Текст книги "Dead in the Water"

Автор книги: Peter Tickler

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Doreen stood up and moved unsteadily over to the fireplace. She took the lid off a small Chinese jar and extricated a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches. She lit up and blew a wreath of smoke up towards the ceiling, watching it as it expanded and then disappeared. Her mother wouldn’t approve, but she didn’t care. What harm could a cigarette or two do?

Chapter 7

Mullen slept soundly that night. The day had sucked the energy out of him and although he went to bed with the events and discoveries of the last twelve hours spinning in his head, his body’s need for rest and recuperation had the final say. He woke once to go to the toilet, but apart from that he was conscious of nothing until his mobile phone woke him. He rolled over, picked it up and checked the caller display; ‘Unknown.’ Most likely some wretched cold caller. He killed the call.

He had barely lain back down before his mobile rang again. The same ‘Unknown’ was displayed. He groaned. His gut reaction was to ignore the call again and turn his mobile off, but something stopped him. Did these automated dialling systems dial you again immediately? He thought not. More likely they did so the next day or the next week. Which meant, he realised, that this was very likely a human being calling, not a salesperson. Hiding your number when you made a call was easy enough to do if you knew how. The phone continued to ring and Mullen reluctantly swung his legs over the side of the mattress and sat up. He pressed the answer icon, lifted the mobile to his ear and listened. There was silence, except for the muffled sound of someone breathing.

“Who is it?”

“Is that the Good Samaritan?”

“What?” Even if Mullen hadn’t been half asleep, the reference would have confused him.

“It’s a dangerous role.”

This time Mullen said nothing. He knew when someone was threatening him. He knew too – or thought he did – that if he kept quiet and avoided rising to the bait then the chances were that the caller would say more.

“Did you hear me?” There was a crack of irritation in the voice, even though it sounded artificial. Mullen was reminded of Stephen Hawking.

“Are you trying to frighten me?”

“It’s not you who should be frightened. It’s your friends.”

It was like being kicked in the stomach. Mullen felt the bile rise and tasted the bitterness in his throat. He opened his mouth and forced himself to say something.

“What do you mean?” Keep him talking, he told himself. And listen, Mullen, really listen – to his stupid voice, to what he says and how he says it, for any background noise.

“Unless you stop,” the man continued, “one of your friends will pay the price.”

And then the line went dead.

* * *

By the time Mullen had showered, dressed in clean clothes, eaten some muesli and downed a mug of black coffee, he felt almost ready to face the day. His headache of the night before was a distant memory, though anxiety was beating its own drum inside his head.

Should he take the phone call seriously? The answer was surely ‘yes.’ Should he contact the police about it? Of course he should. Otherwise, if something did happen to one of his friends, he would never forgive himself. Would DI Dorkin and DS Fargo take him seriously? The answer to that question was less certain.

Even so, Mullen made the call and after an argument with the person on the end of the line he got transferred to Dorkin. Except that the person who answered certainly wasn’t Dorkin, not unless he had had a sex-change or a nasty cricketing accident.

“Your name, sir?” the woman said in a flat Brummie accent.

“Doug Mullen. I need to speak to DI Dorkin.”

There was a pause before she replied.

“I’m afraid he’s out. I’m Detective Constable Ashe. Perhaps I can help.”

“Is DS Fargo there?”

“He’s out too.”

“I need to speak to one of them.”

“About what?”

“About two murders and an anonymous phone call.”

“I see.”

There was another pause. Mullen wondered if she was getting advice or merely making him wait for the sake of it. Then: “They’ll be in touch shortly.” And she put the phone down before he could argue or complain.

Mullen shrugged and leant back in the large Windsor chair he had adopted as his own. “And pigs will fly,” he said to the empty kitchen.

Mullen was wrong. ‘Shortly’ turned out to be a lot sooner than he could possibly have expected. He had only just gone upstairs and brushed his teeth when a banging at the door summoned him back downstairs.

“Hello, again!” The sour smile and gravelly greeting belonged to Dorkin. Behind him, Fargo loomed silent and surly. He seemed to be larger every time they met. “I’d like a little chat,” Dorkin continued, pushing inside. Fargo followed and Mullen, shutting the door, couldn’t help but notice that there were two uniformed officers standing in the drive, one of whom headed off round the side of the house. Were they out there in case he did a runner? It wasn’t a good sign.

He walked back through to the kitchen where Dorkin was making himself comfortable in Mullen’s favourite chair, while Fargo stood against the wall, arms folded and still very large.

“I’ve just been trying to get hold of you on the phone,” Mullen said.

Dorkin’s eyebrows rose minimally. “Oh yeah?”

“I’ve had an anonymous phone call this morning. Someone warned me they would hurt one of my friends if I didn’t stop my investigation.”

“Did they now?” Dorkin rubbed his chin. “Can I see your mobile? I assume they rang you on your mobile?”

Mullen unlocked it and passed it over. “You’ll see it in the call log. ’Unknown.’”

There was a flicker of a smile on Dorkin’s face. He studied Mullen’s mobile for the best part of a minute, then placed it on the table. “I may need to borrow that for a while. Have you got a spare one?”

“No.”

“You don’t have an unregistered, pay-as-you-go one? I thought all smart private investigators kept a stock of them just in case they needed to do naughty things without being caught. For example, they might want to use one to ring up the mobile phone which is registered in their name. That way they can pretend to be an anonymous caller making untraceable threats.”

Mullen stared back at the inspector. He seemed to be enjoying himself. But what the heck was going on? Why wasn’t Dorkin taking him seriously?

Mullen stood up and leant forward across the table towards Dorkin. He heard Fargo tense for action, but Dorkin didn’t even blink. “There’s someone out there, Inspector, threatening to kill my friends. And you’re sitting there like some—“

Mullen never finished his sentence because one of Fargo’s huge hands had gripped him by the arm and was spinning him around as if he was a kid’s top from the days when kids had proper simple toys. The next thing Mullen knew was that he had been rammed back into his chair and two hands were holding his shoulders extremely firmly.

Dorkin’s smile had been replaced by a stony glare. “Shall I tell you why we aren’t taking you too seriously, Mullen? There are two reasons. Number one, it’s because you kept secret from us the fact that you and Becca Baines are pals. That you bought her a meal on Tuesday evening.”

“Actually we went Dutch.”

Fargo’s hands tensed, digging into his shoulders even more.

“This is the woman you were spying on. You mess up her sex life and the next thing is you’re dating her.”

“Not dating her. She came round to give me a verbal roasting, but I was only just out of hospital and I fainted in front of her. What with her being a nurse, well it changed things.”

“So you ended up in bed together?”

“No!” Mullen felt himself getting riled. “She put me to bed. She slept in a chair in the room. I think she was worried about me.”

“But you must like her because you had supper with her.”

“We have a shared interest.”

“Like stamp collecting?”

“Like finding out who killed Janice.”

“And why would she be interested in doing that?”

“Because, like me, she’s probably worried that you’ll try and pin it on her.”

Dorkin considered this, rubbing his fingers on his forehead. Then he gave a shake of his whole body and changed tack. He felt inside his jacket and pulled out a mobile phone. He took a few seconds to find what he wanted to find, then stretched across the table and held it close to Mullen’s face. “Take a look at this, sunshine.”

Mullen recognised who and where the photograph had been taken almost immediately.

“Our colleague, Detective Constable Ashe, is a bit of a Facebook obsessive. Always posting her holiday photos and sharing stupid stuff she’s spotted on the internet. I tell her it’s bad for her. I point out that people are more important than computers. But when has any woman taken a blind bit of notice of what I say?” The wry smile was back on Dorkin’s face. “But that’s one of the strengths of having someone like Ashe on the team. She thinks differently and has other ideas. Like looking to see if the Meeting Place had a Facebook page and then going through everything on it in great detail after she’d gone home and put her little boy to bed. All in her own time, bless her cotton socks. And then, amidst all the photographs up there, she finds this one.”

Mullen said nothing.

“You recognise yourself, of course?”

“Of course.”

“And the man you’re talking to. The man with long hair.”

“Of course I do.” Mullen was trying to think and finding it difficult. He hadn’t realised anyone had been taking any photos that evening. But of course anyone and everyone with a mobile phone can take a decent photograph in an instant nowadays and it’s impossible to stop. And here he was in a photograph with Chris and Chris had got his hand on Mullen’s shoulder as if they were best mates. And indeed the benign smile on Mullen’s face didn’t gainsay that.

“There are three others actually, Muggins. And they all suggest that you and Chris got on pretty well.”

Muggins! A flash flood of anger caused Mullen to grip the arms of the chair. If he lost control, it would be just the excuse Dorkin needed. Even so, when Mullen did finally speak, he did so more sharply and louder than he had intended. “It’s my job to get on well with people.”

“It’s your job to stop people getting out of hand.”

“I don’t believe in bullying people. I’ve seen it happen in the army. My best mate was bullied and he blew his own brains out. So I try to be nice to people and I only lay down the law when people are in danger of getting out of hand. I find it works best that way.”

Dorkin made a show of clapping, bringing his hands together and away again in slow motion, several times. “Bravo!” he said. Mullen pretended not to care. If there was a ‘taking the piss’ module in police training school, Dorkin had clearly passed with distinction.

“Are you gay, Mullen?”

Mullen said nothing.

“Chris was.”

There was more silence. The only significant noise was the heavy breathing of Fargo. He could sense the sergeant tensing behind him, waiting for the explosion that Dorkin was trying to detonate.

“Who told you that?” Mullen knew he had to wrest the initiative back from the inspector. There was nothing to be gained by lying down and letting Dorkin stamp all over him.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” There was the smile again.

Mullen stretched his arms. He felt Fargo’s hands alight ever so briefly on his shoulders in warning. He tried to think. Dorkin was trying to provoke a reaction. There were gays at the Meeting Place, of course there were. But Mullen doubted very much if Chris had been one of them. On the contrary, he had always seemed interested in the opposite sex, whether it was the waif-like Mel or a couple of the female punters who were always up for a nice flirt and maybe a lot more.

“I would, as it happens. But obviously you’re not going to tell me.”

“What were you two talking about in those photos then?”

Mullen knew it was easier – and safer – to tell the truth. Besides, he wasn’t sure how good he was at making things up on the spot. The chances were that Dorkin already had some idea about the conversation. Maybe someone had overheard some of it and informed the police. Kevin Branston or Mel or one of the punters.

“Chris was a bit on edge,” he started. “So a bit like Sergeant Fargo here, I put my hand on his shoulder to calm him down.” Mullen paused.

Dorkin looked at Fargo and nodded his head, which as far as Mullen was concerned could have meant anything. Grab him. Give him a slap to help his memory. Something like that. Fortunately Fargo didn’t interpret it that way. Instead he padded around the table and settled himself in front of the sink unit, close to Dorkin and in full view of Mullen.

“We need a bit more detail than that, Doug.”

“He didn’t say what it was about. It was only the third time I’d come across him at the Meeting Place and I’d not had any trouble from him previously. But that night he was on edge. Of course it was a special evening, when supporters of the project had been invited to come and see how it all worked and meet people. Maybe that had got to him. Or maybe it was something more personal. Anyway one of the other guys said something – I didn’t hear what – and Chris started to get aggressive with him. He was only a couple of metres away from me, so I stepped over to calm him down. I think that was when I put my hand on his shoulder. In retrospect it was a bit of a risk to take. He might have turned on me, but at the time it seemed to be the quickest and best way to kill off any trouble. With there being so many visitors, Kevin Branston had warned me not to let anything develop. Anyway that was what I did and it worked.”

Dorkin sucked at his teeth as if he had got a piece of food stuck in them. “So in the other photos of you and him talking, are you telling me that you can’t remember what you and he said? Didn’t you ask him what the problem was?”

“I asked him if he wanted to talk about it.”

Dorkin stared back at Mullen. “You’re a ruddy counsellor too are you now?”

“Not a very good one.” Mullen felt light-headed, as if he had consumed too much alcohol on an empty stomach. “Chris just changed the subject. He started asking me about the World Cup.”

* * *

As soon as Dorkin and his colleagues had driven away, Mullen got out his laptop. If Detective Constable Ashe could interrogate Facebook, then so could he.

It didn’t take long to find the photos of himself and Chris. It had been right at the beginning of the evening. There was already quite a scrum of punters and Chris had been in an awkward mood. Not that there had been any real trouble from him. That had come from Alec and John who had ended up fighting in the main hall – fortunately before the guests had arrived. Less fortunately Alec had ended up with a broken nose. The last thing Branston had wanted that evening was trouble, so after ordering John off the premises he had insisted Mullen drive Alec straight up to Accident and Emergency and stay with him until he had been dealt with. Two hours later Mullen had returned to the Meeting Place to discover the food and guests had all disappeared, leaving behind them a blocked toilet which he ended up having to sort out.

Mullen began to flick quickly through the rest of the album, curious to see what he had missed. But after only six photos he lifted his finger and stopped. On the screen in front of him was the Reverend Diana Downey. She stood out with her dog collar and rather flimsy clothing and was quite clearly attracting a lot of attention from the men there. Mullen scratched at his head. It wasn’t, as soon as he thought about it, so surprising that she should be there. You would expect a place like that to attract the support of churches. And it offered a more innocent explanation of why Kevin Branston had been visiting the Reverend Downey the other day. (Though it didn’t, Mullen reckoned, entirely explain Branston’s rather furtive exit from the vicarage. Or had he been imagining it?)

If Downey was there, had other people from St Mark’s church also come along to see how their money was being spent? As Mullen continued with a more careful trawl through the album, he soon got some answers. Downey appeared in several of them, always talking to a different person. Whoever it was who had been clicking away had been taken with her too. Mullen spotted Derek Stanley with his tell-tale goatee, talking to some of the regular punters. In another, more surprisingly, was Margaret Wilby, immaculately dressed in navy blue and white and talking to the student Mel and the punter who was always hanging around her. Was Wilby on some church committee and coming along in her official capacity? There were a couple of other faces that Mullen recognised from the church service, but otherwise nothing until he came across a picture that stopped his forefinger dead. In the centre, with his back to the camera, was Chris. The fact that his face was turned away didn’t mean he wasn’t easy to identify with his olive green t-shirt and camouflage trousers. Talking to him was Janice Atkinson, arm in arm with her husband Paul, and next to them stood Derek Stanley, listening intently. There was someone beyond Stanley – but all that was visible of him or her was a raised glass, a hand and a white sleeve. Was it Diana Downey? Mullen flicked to the next photograph in case it should reveal more. It didn’t. It contained mostly punters, except for the distinctive figure of Margaret Wilby, lips pursed as if the wine in her glass didn’t come up to scratch. Or maybe she thoroughly disapproved of the whole business. Mullen flicked on again, but realised he was back at the beginning with photos of the outside of the building bedecked with a long banner wishing everyone ‘Welcome to our Open Evening.’

He went back to the shot he was really interested in and dwelt on it for some time until he had all the details registered in his brain. He prided himself on what he could store away; it wasn’t exactly a photographic memory, but it was pretty good nevertheless.

After that he made himself a cup of tea and sat down again with a pad and pen. He revisited every photo, this time making a note of everyone he recognised from the church, the people they appeared to be talking to (in so far as he recognised them) and the photograph number concerned.

By the time he had got to the end, his tea, barely touched, was cold, but he drank it anyway, not caring, because he had more important things to worry about.

Such as where was Kevin Branston in all the photographs? The answer was nowhere. Did that mean he was the photographer? The only problem with that theory, Mullen told himself, was that it didn’t entirely fit with what he had observed of the man. Branston worked hard. He wasn’t averse to doing some of the background and menial work when required, but he wasn’t a man who avoided the limelight either. It was unquestionably odd that there wasn’t even a single photo of him in the Facebook album. He had got himself into the Oxford Mail the day after that open evening – a flattering photograph and an article that painted him and his project in glowing colours.

And what was he to make of Paul and Janice Atkinson? No sign of marital disharmony there. But then what did he expect? If you’re having an affair and your marriage is on the verge of going down the pan, that doesn’t mean you don’t put on shows of unity. But Janice’s arm was tucked through Paul’s and there was a broad smile on her face; either it was a very brave bit of play-acting or she didn’t at that stage have a clue about his affair. Except that this took place only a week or so before she had contacted Mullen and hired him to track her husband.

And then there was Margaret Wilby, glaring out of the background as if this was the last place on earth she wanted to be. Why was she there if that was the case? Was she there out of duty, under sufferance? Or had there been some falling out with someone earlier that evening?

Mullen clicked the screen of his laptop down and stood up. He felt confused and frustrated, not just with the overload of thoughts, but with the attitude of DI Dorkin. He clearly thought that the anonymous threatening call which Mullen had told them about was fiction, whereas Mullen could still hear the voice of the man in his head, telling him that one of his friends would pay the price. What did he mean by that? Presumably that he was prepared to kill again if Mullen didn’t give up his investigation. Who were the friends he was threatening? He had only been in the area a few months and there were few (if any) people he could genuinely call friends. Rose? Possibly. Becca? He guessed so. Kevin Branston? Mel or Brian or Jean or any of the other volunteers at the Meeting Place? They were all nice to him and twice they had all had a drink together after the evening sessions. What about Pavel from the Iffley Road flats? Ultimately it depended on what the caller meant by ‘friend.’

* * *

In the end Mullen decided he had had enough and made his way into the garden. He thought he’d check the tomato plants for water, weed the vegetable patch and tidy up generally. It would help him to switch his brain off for a while and when he had finished he would take a few photographs so that the professor could see that he was looking after the place. But he had barely got his hoe out before he heard a car pull into the drive. There was a wild attention-grabbing hooting. So whoever it was, it wasn’t the police again. He straightened up and walked round the side path, carrying his hoe. It wouldn’t hurt to show he was in the middle of something.

It was Becca Baines. She grinned. “Ah, it’s the hired gardener.” She held up two bags. “Lunch! Nice and healthy: salad and fresh rolls, plus strawberries for pudding.”

Mullen realised with a start that he was pleased to see her – and also hungry. But he was puzzled that she hadn’t rung first. “I might have been out,” he said.

“In that case I would have eaten solo in your lovely garden and then sunbathed until it was time to go to work.” She smiled. “I’m on the night shift today.”

They ate at the teak garden table, half in the shade and half out. They talked easily. Or rather Becca talked while Mullen listened. Not that he minded. She was good, lively company. Eventually they finished and he went inside to make them coffee. She followed with the debris of lunch.

“You seem distracted,” she said as she put the leftovers in the fridge.

“Sorry.”

“Well are you going to tell me about it or do I have to apply Chinese burns to extract the information?”

So Mullen started to talk. About Chris, about Janice, about the police’s questioning that morning and about what he had seen on Facebook. The only thing he didn’t mention was the anonymous caller.

“Show me,” she said. So he did.

He took her through each photograph, telling her who he knew in each one. She was silent now, murmuring occasionally, sipping her coffee, taking it all in. When he got to the end, he turned and looked at her. “Any thoughts?”

“There are more shots of your glamorous vicar friend than anyone,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And no wedding ring on her finger.”

“No.”

“Is she gay?”

“I don’t know.”

“I bet she isn’t.” Becca had taken over the laptop. She moved back to one of the photographs of Diana Downey, mouth open, laughing, surrounded by punters. “Look at her. She likes to be the centre of male attention. A bit of a prick-teaser, if you ask me. Hiding behind her clerical robes.”

Mullen almost pointed out that she didn’t seem to wear ‘clerical’ clothes even in church, but managed not to.

“Who took the photos?” Becca said.

“Sorry?” Mullen was taken off guard by the change of direction. “I don’t know.”

“A man, I bet. Probably fancies her something rotten.”

It was a light bulb in the brain moment for Mullen. Of course! It was so obvious. Kevin Branston! It all made sense. Branston was conspicuously absent from the photographs, so the chances were that it was him taking the photos. And it was Branston who had been leaving Diana Downey’s house in something of a hurry before Mullen’s own appointment with her. He was probably in charge of the Facebook account too, making sure there were plenty of photos of their open evening on display – not to mention Reverend Downey in all her glamour. He was besotted with her. The question was: did she feel the same way about him?

“Well?” Becca was looking at him impatiently. “What’s going on in that tiny little brain of yours? Because I can hear the cogs clicking, albeit rather slowly.”

Mullen explained. Becca listened with a brow so furrowed it might have been a freshly ploughed field. He thought he found her even more attractive when she was in serious mode. When he had finished, he waited for her to respond. He needed help and he reckoned that she – being a woman and detached – might be the person to provide it.

“I suppose the question is: does the vicar getting up to a bit of hanky-panky with your boss have any relevance to the two deaths?”

“It’s possible, I suppose. If someone was trying to blackmail them, maybe . . .” Mullen dribbled to a halt. Just putting his thinking into words seemed to highlight how flimsy it was.

Becca was looking at him inscrutably. “You don’t seem very certain.”

“No.” He scratched his head. “Well, these days it wouldn’t be the end of the world if such a relationship came to light would it?”

“Is Kevin Branston married?”

Mullen felt very stupid. He hadn’t thought of that. But he knew the answer to her question. “He wears a wedding ring.”

“So put yourself in the Reverend’s shoes. She’s fallen for a married guy. They are sleeping together. Every Sunday she stands up in the pulpit and preaches the ten commandments and all that jazz. Then Chris and Janice find out and they decide to apply a bit of blackmail. ’Woman Vicar is a Marriage Wrecker!’ You can imagine the headlines in the Daily Trash, can’t you? So Reverend Downey tells Kevin it’s all over and she tells him why. But Kevin is obsessed with her. No way is he going to let her finish with him. He’s going to sort the two of them out permanently. So he arranges two very different ‘accidents.’ Maybe he doesn’t even tell Diana.”

She downed the last of her coffee and put her mug on the side. “Well?”

“OK,” Mullen said. “You’ve made a good case. But where’s the hard evidence?”

“You’re the private eye, buster.”

* * *

Mullen’s intention had been to get to the Meeting Place early and in some way or other confront Kevin Branston. He hadn’t worked out the details in his head when he left Boars Hill. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the saying goes, especially on the Oxford ring road system on a Friday, when the rush hour begins midway through the afternoon and lasts forever – or so it seemed to Mullen as he sat fuming in his car on the slow drag towards the Heyford Hill roundabout.

So Mullen actually arrived five minutes late, which put him at an immediate disadvantage. Branston was onto him within seconds, even though he had tried to slip in unobtrusively.

“What time do you call this, Mullen?”

“Sorry, the traffic was really bad.”

“The traffic is the same for everyone,” Branston snapped. Mullen was tempted to argue the toss on that. Branston was within cycling distance, so of course queues of stationary vehicles weren’t going to affect him significantly. But he merely apologised again.

“I’m really sorry, Kevin. It really was just a misjudgement. I’ve moved house and didn’t realise quite how long it would take me. I’ll allow more time next Friday.”

“Good.” Branston seemed to be mollified. He switched into his more normal organisational mode. “We’re one down in the kitchen. So keep an eye on the food queues. Hungry people don’t like to be kept waiting. And of course England are pretty much down and out of the World Cup, so who knows how that will affect people’s mood.”

“Sure.” Mullen moved off through the scrum of people. He had noticed on the BBC website that England had crashed to their second defeat the previous night. What with everything else going on in his life, it seemed totally irrelevant. But he knew from his own brief footballing career in the army how easily passions were raised and how much it hurt when your team lost.

“See the game last night?” It was Brian. Mullen liked him. He and his wife Jean were there every Friday doing their bit. He had a pack of loo rolls under his arm. “Urgent delivery!” he laughed. And then he was gone.

It was a subdued crowd that evening. Mullen put it down partly to depression resulting from England’s World Cup disaster. It had been a lovely day, the warmest of the week, and although that meant people were very happily smoking and chatting outside, everyone seemed rather flat. The only person who got excited about the food being slower than usual was a man called Terry who had diabetes and hence a very short fuse at meal times. Mullen got a roll off Jean and made him chew on it. He suspected that Terry was making the most of his condition to try and jump to the front of the queue. He wasn’t having that, but equally he didn’t want unnecessary trouble. He’d bring it up at the end-of-day team meeting in case there were better ways he could have handled it.

But apart from another blockage in the gents loo – this time a combination of a pair of pants and two plastic bags – it was a pretty uneventful evening. After the punters had gone and the clearing and cleaning up had been completed, the team settled down with cups of tea and debriefed.

Terry and Jean complained about the shortage of cloths and cleaning materials, but in general everyone seemed to be keen to get off home. Branston, who had been yawning intermittently through the meeting, called Mullen back as he prepared to leave.

“Hey,” he said. “I understand it was you who found Chris dead in the river.”

“Yeah.” Mullen could hardly deny it. That sort of information was bound to come out eventually, though he was surprised. No-one else at the Meeting Place had mentioned it, which meant that it surely wasn’t public knowledge. He wondered who Branston’s source was.

“That’s quite a coincidence,” Branston continued, looking askance at Mullen. “Do you want to tell me about it?”