“Excuse me, mate,” he said. “Can you spare a light?”

The youth looked at him as if he had been asked if he knew the quickest route to Timbuktu. Mullen held the cigarette up, a man miming the act of smoking. The youth shrugged and handed over his box of matches. Mullen lit his cigarette, choked violently like a schoolboy having a first smoke behind the bike sheds and handed the box back.

“You know who lives here?” He tried to make it casual and unimportant.

“He’s my neighbour. Of course I do.”

“I thought I recognised him. Not that Richard Dawkins fellow is he?”

The youth laughed as if that was the funniest thing he had heard all week. “Why should I tell you? And who the hell are you anyway?”

Mullen had been half expecting the response. In the youth’s shoes, he would have said exactly the same. Mullen put his hand into his pocket and pulled out the cigarette packet again. And added a twenty pound note. There was no point in skimping.

He held them up, out of reach of the youth. “Who is he and what does he do? I can always ask someone else.”

The youth was tempted, Mullen could see that. The money would buy him something a bit more exciting to smoke than tobacco if that was what he liked. Mullen was pretty sure he did like.

The youth held out his hand. “You first.”

Mullen hesitated, and then handed over the cigarettes. The youth checked the packet and thrust them into his back pocket.

“First name: Alexander.” The youth held out his hand again.

Mullen held out the ?20 note.

The youth took a final pull on his cigarette before tossing the butt onto the pavement. Then he took the note and looked at it intently, as if suspicious that it might have been printed that morning in Mullen’s backroom. Then he began to rip it up. One, two, three. He let the pieces flutter to the ground. “I don’t sell out my neighbours, dickhead.” He stared Mullen full in the face. It was a challenge, full of stupid bravado. Mullen knew he could flatten him with one blow, but what good would that do either of them? Actually, at some level he admired the cocky bugger for standing up to him.

The youth sneered, pleased with his performance and Mullen’s feebleness. Then he retreated inside his front door. Mullen heard the lock click into place and the rattle of the security chain. Not so confident after all.

Mullen stayed where he was, sucking in a lungful of smoke. It was the second cigarette he had smoked that evening and the second since he had left the army nearly three years previously, but oddly enough it felt a bit of a let-down. He didn’t miss the nicotine rush any more. Coffee was a different matter: he couldn’t live without the buzz of caffeine at least three times a day. But fags had never held him in their thrall. Smoking had been something he had done while drinking a pint, nothing more. He tossed the butt towards the youth’s door. It was petty, he knew, but if he got a telling off from his mum or dad in the morning, it would serve the cocky punk right.

Mullen wasn’t done yet. He had had an idea. As ideas went, he couldn’t see much wrong with it. He checked up and down the pavement: not a dicky bird. There was no sign of activity from either the youth’s house or that of the man he had been stalking. The curtains were drawn in both front rooms. There were no twitching fingers to be seen and no curious faces peering out. Both houses had their recycling bins facing each other, as if by mutual agreement, down the side of their houses. Mullen padded quickly over to the one by his quarry’s house and opened it. He peered into the shadows and then plunged his hand down. It was like the bran tub of childhood fetes. When he pulled his hand out, he had in his fingers a sheaf of papers. These included several envelopes and letters discarded without any attempt to tear or shred them. Which was careless, Mullen reckoned. But how many people bothered to shred their post, despite all the scare stories about ID theft? Mullen flicked through his haul and was reassured. He closed the bin’s lid quietly and headed off up the road. He had lost twenty quid and his last packet of fags. He had had his chain pulled by a spotty sixth-former. But in other respects it had been a successful evening. All he had to do was catch two buses home.

* * *

The mystery man’s name was Charles Speight. The envelopes recovered from the bin in Victoria Road were addressed variously to him, a Mrs Rachel Speight and a Jane Speight — a daughter presumably. Back in Boars Hill, Mullen made himself a mug of strong tea and opened up his laptop. It didn’t take long searching the internet to identify Charles Speight in greater detail. He was a pathologist, privately educated at a school that even Mullen had heard of, and he had a string of letters after his name. There were several references to him in the Oxford Mail and Oxford Times, all of which indicated that he worked closely with the Thames Valley police in cases involving violent death. There were even a couple of photographs of him which, despite their formality, tied in with the rather agitated figure Mullen had first seen in the pub.

Mullen sipped his tea and wondered. Why had Speight and Dorkin met in a pub, out of hours and well away from their normal places of work? Was it Speight who had examined Chris? The newspapers hadn’t said as much. Probably at this stage the police wouldn’t release the information. But it seemed to Mullen a pretty good bet that he had. And if he had and if that was why he and Dorkin had met up, how come Speight had looked so on edge? Or had they been talking about Janice? Less than twenty-four hours after her death? Unless they were great buddies — and to Mullen it looked like they were anything but — why would they be meeting in a pub? And why had Speight stormed out of the pub so quickly and unhappily? The only way to find out would be to ask him, Mullen concluded, though that would surely get him into a whole shit heap of trouble if Speight went and bleated to Dorkin. Which he surely would, Mullen told himself, unless of course Speight had nothing to hide and nothing to feel guilty about.

Mullen pushed away his half-drunk mug of tea, conscious of a return of the pain at the back of his head, thumping like a bass drum. He had to speak to Speight. That was the bottom line. The only outstanding questions were how, when and where? He hoped the answers would become clear after a decent night’s sleep.

Chapter 6

Mullen’s mobile rang while he was asleep. He was back in the army, in Ben’s bedroom. He had just opened the door. Ben was sitting at his small table with the red, blue and white angle-poise lamp his parents had brought him on their last visit. He had been so pleased with it. And then Ben had turned round. “Hello, mate,” he said. Which was pretty odd because he didn’t have a mouth to say anything with. There was just a huge black hole in his face. His nose had disappeared into it too. Only his eyes remained and they were closed. That was when the fire alarm had sounded right behind Mullen’s head, except in reality it was his mobile phone.

For several seconds Mullen didn’t move. Then he sat up and realised his pyjamas were drenched with sweat. He picked up the phone. It was a number he didn’t recognise. It was 7.45 a.m. Who on earth rings people up at that hour of the day? He looked at the number for several seconds and then he powered the phone off. He took off his pyjamas, tossed them on the rug and got back into bed, pulling the duvet over his head.

He didn’t get back to sleep. He lay there pretending to himself that he was asleep, because if he was he wouldn’t have to do or think anything. Maybe at one point he almost did drift off into a half-doze. Or maybe not. Perhaps he would have stayed there all morning or even all day. It wouldn’t have been the first time. But there was a heavy knocking on the door. That was what a brass knocker did — gave the visitor a chance to make a lot of noise. Mullen pulled on a pair of pants and his brown towelling dressing gown, before stumping down the stairs as the knocking reached a third crescendo.