Blood on the Marsh

by Peter Tickler

  ‘About half past ten, maybe eleven.’

  ‘And Jim was at home?’

  ‘That’s right. He was at home. Sitting on his arse, because with Greenleaf being dead, that cow at Sunnymede didn’t want him doing any more work there.’

  ‘So he had no work to go to?’

  ‘He told me he was going to finish off Mr Jones’s patio. He lives three doors up. Jim laid it all a couple of weeks ago, but he needed to go and finish it off. I warned him I’d finish him off if he didn’t get it sorted because we needed the money, but that was Jim Wright all over. Never quite finished what he started unless you planted a bomb under him.’

  ‘And you said earlier he was planning to call on someone about a possible job?’

  ‘Oh, you were listening then.’ Maureen’s answer was savage with sarcasm.

  ‘But you don’t know who it was?’

  ‘No, I still don’t know.’

  Sometimes, when she questioned people, Holden got a strong sense that they were telling the truth, and sometimes she felt instinctively that they were spinning a line. But right now, she had neither. The only sense she had was that Maureen Wright was spurting out vitriol in the same way – and perhaps for the same reason – as an octopus ejects ink, to protect itself and confuse its enemy. Holden was encouraged. ‘Look,’ she insisted, ‘I do need to ask these questions if I’m to—’

  ‘Bugger your questions, Inspector.’ Maureen Wright stood up abruptly, catching the edge of the table on her knees so that it lifted and jumped with her. ‘And bugger my husband. There are more important things in the world than him. David has gone missing. My son has gone missing.’ And then she started howling.

  Wilson and Lawson found Fran Sinclair in Greenleaf’s office – or rather it had been Greenleaf’s office, but it was clear that Fran Sinclair had already staked a permanent claim to it. It wasn’t as if she had heavily feminized it – far from it – but the walls proclaimed that this room was now under new ownership. In particular, an oversized graduation photo of her confronted the visitor as he or she entered the room, and to the right of it a framed certificate proclaimed Frances Alison Sinclair as having been awarded a degree of Bachelor of Arts (Second Class) in Applied Social Studies.

  ‘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.

  ‘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.

  ‘It might be a good idea to keep him in the loop,’ Fox had said, as he turned into the peculiarly named Between Towns Road.

  Holden had emitted a guttural noise that might have meant ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or indeed anything.

  ‘You know what he’s like,’ Fox had pressed.

  This time, Holden had made no audible response beyond a slight sniff.

  But Fox, having started, had no intention of stopping. ‘Why don’t you ring him before he rings you?’

  ‘Christ, Sergeant,’ she had exploded. ‘You’re not my mother. I’ve got one of those, and one is quite enough.’

  Fox had said nothing. How had Lawson once put it? That half the time it was as if Holden didn’t want to be mistaken for a member of the human race. Lawson could be an irritating so and so, but she had got that right.

  ‘All right then, I’ll ring him,’ Holden had snapped, suddenly conceding. ‘I’ll ring the detective superintendent, and then, Sergeant, perhaps you’ll revert to the role of detective.’

  Fox said nothing.

  After all this preamble, it was inevitable that Murphy’s Law kicked in. Holden’s phone call was answered by Amanda Blenkinsop, the DS’s guard dog of a secretary.

  ‘I want to speak to Detective Superintendent Collins.’

  ‘He’s not available at the moment,’ came the reply. Ms Blenkinsop was notorious for her ability to not give out information.

  ‘When will he be available?’ Holden asked testily.

  ‘Would you like me to pass a message on to him?’

  Holden was conscious of Fox’s presence next to her. They had stopped at a pedestrian crossing, and she had glanced across to find him watching her, though whether to give her moral support, or whether to check she didn’t misbehave, she wasn’t quite sure. Whatever the reason, it had an effect.

  ‘Thank you, Amanda,’ she said with a huge effort. ‘The message is this.’ And she proceeded to tell her, in short sentences, about the death on the railway, the identification of the body – or rather its remains – and the disappearance of David Wright.

  ‘And this David Wright, the adopted son,’ Blenkinsop said, ‘who has disappeared.’ She liked to demonstrate her ability to summarize. ‘Am I to tell the detective superintendent that you believe his disappearance to be connected with the death of Mr Jim Wright?’

  ‘No, you may not,’ Holden replied firmly. ‘You may tell him the facts only. If he needs to know more, or if he wishes to know my current thinking, then he can ring me. Can’t he?’

  ‘I understand.’ Blenkinsop spoke smoothly and calmly. Getting flustered, getting irritated, indeed getting any sort of emotional high while on duty, was quite out of the question. ‘Rest assured, Inspector, I will pass your message on.’

  Holden terminated t
he call with a snort. Rest assured! Who did the woman think she was?

  ‘Happy now, Sergeant?’ she snarled.

  Fox again said nothing. All his energy and attention was being poured into parking the car tidily and turning off the engine. They were halfway down Barns Road, outside a featureless three-storey block of flats. Holden had despatched Wilson and Lawson to pick up Maureen Wright from her house, so now they had at least five minutes to check David’s flat out before they arrived, just in case there was anything there that Maureen would be best not seeing. Like David’s dead body.

  Maureen had given them the entry code for the main entrance, and her spare key for the flat, so they gained access without a problem. The studio flat – essentially one large room with kitchen facilities at one end, a bed, desk with computer, one armchair, two upright chairs, and a built-in wardrobe, plus a door which opened onto a tiny en suite shower room – was tidy. Whatever and whenever he had had his last meal there, he had washed up and put everything away afterwards. The flat was also, thankfully, free of human corpses.

  Holden opened the wardrobe. Clothes were hung and folded with a neatness and sense of order that matched the rest of the flat. Underneath the rack of shirts, T-shirts, and trousers lay a small suitcase with wheels and a handle, small enough to be treated as hand luggage if you’re flying off on holiday or business. Next to it was an empty space.

  ‘If that’s a missing case,’ Fox said, ‘then it looks like he’s done a runner.’

  Holden nodded. It seemed a fair enough inference, but she didn’t want to jump to conclusions. ‘We’ll see what Maureen can tell us.’

  When Maureen arrived, she soon demonstrated that she wasn’t going to jump to conclusions either. She looked at the gap by the case, and then she opened the other end of the wardrobe and looked there. She studied the footwear. ‘Oh!’ she said. Then she stood up and moved over to the cooking area, opening a cupboard above the sink. It contained various food items – a tin of tomatoes, two jars of pasta sauce, a bag of white rice, a box of cornflakes, a carton of apple juice, gravy granules and tomato sauce.