Blood on the Marsh Read online

  Holden looked around, at Lawson and Wilson, and then back to Fox. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘If you say so, Sergeant.’

  ‘I do, Guv. I do.’

  It didn’t take long for the four of them to search Greenleaf’s flat. They found his clothes and personal effects on the bed, as Fran Sinclair had said they would. Wilson was deputed to check out the mobile, Holden herself began to scrutinize every card and piece of paper in his wallet, while Fox and Lawson took the living room and bedroom respectively.

  ‘He must have some paperwork, somewhere,’ Lawson said irritably. There was nothing of interest to her in his little bedside chest of drawers, and nothing that she could find stuffed in, under, or behind the immaculately organized clothes in the built-in wardrobe.

  ‘There’s something here,’ Fox called out in response. ‘In fact, it looks like our Mr Greenleaf has another house, out in Charlton-on-Otmoor.’

  Holden, who had given up on the wallet, was leaning over Fox almost before he had finished speaking.

  ‘It looks like he’s been having some building work done on it,’ Fox was explaining. ‘Here’s the address of the property.’

  ‘And look at who’s been doing it.’ Holden’s finger stabbed down onto the invoice, at the letter heading. ‘JW Builders, Oxford. Look at the address! Lytton Road.’

  ‘You mean, JW as in Jim Wright.’

  ‘I’d put my mortgage on it.’

  ‘There’s something interesting here, too, Guv.’ Wilson was brandishing Greenleaf’s mobile phone like he was looking for bids at an auction. ‘Ania. Isn’t that the name of the nurse you interviewed?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She rang Greenleaf last night. Or tried to. Three times.’

  ‘Did she now?’

  ‘In fact, looking back through the log, she quite often rang him, and he rang her too.’ The grin on Wilson’s face was Cheshire cat sized. ‘Perhaps she and he were in a relationship?’

  Fox laughed. ‘You mean, they were fucking.’

  Wilson blushed. He was strikingly coy about sex for a man of the twenty-first century.

  Wilson’s grin had, it seemed, migrated to Holden, for there was a look of delight written large across her features. The grin was not, however, aimed at anyone in particular. It was just that, all of a sudden, the whole investigation had become really rather interesting.

  ‘They say Mr Greenleaf was killed by a mugger. Is that true?’

  Ania Gorski sat opposite the detective inspector, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She had arrived at the interview with a red face and damp eyes, a clear indication that she had already heard about Paul Greenleaf’s death. Her question confirmed it. Holden wished she could have put a lid on the news until she had confronted Ania with the question. To have seen her first reaction would surely have been instructive. But there’s no stopping people talking.

  ‘He was killed while out jogging. We don’t know any more than that.’

  ‘But why would anyone have done this?’ Holden looked at her hard. She saw the round-eyed innocence of her face, and heard the shock in her voice. But she wasn’t convinced, and she certainly wasn’t distracted from her plan of action.

  ‘Ania,’ she said, with the most disarming of smiles. She too could play the innocent. ‘Would you please tell us why you tried to ring Paul Greenleaf last night?’

  Ania didn’t answer immediately. It was only the briefest pause, the sort of pause that might indicate anything – shock, surprise, distress, or maybe several split seconds of thinking time. But undeniably she paused before she answered. ‘Because I wanted to speak to him.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About … about my job.’

  ‘About your job?’ Holden made no attempt to hide her disbelief. ‘You rang him to discuss your job? But you were working yesterday? Did you not speak to him during the day?’

  ‘I finished work at four o’clock. He wasn’t in his office. So later I rang him.’

  ‘Three times?’

  ‘Maybe three times.’

  ‘Definitely three times. Why did you ring him three times? Why did you not leave a message saying you wanted a meeting to discuss your job?’

  She shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to leave a message. I wanted to speak to him.’

  Fox made a snorting noise that indicated all too clearly his scepticism. Both women turned to look at him. But he was interested only in Holden. She gave an infinitesimal nod, and he switched he gaze back to Ania. ‘Miss Gorski,’ he said gruffly. ‘Mr Greenleaf had your name and number stored on his mobile. And his call log suggests you often spoke to him by phone. Why was that?’

  She paused, and chewed at her bottom lip. ‘We were good friends.’

  ‘You mean you were lovers?’

  This time Ania made no reply at all, merely ducking her head as if embarrassed by the question.

  ‘Were you lovers, Ania?’ It was Holden asking the questions again. Gentle, encouraging, almost intimate. ‘It’s not a crime. But we do need an answer. Otherwise we’ll have to take you down to the police station and it will all take a lot longer.’

  ‘Yes.’ It was a whisper, which Holden sensed rather than heard.

  ‘How long have you been lovers? A week, a month, a year?’

  ‘About two months.’

  ‘What did you do yesterday, after you left work?’

  ‘I went home to my flat.’

  ‘Is there anyone who can confirm that? Was anyone there with you?’

  Her once flushed face had now turned paler than pale. ‘No,’ she insisted, this time in less of a whisper.

  ‘So when did you last see Mr Greenleaf?’

  She shook her head, and then kept shaking it, harder and harder until her whole body was twisting from side to side in time with some monstrous unheard music. ‘On Sunday,’ she wailed. ‘We spent the weekend at his house in Charlton-on-Otmoor. But we had a row, just as we were leaving for Oxford. It was a terrible row, and then we didn’t speak all the way back to Oxford. But yesterday, when I had calmed down, I thought maybe I should try to talk to him at work, but I didn’t see him, so in the evening I rang him on his mobile, but he never answered.’

  ‘What did you row about?’

  ‘Silly things.’

  ‘What sort of silly things?’

  ‘Private silly things.’

  Holden leant forward, and raised her voice. She was confident that she only needed to apply pressure, and the woman would crack. ‘What did you row about?’

  Ania Gorski lifted her head, and stared back at Holden. Their eyes met head on. She would not be bullied. Greenleaf had not been able to bully her, and neither would the detective woman bully her. No one would, ever. ‘It was private,’ she said loudly. ‘I will not tell you.’

  Holden held the woman’s glare. Ania was, she realized, more formidable than she had first appeared. Had that nervousness been an act? Holden pressed harder. ‘I think you killed him, Ania. He always jogged on a Monday night, didn’t he? You knew that. You knew the path he always took. So you waited for him in the bushes in the dark, and when he reached you, you tripped him up with a wire stretched across his path, and then you beat his head to pulp. A very messy, bloody pulp!’

  But Ania Gorski was having none of it. She stood up, her face a mask of outrage.

  ‘No,’ she screamed. ‘No I didn’t. No! No! No!’

  Elm Cottage lies at the western end of Charlton-on-Otmoor. It is set back from the grandly named High Street, a two-storey Cotswold stone building with leaded windows and a thatched roof. There wasn’t, as far as Lawson could see, an elm tree in sight, but she couldn’t help her mouth gawping as Wilson eased the car to a halt on the gravelled driveway.

  ‘Wow!’ Wilson said, echoing her thoughts. ‘Not bad for a weekend hideaway!’

  ‘Not bad at all!’

  Once inside, their task was, of course, to look for evidence, whatever form that might take – evidence of a hatred so intense that someone chose to
half garrotte Greenleaf with a wire and then batter him to death with the bluntest of blunt instruments. The two of them were used to working together, and with barely a word Lawson headed up the narrow stairway while Wilson gazed around the main living room, wondering where to begin. It wasn’t, as far as he was concerned, a difficult decision: the escritoire. He knew it was called that because his grandmother had had one and had told him off for calling it a desk. ‘It doesn’t give it the respect it deserves, calling it a desk,’ she had said. And for some reason, that brief exchange had stuck with him over the years, when thousands of other more important ones had faded. Wilson pulled out the two horizontal supports, and then lowered the hinged lid down onto them. Inside a series of little vertical panels created six cubby holes of varying width, plus a central one with a door, and underneath each miniature cupboard was a miniature drawer. He began to make his way methodically through each segment, leaving the central cupboard and its drawer till last. Leave the best till last. That was another thing he’d learnt from Gran.

  Upstairs Lawson was looking through a wedding album, which she’d found stuffed in the long wide drawer at the base of a rather pretty walnut wardrobe in what she assumed must be his bedroom. The bed, she had noted, was a double. The wardrobe contained a single, dark-blue suit, two white shirts, and two ties, but beyond that the clothes were distinctly casual. There were not, however, many of them, which tied up with her understanding that he generally lived in the Sunnymede flat during the week, and used this at the weekends. It was, she thought, a bit odd. It wasn’t so far away, even at rush hour time, so why didn’t he use it more? Did he really have to sleep on the premises during the week? She had been pondering this when she found the wedding album underneath a spare blanket in the wardrobe drawer. He clearly wasn’t married now, so what had happened to Mrs Greenleaf – had she died or were they divorced? Still if he had been entertaining Ania here, it was no surprise that he had buried the album well out of view.

  Half an hour or so later, the two detective constables were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea. It was Lawson who had found the half pint of milk in the fridge, and there had seemed to her little point in not making use of it. So there they sat, exchanging first banter and then information. Not that either of them had learnt anything obviously important. The place was neat and tidy, equipped reasonably but not excessively. There were a few CDs, two shelves of books, and a limited amount of food in the kitchen cupboard. More like a holiday let than a home.

  So they sat and whiled away twenty minutes, before reluctantly agreeing they ought to get going. And it was as they were in the very throes of getting into the car to leave that a man appeared in the gateway.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. He was a big man, with a huge bushy beard which hid much but not all of a ruddy face.

  ‘We are detectives,’ Lawson replied, turning towards the newcomer.

  ‘So what are you doing in Paul’s house?’

  ‘We have a search warrant,’ Wilson said defensively.

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question.’

  ‘We not required to answer it,’ Lawson said sharply. She pulled out her ID, holding it high for him to see. ‘Who are you, anyway?’

  ‘I’m his neighbour,’ he said, his belligerence waning. ‘I keep an eye out for him.’

  ‘I see.’ Lawson’s tone eased too. ‘I am sorry to have to tell you, but Mr Greenleaf was killed yesterday. We’re here conducting inquiries.’

  ‘God!’ Behind the beard, there seemed genuine shock. ‘How did he die?’

  Lawson glanced across at Wilson, who shrugged. ‘All I can say is that his death is suspicious.’

  ‘You mean it was, like, murder?’

  ‘I can’t say any more than that at the moment.’

  ‘But I saw him only on Sunday. Not to talk to, mind you. Him and his girlfriend.’

  ‘They were here for the weekend?’

  ‘Yeah, like most weekends.’

  ‘Did you notice any other visitors this weekend?’

  ‘Can’t say I did. Not that I watch out all the time. I’m not a spy. It’s just that he mostly only stays at the weekend, so it’s only during the week that I tend to keep an eye open for intruders.’

  ‘And have you seen any recently.’

  ‘Not since the builder finished. It’s been as quiet as the grave these last few weeks.’ Then he laughed, realizing what he said. ‘Sorry. That didn’t come out right! I just meant—’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Lawson. She reckoned they’d got all they needed from this particular witness. And she was conscious too that she could have been kinder. ‘And thank you for your help.’

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’ The words were anything but welcoming. Maureen Wright shouldn’t have been surprised to see Holden and Fox on her doorstep again, as they’d phoned her two hours earlier, but she stood in the doorway, one hand on the door, and her body fully in the way, as if they’d caught her on the hop. Her whole body language was telling them to bugger off.

  ‘Is your husband in?’

  ‘He’s just about to have his tea.’ She made no attempt to move aside.

  ‘I’m sorry, but we need to talk to him. I’m sure his tea can wait.’

  ‘Christ,’ she snapped. ‘You coppers! Don’t you have a home to go back to?’

  Inside, Jim Wright was watching the TV. There was no sign of his tea. He got up stiffly, killing the TV with the remote control as he did so. ‘You’ve got some news about my mother?’

  Holden shrugged. ‘Actually we wanted to ask you about Paul Greenleaf.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard about him. A mugging was it?’

  Holden ignored the question. ‘How long have you known him?’

  ‘Maybe a year or so.’

  ‘And how did you meet him?’

  Jim scratched his hairless head. ‘When I was looking round Sunnymede for my mother.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Nothing really. Not then. A few months later he asked me to do some work on this house out at Charlton-on-Otmoor.’

  ‘Yes, we found some invoices. And you did some work at Sunnymede too?’

  ‘Yeah, just recently.’

  ‘So you did well out of him?’

  Jim’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘It’s just that we’ve been making inquiries, and the word is that you lost a lot of money in Spain.’

  ‘Where the fuck is this all going to?’ The feigned indifference had disappeared. ‘I’ve had a few financial problems, and Greenleaf gave me some work. So what?’ The four of them were all still on their feet. Jim Wright moved a step closer to Holden, thrusting his red face aggressively forward. ‘Well?’ he demanded when Holden said nothing. ‘Well?’

  She looked down at the floor, as if acknowledging his superiority, and only after several seconds did she look up.

  ‘Who used to top up your mother’s hip flask with whisky? Was it you?’

  Holden’s sudden change of direction took Jim Wright completely by surprise, and he gaped like a landed fish desperate for water. Then his red face darkened to puce. ‘What’s your fucking game, Detective? What are you trying to say?’

  ‘Your mother had a hip flask. Someone topped it up with whisky for her. She came home most Sundays for lunch, didn’t she? So was that when you filled it up with whisky again?’

  ‘Not me,’ he snarled. ‘Not me, Detective!’

  It was then that Holden noticed Maureen. She had made it as far as the archway through to the kitchen, but no further. She was watching her husband, and her two hands were attached to her hips like they had been stuck there with super-glue. ‘Was it you, Maureen?’ Holden asked quietly.

  Her mouth opened as if to say something, but no words came out. Her face had turned a sickly, yellowish grey.

  It was Jim who answered. ‘It wasn’t her who did it.’

  Holden nodded, but her gaze was still fixed on Maureen. ‘Who was it then, Maureen? We need to know.’
>
  Maureen’s eyes blinked. There was moisture in them, and distress too. ‘Our son, David.’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘He used to do it. It was one of his Sunday jobs.’

  ‘Actually,’ her husband butted in, ‘to be strictly accurate, David is our adopted son.’

  ‘What bloody difference does that make, you bastard?’ Maureen Wright moved a pace towards her husband, her hands detaching themselves from her hips. For a moment Holden saw them balling into fists, as if she was about to lash out at him, but Maureen stopped advancing, and unleashed instead a volley of words. ‘Adopted or not, we chose him, so he’s ours, full stop. Until we’re dead, and maybe beyond that too. Not that you’re much use to him as a father.’

  ‘Is David here?’ Holden didn’t need to see more of this. Watching a couple hacking bits out of each other – that was something she took no pleasure in.

  ‘He doesn’t live with us,’ Maureen said quickly. ‘Not any more. He’s twenty now, and lives in a flat on Barns Road. He needs his privacy at his age.’ The words poured out, a protective torrent.

  ‘Well, we will need to talk to him.’

  ‘He’s got Asperger’s syndrome,’ Maureen blurted out. ‘He’s not an extreme case, but you must treat him properly. And I’d like to be present.’

  Holden nodded, as she assimilated this information. ‘We do have to ask him some questions.’ She tried to sound kind as well as firm. ‘But you’re welcome as long as you don’t interfere.’

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  ‘Good. Perhaps we should do that here, tomorrow morning.’

  Fran Sinclair’s mobile rang. She was halfway through EastEnders – not to mention her second gin and tonic – and she was tempted to ignore it. But she was tempted too to see who it was she was ignoring. She picked the mobile up. Bella!

  On screen, Phil Mitchell was doing his one-man bore routine. Phil Mitchell was the character she would most readily push off the top floor of the Empire State Building if she ever got the chance, so she muted the TV with the remote control, and answered her sister.