Death Line (4 page)

“No. I've worked with Jasper for five years, three as a business manager and two as a partner, but it's only in the last twelve months that the postal side has really increased. We took Mrs Campbell on a year ago, and Mrs Moreno six months later when we were able to take over the lease downstairs.”

After Llewellyn had returned and confirmed that Moon's appointments had all been cancelled, Rafferty got him to phone Virginia Campbell and Mrs Moreno. There was no answer from Mrs Moreno's and Llewellyn quietly advised Rafferty that he'd tried Mrs Campbell's phone, but had just got the unobtainable signal. When he'd contacted the phone company, they'd told him her phone had been disconnected.

Rafferty raised his eyebrows and quietly commented, “Let's hope she's not done a flit. Get someone round there quickly to check it out, Llewellyn.” Frowning, he turned back to Astell. “I wouldn't have thought there would be much of a market in Elmhurst for New Age trinkets, sir.”

“There isn't. We sell mainly by mail order.” Astell opened a drawer and handed a glossy catalogue to Rafferty. “I thought it would be a good idea to give our regular clients the opportunity to browse at their leisure, and Jasper agreed we should test the market.” Rafferty could see that a few browsing pop millionaires could be good for business. “Growing numbers of people are looking for alternative ways to improve their lives, and some of the lines are very popular.”

Five minutes later, Appleby popped his head round Astell's office door. “Inspector. Can I have a word?”

Rafferty excused himself. Llewellyn had returned and he and Rafferty followed Appleby back to Moon's office. He led them over to the wall behind the desk, careful to avoid the chalk marks outlining where Moon's body had so recently lain. There were some bright green daubs on the wall. It was blood, Rafferty knew, though looking more Martian than human. The colour was just an idiosyncrasy of one particular chemical. Another turned blood to the most delightful pink.

“These marks showed up by the victim's head when I tried the orthotolidine test,” Appleby told them. “They're not very clear, I'm afraid. Looks like somebody tried to wash them off. Any ideas?”

Rafferty couldn't make much of them and said so. “What do you make of them?” he asked Appleby.

“They were definitely drawn rather than splashed, and drawn by the dead man, most likely. I noticed his right index finger was blood-stained.”

Llewellyn hunkered down beside them and studied the marks for a few moments before he ventured a more considered suggestion. “Could be an attempt at a name. Ian, say, or Isaac and Moon never got beyond the first letter.” Llewellyn pointed. “See? The first 'I” is fairly weak. The second is a better attempt.'

Rafferty contradicted him. “I doubt it's a name. If it was, and it meant anything significant, Moon's killer would only have needed to pick up Moon's finger and alter the lettering, to a 'J” for John,' he glanced slyly at Llewellyn. “Or 'L” for-'

Llewellyn didn't give him a chance to go on. “The murderer seems to have considered the marks important enough to have made an attempt to get rid of them.”

“Probably just rattled by the sight of the bright blood on the white wall. Even killers can have weak stomachs, you know. Moon had just been hit on the head. I doubt his brain was functioning sufficiently to write anything meaningful.” He stood up, pulling rank and closing the discussion and his workaholic Catholic conscience immediately began to berate him. Do you have to be so childish, Rafferty? it asked him. Yes, he snapped silently back. I do. Why don't you mind your own bloody business?

The trouble was that Llewellyn could be such an all-fired know-all. And he was so often right in his deductions, and Rafferty so often wrong, that he frequently got on Rafferty's nerves. Still, Rafferty's conscious managed another rebuke. You could try being a little more grown up about it.

Although, most of the time, and somewhat to Rafferty's surprise, he and Llewellyn got on pretty well, there were still occasions, like at the beginning of another investigation, for instance, when he was prone to over-reaction. Too aware of the fact that, beside Llewellyn, he was over-emotional, impetuous and only half-educated, one part of him wanted to put Llewellyn down even while the other, more sensible part of him acknowledged his reaction was childish. Defensively, he reminded himself that, although Llewellyn might have more education and brain-power he had yet to solve a case, and immediately felt better. “Maybe you're right. Look into it,” he now magnanimously invited Llewellyn. “See how many people with names beginning with 'I” Moon knew.'

Llewellyn gave a stiff nod in acknowledgement. Personally, Rafferty doubted there'd be any such acquaintances. Or, if there were, there'd be none who'd had the opportunity to murder Moon.

“Seeing as you've spurned the first of my clues,” Appleby broke in. “How about taking a look at the second? You'll like this one,” he promised. “There are several nice bloody fingerprints on the outside of the window sill. Definitely not the dead man's. Fraser's taken an impression of them.”

Rafferty waved another olive branch at Llewellyn's poker-face. “That sounds more like it, hey, Dafyd? Something to get your teeth into.”

“If you say so, sir,” Llewellyn replied woodenly.

Irritated all over again, Rafferty opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, a sudden commotion from the stairway stopped him.

A voice yelling, “Come back! You can't go up there,” was followed by the pounding of heavy copper's feet on the stairs.

Rafferty strode across the room and flung the door open. “What the hell's going on?” he demanded.

A woman of about thirty stood at the head of the stairs. Looking sheepish and flustered, PC Smales stammered his apologies. “She sidled past me when I was looking the other way, sir.”

Rafferty guessed she was the Latin American woman, Mercedes Moreno, that Astell had mentioned. Dressed completely in black, a long flowing creation, covered by straight midnight dark hair, her skin was very pale, unnaturally so, he thought, as if she was ill or had deliberately powdered it that way for effect. She looked like an extremely exotic witch.

Smales, putting as much authority into his voice as his twenty years could muster, said, “Come along now, Miss. You've no right to be here.” His colour deepened when the woman ignored him. There was an air of suppressed excitement about her, and although she was doing her best to conceal it, the fluttering muscle in her cheek gave the lie to her efforts. She had still said nothing. Her silence only disconcerted the young officer even more. He gripped her arm, but she shook him off as if he were no more than a minor irritation and he stood irresolute and uncertain until Rafferty took pity on him and dismissed him.

The woman fixed her great dark eyes on Rafferty. “Jaspair is dead, is he not?”

“You are Mrs Mercedes Moreno, I take it?”

“Of course. Who else would I be?”

Who else, indeed? Rafferty asked himself. “Would you mind telling me how you knew Mr Moon was dead?” Dispensing with Superintendent Bradley's preferred brand of crawling civility, he demanded sharply of Astell as, in response to the noise, he came out of his office, “Did you contact her and tell her of Moon's death while you were waiting for us to arrive?”

Astell denied it.

“Edwin has told me nothing.” Her expression haughty, as if she considered the answering of police questions to be beneath her, she added, “I read the Tarot for Jaspair yesterday during my lunch break. Each card told of sudden happenings and great changes. First, he drew the Death card.” Showing a gift for timing the late Olivier might have envied, she paused dramatically, waiting for a reaction. When even Rafferty failed to oblige, she went on, “Admittedly, this card indicates the end of a natural cycle rather than death itself, but even so... Next, it was the Ten of Swords which warns of trials and tribulations, and The Tower, which represents the defeat of false philosophies, and finally, the Page of Swords, which warns of a deceitful person.” She paused once more and gazed from face to face, before telling them with a proud toss of her head, “I am vidente – fey, I think you call it. But, even without the warnings from the cards, I sensed danger for Jaspair, negative auras surrounded him and I warned him to take care.” Solemnly, she added, “It is a pity he did not listen to me.”

At a loss, Rafferty was careful to avoid Llewellyn's eye. He was still fumbling around for an appropriate response when a prolonged bout of wheezy coughing from Astell saved him the trouble.

“Sorry.” Astell apologised, and explained, “Bronchitis. Suffered from it for years.”

“You should live in a warmer climate, Edwin,” Mercedes told him with a silky concern that, in Rafferty's jaundiced view, sounded overly effusive. “Have I not told you this before? Always you will have this problem until you do.”

“A sensible suggestion, if lacking in practicality,” was Astell's terse comment. “My life, my wife, my work are here.”

“None of them are of any use to you if you are dead,” she told him prosaically. “And I thought you were so much improved yesterday.” She felt his forehead and he backed away in irritation. “You are very hot. You should go home and go to bed.”

If anyone could blow their nose in a manner that said clearly – mind your own business – Astell did so. He put his handkerchief away. “How can I, with-with Jasper dead? Someone's got to keep the business afloat. Or are you suggesting I leave you in charge?'”

Mercedes Moreno's eyes glittered angrily at the rebuke, but she said no more. After a few moments uncomfortable silence, Rafferty asked, “And how did Mr Moon take your, er, your warning, Mrs Moreno?”

Disdainfully, she told him, “He accused me of, how you say, fixing the pack. He never take me seriously. As if I would do such a thing. I was upset that he should think I might. He thought I made practical joke.” Her voice was shrill with outrage, though whether at Moon's accusation, Astell's rebuke, or his own scepticism, Rafferty couldn't say. “I never joke.”

Rafferty could believe it. She reminded him of sombre, history-book portraits of long-dead and fanatically devout Spaniards at the time of the Inquisition. As a lapsed Catholic, such obsessive intensity always gave him a shiver of dread.

Nostrils flaring, she declared, “El Senor Moon and La Senora Campbell seemed to think that because I have none of their pieces of paper that my skills are the second rate sort, fit only for selling trinkets in the shop. Is not true. In my own country I was highly thought of, but here-” She made a noise of disgust.

Half expecting her to stamp her foot and burst into a flood of incomprehensible Spanish, Rafferty wondered why she hadn't stayed in her own country if they had thought so highly of her? She had made no comment about Astell's opinion of her skills, but it was clear he didn't rate them very highly. If he had, he wouldn't have been so sharp with her.

She was clearly a highly-excitable woman, fond of dramatizing herself. It was unlikely they'd ever get to the bottom of her outlandish claims, and Rafferty, refusing to let her wrong-foot him, ushered them all into Astell's office and shut the door.

“Perhaps you would both like to tell me when you last saw Mr Moon?” he suggested. “You first, Mrs Moreno.”

“I left at 6.10 p m, a little later than usual as I had first to get changed. I went upstairs to say good night to Jaspair. He was in his office.”

“Was he alone?”

“Yes. But the cleaner, she was in the kitchen. Jaspair tease me again about my warning. I was upset that he made mock of me and told him so. I went straight from work to Senor and Senora Astell. Senora Astell had invited me over. Yesterday was the anniversary of her beloved father's death,” she explained. “She wanted to mark it properly. English people, I find, have little feeling for such rituals, but not Senora Astell. She has the proper respect for her family, and although she is not Catholic, she knew that in my religion, we show the dead due reverence; we pray for them, light candles for them to lessen the time they must spend in Purgatory. She has a little shrine to her father and she asked me to come to share the evening with her, her husband, and an elderly lady friend of her father's. It was an honour to be asked.”

“What time did this, er, occasion start and finish?” Rafferty asked Astell.

“It started about 6.30 p m and ended quite early, about 8.00 p m. Clara Davies, my father-in-law's old friend is quite elderly now, and doesn't enjoy late nights, not that these affairs have ever gone on very late.” Suddenly, as if sorry about his earlier sharpness, he smiled at the Peruvian woman. “Mrs Moreno was concerned that my wife would be anxious and came a little early. She knew my wife planned to serve a light buffet afterwards, and wanted to help.”

“Is the least I could do,” she told him softly. “I am very fond of Senora Astell and it was an important occasion for her. I offered to help clear up before I left the first time, but Mr Astell would not hear of it.” She smiled a smug smile. “But I got my way in the end. That is why I leave the gloves,” she explained. “So I have an excuse to return. The cleaner had gone home sick and is not right that Mr Astell should have to do women's work.”

Astell seemed to find her out-dated attitude embarrassing. “I only had to load up the dishwasher,” he explained. “Not such an arduous task after all.”

“Even so,” she began. Rafferty, tiring of this dish-talk, interrupted her to ask, “I gather you finally left a little before 9.00 p m?” She nodded.