Blood on the Cowley Road

by Tickler, Peter

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the detective had said without sounding as if he meant it. ‘This may be a bit of a shock, but we need to ask you a few simple questions.’ The questions had started with the mundane – full name, address, telephone and mobile numbers – and had then moved on to the slightly more creative.

  ‘You first met Jake Arnold when you started this course, did you?’

  Mace had been tempted to agree, but with Rachel sitting there he decided a lie was an unnecessary risk. He didn’t know if Rachel knew anything about him and Jake, but she might do. ‘No,’ Mace said. The copper looked up with sudden interest, but said nothing, waiting for Mace to expand on his single word response. ‘Jake was a fan of Oxford United, like me, so we’d seen each other at games. We weren’t mates or anything, it’s just that at away games you all get herded together. So when I came along to this course, well, we recognized each other, didn’t we.’

  ‘So you sort of knew him, but you weren’t mates?’

  ‘Yes!’ Mace said, and then ‘No!’ Again the copper fixed him with an expression that was intended to convey that (a) he wasn’t a man to be messed about with and (b) he was happy to sit here all day asking questions until he got replies that he was satisfied with. ‘Look,’ Mace continued, conscious that he wasn’t handling this very well. ‘What I mean is that I knew him by sight, but I didn’t actually know him until after I came here, to the group.’

  ‘So you got to know him since?’ the copper suggested eagerly. ‘You must see him at every game?’

  ‘No. Not every game. I don’t see him at home games, for a start. I always go to the Oxford Mail stand, he probably sits in the South Stand. And he doesn’t go to all the away games either.’

  ‘Did you see him at the last away game?’ The copper was relentless. ‘Where was it, by the way?’

  ‘Shrewsbury. The Tuesday before last. Nil bloody nil. We played rubbish, but so did they. Jake and me had a chat at half-time.’

  ‘About what?’ the copper broke in quickly.

  ‘About the football. What the fuck else? Hardly the time or place to discuss how I was getting on with my anger management, now was it?’

  ‘Just one more question,’ the copper had said then. Mace had felt relieved when he’d said this because inside he could feel himself getting more and more pissed off with the questions and the bloody copper’s attitude and even with Rachel standing there with her mouth closed for once, but her eyes taking every fucking last thing in. ‘Breathe deep!’ He could almost hear Jake say it, which in the circumstances was a right stupid thing to be almost hearing.

  ‘I need to ask you where you were last night,’ the copper was saying. Mace tried to compose himself. ‘I went to Lincoln in the morning. I got back about four o’clock,’ he said as calmly as he could. ‘Had some food. Went to the allotment. But it started to rain soon after I got there so I went home, watched the telly for a bit, and went to bed about 9.00 p.m. I had to be in Grimsby by 8.00 this morning, so I had to be up very early.’ He stopped, waiting for a response. The copper frowned, scribbled a few notes on his pad, and grunted. ‘OK, that’s all.’

  The interview was over.

  At much the same time that Martin Mace was contemplating his hoeing disaster, and less than half a mile away from where he was so doing, Detective Constable Wilson was striding the towpaths of southern Oxford in search of a murder weapon. Not that he expected to find a blood-coated implement lying abandoned in the bushes by the side of the river. But he did hope for confirmation of his theory that the weapon used had been a mooring spike. He started his search in Iffley. He parked his car in the village, then walked down the sloping side road that led to the lock, precisely the route that Peter Mellor had taken with his dog the previous night. He paused for a few moments at the weir where Jake Arnold’s body had shot suddenly into Mellor’s view, and stared down into the water as if waiting for inspiration to rise fully formed from its swirling waters. With a shake of the head, he moved on, across the lock gates, then turning north. He soon passed the Iffley Inn on his right, but he had no interest in revisiting it, and his stride lengthened as his eyes spotted a narrowboat moored a couple of hundred metres up ahead. A middle-aged man dressed in navy blue slacks, polo shirt and nautical hat was busy checking his moorings, and it took only the most casual questioning from Wilson to elicit the information that they had only just arrived, having spent the previous night at Wallingford. He pushed on, slowing briefly at Donnington Bridge in order to read its undergraduate graffiti, but then accelerating northwards, swinging with the river first left and then right, until suddenly before him there lay, as at any time of year, a spectacular view right up to the Head of the River pub, lying in its much favoured and highly profitable position by Folly Bridge. Wilson stopped and for a moment took in the view. On the right stood college boathouses, lining the river in a strict regimental rank, while opposite them – and little more than fifty metres from where he was standing – stood the university boathouse in solitary isolation. But it was not at these that the young detective was looking. He had fished these waters as a boy, and the buildings were remarkable to him only as the background to memories of fish that he had landed and fish that got away. Wilson was looking for moored boats (narrowboats or small cruisers), but surprisingly, given that it was sunny and the weatherwoman had promised a very pleasant weekend, there was none to be seen. A cyclist’s bell jangled unconvincingly behind him, but before Wilson could turn and look, the cyclist was past him, up and over the steeply humped footbridge in front of him, and away past the university boathouse, long hair flapping in the wind. Wilson did not follow. The bridge’s purpose was to allow pedestrians (and cyclists of course, it being Oxford) to cross a small tributary which entered the River Isis at this point, and it was along the southern bank of this waterway that Wilson now began to walk. This was not a path that was well used, and he walked with care. And with anticipation. Because a few hundred metres along the tributary, where it looped round to go under the Donnington Bridge Road, he knew he would find the boats of several river dwellers, and there he reckoned, with a bit of luck, he would find someone missing a mooring spike. As luck would have it, he never got that far. He had walked for barely a minute before he came across a narrowboat almost hidden from view behind a densely foliaged hawthorn bush which was flanked on either side by two graceful willows. As narrowboats go, it was short, fewer than sixteen metres in length Wilson reckoned, and perched on its roof, sipping something from a mug, was a small bald-headed man in dirty brown T-shirt and jeans.

  ‘Good evening!’ Wilson said cheerily. The man looked up, nodded briefly, and said nothing.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir,’ Wilson continued, this time brandishing his ID card in front of him as a matador might brandish his cloak at a bull. ‘Detective Constable Wilson. No need to be alarmed, but we had some reports of thieving locally, and I just wanted to—’

  The dwarf-man laughed. ‘Ah, you’ve got a very nice soppy class of yob in Oxford, haven’t you? Very genteel indeed!’ He took another sip from his mug, then waved it in the air in a manner that made Wilson wonder if it didn’t contain something a bit stronger than tea. ‘Now in Birmingham, they smash your windows. In Leicester they throw all your clothes into the river and smear shit on your bedding. But in Oxford, posh city of dreaming spires, all they steal is a mooring spike, but only one mind you not two, because they wouldn’t like your boat to float off down the river now would they.’

  ‘When was this?’ Wilson tried unsuccessfully to keep the sense of excitement out of his voice.

  ‘Big case, for you, is it?’ the man chuckled. ‘Catching the man who stole a mooring spike.’

  ‘When?’ Wilson said, this time sharply. ‘I need to know when.’

  ‘Last night. When I was out getting some supper.’

  ‘Can you be more precise?’ Wilson pressed. ‘Please.’

  The man scratched his head in an exaggerated fashion. ‘Well, let me think. I must have left the b
oat about 7.15, maybe a bit later. I walked up to the main river, then up to the town, and had a pie and chips and peas and a couple of pints in that pub by the bridge, and then I walked back. Must have got back to the boat maybe a bit after 9 o’clock. The stern was out across the river. And the mooring spike was gone.’

  Wilson inspected the area where the mooring spike had been. The man had replaced it with another (‘I always carry a spare’), but if Wilson had hoped to find some object carelessly dropped by the murderer when he removed the spike, by now his luck had run out. Five minutes later, having declined a cup of tea but taken the man’s name and mobile number, he set off back towards Iffley, softly whistling as he went. He felt sure that Susan – that is to say Detective Inspector Holden – would be very pleased with him. He did hope so.

  ‘Nice flat you’ve got here,’ Holden said brightly, keen to avoid jumping straight into questions. She walked three paces across the spacious minimalist room, and took in the wide sweep of the river through the large picture window. It was 8.30 on Saturday morning and, directly below, a flotilla of mallards made its way from left to right across her vision, down river. ‘I wish I had a view like this,’ she said with feeling. She herself lived only a few hundred metres away as the crow flew (not that crows are often seen traversing Grandpont), but the view from her flat (the bottom floor of a two-storeyed Victorian terraced building) was merely of other terraced houses. Les Whiting lived on the third and top floor of a relatively new development of flats close by Folly Bridge. Holden remembered them being built, and remembered, too, envying those people who could afford to buy them.

  ‘Thank you, my dear,’ Whiting said. ‘Kind of you to say so, though I prefer to think of it as an apartment. The word flat has such, such—’ He paused, and ran his right hand through his streaked hair while he tried to conjure up the precise word he was looking for. ‘Such uninteresting connotations. Don’t you think so?’

  Holden smiled. ‘Thank you for seeing us. I appreciate you’ve got a gallery to run, and I guess Saturday is a busy day for you, so we’ll try to keep it short and then—’

  ‘Please!’ said Whiting, waving her to a halt. ‘I could hardly refuse to help the police with their enquiries, now could I? But before we get down to business, how about a coffee? Espresso, cappuccino, or Americano? Or I’ve got a very nice jasmine tea, or a selection of herbal infusions.’

  ‘Cappuccino, please,’ said Holden, impressed by the choice.

  ‘Black coffee for me,’ said Fox uncompromisingly, refusing to be drawn into the world of fancy hot drinks. ‘With three sugars,’ he added, before slumping heavily onto one of the two white sofas.

  Whiting smiled the indulgent smile he often had to employ in his gallery in the High Street when customers tried to knock down his prices. ‘Three sugars it is,’ he said softly, turning towards the archway that led through to the kitchen.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Holden, ‘but could I use your loo. Bad planning as my mother would say, but it’s—’

  ‘Woman’s stuff?’ Whiting interrupted. ‘Don’t you worry,’ and he tapped his nose with the forefinger of his right hand. ‘Mum’s the word. Follow me!’

  She followed, but he stopped in front of the door lavatory, blocking her way. ‘Just to get this out the way,’ he said firmly. ‘I know Jake was bonked on the head, and I know he was fished out of the river. That’s enough for me. More than enough. Are you with me?’

  ‘Of course,’ Holden said quietly. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Well, I hope that orang-utan of a colleague does too,’ he said moving to the side. ‘Anyway, I’ll leave you to it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Five minutes later and they were sitting down around a low rectangular table which consisted of aluminium tubes of varying diameters and a sheet of glass. Holden took a sip from her cappuccino, and then waited for Whiting to take one from his.

  ‘I’d like you to tell us about your relationship with Jake,’ she asked.

  Whiting took a second sip, before carefully placing his cup and saucer on the table. Fleetingly, his right hand touched the small silver cross hanging around his neck. ‘He came into my gallery about six months ago. That’s Bare Canvas, in the High Street, in case you’re interested. Anyway he asked a lot of questions, but he didn’t buy anything. You soon get a feeling when someone comes into the shop whether they are curious, or serious, or just trying to avoid the rain. He turned up again later that week, just before I was due to shut up shop, and we ended up going out for a drink. Well, to cut things short, we got into a relationship.’ He paused again, and picked up his cappuccino, but this time just cradled it in his hands.

  ‘Did he move in with you?’

  ‘Not permanently. He’d stay over most weekends, and sometimes midweek, but we both liked our personal space.’

  ‘And when did you split up?’

  He lifted the cappuccino up close to his lips, but made no attempt to drink from it. ‘Three weeks ago,’ he said quietly. Holden thought she could detect a tear straining to form in the corner of his eye. ‘Three weeks yesterday, to be precise.’ There was another pause. Holden waited. ‘He’d been seeing someone else.’

  ‘Seeing someone else,’ Holden echoed, a question mark almost visibly attached to it.

  ‘Buggering someone else, if you prefer it, ma’am!’ He spoke forcefully now, all nostalgic emotion now put firmly on hold. ‘Not my scene. Wanting a bit of space is one thing. Fucking someone else on the side is quite another.’

  ‘So it was an unpleasant break-up, was it?’ It was Fox who said this, causing both Whiting and Holden to turn towards him. Holden frowned with irritation, but Whiting seemed unflustered.

  ‘Have you ever had a relationship that went down the tubes, Detective?’ He paused, giving Fox an opportunity to reply. But Fox said nothing. ‘The ends of relationships are never, in my experience, pleasant. Never. In the case of Jake and me, he betrayed me, so of course I hated it. Briefly, I hated him. So I gave him his marching orders. But life is too short to dwell on things that don’t work out. So if you are implying, as I think you are, Detective, that our break-up was so acrimonious that I decided to bash the cheating bastard over the head and then drop him in the river to make sure, then let me tell you that you have got it wrong.’

  Whiting now raised his cup, which had been hovering uncertainly between his mouth and his lap all the time he was speaking, and took a long and noisy slurp from it.

  ‘We have to be suspicious of everyone.’ Holden spoke softly, almost apologetically, irritated as she was by her colleague’s heavy-footed intervention. ‘It’s virtually part of our job description. I’m sure you must realize. And while we are on difficult questions,’ she continued, plunging on while she had an opportunity, ‘I might as well ask you now where you were on Thursday night. Please!’

  To her surprise, Whiting smiled. ‘Oh, Inspector,’ he said, ‘How reassuring this all is.’ He placed the not yet finished cappuccino cup on the table, and leant back in his chair. He placed his fingers together, as if he was about to demonstrate to them that old rhyme that Holden suddenly remembered from school. ‘Here’s a church and here is a steeple, open the doors, see all the people.’ But the fingers stayed still, as did his eyes which surveyed Holden as a chess player might stare at his adversary, immediately after making a move.

  ‘First you do, well if not the good-cop, bad-cop routine, then at least the nice cop, miserable sod cop routine, and then even as I am in mid-cappuccino you slip in the “Where were you when the victim was murdered?” question. Of course, I knew it was bound to come, and of course like all good suspects I have an alibi that no one can vouch for.’ He paused, half-smiling, forcing a response. But surprisingly it came from a suddenly good-humoured Fox.

  ‘If you could just tell us what your unprovable alibi is, sir, then I can, like a good Policeman Plod, record it in my notebook, so that we can come back another time and try and trip you up on the details.’

  ‘Sergeant!’
Whiting almost bounced vertically in the air in his delight. ‘How nice of you to enter into the spirit. Now let me see.’ He paused – overdramatically in Holden’s view – until he felt he had got sufficient audience attention. ‘It was a migraine. I felt it coming on as I was on the bus home, so as soon as I got in I made myself a cup of jasmine tea, took two painkillers, and then took myself to my lonely bed. All very inconvenient, I know.’

  ‘And no one phoned?’ Holden asked firmly. ‘No one rang the bell?’

  ‘I unplugged the phone, didn’t I.’ Whiting’s tone was flatter now, as if the seriousness of the situation was beginning to seep under the surface bravado. ‘If anyone rang the door bell, I didn’t hear. I was in never-never-land almost as soon as my head touched the pillow.’

  ‘You have a mobile?’

  ‘Who doesn’t? But I turned that off too. Obviously.’

  ‘Why obviously?’ Fox interrupted again.

  ‘Bloody hell, haven’t you ever had a migraine. Cause if you had, you wouldn’t ask such a stupid question.’

  ‘I specialize in stupid questions,’ Fox responded evenly. ‘I’m a stupid plodding, sergeant, and I ask stupid bloody questions.’

  ‘Well, bully for you!’ Whiting laughed.

  ‘Perhaps we can focus on Jake,’ cut in Holden, who was getting a little suspicious of Whiting’s manner. His lover of recent time lay dead in the mortuary, yet here he was playing to his audience of two with a will. ‘You may not have killed him, but someone did. It was a nasty, violent, deliberate act. Someone out there disliked Jake very much. So as Jake’s close friend, maybe there is something you know that we ought to know. And if so, now is the time to tell us.’ She paused, and added: ‘If, that is, you want us to catch his killer.’

  Whiting held up his hands theatrically, but then dropped them as if having second thoughts. ‘Sorry. Point taken.’ For a few seconds he shut his eyes, raising his right hand to his mouth. Then he opened them again and looked straight at Holden.