Dead in the Water

by Peter Tickler

  Mullen felt a surge of anger. “Because he was a homeless rough sleeper, what did it matter? Right?” Mullen’s decibel count was rising dramatically. “Chris wasn’t important enough for you to look any closer into his death.” He felt like grabbing Speight by the lapels and shaking him till his prejudices rattled.

  Speight swallowed; his Adam’s apple bobbing furiously in his throat. But he carried on determinedly with his account. “Like anyone, I have to prioritise what I do and don’t do. But the fact is that when I had examined Janice’s body and realised that there was both alcohol and rohypnol in her, it got me thinking again about Chris. So I took some hairs from his head and found traces of exactly the same type of rohypnol in it too.”

  “So when you met Dorkin the other night—”

  “I told him what I had discovered. He was furious and started asking me what sort of pathologist I was to have missed it in the first place. He started making insinuations about my competence, which I didn’t take kindly to. I take great pride in my work, but in the circumstances there had been no good reason to check for rohypnol in Chris. So I pointed out to him that the fact that I had revisited my findings on Chris and thereby located the drug in him was actually a mark of my extreme competence.”

  “And what did Dorkin say?”

  Speight wiped his forehead again. “He was damned rude. So I just walked out. I don’t have to put up with stuff like that from people like Dorkin.”

  Mullen nodded as if he agreed. But actually he didn’t. As far as he was concerned, Dorkin had every right to throw a tantrum at Speight. The pathologist seemed to him to have been seriously at fault. End of discussion.

  “All of this is off the record. Dorkin won’t like it if he discovers that I’ve been talking out of school.”

  Mullen smiled at the expression. Out of school. How old school was that! But he saw no reason to make life difficult for Speight. Nor indeed did he want to draw Dorkin’s attention to his own investigations. “Sure,” he said. “But I’ve just one more question if that’s OK?”

  Speight exhaled. “If you must.”

  “If you didn’t initially look for rohypnol in Chris, why did you do so in Janice?”

  Speight scratched at his neck as he considered this. “Well, Dorkin told me he had a witness who had seen Janice walking rather unsteadily over Magdalen Bridge. So when I discovered that there wasn’t enough alcohol in her system to justify such unsteadiness, I looked around for other reasons.”

  “Thanks.” Mullen stepped back and finally allowed Speight to shut his door. The pathologist needed no further prompting and within seconds he was exiting the car park as if the hounds of hell were on his tail. Mullen watched him go and wondered. He wasn’t sure he trusted Speight, but his story did pretty much hang together. As for what he had said about rohypnol; that really was a game-changer.

  * * *

  The departure of Speight coincided with the return of Mullen’s headache. It had been nagging away gently throughout his long wait in the car, but now it had gained momentum and was banging away like a steam hammer. Mullen was also extremely thirsty, the consequence of having only half a small bottle of water to drink in the simmering heat. His back was complaining too, so he stopped at the Co-op in Wootton to pick up a half-litre bottle of water and some Paracetamol, plus a frozen pizza because he really couldn’t face cooking anything more complicated that evening. He took three tablets, drained the bottle of water and then headed for Boars Hill.

  But when he arrived back at the Cedars, he did not find the peace he craved. There were two cars pulled up in his drive. The red Punto he recognised, but the silver Rav 4 he didn’t. There was no sign of the occupants. He eased himself out of his vehicle and extricated the pizza from the back seat and the empty plastic bottle from the floor.

  “Ah! There you are.” Becca Baines’ voice boomed out. She and Rose Wilby appeared from around the back of the house and advanced towards him. “About time too. We’re dying of thirst and pretty blooming hungry. But at least we had a chance to talk about you behind your back.”

  She laughed and pecked him on the cheek. It was, Mullen supposed, her way of telling Rose to ‘Hands off!’

  “Well, nice to see you both,’ he said, though that wasn’t entirely true. Maybe one of them, just to show him a bit of sympathy, but both of them, without warning? Apart from anything else and based on the little he knew of them, he wasn’t at all sure they would hit it off. Besides, standing there with a pizza in one hand and a plastic bottle in the other, he felt as if he had been caught with his trousers down, the archetypical man incapable of cooking anything more advanced than something straight out of the freezer.

  “Sorry, this isn’t very fair of us turning up without warning.” Rose Wilby’s approach was altogether more polite and sympathetic. She patted him briefly on the forearm.

  Becca laughed. It was the sort of laugh the word ‘fruity’ was designed for. Mullen shivered with lust. It was no wonder that men like Paul — and he — were drawn to her. “Two women on his doorstep!” Becca was squealing now. “He probably reckons he’s died and gone to heaven.”

  Mullen tossed his house keys to her. “Let yourselves in. I just need to water the tomatoes. I could do with a cup of tea,” he added. “But there’s some white wine in the fridge if you want it." And he headed round the back of the house in search of a few moments of peace.

  As he began to fill the watering can from the rain butt by the greenhouse, he became aware that Rose Wilby had followed him. She stood silently a couple of metres away, watching. Only when the can was full and he was turning the tap off did she speak.

  “Are you and Becca an item?”

  “No.” He tried to sound very firm.

  “I got the impression from her that you were.”

  “Well we definitely are not. I barely know her. And I’ve certainly not slept with her.”

  “Would you like to?”

  “Jesus!” The watering can was overflowing. He turned the tap off. “Sorry! That probably offends you.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s none of my business anyway.”

  Mullen didn’t reply. Instead he went inside the greenhouse and watered round the grow bags. His headache had abated a bit, but that was all. He really did just want some peace and quiet on his own. Apart from anything else, he needed to think.

  “Actually,” she said as he left the protection of the greenhouse, “I’ve no intention of spoiling your evening with Becca. I just want to say what I’ve got to say and then I’ll be gone.”

  She moved away to the shelter of the wall, into the shade and — more pertinently Mullen thought — out of sight of Becca who was singing ostentatiously in the kitchen. “We can’t pay you any more money. So as far I am concerned, the job is complete.”

  Mullen looked at her, trying to read her. “I’m not expecting any more money, not at the moment.”

  “People have gone cool. They think it was a waste of their money when the police are free and much better resourced that you can be on your own. They blame Janice for persuading them to take you on. They say she was soft on you, which was the reason she was so keen to hire you.”

  “I got the impression you were pretty keen to hire me too.”

  She didn’t deny it. She didn’t say anything, but Mullen had already worked out that lying wasn’t something she would readily resort to.

  He pressed on. “I’m making progress you know.”

  She shrugged. “Even so.” She turned and started walking away. Mullen followed her to her car.

  He let her get in. “I thought you wanted to know the truth?”

  “What is truth? It’s not going to make a difference, is it? Whether you find out exactly what happened or not, he’ll remain dead.”

  “Did you love him, Rose?” It was the obvious question and he already knew the answer to it because why else would she have tears in her eyes?

  But she wouldn’t admit it with words. She leant over and opened a large
leather bag that was lying on the passenger seat. She pulled a book out and handed it over to him. “I promised to lend this to you,” she said. “I would like it back, but only when you’ve read it. Come round and we can talk about it and I’ll even cook you a frozen pizza.”

  Mullen took the book — The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — and felt a pang of something, a mixture of regret for himself and pity for her. He knew that he ought to ask her to stay. But instead he stepped back, closed the car door and watched her depart. Then he went inside to look for Becca Baines.

  * * *

  “You certainly know how to give a girl a good time.”

  Becca Baines and Mullen were sharing the pizza he had bought, accompanied by some rather tired-looking salad and a tin of mixed beans. He was drinking tea, while she had taken him at his word and opened some white wine.

  “Rose didn’t seem very happy.” Becca was clearly determined to chat.

  Mullen would have preferred to eat in silence, but he guessed he would have to say something. “Maybe not.”

  “I think she fancies you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “She does.”

  Mullen stuffed a piece of pizza in his mouth.

  “Would you like me to stay over tonight?”

  Mullen looked across at her. “No.”

  She raised her eyes archly. “Well that’s me told.”

  “I’ve only met you twice.”

  “And I’ve only put you to bed once.” She drained the last of her wine and filled her glass again. “I just hope I don’t get breathalysed on the way home.”

  Mullen shrugged and caved in. “You can use a spare bed if you want. But you’ll have to make it up yourself.”

  She smiled and took another sip. “So gracious you are, Mr Mullen.”

  Mullen reached over and poured himself half a glass. He doubted it would do him any good as far as his (temporarily muted) headache was concerned, but he didn’t see why she should drink the whole bottle. Besides she almost certainly wasn’t going to like what he was about to ask her. He took a swig and swallowed. “Are you still seeing Paul Atkinson?”

  “Would you be jealous if I was?”

  Mullen swore and placed his glass on the table with great care. Part of him wanted to hurl it across the room to show her his frustration. Why did she have to turn everything into a joke? “It’s not about me,” he snapped. “Janice is dead. She asked me to help her and now she is dead. So I will ask the question again and hope for a sensible answer. Are you still seeing Paul Atkinson? Because if you are, then you must be a lot more stupid than you look.”

  “Janice’s death was an accident, wasn’t it?” Becca had sobered up and gotten serious all in a moment. “It was a hit and run, wasn’t it? An accident pure and simple. The only issue being that the driver didn’t stop.”

  “It was not an accident. It was deliberate.”

  “How can you possibly know that? I’ve read the reports on the BBC and Oxford Mail websites.”

  “Trust me. I’m a private investigator. I dig around and I find things out.”

  For the first time in their short acquaintance, Mullen saw alarm in Becca’s eyes. Her skin had turned a sickly white. “How?” she said. “How—?” That was as far as she could get with her question.

  “I’ve found a witness,” he said. “It was deliberate. And I’ve also learnt that Janice had had her drink spiked with something which would have made her very unsteady on her feet.”

  Becca Baines stared at him for several seconds. She shuddered. “You’re serious!” There was the beginning of panic in her voice.

  Mullen pressed on. “If I was the police and I thought Janice’s death was murder, then my suspicions would be directed first at Paul as her husband and then you as his lover.”

  She shook her head from side to side. “But I didn’t.”

  “Have you got an alibi?”

  She looked up. Her face was a battlefield. “An alibi?”

  “I can vouch that you had supper with me in the Fox. There will be people who will remember us. I can tell the police that you were with me until about nine thirty, but the problem is that she wasn’t killed until ten p.m. and of course from Boars Hill to the Iffley Road at that time of night doesn’t take long in a car.”

  “Hey, you’ve certainly thought it through haven’t you!” She spat the words out. “But there would be a dent on my car if I’d run her down. And I know for a fact that there isn’t.”

  “For all the police know, you stole a car and then set fire to it afterwards.”

  Her mouth opened, but that was all.

  They both fell silent. Mullen drank the rest of his wine. He needed it. Becca began to run her fingers through her hair — as if it was a wig and she was testing how well attached it was to her skull. Eventually she stopped and leaned forward. “Doug, you surely don’t think I killed Janice do you?”

  Mullen didn’t answer at first. The grandfather clock in the hall chimed eight o’clock. It felt like midnight and his headache had returned.

  “Tell me you don’t!”

  “I really don’t know what to think, Becca.”

  She stood up suddenly, knocking over her glass as she did so. “I’ll be off then. The last thing you want is a murderer in your precious house.” She stamped across the kitchen towards the hall.

  “You’ve drunk too much to be driving,” he called after her.

  “You sound like my mother, Mullen.” She hurled the taunt over her shoulder, but didn’t look back. Mullen didn’t follow her. Instead he emptied what was left of the wine into his glass and listened: to her car door slamming shut, to the engine bursting into life and to the wheels shooting gravel out behind them. Then silence descended and with it came a strange mixture of relief and sadness.

  * * *

  It was only when she had put her mother to bed just before ten o’clock that Doreen Rankin allowed herself the stiff gin and tonic she had been thinking about all evening. Normally she settled down in front of the BBC news with a mug of tea, but these were not normal circumstances and for once the stories of doom, gloom and violence failed to engage her. She killed the TV with a savage curse, pushed herself up from the sofa and hobbled over to the bookshelf.

  Her right hand homed in on one of her favourite books, about the Pre-Raphaelites. She took it over to the table where the two of them always ate and opened it up. It fell open where she knew it would — Ophelia floating face-upwards in the river, singing with apparent serenity shortly before she was dragged down to her doom. ‘Her clothes spread wide,’ as Shakespeare recorded it, ‘her garments, heavy with their drink, pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death.’ Rankin mouthed the words as she had mouthed them so often before, but neither Shakespeare’s words nor Millais’s painting held her as they usually did.

  What dragged at her like Ophelia’s garments was the innocuous-looking brown envelope lying between the pages of the book and the three incriminating photographs which she knew lay inside it. She wished she had destroyed them as she had promised Paul she would. If she had done that, she could have pretended to herself that they had never existed — or at least that she had never known anything about them. If only!

  She slipped her right hand inside the envelope and pulled out the photographs. They looked no better after a good slug of alcohol than they had when she had so unsuspectingly opened them in the office. She could destroy them now, she told herself. It wasn’t too late. She didn’t have a shredder here at home and there was no open fire or wood-burner in their twenty-first century apartment, but a pair of her mother’s pinking shears would quickly reduce them to a pile of indecipherable and unrecoverable paper shreds. Except that she had seen on some TV drama that there were people who were experts at putting shredded paper back together. She guessed it was a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle, but without a picture to guide you.

  There was a noise — or rather a series of noises all too familiar to Doreen R
ankin: a heavy thump as her mother swung herself heavily out of bed, a shuffling of feet, the bang of a door. It was the first of her mother’s frequent nocturnal trips. She took another couple of sips of her gin and tonic and listened, waiting for the noises that would signal that her mother had returned to her bed. She was convinced that sooner or later she would fall and crack her skull on a piece of furniture or snap her hip.

  She sipped again at her glass and realised there was only ice at the bottom of it. She poured herself another drink, with a bit more gin this time, and dropped in some extra ice as compensation. She returned to the sofa, glass in one hand and photographs in the other, and slumped down. She took a swig and belched.

  Alcohol was supposed to confuse and befuddle the mind. But that wasn’t how it felt to Doreen Rankin. Quite the opposite. Things were becoming clearer with every mouthful. She couldn’t possibly destroy the photographs. They were evidence. She ought to give them to the police. Except that doing so would be a second betrayal of Paul. Unless of course he had killed Janice, in which case helping the police was her duty. But having an affair did not make Paul Atkinson a killer. He was a charmer, yes. Doreen was pretty darned sure that he had cheated on his wife several times on business trips to Europe and the States. But that didn’t mean he would have killed his wife if she had found out. What would have been the point? To judge from the way he treated her and the angry phone calls she herself had received from Janice, they weren’t exactly a match made in heaven.

  She took another sip and discovered she was down to the ice again. It was amazing how quickly a nice G & T disappeared. She eased herself up, made her way over to the table again and poured herself another refill. This was the last one tonight, she promised herself. Definitely the last. She took a gulp and looked again at one of the photographs. It was the one where Paul had his hand on the woman’s fat bottom and she was whispering something in his ear. Doreen picked up the next one. It was, she now realised, taken almost immediately after the first (Paul’s hand was still on the bitch’s bottom), only in this shot Paul’s face was visible and there was a terrible leering grin spread right across it. She must have been whispering something quite disgusting into his ear. Doreen took another gulp from her glass and felt the anger rise. It was the woman’s fault! Paul was an attractive but weak man, easy prey for the unscrupulous woman. She knew that. She had always known that. Well, she wasn’t going play into the bitch’s hands. She was going to find the pinking shears and go to work on the photographs. And when she had got a nice pile of shredded paper, she’d burn them just to be sure. And later on, in a few days’ time, when Paul had recovered from Janice’s death, she would tell him what she had done. He would be so pleased.