Dead in the Water

t Sundays, but how much do you get to know someone from a few chats in church?”

Mullen considered this. It seemed very reasonable. Friendly, but hardly a deep relationship. If so, then why was Stanley one of those paying for him to make a private investigation? Was this an example of Stanley’s ‘Christian charity’? Or, the cynic inside Mullen said, was this more to do with good old-fashioned guilt that they had somehow failed Chris? Mullen had no immediate answers, but he didn’t mind.

He tried another angle. “Do you know where Chris lived?”

Stanley shook his head. “I’m ashamed to say I never asked him. I assumed he had a tent somewhere. There’s quite a few people that do that round here, pitch camp somewhere along the river near where the railway crosses it. Especially at this time of the year.”

“Did he ever talk about family, where he grew up, jobs he’d done?”

Again there was a shake of the head.

Over Stanley’s shoulder Mullen noticed Rose making her way through a scrum of small children who had materialised from somewhere in the parish centre. He took it as a sign and pulled a business card out of his wallet. “In case you think of anything else,” he said, handing it to Stanley.

* * *

“How is it all going?” Rose engulfed him with her smile. “Not too much of an ordeal, I hope?”

Mullen wasn’t sure if she was referring to Derek Stanley in particular or the whole experience of coming to church.

“Your Chris seems to be a bit of a blank canvas,” he said. “Mr Stanley claims to have spoken to him several times, yet he can’t really tell me anything substantial, not even where he lived.”

Rose frowned as she considered this. The corners of her mouth puckered. Mullen found this absurdly distracting. She was wearing a summer jersey dress, white with yellow and blue flowers, a navy blue linen jacket and a silver chain with a cross round her neck, altogether smarter than when they had met the previous day. He wondered if she had plans for lunch. He wondered too how much — or how little — she knew about Chris. “Do you know where he lived?”

She shook her head. “I assumed he was homeless. In this good weather, a lot of down and outs choose to sleep rough. Or there’s O’Hanlon House in Luther Street.”

Mullen felt a flash of anger from somewhere deep within him. This wasn’t just because of her dismissal of Chris and others like him as ‘down and outs,’ though he did hate the expression. It was a neat way of consigning people, real flesh and blood people, to a place where they could be forgotten. You could humour them, feed them with a sandwich and a cup of tea, and then ignore the rest of their lives. He had known someone like Chris once, a man named Bill. He had bumped into him near Kings Cross when, aged fifteen, he had decided to leave the misery of home for the bright lights of London. Bill had looked after him and after a while persuaded him to get on a train back home. Bill had been a ‘down and out’ and Bill had saved his life.

“So you didn’t ask Chris where he lived either?” He heard the sharpness in his own voice and, as he saw her face crumple, he immediately regretted it. She looked down, as if studying the stained church carpet, then raised her eyes until they met his. “I thought,” she said, “it was kinder not to ask.”

There were still seventy or eighty adults and children filling the church with chatter and laughter and (in one case) tears, but the silence that now fell between Mullen and Rose was as thick and unremitting as the Berlin wall in the Cold War days.

“Perhaps it was,” Mullen said, trying to undo the damage he had done. In vain.

“My mother has invited you for lunch.” A sudden switch of direction.

“Your mother?” he said, trying to ignore the hostility in her voice.

“Surprising though it may seem to you, I have a mother.” The temperature between them had plunged way below zero. “Would you like to come or not?”

“I would,” he said.

“Come on then.” And she turned on her heel, heading for the exit. Mullen followed, conscious that he couldn’t have handled things worse if he had tried.

But he didn’t make it outside. The Reverend Diana Downey, doing a meet and greet routine by the double doors, stepped forward, hand outstretched. “Mr Mullen, I presume.”

“Doug.”

“Very nice to have you along today, Doug. I do hope we haven’t put you off coming again?” Diana Downey’s face crinkled round the edges. Mullen wasn’t an expert on perfumes, but she had undoubtedly applied plenty that morning. Her ear-rings were respectively a sun and moon. More New Age than Christian, Mullen thought — though what did he know about either?

“It was a nice service.” It was a feeble response; but it wasn’t as if he had attended many in his time.

“It was such a shame about Chris,” she continued.

Mullen nodded. So she knew why he was here. “Maybe I could talk to you about him?”

“Of course. I don’t know how much help I can be, but give me a ring. My number is on the bottom of the service sheet.”

“I will.”