Текст книги "Dead in the Water"

Автор книги: Peter Tickler

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Chapter 9

Dorkin was checking out his boat when the phone call came. The boat was, in his eyes, a thing of intricate beauty and breathless speed. It measured 1470 millimetres in length and 284 millimetres in width and it was the closest he was ever going to get to owning – or handling – a mega-yacht. Not that he cared; it was his secret vice. Sailing his immaculate radio-controlled model on a Sunday morning on the artificial lake in Hinksey Park and chatting with the other enthusiasts (all male) kept him sane at the end of a long week. In any case it wasn’t truly a vice, even though he liked to think that his craft must provoke feelings of intense covetousness amongst the rest of his fellow aficionados. Nor indeed was it in any proper sense secret because there were plenty of people who could see him indulging his passion as they wandered past on their way to church or the Sunday market, accompanied by children or grandchildren or dogs. It was secret in so far as he had never talked about it at work, for fear that his colleagues might laugh; that the women might think it rather sweet or the men that ‘old Dork has gone a bit soft.’ Dorkin glanced at the mobile to see who the call was from. Whoever it was he would ignore it.

He swore and pressed answer. “Yes?”

Fargo had never rung him on a Sunday before. They didn’t socialise except for a drink or three after work, but that was different, a sort of continuation of work. Ringing him during his time off meant something serious had happened. Or if it hadn’t, Dorkin’s tongue was primed to tear several strips off Fargo.

“Sorry, sir.” It was a sensible start.

“What?” Dorkin spoke sharply. He could sense his day was about to take a very undesirable turn.

“There’s something you need to know, sir.”

“Is there?”

“There was a fire in Cornwallis Road on Friday night.”

“I know.”

“Two victims. A Doreen Rankin and her mother.”

“And?”

“Doreen Rankin is Paul Atkinson’s PA.”

Dorkin allowed the information to sink in. Then he said: “Is the fire suspicious?”

Fargo cleared his throat. “No-one is committing themselves at the moment.”

“So why ring me on a Sunday morning, Fargo?”

“They found something.” Fargo paused. “Something I believe is relevant to our current investigations.”

Dorkin growled a warning across the radio waves. “Tell me what they found, Fargo – in nice simple words. Then I’ll tell you if it’s relevant or not. OK?”

* * *

Walking into St Mark’s on the second Sunday in a row was a very different experience for Mullen. The first time he had been expected – indeed invited – by Rose Wilby and he had been an item of interest and curiosity to the whole congregation. He had felt surprisingly nervous about walking into church, but he had also felt welcome. This time, however, it was like walking into a foreign and hostile land. The atmosphere in the church was different. There was less chattering as people settled down, or at least the chattering was far more subdued. People were talking with lowered voices and faces, conscious of the presence up near the front of the lone figure of Paul Atkinson, who was sitting ram-rod straight and with empty seats either side of him.

A woman with grey curly hair and elegant mid-green top and skirt thrust a service sheet into Mullen’s hand and welcomed him. He stepped past her, conscious that there were people behind him, and looked around in the hope of encountering a familiar face.

“Mr Mullen!” The voice came from behind him and he turned. “How nice to see you again. I thought you might have been scared off by us all.” Margaret Wilby smiled, but there was no warmth in it, no sense of welcome.

“Perhaps I might sit with you?” Mullen responded, taking her at face value. She was probably the person he least wanted to sit next to. He imagined that she felt the same.

Derek Stanley, standing at her shoulder, stepped forward. “Of course, Doug. Very nice to see you.” He spoke in short, halting sentences. “It’s going to be rather difficult today, I fear. A time to support each other. Poor Paul.” He stumbled to a verbal halt.

“Poor Janice too,” Mullen said quickly. It was Janice he felt sorry for. Not the man who had cheated on her. Not the man who might have killed her.

“In a sense, yes.” Stanley pulled at his moustache. “But we believe she is now in a better place – and at peace with herself.”

Mullen followed them to their pew and sat down. Stanley sat in the middle, probably a deliberate move, Mullen reckoned, to keep him separate from Margaret. Stanley, he had decided, was the peace-maker, albeit a slightly odd one with a singular taste in clothes: today it was an orange polo shirt, rust coloured shorts and leather sandals of the style once favoured by Roman legionaries.

Reverend Diana Downey was as subdued as the rest of them. Her sermon seemed flat and uninspired compared to the previous week – not that Mullen had a whole lot of experience in judging sermons. She spoke of the shock of Janice’s death, but said nothing that Mullen didn’t already know. There was no date fixed for the funeral yet, she announced. “But do keep Paul and Janice’s mother in your prayers.”

As the Reverend Downey made her way down the centre of the nave and so signalled the end of the service, Stanley touched Mullen on the arm.

He flinched, caught off guard.

Stanley didn’t appear to notice. “Stay for coffee. It’s proper coffee, not instant.”

“Thank you, I will.”

“If you need me to introduce you to people, I will. I guess we must seem rather overwhelming when you’re new.”

Stanley was right. Mullen did find it challenging. There was part of him that wanted to walk straight out of the church and then keep walking until he was far enough away to open his mouth and scream.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll be OK,” he lied.

He glanced around. He wanted to ask Margaret Wilby where her daughter was. Their last meeting hadn’t finished well and he regretted that. But Margaret Wilby had exited from the pew via the side aisle and was walking up to a man and woman who were settling down onto two chairs in a corner. A shaft of coloured sunshine angled down through the window above, directly onto a third, empty chair. It was on this that Margaret Wilby sat down.

“She has gone for prayer ministry,” Stanley said, whispering into Mullen’s ear. “Under the watchful eye of St Mark. Anyway let’s get some coffee. Come on.”

Mullen followed him, down the nave and then left towards the huddle of people queuing for a drink. Never mind St Mark, it felt like Derek Stanley was keeping a watchful eye on him.

“So, would you say you have any sort of Christian faith?” Stanley said as they stood waiting their turn.

“No.” In other circumstances – such as with a few glasses of beer inside him – he might have replied in greater detail and told Stanley how he had had some sort of belief in God until his best friend Ben had blown his own brains out one evening in the barracks. But Mullen was currently very sober. More significantly he had just spotted across the other side of the church someone he had never expected to see. It was Charles Speight. There was no doubt about it. He and a woman (his wife, Mullen assumed) were talking to Paul Atkinson.

“None at all?” Stanley said. “So why are you here today?”

“I’m searching for the truth.”

“Aren’t we all?”

Mullen wished that Stanley would leave him be. He doubted that they were seeking the same truth and in any case he was far more interested in Speight. He gestured in his direction.

“That’s Dr Speight with Paul Atkinson isn’t it?” He thought he might as well pick Stanley’s brains. It would be more useful than being quizzed about his own lack of faith.

“Yes. And his wife Rachel.”

“I don’t recall seeing them last Sunday.”

“Not exactly regular attendees.” Stanley’s voice hissed with disapproval. “It’s amazing how a couple of deaths in the congregation can suck the back-sliders back into the fold.”

Mullen opened his mouth to ask more, but he felt a hand on his upper arm.

“Hello, Doug. Just the man I was hoping to see.” Rose Wilby was wearing a green short-sleeved top and trousers of a darker green, and her curly hair was more out of control than usual. “Excuse us, Derek.” She led Mullen away until they were in the south aisle, enjoying some sort of privacy. Mullen had a moment of déjà vu – a week before he had been hiding behind this very column with Janice.

Mullen assumed Rose had something important to say to him, but for several seconds she stood in front of him in silence. She was breathing fast and chewing on her bottom lip.

Mullen wasn’t sure if he owed her an apology or vice versa. Their last meeting really hadn’t ended well. He knew that. But he didn’t think it had been his fault. Quite the opposite. Rose had obviously been put out by the fact that Becca had been there. A case of good old-fashioned green-eyed jealousy.

“Chris and I were not lovers,” she said suddenly. She continued to chew furiously at her lip. “I want to make that absolutely clear to you.”

“OK.”

“We were friends. Very good friends considering the few weeks we had known each other. But it was nothing more than that.”

“It wouldn’t matter to me if it was. That would be between the two of you. The only reason I asked was because I was trying to find out more about Chris’s death.”

“Which I told you to stop doing.” Her voice was sharp. “I hired you with Janice’s encouragement and now I have released you from your obligations.” She moved closer to him, but not for intimacy. “Don’t you see? The more you hang around church and the more you ask questions, the more people will look at me and wonder what went on between Chris and me. I’m the youth worker here, don’t you understand? My contract is due for renewal this autumn. So it would be best for me if you were to disappear from the scene. Then everyone here would soon forget about Chris and stop speculating about our relationship and I would be able to get on with my life.”

“I see.” Mullen didn’t like it, but he really did start to see. “So you want me to stay away from St Mark’s.”

“I certainly do.”

“I’ll try to.”

“Thank you.” She had stopped chewing at her lip. She looked up at him from under her hair. There was half a smile on her lips. “Sorry if I interrupted your conversation with Derek.”

“I think you rescued me, actually.”

“Derek can be a bit intense. Devoted to Mummy, of course. I fear she rather exploits that and gets him running errands for her all over the place.” Mullen didn’t want to talk about Stanley so he changed the subject. “I’ve started The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you know.”

“Oh!” She was clearly surprised.

Mullen hated to be patronised. Did Rose think he was incapable of reading? Did she think he was stupid?

“Lucy has just gone to Mr Tumnus’s house for the second time and has found it ransacked,” he said, to prove his point.

“It’s a horrid moment.” She frowned. Her thoughts were elsewhere. “How is Becca?”

“She was fine when I last saw her. Which was the same day I last saw you.” And gossiped about the Reverend Downey he could have added. He looked towards the church door and saw her standing talking to someone he didn’t recognise, a woman with red hair who was laughing.

“Sorry. It’s none of my business whether you are seeing each other.”

“And this may be none of my business, but I am going to ask you anyway. Is the Reverend Downey a lesbian?”

Rose flushed an angry red. “You’re dead right. It is none of your business.” She turned and moved away a couple of steps, before glancing back at him. She was chewing her lip again. “You can keep the book when you’ve finished it.”

Mullen watched her go, marching purposefully down the aisle, but if she had hoped to escape from the church she was to be disappointed; a huddle of girls intercepted her. Mullen sighed. As an exercise in burying the hatchet, it had been a disaster. He cut through the pews to the nave. He still hadn’t had a coffee. He glanced around, looking to see where the Speights had got to, but he couldn’t see either of them. Paul Atkinson had moved to the exit where he had ousted the red-haired woman and was talking to Downey. He had taken her right hand with both of his and seemed to be clinging on to it for dear life.

Mullen got his coffee and looked around. It would have been interesting to encounter Speight again. He rather doubted the man would admit to knowing him, but even so it would have been amusing to see how he reacted. However Speight was not in sight. He scanned further, looking for someone he could talk to. Margaret Wilby was advancing determinedly down the nave. She was heading, he suddenly realised, directly towards him.

She gave him a curt nod of greeting. “I couldn’t help noticing that you were talking to my daughter.”

Mullen nodded. Couldn’t help noticing?

“Is everything all right?” she continued, oblivious to his irritation.

“I think Rose and I have a tendency to rub each other up the wrong way.”

“Ah!” She pursed her lips as she assessed her next question. “I understood your services had been dispensed with.” It was more of a statement, though the underlying question was presumably along the lines of: “So what on earth are you doing in St Mark’s today?”

“I rather enjoyed the service last week. I thought I would try it again.”

Margaret Wilby made a noise that indicated she didn’t believe him for a second. She inclined her head. “Goodbye, Mr Mullen.”

Mullen sipped at his coffee. He tried not to care but he was beginning to feel distinctly unwelcome. So when a teenage girl came up and asked him with immaculate politeness if he would be willing to sponsor her on a fun run, he agreed without asking what the cause was and pulled a ten-pound note out of his pocket.

“I’m not doing the run until two weeks’ time,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter,” he replied and wrote his details down on her sheet. “I trust you.”

“You’re the private detective, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Have you found out what happened to Chris?”

Mullen completed his signature and straightened up. It was hard to know how to respond to such directness. He might not believe in God, but he did believe in being honest. “He drowned in the river down towards Sandford.”

“I know that.” There was disappointment in her voice. She was clearly expecting a lot more detail. “People say he got drunk and fell in.”

Mullen nodded, but didn’t comment.

“I think that’s rubbish. He didn’t drink. He told us.”

Mullen felt a flickering of interest.

“Who is ‘us’?”

“Our youth group. We meet on Sunday evenings. Diana brought him along the other week to talk to us. She thought it would be good for us to hear his story from his own lips. There are so many down-and-outs on the streets in Oxford and we all tend to ignore them.”

Alice – that was the name on her sponsor sheet – spoke with frightening clarity and certainty. “I mean, what should I do if I see them begging in the Cornmarket? Should I give them money? Should I go and buy them a sandwich? Should I just walk on by like most people do? I could pray for them of course, but is that enough?”

Mullen was impressed. He wished he had all the answers. He wished that at her age he had had all the questions too. “Personally, I wouldn’t give them money. Maybe buy them a sandwich?”

“I prefer to support the charities which help them,” she said decisively. “Diana agrees. Chris agreed too.”

Mullen studied Alice. How old was she? Fourteen maybe, going on twenty-four. He changed tack. “So how did Chris come to be sleeping rough in Oxford? Did he tell you his story?”

“He did and he didn’t. He said there were a lot of things in his past that he wasn’t proud of and preferred not to talk about. What he did say was that he didn’t have a very happy childhood and that he was sent away to boarding school and hated it.”

“He didn’t say what school?”

“No.”

“Did he talk about his family?”

“Not really. His parents were killed in a car crash, but that was all he said about them.”

“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?”

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.”