Dead in the Water by Peter Tickler Read Free Book Online

wondered if she had plans for lunch. He wondered too how much — or how little — she knew about Chris. “Do you know where he lived?”
    She shook her head. “I assumed he was homeless. In this good weather, a lot of down and outs choose to sleep rough. Or there’s O’Hanlon House in Luther Street.”
    Mullen felt a flash of anger from somewhere deep within him. This wasn’t just because of her dismissal of Chris and others like him as ‘down and outs,’ though he did hate the expression. It was a neat way of consigning people, real flesh and blood people, to a place where they could be forgotten. You could humour them, feed them with a sandwich and a cup of tea, and then ignore the rest of their lives. He had known someone like Chris once, a man named Bill. He had bumped into him near Kings Cross when, aged fifteen, he had decided to leave the misery of home for the bright lights of London. Bill had looked after him and after a while persuaded him to get on a train back home. Bill had been a ‘down and out’ and Bill had saved his life.
    “So you didn’t ask Chris where he lived either?” He heard the sharpness in his own voice and, as he saw her face crumple, he immediately regretted it. She looked down, as if studying the stained church carpet, then raised her eyes until they met his. “I thought,” she said, “it was kinder not to ask.”
    There were still seventy or eighty adults and children filling the church with chatter and laughter and (in one case) tears, but the silence that now fell between Mullen and Rose was as thick and unremitting as the Berlin wall in the Cold War days.
    “Perhaps it was,” Mullen said, trying to undo the damage he had done. In vain.
    “My mother has invited you for lunch.” A sudden switch of direction.
    “Your mother?” he said, trying to ignore the hostility in her voice.
    “Surprising though it may seem to you, I have a mother.” The temperature between them had plunged way below zero. “Would you like to come or not?”
    “I would,” he said.
    “Come on then.” And she turned on her heel, heading for the exit. Mullen followed, conscious that he couldn’t have handled things worse if he had tried.
    But he didn’t make it outside. The Reverend Diana Downey, doing a meet and greet routine by the double doors, stepped forward, hand outstretched. “Mr Mullen, I presume.”
    “Doug.”
    “Very nice to have you along today, Doug. I do hope we haven’t put you off coming again?” Diana Downey’s face crinkled round the edges. Mullen wasn’t an expert on perfumes, but she had undoubtedly applied plenty that morning. Her ear-rings were respectively a sun and moon. More New Age than Christian, Mullen thought — though what did he know about either?
    “It was a nice service.” It was a feeble response; but it wasn’t as if he had attended many in his time.
    “It was such a shame about Chris,” she continued.
    Mullen nodded. So she knew why he was here. “Maybe I could talk to you about him?”
    “Of course. I don’t know how much help I can be, but give me a ring. My number is on the bottom of the service sheet.”
    “I will.”
    “Good.” Mullen had had his turn. She turned to greet another parishioner who wanted her attention. Mullen took his cue and went outside to catch up with Rose. She was across the other side of the road, talking to Janice and Paul Atkinson. Their heads turned as one towards him and then they broke up, the Atkinsons hurrying off down a path that ran between the houses.
    “There you are,” Rose said as Mullen reached her. “I thought maybe you had changed your mind.”
    * * *
    Margaret Wilby lived in Grandpont Grange, an elegant stone-faced retirement complex built around a pair of quadrangles in imitation of the archetypical Oxford college. She greeted her daughter rather coolly, Mullen thought, barely allowing herself to be pecked on the cheek. As for him, she nodded curtly and ran her eyes up and down his clothing as