Free Dead in the Water by Peter Tickler Page B

were jars and tins that the professor had left in his cupboards plus some salad stuff that Mullen had picked up from Abingdon a few days earlier. But it was, he had to admit, very edible. By the time she had delivered three plates onto the long kitchen table, Mullen, who had left hospital just as lunch was about to be served, had realised he was starving. So he had eaten eagerly and gratefully, while accepting that the questions and small talk which raged around him were part of the price he had to pay for their help. All he could do was wonder rather desperately how much longer it would be before they went.
    In the end he had resorted to subterfuge. “I think I need to go upstairs and lie down,” he said, hoping this would speed their departure. Rose had opened her mouth to say something, but it was Stanley who answered and, metaphorically speaking, dragged her out of the house to his car. Mullen didn’t warm to Stanley, but in this case he was grateful.
    * * *
    Now that he had the house to himself again, Mullen should have felt relaxed. He tried walking around, taking in the panelled corridors and surprisingly cool bedrooms, full of sunlight and shadow and heavy furniture and classical busts. But all the silence did was accentuate how edgy he was feeling. In addition, his head was beginning to throb again. The hospital had given him some analgesics, so he took a couple with a glass of water, then a third for good luck. Even with the rising temperature outside, the house seemed insulated from the summer. Mullen shivered. He would go for a walk. The air would surely do him good and he would enjoy tramping through the woods. He had never lived anywhere near a wood before, but here on Boars Hill they were everywhere. He took a baseball cap off the coat stand in the hall and let himself out of the front door. He was blinded for several seconds and lowered his head, focusing on the gravel beneath his feet, as he walked towards the road, waiting for his eyes to adjust.
    When he did lift his head, he saw a woman standing in the gateway, some ten metres away. There was a red car beyond her, blocking the exit. He didn’t recognise her at first, not until she lifted her hands to her head and, with a theatrical flourish, removed her wig. Becca Baines, with her cascade of bright red hair, the woman he had seen most clearly through a camera lens, glared at him in silence.
    He stopped, uncertain what to do. If he had ever attended a university course for private investigators — there was bound to be some such institution somewhere in America — then perhaps he would have been taught how to react when confronted by a furious woman who knows you’ve been spying on her with your photo lens. As it was, he had only his own experience and gut instinct to guide him. Imagine she’s a difficult customer at the Meeting Place, he told himself. Except that people there might, on a bad day, be hostile to people in general, whereas this woman had a very personal reason to want to assault him with whatever piece of weaponry she had to hand. Not that she appeared to be armed. No knife, no gun, no jack handle from the boot of her car. Only a long black wig Cher would have been proud of.
    “Becca Baines,” he said, trying to establish verbal contact. If he could get her talking, his thinking went, then there was less chance of her doing something she — and indeed he — might regret.
    She clapped her hands together in mock applause.
    “I’ve already been clubbed once,” he said. “Look!” He pointed to his head, as if the white bandage around it wasn’t obvious enough. Then the penny dropped. “You? It was you?”
    “I wish it had been.” Her face was impassive. Neither a definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Then she began to walk towards him.
    Mullen tensed. His head was pounding like a bass drum and he was feeling ridiculously hot. He lifted his hand to his forehead, which was clammy with sweat. “Look—” he began.
    “Bastard!”