Dead in the Water

Mullen nodded. Couldn’t help noticing?

“Is everything all right?” she continued, oblivious to his irritation.

“I think Rose and I have a tendency to rub each other up the wrong way.”

“Ah!” She pursed her lips as she assessed her next question. “I understood your services had been dispensed with.” It was more of a statement, though the underlying question was presumably along the lines of: “So what on earth are you doing in St Mark’s today?”

“I rather enjoyed the service last week. I thought I would try it again.”

Margaret Wilby made a noise that indicated she didn’t believe him for a second. She inclined her head. “Goodbye, Mr Mullen.”

Mullen sipped at his coffee. He tried not to care but he was beginning to feel distinctly unwelcome. So when a teenage girl came up and asked him with immaculate politeness if he would be willing to sponsor her on a fun run, he agreed without asking what the cause was and pulled a ten-pound note out of his pocket.

“I’m not doing the run until two weeks’ time,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter,” he replied and wrote his details down on her sheet. “I trust you.”

“You’re the private detective, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Ha

ve you found out what happened to Chris?”

Mullen completed his signature and straightened up. It was hard to know how to respond to such directness. He might not believe in God, but he did believe in being honest. “He drowned in the river down towards Sandford.”

“I know that.” There was disappointment in her voice. She was clearly expecting a lot more detail. “People say he got drunk and fell in.”

Mullen nodded, but didn’t comment.

“I think that’s rubbish. He didn’t drink. He told us.”

Mullen felt a flickering of interest.

“Who is ‘us’?”

“Our youth group. We meet on Sunday evenings. Diana brought him along the other week to talk to us. She thought it would be good for us to hear his story from his own lips. There are so many down-and-outs on the streets in Oxford and we all tend to ignore them.”

Alice — that was the name on her sponsor sheet — spoke with frightening clarity and certainty. “I mean, what should I do if I see them begging in the Cornmarket? Should I give them money? Should I go and buy them a sandwich? Should I just walk on by like most people do? I could pray for them of course, but is that enough?”

Mullen was impressed. He wished he had all the answers. He wished that at her age he had had all the questions too. “Personally, I wouldn’t give them money. Maybe buy them a sandwich?”

“I prefer to support the charities which help them,” she said decisively. “Diana agrees. Chris agreed too.”

Mullen studied Alice. How old was she? Fourteen maybe, going on twenty-four. He changed tack. “So how did Chris come to be sleeping rough in Oxford? Did he tell you his story?”

“He did and he didn’t. He said there were a lot of things in his past that he wasn’t proud of and preferred not to talk about. What he did say was that he didn’t have a very happy childhood and that he was sent away to boarding school and hated it.”

“He didn’t say what school?”

“No.”

“Did he talk about his family?”

“Not really. His parents were killed in a car crash, but that was all he said about them.”

“Did he say where he came from? Or if he used to do a job?”