Dead in the Water

by Peter Tickler

  Janice focused again on the task in hand and picked up one of the photos from the table. She studied it: Becca’s giggling face was close to Paul’s, as if telling him a dirty joke or possibly making an obscene suggestion about what they could be doing up in the hotel room Paul had booked. Janice spat at her rival’s face and watched with pleasure as a gob of saliva hit her full in the eye. If only she could do that to her in person — or worse! Except that deep down she knew that even if she had the opportunity, she would almost certainly bottle out.

  She put the photo back in its place on the table. What was she going to do with them? She ought to have confronted Paul as soon as he got home. She should have laid the photographs out on the table so that he saw them as he walked into the room. Instead she had delivered his supper to him like the perfect Stepford wife and chatted to him about trivialities. What was the point of paying out money to get the photos if she wasn’t going to follow it through?

  She put her head in her hands and groaned. What on earth was she going to do? Walk out on him with just her pair of matching suitcases? What good would that do her? He’d probably laugh at her, move Becca in and cancel her monthly allowance. Should she change the locks when he was out at work? But how would she stand legally if she did? Paul and his solicitor Nick Newey were as thick as thieves. She would need to find her own solicitor first and get her advice — her advice because the last thing she was going to do was hire a man to represent her. She selected another photo. In this one Paul and Becca were kissing and his hand was touching her bottom. Janice felt the bitter taste of bile rising in her throat and fought it back down. No, she told herself, I will not be beaten. Not by him. Not when he’s the one in the wrong.

  She stood up and went through to the small study which in theory they both shared, though Paul preferred to lounge on the sofa while checking his emails and do all his internet stuff in front of the giant TV. She opened the third desk drawer and pulled out a brown envelope. She picked up a rollerball pen in her right hand and wrote — rather slowly since she was left-handed — her husband’s name and work address on it. Out of the same drawer she located a first class stamp and stuck it on. She went back to the kitchen and inserted that single photo into the envelope, which she sealed. She returned the rest of the photos to Mullen’s envelope and hid them in the utility cupboard behind all the cleaning materials. Paul would never find them there. Then she made her way to the front door. There was a mail box at the end of the road and five minutes later the envelope addressed to Paul Atkinson was safely inside it and she was back home.

  She went to the fridge, extricated a bottle of white wine — there was always a bottle of white wine chilling in Janice’s fridge — and poured herself a large glass. She would probably regret it later, but she didn’t care. She deserved it. The die was cast. She had crossed the Rubicon. She imagined Paul at work on Monday, opening the envelope, his jaw dropping when he realised what the contents were, his Adam’s apple bobbing crazily in his throat. Or suppose it wasn’t him who opened his post? She had a sudden ghastly thought. Suppose the dragon lady Doreen opened his post for him? Perhaps she should have written ‘confidential’ on the envelope? What would Doreen say or think? She tried to picture the moment as Doreen, all pursed lips and tasteless fashion sense, handed over the offending article to Paul, thumb and forefinger holding it by the corner as if she might infect herself.

  Then Janice began to laugh hysterically. It was a great picture.

  * * *

  Mullen staggered down the seven steps to the pavement and heaved the box unceremoniously into the boot. This one contained a significant part of his worldly goods, though few of them had any financial or emotional value. A small selection of cutlery, three tasteless mugs, two saucepans, a tray, a small LED desk lamp, a tin decorated with a Dickensian Christmas scene (and containing just four tea bags), cling film, refuse bags and so on. The rear section of his tired old Peugeot was already jam-packed with two cases, two other boxes and several plastic bags. He believed in minimal possessions, and it was ridiculous how much clobber he had collected since his return to the UK. There were a few more bags still waiting to be shifted out of his miserable flat, but that would then be that.

  “Excuse me.”

  Mullen turned and found himself faced by a woman.

  Cute! That was his first thought, though he wasn’t stupid enough to say so. She had dark curly hair, a round face, a single mole on her right cheek and grey-green eyes that looked right into his — and maybe beyond. She was, he reckoned, about thirty. Maybe this was his lucky day.

  “Are you Doug Mullen?”

  “I am.”

  “This Doug Mullen?” She held up one of his business cards.

  He nodded. He was wondering how she knew to find him here when his card carried only a website, email address and mobile number.

  “Janice recommended you,” she said, still giving him the deep-stare treatment. Janice. Whom he had last seen in the Cricketers Arms, misery personified, with the photos of her husband in one hand and an empty glass in the other. To whom he had made his excuses and left for a pressing job that wasn’t pressing at all. In point of fact, there hadn’t been any job, pressing or otherwise, since then, but Mullen was barely admitting that to himself, let alone to the woman who stood in front of him, appraising him. He wondered how many marks out of ten she was giving him.

  “I’m Rose Wilby.” She held out her hand. Mullen took it, holding on for slightly longer than was necessary. She glanced at the car. “Are you doing a runner?”

  “Moving house.”

  “So you’re not doing a bunk before some unhappy husband comes to get you?”

  Mullen gave his default shrug. “Somewhere cheaper — and larger.”

  “Larger? It can’t be Oxford then. Where on earth is it? Outer Mongolia?”

  “Boars Hill.” Mullen watched her eyes widen. Was it surprise or disbelief? Or both? Not that it was a big deal what she thought, he told himself. But not for the first time in his messy life Mullen was telling himself one thing and believing another. The truth was that attractive women never accosted him in the street, and he wanted it to last for a bit longer. “I’m house-sitting,” he said. “For a professor.”

  Rose gave a curious smile, one side of her mouth slightly higher than the other, as she assessed his excuse-cum-explanation for the fact that he was moving to Oxford’s poshest postcode.

  “It’s ridiculous really. He pays me to live in his large house while he takes a sabbatical with his wife in the States. Mind you, there’s a lot of garden to look after and some DIY he wants me to do as part of the deal, but frankly . . .”

  She smiled again, this time as if genuinely amused. Mullen dribbled to a halt.

  “Any nice wardrobes to explore?”

  Mullen was puzzled. Was she flirting?

  “C S Lewis? Narnia?”

  Mullen could see he had disappointed her. He was suddenly back at school, standing up in front of the class, having failed some critical test.

  Rose persisted. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It’s a book. The house is owned by a professor.”

  He finally got the reference. “I’ve seen the film.” He had watched it on TV with his niece Florence. He had rather liked it, except for the bit where Father Christmas appeared. That had seemed odd to him.

  Mullen could see that having watched the film was clearly not, as far as Rose Wilby was concerned, in the same league as having read the book. “It’s my favourite book ever,” she said. There was a pause as each of them considered the chasm that lay between them. “I know!” Her earnest face brightened. “I’ll lend you my copy, as long as you promise to return it. Everyone should read it.”

  “Thank you.” He didn’t know what else he could say.

  “It will appeal to the child in you.”

  “What makes you think there is a child in me?” He grinned. This was him flirting back.

  But it didn’t have the desired effect. The
crooked smile on her face faded into invisibility. “You’re a man, aren’t you? And so by definition you’re a little boy at heart.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Oh I do.”

  They stood facing each other for several seconds, this time in an enforced conversational silence as an ambulance tore past, siren blaring.

  “I’d ask you in for a coffee,” he said trying to put things right, “but it’s all packed and I really need to get this car moved before the traffic warden comes calling.”

  “I need to talk to you about a job.”

  “Your husband, is it?”

  She laughed. She held up her left hand, showing him her fingers. Not a ring in sight. “What sort of private investigator are you?”

  * * *

  Professor Thompson’s house was all you might expect of Boars Hill — and more. A sweeping gravel entrance and an honour guard of trees accompanied visitors — in this case Doug Mullen and Rose Wilby — right up to an imposing Edwardian edifice. Rose ran a curious eye over the façade. She looked up to the third storey, where large latticed windows peered out from under the steeply pitched roofs. It was easy to imagine that there might be a wardrobe inside which offered a secret entrance to another world. Not that C.S. Lewis had lived in Boars Hill. She knew that because she had visited his house in Risinghurst. Lewis’s home was an altogether much less imposing structure than this one. In some ways she had found it rather disappointing, not least because so much of the original three acres of garden had long since been sold off for development.

  “Do you mind if I have a snoop around?” she asked as soon as he had unlocked the oak front door.

  She didn’t wait for his answer, heading straight up the stairs to the bedrooms, where she took in each room like an estate agent assessing a house for a quick valuation. Downstairs again, as Mullen began to bring his boxes and bags in, she admired the sitting room, the dining room, another sitting room and finally the spacious kitchen with walk-in larder.

  The professor — or rather, she suspected, the professor’s wife — had left a considerable supply of tinned and dry goods in the larder. She wondered if Mullen was free to raid their supplies as he liked. Returning to the kitchen, she filled and switched on the kettle, located tea bags and mugs and found a fresh pint of milk sitting unopened in the fridge.

  Two minutes later they were sitting down in the kitchen at either end of a long oak table.

  “Janice was full of praise for you,” she said. It wasn’t entirely true. Janice had said he was very good at tracking her husband, though she had only admitted this after she had got her to promise on the Bible not to reveal this to anyone. But Janice had been much less complimentary about other aspects of Mullen. “Morally unreliable if you ask me,” had been one of her comments. And, “I bet he looks at himself in the mirror every morning.” Which had only caused Rose to wonder whether Janice had made a pass at him and been rebuffed.

  “This is a slightly different job from tracking an errant husband,” she continued. “I want you to find out what happened to a friend of mine called Chris.” Her grey-green eyes saw his blue ones blink in surprise.

  “They found him floating face down in the River Thames. Bloodstream full of alcohol. Fell in drunk and drowned.” She paused again, wondering if Mullen would admit to knowing Chris. This was a test. Pass or fail. Right or wrong.

  “It was me who found him,” Mullen said. He had passed.

  “I know.”

  “Who told you?”

  She nearly said. It wouldn’t matter if he knew. But she didn’t want to spoon feed the man. Make him work for it.

  She unzipped her handbag, removed a small white envelope and placed it on the table. “£300 to show my goodwill. Or rather our goodwill. It’s a group effort.”

  Mullen didn’t even pick up the envelope. That was a plus mark as far as she was concerned. Instead he said, “You haven’t exactly given me a lot to go on.”

  “I only knew Chris after he started coming to our church a couple of months ago. Sunday mornings and Thursday lunchtimes. I liked him. Lots of us did. Good with the old. Good with the young. He rubbed some people in St Mark’s up the wrong way, but I liked him.”

  She shivered. It was colder in the house than it was outside. She wished she’d brought a cardigan or jacket.

  Mullen rose from his chair. He ran his fingers through what little hair hadn’t been removed by the barber. “So you think his death is suspicious?”

  She nodded, though in her head she was saying ‘stupid question.’ Of course she did. Why would she be here otherwise? “Chris didn’t drink,” she said. “He told me he’d been on the wagon for three years. I believed him.” She fixed Mullen with her eyes.

  “Why don’t you tell the police all this?”

  “I have. But they’ve already come to the conclusion that he relapsed, got drunk and fell in. Pure and simple. A detective came round to the church this morning. Detective Inspector Dorkin according to his ID. Said they weren’t likely to spend too much time on an open-and-shut case like this.”

  Mullen, who had moved across to the sink, twisted his head round and nodded. She got the sense that he was getting interested finally, but not (curiously) so much in the envelope of cash on the table or indeed in her — though he had run an appraising pair of eyes up and down her in the Iffley Road — but in Chris. She wondered why.

  “Chris is a nobody as far as they are concerned,” she continued. “Why waste valuable police resources on a nobody?”

  Mullen nodded again, like one of those ridiculous dogs that drivers sometimes put in the back window of their cars. She looked at her watch. “So are you taking the case, or what?” It was time for Mullen to make a decision.

  He opened his mouth, but said nothing. She could see the uncertainty in his face. Was he thinking of a polite way to say ‘No’?

  “I appreciate it’s a long shot,” she said, “so my colleagues and I will not expect you to hand back the £300 if you fail in your assignment.”

  “That’s kind.”

  “Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?”

  “Yes.”

  “In that case, I suggest you come to church tomorrow and meet people who knew Chris. I’ve written the details on the back of the envelope.”

  With that, Rose Wilby hoisted her bag over her shoulder and made her exit.

  Chapter 3

  Mullen didn’t hate churches. That was too strong a word. He merely disliked them. Cornered at a party and asked for his reasons he would very likely have trotted out the words ‘irrelevance’ and ‘hypocrisy.’ If pressed further and the drink had been talking, he might well have embarked on a diatribe about the dangers of all types of extreme religious belief. When you’ve seen people blown up by a suicide bomber, all in the name of someone’s God, it’s impossible not to have strong feelings.

  He was sitting in a pew in St Mark’s next to Rose Wilby. It was, by his reckoning, thirty seconds after the official start time of the ten-thirty service, but the vicar — low key in blue clerical blouse and collar, plus darker blue skirt with matching sandals — was showing no sign of getting things started. Glancing behind him Mullen saw punters still drifting in. He turned back. Rose was whispering to her other neighbour, a middle-aged man with a goatee and glasses. Two old ladies sitting at the front had turned round and were looking at Mullen as if he was the major attraction in a zoo. He stared back and they turned quickly away. Mullen tried not to mind. Everyone seemed to be wanting to get a look at him. Was that because he was new or because word had got round about who he was? He turned his own gaze back to the vicar and, as if reading his mind, she stood up. Mullen checked his watch. It was what his RSM at the training barracks would have called relaxed time-keeping. Whatever else St Mark’s was, it hardly emanated vibes of wild fundamentalism.

  Mullen wasn’t sure what to make of the service. Several hymns or songs that he didn’t recognise, a sermon that involved overhead images and three main points, som
e intercessions from a man in a wheelchair (including a reference to the death of Chris — no surname provided), all polished off with a blessing from the vicar and an invitation to stay for coffee and tea. So far, so pleasant and harmless.

  Rose leant close to him as the congregation sat down and the vicar made her way towards the back of the church. “I’ll introduce you to one or two people, but feel free to mingle and ask about Chris.” Mullen didn’t know a thing about perfumes, but he liked Rose’s smell. He wondered momentarily about the etiquette of saying so in church, but by the time he had come to a decision she had risen to her feet and was waving at a woman dressed in bright purple.

  Mullen decided he might as well go and get himself a coffee and mingle. He joined the queue at the back of the church. He felt the tap of a hand on his upper arm and turned.

  “I don’t think we’ve met,” the woman said. Which was a lie, of course, because they had done so on two separate occasions. “My name is Janice and I think you must be Rose’s private investigator. Mr Mullen, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  She held two coffees and offered him one of them.

  “So nice to meet you.”

  Her left hand pressed against his elbow as she eased him away from the crowd and into the south aisle. He moved compliantly enough, though he was trying to recall the Christian teachings on praising and praying to God one minute and lying through your teeth the next.

  “And so glad you have taken on Chris’s case.”

  Janice had been talking loudly, establishing her innocence with a will. Now she turned the volume down to little more than a whisper. “A few of us in St Mark’s have clubbed together, so I hope you’re going to give us good value for money.”

  Mullen glanced around. A hexagonal column separated them from the rest of the congregation, allowing them a surprising degree of privacy considering the number of people milling around.