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Killing by Numbers: An Oxford Murder Mystery (Bridget Hart Book 2) Page 2
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‘Let me speak to them,’ said Bridget. She approached the couple, who looked badly shaken but seemed only too happy to co-operate. The man shook her hand with an iron grip and introduced himself as Frank Harris, retired bank manager from Houston, Texas. His wife’s name was Martha. She was a small, round woman who made Bridget think of homemade apple pie. Frank explained that they’d been in London and this was their first day in Oxford where they would stay a couple of nights at the Randolph before moving on to Stratford-upon-Avon, then York and Edinburgh. The usual tourist trail.
‘We’d just come out of that quaint little street over there,’ drawled Frank, pointing towards Turl Street, ‘and I was saying to Martha we should go take a look at the University Church and maybe climb the spire to get a good view, when this cyclist topples off his bike and lands on the road like a sack of potatoes. It all happened so quickly, didn’t it Martha?’
Martha nodded her head in agreement. ‘That poor boy.’
‘I went over to him and asked if he was all right,’ continued Frank, ‘but then Martha noticed the red stain on his chest and said he’d been shot. That’s not the kinda thing we expected to see in England, did we Martha?’
‘We certainly didn’t.’ She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.
‘And did either of you see who fired the shot?’ asked Bridget. How could a man be shot in broad daylight in the middle of Oxford High Street without someone seeing or hearing something?
‘I noticed a black car,’ said Martha. ‘Don’t ask me what make it was because I don’t know English cars, but it pulled up next to the cyclist right before it happened and then it sped away like a bat out of hell, didn’t it Frank?’
‘It sure did. It was going that way.’ Frank pointed towards Carfax tower. With Cornmarket permanently closed to traffic, and Queen Street open only to buses, Bridget deduced that the car must have gone down St Aldate’s, the way she had just come.
‘What about the driver?’ she asked. ‘Did you see who was behind the wheel?’
Both Frank and Martha shook their heads. ‘Sorry. We didn’t get a proper look.’
‘And what time was this?’
Frank thought for a moment. ‘Just after eleven o’clock, I think.’
‘That’s right, honey,’ confirmed Martha. ‘We’d stopped for a coffee at that nice little café on Turl Street, and you looked at your watch, Frank, and said we should get a move on if we wanted to avoid the crowds at the University Church.’
‘Thank you,’ said Bridget. ‘That’s very helpful.’
‘Oh, there was one other thing,’ said Martha.
‘What was that?’
‘Well, before he… before he passed away, the poor boy tried to speak.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Well, that’s the strangest thing. It was a number.’
‘Can you remember what it was?’
‘Sure.’ Martha reached into her handbag and pulled out a little pocket diary. ‘I wrote it down here so I wouldn’t forget.’ She put on her reading glasses which were hanging on a gold chain around her neck. ‘It was actually a letter followed by a string of numbers. L79468235. He repeated it twice and seemed very keen that someone should know it.’
‘He didn’t say anything else?’
‘No.’
Bridget turned the number over in her mind, but it didn’t mean anything to her. It seemed like a very odd thing to utter with your dying breath. It might be significant or it might not; it was too early to tell at this stage of the investigation.
‘Make a note of that number,’ she told Jake, ‘then see if you can find anyone else who saw a black car accelerating away from the scene.’
Bridget thanked the American couple for their help and instructed a uniformed officer to take their statements. Then she braced herself to approach the white screen that had been erected around the victim. A dead body was never an easy thing to look at, especially when the death had been violent.
Dr Sarah Walker, forensic medical examiner, was kneeling by the corpse, doing her final checks. Meanwhile, the head of the scene of crime team, Vikram Vijayaraghavan, better known as Vik, was busy taking photos of the deceased and his injuries.
Bridget kept back so as not to get in the way, and contemplated the dead man. He was young, no more than mid-twenties, with a thin, pallid face, framed by a wispy beard. His clothes – faded jeans, fraying white T-shirt and worn plimsolls – suggested someone who didn’t spend a lot of time on his appearance or perhaps couldn’t afford to. The overall effect was one of fragility. In the middle of the T-shirt a red stain had bloomed and spread, like one of those ink blot psychological tests. There were other spots of colour on the fabric – blue, green, purple – that might have been paint. The bicycle lay to one side, apparently undamaged. It was a rusty old thing with a bell on the handlebars and threadbare tyres.
On seeing Bridget, Dr Walker rose to her feet. A similar age to Bridget, Sarah Walker was single, and unlike Bridget her career had not been held back by the inconvenience of children. They had worked together briefly before, and Bridget found her polite, serious and above all professional. Bridget would have liked to get to know her better, ideally over a glass or two of wine, but the circumstances of their meetings invariably involved a corpse and little opportunity for small talk.
‘Hi,’ said Bridget. ‘Any conclusions so far?’ It was rare for a medical examiner or pathologist to make any firm pronouncement at the scene of the crime, but Bridget was always hopeful.
‘A single gunshot wound to the chest at close range,’ said Dr Walker gravely. ‘The bullet either entered the heart itself or tore one of the coronary arteries resulting in massive haemorrhaging. The victim would have bled out very quickly. We’ll know more when Roy Andrews does the post-mortem.’
Dr Roy Andrews was the senior pathologist at the John Radcliffe hospital, a lugubrious Scot with a taste in fancy bow ties.
‘A bullet right in the heart?’ queried Bridget. ‘What are the chances of that happening?’
Dr Walker smiled enigmatically. ‘That’s not my department. It might have been the victim’s unlucky day, or maybe the shooter knew exactly what he was aiming for.’
Vik joined them. ‘The victim had a small amount of cash in his back pocket, but no credit cards or any other form of ID.’ He held up a couple of plastic evidence bags. ‘I bagged up his phone for you. And there’s a key, but it doesn’t look like a standard house key. It’s too small.’
‘Thanks,’ said Bridget. A phone was always a big help in identifying a victim and finding next of kin.
‘Can we move him to the morgue now?’ asked Dr Walker.
‘Please do,’ said Bridget. The sooner they cleared the street and re-opened it to normal business, the better.
‘Ma’am?’ Jake strode towards her, accompanied by a man in a bus driver’s uniform and a young woman with a mobile phone. ‘I’ve been speaking to the driver of the tour bus. He confirms seeing a black car speeding away from the scene. Says it was a Toyota. And this lady’ – he indicated the young woman – ‘has caught the car on a video she was filming from the top of the bus.’ The open-topped double-decker bus was parked to one side, its passengers dispersed.
‘It’s not a great video,’ said the woman. She held her phone out and pressed play. The film showed the view from the top of the bus as it approached Carfax tower. The voice of the tour guide was just audible in the background, explaining how the tower was all that remained of the twelfth-century St Martin’s church, and how no new building in the city was allowed to be taller than Carfax tower. About thirty seconds into the video, a black Toyota overtook the bus and pulled up alongside a cyclist. An arm emerged from the car window holding what looked like a gun. It wasn’t possible to see any more of the driver from this angle. A sound like a loud click followed and the cyclist toppled from his bike. Then the car accelerated away from the scene at high speed and the video came to an abrupt halt.
‘I had to slam my b
rakes on,’ the bus driver was saying, ‘or I’d have run over him.’
Bridget thanked the woman who’d taken the video and turned to Jake. ‘Get that sent over to Ffion at Kidlington and see if she can enhance it to get the number plate.’
Detective Constable Ffion Hughes was the best person Bridget had in her team when it came to computer skills.
‘I’m on it,’ said Jake.
‘Now, all we need is to identify the victim,’ said Bridget, more to herself than anyone in particular. ‘Someone must know who he is.’
‘I think I might be able to help with that,’ said a familiar voice behind her.
Bridget turned in surprise to see Jonathan, her date for the evening, standing there. He must have come from his art gallery which was just down the road opposite the University Church. Her heart did a little somersault at the sight of him. He really was quite a dish in his open-necked shirt and tortoiseshell glasses.
‘Did you know him?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice level.
Jonathan nodded, looking miserable. ‘He was with me at the gallery just before this happened. His name is Gabriel Quinn. He’s an artist.’
4
Jonathan seemed badly shaken by what had happened, and Bridget accompanied him back to his gallery, keen to hear whatever he could tell her about Gabriel Quinn.
She had first visited Jonathan’s gallery less than a fortnight earlier, enjoying a glass of wine and chatting to her host on the opening night of his latest exhibition, which was still currently on display. But an unfortunate discovery in the River Thames had put an end to that, calling her away on urgent police business. It seemed that whenever she met Jonathan socially, their encounters were destined to be brief. But today’s meeting was strictly business and she felt slightly awkward in her formal capacity as detective inspector in a murder enquiry. Especially when she and Jonathan were supposed to be going to the opera together this evening. She touched the top of her head lightly, hoping he wouldn’t notice the grey hairs.
The white walls of the gallery were filled with contemporary oil paintings and some limited edition prints. Jonathan’s eclectic tastes matched Bridget’s own, and she would have loved to buy one of the really eye-catching works. But with her floor-to-ceiling bookcases and extensive CD collection of mainly opera, there was hardly any room left on the walls of her tiny home. Vanessa, her sister, had a house big enough to take the sort of artwork normally seen only in the National Gallery, but the paintings in Jonathan’s gallery were far too bold for her sister’s taste. Everything in Vanessa’s home had to co-ordinate with the soft furnishings.
Jonathan ushered her inside and bolted the door behind them, turning the sign on the door to closed. The last time Bridget had been here, a crowd of people had filled the space, but today with the High Street cordoned off by the police it was empty apart from a young woman sitting behind the counter.
She had corkscrew curls tied back in a bushy ponytail, and wore a worried expression on her pale, lightly freckled face. ‘It wasn’t Gabriel in the accident, was it?’ she asked, jumping to her feet as they entered the shop.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Jonathan. ‘Bridget, this is Vicky, my assistant.’
Vicky suppressed a sob and held a handkerchief to her eyes. ‘He was such a sweet, gentle person. How could someone run him over like that and then just drive off? Hit and run drivers make me sick.’
Bridget already knew that this was no hit and run incident. More like a shoot and run. But she didn’t want to reveal too many details just yet.
‘Vicky, this is Detective Inspector Bridget Hart,’ said Jonathan. ‘She’s’ – he seemed to hesitate, and Bridget wondered if he was about to introduce her as his date for the evening – ‘investigating what happened.’
Vicky smiled at Bridget through her tears. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea or a coffee, Inspector?’
The day was hot and Bridget realised she was parched. She was supposed to be at the hairdresser’s now, getting her grey strands touched up, browsing a celebrity gossip magazine (she only ever read them at the dentist’s or the hair salon) and enjoying a complimentary cappuccino. ‘Thanks. Just a glass of water please.’
‘There’s a bottle of San Pellegrino in the cooler in my office,’ said Jonathan. ‘Maybe you could bring us all a glass, Vicky?’
‘Sure,’ said Vicky.
Bridget turned to Jonathan. ‘You said Gabriel was an artist. Do you have any of his paintings on display?’
‘Actually I do. He’s one of half a dozen artists whose work I’m showcasing at the moment. They’re all former students of the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford.’
‘That’s just down the High Street, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, the Ruskin School is next to the University Examination Schools. This group of artists graduated about five years ago. They’re all up and coming, but the art world’s a very precarious business. Most people who study Fine Art end up becoming art teachers in schools or else they retrain as accountants.’ He gave her a wry smile. ‘It’s hard for young artists to make a name for themselves, so I try to support any that I think have real talent. Let me show you Gabriel’s work.’ He led her over to a wall hung with six brightly coloured canvases. ‘These pieces are all his.’
Bridget contemplated the paintings and found that they had a strangely mesmerising effect on her. Hypnotic patterns of colour covered the canvases, drawing the viewer in so that it was hard to look away. The patterns were abstract, but seemed to suggest figures or faces that were just out of focus. On closer inspection she saw that the paintings were made up of thousands, if not millions, of tiny dots. They must have taken ages to produce.
‘Gabriel was very interested in numbers,’ said Jonathan. ‘You might say it was something of an obsession. This series of paintings all have numbers in the title.’
Bridget examined the labels next to the canvases. The paintings had titles like Two million and thirty-six or Two to the power of thirty-eight.
‘What do the numbers refer to?’ she asked.
‘That’s part of the paintings’ mystique,’ said Jonathan. ‘Gabriel attached deep significance to his work, but I can’t say I really understood the mathematics behind the images.’
Bridget remembered the number that Gabriel had spoken as he lay dying in the middle of the road. She pulled her notebook out of her bag. ‘Does he have a painting called L79468235?’
Jonathan shook his head. ‘I haven’t come across that one, but it’s possible it’s something new he was working on. Gabriel was a real perfectionist. I imagine he’d hate anyone to see an unfinished work. He’d probably prefer it to be destroyed.’
Oh well, it was worth a try. Bridget put her notebook back in her bag just as Vicky reappeared with three glasses of sparkling water on a tray. Bridget accepted a glass and took a grateful gulp of the refreshing liquid. ‘Was Gabriel a successful artist?’ she asked. His paintings were all priced between £300 and £500 depending on their size. Two of them had red dots on the accompanying cards to show that they had been sold.
‘That depends on your definition of success,’ said Jonathan. ‘None of the artists here are famous names yet, but if any of them had the potential to make it big, it was Gabriel. As you can see, I’d already sold a couple of his paintings. That’s why I invited him round this morning, to speak to him about getting some new ones in to replace them.’
‘And how did Gabriel seem this morning? Did you notice anything unusual?’
‘Well, he could be a bit of an oddity at the best of times. Perhaps he did seem a little on edge, but he was always rather shy and introverted. He wasn’t a great talker, but there were hidden depths in that head of his.’
‘I always liked him,’ said Vicky, who had resumed her seat behind the counter. ‘He was very modest, despite being so talented. One or two of these others’ – she indicated the work of the artists on display – ‘seem to think they’re God’s gift and should be worth millions. Gabriel was never like that.’
‘Where did he live?’ asked Bridget. ‘Did he have any family?’
‘He never mentioned any family,’ said Jonathan. ‘He lived alone on a boat on the Oxford Canal. La Belle Dame. Let me write the name down for you.’
He wrote the name on the back of a postcard that showed one of Gabriel’s paintings. The postcards were stacked on the counter, next to a Sotheby’s catalogue. ‘I could also give you the phone number of his former tutor at the Ruskin School of Art if that would be helpful. She might be able to tell you more about him.’
‘Thanks,’ said Bridget.
Jonathan checked on his phone and wrote a number on the back of the postcard. ‘Her name is Dr Melissa Price.’
Bridget dropped the postcard into her bag. It was a reproduction of the painting she’d liked best, the one titled Two to the power of thirty-eight. She herself was thirty-eight, not such a bad age. Could she justify buying the painting for her tiny house? It was relatively small and would just fill the space above the sofa, not to mention hiding the cracks in the plaster. But this was a murder investigation, not a shopping spree. Her team would be waiting for her at Thames Valley Police headquarters in Kidlington. Not to mention Chief Superintendent Grayson, who would want an update as soon as she entered the building.
She finished the rest of her water. ‘Thanks for your help. I’d better get going.’
Jonathan unbolted the door and stepped outside with her. ‘Are we still on for this evening?’
Bridget hesitated. She really wanted to go to the opera with Jonathan – La Bohème was one of her favourites – but she’d probably be up to her ears in work now. The first twenty-four hours on a case were always crucial.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to let you know. Sorry.’