Dead in the Water

by Peter Tickler

  * * *

  When Mullen left Grandpont Grange shortly after three p.m., his only thought was to get back to Boars Hill. Margaret Wilby had eased up on him after her daughter’s intervention, but despite the food he had already decided that he would rather eat a flaccid ham sandwich sitting on a park bench than go through that experience again. As far as he was concerned the whole episode had only served to emphasise the truth behind the old adage that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. His car was parked in Lincoln Road, beyond the parking restrictions, and he headed straight down the Abingdon Road because that was the quickest (though hardly the most scenic) route. There was another reason too. He stopped at the shop on the corner of Newton Road and bought five packs of ten cigarettes and then continued south, quickening his pace. All he wanted to do was to get ‘home,’ make a cup of tea and cut the professor’s lawn. In peace. Without interruption. On his own.

  Chapter 4

  O’Hanlon House stands in Luther Street, an easy stone’s throw from the magistrates’ court and a more vigorous hurl from St Aldate’s police station. The main entrance of Christchurch College, centre of academic privilege and touristic pilgrimage, is only a little further up the hill and yet it might as well be in another universe. No tourists ask the way to Luther Street and certainly not to O’Hanlon House, which specialises in providing emergency accommodation for the homeless and help towards permanent resettlement.

  Mullen hadn’t ever been there himself, but he knew enough about it to know that it would be a good place to start his search. Of course, he could have gone to the Meeting Place and asked questions there, but he didn’t want to draw attention to what he was doing and in any case his next shift was four days away. As before, he parked in Lincoln Road to avoid parking restrictions and then walked north along the Abingdon Road. There were places nearer town where he might be able to park for an hour or two if they were not already taken, but he really had no idea how long he would need. Given the speed at which cars and lorries were failing to get into the city centre that Monday morning, he very quickly felt vindicated in his decision — not to mention a little bit smug. Walking was almost as quick and certainly less stressful than driving.

  It took him some twenty minutes to reach the bottom of St Aldates. Just past the magistrates’ court, he turned left into Speedwell Street, overtaking three motionless buses. Then he turned left again, into Cromwell Street, and saw immediately what he hoped to see. Not O’Hanlon House as such — though of course it stood exactly where it always had, but people. Three men emerged from the front door and ambled slowly towards him. Not that they had noticed him. They seemed instead to be immersed in a deep discussion which involved looking down at an object in the hands of the middle man.

  “Hi there, gents!” Mullen called out the greeting from a distance, hoping he sounded cheery and unthreatening. They looked up, surprise and guilt on their faces. “I was hoping you could help me,” he said. They had stopped moving forward, but he continued to advance towards them. “I’m looking for someone.”

  Nobody answered. Mullen slowed to a halt a couple of metres away. The three of them were aligned in height order: the man on the left was at least six feet four by Mullen’s reckoning, with a bald head, sunken eyes and a scar along the bottom of the chin parallel to his mouth. He avoided eye contact. The one on the right was the Ronnie Corbett of the three in height, though more of a Ronnie Barker round the waist. Grey hair plastered his head. The man in the middle was similar in height to Mullen, but bulkier and with a leather jacket which suggested he might once have been a Hells Angel.

  “Who are you?” the man in the middle asked.

  Mullen ignored the question, brandishing instead the photo he had carefully cut out of the newspaper and sealed inside a polythene envelope. He held it out to the middle man.

  “We don’t talk to the police.”

  Mullen smiled. “Nor do I! Not if I can help it.” He reached inside his jacket pocket, extricated three packets of cigarettes and brandished them.

  “His name was Chris,” Mullen said. “A friend of a friend wants to know what happened to him and where he dossed down.”

  “He drowned didn’t he?” Ronnie Corbett-Barker was eying the cigarettes with extreme interest. “It was in the papers.”

  “Did he ever sleep here?” Mullen gestured towards O’Hanlon House.

  “Don’t think so.” The tall guy was joining in now. He didn’t want to miss out.

  “Are you going to give us a fag or not?” Hells Angel was trying to take charge now. He was evidently the boss in their little group.

  “There’s a packet each, but not if you lie to me.”

  “How will you know if we do lie?”

  “I’ll know where I can find you.”

  “Is that some sort of threat?”

  “I guess it is.” Mullen stepped back half a pace and began to put the cigarette packets back in his jacket, all the time keeping his eyes on the ring-leader. He hadn’t yet worked out if he was all hot air and wind. He knew from experience how people could explode into violence.

  “Last chance,” he said. “There are plenty of other people I can ask. Where did Chris sleep at night?”

  “Down by the river.” It was Ronnie Corbett-Barker again. He held out a hand. “Near where it goes under the railway. There’s a whole encampment there.”

  “No he didn’t.” Hells Angel stretched out a hand and grabbed his mate by the shoulder. “This dickhead will say anything. Go down the road to Folly Bridge. Then left along the footpath. You’ll see all the college boathouses on the left and the university one on the right. Keep walking and after a few hundred yards you’ll pass another boathouse. Then it’s over a little footbridge and there on the right you’ll see bushes. He had a tent there.”

  Mullen considered what he had heard. Hells Angel sounded convincing, but you never knew. The man held out his hand. “The fags.” It was a demand, not a request.

  Mullen pulled the three packets out again and handed two of them over. He held up the third in front of them. “One of you is lying, so I’m keeping this one.”

  Half an hour later Mullen had made his way down the west bank of the river past the college boat houses and over the little humpback footbridge. He found the bushes Hells Angel had talked about and the grassed area beyond, but there was no obvious sign of people or tents or the detritus of life. He spent several minutes checking every possible place where a tent or food or a bag of possessions might have been hidden, but drew a blank. He swore. Hells Angel had well and truly suckered him. The little fat guy must have been telling the truth.

  He pulled off his jacket. The sky was pure blue and his shirt was sticky with sweat. He wiped his brow. It was going to be a long hot day.

  * * *

  At pretty much the same time as Mullen was cursing his own gullibility, Doreen Rankin was dealing with the post addressed to Mr Paul Atkinson of GenMedSoft, a computer software company which specialised in the provision of software for the dental and medical markets. As his personal assistant and office administrator, she took a proprietorial interest in everything that came in addressed to Mr Atkinson personally or to his company generally. She liked to know what was going on, not just because she was nosy, but because her boss regularly failed to keep her informed of important pieces of information which later boomeranged back to hit her with an almighty thwack.

  More and more, the interesting and important letters and documents were coming in via email. This was a source of great frustration to Doreen, who now only got to grips with things when Paul Atkinson went on holiday and reluctantly gave her access to his emails. The paper post this morning seemed no different from usual: letters from the Vale of White Horse District Council and from the company who managed the business park, various circulars which went straight into the recycling bin and three A4 envelopes all containing sales brochures. Or so she thought. The first two were indeed that; one she kept just in case and the other she tossed on top o
f the circulars. Doreen Rankin had a laser-beam eye for detail and she noticed even before she ripped open the third envelope that it was addressed by hand. That in itself was unusual, but not unprecedented. A charity appeal, an over-qualified student looking for paid work or an internship, a local business offering a special catering deal — these were the potential correspondents that flicked through her mind ever so briefly before she ripped the white envelope open. There was no ‘Private and Confidential’ on it, so it was by her own rules fair enough that she should take charge of it and vet the contents. Paul would almost certainly tell her off for not doing her job if she didn’t. He had told her right at the beginning that he didn’t want to wade through piles of tedious post when he had more important things to do.

  Doreen Rankin, who had been standing up as she prepared to give this final piece of correspondence a thumbs up or down, made a mewing sound and sat down very heavily in her chair. She felt giddy with shock and prurient excitement. Then she stood up, went over and shut the door to her small office, closed the blind on her internal window and returned to the desk. There were three photographs and they all told the same story: Paul Atkinson was having an affair. Not that this came as a surprise to Doreen. She had seen his eyes wander when any young women were within his vicinity and his hands too with a female student who’d come in as a temp. She had been skinny as hell, but the woman in the three photographs was anything but. She needed to go on a crash diet. God only knew what Paul saw in her, but Doreen Rankin had long since given up trying to understand men. She slipped the photographs back into the envelope and slid it into her top drawer, which she locked. She needed time to think. What should she do? Give it to Paul and apologise for having opened it, but commit herself to secrecy? Keep it as insurance against the future? Shred it and pretend she had never received it? Paul had a meeting that morning and wasn’t due in the office until after lunch. At least she had some time to think.

  * * *

  Mullen could have returned the way he had come, up river, but he wanted to buy a bottle of water (why on earth hadn’t he brought one with him?). However, there was another good reason for walking over Donnington Bridge, along Weirs Lane and then up the Abingdon Road again (right past where his car was parked). As he saw it, the only way he could find evidence that Chris’s death was an accident was to prove to Rose and her church friends that Chris had gone back on the booze. Of course they all wanted to believe he was a reformed character who had forsworn alcohol forever. Mullen understood that. He could sympathise with them for wanting it to be so. But life had hardened him. He held to the view that Chris had most likely relapsed and gone on a bender and had fallen in the river as a result. A pile of empties wherever it was that Chris slept would as good as prove it. Or a friend of Chris prepared to exchange the truth for a couple of packs of cigarettes. Or indeed a shopkeeper who could verify that Chris had bought booze from their shop. Or even a pub. However, pubs were a bit of an endangered species these days. The Wagon and Horses had been turned into a Tesco after considerable local resistance, but Mullen knew that there were two or three others still plying their traditional trade along the road into the city centre, so he would visit them.

  If he could find just one piece of evidence of Chris’s drinking, that would be quits as far as he was concerned. £300 wasn’t a lot for the job, but it would be fair enough in the circumstances. Rose and her friends couldn’t complain just because the truth was different from what they wanted it to be.

  Mullen made his way steadily up the Abingdon Road, armed with his short spiel and the photograph of Chris. It was an unproductive search: none of the pubs remembered serving him, none of the shops admitted to selling him alcohol, though in two cases they certainly recognised him from the photograph. “He smelt a bit, like they all do,” was the first comment. “Came in here from time to time for food or fags, but I can’t say I ever had any problems with him.”

  Mullen nearly challenged the man, but decided there wasn’t any point. If that was how the homeless were remembered and judged — whether they were any trouble or not — he couldn’t really blame people. But he felt irritated and protective nevertheless. In his experience the homeless could be kind, supportive and loyal, just like anyone else. And if they smelt a bit, was that any surprise?

  The woman behind the till in the next shop recognised the photo immediately. “Yes, a very polite man,” she said. “Always asked me how I was. Not like most people who are in far too much of a hurry.”

  “So he was a bit of a regular, was he?”

  “Maybe two or three times a week.”

  “And did he ever buy alcohol?”

  Furrows creased her flawless brown skin as she considered the question. “No, not from me. Mind you, I am not on the till all the time.”

  Mullen found himself warming to her: she didn’t want to mislead or pretend certainty if there was any suggestion of doubt — a perfect witness. “Did he ever come into the shop smelling of alcohol?”

  She pursed her mouth, but her reply was unequivocal: “No, definitely not.”

  Mullen picked up a bar of chocolate from the shelves immediately to his right. “I’ll have this,” he said. It wasn’t exactly a chocolate day; the temperature was mid-seventies at least. But he felt he needed to thank her by buying something.

  “He had a very nice voice too,” she said, handing Mullen his change. “Proper Queen’s English.”

  The encampment which the rotund Ronnie Corbett-Barker had talked about, before being bullied into silence by the Hells Angel, proved to be easy to find. Once Mullen had reached Folly Bridge, he turned left down the footpath and followed the Thames up-river, winding past modern flats and Victorian terraces, college accommodation and sheltered housing and then suddenly there were grass and trees and bushes on his left. Mullen followed the meandering course of the river, passing under a black iron bridge and soon after that beneath the railway. It was then that he saw the settlement, a ragged line of tents stretching away from the main river alongside a meagre tributary.

  Mullen paused. He was feeling queasy. He had already devoured the unnecessarily large chocolate bar, conscious that in this heat, it would cause a mess if he didn’t. But now he was regretting it. He would have been much better off buying a nice wholemeal sandwich from the delicatessen he had passed. He took a swig of water and advanced. As he got closer, he realised the site was much tidier than he had expected. He imagined most of them either kept their belongings inside their tents or carried them with them. It was also pretty much deserted, excepted for a couple of men sitting together in the shade of a bush. They were playing cards.

  When they saw him, they both jumped up.

  “What do you want?” one demanded.

  “Who are you?” the other added.

  Mullen stopped some five metres away from them, conscious of their nervousness and hostility. “Did you know Chris? The guy who drowned in the river, down near Sandford.”

  “You haven’t answered our questions,” the first man said. He had a pinched face and a pinched body; his eyes flickered uncertainly on Mullen and on the track to his right, as if weighing up the options of fight or flight. Mullen fiddled in his jacket and located two of the three remaining packets of cigarettes.

  “I understand he lived here.”

  “Do you?” He was giving nothing away. His colleague, shorter and fatter and wearing tartan trousers, was silent, twisting his hands together as if they held a dishcloth that needed wringing out.

  “There’s a packet of fags each if you just show me which was his tent.” He held out his hands but then tucked the cigarettes away back in his pocket.

  They both turned and walked further up the tributary, past half a dozen other tents and a couple of bundles. They continued for another thirty-odd metres before they came to a flattened area of grass. A circle of stones around grey ashes showed where a fire had once burned. There was a saucepan, cigarette butts, a filthy red scarf and an empty tin of baked beans. A sing
le mauve sock decorated the ground.

  “Didn’t he have a tent?” Mullen felt the frustration bubbling up.

  “Yeah, sure he did. But someone took it.” The man with the pinched face was looking nervous, his eyes searching again for an escape route.

  “Don’t take the piss, matey. Who took it?” Mullen took a step closer. He wasn’t going to be messed about again.

  “Some guy.”

  “What sort of guy?”

  “Dunno. I didn’t ask him for his name and number. It was early. I wouldn’t have seen him except that I needed a pee. He just pulled Chris’s tent down and then went through all his stuff. He put most of it in a plastic bag and walked off.”

  “So he took the tent with him?”

  He didn’t reply immediately. There was the slightest of pauses. Then: “Yeah.”

  The other man, who hadn’t said a single word, giggled. Mullen looked at him and then back to the pinched one.

  Mullen’s hand moved like a cobra striking its prey. It grabbed the man by his t-shirt and wrenched him forward until they were eyeball to eyeball. He wasn’t giggling now.

  “I’ve already been lied to once today,” Mullen snarled. Close up, the man smelt of baked beans and dirt. And fear.

  “He’s got it.” He pointed at the other guy. He licked his lips. His face was greasy with sweat. Mullen held onto his informant, but concentrated his gaze on the other man. He wondered if he was going to try and do a runner.

  “Mine had had it,” the man said. “Worn out.” He spoke quickly and jerkily. “I asked the guy if I could have the tent. He said I could. That was kind of him wasn’t it?”

  “Show me,” Mullen said, releasing his grip.

  The tent was a small one, big enough to sleep in and hide from the rain, but not much else. Easy to carry. There wasn’t much room to store stuff either, which was probably just as well. There was a sleeping bag piled in a heap in the corner, a full bottle of water and two empty ones, a few clothes under the sleeping bag, a saucepan, a multipack bag of crisps, cans of soup and a couple of toilet rolls. Mullen lay down on the groundsheet and looked up. For a moment he was back in the army on a training course. Three days in some wild bit of Scotland. It had been hot then and it never got properly dark at night. Mullen had liked the outdoors side of the army. As a kid he had loved camping in the small back garden. But living in a tent like this was different. OK in the good weather, but tough when the rain came and the temperatures plunged.