A Thrust to the Vitals (25 page)

‘It’s not fair, Joe. You seem to think that getting your ring on my finger gives you the right to neglect me. You don’t come home till all hours and when you do you’re still somewhere else, in your head. You hardly talk to me any more.’

Abra’s gaze flashed fire and water; angry and tearful in about equal measures, though perhaps the anger had the edge. ‘Are you beginning to regret asking me to marry you already?’

Hastily, Rafferty swallowed his hot curry and bread. He managed not to choke, although his throat felt aflame. He grabbed a glass of water and cooled the flames before he was able to voice a protest. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘It’s not that at all.’

‘Then what is it? Don’t you think I have a right to know?’

That was just it — she did. Trouble was that it wasn’t his secret to tell. It was Mickey’s. But it was on a need to know basis and Abra didn’t need to know. Certainly, neither Rafferty nor his brother wanted Mickey’s unfortunate connection to the victim to be bandied about any more than absolutely necessary. But he had to tell her something, he realised.

Stumblingly, he compromised on part of the truth. She was entitled to that much. ‘It’s my brother, Mickey. He’s in a bit of bother.’ If getting yourself suspected of murder could be called ‘a bit of bother’. Talk about famous British understatement.

‘So what’s he done?’

‘That’s just it: I can’t tell you. It’s Mickey’s business, not mine.’ He wished. But now he— and his career— were a very big part of it.

Of course Abra, like all women, having learned a little, wanted to know the rest. And when Rafferty failed to come up with the goods, she retired to bed in a huff. He was in the doghouse. Again.

How did other police officers manage to keep their relationships intact? he wondered as he listened to Abra banging and clattering in the bedroom. Perhaps, alongside all the political-correctness and racial-awareness courses the police were forced to attend nowadays, there ought to be one on how to keep your partner content? Though, if they were run by the same thought-police who ran the other courses…

This was a special time in his life and Abra’s. He wished he could attend solely to their own concerns and their future happiness for a while.

But then it was a pretty special time in Mickey’s life, too. And Ma’s and the rest of the family. Sometime, it was difficult to split himself in so many directions. But he would have to continue to do so until he’d caught his murderer. He just wished he felt able to come clean and explain all the ramifications to Abra.

Chapter Seventeen

The next morning was clear and cold. Thankfully, the chill rain had stopped during the night. Rafferty, in order to avoid any more questions or sulks from Abra, was up while it was still as dark as the midnight hour. He didn’t even stop for a hot drink in case his clattering about in the kitchen should waken her.

As he had left the warmth of his small block of flats and hurried across the car park, the stiff, North Sea breeze assaulted him, making his ears ache and his cheeks tingle. Even the eternally argumentative seagulls seemed to have had their fill of the chill wind. Their cries echoed like a mournful plaint over the water as they swooped and circled like so many aerial ballerinas in a tragedy.

Fanciful, Rafferty, he smiled to himself. The sea’s champion crappers as aerial ballerinas was surely a fancy too far even for him.

And even though, once at work, he was still weighed down with the problem of Mickey, the sulks of Abra and a murder —- the solution to which continued to elude him — he was aware of an inexplicable feeling of well-being.

Nothing was any different from the day before, not really. Yet he felt different. Unreasonable optimism had him in its grasp and he could only hope it kept a good hold. Perhaps he should make an early start more often? He was so early that he had beaten the ever early Llewellyn to work. He had even beaten the dawn, though that wasn’t difficult since the December sun was a lie-abed. In fact, he had been at the station for over an hour before either Llewellyn, or the dawn, showed up.

The latter heralded a promising sky, weather-wise, of duck egg blue. It put new heart into Rafferty. He could bear the cold. He could even bear the wind: it was grey skies, day after day that brought his mood spiralling downwards.

But today looked set fair to be one of those glorious days that occurred far more often during the autumn and winter than his previous grey-sky humours would admit to.

Llewellyn, when he arrived, was, by contrast, in a pensive mood. Before he had even greeted Rafferty, or got the tea in, he made purposefully for one of the many photo-fit pictures of Mickey that Ivor Bignall and the security guards had put together with the computer artist, and gazed intently at it.

Immediately, Rafferty’s joy in the morning died away, sure that Llewellyn had at last made the connection between the photo-fit and Mickey himself, even though their only previous meeting had been a brief one. He awaited retribution.

Llewellyn glanced across at him and said firmly, ‘I know this man. I’ve met him. We both have, I’m sure of it.’

Rafferty, dismayed at this revelation, sat, corpse-like in his chair, not daring to risk a wrong word and awaiting the inevitable upset of his own dark conniving. His relief when Llewellyn frowned and told him, ‘But I just can’t place him,’ was so profound that his entire body slumped. Thankfully, Llewellyn, still intent on the picture, didn’t notice his chief’s reaction and he brightened a fraction. Perhaps all his joy in the day wasn’t about to drain away entirely.

Llewellyn thrust the photo-fit under his nose. ‘Look at it again. Does anyone spring to mind?’

Rafferty forced himself to look at the picture for a good thirty seconds, as if he was studying it as intently as Llewellyn had. Then he shrugged. ‘Sorry, Daff. As you say, this man looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t place him either. In our line of work we meet so many people that sometimes the faces become jumbled.’ Rafferty hoped such a comment would provide some sort of defence, should the worst-case scenario unfold. ‘The trouble with these computer pictures is that they are often so generalized and rely on witnesses being observant enough to take note of the shape and size of a person’s nose, eyes and the rest and most don’t, or not accurately enough. But if I do know him, it’ll come to me sooner or later, I’m sure, especially,’ he added determinedly, ‘if neither of us keeps worrying and staring at the picture.’ You in particular, he added in a silent rejoinder to Llewellyn.

Fortunately, Llewellyn seemed to take his last comment as a hint that he was time-wasting, for he returned to his desk, put the photo-fit aside, and continued with organising the allocation of the day’s CID duties.

Llewellyn, still convinced that Ivor Bignall was psychologically wrong for the role of back-stabbing murderer, was concentrating his investigatory efforts on those he believed did fit such a profile and who were both psychologically capable of the crime and had the means and opportunity to commit it. In this category he had filed the Farraday twins and Randy Rawlins.

Rafferty was more than happy to let him get on with it, relieved that he was, for the moment, concentrating all his energies away from Mickey and the photo-fit. Not that Llewellyn had much choice about this, because to Rafferty’s considerable surprise, the self-imposed form of ‘omertà’ that Mickey’s friends had applied to themselves, seemed to be holding.

Indeed, several of them, concerned by both the Mickey-inspired photo-fit and his lengthy and unexplained absence both from his flat and his usual haunts, even rang Rafferty at the station to seek his guidance as to what they should do.

As discreetly as he could, he simply advised them to carry on as they were doing, which was keeping shtum, confident that they would spread the word.

Meanwhile, with Llewellyn engaged in trying to prove which of the three he had selected as most closely matching his profile for Seward’s killer, was the guilty party, Rafferty concentrated his fire on the rest: Ivor Bignall, Idris Khan and Marcus Canthorpe. The ladies in the case — Mandy Khan, Dorothea Bignall and Samantha Harman, as well as the two security guards who seemed to have had no previous connection with Seward — he would fit in as and when. Certainly, the first two ladies had motives in plenty for wishing to kill Seward and he knew he would need to find time to question them again.

As for the male suspects; Bignall’s plans on advancing his family tree had been stymied by Seward’s rape and the subsequent botched abortion, before his seed could take root. Which might or might not provide Bignall with a major motive, depending on how strongly he really felt about carving out a dynasty.

Idris Khan, too, could be said to have a strong motive. If, that was, the Farraday twins could be believed when they claimed that Mandy Khan had had a fling with Seward and Khan found out about it.

Although the story about Mandy having an affair with Seward didn’t seem to have spread beyond the twins, when he questioned Khan about it in his mayoral parlour, Rafferty, from Khan’s determined and furious denials that it was true, got the distinct impression that the opposite was, in fact, the case.

Maybe Seward had unwisely let slip his conquest to Mandy’s mayoral husband in a bout of macho one-upmanship? Or maybe Khan had heard about it from some other source? The creeping Farraday twins seemed a distinct probability.

The other possibility in Rafferty’s current suspect line up, was Marcus Canthorpe — he of the legacy expectations that were doomed to disappointment. Idly, Rafferty found himself wondering whether Canthorpe had yet learned the bad news from Seward’s solicitor.

On an impulse, he rang their Norwich offices and managed to catch the solicitor between appointments. Philip Metcalfe confirmed he had written to all the heirs. Canthorpe must have heard on the Seward family grapevine about these letters because he had contacted the solicitor himself when this much-anticipated correspondence failed to arrive. Metcalfe told Rafferty that he had already broken the bad news.

‘How did Canthorpe take it?’ Rafferty asked.

‘He was upset at first, but he realised there was little point in arguing about the terms of the will with me. In fact, he seemed to be more annoyed at himself for being gullible enough to take Sir Rufus at his word that he would receive a legacy. I’ve had Keith Farraday on the phone, too, in search of the same reassurances as Canthorpe. Though he didn’t take it on the chin with quite Canthorpe’s phlegm and became so abusive that I had to put the phone down on him.’

Rafferty thanked the solicitor and, after a few more exchanges, bid him adieu and hung up. He sat thoughtfully staring out of the window as the afternoon turned into twilight and, one after the other, like so many yellow tiger eyes glowing in the darkness, the lights in the town came on. He wished they could show him the way as easily as they did those not on the trail of a murderer.

He had been able to find no connections between Seward’s heirs, deposed heirs or those present at the reception and who might, for a consideration, agree to remove the obstacle to their inheritance. Unless, that was, one of the guests bore Seward a grudge on their own account and was in need of funds and prepared to rid the world of Seward in a ‘two grudges for the price of one’, scenario and had come to some private arrangement.

Bignall’s grudge wasn’t about money. Neither was Idris Khan’s. And Canthorpe couldn’t have known before Seward’s death that he had reason to bear his employer a grudge. He wasn’t in urgent need of funds, either — his finances were in much ruder health than Rafferty’s own, as he had lived in at Seward’s expense for the past five years and had been able to save quite a little nest egg.

The Farraday twins didn’t seem short of funds either, if their self-indulgence in drugs, antiques and paintings were any indication.

Which left Randy Rawlins, who, in spite— or perhaps because of — the extensive and expensive wardrobe that took up half his staff bedroom, didn’t seem to have any money put by. His bank account was overdrawn by a grand and his three credit cards were all cranked up to their maximum. Shame he had no reason to believe himself down to inherit some much needed money in Seward’s will…

But, of course, all of them had had the opportunity to murder Seward, whether for reasons of monetary gain or some other motive, so none could be discounted. It was comforting to think that, as a suspect, Mickey was certainly not the only contender. But were any of the other possibles the type to kill in such a manner? Rafferty fretted. He pulled a face when he realised that Llewellyn had managed to infect him with his own psychological assessment of the suspects. And while Rafferty might not have as great a belief in the benefits of psychological assessment or profiling as his educated, intellectual sergeant, and thought it just as likely that someone determined to kill would choose the means most likely to be successful and least likely to put them in any physical danger, he didn’t, whatever Llewellyn might believe, dismiss the angle completely out of hand.

As with Ivor Bignall and Idris Khan, he simply thought that all three of Seward’s employees were either smart enough or sly enough to go in for a bluff in the means they chose to commit murder. Though, in the twins’ case, he supposed it would have to be a double-bluff, given the cowardly, back-stabbing way the murder was committed. The cowardly, behind the back attack had always been their preferred style.

This thought, of course, reminded him that the ghastly Farraday twins weren’t the only ones with a yellow streak. Cousin Nigel, he of the devious nature and preference for deceit and working behind people’s backs might, after all, turn out to be a stronger candidate for this murder than Rafferty had at first thought.

He sighed and dragged his gaze away from the slyly mesmerising lights beyond the window. Once again, all this thinking had got him nowhere, with or without Llewellyn’s psychological approach. What he needed was a pointer to guilt. But so far, even though he had as fine an assortment of suspects as any policeman could wish for, this was the one thing he lacked.