Blood on the Cowley Road

by Tickler, Peter

  And so Smith waited, constantly surveying the terrain before him. Occasionally, he looked round behind himself, as a vehicle drove along the lane, but none slowed down to turn into the car park. Where the fuck was he? For the twentieth time he checked his watch. It was 5.15. How much longer should he give it before he ... before he did what? Just drive off? Or should he ring Jake’s mobile? What the hell was the bastard playing at?

  ‘Good evening!’ The woman with the Jack Russells took him completely by surprise. He had noticed her returning down the hill, but he had been so intent on looking out for the killer and so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he had completely overlooked her, and now here she was walking past him so close he could smell her perfume.

  ‘Good evening,’ he parroted back. He watched as she opened the rear passenger-side door. The dogs jumped dutifully in, and she slammed the door shut. Suppose the killer was a woman? Why the hell did it have to be a man? Wasn’t a woman just as capable of thumping Jake over the head or burning Martin to death in his own allotment shed. In fact, wasn’t a woman more likely to have done it than a man. If you thought about the planning and execution of Martin’s death (and Al had, like many others, followed every detail avidly in the local media), wasn’t that degree of malicious cunning typical of a woman? He watched as the woman, who had made no attempt to murder him, turned right out of the car park and began to accelerate down the hill towards the village. He stood watching until he could hear her engine no more. Then, he jumped. Almost literally.

  ‘Fuck!’ he swore, disgusted with his own reactions and feelings. His mobile was ringing. Hastily he dragged it out of his pocket. A quick glance showed it was Jake’s phone. He pressed the green button and pushed the mobile against his left ear. ‘Where the hell are you?’ he said aggressively. ‘I’ve been waiting ages.’

  ‘Tut, tut!’ came the mocking voice. ‘That’s not a very nice greeting!’

  Smith was swivelling around, left and right, to see if he could see the killer. Was he waiting there in the wood, or behind the hedge, a rifle in his hands, playing with him before he fired? There was no one visible. The labrador and his master had disappeared from view. Smith suddenly realized how vulnerable he was, standing there in a lonely car park with no other humans in sight. He must have been stark staring bonkers to imagine that the bastard would just turn up and fight, man to man.

  ‘You said five o’clock!’ he said.

  ‘Change of plan. Sorry!’

  ‘What do you mean? You made the arrangement.’

  ‘That’s right, I did. And now I’m making a different arrangement. Because I’m calling the shots, arsehole. So I’m telling you to drive to the Bullnose Morris and wait in the car park till I call again.’

  ‘How do I know you’re not just taking the piss?’

  The man did not answer the question, unless an explosion of laughter can be called an answer. But it died as suddenly as it had started. The phone call was over.

  Holden heard the footsteps in the corridor, and looked at her watch. It was barely twenty-five minutes since she had spoken to Don Alexander. She had asked him to bring over every photo he had on file from the inquest and funerals of those six people who had died on 5 May.

  ‘Use a messenger,’ Holden had said, ‘and we’ll pay. Just as long as it’s quick.’

  ‘I’ve got a motorbike,’ Alexander had replied with the smugness of a card-sharp who knows he’s got an unbeatable hand. ‘Saves me loads of time round the city. I’ll bring them myself. Then if you need any help with identification, or anything—’

  ‘Fine!’ Holden had agreed. Not that she had had any choice. It was as obvious as the dog-shit on the pavements of Oxford that Alexander wanted to be sure that no one got the inside story before he did, and she could hardly blame him for that. But if the photos were to confirm her darkest fears about Fox, if there was just one photo with his face lurking in the background, then she would be faced with the additional problem of stopping Alexander releasing the story before she was ready. ‘Bent cop is serial killer’ was not a headline she wanted appearing on the front page without the press office being fully briefed in advance. She had not, of course, told Alexander of her suspicions, but he would soon put two and two together, and then, whether she liked it or not, the cat would be out of the bag. She would have to prevail on his good nature. Hell, even journalists must have a good nature hidden somewhere deep down within them. Maybe a bit of flattery, or rather a lot flattery, would do the trick. He was probably vain enough. With this final uncharitable thought in her head, and with the tread of footsteps getting ever closer to the doorway, she stood up, ready to receive him.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ she said. Then there was silence. Her jaw dropped as low as any jaw has ever dropped in amazement.

  ‘Sorry, I’m a bit late Guv,’ came the reply. ‘Is something wrong?’

  Holden stared at DS Fox until her jaw regained movement.

  ‘Where in God’s name have you been?’ she demanded.

  ‘I told Wilson,’ he said defensively. ‘Didn’t he tell you? I went to the dentist.’

  Smith pulled up in the car park of the Bullnose Morris in Garsington Road, and turned off the car. The light was fading fast. He looked around, but there was no one to be seen. Half a dozen cars and, as far as he could see, no one sitting in any of them. Wherever he was, it wasn’t here. He flipped open his mobile and rang Jake’s number. The voice answered: ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At the Bullnose. Where else?’

  ‘Set your milometer to zero.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Drive one point one miles towards Garsington, then turn left. Drive zero point four miles down that road. You’ll see a farm track leading off to the right, and a sign saying “Private – Dingle Dell Cottage”. Follow the track till you reach a delapidated stone cottage. I’ll be waiting for you.’

  ‘What if I don’t?’ Smith asked. But there was no response. Only a dial tone.

  ‘Fuck!’ he said. He held the phone to his ear for several more seconds. Then he tried a redial, but it just cut straight into Jake’s message and his answering service. ‘Fuck!’ he said again.

  When you’re faced by a man whom you suspect has committed three murders, and you are alone in a room with him, every word you utter and every move you make has to be weighed with the greatest of care. DI Holden looked across at her sergeant and smiled. It was, in the circumstances, a pretty convincing smile, and Fox, who wasn’t sure what he had walked into, gave a somewhat sheepish grin back.

  ‘What was it?’ she asked with apparent concern. ‘An abscess?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said with shrug.

  ‘Hmm!’ she said neutrally, before she began what she hoped was unobtrusive probing. ‘I was beginning to wonder where you’d got to. It’s just that you’ve been out quite a time, and you’re with Mr Stewart just down the road, aren’t you? And of course,’ she added with a thin smile, ‘we are in the middle of a murder investigation!’

  A helpless grin spread across Fox’s face. ‘Sorry, Guv. It’s a bit embarrassing, really,’ he said. And, as if to reinforce his words, Fox gave a pretty good impression of looking embarrassed too. ‘I fainted!’

  ‘You fainted?’ Holden echoed, trying to spin out the time available to her, only how much was available to her she really didn’t know. And Fox, she realized with a start, had pushed the door shut behind him.

  ‘I’m not very good with dentists, especially when they’re brandishing needles.’ Again he flashed that sheepish grin. ‘That’s why I changed dentists, from Mr Stewart to Mrs Stephenson.’

  ‘You changed dentists?’

  ‘Yes. It’s silly, really. Me being a policeman and yet having a phobia of going to the dentist. I was talking to the pharmacist about it and she suggested that maybe I’d be better with a woman dentist, and she told me about Mrs Stephenson, who she goes to. So I thought I might as well try her out. And to be honest, Mrs Stephenson was very nice and reassuring, but I still faint
ed, and then she insisted that I sit down and rest up with a cup of tea, but I realize I should have rung in and, well, I’m sorry, Guv.’

  As Fox’s little speech petered out, Holden allowed herself to sink back down into her chair. She was conscious of tension across her shoulders and the nape of her neck, and a throbbing at the back of her head. It ought to feel better than this, when you suddenly realize you’ve been an inch away from making a terrible mistake, but it didn’t. Perhaps that was because suspicion still lurked, not yet fully under control, at the back of her brain.

  ‘Fox,’ she said, ‘tell me about Sarah Johnson’s diary.’

  He frowned. ‘I’m not with you Guv. What about it?’

  ‘It wasn’t with the file. It was in your desk drawer, locked away,’ she said, and then played her final card. ‘Someone had ripped out a page. Can you explain that?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re suggesting, Guv,’ he said cautiously. Suspicion was roused and active at the back of his head too. ‘That I should leave my desk drawer unlocked? That I should have noticed a page was missing from the diary? Or what? Because to be honest, I never got round to reading it properly. I mean I flicked through it at the beginning, but after that I put it in my drawer because it seemed safer, and besides my desk diary is very like it. And then I forgot all about it.’

  ‘Your forgot all about it?’ Accusation, doubt and suspicion accompanied these words, but they were more to do with Fox’s lack of professionalism than anything else. The idea of Fox as killer had almost completely receded, and she felt deflated and irritated as a consequence.

  At which point in their conversation, the door burst open and in walked a figure known to both of them.

  ‘Don!’ Holden said brightly, ‘Is it good to see you!’

  ‘The pleasure is all mine,’ he flashed back, all charm and smarm. He placed a thin bundle of papers on the desk.

  ‘Is that all there is?’ Holden said, disappointment apparent in her voice.

  ‘There’s this too,’ Alexander replied, pulling a CD out of his pocket as a conjuror might pull the missing card. ‘We’re in the twenty-first century Inspector, where we come from, and photos are mostly digital.’ Holden snatched it irritably from his hand and moved round the desk to sit back down at her PC. Fox, a man happier with old fashioned photos and grubby newspaper cuttings, began to leaf deliberately through those on the desk.

  ‘So what is it exactly we are looking for?’ he asked eagerly.

  ‘There’s no need for you to hang around, Don,’ Holden said dismissively. ‘We’ll take it from here.’

  ‘I can’t let these out of my sight, Inspector,’ he said pompously. ‘I’m doing you a big favour as it is.’

  ‘Well, sit down over there,’ she said indicating a red chair in the corner of the room. ‘We can’t work with you peering over our shoulders. ’

  ‘As you wish,’ he said, and moved away. He was not unhappy. He was in the room and on the spot. Whatever kicked off, he would know. The story was safe.

  Barely a minute had passed before Holden broke the silence. ‘Look!’ she said.

  Fox, who was in the middle of reading a newspaper report, moved round the desk. ‘Well, damn me!’ He found himself staring at a pair of sombre-looking men standing in front of a large rectangular hole in the ground. One he didn’t recognize, but the other, the one of the right-hand side, was all too familiar.

  ‘Can I help?’ Alexander asked, standing up as he did so.

  ‘No!’ Holden snapped, as she clicked again with the mouse. Another picture came up. There were five people in this one. Holden and Fox stared for three or four seconds before the sergeant spoke:

  ‘Isn’t that what’s her name?’

  ‘Rachel Laing, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think so. And the guy next to her, in the anorak, I’ve met him in church.’

  ‘Church?’

  ‘He came up and spoke to me. He knew Jake and Sarah, from the day centre.’

  ‘And the others? Do you think they are from the day centre too?’

  Alexander had made his way round to the desk and was himself peering at the PC monitor. ‘That’s from the funeral of Alice Smith. Up at the cemetery in Between Towns Road.’

  ‘What do you know about her?’ Holden had given up trying to keep Alexander at a distance.

  ‘She was a benefits adviser, or something like that. She used to go round the various day centres in Oxfordshire, handing out advice.’

  ‘And one of those day centres was the Evergreen one?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘So,’ said Fox, ‘if these killings are about someone taking revenge for her death, then we’ve suddenly got a hell of a lot of suspects.’

  ‘Revenge killings?’ Alexander said, already writing the next day’s headline in his head. ‘That’s you’re theory is it? Can I quote you on it?’

  ‘No!’ both Fox and Holden said in unison.

  It was then that the phone rang. Holden snatched it. ‘Holden here.’

  It was Wilson, and he was in a state. Fox could hear a frantic buzz of fast-forward chatter from the other end of the line.

  ‘OK, Wilson,’ Holden was saying, ‘OK. Now just slow down and tell me from the beginning what the situation is.’

  Wilson slowed down and explained, but even so he hardly drew breath as he did so. They were with Doreen Sexton, and Sam had not come home, and in fact he was late, and neither Sam nor Al Smith were answering their phones, but Doreen had spoken to Sam earlier and he had said he was going to meet a client at a place called Dingle Dell Cottage which was somewhere out of town on the way towards Stadhampton they thought, only Doreen was very worried because Sam had promised not to be late and normally he was very reliable. ‘Just a minute!’ Holden cut in noisily, and wondering why the hell Lawson couldn’t have made the call. ‘Wait while we check.’ And thanks to the wonders of the Internet, it took less than a minute to track down Dingle Dell Cottage. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘we’ll meet you on the Garsington Road. Wait by the Bullnose. Don’t go after them on your own. I’m bringing armed back-up.’

  Smith pulled out of the Bullnose Morris car park and headed south. He drove slowly along the thirty mile limit, much more slowly than usual. At the roundabout, he was used to turning right, along Grenoble Road towards the football stadium, but this time he went straight on. He was out of the restricted zone now, but he drove barely forty-five miles an hour. He watched carefully as the milometer progressed: point eight, point nine, one mile. There it was. A left turn. He carefully swung the car round, and peered ahead. It was less than three miles from where he lived, but he couldn’t remember ever having driven along this road. He glanced down at the dashboard. One point two miles. Not far now. One point three. One point four. There it was, on the right, a rough farm track, and a sign. Dingle Dell Cottage. He swung right, slowing his car as it bumped uncomfortably over the rugged surface. He changed down another gear and twisted hard right and then left as he tried to avoid – unsuccessfully – a deep rut. Lurching around, he nevertheless gently pressed down on the accelerator, anxious to get to the rendezvous. He kept his eyes fixed ahead, but with his hand he felt across the passenger seat, searching with his fingers until the found the reassuring presence of the baseball bat. He found it an easy weapon to handle: whether with a full swing of the arm or a short stabbing movement into an opponent’s face, it was bloody effective. And it was easy enough to hide too, slipped up inside the sleeve of an anorak. He was ready. He was ready for the bastard. It was now or never. And he was bloody fucking ready.

  It was, for the time of day and year, extremely dark. Since Smith had left Wittenham Clumps, thick low cloud had thrust dramatically in from the west, gobbling up the blue sky until it was all gone. The wind which had brought it had then relented, leaving the grey billowing masses to mark time over Oxford and the countryside around, threatening, though not yet delivering, rain. Smith, suddenly noticing a large lump of stone in front o
f him, again swung the wheel abruptly first one way and then the other, before slipping down a gear for fear of stalling the car. It was at that moment that the smell hit him. It was the smell of smoke, though it wasn’t the comforting smell of wood smoke or the burning of autumn leaves. It was an altogether more unpleasant and acrid odour, an essentially unnatural smell.

  He peered in front, looking for its source, but trees now pressed in from either side, scratching at the car and limiting his view. Up front, the track curved away to the right and out of sight, and he pressed his foot down again, briefly spinning his back wheels as they lost traction.

  ‘Shit!’ Up front the road was straightening out, forcing its way out of the clinging wood, and leading straight to a dilapidated-looking stone building that Smith assumed must be Dingle Dell Cottage. But his one-word exclamation had nothing to do with the building. Parked in front of it was a vehicle. And it was on fire. ‘Bloody fucking shit!’ Dark black smoke and blistering orange flames were erupting skywards from it. As he drew closer, the detail of the object started to register and its outline become apparent through the flames and smoke. It was bigger than a car. A van in fact. The sort of van beloved of builders. In fact, a make of a van that Smith recognized only too well. He lurched to a halt and jumped out, forgetting the baseball bat that he had been handling only seconds before. Or not so much forgetting it as leaving it, because the fact was that a baseball bat wouldn’t be any use at all in rescuing his friend from the blaze. ‘Sam!’ he screamed, but he knew there would be no reply. He ran forward, but after three of four steps, the heat of the blaze stopped him in his tracks. Reluctantly, he retreated. ‘Sam!’ he screamed again. ‘Sam!’ Because there was nothing else he could do. ‘Sam!’ Again and again and again he bellowed out his friend’s name, and he stopped only when something hard and heavy collided with the top of his head.

  If Al Smith had not ducked very slightly before impact, he would almost certainly have died instantly. A sixth sense, a primeval survival instinct, or some undeliberate stumble – whatever it was that caused the sudden lowering of his head – the result was that the metal boating spike which his unseen assailant swung at his head missed the centre of its target and instead struck him a glancing blow on the top of the head. But glancing blows with heavy objects can still inflict severe damage, and before Smith hit the ground he had already entered a world of oblivion. His assailant stood over his inert body for several seconds, but when Smith half opened his eyes and gave a groan, the man, rather than hitting him again, merely smiled. ‘Still with us, you bastard?’ he snarled. There was no reply. Merely another groan. ‘Perhaps this will wake you up?’ he continued and he began to pour water over him. ‘Hello!’ he shouted. ‘Hello! Anyone at home?’