Blood on the Cowley Road Read Free Page B

day. The taller, older man, certainly looked the part: he was wearing a dark suit, white shirt and plain tie under a long black coat, and his downcast expression seemed to her to be appropriate for someone in the burial business. It was this man who responded. ‘Detective Sergeant Fox. And this is Detective Constable Wilson.’ He paused, still not entirely back in the logical world either. ‘You must be... ?’
    â€˜Anne Johnson,’ she said hastily. She offered her hand, while wondering if this was appropriate for greeting a policeman on duty. ‘Please, come in.’
    While Anne Johnson got them a mug of tea, Fox sat on a distinctly tatty armchair and looked about the room. He would have liked to have wandered around, nosing around into every corner of the flat, to
see what Sarah Johnson had liked to read, to eat, to dress in. What photos did she have in her bedroom? What was on her bedside table and in its drawers (assuming she had one and it had drawers). Were there pills for depression there? Had she stopped taking them? But somehow it seemed insensitive to do that until they had drunk tea together and talked about Sarah. Only then would he feel he could ask permission to look through the dead woman’s possessions.
    â€˜So,’ Anne Johnson said, after she had sat down and taken a sip from her mug, ‘what do you want to know?’
    â€˜We are required to make a few enquiries, for the inquest. Just a formality, you understand?’
    â€˜You want to know if she was the sort of person who would commit suicide, you mean?’ She spoke firmly, unemotionally, in a manner perfected at those wretched parent-teacher evenings that were one of the least enjoyable parts of a teacher’s lot. How often had she sat opposite a pushy middle-class parent, calmly answering his or (more frequently) her overanxious questions. Not-so-little John or Victoria was invariably absent from these intimate public meetings – and always for some highly implausible reason – so pushy parent was able to lay it all out while the next pushy parent in line tutted noisily about the time everyone else was taking. Not that Miss Johnson viewed the slightly ponderous detective and his young sidekick as half as challenging as some of her parents, but the situation unquestionably was. If she could just treat this interview as a rather unexceptional parent-teacher meeting, then she felt she could get through it without bursting into tears and making a fool of herself.
    â€˜I suppose so,’ DS Fox admitted. ‘Yes.’ He looked down as he spoke – almost demurely – thereby sabotaging her attempts to pretend that he was the archetypal parent from suburban hell. ‘If you don’t mind?’ he added gently.
    Anne Johnson took another sip from her mug. ‘Sarah was always a bit up and down,’ she said, and then immediately regretted it. What a stupid, stupid expression. And who was she to patronize her sister with such a trite description? She looked up from her mug at Fox. He gave a vague but encouraging grimace. ‘Bipolar disorder the doctors called it,’ she continued. ‘Manic depression in ordinary language.’ The words began to tumble out. ‘Since she was about eighteen or nineteen.
She went to Edinburgh University, had a breakdown her second term. She was sectioned and shut away in hospital until they had diagnosed her and worked out what drugs to pump into her. Then out she went into the community, stigmatized for ever – unable to get a job, a mortgage, anything that you or I would call a normal life.’ She paused, and this time Fox intervened.
    â€˜When did you last see her?’
    â€˜Not recently.’
    â€˜Or speak to her?’
    She took one, then a second sip from her mug. ‘Look we weren’t exactly best buddies. It was about three weeks ago. I try ... I used to try and ring her on the first of the month. Otherwise I knew I