Blood on the Marsh Read online

  ‘Not at all.’ Hargreaves waved a hand dismissively. ‘When the police request an urgent interview, I always do my best to co-operate. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I just wanted to run my eyes over Mrs Nanette Wright’s papers so that I could answer your questions.’

  ‘Well, we just need to check out her will. To see to whom she left her estate.’

  ‘Of course.’ Hargreaves nodded vigorously, and looked down at the open file in front of him, as if he needed to double check the details. ‘In fact, it’s all very straightforward. She left all her estate to her son, Mr James Wright, all except for some items of jewellery that she has specified be given to her granddaughter, Victoria.’

  ‘What about her grandson, David?’

  Hargreaves looked down again, adjusting his glasses as he did so. ‘Nothing was left to anyone else.’

  ‘Oh!’ Wilson felt a spurt of sympathy for the forgotten boy. He hoped his own gran wouldn’t ignore him just because he was male.

  ‘I believe David was adopted,’ Hargreaves said, looking up. ‘Maybe that explains it.’

  ‘Oh!’ Wilson said again. He didn’t remember being told that in the briefing. He’d check it out later, but right now there were other questions to ask. ‘Do you know how large her estate is?’

  Hargreaves leant back, and smiled at Wilson as if he was a rather uncouth young nephew. ‘That’s a question to ask her accountant, I think.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Wilson flushed, but not – as might once have been the case – with embarrassment. It was anger he felt, anger at being so patronized by this man who felt a handmade suit and a public-school accent put him above people like himself. ‘I would imagine,’ Wilson persisted, ‘that you have some idea of your clients’ financial affairs. After all you wouldn’t want them defaulting on their bills.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The hand waved again, a tennis player’s hand perhaps, acknowledging a good return of service. He leant forward. ‘What I can tell you, Constable, is that about a year ago she took a quarter share in her son’s house. I had to draw up the agreement.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really! But as I say, if you want financial details, you’ll need to speak her accountant. His name is William Kelly.’

  ‘Do you have an address and phone number?’

  Hargreaves leant back again, and pointed a single complacent finger towards the ceiling. ‘Next floor up, young man.’

  At much the same time as Wilson was being patronized by Charles Hargreaves, Holden, Fox and Lawson were undertaking the grunt work that a police investigation typically involves. From the list that Fox had compiled the previous day, it had become obvious to Holden that there were all too many people who could potentially have put morphine in Nanette Wright’s hip flask and so caused her death. Quite apart from all the staff, there were visitors and business callers. ‘And, of course,’ Holden pointed out, ‘we shouldn’t ignore the possibility of other residents being involved. The question is where to start. We aren’t necessarily looking for someone with an obvious motive to commit murder. If the morphine was put in the hip flask by someone merely hoping to quieten Nanette down, then we may be looking for someone with a petty grudge against the old woman, or someone whom she managed to rub up the wrong way. But if the intent was to kill, then well …’ Holden shrugged and opened her hands in apparent supplication to a higher being.

  ‘There is another way of approaching the problem.’ Despite her lack of experience, Lawson was not a person to hold back. Keeping quiet gets you nowhere. That had always been her motto. ‘What I mean is that we could start with the people who could most easily have gained access to morphine. Which is presumably some of the more senior nursing staff.’

  ‘I take your point, Lawson.’ It was a guarded welcome. ‘In fact,’ Holden continued, ‘my next move is to go and talk to Fran Sinclair about their drugs regime.’ Lawson felt a flush of pleasure. There was a juvenile part of her that needed her boss’s approval. ‘But’, Holden was saying – of course there had to be a ‘but’ – ‘I don’t want to make too many assumptions yet. What I want you and Fox to do, Lawson, is to try and build up a picture of Nanette Wright’s life here, and in particular her last few days. Did she tend to wander around a lot, or stay in her room? Did she have particular friends? Was she popular or unpopular? Get people to talk about her, and try and find out who she related to. Did her family visit her much during the week? You don’t need me to spell it out. Just find out as much as you can.’

  William Kelly was the very antithesis of Wilson’s idea of an accountant. For a start, he was dressed an in open-neck black shirt and black jeans. The top two shirt buttons were undone, revealing a small silver cross on a fine chain, and there was noticeable stubble on his face. His hair was jet black and short, and his eyes flickered with amusement.

  ‘So you’ve been and seen Charles, I gather, and now it’s me for the third degree.’

  ‘Just a few questions, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘You want to know how much Nanette Wright was worth, I expect.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So her death is suspicious?’ The amusement in his eyes had dissolved.

  Wilson pursed his lips. ‘All I can say is that we are investigating her death, and we need to collect all the information about her we can. Mr Hargreaves told me that she became a part owner of her son’s house about a year ago.’

  ‘And I expect you’ve already worked out that six months later they were shunting her into a care home. It makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I assume she needed more care than her son and daughter-in-law could give.’

  Kelly made a face. ‘You can assume what you like, but I wouldn’t treat my mother like that. Never!’

  ‘Was her son short of money?’

  ‘Is her son a bastard? The answer is yes to both questions. I never liked him. He came round here with her a couple of times and asked a lot of intrusive questions. So when they’d gone, I did some of my own investigations. He had his own building business, and it was quite successful for a while. He even bought property out in Spain, doing it up and selling it on, but when the property market there crashed in 2007, so did his business. Now he’s just a jobbing builder, but my guess is that he’s still skint. That’s why his mother had to buy a stake in his house. He needed cash.’

  ‘So Mrs Wright’s death is a bit of a windfall for her son.’

  ‘It’s certainly damned convenient. Apart from her share in the house, she has maybe twenty grand left, which he’ll now get. But, of course, she’s been shelling out several hundred pounds a week for Sunnymede, and if she’d lived for a while longer, she’d have had to ask her son for her money back. And that would have made things difficult for him. So if you’re looking for a motive for murder, then Jim Wright – not to mention his wife – has it in spades.’

  Holden tracked down Fran Sinclair in her office. It was, she noted, much smaller than Greenleaf’s, and with the desk, sideboard, and two wall cupboards it felt cramped and unwelcoming. The single small window in the back wall, which seemed to have escaped the attention of whoever it was who cleaned the windows, did nothing to change that impression.

  Sinclair did not rise. She had a mug of something hot in one hand, and a chocolate biscuit in the other, which was poised in front of her mouth. Her eyes ran up and down her visitor, and then, without a word of welcome, she thrust the biscuit into her mouth.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you about your drugs regime.’

  Sinclair continued chewing. Holden sat down. Sinclair now took a sip from the mug, wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist, and sniffed.

  ‘So, what do you want to know?’

  ‘Where do you keep your drugs for your patients?’

  ‘In the drugs trolley.’ Sinclair sniffed again.

  ‘I assume that it’s lockable?’

  ‘Of course it’s lockable. And it’s kept locked.’

  ‘And do you have much morphine in it?’

>   ‘None.’

  ‘None?’ The surprise in Holden’s voice was obvious, and it provoked an immediate smile in the woman opposite her. Fran Sinclair was more than happy to play silly buggers. ‘Are you saying there’s no one in Sunnymede who is taking morphine?’

  ‘No!’ The smile was even more smug now. ‘Morphine is a controlled drug. And like all controlled drugs, it has to be kept in a locked and immovable container, like that cupboard on the wall.’ She pointed high towards Holden’s right. ‘That way, no one can walk off with the whole lot.’

  ‘So how much morphine have you got in there at the moment? Can I look inside?’

  ‘No need.’ Sinclair picked up a black A4 book sitting on top of a pile of papers. ‘This is our register of controlled drugs. We log them in, we log them out. We keep a running total.’

  ‘Can I see?’ It was a polite request, but Fran Sinclair didn’t immediately pass it over. Holden felt her patience running thin. She didn’t like the woman sitting in front of her, and she certainly didn’t like her attitude.

  Sinclair opened the book and leafed slowly through several pages, before turning it round so that Holden could see it.

  ‘That’s a good example. One of our cancer patients. She needs morphine on a daily basis. As you can see, each dose is logged, signed for, and witnessed. And the balance of the drug in the cabinet is also recorded.’

  Holden nodded. She had never seen one of these before. ‘So you check the balance on the book against what is in the cupboard?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if there was a discrepancy, what then?’

  ‘There never has been a discrepancy,’ she replied icily. Sinclair’s brief attempt at being human had apparently come to an end.

  ‘But just suppose a discrepancy had occurred,’ Holden pressed.

  ‘Then that would be a serious matter. I’d have to report it.’

  Holden turned a page in the book. Her eyes scanned the entry for a Mrs Diana Leigh, but her brain was already moving on: ‘And when a patient on morphine dies, what happens to the rest of the morphine?’

  ‘All unused drugs would be safely disposed of via a licensed waste management company. And before you ask, let me tell you we keep full records of that too.’

  Holden nodded again, though not because she was satisfied. If there had been a discrepancy – if morphine had disappeared – would Fran Sinclair really be happy to report it?

  CHAPTER 5

  I don’t know where to start. I can’t stop thinking. My head is a whirlpool. My head is an unexploded bomb. I have not slept well. Every time that I closed my eyes, my brain went into overdrive. So let me tell it in order, the whole day, from the beginning to end, and maybe then I will feel better.

  I got up when my alarm went off. I had a shower and I got dressed. I put on clean pants and clean socks, but the rest of my clothes I had worn the previous day. I had breakfast – a little packet of porridge with milk which I microwaved for two and a half minutes. I put soft brown sugar on top – just one level dessert spoon – and I ate it slowly, with a glass of orange juice. Then I brushed my teeth, put on my anorak and my Oxford United scarf, and went to catch the bus. I got to work a bit early, so I went and stood outside the music shop in the Cowley Road and looked at all the guitars. I wish I could be a pop star.

  Then I went to the shop. Jaz was already there, and I had four frames to make, so I concentrated on that. She popped out to the bank at 11.30 a.m., so I sat at the front and waited for customers, and then in walked Bella. She had come for her painting of Doubtful Sound. Jaz had told me that it was a real place, in New Zealand, so I felt bad that I had thought she was teasing me.

  She paid me, and I said ‘Thank you’ and she said ‘Thank YOU’ and that made me feel better.

  Jaz came back from the bank a few minutes later, and since it was 12.01, I went and ate my sandwiches at the back of the shop, and then I went for a walk. When I got to George and Delilah’s for my ice cream, Bella was already there, sitting at the same table as the day before.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said.

  She smiled. She has a nice smile. ‘I want to buy you an ice cream, and then I want to tell you a secret.’

  All afternoon the secret she told me was whizzing round my head, so I found it really hard to concentrate. I left work at 4.30 p.m., and outside there was Vickie, waiting for me.

  ‘Hello, what are you doing here?’ I said.

  ‘I rang you, you twerp,’ she said. ‘We arranged that I could come round to your flat.’

  She was right. I had forgotten. ‘Are you wanting supper?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got some money,’ she said. ‘I’ll buy us both fish and chips.’

  So we went back to my flat, and we ate at the table, and afterwards I made us each a mug of tea. But when I turned round to give her hers, I saw she was crying.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I said. I’m no good when people cry. I went to the bathroom and got her some toilet paper. After a while she stopped crying. ‘Are you all right now?’ I said. What else could I say?

  ‘It’s Dad,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said, though I thought I knew what she meant.

  ‘I hate him,’ she said.

  ‘Has he been hitting her again?’ I felt myself getting angry just thinking about it. I saw him hit her once, right in the stomach with his fist. Mum had said he didn’t hurt her, but I knew he had. I knew the bastard had hurt her.

  ‘No,’ Vickie said quickly. ‘At least, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Tell me if he does,’ I said.

  ‘I wish I could stay with you,’ she said.

  I was confused. I couldn’t keep up with what she was saying. My flat is tiny. She has a double-size bedroom at home. ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘I’ve only got one room.’

  ‘I wish I could stay here forever.’

  People are hard to understand. I didn’t know what to say, so I changed the subject. ‘Do you want to know a secret?’ I said. I was bursting to tell someone, and she was the best person to tell. Except maybe Jaz. But Jaz was always too busy.

  ‘What secret?’ She looked at me with eyes wide open. They were red, but she had definitely stopped crying.

  ‘I met my mother today.’

  She really did look surprised. I was pleased. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I met my real mother today. She bought me an ice cream. Her name is Bella.’

  ‘What do you mean, your real mother? Mum is your mother.’

  ‘Mum is my adopted mother, you know that. Bella is my real mother.’

  Then Vickie said something terrible. Or rather she shouted something terrible, at the top of her voice. ‘Mum is your real mother, you idiot! She is the one that has loved you since you were little.’

  ‘Bella has always loved me,’ I said. I knew that because she had told me so, while I was eating the ice cream.

  But Vickie just shouted at me again, about how ungrateful I was. And then she picked up her rucksack and her coat and said she was going home to tell Mum.

  That made me angry. Really, really angry. So I grabbed her. I am much bigger than her, so it was easy to grab her by the upper arms and shake her. ‘It’s a secret,’ I shouted. ‘You mustn’t tell anyone. Bella said it had to remain a secret.’

  She tried to break free, but I’m strong, and I held her tight until she stopped struggling.

  ‘Let me go,’ she whined.

  ‘Not until you promise to keep it a secret.’

  She looked up at me then and I could see that she was scared. ‘I promise,’ she said.

  But I didn’t believe her. I couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t tell her mum. Her mum. Not mine. Bella had told me I had to start thinking of her as my mother, and Vickie’s mother as my adopted mother. But we had to keep it a secret for now.

  ‘Say it again.’

  ‘I promise,’ she said. ‘David, I really do promise.’

  This time I believed her. Almo
st. I gripped her arms even harder, digging my fingers into her flesh, and she started to cry. I pushed my face close up to hers. ‘If you ever tell anyone, I will kill you’, I said, and I snarled as I spoke. I wanted to really, really frighten her. Then I let her go.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Bella Sinclair recognized the voice only too well, but she resisted the urge to turn round. She had known that by coming back to Sunnymede she risked the chance of bumping into him, but he held no fears for her. When Fran had helped her get the job, she had been broke and so very glad of it, but now things were different. As jobs went, it wasn’t exactly the be-all and end-all of her life, and if she lost it because of that bastard, then so be it. As she had walked up Fitzroy Close that morning, it had been anger that fuelled her, not fear. She had found herself reciting the conversation she would have if she bumped into him, and she had graphically imagined the scene – her and him having a stand-up row in front of a crowd of fascinated onlookers. Of course, reality rarely lives up to fantasy, but when she heard his voice, she was ready for him.

  ‘You’re suspended,’ Greenleaf bellowed. ‘You have to leave now!’

  She turned round. His face was flushed, but seeing this only strengthened her resolve. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Greenleaf.’ Her voice was mocking. ‘Have I done something wrong?’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  Her face and her voice hardened. ‘What the hell does it look like? I’ve come to get some things from my locker.’

  ‘You know you’re not allowed on the premises!’

  ‘As it happens, I didn’t. I’ve never been suspended before. But I’ll go as soon as I’ve collected my things.’ She turned her back on him and pulled open the locker door. In fact she had already got what she needed, but that wasn’t the point. She removed a copy of a Susan Shields novel that she had already read twice, and pushed it into the hessian bag she was carrying. She would go when she was ready and not before. Besides, she was aware that she had an audience of at least two. A man and woman were standing several metres away along the corridor beyond Greenleaf, and they were obviously fascinated.