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

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 deja 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.”