AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mullen said nothing.
“Chris was.”
There was more silence. The only significant noise was the heavy breathing of Fargo. He could sense the sergeant tensing behind him, waiting for the explosion that Dorkin was trying to detonate.
“Who told you that?” Mullen knew he had to wrest the initiative back from the inspector. There was nothing to be gained by lying down and letting Dorkin stamp all over him.
“Wouldn’t you like to know!” There was the smile again.
Mullen stretched his arms. He felt Fargo’s hands alight ever so briefly on his shoulders in warning. He tried to think. Dorkin was trying to provoke a reaction. There were gays at the Meeting Place, of course there were. But Mullen doubted very much if Chris had been one of them. On the contrary, he had always seemed interested in the opposite sex, whether it was the waif-like Mel or a couple of the female punters who were always up for a nice flirt and maybe a lot more.
“I would, as it happens. But obviously you’re not going to tell me.”
“What were you two talking about in those photos then?”
Mullen knew it was easier — and safer — to tell the truth. Besides, he wasn’t sure how good he was at making things up on the spot. The chances were that Dorkin already had some idea about the conversation. Maybe someone had overheard some of it and informed the police. Kevin Branston or Mel or one of the punters.
“Chris was a bit on edge,” he started. “So a bit like Sergeant Fargo here, I put my hand on his shoulder to calm him down.” Mullen paused.
Dorkin looked at Fargo and nodded his head, which as far as Mullen was concerned could have meant anything. Grab him. Give him a slap to help his memory. Something like that. Fortunately Fargo didn’t interpret it that way. Instead he padded around the table and settled himself in front of the sink unit, close to Dorkin and in full view of Mullen.
“We need a bit more detail than that, Doug.”
“He didn’t say what it was about. It was only the third time I’d come across him at the Meeting Place and I’d not had any trouble from him previously. But that night he was on edge. Of course it was a special evening, when supporters of the project had been invited to come and see how it all worked and meet people. Maybe that had got to him. Or maybe it was something more personal. Anyway one of the other guys said something — I didn’t hear what — and Chris started to get aggressive with him. He was only a couple of metres away from me, so I stepped over to calm him down. I think that was when I put my hand on his shoulder. In retrospect it was a bit of a risk to take. He might have turned on me, but at the time it seemed to be the quickest and best way to kill off any trouble. With there being so many visitors, Kevin Branston had warned me not to let anything develop. Anyway that was what I did and it worked.”
Dorkin sucked at his teeth as if he had got a piece of food stuck in them. “So in the other photos of you and him talking, are you telling me that you can’t remember what you and he said? Didn’t you ask him what the problem was?”
“I asked him if he wanted to talk about it.”
Dorkin stared back at Mullen. “You’re a ruddy counsellor too are you now?”
“Not a very good one.” Mullen felt light-headed, as if he had consumed too much alcohol on an empty stomach. “Chris just changed the subject. He started asking me about the World Cup.”
* * *
As soon as Dorkin and his colleagues had driven away, Mullen got out his laptop. If Detective Constable Ashe could interrogate Facebook, then so could he.
It didn’t take long to find the photos of himself and Chris. It had been right at the beginning of the evening. There was already quite a scrum of punters and Chris had been in an awkward mood. Not that there had been any real trouble from him. That had come from Alec and John who had ended up fighting in the main hall — fortunately before the guests had arrived. Less fortunately Alec had ended up with a broken nose. The last thing Branston had wanted that evening was trouble, so after ordering John off the premises he had insisted Mullen drive Alec straight up to Accident and Emergency and stay with him until he had been dealt with. Two hours later Mullen had returned to the Meeting Place to discover the food and guests had all disappeared, leaving behind them a blocked toilet which he ended up having to sort out.
Mullen began to flick quickly through the rest of the album, curious to see what he had missed. But after only six photos he lifted his finger and stopped. On the screen in front of him was the Reverend Diana Downey. She stood out with her dog collar and rather flimsy clothing and was quite clearly attracting a lot of attention from the men there. Mullen scratched at his head. It wasn’t, as soon as he thought about it, so surprising that she should be there. You would expect a place like that to attract the support of churches. And it offered a more innocent explanation of why Kevin Branston had been visiting the Reverend Downey the other day. (Though it didn’t, Mullen reckoned, entirely explain Branston’s rather furtive exit from t
he vicarage. Or had he been imagining it?)
If Downey was there, had other people from St Mark’s church also come along to see how their money was being spent? As Mullen continued with a more careful trawl through the album, he soon got some answers. Downey appeared in several of them, always talking to a different person. Whoever it was who had been clicking away had been taken with her too. Mullen spotted Derek Stanley with his tell-tale goatee, talking to some of the regular punters. In another, more surprisingly, was Margaret Wilby, immaculately dressed in navy blue and white and talking to the student Mel and the punter who was always hanging around her. Was Wilby on some church committee and coming along in her official capacity? There were a couple of other faces that Mullen recognised from the church service, but otherwise nothing until he came across a picture that stopped his forefinger dead. In the centre, with his back to the camera, was Chris. The fact that his face was turned away didn’t mean he wasn’t easy to identify with his olive green t-shirt and camouflage trousers. Talking to him was Janice Atkinson, arm in arm with her husband Paul, and next to them stood Derek Stanley, listening intently. There was someone beyond Stanley — but all that was visible of him or her was a raised glass, a hand and a white sleeve. Was it Diana Downey? Mullen flicked to the next photograph in case it should reveal more. It didn’t. It contained mostly punters, except for the distinctive figure of Margaret Wilby, lips pursed as if the wine in her glass didn’t come up to scratch. Or maybe she thoroughly disapproved of the whole business. Mullen flicked on again, but realised he was back at the beginning with photos of the outside of the building bedecked with a long banner wishing everyone ‘Welcome to our Open Evening.’
He went back to the shot he was really interested in and dwelt on it for some time until he had all the details registered in his brain. He prided himself on what he could store away; it wasn’t exactly a photographic memory, but it was pretty good nevertheless.
After that he made himself a cup of tea and sat down again with a pad and pen. He revisited every photo, this time making a note of everyone he recognised from the church, the people they appeared to be talking to (in so far as he recognised them) and the photograph number concerned.
By the time he had got to the end, his tea, barely touched, was cold, but he drank it anyway, not caring, because he had more important things to worry about.
Such as where was Kevin Branston in all the photographs? The answer was nowhere. Did that mean he was the photographer? The only problem with that theory, Mullen told himself, was that it didn’t entirely fit with what he had observed of the man. Branston worked hard. He wasn’t averse to doing some of the background and menial work when required, but he wasn’t a man who avoided the limelight either. It was unquestionably odd that there wasn’t even a single photo of him in the Facebook album. He had got himself into the Oxford Mail the day after that open evening — a flattering photograph and an article that painted him and his project in glowing colours.
And what was he to make of Paul and Janice Atkinson? No sign of marital disharmony there. But then what did he expect? If you’re having an affair and your marriage is on the verge of going down the pan, that doesn’t mean you don’t put on shows of unity. But Janice’s arm was tucked through Paul’s and there was a broad smile on her face; either it was a very brave bit of play-acting or she didn’t at that stage have a clue about his affair. Except that this took place only a week or so before she had contacted Mullen and hired him to track her husband.
And then there was Margaret Wilby, glaring out of the background as if this was the last place on earth she wanted to be. Why was she there if that was the case? Was she there out of duty, under sufferance? Or had there been some falling out with someone earlier that evening?
Mullen clicked the screen of his laptop down and stood up. He felt confused and frustrated, not just with the overload of thoughts, but with the attitude of DI Dorkin. He clearly thought that the anonymous threatening call which Mullen had told them about was fiction, whereas Mullen could still hear the voice of the man in his head, telling him that one of his friends would pay the price. What did he mean by that? Presumably that he was prepared to kill again if Mullen didn’t give up his investigation. Who were the friends he was threatening? He had only been in the area a few months and there were few (if any) people he could genuinely call friends. Rose? Possibly. Becca? He guessed so. Kevin Branston? Mel or Brian or Jean or any of the other volunteers at the Meeting Place? They were all nice to him and twice they had all had a drink together after the evening sessions. What about Pavel from the Iffley Road flats? Ultimately it depended on what the caller meant by ‘friend.’
