Blood in Grandpont (19 page)

‘Impressive, Wilson,’ Holden said. ‘And possible. However,’ she continued, taking great care in how she phrased her misgivings, ‘I do wonder if someone would have killed three people for a painting that might fetch at best ten thousand pounds.’

‘Why not?’ Fox countered with sudden force. ‘If you need the money enough, why the hell not?’ And he slurped noisily from his cup, as if the matter was well and truly settled.

‘Why does it have to come down to money?’ The question – or perhaps it was a challenge – came from Lawson.

Fox laughed dismissively. ‘Money or sex. It’s nearly always
money or sex.’ And he laughed again, ridiculing the young woman’s idea.

‘Constable Lawson.’ Holden deliberately looked directly at her protégé, ignoring Fox totally. ‘Perhaps you can explain your thinking. Sergeant Fox doesn’t have a monopoly on good ideas, at least not in this office.’

Lawson began slowly, feeling her way. ‘Maybe what we should be focusing on is the painting’s subject. It may not be of great artistic merit, but it is very unusual. Mary the mother of Jesus going round to visit the mother of Judas after he has betrayed her son. Now if that had been the work of an even moderately well-known painter, it might have been hugely valuable to someone. But even though it’s by an unknown artist, who’s to say that there aren’t people out there who might want it very much, so much so in fact that they’d pay over the odds despite its technical limitations?’

‘Ah!’ Fox jumped in again, apparently unaffected by his superior’s rebuke. ‘So it is all about money.’

‘Shut up, Sergeant.’ This time she looked at him, and the acid in her voice and the thunder on her face finally caused his smirk to fade.

Lawson plunged on. ‘I don’t mean they would necessarily want to hang it on their walls. Maybe just the opposite. Maybe they’d want to destroy it because it contradicts the Bible. Do you know how Judas is described in St John’s Gospel?’ She paused, and realized that she’d got the attention of all of them, even the dismissive Fox. ‘“Satan entered into him.” That’s what St John wrote. The same John who sat at the table with Jesus and Judas at the last supper. “Satan entered into him”.’

‘So what the hell does that prove?’ Fox interrupted.

Lawson looked unflinchingly into his eyes. ‘There was an artist who created twelve stained-glass windows of Jesus’ disciples for a church in Dorset. He insisted on including Judas along with all the others. I’m not sure exactly what his point was, maybe to underline the fact that they all betrayed their Lord, and not just Judas, but the parishioners refused to allow Judas’s image into their church. My
point, Sarge, is that Judas is, and always has been, a controversial figure. Maybe Maria and Dominic realized that, and reckoned it might be worth a lot more than it deserved on artistic merit alone.’

Fox grunted cheerfully. ‘So when push comes to shove, it is about money.’

‘For Maria and Dominic, maybe,’ Lawson conceded. ‘But. …’ She paused, determined to ensure she had all their attention for what she was about to say. ‘For the killer, maybe the money was irrelevant. Maybe it was all about getting hold of and destroying a painting he or she saw as blasphemous.’

They had to park some distance beyond the Tulls’ house and walk back. Even at this time of day, when those who work are at work and the decreasing band of ladies who lunch are still prolonging their outings with a drawn-out coffee, there were few available parking spaces. The sky above was a uniform grey – cloud as opposed to clouds – a blanket of dampness that offered no hope of relief. Holden put her hand up to see if she could feel any actual rain, then touched her cheek. She grinned to herself, recognizing a behaviour left over from childhood. Please let it not rain today.

Dr Alan Tull opened the door. The smile of greeting on his face evaporated as soon as he saw them. ‘Gosh, you have come in numbers.’

‘We’ll be quicker that way.’ Holden tried to sound matter of fact, and upbeat. She didn’t want to alarm him. ‘Anyway, may we come in?’ Tull was still standing in the doorway, and had been showing no sign of allowing them over the threshold.

‘Sorry,’ he said. Even under stress, he was courteous. ‘I do apologize. Come in.’

‘Thank you.’ Holden led the four of them in. She felt bad. When she had rung him to arrange their visit, she’d made out that what she was proposing was merely a chat and a clarification of a few details, only one step up from a social visit to see how he was holding up. Now his decency and acceptance of the circumstances made her feel deceitful and cheap. He didn’t deserve it. Unless, a
little voice whispered in the back of her brain, unless he had killed his wife and her lover, and indeed her ex-lover if that is what Dominic Russell had been.

Holden tried to make it as non-threatening as possible. In fact, as they drove over the four of them had discussed where they should sit. When Alan Tull gestured towards the sofa, Holden moved towards it, and Fox joined her. Tull seated himself in an armchair opposite them, while Lawson and Wilson sat to the side, at a distance, in his eye-line if he chose to glance at them. ‘Whatever you do, don’t just hover,’ Holden had insisted. ‘It’ll spook him.’

Alan Tull leant forward, his interlocked hands twisting slightly as he spoke. ‘So, have you made progress? I take it you haven’t arrested anyone yet.’

She nodded encouragingly. ‘Yes, we’ve made progress, and no, we haven’t arrested anyone. But there are a few details we need your help with.’

‘Of course.’

Holden looked down at her notes. ‘On the night your wife died, you came home just after six o’clock.’

‘Yes.’

‘Could you say what time she actually left the house?’

He scratched the crown of his head. ‘She was finishing off her meal when I arrived. Mackerel salad. She was quite rigorous about what she ate. And about what I ate, in fact.’ He sniffed. ‘I poured myself a whisky and asked her if she was organized for her lecture, and she told me I had spilt some food down my shirt and I should give it a soak in cold water and salt.’ Again, he sniffed. ‘Then I went through to my study to make a phone call. I was still on the phone when she called through that she was leaving, and then the door slammed and she was gone.’ He sighed, a deep, heavy sigh that seemed to Holden almost theatrical in its intensity. She remembered suddenly Sarah Russell’s account of her visit to him on the morning of her husband’s death, and she shivered. Was all this an act? The courteousness, the sadness, the sense of bathos wrung tight. Was he playing them for fools? He was keen on the theatre, after all.

‘Could you give a time?’

‘Maybe 6.15 p.m. I’m not sure, to be honest. But I do remember thinking she had plenty of time to get there and get organized, so it can’t have been much after that.’

‘And do you remember her receiving any phone calls before she left?’

He shook his head slowly. ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m sorry. I wish I could be more help.’

‘Thank you.’ Holden smiled. She too could do polite. A mobile phone rang. Damn. It was hers. She opened her bag, saw it was her mother, and killed the call. Then she powered the phone off. Her mother would only try again. ‘Sorry!’ she said sheepishly.

Tull smiled sympathetically back.

‘Karen, my dear. What a pleasure!’ Geraldine smiled broadly and directed her towards the chair with a wave of her hands.

‘Not for me!’ Karen Pointer hated dentists. Not personally. She and Geraldine still got on well when they encountered each other, as they inevitably did, on their social network. But the thought of going to the dentist, any dentist, made her shiver. Literally. There had been Mr Miller. That had been the name of her dentist when she had been a child. Miller the Killer, her brother had called him. For fun. At least her brother thought it fun. After the dentist they would always get a treat, a trip to the cinema or a visit to WH Smith with money to spend, but despite that she could never recall a time when, for her, visiting the dentist had been fun.

‘You’ll thank me afterwards,’ came the cheery reply.

‘Maybe.’ Karen lay back in the chair and tried to pretend she wasn’t there.

‘Sorry I couldn’t fit you in at the end of the day, but someone cancelled this spot only this morning.’

Karen said nothing. As far as she was concerned, the dentist was not the place for small talk.’So how is my favourite pathologist?’ Geraldine pressed a button and the seat began to rise. ‘Up we go!’

‘Up we go! What do you think I am? A three-year-old?’

‘At least five, my darling,’ she replied instantly. ‘Now, let’s take a look at this filling. Ah, yes, now there’s the hole! Still, it’s nothing that can’t be fixed.’

Geraldine Payne’s chatter, designed to distract, continued as she got to work. She made the silent decision, based on her past experience of her patient, to skip the injection, and reached cheerfully for the drill as she recounted a recent and rather exaggerated incident involving herself and a traffic warden. She worked deftly and quickly, conscious of the mounting anxiety in Karen. She had had patients turn and walk out of the surgery at the prospect of a filling, so she took these feelings very seriously. She prided herself on making the experience as tolerable as possible. She knew she couldn’t make it a happy one, but for people like Karen smoothness and speed were her watchwords.

At first Karen tried not to think, but that was hopeless. It blotted out precisely nothing. She tried then to think about Susan. She was worried about her, but lying there worrying achieved nothing. So she thought instead about the case, that is to say her bits of the case. The dead bodies and their manners of death. The clinical knife wounds and the exploded mess caused by the gun. She thought about Dominic Russell lying on the loft floor and the painting of Judas and the two mothers, and the neat slashes in the canvas, two parallel cuts on one diagonal and two on the other. So precise! What the hell was that all about?

‘Do you want a rinse, Karen?’

Opening her clenched eyes, she realized Geraldine was talking to her. She leant to her side, took a sip from the plastic cup, and swilled the minty green solution around her mouth, before spurting it out into the white whirlpool bowl.

‘Nearly finished, darling. Just lie back while I do a final check.’

She lay back. That was it. She hadn’t thought of that. The cuts were neat and clinical, just as the stab wounds to Maria’s heart and neck had been. They weren’t the emotional slashes of a man who had decided to blow his brains out, surely? It had to be murder. She must tell Susan, give her a ring. It might help. Only Susan didn’t
want hunches or guesses from her. She wanted evidence, something definitive. And that was something she couldn’t currently provide.

‘All finished!’ As soon as Geraldine had uttered these words of release, Karen sat up like a jack-in-the-box, anxious to escape the confines of the chair. Geraldine stifled a giggle. ‘Steady up, I’ve just got to lower the seat.’

Karen waited obediently, then clambered out and wiped her mouth with the tissue that Geraldine offered. She turned round to look for a bin, but as she did something happened behind her eyes and a surge of dizziness struck her. She staggered and gave a tiny yelp. Geraldine Payne, alerted, grabbed her with her left arm before she could fall.

‘Steady!’ Her other arm wrapped round her patient, and she pulled her towards herself. They stood there for barely two or three seconds, locked together. Geraldine could feel Karen’s breasts, soft against her own. She smelt the beguiling scent of her freshly shampooed hair, and memories resurfaced. Then, reluctantly, she released her.

‘Are you all right?’ she said hastily. ‘Look, you’d better come and sit down for a few minutes. Lucy can make you a cup of tea. I know it’s been an ordeal for you. But Susan will never forgive me if I let anything happen to you in my surgery.’

Karen Pointer nodded, her head still reeling. ‘Sorry if I was rude earlier.’

‘Forget it,’ the dentist replied brusquely, leading her by the arm. ‘Let’s get you sat down. Then I’ve got more patients to see.’

‘Dr Tull.’ Holden paused, wanting to be sure she had got Alan Tull’s attention. ‘We’re trying to trace what Maria did on that last day, just in case it gives us any clues. I know you were at work, but I wonder if you know what she had planned for that day. Work appointments, or a visit to the hairdresser, maybe?’

‘Gosh, there’s a question. To be honest, I don’t know. Not for certain. She might have been going to see Dominic. They’d been as
thick as thieves since she returned from Venice. I noticed that. Not that I told Maria I’d noticed. I didn’t like it. It was all to do with stuff she’d sourced for him in Venice, I expect, but I didn’t like it because Dominic wasn’t exactly the straightest pencil in the pack, if you know what I mean.’

‘Did Maria keep a diary?’ However interesting Tull’s comments were, Holden wanted to keep on her chosen track.

‘Oh, yes, a little blue one.’

‘Do you know where it is?’

Tull frowned. ‘Wasn’t it in her bag? You know that nice bag from Venice that you haven’t yet returned to me.’ It was sharpest comment that Holden had heard him say.

‘You will get the bag back, in due course, sir. But the diary wasn’t in it when we found it. Maybe it’s lying around the house somewhere.’

‘I suppose it could be,’ Tull replied, though he sounded doubtful.

‘Your wife used a computer, did she?’

‘Yes, I bought her a laptop last Christmas.’

‘We need to look at it, if you don’t mind.’

‘Look at it? What on earth for?’

‘In fact, we need to look around generally.’

‘Ah!’ Dr Alan Tull hadn’t become a very respected and successful GP by being a complete fool. ‘So that’s why you’ve come in force. Don’t you need a search warrant?’

Holden nodded, and looked sideways at Fox.

Fox held his hand out. ‘I’ve got one here, actually, sir.’

Tull’s face hardened, and the softly spoken politeness drained from his voice. ‘Well, damn you!’

‘This is so embarrassing. I must be your worst patient.’

‘I wish you were.’

Karen Pointer was sitting on an upright dining chair in a little room off the main waiting room. It was equipped with a kettle, a tray with four mugs on it, a small fridge that hummed away in the corner, and a sink. There were cupboards on the wall facing her,
made of stripped pine with frosted glass doors that obscured their contents. Below them were pine shelves, piled with magazines to the left and formidable dental tomes to the right.

‘We’ve got plenty of patients a lot worse than you,’ Lucy added, conscious that that her comment needed some explanation. ‘Late, rude, and always moaning about the cost. And stuck-up gits to boot. Only don’t quote me on that.’ She grinned and poured boiling water into one of the mugs.

‘Milk?’

‘Please.’

She added milk, two sugars and stirred. ‘There, that should do the trick.’

‘Lucy!’ Geraldine Payne’s voice rang out. ‘If you don’t mind, I need some assistance.’

‘Or even if I do mind!’ Lucy winked at Karen. ‘That’s Mrs Pearson. She’s always a two-person job. Take your time. I’ll pop back as soon as I can.’

Karen sipped at her tea and shut her eyes, leaning as far back as the upright back of her chair would allow. How stupid she was. How bloody, bloody stupid she was!

Back in Bainton Road, Lawson and Wilson had left the living room to go in search of laptops and diaries and whatever else that might be of interest. And DI Holden had decided it was time to change tack. ‘On Saturday morning, Sarah Russell came to see you. Can you tell me what that was about?’

‘Poor Sarah.’ The words of sympathy slipped smoothly out of Alan Tull’s mouth. ‘And poor Dominic. I met him as an undergraduate, you know. Keble men we were. No women in those days. Still, that’s of no interest to you.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Sarah came to see how I was. At least that was what I thought. But I should have known better. Sarah isn’t exactly the tell-me-all-
about-it
-and-cry-on-my-shoulder type. Not that that’s a fault. No criticism intended. She was concerned about me in her own brusque way. But what she really came to find out was whether I wanted to pull
out of the J.B. Priestley play. You probably know it:
An Inspector Calls
. Such a good play. A touch old-fashioned, maybe, and the inspector is a male, I’m afraid, but it always goes down well!’

He chuckled, pleased at his own observation, but Holden did not respond in kind. ‘So she arrived when?’

‘Ah, times again. You police, you’re worse than my receptionist!’ He shook his head. ‘I would guess she arrived about nine-thirty and left maybe an hour later, maybe a bit more than an hour. Sorry, that’s the best I can do.’

She opened her eyes and looked around. She must have dropped off for a moment. She looked down at her mug, cradled in her hands and took a sip. It was still pretty hot. Not even forty winks. When she had finished she would go. Maybe by the time she had walked home she would feel better.

She looked around the room again, and her eyes alighted on the magazines, this time staying there. She put her mug down, and knelt down on the floor. There must be something to read, something to distract herself until she could face going home. The magazines were, of course, old, rejects from the reception room. Peter Andre stared out at her from the front cover of the top one. Karen made a face, and looked at the one underneath. Different name on the magazine, similar picture. There was easy reading and there was trash. She moved halfway down the pile, to Lewis Hamilton, delayed briefly, and then moved to the very bottom. She yanked it out – an Arts magazine. Nine months old – but then art doesn’t go out of date much. Or does it? It must be one of Geraldine’s. Or do dentists have a budget under the heading ‘Reading material for the distraction and entertainment of customers’? She eased herself back on to the chair, took a sip of tea, and began to leaf through her find. An article on the origins of Art Deco seemed promising, but the first paragraph was of such deadening dullness that she abandoned it, glancing only at the pictures before flicking onwards. Gilbert and George were next, but even at the best of times she couldn’t work up enthusiasm for them, and she moved quickly on. And then she saw
an article that stopped her dead. It was entitled ‘Zeus the Serial Seducer’. She read the text slowly, for it was in a sense topical. It traced the Greek god’s sexual adventures through mythology and art. Some of it she felt she knew and some of the paintings illustrated were definitely familiar. She had seen Rembrandt’s
The Abduction of Europa
in Los Angeles a couple of years ago, but even in her befuddled state the theme struck her with fresh force. The painting whose photo had been on Jack Smith’s mobile and that the police had found at Dominic Russell’s wasn’t illustrated in the magazine, of course. It was far too insignificant, but its theme was the same: seduction or rape, whatever you might prefer to call it. Now what the hell was that all about?