Dead in the Water - Tickler Peter (книги онлайн без регистрации TXT) 📗

“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?”

Mullen shook his head. “Not really. Maybe after the coroner has passed judgement.”

Branston gave another yawn. His breath smelt of garlic and mints. But he hadn’t finished. “It must have been quite a surprise for you.”

“Looks like you need an early night,” Mullen replied, trying to change the subject.

Branston yawned again. “Ten out of ten for observation, Doug.” He pressed his shoulders back, flexing his arms. “Gina, my wife, wakes me up. She’s always waking up and then she turns on the lights and fusses about getting cups of tea and scanning the internet on her tablet. So I wake up too and then I can’t get back to sleep either.”

“Can’t the doctor prescribe something for her?” A thought was flitting elusively round Mullen’s brain.

“Of course. And they have done. But it’s a dangerous road. I don’t approve myself. You can easily become dependent on them. So Gina saves them for when she’s feeling desperate. As for me, I just move into the spare room when I need an uninterrupted night.”

Mullen paused. He was tempted to ask what drugs the doctor had prescribed for Gina Branston, but something held him back — caution or intuition — and then the opportunity was gone.

“Anyway, we are all done here,” Branston said with finality. “Time to go home.” He turned off the hall lights in order to drive home his point. “See you next week, Doug.”

Mullen nodded and said goodnight. His opportunity had gone, but his suspicions remained.

Chapter 8

The dream began in the usual way. He was back in the army and was opening the door into Ben’s bedroom. There was a smell of joss sticks, which was strange because Ben never burned joss sticks. He was sitting at his small table. The room was dark except for where his red, blue and white angle-poise lamp cast a glaring light down onto a book over which Ben was hunched. Mullen was puzzled. He walked over to the desk to see what the book was because Ben was not a reader of books.

“Hello, mate,” Ben said, turning his head. Mullen didn’t dare look at him because he knew what he would see. That black hole where his mouth and nose should be. He bent down and closed the book so that he could see what it was. An animal’s face stared out at him: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Then he became aware of a ringing sound. Half awake, Mullen felt for his mobile and answered the call.

“Who’s that?”

“Fitz,” said a thick Glaswegian accent. “You said to ring. It’s about Chris.”

Mullen’s somnolent brain woke up, identifying the guy to whom he had given the last of his supply of cigarettes. “Yes?”

“You promised twenty quid.”

“OK. Where shall we meet?”

“There’s a good cafe in St Giles. In half an hour.”

“Half an hour? Not sure I can be there that soon.”

“I’ll wait outside.” He hung up.

* * *

Fitz was sitting on the pavement, legs crossed, eyes cast down and a cap laid upside down in front of him. There were half a dozen coins in the bottom, but only one of them was silver.

“Fitz?”

As soon as Mullen spoke, the man leapt to his feet with surprising alacrity, scooping up hat and money as he did so.

“Thought you weren’t coming.”

“You know what thought did,” Mullen replied, quoting something that his teacher Miss King used to say to him without ever explaining further.

“I’m hungry.”

A full English breakfast was clearly part of the deal as far as Fitz was concerned. Mullen didn’t mind. He ordered himself one too. It was a welcome change from Muesli. And as long as Fitz was waiting for and then eating his breakfast and drinking his tea, he was a captive audience.

“So, tell me about Chris.”

“Hungry,” Fitz said.

Doug shrugged and waited. Two mugs of tea were soon delivered, but Fitz remained sullen and silent. The teas were followed, with impressive speed, by two plates piled with the sort of fry-up a man would die for. Mullen dug in, pushing a fork piled high with bacon, egg, sausage and toast into his mouth. He shuddered with pleasure. He looked across at Fitz, who grunted rhythmically as he swallowed three mouthfuls of food in quick succession. At that rate, Mullen reckoned, he would be done and dusted within minutes and then out of the door. Maybe this was a mistake, another dead end up which he had been led. Fitz jerked his head up as if he had read Mullen’s thoughts and gave a toothy grin.

“He was a tight bastard.”

Fitz took another slug of tea from his mug and belched. Mullen sipped at his tea and waited.

“Tried to borrow off me. He pretended he was skint. I was stupid enough to give him a tenner, but I never got it back.”