Dead in the Water

She turned and looked at him. She had a half-smile on her face, but she emanated sadness. “Gina.” She ran her eyes up and down him slowly, as if she was uncertain as to who or what he was. She pursed her lips. “I could paint you,” she said and turned back to the kettle.

Mullen moved a couple of steps deeper in. The far end of the room, he now realised, was populated with her painting equipment, though in a more ordered manner: an easel with a blank canvas on it; boxes of what he took to be oil paints laid out on a long flat trestle table which stood along the left-hand wall; brushes and pallet knives; a plate of fruit and a couple of small blue and white vases which he imagined may have been the subject of a still-life; jam jars and bottles of linseed and white spirit. All the paraphernalia was there, but no sign of any painting in progress.

“I could paint you naked,” she continued, talking to the wall, “but Kevin is a bit of a prude.”

Mullen wasn’t sure how to react. He looked around. There was only one painting on the walls; it hung over the trestle table. He went and stood in front of it: a head and shoulders portrait of a younger, thinner Kevin, half-turned towards the artist, yet avoiding her gaze, looking beyond her. It was the sort of pose that photographers favour, endowing their subject with a distant, thoughtful look. But in this case, with the sharp differentiation of dark and light around Kevin’s features, Mullen thought he could see something else, a shiftiness, an inability to look his wife squarely in the eye. Or was that his own interpretation, based on his own suspicions with regard to Branston and Diana Downey?

“Sit down.”

Mullen turned to see that Gina had crossed the room and was holding out a mug of tea. She picked up a camouflage jacket lying on a tall stool and tossed it aside. “There,” she said, pointing. “I want you to look directly at the wall. Below the portrait, not at it.”

Mullen did as he was told. She picked up a pad and a couple of pencils from one of the jars, walked back to the main kitchen table and perched on its edge. “You can drink your tea and you can talk if you want, but otherwise I want you to keep still.”

Mullen didn’t talk. He sat and sipped and concentrated on a dark smudge on the white wall. He could hear her pencil gliding across the paper, long strokes and short strokes, wild flourishes and careful hatching, and occasionally moments of inactivity when the only sound was her muttering not quite soundlessly to herself.

“Now look at me,” she said, ripping a sheet from the pad and setting it down beside her. “And put your tea down.”

He obeyed. He had never had anyone do this to him before and it felt unsettling, as if he was being examined and found wanting. He watched her face, as her eyes constantly flicked between his face

and her pad, absorbed in the present. An ambulance went past outside, but there wasn’t even a flicker of distraction. The front door opened. Mullen’s eyes moved and took in the puzzled outline of her husband.

“Doug,” she snapped, forcing him to face her again. There was exasperation in her voice and she scratched harder and faster with her pencil, fearful that the opportunity was almost gone.

“What’s all this then?” There was surprise in Kevin Branston’s voice.

“I’m drawing Doug,” she said, still wielding her pencil with an air of desperation. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“What are you doing here, Doug?” Branston clearly wasn’t pleased.

Mullen said nothing. He had reverted to looking at Gina, giving her his fullest attention. He felt irrationally angry that Branston had returned and interrupted her. But the spell had been broken and Gina gave a sigh of disgust. “I haven’t finished!”

For a moment Mullen wondered if there was going to be a full-scale argument, but Branston shrugged as if this was normal. “OK. I’m off to the loo.” And he turned back along the corridor, taking his newspaper with him, and trudged up the stairs.

Gina returned to her sketch, head bent so low over it that her hair hung down like a curtain. Mullen knew he had to ask his question now or he never would, even if it was a leading one and deceitful too. But the thought had been there ever since the previous evening, and it had put down roots.

“Kevin tells me you suffer from insomnia.”

She gave a half laugh from behind the hair. “Something like that.”

“Do you find rohypnol helps?” It was a stab in the dark.

For several seconds she made no response, as her pencil continued to skate across the paper. Finally she stopped, raised her head, pushed her hair out of her eyes and regarded Mullen. “He shouldn’t have talked about it,” she said. “It’s none of anyone else’s business.” It wasn’t an admission, but it wasn’t a denial either.

“Can I see what you’ve drawn?” Mullen was more than curious to see what she had made of him, but he also wanted to change the subject.

“No,” she said firmly. She tucked her notepad under her arm, picked up the first sketch from the table and then, like her husband, retreated along the corridor and up the stairs. Mullen picked up his mug and drained what was left of the tea. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that he had had a great opportunity and blown it.

* * *

“So why exactly are you here?” Kevin Branston said. The irritation in his voice was palpable. Three or four minutes had passed since Gina had disappeared upstairs and he had reappeared. Mullen couldn’t help but wonder if and what they had been saying to each other. “This is my home and it is outside of work hours.”

“I’m not here about work.”

“So what the hell is this visit about?”

“Chris. Chris who drowned in the river.”

Branston seemed surprised. He peered at Mullen, his eyes narrowing. “What?”