Dead in the Water

by Peter Tickler

  “What value were the notes?” Mullen had begun to wonder if Fitz was just giving him a run for his money, making up a good story to ensure he got the promised reward. Asking about the detail seemed a better way of finding out the truth than challenging him directly.

  “Twenties,” Fitz said instantly. “I reckoned he must have had the best part of five hundred quid with him.”

  “Did you speak to him?”

  “No.”

  “Why ever not? You could have asked for your tenner back couldn’t you?”

  Fitz returned to his food, shovelling in a couple more mouthfuls. Then he drained his mug and leant back in his chair. “You promised me twenty quid.”

  Mullen opened his wallet and removed three ten-pound notes, but he didn’t hand them over. “Why didn’t you speak to Chris in Costa? Or follow him outside?”

  “I was going to.” Fitz belched and then licked the fingers of his left hand. “I stood up and got my clobber. But there was a guy coming down the stairs a few steps behind him. I knew him — sort of. When he got to the bottom, he spotted me. He came over and said ’hello,’ so I had to ask him how he was and all that stuff and by the time we’d finished Chris was out of sight.”

  “Who was he, this guy?”

  Fitz said nothing. He had returned to his breakfast, shovelling it in as if he was in ‘Cinderella’ and the clock had started to strike twelve.

  “Who was he?” Mullen repeated quietly, leaning forward.

  Fitz picked up a final piece of toast in his fingers and wiped it around his plate, determined not to waste even a smear.

  “Kevin,” he said eventually. “Runs the drop-in down in Cowley. I used to go there, but I prefer to stay in town now. Gatehouse, Archway. They’re better. More convenient.”

  “Describe him,” Mullen said. Not that he needed a description of his boss at the Meeting Place, but it was a way of checking if Fitz was for real or not.

  “Round face. Dark hair.” Fitz chuckled. “I think he was a bit offended I’d stopped coming to his place.”

  “Did he speak to Chris as he came downstairs?”

  Fitz shrugged and began to pull his anorak on. “Don’t think so.” He stood up. “I reckon I’ve earned my money, and more.” He held out his hand.

  Mullen nodded towards the counter. “See the guy there. I’m giving thirty quid to him. He’ll keep it on a tab for you. It’ll buy you a few good meals.”

  Mullen didn’t get up, but he tensed himself nevertheless because it was impossible to know how Fitz would react. It would have been much easier to give Fitz the cash and let him spend it on booze or drugs, but that went against Mullen’s code. “I thought that would be a good way of keeping the money safe for you,” he said, trying to head off any trouble. “No-one can nick it from you when you’re asleep.”

  Fitz didn’t reply. He turned away, pushing past a student who had just entered the cafe. He was angry, but Mullen was pretty sure he’d come back when he was hungry.

  * * *

  Mullen didn’t know Branston’s address, but he knew he cycled to work on a not very flash bike, so the chances were he lived locally. A search for the name Branston on his smart phone (Mullen was gradually getting smarter in its use) came up with just two results and only one of these could possibly be Kevin: KL Branston, living in Crescent Road, Oxford. It didn’t ring a bell with Mullen, whose knowledge of the city was curate’s-eggish. But BT provided a convenient ‘Map’ link and within moments Mullen could see it was a long straggling road in Temple Cowley. He studied the surrounding streets for several seconds, imprinting the area in his brain, before stuffing his phone in his pocket and striding off down St Aldates in search of his car. He had briefly considered ringing Branston to see if he was in — he had his mobile number in case of work issues — but he had dismissed the idea almost instantly. He wanted to apply pressure and he reckoned that appearing unannounced on his doorstep would be a good way of doing that, especially if his wife was at home.

  The house was stuck in the middle of a long terrace — red Victorian brick, white sash windows with peeling paint, dark blue door with cobwebs above it, a single bike (Kevin’s) chained to a metal bar bolted to the wall. A woman opened the door almost immediately — maroon tracksuit, unbrushed brown hair and grey eyes set inside dark rings of exhaustion, medication or both.

  “Mrs Branston?”

  She nodded.

  “I work with Kevin. Is he in?”

  She frowned as if the question was too hard. She leant forward and looked up the road. “Gone to the shops.” Mullen followed her gaze, but could see only a couple of people and they were women with buggies. “He’ll be back,” she said and withdrew inside, leaving the door open behind her. Mullen took this as an invitation and followed her along a short corridor that led into a long kitchen diner. The near end was the kitchen and every surface was covered with stuff — mostly food (packets, boxes, tins, jars, bottles), but also with books, newspapers, a large grey fairy holding flowers which had been painted a variety of yellow and orange hues, a brass hand-bell and an assortment of kitchen implements and machines.

  Mrs Branston went over to the surface to the left of the cooker, pushed some things aside and switched on a kettle.

  “I’m Doug,” he said.

  She turned and looked at him. She had a half-smile on her face, but she emanated sadness. “Gina.” She ran her eyes up and down him slowly, as if she was uncertain as to who or what he was. She pursed her lips. “I could paint you,” she said and turned back to the kettle.

  Mullen moved a couple of steps deeper in. The far end of the room, he now realised, was populated with her painting equipment, though in a more ordered manner: an easel with a blank canvas on it; boxes of what he took to be oil paints laid out on a long flat trestle table which stood along the left-hand wall; brushes and pallet knives; a plate of fruit and a couple of small blue and white vases which he imagined may have been the subject of a still-life; jam jars and bottles of linseed and white spirit. All the paraphernalia was there, but no sign of any painting in progress.

  “I could paint you naked,” she continued, talking to the wall, “but Kevin is a bit of a prude.”

  Mullen wasn’t sure how to react. He looked around. There was only one painting on the walls; it hung over the trestle table. He went and stood in front of it: a head and shoulders portrait of a younger, thinner Kevin, half-turned towards the artist, yet avoiding her gaze, looking beyond her. It was the sort of pose that photographers favour, endowing their subject with a distant, thoughtful look. But in this case, with the sharp differentiation of dark and light around Kevin’s features, Mullen thought he could see something else, a shiftiness, an inability to look his wife squarely in the eye. Or was that his own interpretation, based on his own suspicions with regard to Branston and Diana Downey?

  “Sit down.”

  Mullen turned to see that Gina had crossed the room and was holding out a mug of tea. She picked up a camouflage jacket lying on a tall stool and tossed it aside. “There,” she said, pointing. “I want you to look directly at the wall. Below the portrait, not at it.”

  Mullen did as he was told. She picked up a pad and a couple of pencils from one of the jars, walked back to the main kitchen table and perched on its edge. “You can drink your tea and you can talk if you want, but otherwise I want you to keep still.”

  Mullen didn’t talk. He sat and sipped and concentrated on a dark smudge on the white wall. He could hear her pencil gliding across the paper, long strokes and short strokes, wild flourishes and careful hatching, and occasionally moments of inactivity when the only sound was her muttering not quite soundlessly to herself.

  “Now look at me,” she said, ripping a sheet from the pad and setting it down beside her. “And put your tea down.”

  He obeyed. He had never had anyone do this to him before and it felt unsettling, as if he was being examined and found wanting. He watched her face, as her eyes constantly flicked between his face
and her pad, absorbed in the present. An ambulance went past outside, but there wasn’t even a flicker of distraction. The front door opened. Mullen’s eyes moved and took in the puzzled outline of her husband.

  “Doug,” she snapped, forcing him to face her again. There was exasperation in her voice and she scratched harder and faster with her pencil, fearful that the opportunity was almost gone.

  “What’s all this then?” There was surprise in Kevin Branston’s voice.

  “I’m drawing Doug,” she said, still wielding her pencil with an air of desperation. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “What are you doing here, Doug?” Branston clearly wasn’t pleased.

  Mullen said nothing. He had reverted to looking at Gina, giving her his fullest attention. He felt irrationally angry that Branston had returned and interrupted her. But the spell had been broken and Gina gave a sigh of disgust. “I haven’t finished!”

  For a moment Mullen wondered if there was going to be a full-scale argument, but Branston shrugged as if this was normal. “OK. I’m off to the loo.” And he turned back along the corridor, taking his newspaper with him, and trudged up the stairs.

  Gina returned to her sketch, head bent so low over it that her hair hung down like a curtain. Mullen knew he had to ask his question now or he never would, even if it was a leading one and deceitful too. But the thought had been there ever since the previous evening, and it had put down roots.

  “Kevin tells me you suffer from insomnia.”

  She gave a half laugh from behind the hair. “Something like that.”

  “Do you find rohypnol helps?” It was a stab in the dark.

  For several seconds she made no response, as her pencil continued to skate across the paper. Finally she stopped, raised her head, pushed her hair out of her eyes and regarded Mullen. “He shouldn’t have talked about it,” she said. “It’s none of anyone else’s business.” It wasn’t an admission, but it wasn’t a denial either.

  “Can I see what you’ve drawn?” Mullen was more than curious to see what she had made of him, but he also wanted to change the subject.

  “No,” she said firmly. She tucked her notepad under her arm, picked up the first sketch from the table and then, like her husband, retreated along the corridor and up the stairs. Mullen picked up his mug and drained what was left of the tea. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that he had had a great opportunity and blown it.

  * * *

  “So why exactly are you here?” Kevin Branston said. The irritation in his voice was palpable. Three or four minutes had passed since Gina had disappeared upstairs and he had reappeared. Mullen couldn’t help but wonder if and what they had been saying to each other. “This is my home and it is outside of work hours.”

  “I’m not here about work.”

  “So what the hell is this visit about?”

  “Chris. Chris who drowned in the river.”

  Branston seemed surprised. He peered at Mullen, his eyes narrowing. “What?”

  “I’d like to know why you met Chris in Costa in Queen Street a few weeks ago and gave him a substantial sum of money.”

  Branston opened his mouth and then shut it. Mullen could see his Adam’s apple working overtime. His face had flushed visibly, betraying the anger within. “I think you’d better leave.”

  “Was he blackmailing you?”

  There was no response from Branston.

  Mullen pressed. “About your relationship with Diana Downey?”

  The blood drained from Branston’s face. He wobbled. For a moment, it seemed to Mullen that he was in danger of collapsing on the floor, but he grabbed the work surface with his hand, knocking over a packet of cereal as he did so.

  “We aren’t having a relationship.” His words were barely audible.

  “I saw you coming out of the vicarage on Thursday.” Mullen paused, allowing the information to sink in. “At two twenty in the afternoon to be precise.”

  “Look, it’s not what you think.” Branston went to the sink and poured himself a glass of water. He drank half of it before he continued. “Diana is a friend. A good friend. But that’s all. I think she’s gay if you must know, though we’ve never discussed it. She’s been very supportive. About Gina that is.” He paused, as if wondering how much to say. “Gina has mental health issues. I find it a bit difficult sometimes, coping with it. I met Diana at the Meeting Place first. She came along because she was very interested in what we were doing there. I really appreciated that. And I soon found out that she was a good listener too. So she agreed that I could come and talk to her at the vicarage, well away from work and home. I guess you’d call it informal counselling.”

  “If it was merely counselling, why did you give Chris money?”

  “I’m coming to that.” He licked his lips and drank some more water. “Chris was a bastard. He noticed we got on well and he discovered that I was visiting Diana. He joked about how it would be easy for someone to get the wrong idea about it. At least I thought it was a joke. But the next thing was he was telling me how hard up he was and that what he really wanted to do was go and live in Spain. He knew someone there, he said, who would help him get work. But he needed money to get himself there. It was all a load of rubbish, of course. But I was naïve enough to think that if I gave him £500, then at least he would clear off and we’d be shot of him.”

  “We?” Mullen couldn’t help himself from jumping on the word. “So Diana knew about this?”

  “No.” Branston fell silent for a long moment. Eventually he continued. “What I mean is that Diana knew about Chris’s insinuations that we were having a sexual relationship. But I never told her about the £500 I gave him. You have to believe that. It was my own stupid idea. For three days I thought it had worked a treat. Chris disappeared from view. I was really pleased with myself. But then he turned up again at the Meeting Place, a smirk on his face. ‘Change of plan,’ he told me.”

  “And did you have a change of plan too?”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Did you decide to kill him?”

  “What on earth are you talking about? He fell into the river because he was drunk as a skunk.”

  Mullen shook his head. “I believe that someone helped him to fall into the river.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  Mullen shrugged. “Call it an educated guess.”

  Branston glared at him. Mullen noticed that his hands had clenched into fists, but it didn’t bother him. He was confident that if it came to a fight, he would be more than a match for the guy.

  Eventually Branston responded. “You think I did it?”

  “As far as I can see, you’ve certainly got a motive.” In truth the longer the conversation had gone on, the less certain Mullen felt about his theory, but it was the only one he had.

  “I think you had better leave,” Branston said. “Now!”

  “As you wish.”

  * * *

  Paul Atkinson very nearly didn’t answer the door bell. He had had enough of people calling in to offer their condolences and ask nosey questions. God knew he and Janice hadn’t had the best of relationships. A lot of that was his fault. But it was partly hers too. It was hard to live with someone who was always checking up on you. Janice had always wanted to know who he had been meeting for lunch (especially if they were female), what they had been discussing, what the woman was wearing and how old she was. Her enquiries were about as subtle as a sledge hammer. In the end, it had pushed him into having the affairs she was so suspicious about. Not with anyone at St Mark’s. That would have been far too risky. Usually it happened on his business trips to the States, where the other party accepted it for what it was — a brief sexual encounter where neither makes any emotional demands on the other. There had been one-night stands in Prague and Berlin too. But he had kept things safely at a distance until Becca. He hadn’t been looking for an affair or expecting one. It had just happened and it had been great until Janice found out.
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  The doorbell rang again, this time more insistently. Whoever it was, they were determined. It was almost certainly someone from the church. He must have had nine or ten people call in over the past two days, each bearing a card of sympathy and each hoping he would let them in for a cup of tea and a chance to ‘chat.’ He had done just that with some of them — Derek Stanley and Margaret Wilby, Rose, Diana Downey — and they had talked in solemn tones about what a lovely person Janice had been and how unbelievable it was that she could have been taken from them like that. Of course there were things they didn’t say, but he could sense they were thinking them. How he hadn’t been a very good husband. That if he had been a better one, then somehow poor Janice wouldn’t have been run down in the middle of the Iffley Road. And what on earth had she been doing in the Iffley Road at that time of night anyway? Only Margaret Wilby had been honest enough to ask him that particular question and in her usual forthright manner. He hadn’t answered her, of course.

  Diana Downey had at least offered him practical support, offering to deal with the undertaker and discussing the funeral arrangements. With her help he had already decided on a private cremation followed an hour later by a service back at St Mark’s. She had prayed with him too, which he had found comforting and surreal. The whole situation was surreal, of course, and he still hadn’t got his head round it. Not to mention the number of phone calls he had had to make to relatives and friends. So the last thing he wanted was to have to be polite to another well-wisher. But that didn’t stop the bell ringing yet again, long and loud. He swore and made his way along the hall, bracing himself for whoever it might be. At the door stood probably the last person he expected (or wanted) to see. It was Eddie Loach.

  Loach held up both hands in front of his shoulders in mock surrender. “I’m really sorry!” he said. Quite what he was sorry about he didn’t make clear. Was it about Janice? Was it about calling at his house in the evening? Or was it because he was such a plonker?

  “I’m really tired,” Atkinson said.

  “It’s not about work.” Loach lowered his hands. “And it’s not about Janice, though obviously we are all in shock in the office.”