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“Thanks, Doc.”
The doctor-schoolboy sniffed. “Maybe after you’ve taken a shower.”
It wasn’t the subtlest of hints, but Mullen wasn’t bothered.
He lay there a bit longer, reluctant to do anything. Someone in a green uniform appeared with a trolley. His name was Rick. It said so on his badge. He chatted so volubly that Mullen decided maybe he would like to get home after all.
“Will you be wanting lunch?” Rick asked, ever helpful.
“Not if my lift turns up first.”
Rick moved on. Mullen, who had opted for a cup of tea, drank it slowly. Then he went in search of the shower room.
* * *
Becca Baines had only been in the hospital car park ten minutes when Mullen appeared out of the main entrance escorted by a man and a woman. She didn’t know either of them. The guy was wearing bright orange-brown chinos and a summer jacket, and the woman was neat and precise in both clothing and movements. Even the dark curls of her hair seemed well controlled. Baines walked slowly towards her own car, a red Fiat Punto, trying to keep an eye on the trio as they made their way across to a blue Vauxhall Astra. Suppose Mullen looked over, saw her and recognised her? But surely he wouldn’t. She was wearing sunglasses, a long black wig and a retro dress from the back of the wardrobe which she wouldn’t normally be seen dead in. Wasn’t that enough of a disguise? She had bought the wig for a fancy dress party, as a bit of a laugh, but it hadn’t been that cheap and she had rather liked the effect it had had on a guy called Steve — rock hard biceps and an eagle tattoo on his neck. But Becca needn’t have worried about being recognised. Mullen was fully pre-occupied by the task of getting to the car. His two escorts were walking so closely he might have been handcuffed to them. The man got into the driver’s seat while the woman held open the rear door for Mullen as if he was incapable of doing anything for himself. Mind you, he did have an impressive bandage round his head. The woman bent over him, fussing. Finally, she shut his door and walked round to the other side of the car. She opened the rear door. She was going to sit next to him. Baines puckered her lips, much as Frankie Howard used to do. “Ooh!” Becca could read the body language even at this distance: the woman fancied Mullen.
Becca wanted to laugh out loud, but the Astra was already moving off. She hurriedly squeezed herself into the Punto — no easy task given how close the neighbouring SUV had parked — rammed the key into the ignition and started the engine. By the time she had reached the exit barrier, the Astra was out of sight. There was only one road out, but when she got to the end of it and encountered the junction, she felt the first stirrings of panic. Left or right? A glance each way gave no clues. Logic told her that the chances were they would have turned right. A driver behind her hooted. She shouted abuse into the mirror and followed her instincts, turning right down the hill. There was a blue Mini some distance in front. And a car in front of it. They were slowing down, as red lights gave Baines the chance to close the gap, but seconds later the lights changed and they were on the move again, over a mini roundabout and then right, blue Astra followed by the Mini. She pressed on after them, out to the ring road and then over it before looping back and off towards the Headington roundabout, tucking herself in behind the Mini. She grinned and gave a whoop of joy. This tailing lark wasn’t so difficult after all.
The Mini eventually parted company at the Heyford Hill roundabout, heading into Sainsbury’s, but the Astra remained on the ring road. Baines kept her distance, happily allowing a white van to slip across in front of her. There was no way Mullen and his two buddies were going to notice they were being followed. She kept them within sight all the way round the ring road, over the A34 and up towards Boars Hill, turning right at the top into Foxcombe Road. She had driven along it often enough. There was a pub further along, unimaginatively called the Fox. Even so, it was a nice place. She had eaten and drunk there several times with a friend and would-be lover. He was water under the bridge now. And good riddance too.
But the Astra wasn’t going to the pub. Its tail lights showed red as it braked sharply. Its left-hand indicator flashed orange and immediately the car swung left off the road, bouncing and slightly out of control. Baines braked too, but not so sharply, easing off the accelerator and peering after them. She saw the rear of the car, red lights flickering on and off, and then she was past the entrance. Through the rather feeble cover of the beech hedge that fringed the pavement, there were flashes of black beams and white stucco, a large pseudo-Tudor pile. Hell, she thought. Does Mullen really live there?
* * *
Mullen had had enough for one day, even though it was only mid-afternoon. Quite why Derek Stanley and Rose had had to stay so long to ‘make sure you’re all right,’ he really didn’t know. Or rather in Rose’s case it was pretty blooming obvious. Stanley had clearly disapproved of the way she had fussed around him, insisting on making him some food. She had looked in his cupboards and reported herself more than satisfied by what she found. “I’ll soon whip up something nourishing and nice.” In fact most of the things she had used were jars and tins that the professor had left in his cupboards plus some salad stuff that Mullen had picked up from Abingdon a few days earlier. But it was, he had to admit, very edible. By the time she had delivered three plates onto the long kitchen table, Mullen, who had left hospital just as lunch was about to be served, had realised he was starving. So he had eaten eagerly and gratefully, while accepting that the questions and small talk which raged around him were part of the price he had to pay for their help. All he could do was wonder rather desperately how much longer it would be before they went.
In the end he had resorted to subterfuge. “I think I need to go upstairs and lie down,” he said, hoping this would speed their depart
ure. Rose had opened her mouth to say something, but it was Stanley who answered and, metaphorically speaking, dragged her out of the house to his car. Mullen didn’t warm to Stanley, but in this case he was grateful.
* * *
Now that he had the house to himself again, Mullen should have felt relaxed. He tried walking around, taking in the panelled corridors and surprisingly cool bedrooms, full of sunlight and shadow and heavy furniture and classical busts. But all the silence did was accentuate how edgy he was feeling. In addition, his head was beginning to throb again. The hospital had given him some analgesics, so he took a couple with a glass of water, then a third for good luck. Even with the rising temperature outside, the house seemed insulated from the summer. Mullen shivered. He would go for a walk. The air would surely do him good and he would enjoy tramping through the woods. He had never lived anywhere near a wood before, but here on Boars Hill they were everywhere. He took a baseball cap off the coat stand in the hall and let himself out of the front door. He was blinded for several seconds and lowered his head, focusing on the gravel beneath his feet, as he walked towards the road, waiting for his eyes to adjust.
When he did lift his head, he saw a woman standing in the gateway, some ten metres away. There was a red car beyond her, blocking the exit. He didn’t recognise her at first, not until she lifted her hands to her head and, with a theatrical flourish, removed her wig. Becca Baines, with her cascade of bright red hair, the woman he had seen most clearly through a camera lens, glared at him in silence.
He stopped, uncertain what to do. If he had ever attended a university course for private investigators — there was bound to be some such institution somewhere in America — then perhaps he would have been taught how to react when confronted by a furious woman who knows you’ve been spying on her with your photo lens. As it was, he had only his own experience and gut instinct to guide him. Imagine she’s a difficult customer at the Meeting Place, he told himself. Except that people there might, on a bad day, be hostile to people in general, whereas this woman had a very personal reason to want to assault him with whatever piece of weaponry she had to hand. Not that she appeared to be armed. No knife, no gun, no jack handle from the boot of her car. Only a long black wig Cher would have been proud of.
“Becca Baines,” he said, trying to establish verbal contact. If he could get her talking, his thinking went, then there was less chance of her doing something she — and indeed he — might regret.
She clapped her hands together in mock applause.
“I’ve already been clubbed once,” he said. “Look!” He pointed to his head, as if the white bandage around it wasn’t obvious enough. Then the penny dropped. “You? It was you?”
“I wish it had been.” Her face was impassive. Neither a definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Then she began to walk towards him.
Mullen tensed. His head was pounding like a bass drum and he was feeling ridiculously hot. He lifted his hand to his forehead, which was clammy with sweat. “Look—” he began.
“Bastard!” she said, just before he fainted.
* * *
When the man you’re about to tear limb from metaphorical limb collapses onto the gravel in front of you for no good reason, it inevitably changes things. Becca Baines froze. But it was momentary, the result of disbelief. She was a woman who acted first — and sometimes regretted it later. She didn’t freeze solid. That had never been her way, not even as a three-year-old when she had snatched her teddy from the wheels of an oncoming lorry loaded with straw bales.
She dropped to her knees and checked for a pulse. It was there, if a little slow. “Hey!” she snapped. “You’re not allowed to die on me.”
His eyes flickered open and shut, but otherwise he lay still, blank and uncomprehending, lost in some other world.
