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‘I need to talk,’ her companion reiterated, but her voice had dropped down to a confidential, but intense whisper. ‘I’ve done something stupid.’ She paused, and looked up, checking that there was no one who could possibly overhear her. ‘Something really stupid.’
‘What are you talking about?’ There was still irritation obvious in Geraldine’s voice, but she too had dropped several decibels.
‘I’m being blackmailed.’
CHAPTER 2
Maria Tull died shortly before 10.00 p.m. on the Monday following her return from Venice. No one – with one possible exception – knew the precise time, though later the general consensus of her shocked students was that she had left the St Aidan’s Hall in St Clement’s round about 9.45 p.m., give or take five minutes. She had been giving the first of six planned lectures on the history of Venetian art, and it had gone well. Those who knew her modus operandi would have expected her to join her students in a local pub or bar at the end of the evening. Socializing was part of her make-up, and she was shrewd enough to know that if she established a personal bond on that first night, then her students were much more likely to stay the course. In the event, the weather put paid to any such plans on that particular Monday night. Round about 9.15 p.m., it had begun to rain. Not the soft refreshing rain celebrated in the old hymn, but a driving, torrential downpour of such primeval fury that it caused the flood-conscious residents of the lower-lying parts of Oxford to twitch curtains, peer nervously out of windows, and wonder if sandbags would need to be drafted into action again.
These were the weather conditions that greeted Maria’s students as they prepared to leave, and it was therefore inevitable that they left at a run, in ones and twos, heading for the bus stop, the car or the pub. Maria was the last to leave. John Abrahams, a tall, old-fashioned man in his late sixties, later confirmed this to the police. He had waited for her to lock up, and then he had walked hurriedly to the bus stop twenty metres to the east, while she scurried off in the other direction, towards town. After some seventy metres, she very likely turned right, down a passageway that led into the St Clement’s car park. That, at least, would have been her most direct route to her car, which was parked in the corner at the back of the car park. And it was by the car, as she was scrabbling around in her handbag trying to locate her keys, that she felt a sudden and unutterable pain in her side, before collapsing on to the tarmac. The knife which had caused this searing agony struck again, this time into the neck area, but she felt nothing, for she was already dead – or as good as.
Despite the fact that this untoward event occurred in a public and well-used car park, it was not until shortly after 10.30 that evening that a middle-aged couple, Mr and Mrs Martin Barnes, who had been enjoying a leisurely anniversary supper at the nearby Thai restaurant, returned to their car and almost literally stumbled over her body.
It took an ambulance approximately six minutes to arrive. Martin Barnes had reported the prone woman as a possible heart attack victim, for the darkness in that area of the car park had hidden the telltale blood, and the intensity of the rain had discouraged him from any close inspection. Mr Barnes knew he needed to ring 999, and that was enough. But when the paramedics arrived
they quickly realized (a) that the woman was irredeemably dead, and (b) that she had been stabbed. Within another six minutes, three other vehicles had arrived, out of which emerged two uniformed policemen in the first case, then two plain clothes detectives (both female), and finally another non-uniformed woman who was obviously well known to all four members of the police.
‘Sorry to spoil your evening, Karen,’ DI Susan Holden shouted, as the latest arrival clambered down from her four-by-four.
Dr Karen Pointer flashed a grim smile through the darkness. ‘What’s there to spoil on a Monday night?’ she called back, as she walked to the back of her car, opened the boot and pulled out a squat, black case.
Both the wind and the rain had eased somewhat, but water was still beating down furiously from the black sky with a power that gave the unfortunate group of figures no sense of relief. Umbrellas had been found, however, so as Dr Pointer knelt down to examine the body, she did at least receive some protection from the remorseless elements.
‘I can confirm that the subject is dead,’ she said. ‘There’s a stab wound in the neck.’ Her eyes made their way methodically down the body, until they came to rest on a darker patch. ‘Can I have more light?’ she snapped, and began to unbutton the sodden fawn mackintosh in which Maria Tull had died. She pulled it open. A dark red patch on the white blouse told its own unequivocal story. ‘There’s a stab wound to the heart as well,’ she continued. ‘At least death would have been quick, maybe instantaneous.’ She peered closer, unbuttoning the blouse to get a proper look at the wound. ‘You should be looking for a narrow-bladed knife,’ she concluded, before rebuttoning the blouse and standing up. ‘If it’s OK by you, Detective Inspector, I’d rather continue my investigations in my lab, in the morning.’
Holden nodded. ‘There’s nothing to be gained by you catching pneumonia,’ she said, wishing that she too could escape into the dry, but there were things they had to do first. ‘We’ll take a look round for the weapon.’ Holden now knelt down herself, not to take look at the wound, but check the woman’s coat pockets. This yielded a mobile phone, which she passed to her young colleague, Detective Constable Jan Lawson. ‘Bag this, will you.’ Then Holden stood up. ‘There must have been car keys, and probably money, and she’s wearing lipstick, so the chances are she was carrying a handbag. So let’s get looking for them. If we don’t find one, we can always check the car’s registration to get an ID.’
While Holden and PC Hughes began a methodical sweep of that end of the car park, Lawson and PC Wright followed a footpath which exited at the back and dropped down into Angel and Greyhound Meadow which separates this more modern area of East Oxford from the medieval city. Wright went left and Lawson right, but it was Lawson who found the handbag where it had apparently been tossed, half hidden under some bushes behind a fallen tree trunk. It was large and brown with black patches, like a crocodile. The leather was soft and expensive, and the name PRADA was positioned, discreetly but prominently, just under the lip of the bag. Lawson could only dream of owning something like this, assuming it was genuine, and no reproduction rip-off. Despite the circumstances she felt a brief flash of envy. The dead woman had clearly possessed both money and style.
The bag had not been ransacked. The only item obviously missing was a wallet or purse. Of the knife which killed the woman, there was no sign. All of which pointed to a mugging, a druggy wanting cash for his next fix, Lawson volunteered much later, as she drove her boss home. This was after they had made the necessary but unpleasant visit to the Tull household, to tell a husband and two adult children about the death of their wife and mother, Lawson was determined to put that experience behind her by focusing upon the practical detail of the case. Holden made no response to this speculation. ‘Don’t you agree?’ Lawson pressed. She wasn’t someone who found silence comforting.
‘Concentrate on getting me home in one piece, Constable,’ Holden replied brusquely. Her mind was on practical detail too, but for her there was a whole raft of it floating around in her head. What staff would she need? How early should she get Lawson to collect her in the morning? What were the chances of finding forensic evidence? (Might the killer’s clothing have snagged somewhere as he or she fled the scene?) Was there any chance of finding the knife? It could easily have been tossed into the river; and then again the killer could have taken it home, washed it clean, and put it back in the kitchen drawer, if that was where it had come from. A thin knife, Karen had said. How thin? And why had the killer stabbed her? She hadn’t been a tall woman, and if the killer had been an addict desperate for a fix, he could surely have done so with just a clout round the head. Or did he threaten her with a knife, and did she refuse to surrender her bag? In any case, it would be instructive to check out in the morning if anyone had actually tried to use any of the woman’s cards. Maybe Lawson was right: drugs were the obvious answer, but somehow it didn’t quite feel like it. The killing was clean and quick, as if someone knew what they were doing, not a messy desperate assault by someone driven half-crazy by the need for the next fix. Anyway, whatever, it was far too bloody early to go jumping to conclusions.
Lawson had gone obediently silent, allowing her boss’s thoughts to go where they would, and she said nothing else until she pulled up outside Holden’s house in Chilswell Road. Holden was relieved to be home. She liked her little house, tucked away here in the middle of Grandpont in south Oxford, protected by its position from the noise of the Abingdon Road to the east and that of the railway line to the west. It was raining harder again, battering against the windscreen of the car, but she wasn’t concerned. She had survived the floods of July 2007, so what was there to worry about?
‘Here we are, Guv,’ Lawson said, trying again. ‘I expect you’ll be glad to get to bed after all that.’
‘I doubt I’ll be able to sleep,’ Holden said firmly.
‘My mum always swears by a cup of cocoa,’ Lawson continued, her optimism undimmed.
Holden gave a snort, and immediately regretted it. Lawson was only trying to have a normal conversation, trying to deal with the brutality of what she had encountered that evening. But she, Holden, was being a right cow. She knew that. And it wasn’t just about the dead woman. She had other things on her mind. The relief at returning home was not an unalloyed feeling. Coupled with it came another feeling, an unnerving sense of loneliness that would sometimes lie in wait for her and leap out as she shut the front door behind her. What was it? Two years since that bastard Richard had walked out on her. Yet there were times when she found herself missing even him. Bloody hell, what was happening to her?
‘Sorry,’ she said, trying to make amends. ‘I’m sure your mother is wonderful, Lawson. But I doubt I will ever be a cocoa person. Or even, before you suggest it, a herbal tea person. In these circumstances, a slug of whisky is more my line.’
‘Oh!’ Lawson replied. She was, untypically, lost for a suitable response.
‘But I appreciate your concern.’ Holden paused, and switched modes again. ‘Anyway, can you pick me up at 7.45 in the morning?’
‘Of course, Guv.’
‘Good.’ Holden opened the car door, but didn’t immediately get out. She twisted round to face her colleague again. ‘Mothers are a good thing, Lawson, and it’s important you have someone you can talk to. But remember that mothers worry about their children, so sometimes they also need protecting. They don’t need to know everything. Are you with me?’
Lawson nodded after a pause. ‘I think so Guv, yes.’
‘Good night, then, Lawson.’ And with that, the detective inspector got out of the car into the unrelenting rain and shut the door firmly behind her.
At 8.30 the following morning, DI Holden was sitting at her desk facing Lawson, Detective Sergeant Fox and Detective Constable Wilson. Fox was by some distance the oldest of the quartet, and the biggest. Being seated seemed, if anything, to accentuate his bulk, stretching his shirt and jacket tight across his chest and shoulders. Wilson, sitting next to him, seemed small by comparison, though in reality he was less than an inch shorter. Wilson was, however, a slight man, and his hunched posture merely underlined that slightness. He lacked confidence in himself, and not for the first time Holden wondered fleetingly if there wasn’t something she should be doing about it. Lawson, by contrast, sat bolt upright, her face open and eagerly watching her boss. She would, Holden had no doubt, go far if she chose to put career in front of domestic bliss.
