Текст книги "Dead in the Water"

Автор книги: Peter Tickler

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

* * *

Mullen took his time over a second cappuccino – followed by a second trip to the loo – before he finally headed off to look for witnesses. It wasn’t that he was reluctant to do so, more a question of timing. He wanted to give himself the best opportunity of finding people in, which meant, he reckoned, not starting until six p.m.

He began with the terrace of old town houses in which he himself had temporarily stayed. They were all split into tiny bedsits and although a surprising number of people were in, he drew a total blank. Even Pavel, with whom Mullen had gone out for a drink a few times when he was living there, could only shrug his shoulders in sympathy. What with the foul weather, the prevalence of double glazing and the manifold attractions of the TV on such a night, no-one had apparently noticed when death had come careering down the Iffley Road the previous evening. One elderly couple thought they had heard a bang, but when the man had looked out of the window, he hadn’t seen anything. One or two people had noticed the arrival of the police car and ambulance a few minutes afterwards, but that was all.

By seven thirty, Mullen was resigned to failure as he reached the top floor of a block of tired-looking flats named after a writer Mullen had never heard of. There were two doors there, as there had been on each floor below. After this, Mullen resolved, he would give up and go home. He rang the bell of the one on the right, but no-one answered even though there was light visible underneath the door and sound coming from a TV turned up very loud. He tried the door opposite. This opened immediately.

Mullen found himself looking at a curious-faced old woman, and he embarked on his spiel, explaining who he was and why he was there. He was expecting her at any moment to make her excuses and shut the door in his face, because that was the sort of evening he had been having. But on the contrary she beckoned silently, inviting him in as if this was something she did every night. She was notably thin, with a sharply pointed nose, a gentle voice and clothes that suggested a love of Scotland. “Do take a seat.”

Mullen sat down in an armchair, while she manoeuvred herself into the one opposite him. Like her, the upholstery looked as though it could do with a few repairs.

“So,” she said brightly. “You’re looking for witnesses?”

Mullen nodded. “So far, no-one has seen anything.” He didn’t think it was going to be any different this time. The fact that she had asked him in signified nothing. He guessed she didn’t get many visitors. She was lonely and she had dragged him in for some company and a chat. Not that Mullen minded. He was almost relieved.

“Well,” she said, “of course I didn’t see anything.”

Mullen tried not to let his disappointment show. “Not to worry. Maybe—”

The old woman exploded into laughter, rocking back and forth with glee. “Haven’t you noticed?”

Mullen looked at her, nonplussed. What was so funny? And then the penny dropped. “You’re blind!” It was suddenly glaringly obvious.

“And you claim to be a private eye!” She laughed again, delighted with the situation, but abruptly switched it off. When she spoke again, it was with the utmost seriousness. “I heard the collision, you know.”

“You heard it?” Mullen parroted, unconvinced.

“I may be blind, but I’m not deaf.” She spoke without any sign of the irritation that she might reasonably have felt at Mullen’s response. “Quite the contrary, I have very good hearing.”

“Of course.” Mullen felt chastised.

“I imagine it’s a nice smooth ride. A quiet engine, but not so quiet I couldn’t hear it.”

Mullen frowned and then immediately wondered if she could hear a frown – or at least sense it. He hoped not.

Sitting there, in this slightly shabby flat, Mullen saw the old woman in a new light. He was pretty sure he must have seen her before. Maybe they had passed in the street and he had walked past her without even noticing. They had lived within 50 metres of each other, yet they might as well have been living in parallel universes. Mullen felt a sense of shame, but he also, for the first time that day, felt the beginnings of something like optimism. He leant forward, as if leaning forward might help him to grasp the importance of whatever it was she might say.

“You said you heard the collision,” he said. “Can I ask you just to talk me through exactly what you heard? Was the car going fast? Did it brake sharply? Did the driver stop and get out of his or her vehicle? All the details.”

She leant back in her chair, and drew in a deep breath, as if trying to recollect. “It was just after ten o’clock. Maybe five past. I know because I had just finished listening to the radio. I turned it off, and opened the window. The rain was falling, but the wind had dropped. I like to listen to the city. I remember hearing some of the city bells striking the hour. Christchurch is always the last to finish. And I remember thinking how quiet it was. Not silent, you understand, it is never silent, but for Oxford it was very quiet. Then I became aware of someone in a hurry. She must have been a woman, because her heels were beating a tattoo on the pavement. As she got closer, she suddenly stopped, and then after a pause I heard her heels again, only the sound was slightly different. I think she must have been crossing the road, from the far side to the near side. Then I heard the car. I hadn’t noticed it before, but the engine growled sharply as if the driver had rammed his foot on the accelerator. Then there was a thud. That must have been the poor woman being hit, though I wasn’t sure at the time exactly what was happening. The car slowed down, but only briefly, and then it drove off away from town as if nothing had happened.”

Mullen felt a spike of excitement. “I want you to think very carefully. Are you saying that the car didn’t brake before it hit the woman?”

She replied without delay. “Oh no, I’m quite sure of that.”

They both fell silent. Mullen shivered and looked across to the window. It was partially open. He tried to listen to the noise outside, as she must listen to it from her small secluded world – vehicles accelerating and braking, someone hooting in the distance, young women giggling, shoes clicking on the pavements, a male voice arguing violently with itself.

“So has that been any help?” the old woman asked eagerly.

“Help?” Mullen said. He had been miles away, as the hamsters powering the treadmill inside his brain struggled to get up to speed. “I should say so. Do you realise what you have just described?” But that was a rhetorical question and Mullen pressed on with his own answer. “You’ve described a car suddenly accelerating as the woman started to cross the road. A car that doesn’t brake until after it has hit the person. What you’ve described isn’t an accident. It’s murder.”

“Gosh! I suppose it is.”

But it wasn’t only Lorna Gordon – for that was her name – who was bubbling with excitement. Mullen stood up, unable to contain himself in the armchair. He strode over to the windows and looked down to where Janice Atkinson had died. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it as it must have been for Lorna listening to it all happen: high heels clacking, an engine roaring into life, a dull thud as the car hit Janice’s vulnerable bodywork. Mullen felt giddy and grabbed at the window frame, steadying himself.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Lorna Gordon asked.

And Mullen, much to his own surprise, said he would.

* * *

Mullen delayed his departure from Lorna Gordon’s flat for as long as he reasonably could, stringing out the mug of tea and accepting two chocolate digestives to go with it. While she chatted away, first about the hit-and-run and then about her grandson, Mullen’s thoughts drifted. They centred initially on the prosaic task of getting home: he would have to walk into the city centre to get a bus out to Boars Hill. He wondered how frequent they were. But soon his ruminations moved on to Chris. Mullen realised with a start how little he had achieved in his investigation, though the word investigation seemed rather overblown for what he was doing. What exactly had he found out? Very little, except to establish that someone had been so annoyed by his attempts to track down where Chris had been living that they had slugged him over the head with something blunt and heavy. Mullen felt his bandaged head and resolved to take the thing off when he got home.

“Would you like another one?” Lorna Gordon leant down to pick up his empty mug.

“I really must be going.”

“That’s a shame.”

Mullen stood up, but she hadn’t finished yet.

“Are you going to tell the police?”

Mullen hesitated. He didn’t like lying, especially to a woman as nice as Lorna. It went against all his instincts. And yet there were other moral imperatives by which he lived, such as protecting the weak. The last thing he wanted to do was to cause the police to come round and question her. The whole scenario made him feel uneasy.

“Well?” The old woman wanted an answer.

“Yes, of course I am. Don’t you worry, I will tell them everything.”

Mullen shook her hand and left, promising to come back and tell her all about it when they had caught Janice’s killer. And when he said that, he really did mean it. One lie was enough.

* * *

Outside on the pavement, it was pleasantly warm. A gaggle of students in shorts and t-shirts walked past, heading out of town, talking animatedly. Mullen didn’t take in what it was that had so caught their imagination because his eyes and attention were fixed on two figures who had, like him, just exited a building some 50 metres away, nearer town. The light was beginning to fade, but Mullen’s eyes were keen enough to recognise the profiles – one tall, heavily muscled man in a suit and another shorter one, also in a suit, with untidy hair and an aquiline nose. Fargo and Dorkin. Mullen slipped into the shadows. On another day and in another place, he might have carried on walking right past them with a cheery greeting. But not tonight, not when they had just walked out of the building in which he had lived. What were they doing there? Checking his room? It seemed unlikely. Asking questions about him? It was much more likely that they had been checking him out. When exactly he had moved in and moved out, who he had socialised with, what visitors he had had.

The two detectives started walking towards town, little and large, still talking, to judge from the hand movements, though whether they were discussing work or the World Cup was anyone’s guess. Across the road a couple walked arm in arm in the same direction, hurrying as fast as the woman’s heels allowed. Mullen crossed over and settled in a few metres behind, using them as a protective screen. Not that he needed it. Fargo turned right at the next side street while Dorkin continued straight on without so much as a backward glance. He was walking faster now, a man on a mission to get home maybe.

Or maybe not, because when Dorkin got to the roundabout he turned right and pushed his way into the Cape of Good Hope pub. Mullen had had a pint there a couple of weeks previously, but it wasn’t his sort of place. He’d be surprised if it was Dorkin’s either, but maybe the detective was just thirsty. Mullen paused, uncertain what to do. What was Dorkin up to? Asking more questions? At this time of night in a busy pub? Or just delaying the moment when he returned home.

The couple who had been providing cover for Mullen had moved on, heading over Magdalen Bridge. A group of four Chinese – a man and three women – were standing in a huddle discussing something unintelligible. Mullen slipped behind them and felt in his pockets. He still had a packet of cigarettes left, so he lit one up in the pointless hope that it would somehow make him invisible. Across the road, through one of the large stone-framed windows, Dorkin suddenly came into view as he sat down with two pints. He pushed one across the table to a man Mullen didn’t recognise.

The Chinese group had come to a decision and started to cross the road. Mullen followed them as closely as he dared. He wanted to get a better look at the man with Dorkin, maybe even go into the pub if he could without Dorkin spotting him. Yet if Dorkin did happen to catch sight of him, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. After all, he could just be visiting a favourite haunt.

Mullen detached himself from the Chinese, who headed up the Cowley Road, and continued smoking his cigarette by the pub door. He’d give it a couple of minutes and then he’d go in and take his chance.

* * *

Mullen never did get inside the Cape of Good Hope because Dorkin’s companion appeared in the doorway. He was breathing heavily. He turned round, as if worried that he was being pursued, swore and then shot across the road oblivious of any traffic exiting the Iffley Road. A taxi hooted. The man hurried on, arms flailing, across Cowley Place and onto the southern pavement of Magdalen Bridge. He was heading into the city centre. Mullen tossed his butt onto the ground and followed, but he crossed the Cowley Road taking the anti-clockwise route round onto the northern pavement of Magdalen Bridge, well out of view of Dorkin – or so he hoped.

Following the man couldn’t have been easier. Along the curve of the High Street, turn right up through the pedestrianised Cornmarket, across Broad Street and into Magdalen Street. The man queued for a Kidlington bus and immediately struck up a conversation with a much younger woman he obviously knew from somewhere. Mullen slipped into the queue behind a pair of French-speaking youths. When the bus arrived, he bought a ticket for Kidlington. The man and woman – she was mid-twenties Mullen reckoned and, to judge from their conversation, his dental nurse – sat together. Mullen moved past them and slumped down in the seat behind. He got out his mobile and pretended to check for emails. Not that he had any emails to check because he hadn’t got round to linking his emails to his smart phone. He really should get a bit smarter with it, he told himself. What was the point of having it otherwise? At least he knew how to use the camera. He knew how to turn off the flash. He knew how to turn off the sound. In sum, he knew how to take a photo of two people talking animatedly to each other without either of them noticing.

The man got off just north of Summertown. The woman stayed seated, apparently bound for Kidlington. Mullen got off and followed the man at a distance down Victoria Road. The guy seemed too distracted and too lubricated with alcohol to have twigged him, but Mullen couldn’t be sure. The man was halfway along the road when he slowed up. He had been swinging his arms like pistons, but now they dropped to his side and fell still. He pushed open a small gate, but went no further. The houses in Victoria Road are easy money for the local estate agents and the man was hesitating outside a particularly impressive one in Edwardian style. Money and status it said, which made Mullen all the more curious as to why a man like him should have been meeting Dorkin in a pub. He sure as heck wasn’t a low-life informer. Mullen waited. The man, he realised, was being greeted by a woman, his wife presumably, though Mullen knew you should never make such assumptions nowadays. The man made as if to kiss her, but she appeared to duck away. She was talking and gesturing at the same time. An angry wife. An unhappy homecoming. These were reasonable deductions in the circumstances, Mullen told himself. Not that it mattered whether he was right or not because he had no intention of knocking on the door at this time of night. But he did want to know who the man was.

Mullen waited for the two of them to disappear inside and for the door to slam. He wandered along the pavement until he was in front of the house. There was a blue Audi A4 parked on the forecourt. He pulled out his phone and photographed the registration plate. As for the house number, that was easy enough to memorise. He hovered outside. The front curtains were drawn. What now? Maybe he would return next morning and follow him to work. Mullen was reviewing his options when a noise made him turn. A young man came out of the neighbouring house, slamming the door. He was thin and on edge. He immediately lit up a cigarette. That was one option. Ask him. Why not? Mullen got out his remaining packet and extricated a cigarette.

“Excuse me, mate,” he said. “Can you spare a light?”

The youth looked at him as if he had been asked if he knew the quickest route to Timbuktu. Mullen held the cigarette up, a man miming the act of smoking. The youth shrugged and handed over his box of matches. Mullen lit his cigarette, choked violently like a schoolboy having a first smoke behind the bike sheds and handed the box back.

“You know who lives here?” He tried to make it casual and unimportant.

“He’s my neighbour. Of course I do.”

“I thought I recognised him. Not that Richard Dawkins fellow is he?”

The youth laughed as if that was the funniest thing he had heard all week. “Why should I tell you? And who the hell are you anyway?”

Mullen had been half expecting the response. In the youth’s shoes, he would have said exactly the same. Mullen put his hand into his pocket and pulled out the cigarette packet again. And added a twenty pound note. There was no point in skimping.

He held them up, out of reach of the youth. “Who is he and what does he do? I can always ask someone else.”

The youth was tempted, Mullen could see that. The money would buy him something a bit more exciting to smoke than tobacco if that was what he liked. Mullen was pretty sure he did like.

The youth held out his hand. “You first.”

Mullen hesitated, and then handed over the cigarettes. The youth checked the packet and thrust them into his back pocket.

“First name: Alexander.” The youth held out his hand again.

Mullen held out the £20 note.

The youth took a final pull on his cigarette before tossing the butt onto the pavement. Then he took the note and looked at it intently, as if suspicious that it might have been printed that morning in Mullen’s backroom. Then he began to rip it up. One, two, three. He let the pieces flutter to the ground. “I don’t sell out my neighbours, dickhead.” He stared Mullen full in the face. It was a challenge, full of stupid bravado. Mullen knew he could flatten him with one blow, but what good would that do either of them? Actually, at some level he admired the cocky bugger for standing up to him.

The youth sneered, pleased with his performance and Mullen’s feebleness. Then he retreated inside his front door. Mullen heard the lock click into place and the rattle of the security chain. Not so confident after all.

Mullen stayed where he was, sucking in a lungful of smoke. It was the second cigarette he had smoked that evening and the second since he had left the army nearly three years previously, but oddly enough it felt a bit of a let-down. He didn’t miss the nicotine rush any more. Coffee was a different matter: he couldn’t live without the buzz of caffeine at least three times a day. But fags had never held him in their thrall. Smoking had been something he had done while drinking a pint, nothing more. He tossed the butt towards the youth’s door. It was petty, he knew, but if he got a telling off from his mum or dad in the morning, it would serve the cocky punk right.

Mullen wasn’t done yet. He had had an idea. As ideas went, he couldn’t see much wrong with it. He checked up and down the pavement: not a dicky bird. There was no sign of activity from either the youth’s house or that of the man he had been stalking. The curtains were drawn in both front rooms. There were no twitching fingers to be seen and no curious faces peering out. Both houses had their recycling bins facing each other, as if by mutual agreement, down the side of their houses. Mullen padded quickly over to the one by his quarry’s house and opened it. He peered into the shadows and then plunged his hand down. It was like the bran tub of childhood fetes. When he pulled his hand out, he had in his fingers a sheaf of papers. These included several envelopes and letters discarded without any attempt to tear or shred them. Which was careless, Mullen reckoned. But how many people bothered to shred their post, despite all the scare stories about ID theft? Mullen flicked through his haul and was reassured. He closed the bin’s lid quietly and headed off up the road. He had lost twenty quid and his last packet of fags. He had had his chain pulled by a spotty sixth-former. But in other respects it had been a successful evening. All he had to do was catch two buses home.

* * *

The mystery man’s name was Charles Speight. The envelopes recovered from the bin in Victoria Road were addressed variously to him, a Mrs Rachel Speight and a Jane Speight – a daughter presumably. Back in Boars Hill, Mullen made himself a mug of strong tea and opened up his laptop. It didn’t take long searching the internet to identify Charles Speight in greater detail. He was a pathologist, privately educated at a school that even Mullen had heard of, and he had a string of letters after his name. There were several references to him in the Oxford Mail and Oxford Times, all of which indicated that he worked closely with the Thames Valley police in cases involving violent death. There were even a couple of photographs of him which, despite their formality, tied in with the rather agitated figure Mullen had first seen in the pub.

Mullen sipped his tea and wondered. Why had Speight and Dorkin met in a pub, out of hours and well away from their normal places of work? Was it Speight who had examined Chris? The newspapers hadn’t said as much. Probably at this stage the police wouldn’t release the information. But it seemed to Mullen a pretty good bet that he had. And if he had and if that was why he and Dorkin had met up, how come Speight had looked so on edge? Or had they been talking about Janice? Less than twenty-four hours after her death? Unless they were great buddies – and to Mullen it looked like they were anything but – why would they be meeting in a pub? And why had Speight stormed out of the pub so quickly and unhappily? The only way to find out would be to ask him, Mullen concluded, though that would surely get him into a whole shit heap of trouble if Speight went and bleated to Dorkin. Which he surely would, Mullen told himself, unless of course Speight had nothing to hide and nothing to feel guilty about.

Mullen pushed away his half-drunk mug of tea, conscious of a return of the pain at the back of his head, thumping like a bass drum. He had to speak to Speight. That was the bottom line. The only outstanding questions were how, when and where? He hoped the answers would become clear after a decent night’s sleep.