Blood on the Cowley Road Read online

  Lawson got to the door first and pressed the bell, once, twice and then again. ‘You can lead,’ she said, as Wilson caught up with her.

  Anne Johnson opened the door. This time, there was no towel swathed round her head, but her welcome was just as hostile. ‘Not you again!’

  ‘Good morning, Miss Johnson,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we need to ask you a few more questions.’

  ‘Questions?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Down at the station.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘Do you mind if we come in for a moment?’ Wilson pressed on patiently.

  ‘Yes, I blooming do,’ she said firmly.

  ‘I really do need to use your toilet,’ WPC Lawson said, stepping forward from behind her much taller colleague. ‘You know what it’s like.’ Anne Johnson opened her mouth to object, but Lawson wasn’t waiting for an answer. ‘Coming through,’ she said, and pushed her way past the astonished woman.

  ‘Really!’ Anne Johnson huffed, but she knew she had lost the skirmish.

  ‘And who might you be?’ Lawson said, as she entered the living area. A tousled figure in crumpled white T-shirt and jeans was just getting up from the sofa. The man said nothing, but Wilson, following his colleague, recognized him instantly.

  ‘Bicknell!’ he exclaimed.

  By the time Holden and Fox had returned to Cowley Police Station, both interviewees were ready and waiting for them. Ratcliffe was in Room B, on his own, while Anne Johnson was in Room C, with WPC Lawson standing discretely in attendance. Holden, however, was in no mood to rush. She spent some ten minutes in the ladies toilets, took another five minutes to make herself a mug of coffee, and then strolled casually along the corridor to Wilson’s office. The detective constable was bent over the printer next to his desk.

  ‘Any problems, Wilson?’

  ‘The printer’s jammed,’ he said, without looking up.

  ‘I meant with Anne Johnson.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, looking up with a sheepish look on his face. ‘Sorry. No, no problems.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But there was one interesting development.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Ed Bicknell was there.’

  ‘Bicknell!’ she exclaimed. ‘How very interesting. What was he doing there?’

  ‘Can’t say they volunteered any information. He just said he had to be off. In the circumstances, I thought it might be best for you to pursue that line of enquiry.’

  There was a coughing sound from the corridor. Holden turned, to see Fox entering the open door. ‘I hope I haven’t been delaying you Guv?’

  ‘No,’ she said, and turned back to Wilson. ‘While we interview Ratcliffe, can you do me a timeline of everything we know about Sarah Johnson’s last hours, starting from 7.00 p.m. when Dr Ratcliffe visited Anne Johnson’s house in Reading. Sightings of her Mini. Phone calls, et cetera.’

  ‘Yes, Guv.’

  ‘It’s Sam.’

  ‘All right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘Have you heard from Martin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s not answering his mobile.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Got your ticket?’

  ‘Yeah. Look I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘See ya!’

  ‘I do hope this is important. I spoke to someone over the phone – name like a carpet, Constable Wilton or Shagpile or something – and I can’t for the life of me see what else there is to say.’ Dr Adrian Ratcliffe spoke aggressively. He was damned if he was going to be pushed around, and in the circumstances attack seemed the best form of defence. Take charge, throw the enemy off balance, cover his tracks.

  ‘Would you like a coffee?’ the woman asked. Trying to lull him into a sense of security, was she? What sort of idiot did she take him for?

  ‘No!’

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Water?’

  ‘Does it come with whisky?’

  The woman looked down at the papers in front of her, turned the top sheet over, and frowned. She looked up. ‘Why did you lie to Constable Wilson?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ He said it without blinking, looking straight into her face.

  ‘You said Anne Johnson’s car had broken down.’

  ‘That’s what she told me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When she rang me, that morning.’

  ‘Oh,’ the woman said. ‘I thought maybe this was an excuse that you’d arranged the night before, while you smoked your post-coital cigarette.’

  Ratcliffe’s eyes opened wider for a second. He wasn’t surprised that Anne had talked about their relationship, but he was disappointed. However, ‘I don’t smoke,’ was all he said.

  ‘That evening, did Anne Johnson intimate that she might be late the next day?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘When did you leave her house that night?’

  ‘What the hell has this got to do with anything?’ He displayed anger now.

  ‘Please answer the question,’ she insisted.

  ‘I don’t know. About ten o’clock probably.’

  ‘Probably!’ She frowned again, and rubbed briefly at her chin. ‘I suppose ... I suppose your wife can confirm what time you got home, and then we can knock off the time for travelling and—’

  ‘Do you take pleasure in wrecking lives?’ This time the anger was genuine, fuelled by fear. ‘My affair with Anne Johnson has absolutely nothing to do with the death of her sister. Sarah killed herself the following morning. Just after 9.00 o’clock, wasn’t it? You have no right to destroy my marriage, the lives of my two children, by bringing this to court, or revealing this to my wife.’

  DI Holden leant back in her chair, and brought her hands up together in front of her mouth. If she had been sitting in a church pew, the observer would have concluded that she was praying, but in the context of a police interview, deep thought was more likely. She remained in this pose for several seconds, before abruptly standing up.

  ‘Interview terminated,’ she said.

  ‘Are you ready, Guv?’ Fox was standing cautiously at the doorway of DI Holden’s room. Wilson was half a pace behind him, also unsure whether to enter or not. ‘We’ve kept her waiting quite a long time now.’

  ‘He’s a slimy creep, that Ratcliffe,’ she snarled. ‘Hell, I’d like to hang his balls out to dry!’

  ‘Being a creep isn’t a crime,’ Fox said patiently.

  ‘Well it bloody well ought to be,’ she said defiantly, but the snarl was gone.

  Fox stepped forward, apparently satisfied that it was safe to do so. ‘Wilson here has got a list of all the phone calls to and from Sarah’s mobile.’

  Holden looked past Fox at her detective constable and beckoned him. ‘Let’s be seeing it then, Wilson.’

  He moved forward, placed it on her desk, and stepped back. For a full half a minute Holden studied it. Then her finger stabbed down at one particular entry. ‘What about this one, Wilson?’

  He moved forward again, bending down to get a clear view. ‘That’s a phone box, Guv. In Iffley Road. Opposite the Cricketers. That’s on the corner—’

  ‘Thank you Wilson,’ she said firmly. ‘I do know where the Cricketers is, as it happens.’

  ‘Sorry!’ he replied, stepping back again as his did.

  Holden looked up from the list of phone numbers. ‘Don’t apologize all the time, Wilson, unless you’ve got something proper to apologize for. You’ve done a good job’

  ‘Yes, Guv.’

  ‘Now, whatever happened to Sarah Johnson, we know we’ve got two other murders to solve, so I want you to turn your attention to them. In fact, to Martin Mace. I want you to follow up the money that was stuffed into Mace’s mouth.’

  ‘What money?’ said Wilson, who had yet to be updated on the allotment details.

  ‘There was a wadge of money,’ Holden replie
d, ‘probably £500, stuffed in the dead man’s mouth. Assuming, as we are, that the dead man is Mace, I want to know if the money was his or his killer’s. Ring Pointer. She’s got the wallet that Mace was carrying. Presumably, there’ll be a debit card in it. Go to the bank. Check his withdrawals over the last few days. Five hundred pounds is too much to withdraw at a slot machine, so if he withdrew it, he’ll have done it in person. We need any clues we can. OK?’

  ‘Yes, Guv. Thank you Guv.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Wilson, don’t thank me either,‘ she said wearily. ‘Unless I’ve done you a real favour.’

  Wilson opened his mouth to apologize, but shut it again just in time.

  ‘Sorry to have kept you for so long,’ Holden said, as she and Fox sat down at the table opposite Anne Johnson.

  ‘Oh, I assumed it was all part of the softening-up process.’ Anne Johnson said this without emotion, a bleak smile across her face.

  ‘Would you like a tea or coffee?’ Holden said pleasantly.

  ‘No!’ The reply was definite.

  Holden looked down and opened the folder of paper she had placed on the table. She spent several seconds frowning over the first page. Then she closed the folder and looked up. ‘You’ve been lying to us, Miss Johnson?’

  ‘Have I?’ she replied, steadily holding the Detective Inspector’s gaze.

  ‘In fact, you seem to make quite an art of not telling the truth.’

  Anne Johnson shrugged, but said nothing.

  Holden flicked a glance towards Fox, who immediately opened a folder in front of him, and drew from it a photograph which he pushed across the table in front of him.

  ‘Is that your car?’ he asked.

  ‘It looks like it,’ she said grudgingly.

  ‘The number plate is quite clear,’ Fox said evenly. ‘For the sake of the tape recording, can you please confirm yes or no if this is your car.’

  ‘You obviously know it is,’ she said belligerently.

  ‘This photograph of a car which you have agreed belongs to you was taken at the entrance to the multi-storey car park at the Magdalen Bridge end of the Cowley Road. As you can see from the timestamp at the bottom, it was taken at 6.40 a.m. the morning of your sister’s death. Were you driving the car?’

  ‘I suppose I must have been.’

  Holden leant forward. ‘In your original statement to DS Fox, you told him you hadn’t seen her for some weeks prior to her death.’

  ‘Did I?’ she said, as if she was genuinely surprised.

  ‘In fact, Miss Johnson,’ Fox said, ‘you told me you hadn’t even spoken on the phone?’

  ‘Look, what does it matter? My sister had jumped from the top of a car park. I was still very distressed. I might have said anything.’

  ‘We are trying to establish the precise circumstances of your sister’s death,’ Fox continued doggedly. ‘If you lie, it is a very serious matter. Now the fact is that we have photographic evidence of you arriving in Oxford and parking very near to your sister’s home less than two and a half hours before she died. We also know from Miss Sarah Johnson’s mobile phone records that she rang you up the previous night.’

  Anne Johnson laughed. ‘Haven’t you been a busy boy! A gold star for you.’

  Holden leant forward and took up the baton. ‘Why did she ring you?’

  ‘Why do you think? She was depressed.’

  ‘More so than usual?’

  ‘Well, I guess so,’ Anne Johnson said, her voice heavy with sarcasm, ‘given that she then committed suicide. It’s not the thing you do if you’re feeling on top of the world.’

  ‘But that’s something we are trying to establish. If she did indeed commit suicide, and if so, why. Because the evidence so far is circumstantial. ’

  Anne Johnson’s attitude of bored intolerance disappeared. ‘What the hell do you mean? Of course she committed—’

  ‘There’s no of course in my book,’ Holden snapped, ‘merely evidence – good, bad or circumstantial. And so far it doesn’t add up to anything conclusive. There’s nothing that says she must have jumped rather than she was pushed by person or persons unknown.’

  ‘So,’ Fox cut in, ‘perhaps you can tell us in more precise terms what she said when she rang you up.’

  Anne Johnson dropped her gaze, so that when she replied, she addressed her words towards the table.

  ‘She was very distressed. She said how she was feeling very low. How she hated herself. That she wasn’t sure she could carry on.’

  ‘What was making her feel that?’ Holden said.

  Anne looked at her questioner as if she couldn’t quite believe that she had heard her correctly. ‘She was a manic depressive. Up sometimes, down sometimes. There didn’t have to be a reason to be down. Sometimes she just was.’

  ‘What did she tell you about her will?’

  Anne looked at Holden sharply. She started to open her mouth, as if to speak, then closed it. She gave a shrug that Holden thought rather theatrical, the sort of gesture she remembered from a largely forgotten school production of Grease. ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said firmly. ‘Are you saying she was making a will?’

  Holden hoped her face wasn’t giving anything away. She had hoped she would catch her adversary out with this question – cause her at the least to admit to knowledge of the will – but like Muhammed Ali in his prime Anne Johnson had swayed out of the way of the intended left hook with contemptuous ease, leaving Holden feeling stupidly clumsy. Holden, almost desperately, tried a right hook: ‘I gather you and Bicknell are very good friends? Rather strange that, to get so chummy with the man whose lunatic art project may have inspired your sister to kill herself.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Anne Johnson, ‘I wondered when you’d bring him up.’

  ‘How long have you had a sexual relationship with him?’ Fox said, trying to bring relief to his boss.

  ‘Sexual relationship?’

  ‘How long have you known him?’ Holden came in.

  ‘In the biblical or non-biblical sense?’ she replied with a smile. She waited for a response from Holden, but none came. Eventually, she gave another of her theatrical shrugs. ‘A few days. That’s all.’

  ‘You expect us to believe that?’ It was Fox again.

  ‘What exactly are you implying?’ Anne Johnson snapped.

  ‘Let me give you a scenario,’ Holden said calmly. ‘You are at home. Dr Ratcliffe has just left and you get a phone call. From your sister. She is, as you say, maybe distraught, maybe depressed. But that is not what grabs your attention. It is what she tells you. That she is going to change her will. A will which until that time left everything to you. She is not a poor woman. She owns her own flat. You find it difficult to sleep, wondering what the hell to do. So early next morning you drive to Oxford. You park in the multi-storey, and go and see her. What goes on between the two of you only you know. But let’s suppose that you try – but fail – to persuade her not to change her will. You leave, and you drive your car out of the car park at about half past eight. But my question would be: what did you do then? Because half an hour later your sister plunges off the top of that same car park. Now, can you fill in the gaps for us?’

  Anne Johnson had been watching Holden very carefully right the way through this exposition. When Holden stopped talking, she puffed out her cheeks. ‘Wow!’ she said. ‘You’ve obviously missed your vocation. As a writer of fiction.’

  ‘Not much fiction there,’ Holden said with a smile, and she turned briefly towards Fox.

  ‘We know,’ he said, ‘from Sarah’s phone records that she rang you that night at about 10.10. Fact. We have your car arriving on CCTV. Fact. We have your car leaving on CCTV. Fact. At 8.30 a.m. Yet you only get to school in time to teach the third lesson, which commences at 11.30. Again, fact. We have spoken to Sarah Johnson’s solictor, who has confirmed that she had arranged a meeting to change her will. Fact. And, of course, your sister’s death is a fact. Only its cause remains uncer
tain.’

  ‘Another point of fact,’ Holden said, leaning forward again, ‘is that much of the fiction has been coming from you, Miss Johnson. For example, you lied to your school about your car breaking down. You lied to DS Fox when you told him you hadn’t seen or even spoken to your sister recently. So why should we believe you when you claim to have no knowledge of Sarah’s will. And why should we believe you when you say you have only very recently met Ed Bicknell. It doesn’t take much imagination to suppose that he was part of your plot, conveniently standing there at the bottom of the car park with his suicide plaque, and even more conveniently photographing her looking at the plaque.’ Holden paused, pondered and then decided to take the plunge. ‘Only who is to say that it was her, standing there in her long mackintosh. Who is to say it wasn’t you? That you were making sure that Bicknell got some photos of you pretending to be your sister, contemplating her suicide, before you made your way to the top of the car park, and there pushed your waiting sister over the edge.’

  She stopped then and silence descended on the room. Holden and Fox sat unmoving, their eyes on their suspect, wondering, hoping against hope, almost (in Holden’s case) praying for the woman opposite to break down and confess. Eventually Anne Johnson leant back in her chair and let out a deep sigh. ‘Are you,’ she said coldly, ‘accusing me of murder?’

  Holden pursed her lips together, knowing she had not won. ‘At this point, I am merely trying to point out the possibilities.’

  ‘In that case,’ her interviewee said, ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘In what sense,’ Holden responded instantly.

  ‘In the sense that, if there are any more questions, I’d like to have a solicitor present.’

  CHAPTER 10

  A four-minute phone call was all it took for Wilson to ascertain Martin Mace’s bank. And much of that four minutes was taken up with waiting while Dr Pointer checked the contents of Mace’s wallet. There then followed a short exchange.

  ‘There’s a debit card for the National Exchange bank, but no credit card,’ Pointer began briskly. ‘The account name is Martin N. Mace. The account number isn’t entirely clear. The edge of the card is a bit scorched, but the first six digits are two, one, five, four, two and I think that’s a six. But I expect that is enough to be going on with?’