Dead in the Water

by Peter Tickler

  “Did he say where he came from? Or if he used to do a job?”

  Alice frowned. For the first time, she seemed uncertain. “He was rather evasive about the details.”

  “Or when and why he came to Oxford?”

  “He said he came here because he thought Oxford in the summer would be a rather fine place to be.” Alice smiled, remembering. “Those were his exact words. Then he winked.”

  “Winked? At you?”

  “At our youth worker, Rose!” She rolled her eyes. “I think he fancied Rose. And she liked him.”

  “Lots of people seem to have liked him.” Mullen left the statement hanging in the air, hoping Alice might say something else, preferably something indiscreet which would clarify the confusion he felt when he tried to imagine Chris as a person. Chris the elusive, as hard to pin down as a dragonfly.

  Alice shrugged. “Thanks for the sponsorship!” And she turned away.

  The church was emptying. Mullen watched Alice approach an old lady dressed in purple, but his brain barely registered this because it was too busy sifting the details of their conversation. Chris was rather evasive about detail. That was what the girl had said. If that was the case — and everything he had learnt so far pointed to that being so — the question was: why? What had Chris got to hide?

  Mullen downed the last of his coffee and returned the cup to the hatch. He moved towards the exit. The Reverend Downey was talking to yet another member of her congregation. Mullen was relieved. He had had enough. He just wanted to slip unobtrusively out of church and escape back home.

  “Doug!” It seemed that the Reverend didn’t let members of her congregation sidle past her without a firm handshake and exchange of greetings. “How nice to see you here again! We must be doing something right!” She laughed and took his hand, leaning closer as she did so. “I gather you’ve been talking to Kevin,” she said in a low whisper. “I trust you haven’t been jumping to any wild conclusions?” Her fingers tightened their grip. “You should read the epistle of James. It cautions us all about the dangers of idle gossip.” Her fingernails dug into the back of his hand. Then she released her hold and smiled. “See you next Sunday, I hope.”

  * * *

  Mullen exited the church with a sigh, but there was little relief outside. The relative cool of the church was exchanged for the heat of another scorching day. There was no protection from the blazing light of the sun either and as he lifted his right hand against it he glimpsed two figures standing dark and still a couple of metres in front of him.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Mr Mullen.”

  He recognised the sarcastic voice of Dorkin immediately, just as he recognised the bulky outline of DS Fargo. He felt a jolt of anxiety. He didn’t need Sherlock Holmesian powers to deduce that something was very wrong.

  “A little bird told us you’d be at church,” Dorkin continued. “Didn’t really believe it, but what do you know?” Dorkin was enjoying the moment.

  A thought flashed across Mullen’s brain: who was the little bird? But then it was gone and Dorkin was saying something else. “I’d like a little chat with you, Mullen, if you don’t mind.”

  “It’s Sunday,” Mullen said, stating the obvious.

  “Normally it’s my day off too,” came the reply. Dorkin had dropped the sarcasm. “But I have here a search warrant,” he said. “For The Cedars, Foxcombe Road, Boars Hill.” He thrust a piece of paper at Mullen. “Would you like to read it?”

  Mullen was suddenly conscious that there were several members of the St Mark’s congregation standing around, watching with fascination. Rose Wilby and Derek Stanley were both standing on the far side of the road. They must have left shortly before he had and had turned to watch the drama unfold. Mullen tried to ignore them. He glanced at the search warrant in his hand. He made no attempt to read it in detail. He hadn’t ever seen one before, but it could hardly be a fake. Dorkin wouldn’t be stupid enough to do that, especially with so many curious bystanders as witnesses. He handed it back to him. “So what now?”

  ‘What now?’ involved Mullen handing over his house keys to Dorkin, who passed them over to a pair of uniformed officers standing in the shade of one of the poplar trees which stood in ranks along the front of the church.

  ‘What now?’ involved Mullen himself being driven to the police station and then having to wait for nearly two hours before a solicitor could be found.

  ‘What now?’ involved Mullen in doing a lot of thinking.

  * * *

  Mullen’s solicitor introduced herself as Althea Potter. She was brisk and a little off-hand. She was dressed in white slacks and pale pink blouse. Her blonde bob of hair was still wet and she smelt of chlorine. She looked like a woman who had just had her weekend rudely interrupted.

  She asked Mullen a series of questions, made a note of his answers on her notepad and then went to the door. There was a uniformed constable outside. “Tell Inspector Dorkin we are ready,” she said. “And would you mind getting us both a cup of tea. I would also point out that my client hasn’t had lunch either.”

  Twenty minutes passed before Dorkin appeared with Fargo. Mullen tried not to give way to his feelings of irritation. No doubt this delaying was a deliberate tactic by Dorkin, but if so the constable who brought in not just cups of tea but also sandwiches was not party to it. Mullen was starting to feel human again.

  Fargo did the preliminaries. Then he fell silent and waited for Dorkin who again embarked on a game of silence as he leafed through the folder of papers lying on the table in front of him.

  “What the heck is this all about?” Mullen said. Althea Potter touched his arm with her hand, but he had no intention of lying there and being trampled.

  Dorkin looked across at him, a jackal-smile on his face. “I’ve got something to show you,” he said.

  Fargo conjured up with a flourish a thin large-format book out of the pile of paperwork in front of him and placed it in front of Mullen. Mullen didn’t have to fake surprise. He had never seen the book in his life, as far as he was aware.

  “Art isn’t my thing,” he said.

  “What about photography?”

  Fargo did his conjuror act again and placed three photographs on the table. “Do you recognise these?”

  Mullen nodded. “Of course. I took them. When I was working for Janice Atkinson.”

  “And who are the people in them?”

  “Paul Atkinson and Becca Baines.”

  “Good. That was easy wasn’t it? So you took these photos and gave them to Janice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you give her printed copies like these or did you give her digital copies?”

  Mullen picked up each photo in turn, examining the back.

  “These are some of the prints I gave her. There’s a number in pencil on the back. That was me. I kept the digital files myself.”

  “A couple of nights ago, a woman died in a house fire. These photographs were found inside this book under her body.”

  For the first time, Mullen felt a surge of panic. “Who was she?”

  Dorkin didn’t reply.

  The room was surprisingly cool, but Mullen could feel the sweat on his forehead. “Jesus, it wasn’t Becca, was it?” Dorkin was eyeing him steadily.

  There was a hiss of anger from Mullen’s right. “Stop messing about, Inspector.” Althea Potter, hitherto silent, stabbed her pen onto her notepad. “My client has come here willingly. He has agreed to cooperate with your investigations. But if you persist, I will advise him to withdraw that cooperation.”

  Dorkin’s face twitched. “The dead woman was a Doreen Rankin. She worked for Paul Atkinson.”

  Mullen tried to think. So did that mean Janice had shown her husband the photographs? If so, how come Doreen had got them? Was she another lover?

  He looked up. Dorkin was shifting in his seat and asking him another question.

  “Why did you think that the dead woman might be Becca Baines?”

&
nbsp; Mullen tried to think. “I don’t know. The photo I suppose. You said it was a woman . . .” He tailed off. When the hell had he last seen Becca? His brain was porridge.

  “Are you and Becca lovers?”

  “There’s no need to answer that,” Althea Potter intervened.

  Mullen shrugged. “I’ll answer it if the Inspector will answer one of my questions. Was the fire an accident or was it arson?”

  Dorkin returned his stare. Then he answered. “The circumstances which gave rise to the fire are uncertain.”

  Mullen smiled back. “And the relationship between myself and Becca Baines is also uncertain.”

  “Do you have any other questions for my client?” Althea Potter was clearly impatient to rescue what was left of her Sunday.

  Dorkin turned to Fargo and nodded. Fargo removed the book and photographs from the table and delved again into his pile of paperwork. This time he produced a see-through evidence bag and placed it in front of Mullen.

  “Do you recognise this?”

  Mullen picked it up, studied the pills inside the bag and then replaced it on the table. “No.”

  “For the record, we found them inside the Cedars, Foxcombe Road, Boars Hill.”

  “They must be the professor’s.”

  “We’ll check that out.”

  “What is in the bag?” Althea Potter’s manner betrayed the fact that she was getting increasingly irritated by every sentence that passed Dorkin’s lips.

  “Rohypnol.”

  “And what is the relevance of finding rohypnol in my client’s place of residence?”

  Dorkin shrugged. “It may not be relevant. I just wanted to check it out.”

  “Check it out?” Althea Potter spat the words back at Dorkin one at a time as if they were some unexpectedly sour berries. She had had enough. She began to gather up her papers. “I think my client has answered quite enough questions for now. Unless, of course, you are going to charge him with a crime?”

  Mullen should have kept his mouth shut. He knew that even as he opened it. But sometimes common sense makes no sense. “Janice Atkinson had rohypnol in her bloodstream when she died,” he announced.

  Dorkin, Fargo and Potter all stared at him.

  “As did Chris, who was found floating face down in the river.”

  They were all still staring. In silence.

  “And just for the record,” Mullen concluded, “I know because the pathologist Charles Speight told me.”

  * * *

  For a few marvellous seconds, Mullen had been more pleased with himself than he could possibly have imagined. Dorkin’s face, contorted in disbelief, was a joy to behold. But after the high comes the low. And by the time Althea Potter had given him several pieces of her mind and then departed in a swirl of anger, Mullen was realising that what he had said hadn’t been very clever at all. He was also realising that for the second time he was stuck in the Cowley police station a long way from his car, which he had left in what was fast becoming his personal parking space in South Oxford. It would take him an hour or so to walk, he reckoned, as he pushed his way out through the exit doors.

  “Hi!”

  Rose Wilby was standing a few metres away, leaning against the metal railings and holding a cigarette. She dropped it hastily and ground it out with her foot.

  “Bad habit. Don’t tell my mother.”

  Mullen stood still. He felt awkward, unsure of his own thoughts and feelings. “Mum’s the word,” he replied, because he didn’t trust himself to say anything more real.

  “Would you like a lift?”

  He nodded.

  She advanced towards him. “Good.” Then, to his surprise, she put her arms round him and held him for several seconds. “Sorry,” she said finally, releasing him.

  She drove him back to South Oxford in silence. Only when she had pulled up opposite his Peugeot in Lincoln Road did she speak again.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He wondered what she meant by ‘it.’ Becca? Being questioned by the police? “Not here,” he said.

  “Shall we go to your house?”

  “The police are searching it.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. She didn’t sound surprised that the police were combing his house. Mullen tried to read her face for signs, but he drew a blank.

  “My flat, then,” she said finally. “Follow me. I can give you a visitor’s permit to park in the street.”

  * * *

  Rose’s flat was a modern one-bedroom spacious affair with a balcony overlooking the river. Expensive for a youth worker, Mullen imagined. In fact way above her salary scale. Not that he had any informed knowledge of what church youth workers were paid, but he doubted it covered the cost of renting a flat in this part of Oxford, let alone buying one. You are what you do. Someone had said that to him once. He wasn’t sure who, but it had stayed with him. Now that he had set himself up as a private investigator, he was realising how true it was. All of a sudden he was looking at everyone he encountered with jaundiced, analytical eyes, searching for things that didn’t fit. Even Rose Wilby was coming under his baleful gaze. It was possible that Margaret Wilby had bought the flat for her, even though the mother-daughter relationship wasn’t the best he had ever encountered. Or had Rose inherited money from her father? A father hadn’t ever been mentioned. Had he died or walked out on them? Mullen caught himself glancing around for family photographs, but there were none in the main living space. If Rose had any, he supposed she must keep them in her bedroom.

  Rose had been busying herself at the kitchen end of the living space, getting them each a cold drink.

  “Homemade lemonade,” she announced. “With lots of ice.”

  They sat down opposite each other at the dining table, hiding from the sun. Mullen took a sip, nodded appreciatively and started to talk. She was a good listener, alert and attentive, saving any questions until he had finished. Even then, she didn’t say anything at first. Instead she stood up and drew the long curtains half-way across the balcony windows, shutting out more of the light. Then she moved back and sat down again.

  “Tell me about rohypnol.”

  “It is prescribed to people with sleeping problems. It’s a powerful drug and when combined with alcohol causes people to get extremely unsteady and black out. It is popularly known as a date-rape drug. People use it because afterwards victims often have no clear memory of what happened to them.”

  “How horrible.”

  Mullen sipped at his drink. It was horrible. Rose was right. But could she really be so innocent as to not know about the drug at her age?

  “And they found some where you live.”

  “It’s not mine.”

  “You could have found it. And you could have used it.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “That’s what the police will think, isn’t it?” Rose said all this in a matter-of-fact way. “That you might have found it and given it to Chris and Janice before you killed them.”

  “But I didn’t.” Mullen suddenly felt defensive. He had thought Rose was on his side, but here she was making a case against him. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “Of course.” She stretched out her hand and for a second allowed it to rest on his. “But it doesn’t look good, Doug.”

  This time Mullen took another, slower pull at his lemonade.

  “Do you have alibis that someone else can confirm?”

  Mullen shook his head. It was something he had thought about too.

  “It was you who found Chris, wasn’t it? That won’t look good either. And you took those photographs for Janice and then she was killed.”

  “Hell, I know that.” He didn’t mean to snap, but it was hard not to. “Don’t you think I feel guilty about her? If I hadn’t gone snooping for her, she wouldn’t have come looking for me in the Iffley Road and she would still be alive.”

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Doug.” Rose sounded like her mother. “We need to make a plan and we need
to get on with it before the police come knocking on your door again.”

  * * *

  “You’re the detective. Don’t you have a prime suspect?” Rose had just made them a second glass of lemonade with plenty of ice. It was ridiculously hot in the flat, even with the balcony doors pulled wide open. “I mean, the prime suspects for Janice must be her husband or her husband’s lover. Paul or Becca. Or both, of course.”

  “But why would they kill Chris?” Mullen was talking as much to himself as to Rose.

  “How can you be sure Chris was murdered?”

  “The rohypnol.”

  “Maybe someone just gave it to him. Maybe he thought it was some other drug. He took it, had a drink and then fell into the river. That’s the simple answer isn’t it?”

  “Why did you and Janice hire me in the first place?”

  Rose shrugged. “Because we liked him.”

  “That’s it?”

  “We felt we owed him.”

  “Owed him what?”

  “Not to be forgotten. Not to be ignored just because he was a drifter, a man with no place in society and no fixed abode.”

  “What about everyone else at St Mark’s?”

  “A few people agreed. Mostly women. However, I suspect that the majority of people in the church thought we should just leave it to the police.”

  “And was there anyone who was actively hostile to your plans? Anyone who tried to dissuade you?”

  Rose frowned. Not for the first time Mullen realised he found her rather attractive. She wasn’t a conventional beauty, but then he had never been drawn to conventional beauties.

  “The vicar of course. Diana didn’t like Chris. She hid it well. She was perfectly nice to him, but . . .” Rose paused, allowing Mullen to interrupt.

  “But she was worried about the effect he was having on her congregation? On people like Janice and yourself?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Anyone else apart from Diana?”

  “My mother.” Rose laughed at the thought. “She definitely didn’t like the way Chris flirted with me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Being nice to him in church was one thing. But any sort of relationship would have been quite another thing in my mother’s book.”