Authors: Peter Tickler
* * *
Tracking Janice Atkinson’s husband had proved a very straightforward first assignment for Mullen. On three separate evenings Mullen had followed Paul Atkinson after work and on each occasion he had obtained remarkably good photos which were, by his reckoning, evidence about as watertight as any wronged wife could possibly wish for. The object of Paul Atkinson’s attentions was a surprisingly bulky redhead with a taste for loud floral patterns, a ferociously fruity laugh and an appetite to match. It was clear to Mullen that Atkinson was besotted with her. Even in the public space of the hotel bar where they met each evening, Atkinson was unable to keep his hands off her.
The following Friday Mullen met up with Janice Atkinson in a retro coffee bar on Oxford’s Cowley Road. He got there at two twenty, ten minutes early. He was relieved to see it was sparsely occupied, and as he sat at the back, waiting for his Americano to cool, he realised with some alarm that he wasn’t looking forward to their meeting one little bit. He ran his hand across his forehead. There were beads of moisture on it. He took off his jacket and wiped his brow. He would be glad to receive his fee — of course he would — but as for giving the wretched woman the bad news and confirming her worst fears, that was something he really wasn’t ready for.
When he saw Janice advancing across the floor, he stood up like a nervous young man on a first date. As soon as they were both sitting down, he looked for the waitress but she was already heading their way.
Janice ordered a green tea.
“This is on me,” Mullen said, like some big-hearted Harry. And immediately he regretted it. He was preparing her for bad news and she saw it immediately. Her face deflated like a balloon that has developed a leak and he hated himself. He felt a spurt of shame and self-disgust at the job he had chosen to do. But there was no going back. This, he realised, was where he opened Pandora’s Box. Whatever came out of the meeting, there would be no going back for Janice Atkinson. And he was going about it with all the tact of a bull elephant on the rampage.
“Well?” She spoke in a whisper, her lips barely moving. She was wearing her hair tucked behind her ears, which accentuated the tightness in her face and the anxiety in her eyes.
Mullen said nothing, conscious that whatever he did say would almost certainly be wrong. Just as wrong as sliding a brown envelope of incriminating photographs across the table. But that was what he did anyway because he had to say or do
something
.
She turned it over as if examining it for booby traps. There was nothing written on it. It was just a plain brown envelope with stuff inside it. With a sudden flick of her left hand — the third finger, he noticed, was decorated with a seriously expensive diamond ring plus a plain gold wedding band — she ripped it open and slipped its contents onto the table in front of her. Mullen flicked a glance beyond her; she didn’t seem bothered about rubberneckers. There were some twenty photographs in the pile — Mullen had, of course, taken a lot more than that, but twenty had seemed to him more than sufficient for their meeting. She began to tap the sides of the pile, until all twenty pieces of evidence were perfectly ordered.
“Here’s your green tea.” The waitress had appeared by the table and was slowly unloading a small pot, a cup and saucer and a couple of sugar sachets onto the table. “Anything else I can get you?” She hovered longer than was necessary. Mullen’s thought so anyway, though Janice Atkinson seemed not to care.
“No thank you.”
Janice began to leaf through the photographs. She looked at each one carefully for maybe four or five seconds before moving onto the next. She made no comments. When she got to the end, she slipped them back in the envelope and leant back.
“Job done then.”
Mullen nodded.
“I guess I owe you some money.”
Mullen nodded again.
Janice Atkinson was studying him intently. “Cat got your tongue?”
Mullen knew he should say something, but the words wouldn’t come. He wondered if she was going to burst into tears. He ought to carry a packet of tissues for times like this. It ought to be part of the private eye’s standard kit.
But Janice didn’t cry. Instead she picked up her cup in her right hand. Her fingers and thumb were tight as pliers around it. For a moment Mullen thought it might shatter in her hand. Or was she going to hurl cup and green tea all over him? After such bad news, he would hardly have blamed her if she did.
Mullen knew he had to say something. “Actually,” he said, “It’s the first time I’ve done this.”
If he hoped to elicit sympathy, he failed miserably. “I bet you enjoy it, don’t you? Poking into other people’s secrets and lies?” She leant forward, hissing her fury. “What sort of man are you, Mullen?”
He winced. He felt her pain, but he knew his own too. “Look, I didn’t enjoy it. Not one little bit. But I need the money. Anyway, it was you who answered my advertisement.”
They glared at each other for several seconds. Then she dropped her gaze, her anger apparently spent. “Sorry.” Her voice was a whisper again. She leant forward. An observer might have assumed they were close, even intimate. “It’s my first time too.” Mullen shifted uneasily in his seat. He wanted to leave, but she hadn’t paid him yet.
As if reading his mind, she pulled a smaller envelope out of her bag and held it nonchalantly in her hand.
“What’s her name?”
Mullen said nothing. He hadn’t intended to tell Janice in case she went round to the woman’s house and beat her half to death. He imagined she was more than capable of it.
“What’s the name of the bitch that is sleeping with my husband?”
Mullen tried a final, futile defence.
“Does it matter?”
“Name and address.” She waved the envelope in the air. “Then, and only then, do I pay you.”
He could probably have grabbed it; he could move fast when he needed to. But in the circumstances, in a public place, who knew where that might lead?
“Well?” She pulled the envelope close to her body, alert to all possibilities.
“Becca Baines.”
“Address?”
“Wood Farm Road.” He gave her the number too. It was a flat half-way up a characterless tower block. He had followed her home one evening.
She didn’t bother to write it down. Mary Tudor was said to have had Calais engraved on her heart. Maybe the words ‘Becca Baines, Wood Farm Road’ were already carved into Janice Atkinson’s. Mullen wondered if he had made a big mistake. Suppose she went storming round there and took her revenge?
She gave a thin smile. “Thank you, Mr Mullen.” She flipped the envelope across the table. It collided with his half-drunk coffee, but the mug stayed upright.
“Everything all right?”
Startled, they both looked up. It was the waitress again, appearing like the bad fairy. Or the nosy neighbour.
Janice pointedly ignored her. She raised her eyes to Mullen. “Do you think we can get a proper drink somewhere round here?” she said. “It’ll be on me.”
* * *
Janice Atkinson was wanting more than alcohol. That much seemed clear to Mullen, but mixing work and pleasure seemed (at the very least) unnecessarily complicated, especially when he had been shadowing the woman’s husband for the last few days. Besides, he didn’t fancy Janice in the slightest. Sure, he felt sorry for her. But that was as far as it went.
She kept giggling. Mullen couldn’t keep up. One moment she had been bullying him into submission and the next she was throwing herself at him like a teenage groupie at a rock star. Women were so hard to understand.
Dutifully he laughed at her jokes and reassured her that he couldn’t possibly understand why Paul should prefer an overweight bitch like Becca Baines to her. That was a lie, of course. He could definitely see why a man would find Baines very attractive. But in the circumstances a lie seemed preferable.
Mullen let her blether on while he downed his pint as quickly as he decently could. Then he made his excuses.
“I really have got to go,” he said. “Work calls.”
“Yeah, right.”
Mullen felt he had to explain. “I help out at a drop-in on Friday evenings.”
“Not snooping on people then?”
He ignored the jibe. “The Meeting Place, down in Cowley. We provide food, friendship and—”
Janice cut in. “All right, off you go then. Mustn’t stop you doing your good works.”
He stood up and for a moment or three he hovered, just like the waitress at the café.
“Bugger off, then!” She dismissed him with a wave of her hand.
He nodded, turned and headed towards the exit; a naughty schoolboy sent out of the classroom. As he pulled the door open, he half turned. She was watching him. But her face remained impassive as a mask.
When Mullen arrived at the Meeting Place at 5.30 p.m. on the dot, he immediately sensed that something was different. There were more than the usual number of clients for this time of day and the conversations were muted and secretive. The World Cup had kicked off only the night before and yet no-one seemed to be talking about it. Mullen wasn’t much interested in any case. The patriot inside him wanted England to surprise everyone and win the thing — preferably beating Germany in the process — but the realist told him that this was only marginally more likely than the moon turning out to be made of cheese. He made his way through the throng and greeted his fellow volunteers. Kay and Alex were already hard at work making sandwiches, and the manager Kevin Branston, broad of beam and heavily bearded, homed in on him, clapping him unnecessarily hard on the upper arm.
“Good to see you, Doug. Can you mingle tonight?”
Doug had been asked to mingle every session since Branston had discovered he had a military background. “We need someone who can handle himself in a difficult situation,” he had explained on that occasion, ignoring the fact that Mullen had just told him his expertise had been in communications, not hand-to-hand combat. Mullen’s army career had lasted barely two years, but Branston was now convinced that his usefulness lay primarily in dealing with any nastiness that might suddenly erupt. This became more understandable to Mullen when he looked around at the rest of the volunteers: all of them, with the exception of the stick-thin student Mel, were well past pensionable age.
“See the Brazil game last night?” Mullen asked, keen to make use of the time he had wasted in front of the TV.
Branston ignored the question. “Folks are a bit on edge,” he said. “Chris was fished out of the river a couple of days ago.”
“Chris?” For the briefest moment, Mullen wondered what on earth Branston was talking about. And then all the bells in his head started ringing in unison.
“Shoulder-length blonde hair tied in a ponytail, camouflage clothes, bare feet and sandals?”
“Of course.”
“Two mornings ago. Some jogger fished him out of the water.”
Mullen looked hard at Branston. Did he know it was he who had pulled Chris out of the river? Was Branston giving him a prod to see how he would react? He wouldn’t have put it past him. But Branston’s mind had apparently moved on to other things. His eyes were traversing the room, looking for someone or checking for trouble. “Anyway, keep on your toes, Mullen.” He patted him on the shoulder and then he was off. Mullen watched him wend his way through the scrum of people queuing for their food. He didn’t warm to Branston. Apart from his patronising manner, there was something shifty about him — a man you couldn’t quite pin down or trust. Or was that Mullen’s own paranoia kicking in? He shook himself. It was time to concentrate on the clients.
Suddenly another hand — or rather a finger — jabbed Mullen in the shoulder blade. He spun around, hands raised, ready to attack or defend. Old habits die hard.
“Steady up, matey.” It was DI Dorkin. “Assaulting an officer can get you in a lot of trouble.”
Mullen dropped his hands. “And so can creeping up on people without warning.”
“You’re a regular here are you?”
“I volunteer every Friday.”
“Bit of a coincidence.” Dorkin scratched at his neck, and then pulled at the collar of his tieless white shirt. He was, Mullen reckoned, the sort of man who would never look comfortable in a suit even though he wouldn’t dream of coming to work without one.
“Is that it?” Mullen asked.
“No,” came the reply. “I think we need a little chat.”
* * *
The ‘little chat’ took place in Branston’s office, which Dorkin had established as his centre of operations for the evening. Branston had been banished and a seriously young uniformed PC stood in the corner of the room trying to look more important than he was. Mullen sat down on a plastic green chair with a comfort value of zero and waited. Dorkin undid the buttons of his jacket and dumped himself into Branston’s office chair. He adjusted its height — up, down and then up again — until he was satisfied. He jiggled from side to side, as if settling himself in for the long haul. Then he unleashed a grin.
“So, Mr Mullen. What have you got to say for yourself?”
Mullen shrugged. As questions went, it didn’t exactly demand a reply.
“You see,” Dorkin continued, “there’s something I don’t quite get, Mr Mullen. You come across a dead body in the river. You fish him out. Like a good upright citizen you dial 999. But then, when questioned, you fail to mention the fact that you know him.”
During the time Dorkin had been settling himself into Branston’s chair, Mullen had been thinking hard about this question. He knew that if Dorkin was an even half-competent detective, he was bound to ask something along these lines. But despite this opportunity to prepare an answer, Mullen doubted that it was going to cut much ice with the laughing policeman here.
“I didn’t exactly know him. I’ve only been coming here for six weeks, on Fridays. Chris was just one of a hundred people thronging the place.” He hoped it didn’t sound quite as feeble as he feared.
“But you’ve spoken to him here, right?”
Mullen paused. Was this a fishing expedition? Was Dorkin just casting a line and hoping for a bite?
“Branston definitely thinks you have.” The detective sat very still, watching Mullen as if they were playing ‘Who blinks first?’
Mullen shrugged. He knew he had to say something. “I’ve probably spoken to half the people here. In the sense of passing the time of day, apologising that I don’t have a spare cigarette, or telling them to tone things down. That doesn’t mean I’d recognise them all if I found them floating face-down in the river.”
Dorkin’s eyes narrowed. “I’d have thought that as a private eye you’d be good at remembering faces.”
“I’ve not been doing it long, have I? Still wearing my L plates.” Mullen smiled, trying to laugh off the question, but Dorkin was having none of it.
“Don’t get smart with me, Muggins. I could make life very difficult for you.”
A warning light flashed somewhere in Mullen’s brain. He had once knocked out a squaddie who had teased him about his name. He clenched his hands over his stomach and reined in the impulse to do the same with Dorkin. “Okay, the fact is I didn’t recognise Chris. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should have. But I didn’t.”
Dorkin leant back in his chair and gave Mullen another of his full frontal grins. He seemed to be pleased with what he had achieved. “As far as I am concerned, Muggins, you can clear off back to work. Just so long as you tell me what it was you and Chris talked about.”
Mullen smiled back, now fully under control. He had an answer, a very credible one. “The World Cup,” he said.
* * *
Across the other side of the city, at pretty much the same moment as Mullen was checking in for his shift at the Meeting Place, Janice Atkinson was waking up on her sofa. She wasn’t used to drinking alcohol in the middle of the day, especially on an empty stomach, and it had made her ridiculously light-headed, and dopey to boot. She was conscious that she had made a bit of a fool of herself with Doug Mullen, so much so that he had downed his pint and exited the pub with indecent haste. She had, briefly, hated him for that. He could at least have bought her a drink. She had paid him enough. As it was, she had had to buy herself a second large glass of white wine and then drink it on her own. She had picked up a newspaper which someone had left on a nearby seat and had tried to concentrate on reading it, but her brain refused to co-operate. A gaunt young man with a body odour problem had sat himself down on the other side of the table without so much as a ‘do you mind’ and attempted to chat her up. As it happened, she had minded, so she drained what was left in her glass and left, feeling very sorry for herself.
Back home, she had lain down on the sofa and fallen asleep, waking only when the grandfather clock chimed five. She went to the toilet — very necessary — and then checked her mobile in the kitchen. A new text message from Paul informed her that he was going out to play squash later, so only wanted a light meal. She snorted, but set about preparing it anyway. At 5.55 p.m. he arrived home in an upbeat mood. They ate in the kitchen with the TV news on in the background. They exchanged pleasantries and actually agreed that the prospect of four weeks of World Cup football dominating the headlines and the TV schedules was just too much to bear thinking about. Afterwards Paul went upstairs to change and gather together his kit. By seven he had left to meet up with his friend Charles Speight.
Or so he said. Janice wasn’t convinced. All this fussing about his gear could have been a pretence. She had never been so gullible as to believe everything that her husband said and recent events had made her even more sceptical. She waited ten minutes while she made herself a coffee — she really did need a clearer head — and then she put in a call to Rachel Speight. Ostensibly this was to ask her if she’d like to meet for lunch the following week, but in reality it was to establish if Charles was indeed playing squash with her husband that evening. He was. Or at least that was clearly what Rachel believed.
Janice double-checked that the front door was locked and slipped the security chain across. The last thing she wanted was for Paul to return unexpectedly. She settled back down at the kitchen table. She had a couple of hours at least to come up with a plan. She laid out several of Mullen’s photographs and studied her husband chatting to, laughing with, touching and even kissing the woman. Becca Baines. She had thought at first that Mullen wasn’t going to give her the bitch’s name. And especially not her address. But he had caved in soon enough when he saw the envelope of money in her hand. He wasn’t so tough after all. Show a man you aren’t going to take any nonsense and you soon discover what he’s made of. Marshmallow in Mullen’s case. Presumably he had been worried she might go round to Wood Farm armed with a rolling pin or piece of lead piping and inflict some serious damage on the fat cow.
That was the thing she most resented: the woman with whom her husband was messing about — she tried not to think of them as actually having sexual intercourse — was fat. In fact, she reckoned Becca must, technically speaking, be obese. But that thought made Janice feel even angrier. What had Becca got that she hadn’t? Janice downed her coffee, imagining it to be a giant-sized gin and tonic, and swore into the silence of the kitchen. The answer to her unspoken question was simple. What Becca had was youth. It was undeniable. She must be ten years younger, maybe fifteen. But she also wobbled like a jelly. Janice told herself that, unlike Becca the Fat, she had looked after herself diligently over the years: a personal trainer; a boutique hair-dresser in Jericho; daily applications of all sorts of creams to revitalise her skin and put off the inevitable onset of ageing; she had even put herself through seaweed wraps on several occasions. She had avoided Botox. That, as far as she was concerned, was going too far.
Janice focused again on the task in hand and picked up one of the photos from the table. She studied it: Becca’s giggling face was close to Paul’s, as if telling him a dirty joke or possibly making an obscene suggestion about what they could be doing up in the hotel room Paul had booked. Janice spat at her rival’s face and watched with pleasure as a gob of saliva hit her full in the eye. If only she could do that to her in person — or worse! Except that deep down she knew that even if she had the opportunity, she would almost certainly bottle out.
She put the photo back in its place on the table. What was she going to do with them? She ought to have confronted Paul as soon as he got home. She should have laid the photographs out on the table so that he saw them as he walked into the room. Instead she had delivered his supper to him like the perfect Stepford wife and chatted to him about trivialities. What was the point of paying out money to get the photos if she wasn’t going to follow it through?
She put her head in her hands and groaned. What on earth was she going to do? Walk out on him with just her pair of matching suitcases? What good would that do her? He’d probably laugh at her, move Becca in and cancel her monthly allowance. Should she change the locks when he was out at work? But how would she stand legally if she did? Paul and his solicitor Nick Newey were as thick as thieves. She would need to find her own solicitor first and get her advice —
her
advice because the last thing she was going to do was hire a man to represent her. She selected another photo. In this one Paul and Becca were kissing and his hand was touching her bottom. Janice felt the bitter taste of bile rising in her throat and fought it back down. No, she told herself, I will not be beaten. Not by him. Not when he’s the one in the wrong.
She stood up and went through to the small study which in theory they both shared, though Paul preferred to lounge on the sofa while checking his emails and do all his internet stuff in front of the giant TV. She opened the third desk drawer and pulled out a brown envelope. She picked up a rollerball pen in her right hand and wrote — rather slowly since she was left-handed — her husband’s name and work address on it. Out of the same drawer she located a first class stamp and stuck it on. She went back to the kitchen and inserted that single photo into the envelope, which she sealed. She returned the rest of the photos to Mullen’s envelope and hid them in the utility cupboard behind all the cleaning materials. Paul would never find them there. Then she made her way to the front door. There was a mail box at the end of the road and five minutes later the envelope addressed to Paul Atkinson was safely inside it and she was back home.