Mixing With Murder (6 page)

‘No,’ she said in that kindly way, ‘I don’t think you are.’

I stooped so that I could meet her glance at even level. ‘Why don’t you just show me your warrant card?’ I invited.

She looked a little startled but rallied quickly. ‘All right.’ She delved in the pocket of the cherry jacket and held up a rectangle of plastic showing her mugshot and identifying her as Detective Sergeant Hayley Pereira. The driver of the taxi behind us, who had been tooting to let us know we were in his way, now decided to pull out round us and drive off with his foot down.

‘How did you guess?’ DS Pereira asked, genuinely wanting to know. Plainclothes coppers never like to find they’ve been rumbled. They honestly believe they blend in with the crowd. Not in any crowd I’ve ever been part of.

‘I know,’ I said, ‘when someone’s trying to pick me up, whether it’s a man or a woman. You could be talent-scouting for a vice ring, but I’m not the type you’d want to recruit as a hooker. You might be representing some dogooding charity. But you haven’t got that pious look. So, you’re a copper.’

‘Sounds logical,’ she agreed, putting the warrant card away.

‘Tell me,’ I asked her. ‘Do I bear a striking resemblance to some wanted person?’

She raised neatly plucked eyebrows. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘So, Sergeant,’ I went on, ‘I’m a bona fide traveller with a valid ticket. You don’t have any reason to suppose I’ve committed an offence. I haven’t even dropped a crisp packet or stuck my chewing gum in the slot at the turnstile. I don’t have to give you my details. You don’t need to know my business. You don’t have any cause to pull me in.’

She sighed. ‘I’m not pulling you in, believe me. You don’t have to get in the car. But I’d like it if you’d let me give you a lift to wherever you want to go.’

‘Why?’ I demanded. I was well aware the cops don’t offer taxi service. She wanted something.

‘Because I’d like to be sure you have somewhere to stay tonight.’

‘I won’t be sleeping in a doorway.’

We had reached stand-off. I sighed. The police have a way of making you an offer you can’t refuse.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘And then that’s the end of it, right?’

‘Sure,’ she said, reaching back to open the rear door. ‘Sling your bag in there.’

I put my bag on the back seat and shut the door. Then I walked round and got into the passenger seat beside her.

‘Where to?’ The car rolled smoothly forward.

I gave her the address of the guest house and she nodded. But I hadn’t expected this journey to be made in silence.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked in a friendly way.

‘Fran,’ I said.

Before she could press for my surname I decided to head off any further questions by asking a few of my own.

‘Just why have you picked on me?’

‘I haven’t “picked” on you, Fran,’ she returned reproachfully. ‘It’s as I told you on the train. Oxford’s a really nice city. Everyone thinks there’s just the university but there’s lots more besides. Naturally, because even without the students we have a big permanent population, we have all the troubles that brings anywhere. We have our homeless, our beggars, our winos, our druggies—’

‘Thanks!’ I interrupted. ‘I look like I fall into one of those categories, do I?’

‘No, you don’t. Look, I’m standing at the timetable display at Paddington Station and next to me, studying the same Oxford timetable, is a young woman who’s clearly worried. She’s upset because she’s missed the train and she’s talking aloud to herself.’

‘Doesn’t everyone from time to time?’ I countered.

‘Sure. I do it myself. But then, when I go for a coffee, I see that same young woman again. She’s studying a street plan that I recognise as Oxford. It’s my manor, if you like. I know the layout of those streets like the back of my hand. She’s heading for a strange place and trying to orient herself before she gets there. If it’s Oxford then it’s the wrong time of year for her to be a student, long vacation. She might be a prospective student going to have a look round.’

‘So you checked to find out if I was,’ I said. ‘That was almost the first thing you asked me.’

‘And you weren’t. You seemed to be streetwise and able to look out for yourself. I was right about that, wasn’t I? Your reaction just now, demanding to see ID and telling me why I had no right to pull you in, all suggests you’ve dealt with the police before! There’s no reason that should bother me. But you seem to me to be unhappy about something, worried. You said vaguely you were going to see a friend. You didn’t want to talk in the train and you don’t now. I’m beginning to wonder if you might be in trouble of some sort.’

‘I’m not,’ I lied.

She smiled at me. ‘I used to work in the probation service,’ she told me, ‘before I decided to join the police. I worry about young people with problems.’

‘I do not have a problem,’ I repeated slowly and forcefully. ‘I am not on probation and I’m twenty-two years old, not a kid.’

‘You look younger,’ she said.

‘Yeah, it’s because I’m pint-sized and don’t do the make-up and fashion thing.’

She flushed. Perhaps she thought I was getting at her. But too bad, I was the one getting the unwelcome attention.

We were driving down a long street and to either side, from time to time, appeared the imposing frontages of what I supposed to be the colleges. I couldn’t help rubber-necking. Pereira obliged by telling me that this was the High Street and naming the buildings we passed.

Our route opened out. ‘We’re coming up to Magdalen College and Magdalen Bridge. That’s the Botanic Gardens on the right. If you’re interested in boating you can hire a punt just under the bridge.’

‘I’ve been warned to stay out of punts,’ I said.

We rolled over the bridge and came to an area where several roads met, with a patch of dusty vegetation in the middle.

‘This is called the Plain,’ Pereira continued her tour guide commentary. ‘It used to be a cemetery.’

‘Nice,’ I said.

‘And this is the beginning of the Iffley Road.’

That meant we were nearly at our destination. Thank goodness, I’d be rid of my guardian angel soon. She turned the car into a side street and pulled up before a red-brick villa with bow windows and an illuminated sign in the ground floor window reading ‘Bed and Breakfast. No Vacancies.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Pereira. ‘You’re out of luck, Fran.’

‘No, I’m booked in. They’re expecting me.’ I opened the door and scrambled out. As I retrieved my bag from the rear seat she made one last try.

‘I have to go to London for an early-morning meeting,’ she said.

I just smiled at her. ‘Thanks for the lift.’

I ran up the steps to the front door and rang the bell. My police escort hadn’t moved off but sat waiting in her car to see what happened.

There was a pause, longer than I would have wished. I refused to turn my head and meet Pereira’s eye. At last I heard sounds of movement and then the yap of a small dog. I was already unsettled and that sound nearly finished me off. For one wild stupid moment I wondered if Bonnie had been spirited to Oxford to meet me, but it couldn’t be so and it wasn’t.

The door opened. A woman with hair an unlikely shade of red, wearing black trousers and a striped blue and grey shirt, stood before me. Tucked under her arm was a wriggling miniature poodle. It fixed me expectantly with its shiny little eyes, its pink tongue waggled and it gave another friendly yap of greeting.

‘Hi . . .’ I said, my voice choking.

‘Sorry, dear,’ said the redhead. ‘I’ve got no rooms free.’

‘I’m Fran Varady . . .’ I began.

Her face brightened and she interrupted me. ‘Oh, you’re Mickey’s girl. Come on in, then. I was wondering when you’d get here.’

I wasn’t Mickey’s girl and I would have to disabuse her of that quickly. But right now I had other things on my mind. I snatched up my bag and stepped into her hallway.

She looked past me. ‘Who’s that, then?’

‘Plainclothes,’ I said.

‘Blimey, dear,’ she returned. ‘You didn’t take long to get yourself noticed, did you? What did you do?’

Chapter Three

‘I haven’t done anything!’ I told her. ‘Look, can I come inside? She’ll drive off as soon as the door’s shut. She’s just checking I’m staying here.’

The landlady didn’t argue with that. Let’s face it: she didn’t want a copper parked outside her front door keeping observation. No one would. It’s the sort of thing the neighbours notice and it makes them nervous. She moved aside in a way which struck me as clumsy, and let me walk past her and drop my bag on the floor. Then she pushed the door closed and set the poodle down. He ran to sniff my jeans and then stood on his hind legs to put his narrow paws against my knee and panted at me happily. I scratched his woolly ears. He wore a pale blue leather collar with rhinestones on it.

‘This is Spencer. He likes people,’ said the landlady. ‘I have to pick him up when I open the door in case he runs out. Do you want to take a look out of the window in there and see if your friend has gone?’

She indicated the room which originally would have been the house’s front parlour. I went inside and looked through the bay window, knowing that most of me was hidden by the B and B sign which hung there. Pereira’s car was nowhere to be seen. I’d finally shaken her off. I turned away in relief. With the police you can never be absolutely certain. Although I’d assured the landlady my unwanted guardian angel would leave once she saw I was accepted in the house, there had been the possibility she’d sit out there for a while to make sure I hadn’t just talked my way in on a temporary basis. It was sod’s law that I’d run into a nosy copper at Paddington and I hoped she wasn’t going to complicate matters. They were complicated enough already. Not, of course, that I’d come to Oxford to involve myself in anything criminal. I told myself this forcefully, subduing the awkward persistent twinge of doubt. But I guessed Pereira’s interest in me was less because I might be in trouble than that I might turn out to
be
trouble, for her.

I was now free to study the contents of the room in which I found myself. It was decorated with flowered wallpaper of the sort I hadn’t seen in years and still had an old-fashioned fireplace although these days a gas fire was installed in it. Otherwise, it was furnished with small tables each neatly laid with two place settings and salt and pepper pots. There was a lingering background odour of bacon.

‘It’s the breakfast room,’ said the landlady from the door. ‘Breakfast is from eight to nine thirty, or you can have it earlier if you let me know the night before. I don’t do evening meals. There are lots of little places in the area where you can eat.’

She was either a very patient person or she wasn’t overburdened with other tasks at the moment. She didn’t appear to mind how long I lingered.

‘That’s OK,’ I told her. ‘I don’t think I’ll be staying long.’ I realised I owed her an explanation as to why I’d arrived in the company of plainclothes. ‘I just had the bad luck to meet up with that sergeant on the train. I didn’t give her any encouragement but she kept asking me questions. I don’t know why. She insisted on driving me here. She said she wanted to be sure I had somewhere to stay.’

‘Ever been homeless?’ the landlady asked unexpectedly but in a pleasant way.

‘Yes, for a little while. It was quite a time ago. Does it show?’ I was surprised.

‘No, dear, of course it doesn’t. My name’s Beryl. Do you want me to show you your room?’

She turned and lurched towards the staircase. The poodle pattered after her. I picked up my bag and followed.

We climbed slowly to the first floor. It was clear now that Beryl had some kind of walking difficulty. She held on to the banister and hauled herself up. When we arrived, she opened the door to a room at the back and stood aside for me to enter.

‘I hope you’ll be comfortable. I don’t offer a proper en suite although you’ve got your own washbasin, see? But there’s a bathroom right across the hall and toilets on each floor. There shouldn’t be a problem because there are only three other people staying, two tourists and a travelling rep, I know the sign in the window says I’m full, but I just switched that on to stop people coming and asking for rooms. It’s been a really busy summer and I wanted a bit of a rest.’

‘I’m sorry Mickey asked you to take me,’ I apologised. ‘It’s extra work for you.’