Dead in the Water - Tickler Peter - Страница 3

Janice watched him through the window. She saw him stop on the pavement, looking right and left as if unsure where to go next, before striding off towards the town square. For several seconds she remained unmoving, her lips puckering in thought. Then she stood up and went over to the noticeboard. As she had assumed, he had pinned up a business card. She stared at it for several seconds. Then she unpinned it, returned to her table and slipped it into her handbag.

* * *

Tracking Janice Atkinson’s husband had proved a very straightforward first assignment for Mullen. On three separate evenings Mullen had followed Paul Atkinson after work and on each occasion he had obtained remarkably good photos which were, by his reckoning, evidence about as watertight as any wronged wife could possibly wish for. The object of Paul Atkinson’s attentions was a surprisingly bulky redhead with a taste for loud floral patterns, a ferociously fruity laugh and an appetite to match. It was clear to Mullen that Atkinson was besotted with her. Even in the public space of the hotel bar where they met each evening, Atkinson was unable to keep his hands off her.

The following Friday Mullen met up with Janice Atkinson in a retro coffee bar on Oxford’s Cowley Road. He got there at two twenty, ten minutes early. He was relieved to see it was sparsely occupied, and as he sat at the back, waiting for his Americano to cool, he realised with some alarm that he wasn’t looking forward to their meeting one little bit. He ran his hand across his forehead. There were beads of moisture on it. He took off his jacket and wiped his brow. He would be glad to receive his fee — of course he would — but as for giving the wretched woman the bad news and confirming her worst fears, that was something he really wasn’t ready for.

When he saw Janice advancing across the floor, he stood up like a nervous young man on a first date. As soon as they were both sitting down, he looked for the waitress but she was already heading their way.

Janice ordered a green tea.

“This is on me,” Mullen said, like some big-hearted Harry. And immediately he regretted it. He was preparing her for bad news and she saw it immediately. Her face deflated like a balloon that has developed a leak and he hated himself. He felt a spurt of shame and self-disgust at the job he had chosen to do. But there was no going back. This, he realised, was where he opened Pandora’s Box. Whatever came out of the meeting, there would be no going back for Janice Atkinson. And he was going about it with all the tact of a bull elephant on the rampage.

“Well?” She spoke in a whisper, her lips barely moving. She was wearing her hair tucked behind her ears, which accentuated the tightness in her face and the anxiety in her eyes.

Mullen said nothing, conscious that whatever he did say would almost certainly be wrong. Just as wrong as sliding a brown envelope of incriminating photographs across the table. But that was what he did anyway because he had to say or do something.

She turned it over as if examining it for booby traps. There was nothing written on it. It was just a plain brown envelope with stuff inside it. With a sudden flick of her left hand — the third finger, he noticed, was decorated with a seriously expensive diamond ring plus a plain gold wedding band — she ripped it open and slipped its contents onto the table in front of her. Mullen flicked a glance beyond her; she didn’t seem bothered about rubberneckers. There were some twenty photographs in the pile — Mullen had, of course, taken a lot more than that, but twenty had seemed to him more than sufficient for their meeting. She began to tap the sides of the pile, until all twenty pieces of evidence were perfectly ordered.

“Here’s your green tea.” The waitress had appeared by the table and was slowly unloading a small pot, a cup and saucer and a couple of sugar sachets onto the table. “Anything else I can get you?” She hovered longer than was necessary. Mullen’s thought so anyway, though Janice Atkinson seemed not to care.

“No thank you.”

Janice began to leaf through the photographs. She looked at each one carefully for maybe four or five seconds before moving onto the next. She made no comments. When she got to the end, she slipped them back in the envelope and leant back.

“Job done then.”

Mullen nodded.

“I guess I owe you some money.”

Mullen nodded again.

Janice Atkinson was studying him intently. “Cat got your tongue?”

Mullen knew he should say something, but the words wouldn’t come. He wondered if she was going to burst into tears. He ought to carry a packet of tissues for times like this. It ought to be part of the private eye’s standard kit.

But Janice didn’t cry. Instead she picked up her cup in her right hand. Her fingers and thumb were tight as pliers around it. For a moment Mullen thought it might shatter in her hand. Or was she going to hurl cup and green tea all over him? After such bad news, he would hardly have blamed her if she did.

Mullen knew he had to say something. “Actually,” he said, “It’s the first time I’ve done this.”

If he hoped to elicit sympathy, he failed miserably. “I bet you enjoy it, don’t you? Poking into other people’s secrets and lies?” She leant forward, hissing her fury. “What sort of man are you, Mullen?”

He winced. He felt her pain, but he knew his own too. “Look, I didn’t enjoy it. Not one little bit. But I need the money. Anyway, it was you who answered my advertisement.”

They glared at each other for several seconds. Then she dropped her gaze, her anger apparently spent. “Sorry.” Her voice was a whisper again. She leant forward. An observer might have assumed they were close, even intimate. “It’s my first time too.” Mullen shifted uneasily in his seat. He wanted to leave, but she hadn’t paid him yet.

As if reading his mind, she pulled a smaller envelope out of her bag and held it nonchalantly in her hand.

“What’s her name?”

Mullen said nothing. He hadn’t intended to tell Janice in case she went round to the woman’s house and beat her half to death. He imagined she was more than capable of it.

“What’s the name of the bitch that is sleeping with my husband?”

Mullen tried a final, futile defence.

“Does it matter?”

“Name and address.” She waved the envelope in the air. “Then, and only then, do I pay you.”

He could probably have grabbed it; he could move fast when he needed to. But in the circumstances, in a public place, who knew where that might lead?

“Well?” She pulled the envelope close to her body, alert to all possibilities.

“Becca Baines.”

“Address?”

“Wood Farm Road.” He gave her the number too. It was a flat half-way up a characterless tower block. He had followed her home one evening.

She didn’t bother to write it down. Mary Tudor was said to have had Calais engraved on her heart. Maybe the words ‘Becca Baines, Wood Farm Road’ were already carved into Janice Atkinson’s. Mullen wondered if he had made a big mistake. Suppose she went storming round there and took her revenge?

She gave a thin smile. “Thank you, Mr Mullen.” She flipped the envelope across the table. It collided with his half-drunk coffee, but the mug stayed upright.

“Everything all right?”

Startled, they both looked up. It was the waitress again, appearing like the bad fairy. Or the nosy neighbour.

Janice pointedly ignored her. She raised her eyes to Mullen. “Do you think we can get a proper drink somewhere round here?” she said. “It’ll be on me.”

* * *

Janice Atkinson was wanting more than alcohol. That much seemed clear to Mullen, but mixing work and pleasure seemed (at the very least) unnecessarily complicated, especially when he had been shadowing the woman’s husband for the last few days. Besides, he didn’t fancy Janice in the slightest. Sure, he felt sorry for her. But that was as far as it went.