‘Have they arrested him?’ Lawson said with a hint of alarm in her voice. The last thing she wanted was to miss out on the climax of the investigation.
Wilson shared her unspoken alarm. ‘Well, he’s not cuffed.’
Holden, who had seen the two of them arrive, gestured Fox to take Blunt inside, and began walking briskly over towards them.
‘We’ve brought Blunt in for questioning,’ she said, anticipating their thoughts. ‘We’ve had an incident down at the day centre.’ She proceeded to bring them up to date, about both Flynn and Blunt, and also the conversation she had had with Les Whiting. ‘Danny was very distressed, and in view of what he said, we need to talk to him. He may just be paranoid, but he spoke as if he really did know something about Blunt. Whether it’s relevant to the case, I don’t know, but I want you both to visit the hospital and find out what you can. Wilson, I want you to concentrate on the staff, chat up the nurses, see what you can learn from them. But you stay away from Flynn. Lawson, you’re female, and I want you to get Flynn talking. Be his friend, be his mother, be whatever. Just get him to talk about Blunt.’
‘Yes, Guv,’ Lawson said brightly, her face revealing all too well her delight at being given this task.
Wilson said nothing, and turned abruptly back towards the car.
‘Are you all right with that, Wilson?’ Holden spoke sharply, irritated by his all too obvious change of mood.
He stopped and turned back towards her, though his eyes avoided hers. ‘Yes, Guv, you’re the boss.’
‘You’re spot on there, Constable, and just you remember it. Because if you can’t take orders, you’re no use to me.’
Wilson felt a tremor of humiliation running up his back. Memories of being bawled out by the PE master at school jumped into the forefront of his mind. He tried, but failed, to look her full in the face. ‘I always try to follow orders, Guv,’ he said defensively.
‘Well that’s good, then, Constable. We’ll get along fine. But try one thing for me. Try not to sulk. That’s the sort of behaviour I’d expect from a teenager.’
‘Sorry, Guv,’ he said, this time almost looking her in the eye.
‘One more order before you go. Drive the scenic route to the hospital.’
‘Scenic route?’ Both Wilson and Lawson stared at her, faces blank with incomprehension.
‘The scenic route via wherever it is that Lawson lives. Then, Wilson, you can give her no more than ten minutes to get out of that bloody uniform and into something more casual. The last thing we want is Danny knowing she’s a cop as soon as she walks into the room. Or indeed thinking she’s a shrink. So no white blouse, and no knee-length black skirt. The sloppier and more low key, the better. Right?’
‘Right!’ they replied in unison.
‘I’m curious.’ Detective Inspector Holden, supported by Detective Sergeant Fox on her right, was sitting opposite Jim Blunt in Interview Room 2. She was leaning forward, both elbows on the table, resting her chin on her linked hands and looking directly at the man before her. He was leaning back in his chair, as if to maintain a distance between himself and his questioner, and he had adopted an air of studied casualness, his hands cupped behind his neck.
‘Curious?’ Blunt uttered the word as if he was tasting wine, swilling it around in his mouth while he analyzed its blend of flavours. ‘You say curious,’ he said preparing to spit the mouthful out, ‘others might call it nosey.’
Holden ignored the remark. ‘I’m curious as to what technique you use to cause someone like Whiting to hate you so much.’
‘I hardly know him.’
‘In that case, I’m even more impressed!’
Blunt looked at Holden hard, assessing which way to play it. ‘Is that why you’ve dragged me here. Because of Whiting’s hyperactive rantings. ’
Holden shrugged, and changed tack. ‘Jake Arnold’s death is very convenient for you, isn’t it?’
‘Convenient? What the hell do you mean by that?’
‘If his allegations that you had bullied him had been upheld, you’d have been out of a job.’
‘It was his word against mine. The complaint was going nowhere.’
‘In fact, your whole career would have been at risk.’
‘Bollocks. There was absolutely no proof. Just a load of hysterical whining.’
‘Les Whiting didn’t think it was hysterical whining. You’ve got a bit of a reputation, haven’t you? A hard taskmaster. You took against Jake Arnold by all accounts. Decided he wasn’t right for the job. So you decided to force him out. Hard to prove, I agree. But easy enough lay the seeds of doubt. One or two more complaints, maybe an article in the local rag, and who knows, suddenly it might have been you that management decided to get rid of.’
If Blunt was worried by this line of questioning, he didn’t show it. ‘Are you telling me,’ he said with a grin across his face, ‘that you think I killed Jake Arnold because I was worried about my job?’ He began to laugh then, shaking his head as he did so.
‘You don’t have an alibi,’ Holden said firmly. ‘As I recall, you claim to have been in your flat, on your own, watching a DVD. Not exactly the most original story.’
‘Are you accusing me? Or merely speculating out loud? Because if it’s the former, I think it’s about time you got me a solicitor.’
‘Tell me about Danny,’ she replied, conscious that she had gone as far as she could down that particular avenue.
The grin returned to Blunt’s face. ‘I don’t discuss clients. It’s a question of confidentiality.’ He leant back and crossed his arms. ‘Sorry!’ he concluded, without, of course, meaning it.
‘Why did he come to the day centre and start waving a knife around?’
‘Maybe you should ask him.’
‘When you were trying to calm him down, you promised that if he put the knife down, you’d discuss it man to man. What exactly was it you were going to discuss?’
The grin, though becoming increasingly synthetic, was still plastered across his features. ‘When a man is threatening you with a knife,’ he said evenly, ‘you’ll say anything to calm him down.’
‘And why was Danny so uncalm?’ she pressed.
The smile finally faded. ‘Either you let me go, or you get me a solicitor. ’
Holden hesitated, but only briefly. She stood up, picked up the pile of papers, and moved towards the door. ‘Sergeant Fox will show you out,’ she said without looking back.
Al Smith watched as Sam Sexton’s van disappeared up the street. Sam had left his sandwiches at home, so even if he came straight back he’d be gone for twenty minutes at least. So he had plenty of time. He pulled his mobile out of his pocket, unlocked it, and flicked to his messages. He read again the one from Jake’s phone. ‘You are next.’ He muttered something inaudible to himself, rang the number and waited. If he hoped or expected someone to answer, he was disappointed. It went straight to the answering service, in fact to Jake’s own voice, eerily telling him that right now he was busy, but that if he were to leave a message he would ring back as soon as possible.
‘It’s Smith here. Al Smith.’ As if it would be anyone else. He spoke calmly, though he wanted to shout and swear. He wanted to scream at the bastard at the top of his lungs, but he knew he had to keep calm. ‘It’s me you want. Just me. I was the driver. It was my fault. So let’s meet. Anywhere you want. Then we can sort it all out, one way or another.’ He paused, but only briefly because he had planned what he was going to say. He needed to provoke the guy into a meeting, and he could think of only one way of doing that. ‘And just so that you know, I’m not scared of you.’ He pressed the red button on his mobile and let out a sigh. God, he hoped that would do it. He wanted just one chance to get revenge for Martin. He had to keep Sam out of it. The bastard was after him anyway, and what were his options? To go to the cops? And admit what he’d done last May? Or try to get the bastard out into the open? Because if there was one thing he could do, he could handle himself in a fight.
It took Whiting over an hour to walk from the day centre to his gallery. This was not because of some physical restriction. He had banged himself on the right thigh when he had stumbled against the bench in full view of the detectives, but it was nothing more than a bruise. Much more painful, however, had been the emotional assault he had received from Jim Blunt. So rather than go straight back to the gallery, he entered a trendy little café which stood on the right-hand side of Cowley Road just short of the Plain roundabout. Once inside, he selected a peppermint tea, a piece of carrot cake generously topped with buttercream icing, and a copy of that day’s Guardian which the establishment provided gratis for its customers. Armed with these, he had sat in the corner, away from the window, and shut out the world.
Only a text, some half an hour later, from Ruth at the gallery asking when he would be back, woke him from his cocoon. He poured out the last few drops from his teapot, drained them, and reluctantly stood up. It was time to get on with his life.
When he got back to his gallery, Ruth met him at the door. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she hissed. ‘This guy’s been waiting for ages. He says he had an appointment.’
One might have expected – and Ruth almost certainly did – that Whiting would have told his employee how brown she looked and asked if she had a fabulous holiday. But in fact Whiting pushed past Ruth without so much as a greeting, and instead gave half a wave and all of his attention to the man standing on the far side of the room. ‘Sorry, Bicknell,’ he said. ‘I got held up. Just couldn’t get away.’
Bicknell looked at him with a face that told both Whiting and Ruth that he was not impressed: ‘I hope you’re not pissing me about, Whiting, because let me tell you that you’re not the only fish in the sea.’
‘Come, come!’ Whiting replied, as if he was soothing a small child. ‘The last thing I wanted to do was keep you waiting. Heaven forbid. Now, why don’t we go and discuss things over a drink. There’s a new wine bar just opened up the road.’
‘Hello Danny.’
Danny Flynn was sitting on a red moulded plastic chair, looking absent-mindedly out of the window. The voice, a female one, seemed to come from somewhere away to his left. He didn’t recognize it, so he knew it must be real. His own voices were, with one exception, always male, and nearly always harsh, demanding and insistent. This new voice matched none of these descriptions. For several seconds he continued to look out of the window while his mind – which seemed to have been operating in slow motion ever since he arrived here (wherever here was, he couldn’t quite be sure) – processed his thoughts. Eventually, he turned to see to whom the voice belonged.
He frowned. The woman who stood there was no one he recognized. Her hair was short and blonde, she was wearing a bright pink T-shirt and jeans, and she had a small gold-coloured handbag dangling on a long strap from her shoulder. She looked a bit like the girl who sometimes served behind the bar in the Cricketers, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t her. Or maybe she was the girl from the chemist, only she was always heavily made up, whereas the person standing in front of him was anything but. Not even lipstick, and certainly no mascara or whatever else it was that girls put around their eyes.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘I’m Jan,’ she said in that same soft voice. And she smiled. He liked that. It was a really friendly smile.
‘I don’t think I know anyone called Jan.’
‘No, we’ve never met,’ she said. She had decided that honesty – though she wasn’t sure about total honesty – was the best approach. It was certainly the approach she felt most comfortable with. That was her parent’s fault. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, conscious that she needed to steer the conversation. He looked, as she had been, at the white bandage that swathed the wrist and lower part of his left arm. He lifted it up and moved it slowly around while he inspected it. They had done a good job, Lawson concluded silently, not a trace of blood to be seen. Flynn allowed his arm to subside back to a resting position.
‘It aches,’ he said flatly. Then he leant forward. ‘I think,’ he said in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘they’ve given me something. You know, drugs or something.’
‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, Danny?’ she said, in that same caressing voice.
‘Are you from the social services?’ he asked.
‘No!’ she said.
‘So who are you?’
She paused, but only for a millisecond. What the hell? She was her parents’ daughter. ‘I’m in the police. A constable. Lowest of the low. I’m out of uniform because my boss reckoned you wouldn’t talk to the police. But what does she know? She’s only been in the force ten years.’
She fell silent and waited. If Danny freaked now, that would be it. Her first day out of uniform would be her last. A life of traffic control and male chauvinism beckoned. And all because she thought she knew better than DI Holden.
‘Open your bag,’ he said, his voice a little stronger than before.
Lawson bit back the urge to ask why. Instead, she slipped the bag off her shoulder and opened it. Then she stepped forward and gave it to him. ‘Take a look,’ she said, ‘but there’s nothing very exciting.’
He took the bag, and very carefully began to take the contents out one by one, inspecting each as he did so: a purse, which he opened and then, after a brief examination of its contents, closed; a pack of paper hankies; a tampon; a small bottle of toilet water; and a biro. It was this last item which interested him most – he clicked it one, two, three times, then ran it across the back of his hand to see if it worked (it did), before finally dismantling it, checking each piece, and then putting it back together. This took at least five minutes, and all this time Lawson remained silent. Finally he passed the bag back to her.
‘How do I know you’re not lying?’ he asked.
‘You don’t,’ she said. ‘But maybe this will help.’ And she pushed her hand into her back pocket, drew out her identity card, and handed it to him. He looked at it, this time only briefly, before handing it back.
‘You remind me of my sister.’
She nodded in acknowledgement. ‘What’s her name?’
‘She’s dead,’ he said.
‘Oh!’ Lawson was taken aback by this, and briefly at a loss to know how to continue.
‘A car accident,’ he said simply.
‘I’m sorry!’ She was conscious that this was a feeble response, but what else do you say? ‘Really sorry.’
But Flynn was already moving on in his head. ‘These questions you want to ask – are they on the record?’
‘No, definitely not. There’s just me and you, no one else to witness anything you say. It’s just a chat. OK?’ She paused, waiting to see how he reacted, but he sat there unmoving and silent. She frowned, and then she said something that as soon as she heard herself say it, made her flinch in surprise. ‘I promise you, on my heart.’ Where the heck had that come from? On my heart! What was she saying?
‘OK’, he said, pursing his lips. ‘Ask away.’
‘Thank you, Danny,’ she said quietly, while her mind desperately sought for the right words. ‘I was wondering, my boss was wondering, well in fact we were all wondering why it was that you were so upset with Jim Blunt.’
Flynn didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he shut his eyes, screwing them tight while he tried to concentrate on that question. Jealousy? Mistrust? Hatred? Well, the first two of those certainly. But hatred? Did he hate Blunt? Yes, perhaps he did. But was that what she wanted to know, this woman with the nice face? Flynn opened his eyes, and looked across at her.
‘They were lovers,’ he said.
‘Lovers?’ Lawson replied, taken by surprise. ‘Who were?’
‘Blunt and Sarah.’
Lawson did not immediately respond. Whatever it was she was expecting Danny to say, it wasn’t this. If he had told her that Blunt was a spy, she would have smiled politely at his paranoia and started to execute a polite exit strategy. But this was
much more unexpected to her, and thus more plausible.
‘Is that what you said to Blunt, that you knew they were lovers?’ she asked.
‘Not exactly,’ he replied. ‘I just told him I knew there was something between them because I’d seen them together two nights before Sarah died. He got really angry.’
‘Danny,’ Lawson said in a confidential tone. ‘I really need you to think very hard about this and to tell me in as much detail as you can about what you saw.’
‘So, you believe me?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said without hesitation, ‘I do. That’s why I want you to tell me all about it.’
‘I saw them at his house. He lives in Bedford Street, and I went round there on the Wednesday night before she fell from the top of the car park.’
‘Why did you go there, Danny, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘Because whenever I went to the day centre, he was watching me. Like he was spying on me. Waiting to catch me unawares. So I thought I’d go round and watch him, you know, to get my own back. That Wednesday was the third night I’d been round. There’s a derelict house opposite, which some builders are doing up, so I hid in the front garden behind the hedge and watched. The first night he wasn’t in. I stayed a couple of hours, but he didn’t come home. The next night he was already home when I got there. I saw him through the windows, but he stayed in all evening. And then the next night, he was in as well, only I realized there was someone else there too, and about ten o’clock they came to the door, and I saw them kissing. Him and Sarah. And then she left and walked off up the hill.’
‘Did you follow her Danny?’
‘No!’ he said. ‘I was worried he might see me, so I stayed hidden behind the hedge for maybe ten minutes, and then I went back to my flat.’
‘It must have been quite dark, Danny. Are you absolutely sure it was Sarah?’
‘His hall light was on. I could see them. Don’t you believe me?’
‘Yes,’ she said quickly, too quickly maybe.
Blood on the Cowley Road Page 20