Dead in the Water

“I’d like to know why you met Chris in Costa in Queen Street a few weeks ago and gave him a substantial sum of money.”

Branston opened his mouth and then shut it. Mullen could see his Adam’s apple working overtime. His face had flushed visibly, betraying the anger within. “I think you’d better leave.”

“Was he blackmailing you?”

There was no response from Branston.

Mullen pressed. “About your relationship with Diana Downey?”

The blood drained from Branston’s face. He wobbled. For a moment, it seemed to Mullen that he was in danger of collapsing on the floor, but he grabbed the work surface with his hand, knocking over a packet of cereal as he did so.

“We aren’t having a relationship.” His words were barely audible.

“I saw you coming out of the vicarage on Thursday.” Mullen paused, allowing the information to sink in. “At two twenty in the afternoon to be precise.”

“Look, it’s not what you think.” Branston went to the sink and poured himself a glass of water. He drank half of it before he continued. “Diana is a friend. A good friend. But that’s all. I think she’s gay if you must know, though we’ve never discussed it. She’s been very supportive. About Gina that is.” He paused, as if wondering how much to say. “Gina has mental health issues. I find it a bit difficult sometimes, coping with it. I met Diana at the Meeting Place first. She came along because she was very interested in what we were doing there. I really appreciated that. And I soon found out that she was a good listener too. So she agreed that I could come and talk to her at the vicarage, well away from work and home. I guess you’d call it informal counselling.”

“If it was merely counselling, why did you give Chris money?”

“I’m coming to that.” He licked his lips and drank some more water. “Chris was a bastard. He noticed we got on well and he discovered that I was visiting Diana. He joked about how it would be easy for someone to get the wrong idea about it. At least I thought it was a joke. But the next thing was he was telling me how hard up he was and that what he really wanted to do was go and live in Spain. He knew someone there, he said, who would help him get work. But he needed money to get himself there. It was all a load of rubbish, of course. But I was naïve enough to think that if I gave him £500, then at least he would clear off and we’d be shot of him.”

“We?” Mullen couldn’t help himself from jumping on the word. “So Diana knew about this?”

“No.” Branston fell silent for a long moment. Eventually he continued. “What I mean is that Diana knew about Chris’s insinuations that we were having a sexual relationship. But I never told her about the £500 I gave him. You have to believe that. It was my own stupid idea. For three days I thought it had worked a treat. Chris disappeared from view. I was really pleased with myself. But then he turned up again at the Meeting Place, a smirk on his face. ‘Change of plan,’ he told me.”

“And did you have a change of plan too?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Did you decide to kill him?”

“What on earth are you talking about? He fell into the river because he was drunk as a skunk.”

Mullen shook his head. “I believe that someone helped him to fall into the river.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

Mullen shrugged. “Call it an educated guess.”

Branston glared at him. Mullen noticed that his hands had clenched into fists, but it didn’t bother him. He was confident that if it came to a fight, he would be more than a match for the guy.

Eventually Branston responded. “You think I did it?”

“As far as I can see, you’ve certainly got a motive.” In truth the longer the conversation had gone on, the less certain Mullen felt about his theory, but it was the only one he had.

“I think you had better leave,” Branston said. “Now!”

“As you wish.”

* * *

Paul Atkinson very nearly didn’t answer the door bell. He had had enough of people calling in to offer their condolences and ask nosey questions. God knew he and Janice hadn’t had the best of relationships. A lot of that was his fault. But it was partly hers too. It was hard to live with someone who was always checking up on you. Janice had always wanted to know who he had been meeting for lunch (especially if they were female), what they had been discussing, what the woman was wearing and how old she was. Her enquiries were about as subtle as a sledge hammer. In the end, it had pushed him into having the affairs she was so suspicious about. Not with anyone at St Mark’s. That would have been far too risky. Usually it happened on his business trips to the States, where the other party accepted it for what it was — a brief sexual encounter where neither makes any emotional demands on the other. There had been one-night stands in Prague and Berlin too. But he had kept things safely at a distance until Becca. He hadn’t been looking for an affair or expecting one. It had just happened and it had been great until Janice found out.

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The doorbell rang again, this time more insistently. Whoever it was, they were determined. It was almost certainly someone from the church. He must have had nine or ten people call in over the past two days, each bearing a card of sympathy and each hoping he would let them in for a cup of tea and a chance to ‘chat.’ He had done just that with some of them — Derek Stanley and Margaret Wilby, Rose, Diana Downey — and they had talked in solemn tones about what a lovely person Janice had been and how unbelievable it was that she could have been taken from them like that. Of course there were things they didn’t say, but he could sense they were thinking them. How he hadn’t been a very good husband. That if he had been a better one, then somehow poor Janice wouldn’t have been run down in the middle of the Iffley Road. And what on earth had she been doing in the Iffley Road at that time of night anyway? Only Margaret Wilby had been honest enough to ask him that particular question and in her usual forthright manner. He hadn’t answered her, of course.

Diana Downey had at least offered him practical support, offering to deal with the undertaker and discussing the funeral arrangements. With her help he had already decided on a private cremation followed an hour later by a service back at St Mark’s. She had prayed with him too, which he had found comforting and surreal. The whole situation was surreal, of course, and he still hadn’t got his head round it. Not to mention the number of phone calls he had had to make to relatives and friends. So the last thing he wanted was to have to be polite to another well-wisher. But that didn’t stop the bell ringing yet again, long and loud. He swore and made his way along the hall, bracing himself for whoever it might be. At the door stood probably the last person he expected (or wanted) to see. It was Eddie Loach.