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

“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.”

“It’s not mine.”

“You could have found it. And you could have used it.”

“But I didn’t.”

“That’s what the police will think, isn’t it?” Rose said all this in a matter-of-fact way. “That you might have found it and given it to Chris and Janice before you killed them.”

“But I didn’t.” Mullen suddenly felt defensive. He had thought Rose was on his side, but here she was making a case against him. “Don’t you believe me?”

“Of course.” She stretched out her hand and for a second allowed it to rest on his. “But it doesn’t look good, Doug.”

This time Mullen took another, slower pull at his lemonade.

“Do you have alibis that someone else can confirm?”

Mullen shook his head. It was something he had thought about too.

“It was you who found Chris, wasn’t it? That won’t look good either. And you took those photographs for Janice and then she was killed.”

“Hell, I know that.” He didn’t mean to snap, but it was hard not to. “Don’t you think I feel guilty about her? If I hadn’t gone snooping for her, she wouldn’t have come looking for me in the Iffley Road and she would still be alive.”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Doug.” Rose sounded like her mother. “We need to make a plan and we need to get on with it before the police come knocking on your door again.”

* * *

“You’re the detective. Don’t you have a prime suspect?” Rose had just made them a second glass of lemonade with plenty of ice. It was ridiculously hot in the flat, even with the balcony doors pulled wide open. “I mean, the prime suspects for Janice must be her husband or her husband’s lover. Paul or Becca. Or both, of course.”

“But why would they kill Chris?” Mullen was talking as much to himself as to Rose.

“How can you be sure Chris was murdered?”

“The rohypnol.”

“Maybe someone just gave it to him. Maybe he thought it was some other drug. He took it, had a drink and then fell into the river. That’s the simple answer isn’t it?”

“Why did you and Janice hire me in the first place?”

Rose shrugged. “Because we liked him.”

“That’s it?”

“We felt we owed him.”

“Owed him what?”

“Not to be forgotten. Not to be ignored just because he was a drifter, a man with no place in society and no fixed abode.”

“What about everyone else at St Mark’s?”

“A few people agreed. Mostly women. However, I suspect that the majority of people in the church thought we should just leave it to the police.”

“And was there anyone who was actively hostile to your plans? Anyone who tried to dissuade you?”

Rose frowned. Not for the first time Mullen realised he found her rather attractive. She wasn’t a conventional beauty, but then he had never been drawn to conventional beauties.

“The vicar of course. Diana didn’t like Chris. She hid it well. She was perfectly nice to him, but . . .” Rose paused, allowing Mullen to interrupt.

“But she was worried about the effect he was having on her congregation? On people like Janice and yourself?”

“I guess so.”

“Anyone else apart from Diana?”

“My mother.” Rose laughed at the thought. “She definitely didn’t like the way Chris flirted with me.”

“Why not?”

“Being nice to him in church was one thing. But any sort of relationship would have been quite another thing in my mother’s book.”

“And did you respond to any of his flirtations?”

There was a slight pause before she answered his question. “No.”

Mullen considered this for a few seconds before moving on. “So when you came and told me you wanted me to stop the investigation, who put you up to it?”

“Diana and my mother essentially. But Janice had got cold feet too. That was what we talked about the last time I spoke to her. She and Rachel Speight waited behind at the end of the youth group. They said they wanted to offer me some ‘good Christian advice.’”

“That was it? Did none of the men offer you ‘good Christian advice?’”

Rose frowned again, as if that was something she had not considered before. “There was Derek Stanley of course. Wherever my mother goes, he follows in her footsteps. But in my experience, men are less keen to hand out free advice.”

“Tell me about Derek.”

“What is there to know? He was here at St Mark’s when my mother and I came ten years ago.”

“Does he have any family?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“He had a sister, didn’t he? Lived in Hungerford. She committed suicide.”

Rose opened her eyes wide. “Gosh. You are well informed.”

“She was in Hungerford the day Michael Ryan ran amok and killed fourteen people. According to Derek, she was lucky not to be killed herself. Exactly one year later she hanged herself.”

She stood up and walked over to the balcony windows, staring out across the river. Mullen studied her profile and was struck by her nose, long and slightly upturned at the end, suggesting an arrogance that was at odds with what he knew of her character. She turned towards him. “How on earth did you get Derek to tell you that?”