Blood on the Cowley Road (17 page)

Wright dragged his hand through his hair as he tried to recall. ‘I think so,' he said uncertainly. ‘I seem to remember his coming over Thursday or Friday.'

‘You wouldn't know which seats?' Wilson said.

Wright shrugged. ‘Sorry. If he paid cash—' His voice trailed away. Wilson stood there unmoving, reluctant to bring the meeting to an end. ‘Still,' said Wright, ‘I guess you'll recognize him now, if you want to arrest him.'

‘He won't be coming tonight' Wilson said brutally. ‘Didn't we mention it? He's dead. Burnt to a cinder. It's his friends we are interested in.'

‘Oh!' Wright said. ‘Well, if we can be of any help—'

‘You've already been a great help,' Lawson said, intervening. Wilson's boorish aggression was beginning to irritate her. Couldn't he bloody see that a bit of flattery and thanks was going to work a lot better with Wright than his we're-in-bloody-charge approach? ‘But I was wondering if there wasn't another area in which you could help us even more? I know you must be very busy, but—'

‘Just ask' he said, anxious again to please the really rather attractive WPC.

Lawson smile again. She could almost see his tail wagging like a windmill. ‘Well, I was thinking about how we might identify these friends of Martin Mace, and then it suddenly occurred to me that you must have got closed circuit TV. So if you could help us locate Mace from a previous game, we should be able to identify his friends.'

‘I'd be delighted,' Wright said.

It took Fox three prolonged rings on the bell before he and Holden were rewarded by the sound of something falling, and then by the appearance of a figure at the back of the gallery. As Les Whiting walked towards them and then fiddled at the locks and bolts which secured Bare Canvas from the outer world, Holden looked again at her watch. ‘How does he make any money if he's not open at this hour?'

‘How does he make any money at all,' Fox responded sourly. ‘Who the hell wants to pay hard earned cash for rubbish like this,' and his hand gestured towards the stark primary-coloured canvases which hung on his walls.

The door opened. ‘Not come to buy something to cheer your living spaces up, have you?' If Les Whiting had heard Fox's comments, he wasn't showing it. Holden briefly thanked God that she didn't have to be perpetually cheerful in order to do her job.

‘I'm afraid not,' she replied. ‘But perhaps another time.'

‘Police business then,' Whiting said, holding the door open so that they could enter. ‘Is it OK with you if I open up?' he asked. ‘I'm not expecting a flood of visitors, but a single buyer is all one needs sometimes. '

‘Best not,' said Holden firmly. ‘Sorry, but this is serious police business, and if all goes well it'll only take a few minutes.'

Whiting locked and bolted the door. ‘Well in that case,' he said rather petulantly, ‘I won't risk delaying you by offering you a coffee.'

‘Good,' Fox said uncompromisingly, ‘because all we are interested in are some straight answers to some questions. Then, as the Inspector said, if we are satisfied with the answers we'll go.'

‘And if you're not?'

‘Where were you on Monday night?'

Whiting frowned. ‘Why do you ask?'

‘Would you rather we did this down at the police station?' Fox asked belligerently. ‘Because if you don't bloody well answer our questions, that's where you'll be going, and your precious gallery will be staying shut for a lot longer.'

Whiting looked across at Holden, but if he hoped to gain comfort there he was disappointed. The woman's face was hard, stripped bare of emotion, and her eyes met his unflinchingly. He turned back towards Fox. ‘I was here,' he said. ‘We had a private showing, to open
this exhibition. It started at 6.00, though I had been here most of the day getting ready for it with Kim. Kim Carpenter. The exhibitionist.' He gestured towards the walls. ‘It finished about 8.00 p.m.'

‘Did you leave immediately?' Fox pressed.

‘Not immediately. I had to clear up, but I probably left about 8.30.'

‘Can anyone verify this?'

‘Well Kim offered to stay behind, but her son and daughter had come up from London, so I told her to go and I finished off on my own.'

‘We'll need to get her to verify this.'

‘Look, what exactly is all this about?'

‘Don't you know?' Fox asked.

‘Well, of course I don't. I mean, you come here and start asking—'

‘Mr Whiting!' Holden spat the words out like an archetypal sergeant major bringing a new recruit to order. Whiting stopped, and for three or four seconds silence fell. When Holden continued, her voice was quieter, but equally as firm. ‘Tell us about your break-up with Jake. If I recall correctly, you said he had an affair with another man, but I don't think you told us who this man was.'

‘I think you recall incorrectly,' Whiting replied. ‘I am certain I told you he had a one night stand with someone. And the reason I never told you his name was because I never knew what it was.'

Holden chewed at her lip, while her brain apparently lost itself in puzzled thought.

‘So how did you find out about this, this er …one night stand. Did Jake confess it over his cornflakes the next morning?'

‘What the hell does it matter?'

‘It matters,' Holden said, reverting to her sergeant major tones, ‘because I want to find Jake Arnold's killer.' Even as she said this, Holden was undecided as to what to say next – if anything. Whiting, she was sure, had not been entirely truthful about the end of his relationship with Jake, but that merely made it all the more important to choose her line of attack with care. There seemed to be two possible approaches: one softly, softly, probing with questions gently, remorselessly; or there was the opposite approach.

‘You must have hated Martin.' Holden said this in a matter-of-fact, doesn't-really-matter tone. She tried to look as if she was uninterested
in the answer, merely going through the motions for the sake of it, but she was watching intently for Whiting's reaction, conscious that it was that first second of time, that first unguarded expression to flick across his face, maybe – if she was lucky – his first utterance that would tell her that her suspicions were well founded. Or not.

Whiting opened his mouth as if to speak, but then shut it again. He smiled, and then opened his mouth again, this time to speak. ‘Martin? Martin who?'

‘I think you know.'

He scratched his head theatrically. ‘Hm!' he continued. ‘I think I know at least three Martins, and then of course there's also Mr Martin who runs the corner shop. I find him perfectly pleasant.'

Holden changed tack abruptly, switching back to her original line of enquiry.

‘You haven't yet told me how you found out about Jake Arnold's one night stand.'

‘Haven't I? Is that a crime.'

‘Christ!' Fox broke in angrily. ‘Let's just take him down to the station. If he wants to play silly buggers with us, then we'll fucking well do it properly. We could start by sticking him in a cell for a few hours while we search his flat, and then we could question him for half the night, and then maybe he'll stop pissing us about.' Fox stepped forward as he stopped talking, causing Whiting to step back. Then, pleased with the effect of his outburst, he produced a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. ‘Do you want to tell him his rights, or shall I?'

‘I saw a text message on his mobile,' Whiting blurted out. He was unsure whether the hulking great sergeant was serious or not, but he found him frightening nevertheless, and suddenly his own appetite for playing games was gone.

‘What message?' Holden asked quickly.

‘A suspicious one.'

‘That's not good enough,' Fox said bluntly.

‘You want chapter and verse? Word for word? Well, let me think. “When can we do it again?” I think that was pretty much it.'

‘Did you often check his mobile messages?' Holden said flatly.

Whiting shrugged. ‘No. But the fact is he had been behaving pretty suspiciously, so I took my opportunity.'

‘So you asked him about the message?'

‘Yes.'

‘And?'

‘And he admitted it. That he'd met this guy.'

‘What was this guy's name?'

Whiting gave another shrug. ‘Don't know.'

‘You're lying,' Fox snarled.

Holden held up her hand, gesturing Fox to silence. ‘Let me just run over the scene. You ask Jake about the message. He admits to meeting someone else. He says it was just a one-off. You don't ask who he was. You don't ask where he met him, or when he met him or anything. You just say: “That's OK, Jake, let's pretend it never happened and why don't we crack open a bottle of champagne to demonstrate how grown up we've been about it all.” Now, are you seriously expecting me to swallow that story? Because if you are I'll stop right now and start following Sergeant Fox's advice.'

Whiting shut his eyes and lifted his hands to his face. Slowly he sucked in a deep breath and then noisly released it. He opened his eyes and looked with an air of resignation across at Holden ‘MM. That's what his initials were. They were stored on his mobile. But he wouldn't tell me any more about him. I swear. Not his full name or where he met him, or the colour of his underwear or anything. He was very protective of him. Maybe he was worried I'd storm round to where he lived and cause a scene.'

‘Did you?'

‘No I didn't. I don't know where he lives. How could I?'

Holden suddenly stood up. Fox followed suit. Whiting nervously did the same. ‘Is that all?'

‘No,' said Holden. ‘We're taking you down to the station.'

‘Why?' Whiting replied in obvious alarm. ‘I've answered all your questions, and I've got a gallery to open up.'

‘Because,' she said, ‘I need a formal statement. Martin Mace was brutally murdered on Monday night, and the way things are at the moment, your name is pretty much top of our list of suspects. And, of course, if my memory serves me right, you didn't have an alibi for Jake Arnold's death either.'

Dr Karen Pointer was in her office, seated at her desk, her fingers moving deftly over her laptop keyboard.

‘Come in!' she called in response to the knock on her door, but she continued typing, her eyes refusing to look up as DI Holden entered the room, though whether it was because it was Holden (she had seen her get out of the car that pulled up outside her window), or whether she was genuinely preoccupied with her report, only she herself knew. ‘Sit down,' she said, but still her eyes and fingers remained committed to their computer task. Holden sat down silently, and waited. Eventually, Dr Pointer's hands slowed down. Her right thumb and forefinger briefly moved to the bridge of her nose, alighting there for several seconds, before they moved to the screen of the laptop and firmly closed it down. Only then did she look up. When she spoke, it was with brisk efficiency.

‘I need to check a couple of things out, but otherwise my report on Mace is pretty much finished. I'll get it over to you this afternoon.'

‘Thank you. I would appreciate that.'

The two women eyed each other. ‘Good,' Pointer replied, wondering why Holden had come over, and had come on her own this time. It was, she suddenly realized, the first time she had been alone with her since, well, since the incident.

‘I don't mean to hassle you,' Holden said apologetically, ‘but I need to know about the time of death. I don't know how accurate you can be with a burning.'

‘8.45 p.m. Or thereabouts.'

‘Wow!' she said, taken by surprise.

‘Actually, it's not particularly clever,' she said with a thin smile. ‘His watch stopped. Presuming it was the fire that did it, then I reckon that ties it down pretty tight. Certainly it is in accordance with the forensic evidence.'