Blood on the Cowley Road

by Tickler, Peter

  ‘So,’ said Wilson, taking the opportunity offered by the lull in Ratcliffe’s monologue, ‘I suppose Anne is the sole heir and beneficiary? ’

  ‘Well, I imagine so,’ said the busy head teacher. ‘I’m pretty sure there’s no other family. But you can always ask Anne herself. As I said, she’s probably in Oxford.’

  ‘We’ve already spoken to Anne,’ Wilson said firmly.

  ‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ Ratcliffe exclaimed, ‘instead of letting me rabbit on. Anyway, if you have spoken to her, why are you ringing me up?’

  ‘When investigating, sir, it is important that we get corroboration where we can. The coroner prefers it.’

  ‘Ah, ha!’ Down the other end of the telephone call, in the office of the head teacher of St Gregory’s, it seemed that the penny had suddenly dropped. ‘No wonder you were so pleased for me to rabbit on.’

  Wilson was feeling very pleased with how things were going, but of course he wasn’t going to say so. ‘Actually, sir, we just want to firm up on the details of the day of Sarah Johnson’s death.’

  He paused, and, in the city of Reading, Ratcliffe paused too. Two men silently taking stock. Waiting for the other to make the next move.

  ‘Such as?’ said Ratcliffe, back in terse mode.

  Wilson tried to sound off hand. ‘Well, for the sake of completeness, sir, can you just confirm that Anne was at St Gregory’s on the morning of 21 September.’

  ‘One moment.’ Again the terse reponse, followed this time by nearly a minute’s silence before Ratcliffe spoke again: ‘Anne has a first lesson on a Friday. Then two periods off, then lessons before and after lunch. And she runs a gymnastics club after school, in the sports hall.’

  ‘I appreciate that that is her timetable, sir,’ Wilson said firmly, ‘but that isn’t what I asked for.’ Wilson now had a definite sense that Ratcliffe was being less than straightforward. ‘What I wanted to confirm whether Anne was in school as per her timetable. And if so, what time did she arrive at school?’

  ‘Well,’ said Ratcliffe with a sneer in his voice, ‘I am not sure I am going to be able to give you precise details about when she arrived and so forth. We aren’t a police state here you know.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she have taken a register of her class, first thing?’ Wilson retorted. ‘And if so, wouldn’t she have signed it? As far as I am concerned, and as far as the coroner is concerned, that would be more than adequate evidence.’

  ‘Just wait,’ Ratcliffe said. ‘I’ll check.’ Wilson smiled. No doubt Ratcliffe would take his time over the checking process, but that didn’t bother him in the slightest. The head bloody teacher was rattled. The supercilious git! The wait turned out to be almost two minutes, though Wilson wasn’t counting. In fact, his attention was focused again on the picture displayed on the PC monitor, picture number two of Sarah Johnson. The idea which had slipped into his mind while he was first waiting to speak to Ratcliffe was now making its presence felt. Could it ... could it possibly be?

  ‘Sorry for the delay.’ It was Ratcliffe, and the tone of voice was suddenly breezy. ‘You were right! I checked the register and I’ve had a word with the school secretary. The details of that terrible day are very fresh in her mind. Apparently Anne didn’t make it to her first lesson. She had problems starting her car. Mr Ford took her place, as he had a free period, and she was in school in time for her lesson before lunch. So that would have been by 11.30 a.m. Of course, it was during that lesson we got the phone call about her sister. Now, does that about cover it, Detective?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Wilson. ‘That covers it very well. For now.’

  ‘You look bloody pleased with yourself.’ It was only five minutes later, and DS Fox had returned from the chemist and had sat down at his desk to see his young colleague smiling almost beatifically into space. ‘Don’t tell me the Queen has gone and invited you to her next garden party!’

  Wilson laughed. ‘I’ve just had an idea, that all.’

  ‘An idea!’ said Fox dramatically. ‘Well knock me down with a feather. Detective Constable Wilson has had an idea. Are you going to share it with me, then?’

  ‘No,’ said Wilson, more firmly than he meant to. ‘At least, sir, I’d rather not do so yet, until I have checked out a few things. It might be nothing.’

  ‘Ah, the detective constable’s idea may be nothing!’ Fox laughed, but his heart was not in it. He got up and walked over to the corner of the room, where he switched on the kettle. ‘I hope these bloody painkillers do the trick.’

  Meanwhile, some 30 miles away at St Gregory’s School, Reading, Dr Adrian Ratcliffe sipped at the cup of coffee that Miss Hegarty had brought in. For several seconds, he frowned. Then he picked up the telephone receiver and began to punch in a familiar set of numbers. He waited for the call to connect, and for someone, after two rings, to answer.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’ came a rather irritated reply.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you.’

  CHAPTER 7

  Martin Mace brought his lorry abruptly to a halt, pulled the handbrake on, and switched the engine off. Then he leant back in his seat, shut his eyes, and blew a deep breath of air through his nostrils. He stayed there several seconds, eyes shut, and motionless except for the gentle rise and fall of his upper frame. The 6.15 start hadn’t been especially early by his standards, but he felt remarkably tired. If he’d had a heavy weekend, he could have understood it, but following the goalless draw on Saturday he hadn’t felt like going out and getting hammered with Al and Sam, and on Sunday he’d slept in a bit, watched the football highlights on Sky, met up with Sam for a single pint and a roast dinner at the Cricketers, and then spent the afternoon tidying up the shed on his allotment. OK, he hadn’t slept that well on Saturday night or Sunday night, what with thinking about Jake, but he ought to be feeling brighter than this. Maybe a coffee would wake him up. The dirty white caravan some thirty metres in front of him didn’t exactly sell itself very eloquently, but he knew from past experience that the coffee here was one of the best. He turned to pick up the Daily Mirror off the bench seat to his left when his mobile rang. He picked it up, looked at the display panel, and wondered who it might be. No one his phone recognized, that was for sure.

  ‘Hello, Martin Mace here,’ he said, trying to sound perky and professional. ‘How may I help you?’

  No one replied. Mace listened intently, but beyond the crackling interference that denoted a poor connection, he could hear only silence.

  He spoke more loudly. ‘Hello! Who is that?’

  Again there was crackling, then a second or two of real silence, then a voice. ‘Is that Mace? Martin Mace?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, speaking loudly and with exaggerated care. If this was someone offering him work, he didn’t want to lose it.

  ‘Martin Mace the lorry driver?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Can I help you?’ He spoke eagerly, too eagerly perhaps. He only had three days of driving lined up this week, and two the next. He needed more.

  ‘Martin Mace of Oxford?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Martin Mace who lives in Meadow Lane, Oxford?’

  ‘Yes.’ But this time Mace’s voice was quieter. Something about this caller – he wasn’t quite sure what – was unsettling. He waited for a reply, but none came. Only anxiety came, creeping across the airwaves, out of the earpiece of his mobile, and down into his stomach like some invisible alien virus. And anxiety was closely followed by anger and aggression.

  ‘Who are you?’ He spat the question noisily into his mobile.

  ‘Five hundred pounds.’

  The anxiety receded. A job. ‘You’ve got a job for me?’

  ‘That’s right. This is what I want you to do.’ The words came out slowly, deliberately. ‘I want you to go to the bank, withdraw five hundred pounds, and give it to me.’

  ‘Is that you Al? Because if it is, let me tell you it ain’t very bloody funny. You’re
pissing me off.’

  ‘Listen!’ The word was shouted down the line so loudly that Mace gave an involuntary start. ‘Because you are pissing me off, Mister bleeding Mace. This is serious. Deadly serious. I know you, and I know your dirty little secret. I know what happened on May the fifth, and I know that if you don’t get the money today, and leave it wherever I say, then I will be telling the police about it too. Do you understand?’

  A shadow passed across Mace’s cab, as a large freighter from Poland pulled past, bumping and grinding over the uneven surface, as it sought a parking placing beyond the caravan.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  Mace nodded his head, as if his questioner was directly in front of him. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, then more loudly, ‘Yes.’

  Mace waited for a reply – for some sort of instructions – but all he heard was a click as the caller hung up. Beyond the caravan, the Polish freighter rocked to a halt as its air brakes were applied. Mace watched as its driver climbed down, walked back towards him along the side of his lorry, and then turned right towards the bushes, where he proceeded to straddle his legs and urinate. Mace sat unmoving, his face transfixed. The man pulled at his zip, turned, and looked up, suddenly aware that he was being observed. He lifted his right hand, thrust a V-sign defiantly at Mace, and walked back round his lorry and past it, until he reached the caravan.

  Mace, all thoughts of coffee abandoned, placed his mobile back into its cradle, connected up his seat belt, and turned the key in the ignition.

  ‘He looks a bit rattled,’ Holden said to Fox as they pulled up in front of the Evergreen Day Centre. She was referring to Jim Blunt. She had rung up and warned him they wanted to come round and speak to him about Jake, and even though they were three minutes early, he was standing outside the front with two other men, ostensibly smoking, but in reality, Holden reckoned, watching. Before the car had come to a halt, he was moving forward towards them, waving a welcome. Gone was the studied insouciance of Friday, when he had made them wait while he addressed his day centre.

  ‘He’s probably feeling guilty,’ Fox said in a matter-of-fact tone.

  ‘Of what?’ Holden asked.

  Fox turned the engine off, and turned to look at her.

  ‘Of what?’ Holden repeated. ‘He can wait,’ she added, her eyes indicating that ‘he’ was Blunt, who had now stopped, rather awkwardly, in front of the car.

  ‘When I was staying with my sister, we went out in the car one morning, to get some more paint. She was driving, and we were going along the main road when she suddenly said “There’s a police car behind us.” “Yes”, I said to her, “so there is, and there’s also a policeman sitting in the seat next to you!” I remember that I laughed. But you know what she did, she pulled into a bus stop about fifty metres in front of us, so that the police car would go past. I was going to laugh again, but one look at her face stopped me. “You probably think I’m silly, Derek,” she said, “but I can’t bear being followed by a police car. I feel I must have done something wrong, broken the speed limit, jumped the traffic lights, or knocked down an old lady without noticing. Even though I know I haven’t, I still feel guilty.”

  Holden released her seat belt, and finally acknowledged Blunt’s presence with a brief wave. Then she turned her face back towards Fox. ‘What sort of creatures would we be if we never had feelings of guilt? Nothing more than animals, I guess.’ And with that, she opened the car door and got out.

  Blunt took them not to the small room with the dirty armchairs, but to a slightly larger room that served as his office. The centre of the room was taken up by a large desk that had clearly seen better days. It was in its turn dominated by the usual paraphernalia of computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse and printer. The only other item on the desk was a nest of three wire filing trays, the top one of which was marked ‘In’, the middle one ‘Pending’, and the bottom one ‘Out’. It was behind this defensive wall that Blunt now sat, after briefly waving his visitors to a pair of red plastic chairs on the near side of the room.

  ‘So,’ he said, nonchalantly, and looking at Holden, ‘what was it you wanted to talk to me about?’

  Holden turned and gave a brief nod of her head to Fox. She had no intention of giving Blunt an easy ride. And as she and Fox had discovered from experience, one of the best ways to start that process was to confuse the interviewee over who the interviewer was.

  ‘I’d have thought you would have guessed, sir,’ Fox said firmly.

  ‘Guessed?’ Blunt said cautiously.

  ‘Well, you being an intelligent sort of man, sir.’ He spoke calmly, quietly. He paused, then smiled. ‘And, of course, with the sort of history you’ve got—’

  ‘Look,’ Blunt said with irritation, ‘I have a day centre to run, so I don’t have time to play guessing games.’

  ‘And we have a murderer to find, sir,’ Fox said evenly, ‘so we don’t have time to waste, and that’s why I am hoping you will cooperate sir.’

  ‘Of course I’ll cooperate,’ Blunt blustered.

  ‘Like you did on Friday?’ said Holden, briefly entering the fray and forcing Blunt’s attention to her.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Blunt replied, suddenly uncertain.

  ‘On Friday,’ Fox stated, again forcing Blunt to switch his attention and gaze, ‘you stated that you and Jake Arnold got on well enough.’

  ‘Did I?’ Blunt said.

  ‘You also said he was a bit idle and occasionally needed the proverbial kick up the backside.’

  ‘Sounds about right,’ Blunt acknowledged.

  ‘But you didn’t mention, sir, that Jake had made allegations that you had bullied him.’ Fox stopped, looked evenly at Blunt, and waited for a response. Blunt looked back at him, but said nothing. For several seconds there was silence, until Holden broke in.

  ‘Were the allegations true?’

  ‘No!’ Blunt snapped the word back.

  ‘But they were damaging, to you, I imagine,’ Holden continued. ‘On the no-smoke-without-fire basis.’

  ‘It was his word against mine. I’ve been running this centre for three years. He’s been here a bare six months. Who are they going to believe. Him or me?’

  Fox liked interviewing with Holden. They worked together well. He liked the fact that she didn’t take over, and he found that he could tell instinctively when it was his turn to talk, and when his turn to shut up. ‘Tell us about how you came to leave the army, sir. You were only there three years, which doesn’t seem that long, really.’

  The change of direction appeared to throw Blunt off balance. He looked hard at Fox, then back at Holden. The colour that had flared up just before now receded as quickly. Fox, scenting a breakthrough, pushed a little more.

  ‘I understand you got into a fight, and you made such a mess of the guy you were fighting that he ended up in hospital. Or maybe it’s something you prefer not to discuss publicly.’

  But Fox had misjudged his quarry. Blunt leant back in his chair so far that it rocked up on its back legs. Then he smiled.

  ‘I left the army with a clean slate. In fact, my CO gave me a glowing reference for Civy Street. He liked the fact that I stood up for myself. The guy came at me with a broken bottle. I stopped him. The fact that he ended up in hospital for two months was his look-out, not mine. He got what he deserved.’

  ‘Did Jake get what he deserved, do you think?’ Fox said, with an edge of anger in his voice.

  Blunt stood up suddenly. His face was red again, and his hands, Holden noticed, were clenched. ‘End of interview,’ he snarled. ‘My army career has nothing to do with Jake.’ He pointed the forefinger of his right hand aggressively at Fox. ‘If you want to make any more insinuations, Detective, you can do so in front of a solicitor. Right?’

  ‘No need for that,’ Holden said mildly. She sat unmoving in her chair, refusing to be intimidated by his aggression. She knew Fox had gone too far, but she wasn’t displeased with the outcome. ‘No more questions. But I would like to speak
to Danny. Is he around?’

  When the bell of flat 2, number 12 Marston Street rang at 10.45 a.m., Anne Johnson had only just dressed. She had always – or at least as far back as she could remember – been an owl rather than a lark, so the opportunity for lying in that three weeks of compassionate leave offered was one she had seized at eagerly. Her hair was still wet from the shower, and as she moved toward the front door she hastily tightened the towel which she had twisted turban-style around her head.

  ‘Oh,’ she said as she pulled back the door, ‘it’s you.’

  Detective Constable Wilson felt the disappointment in her voice, but ignored it.

  ‘Good morning, Ms Johnson,’ he said with his most winning smile. ‘I hope this isn’t inconvenient for you. It’s just that I was in the area and I was wondering if—’

  He never completed his sentence because a snort of words erupted from the mouth of Anne Johnson. ‘In the area! In the area?’ It was strange, she thought, how much less cute he looked this morning. ‘Did they teach you that chat-up line at police school?’ she continued scornfully. Wilson’s poise collapsed like a sandcastle swamped by an unexpectedly large wave. He had been looking forward to interviewing Anne Johnson – she had a sense of fun and spirit that had impressed him on his earlier meeting – but he realized now that he had misread her badly.