into his head that he could give her some morphine to ease the pain.’

  ‘So where did he get the morphine? Isn’t it more likely the morphine came from Sunnymede, and was put into her flask there?’

  ‘I thought we were concentrating on David,’ Fox said quietly. He was not a butterfly when it came to analysing a case, or indeed anything else. ‘I thought we were constructing a scenario in which he killed his grandmother accidentally or otherwise. Personally, I don’t see him as a killer, but maybe we shouldn’t underestimate him. I watched a programme on telly about it once. People with Asperger’s can be very bright and capable.’

  Holden shut her eyes again, and allowed Fox to concentrate on turning right, off the main road. She agreed with him. David as killer was possible, but not probable. And where would David have got morphine from? Or, indeed, Jim or Maureen?

  The smell of fresh coffee hit Holden as she walked into the staff room. Both Lawson and Wilson looked round, matching grins on their faces. Either there was something going on between them or they were after somet
hing.

  ‘Coffee, Guv? Coffee, Sergeant?’

  ‘You’re not trying to soften me up, are you, Constables? Because if so I’d rather drink the dregs from the washing up.’

  ‘Fran Sinclair bought it.’ Wilson said. ‘Specially!’

  ‘I think,’ Lawson added, raising her eyes as she spoke, ‘that she’s taken a bit of a shine to you, Guv.’

  There was a silence then, very short, in truth, but a silence nonetheless. Holden’s sexual orientation was understood, but never openly discussed by her team, and Lawson’s sudden teasing was a step further than ever before. The young constable had a brief moment of panic, that it was maybe a step too far. She felt her cheeks flush and waited for a reprimand.

  Holden, however, merely shrugged, and the silence softened as she did so. ‘Whatever, Constable. I’ll take my coffee black, unless Fran has splashed out and purchased cream for us.’

  It took another minute for them to settle. Fox, Lawson and Wilson perched with their coffees on the rather worn armchairs round the low table, and waited for Holden to start.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Holden said eventually. ‘Has anyone checked Greenleaf’s emails?’

  ‘I took a look at the office PC yesterday,’ Wilson said. ‘But it didn’t look as though he had any personal files there.’

  ‘Does he not have a laptop?’

  ‘I haven’t seen one.’

  Holden frowned at Wilson, and then turned towards the others.

  ‘We searched his flat very thoroughly,’ Lawson said defensively. She and Wilson had spent some time doing so the previous afternoon, and she was pretty damn sure that if there had been a laptop there, they would have found it.

  ‘What about his cottage?’

  ‘I didn’t notice one there,’ Lawson admitted, which she was beginning to realize was odd.

  ‘Not everyone has a laptop,’ Fox said firmly, thinking of himself. ‘Not everyone feels the need.’

  ‘But he must have had one!’ Wilson blurted this out, more forcibly than he intended, and Fox coloured in anger. Sometimes, quite often in fact, he felt Wilson and Lawson didn’t give him the respect he deserved, but at that moment Wilson was oblivious to everything except his own brainwave. ‘He’s got a wireless router in the cottage! On a little table in the corner of the living room. Why would he have that if he didn’t have a computer?’

  ‘Right,’ Holden cut in. She wasn’t oblivious to the tensions that were surfacing, but she didn’t actually care about them either, at least not in comparison with finding Greenleaf’s killer. ‘So let’s get on and find it! If it’s hidden, maybe there’s something on it he wouldn’t want us to see.’ She paused, and sipped at her coffee. There was something else she wanted to raise, something that she had noticed the night before as she had pored over the paperwork in her kitchen. ‘Lawson. Wilson. Last night I was reading through your report of your visit to Greenleaf’s cottage. There’s something odd about it, you know.’

  She sipped again at her coffee, savouring it. It really was rather good. She must remember to ask Fran what it was.

  ‘What do you mean, Guv?’ Wilson was conscious that it was he who had drafted the report.

  ‘There was the neighbour you spoke to at the end. The one with a beard whose name you failed to record. He talked about the building work, and according to your report he said that it had been as quiet as the grave the last few weeks.’ Holden had been studying her coffee as she spoke, but now she looked up at her two constables. ‘Are you sure that is what he said? I mean, you must be sure, mustn’t you, given that that is what you wrote down.’

  ‘That is what he said,’ Wilson said. He tried to sound definite, but there was a note of uncertainty in his voice.

  ‘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?’