“If you’re looking for sinners, what better place to start than a church?” Atkinson was clearly the sort of man who didn’t merely make a point. He battered it half to death. “Christians are obsessed with sin. ‘We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’ wrote St Paul. And don’t we get reminded of it every Sunday.”

“Paul!” Janice hissed. “That’s a gross caricature.”

There was another laugh and a tossing of the head. “Nice to meet you, Mulligatawny,” he said. “Things to do and places to go.” And then he was gone, off to irritate some other sap.

In another place and in other circumstances, Mullen would have succumbed to his instinctive desire to knock the man’s block off. It had been Dorkin the other day, hiding behind his detective’s badge, and now it was Paul Atkinson hiding behind the church and the fact that there were a hundred pious witnesses who would back him up. Mullen clenched his left hand into a fist and thumped himself on the thigh. It was the only way he could express his frustration. He wasn’t a man who had grown up learning to turn the other cheek and let prats get off scot free.

Janice didn’t follow her husband. She did, however, emit a noise like a frustrated parakeet. She moved half a step forward. “Par for the course I’m afraid, Doug,” she whispered. “God only knows why I don’t throw him out.” She looked at him in appeal. “I could do now, couldn’t I?” She reached across, her hand gripping his upper arm for two or three seconds.

Mullen flinched. He felt like he had stepped out of the shallows straight into deep water, his feet suddenly unable to touch the bottom. He took a slug of coffee while he tried to think of something appropriate to say. Whatever he had thought spying on people’s spouses might lead to, this sort of emotional complication wasn’t one of them.

“Look, Janice,” he said, trying to extricate himself without being too brutal. “I need your help. I need to know who in the church knew Chris.”

“We all did, pretty much.” She paused. “Not biblically of course.” She laughed. “But Chris was one of those people you couldn’t not notice. His ponytail, his insistence on wearing camouflage clothes, dare I mention his smell — not exactly a typical member of St Mark’s.”

Mullen tried another angle. “So who in the church is funding me?”

“I am, for one. After all, you were my idea.” She rolled her eyes. She was flirting again.

“Jesus!” Mullen said, and then realised his faux pas.

Janice grinned. “Naughty, naughty!”

Mullen drained his coffee. He had had enough messing around. “You’re not exactly helping here, Janice.”

He turned to move away, but this time her hand touched his shoulder. “Sorry, Doug,” she said, suddenly serious. “Just follow me. I’ll introduce you to Derek Stanley.”

Derek Stanley was the guy with the goatee to whom Rose had failed to introduce him. Nattily dressed in electric blue chinos, pale yellow shirt and stone-coloured linen jacket, he peered at Mullen over his glasses. Janice made the introductions and then withdrew, removing Mullen’s coffee mug from his hand as she did so. He felt her nail scratch the inside of his wrist and then she was gone, leaving behind both the smell of her perfume and a host of confused thoughts.

Stanley plunged straight in. “Chris was a nice chap. Chatty, easy-going and helpful. Sorted out the disabled loo when it got blocked one Thursday. He’ll be missed.”

“Do you remember when he first came to the church?”

“Oh, yes. That’s an easy one. Good Friday. Of course we had a service that day, 10.30 start like today, but very different in tone: quiet and reflective. Actually I didn’t notice him until the end. That was because he was sitting at the back of the church. My first thoughts were, I fear, rather unchristian.” He frowned as if not quite sure how to express his feelings. “I found his camouflage clothes rather . . .” He took off his glasses and allowed them to hang from his neck on their chain. He rubbed at his eyes. They were moist. “Sorry. Perhaps I should explain. My sister Sarah moved to Hungerford in July 1987. A lovely little Berkshire town — or so she thought. Six weeks later Michael Ryan ran amok there and killed fourteen people before shooting himself. Perhaps you remember it? The first person he killed was a mother he came across in Savernake Forest. He let the children go, but he shot her in the back. Thirteen times. ”

He fell silent. Mullen waited, conscious Stanley was nowhere near finished.

“Sarah was at home that day. She was sitting in her front room when Ryan passed by, oblivious of everything that was going on outside. Ryan fired four shots through the windows. One of the bullets grazed her temple. She recovered physically, but not emotionally or mentally. One year later to the day, she hanged herself.”

There was another long pause. For the second time Mullen felt he wasn’t just in deep water, but was in danger of drowning in it. He knew he had to say something. “I’m sorry to have brought it all up again.”

Stanley shrugged. “Not your fault. But I suppose the first time I saw Chris standing there at the back of the church, I thought he was Michael Ryan reincarnated. A ghost.” He fell silent, and then a half-smile spread across his face. “Don’t tell the vicar. She might give me a theological telling off.” He leant forward and gripped Mullen’s forearm. Mullen tried not to wince. Was this grabbing of arms and patting of shoulders something that all the members of St Mark’s did when they got intense and serious?

Stanley, as if sensing his discomfort, released him. “Actually, it has been very good to talk about it. Therapeutic I guess. Not that I’m into stuff like that, but . . .” He shrugged, unable to finish saying whatever it was that he was thinking. A child dressed as an angel danced past and for a moment or two both of them were distracted by the girl.

“But the reality was that Chris was altogether different. Cheerful, sociable, chatty. Not at all like your average mass murderer.”

Mullen took the opportunity to move the conversation on. “So when did you last see him?”

“On the Sunday before his death. He came to the morning service and then stayed for the bring-and-share meal. Not that he would have brought any food, I dare say. But that didn’t matter. I remember he helped put away the tables at the end.”

“What else can you tell me about Chris?”

Stanley seemed surprised by the question. His eyes, unprotected by his glasses, blinked — a mole emerging from darkness. “Not a lot, I suppose. We passed the time of day most Sundays, but how much do you get to know someone from a few chats in church?”

Mullen considered this. It seemed very reasonable. Friendly, but hardly a deep relationship. If so, then why was Stanley one of those paying for him to make a private investigation? Was this an example of Stanley’s ‘Christian charity’? Or, the cynic inside Mullen said, was this more to do with good old-fashioned guilt that they had somehow failed Chris? Mullen had no immediate answers, but he didn’t mind.

He tried another angle. “Do you know where Chris lived?”

Stanley shook his head. “I’m ashamed to say I never asked him. I assumed he had a tent somewhere. There’s quite a few people that do that round here, pitch camp somewhere along the river near where the railway crosses it. Especially at this time of the year.”

“Did he ever talk about family, where he grew up, jobs he’d done?”

Again there was a shake of the head.

Over Stanley’s shoulder Mullen noticed Rose making her way through a scrum of small children who had materialised from somewhere in the parish centre. He took it as a sign and pulled a business card out of his wallet. “In case you think of anything else,” he said, handing it to Stanley.

* * *

“How is it all going?” Rose engulfed him with her smile. “Not too much of an ordeal, I hope?”