Blood on the Marsh

by Peter Tickler

  ‘Yeah, she had a right go at me.’

  ‘Did you, Maureen?’

  ‘Yes I blooming well did,’ she snapped back. ‘Not because of her going Goth in itself. Hell, we all do stupid things when we’re young. It was all to do with the timing. It was about respect, of rather her lack of it, for her grandmother. Nanette was very good to her, very good to us all, and I thought she could have had the decency to wait until after the funeral before she entered her Goth stage. She can be a Goth for all I care, but yesterday, while I was out in Reading buying myself a suitable outfit, she was spending money on black spiky hair and make-up. And she skipped school to do it! Jesus bloody wept!’

  ‘Only the afternoon,’ Vickie responded sharply. ‘One lesson was sport and Mr Ford was sick. It would only have been a crappy supply teacher.’

  Holden turned to Fox, trying to get her head round all this new information. ‘Sergeant, when you called in here yesterday, Vickie was blonde, wasn’t she?’

  ‘That’s right, Guv.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right!’ Vickie drawled, her confidence growing with every word she spoke. ‘I was nearly late for my appointment, because of him and that female with him. She insisted on going to the loo, and was ages in there, and I ended up having to run to the hairdresser.’

  ‘And this was when?’

  ‘Half past two.’

  ‘And you got home when?’

  ‘Just before five.’

  ‘Oi!’ Maureen had had enough. ‘Why all these questions? What has my daughter’s skipping school and getting her hair messed up got to do with anything?’

  Holden ignored the question. ‘So Vickie, did you skip school in the morning too?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you came home at lunchtime.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And did you see your father?’

  ‘No. He wasn’t in.’

  ‘And you were out of the house between half past two and five o’clock.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And when did your mum get back from Reading?’

  ‘Maybe ten or fifteen minutes after I got back from the hairdresser.’

  ‘And did you go out again?’

  ‘No, she did not!’ Maureen was standing up and her eyes were flaring. ‘I grounded her. I got a text from the school. That’s what they do now. They send you a text telling you if your child has skived off. So I was hopping mad by the time I got home. I grounded her, and I stayed in all evening to make sure she stayed grounded.’

  ‘I see.’ Holden tried to assess this new information – or was it disinformation? It would be easy enough to check out their story – the hair appointment, the text message from the school – and it certainly put Vickie in the clear, but Jim died at 7.27 p.m. and if Maureen was behind that, then Vickie was lying for her. But if Vickie was telling the truth, then the obvious suspect had to be David. ‘Tell me, Vickie. Do you know where David is?’ She spoke casually, as if the answer was barely consequential.

  The girl began to study her fingernails, which were painted alternately deep crimson and black. She said nothing. Gave no indication.

  ‘We’re worried about him. If you know anything, you must tell us.’

  Vickie’s hand moved involuntarily to her neck, remembering the aftermath of the fish and chip supper. ‘He can look after himself.’

  ‘I’m sure he can. It’s just that we’re worried in case he does something silly.’

  Vickie’s earlier confidence had faded, and been supplanted by mere stubbornness. ‘I can’t help you.’

  ‘You know where he is, don’t you, Vickie.’

  ‘No.’

  Holden had been leaning forward confidentially, but now she leant back and took stock. Was it time for a change of tack? David wasn’t going to go far. No doubt he was camping somewhere in the Boars Hill woods. Sooner or later a search team would find him. And then, if he was the killer, there was a good chance they’d be able to get him to confess. But what if he wasn’t? Holden leant forward again. She had another weapon in reserve, and now was the time to deploy it.

  She opened the folder in front of her, pulled out a piece of paper, and pushed it across the table towards Vickie. ‘Talking of photos, Vickie, as we were a bit earlier, what can you tell me about these ones?’

  ‘These ones’ were three of the photos of Ania and Vickie, dressed as schoolgirls and smiling unconvincingly at the camera.

  Vickie said nothing. It was her mother who stretched forward, picked them up, and studied them one at a time for several seconds. ‘Where did you get these from?’

  ‘They were on Paul Greenleaf’s laptop.’

  It was just a bit of fun,’ Vickie jumped in. ‘After the football game. We went to Mr Greenleaf’s house, and had supper, and Ania and I dressed up for a bit of fun, like we were sisters, and they took photos.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Mr Greenleaf really. But Dad was there, so I knew it was all right.’

  ‘Did anything else happen, Vickie?’

  ‘No. Course not. I got a headache, so Dad brought me home.’

  ‘And I guess that was quite late, was it?’

  ‘Half past ten.’ Maureen cut in firmly. ‘Or thereabouts. I was still up. Jim turned on the TV to catch Match of the Day but it had already started. I gave Vickie two paracetamol and saw her into bed.’

  Holden picked up her mug and slowly drained the tea in it. Mother and daughter were united now: Maureen was sitting bolt upright in the armchair, while Vickie perched on its arm, her right arm across her mother’s shoulder. The question was how to separate them.

  ‘Weren’t you worried, Maureen?’

  ‘Why should I have been? It was a Saturday night. She was with her dad. What was there to worry about?’

  ‘Sorry, that isn’t what I meant.’ Holden tried to look apologetic, as she set her trap. ‘I meant, weren’t you worried when you saw the photos?’

  ‘What are you talking about? I’ve never seen them until now.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Holden said quickly. The trap had snapped shut on thin air. ‘You wouldn’t have. But I assumed that Vickie would have told you about them. Or maybe your husband would have.’

  ‘Why would they have told me? It looks like just a bit of fun. Harmless fun. What’s the big deal?’

  ‘The big deal, Maureen, as far as I can see, is that they are motive for murder. Paul Greenleaf and your husband took the photos, and now they’re both dead.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. They’re just stupid photos. They were probably drunk when then took them.’

  ‘Stupid photos?’ Holden spat the words back. ‘Is that what you really think, Maureen?’

  Maureen flinched. Whatever thoughts she had about the photos, she wasn’t going to share them with Holden. ‘I don’t give a shit about them!’ She waved the photos wildly in front of Holden’s face. ‘Right now, all I care about is David. You should be out there looking for him, not showing us stupid photos.’ And she started to rip them up into pieces.

  It was Fox who intervened. He could read the signs, and they were flashing red for danger. ‘Mrs Wright,’ he said, because at that moment anything else seemed too casual, ‘let me reassure you. We’ll soon have a search party out on Boars Hill. I’m sure if David is there, they’ll soon find him.’

  She looked at him, glad of his assurance even if she wasn’t convinced. ‘I can’t wait here,’ she said simply. ‘I’d like to join the search. David may be frightened. I should be there. I’m his mother.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said. It wasn’t his call to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, but he felt he had to say that much.

  They both turned towards Holden. ‘DC Lawson will drive you up there,’ she said quickly. There was no need to deny the woman’s request. In fact, it was a damned good way of keeping tabs on her. ‘You can both join the search.’

  ‘What about me?’ It was Vickie. She had retreated to the door, watching, listening, and silent. Behind the black curtains of
her hair, there were dark smudges down her cheeks.

  ‘I want you to stay here,’ Maureen said firmly. ‘In case David phones. Or comes home.’

  ‘Is he here?’ Holden had pushed past Bella Sinclair as soon as she had opened the door of her flat.

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Your son, Bella. We know all about you and your precious son, so why don’t you just tell us where he is?’

  Bella didn’t say anything, not for several seconds. She looked from Holden to Fox to Wilson as if sizing up her options.

  ‘David is your son, isn’t he?’ It was the big male detective speaking now, more quietly than his boss, seeking confirmation.

  She nodded.

  ‘So do you know where he is?’

  ‘Isn’t he at work?’

  The man leant forward. ‘Has he been here today?’

  She shook her head.

  But Holden had had enough of Fox’s softly-softly tactics. She wanted answers, and being nice wasn’t going to get them, at least not as quickly as she wanted them. ‘Ms Sinclair,’ she snapped, stabbing her forefinger at the woman’s face. ‘Your son is wanted for murder. For three murders, in fact. His grandmother, your boss and his adoptive father. Now, when did you last see him?’

  Bella’s mouth opened, shut and then opened again, but no sound came out. Her face, however, had turned a sickly white.

  When she did speak, she did so with anguish in her voice. ‘Why would he have killed them? Why would he have killed Greenleaf? He didn’t even know him.’

  ‘What on earth makes you think that?’ Holden had her line of argument prepared. ‘He used to visit his grandmother in Sunnymede, didn’t he? So he could easily have met Greenleaf there, couldn’t he?’

  ‘Believe me, Greenleaf wouldn’t have wasted his precious time talking to someone like David.’

  Holden smiled bleakly, and delivered her coup de grâce. ‘But Greenleaf spent his precious time chasing you, didn’t he Bella. And then he suspended you. So you had a motive to kill him. Maybe you told David, and out of misguided love for you, David killed him?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’ She sounded angry, but her face had paled. ‘Absolutely ridiculous.’

  ‘What’s ridiculous?’ Holden hadn’t finished yet. ‘Are you saying it’s ridiculous that David should love you, then? Or that he should do something to demonstrate his love?’

  Fox flinched. Sometimes, he found Holden quite terrifying. First it had been Maureen, and now Bella. Find the weakest point – and in both their cases it was a mother’s love – and then stick the knife in and twist.

  But if Holden’s intention was to get Bella to react, to say something that she instantly regretted, something incriminating, she was to be disappointed. The woman sank down onto her sofa and began to drag her fingers through her red hair, tugging viciously when they met resistance. When she looked up, her eyes were moist, Fox noticed, and her face a picture of misery. ‘He hardly knows me,’ she said plaintively. ‘We’ve had such little time.’

  Fox almost nodded in sympathy. To him, the woman’s grief seemed genuine. But Holden’s features were as unrelenting as granite. And she hadn’t finished yet. ‘Where is he, Bella?’ she demanded. ‘We need to find him. Before he does any harm to anyone else. Or even to himself.’

  ‘Himself?! What are you suggesting?’

  ‘Where is he, Bella?’ Holden persisted. ‘You’d better tell me before it’s too late.’

  But Bella was saying nothing. Instead she just sat there, looking over Holden’s shoulder, and out through the window beyond. It was as if she had entered another reality.

  ‘If you don’t co-operate,’ Holden said, raising her voice, ‘then I’m going to have to ask you to accompany Detective Constable Wilson down to the station until we’ve more time to interview you.’

  Bella focused her eyes back on Holden. ‘Now that really would be stupid,’ she said. Her eyes didn’t blink, and she continued speaking as if explaining a rather dull concept to a rather dull set of children. ‘You don’t look stupid to me, Inspector. Behind that miserable face of yours, I bet you’re really rather smart. But what good is taking me to the station going to do? It will occupy your constable here, and leave my flat empty. And when David comes to find me, I won’t be here.’

  ‘And what makes you think he’ll come and find you?’

  ‘Where else can he possibly go? The world is against him. I’m his mother. His real mother. He’ll come home to me sooner or later.’

  Holden looked at Bella, and wondered if the woman looking back at her was completely deluded. Would David really come to Bella rather than Maureen? Surely not. Maureen had been his mother for some twenty years. How could this woman replace her? And yet. The words of doubt were there in her brain. What would it be like to be David – to have your mother return from the dead after twenty years? What might it have done to him?

  ‘Very well.’ Holden had made her decision. ‘You can stay here, in case David comes or tries to contact you. But Detective Constable Wilson will remain with you.’

  She turned to him. ‘You stay here whatever the circumstances, Wilson. Any news and you report to me immediately. And you don’t let her out of your sight. Understood?’

  Wilson tried not to show his dismay. ‘Yes, Guv.’

  Holden and Fox had barely stepped out of the lift when her mobile rang. The caller’s name did not register.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. She dared it to be someone selling something. Dared it and willed it. She was in the perfect mood to rip a call-centre operator limb from limb.

  ‘Nurse Straker,’ the answer came. ‘I’m calling from the hospital.’

  ‘The hospital?’

  By the time the conversation with Nurse Straker had finished, Holden’s face – and probably every other part of her body – had gone puce.

  ‘Is your mother OK?’ Fox asked.

  Given that a string of expletives had started to erupt from his guv’s mouth, it was, Fox knew, not the most sensible question. But he reckoned he had to say something before he had half the inhabitants of Blackbird Leys turning up for the sideshow.

  ‘My mother has only gone and fallen over in the hospital! Why didn’t she tell me she was going? Or Doris at least. But oh no, not my mother. She takes a taxi up to the JR for a check-up, and then faints right in front of the consultant. So Nurse Straker rings up and insists someone picks her up. And by someone she means her daughter.’

  ‘So let’s go.’

  ‘I’m in the middle of a murder case, Sergeant.’

  ‘She’s your mother, Guv.’

  ‘I could strangle her.’

  But Fox had already got his door open. ‘I reckon I can do it in six minutes with the light on.’ And with that, he slipped into the driver’s seat, and started the engine.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Constable?’

  ‘Please. Milk one sugar.’ Wilson picked up the copy of the Oxford Mail lying on the sofa, sat down and turned to the back page. At least he could catch up on the local sport. ‘United missing out’ the headline screamed. It seemed appropriate.

  In the kitchen, Bella switched the kettle on, prepared two mugs with teabags and sugar, and waited for the kettle to create some noise. Then she switched her mobile onto silent, and composed her text.

  ‘You must ring me. The police are looking for you. I can help. Mother.’ She looked at it, frowned, added ‘xx’ at the end, and sent it.

  CHAPTER 12

  For the third time in less than three hours, Fox felt acutely embarrassed by DI Holden. Previously it had been because of the terrible things she had been saying – first to David’s adoptive mother and then to his real mother. But now it was because she wasn’t saying anything at all. Here they were, taking her own mother back to her flat, and Holden had sent her to Coventry. The two of them had exchanged words at the hospital along the lines of the ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ and ‘You’re always too busy to help’ variety, but now
his DI was refusing to communicate with her mother at all. It was, he couldn’t help thinking, ridiculously childish.

  ‘This is why I never told you,’ her mother was saying. It was a variation on a theme she had been playing ever since her daughter and the nice sergeant had turned up at the hospital. ‘I didn’t want to distract you from your big case.’

  There was no reply. Holden was sitting in the back of the car. She was hiding. She knew if she said something, anything, it would be unforgivably rude.

  ‘We’re very glad to be able to give you a lift, Mrs Holden.’ Fox realized it was up to him to intervene.’

  ‘You’re only saying that.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ he said calmly, easing to a stop at the traffic lights. ‘I mean it. And despite what you might sometimes think, your daughter is very fond of you. It is just that the case is at a very difficult stage.’

  ‘Is it now?’ Mrs Holden paused. But almost immediately pressed on. ‘What has happened today, then? Or is that something that you can’t tell me? My daughter is always refusing to tell me things, but I can keep a secret.’ Neither of these statements was entirely true, but right now she was more interested in provoking her daughter than being entirely straight with the sergeant.

  ‘Jim Wright has been killed,’ Fox said. He could see no reason not to say it. If it wasn’t all over the local news now, it almost certainly would be at six o’clock.

  ‘Really? Murdered, you mean?’

  ‘And David has run away.’

  ‘David? You mean he killed his father and has gone on the run?’

  ‘We don’t know. That’s one possibility,’ he admitted cautiously. ‘But the key thing is to find him.’

  ‘I feel sorry for the boy,’ the old woman said.

  ‘He’s a grown man, nearly twenty,’ DI Holden interjected suddenly from the back of the car.

  ‘But inside, I bet he’s a small insecure boy.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Mrs Holden, who had finally provoked her daughter into life, had no intention of not telling her. ‘He’s had a terrible shock. After all these years, his birth mother turns up, and tries to reclaim him. Suddenly he’s got two mothers and doesn’t know who to trust, who to love. He’s got Asperger’s, hasn’t he, and maybe sibling rivalry with his so-called sister, Vickie. And remember his grandmother has just died, and she must have doted on him.’