Should he take the phone call seriously? The answer was surely ‘yes.’ Should he contact the police about it? Of course he should. Otherwise, if something did happen to one of his friends, he would never forgive himself. Would DI Dorkin and DS Fargo take him seriously? The answer to that question was less certain.

Even so, Mullen made the call and after an argument with the person on the end of the line he got transferred to Dorkin. Except that the person who answered certainly wasn’t Dorkin, not unless he had had a sex-change or a nasty cricketing accident.

“Your name, sir?” the woman said in a flat Brummie accent.

“Doug Mullen. I need to speak to DI Dorkin.”

There was a pause before she replied.

“I’m afraid he’s out. I’m Detective Constable Ashe. Perhaps I can help.”

“Is DS Fargo there?”

“He’s out too.”

“I need to speak to one of them.”

“About what?”

“About two murders and an anonymous phone call.”

“I see.”

There was another pause. Mullen wondered if she was getting advice or merely making him wait for the sake of it. Then: “They’ll be in touch shortly.” And she put the phone down before he could argue or complain.

Mullen shrugged and leant back in the large Windsor chair he had adopted as his own. “And pigs will fly,” he said to the empty kitchen.

Mullen was wrong. ‘Shortly’ turned out to be a lot sooner than he could possibly have expected. He had only just gone upstairs and brushed his teeth when a banging at the door summoned him back downstairs.

“Hello, again!” The sour smile and gravelly greeting belonged to Dorkin. Behind him, Fargo loomed silent and surly. He seemed to be larger every time they met. “I’d like a little chat,” Dorkin continued, pushing inside. Fargo followed and Mullen, shutting the door, couldn’t help but notice that there were two uniformed officers standing in the drive, one of whom headed off round the side of the house. Were they out there in case he did a runner? It wasn’t a good sign.

He walked back through to the kitchen where Dorkin was making himself comfortable in Mullen’s favourite chair, while Fargo stood against the wall, arms folded and still very large.

“I’ve just been trying to get hold of you on the phone,” Mullen said.

Dorkin’s eyebrows rose minimally. “Oh yeah?”

“I’ve had an anonymous phone call this morning. Someone warned me they would hurt one of my friends if I didn’t stop my investigation.”

“Did they now?” Dorkin rubbed his chin. “Can I see your mobile? I assume they rang you on your mobile?”

Mullen unlocked it and passed it over. “You’ll see it in the call log. ’Unknown.’”

There was a flicker of a smile on Dorkin’s face. He studied Mullen’s mobile for the best part of a minute, then placed it on the table. “I may need to borrow that for a while. Have you got a spare one?”

“No.”

“You don’t have an unregistered, pay-as-you-go one? I thought all smart private investigators kept a stock of them just in case they needed to do naughty things without being caught. For example, they might want to use one to ring up the mobile phone which is registered in their name. That way they can pretend to be an anonymous caller making untraceable threats.”

Mullen stared back at the inspector. He seemed to be enjoying himself. But what the heck was going on? Why wasn’t Dorkin taking him seriously?

Mullen stood up and leant forward across the table towards Dorkin. He heard Fargo tense for action, but Dorkin didn’t even blink. “There’s someone out there, Inspector, threatening to kill my friends. And you’re sitting there like some—“

Mullen never finished his sentence because one of Fargo’s huge hands had gripped him by the arm and was spinning him around as if he was a kid’s top from the days when kids had proper simple toys. The next thing Mullen knew was that he had been rammed back into his chair and two hands were holding his shoulders extremely firmly.

Dorkin’s smile had been replaced by a stony glare. “Shall I tell you why we aren’t taking you too seriously, Mullen? There are two reasons. Number one, it’s because you kept secret from us the fact that you and Becca Baines are pals. That you bought her a meal on Tuesday evening.”

“Actually we went Dutch.”

Fargo’s hands tensed, digging into his shoulders even more.

“This is the woman you were spying on. You mess up her sex life and the next thing is you’re dating her.”

“Not dating her. She came round to give me a verbal roasting, but I was only just out of hospital and I fainted in front of her. What with her being a nurse, well it changed things.”

“So you ended up in bed together?”

“No!” Mullen felt himself getting riled. “She put me to bed. She slept in a chair in the room. I think she was worried about me.”

“But you must like her because you had supper with her.”

“We have a shared interest.”

“Like stamp collecting?”

“Like finding out who killed Janice.”

“And why would she be interested in doing that?”

“Because, like me, she’s probably worried that you’ll try and pin it on her.”

Dorkin considered this, rubbing his fingers on his forehead. Then he gave a shake of his whole body and changed tack. He felt inside his jacket and pulled out a mobile phone. He took a few seconds to find what he wanted to find, then stretched across the table and held it close to Mullen’s face. “Take a look at this, sunshine.”

Mullen recognised who and where the photograph had been taken almost immediately.

“Our colleague, Detective Constable Ashe, is a bit of a Facebook obsessive. Always posting her holiday photos and sharing stupid stuff she’s spotted on the internet. I tell her it’s bad for her. I point out that people are more important than computers. But when has any woman taken a blind bit of notice of what I say?” The wry smile was back on Dorkin’s face. “But that’s one of the strengths of having someone like Ashe on the team. She thinks differently and has other ideas. Like looking to see if the Meeting Place had a Facebook page and then going through everything on it in great detail after she’d gone home and put her little boy to bed. All in her own time, bless her cotton socks. And then, amidst all the photographs up there, she finds this one.”

Mullen said nothing.

“You recognise yourself, of course?”

“Of course.”

“And the man you’re talking to. The man with long hair.”

“Of course I do.” Mullen was trying to think and finding it difficult. He hadn’t realised anyone had been taking any photos that evening. But of course anyone and everyone with a mobile phone can take a decent photograph in an instant nowadays and it’s impossible to stop. And here he was in a photograph with Chris and Chris had got his hand on Mullen’s shoulder as if they were best mates. And indeed the benign smile on Mullen’s face didn’t gainsay that.

“There are three others actually, Muggins. And they all suggest that you and Chris got on pretty well.”

Muggins! A flash flood of anger caused Mullen to grip the arms of the chair. If he lost control, it would be just the excuse Dorkin needed. Even so, when Mullen did finally speak, he did so more sharply and louder than he had intended. “It’s my job to get on well with people.”

“It’s your job to stop people getting out of hand.”

“I don’t believe in bullying people. I’ve seen it happen in the army. My best mate was bullied and he blew his own brains out. So I try to be nice to people and I only lay down the law when people are in danger of getting out of hand. I find it works best that way.”

Dorkin made a show of clapping, bringing his hands together and away again in slow motion, several times. “Bravo!” he said. Mullen pretended not to care. If there was a ‘taking the piss’ module in police training school, Dorkin had clearly passed with distinction.