Rafferty's morning, as Llewellyn had predicted, wasn't going quite so smoothly. Feeling Frank Massey would be more communicative if he questioned him alone, he had left Mary Carmody in the car. But, as it turned out, Massey seemed to have no inclination for talking whether it be to one person or twenty-one.
After Rafferty had explained the reason for his visit, a haunted look came into Massey's eyes. His body visibly trembled and Rafferty was afraid he'd collapse. But Massey managed to get himself together. He let go of the doorpost and, after staring at Rafferty with a mixture of fear and aggression, he turned abruptly on his heel and left Rafferty to follow or not as he pleased.
Massey had not only gone down in the world in terms of money and social standing, Rafferty realised as he followed the man into the room and shut the door. He had also let himself go. Not altogether surprising, he acknowledged as he sat down on a hard wooden chair. From being a respected academic, a university lecturer, he was now unemployed and had exchanged a comfortable semi-detached house for a bedsitter, success for defeat; Rafferty could smell the sour odour of it in the damp walls, the unwashed body and rumpled, none-too-clean clothes. The fumes of strong lager and cigarette smoke added to the fetid atmosphere.
Rafferty knew Frank Massey wasn't yet forty, yet already he looked old. His hair, what remained of it, hung lank and greying over his shirt collar and his neck was thin and stringy with the wrinkles from age that were more commonly seen in a much older man. Even his fingers, long and slender like those of an artist, showed the decline and were stained with nicotine, the nails bitten to the quick.
All this Rafferty took in in a few seconds, conscious of a terrible feeling of pity. He could imagine what a man like Massey would have suffered in prison and his experiences would be unlikely to encourage him to still view the police and the judicial system with any confidence.
Rafferty couldn't blame him. The poor sap had been confident of justice and when the law had failed him he had attempted to supply it himself and had instead brought that very justice down on his own head. Between them, the law and Maurice Smith had destroyed him: his marriage, his career, his entire life, had been smashed to smithereens. Conscious of this, and aware that his sympathy was already heavily engaged in Massey's favour, he was careful how he proceeded.
'So what do you want?' Massey's voice was rough, scratchy from too many cigarettes, but underlying the harshness and the rough manner undoubtedly learned in prison for self-protection, were the well-modulated tones of an educated man.
The battered collection of books that Rafferty saw on the cheap shelving confirmed this; there were literally hundreds of them. He squinted and managed to read a few of the names. There was Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The House Of The Dead, Milton's Paradise Lost, and George Orwell's Down And Out In Paris And London. Rafferty hadn't read any of them, but he found it unsurprising that such titles should look the most thumbed of the lot.
Into Rafferty's mind flashed the thought that his own determination to advance further with his reading had come to a grinding halt because his motives were all wrong. A desire to top Llewellyn's aggravating partiality to literary allusion was proving an insufficient carrot, whereas Massey, as appropriate for a one-time university lecturer on literature, obviously loved books for their own sake. Another unwelcome thought immediately followed; that Llewellyn, who normally spouted superior quotes at him several times a day, had, since his mother's arrival, failed to produce one.
Thrusting both thoughts to the back of his mind where they could quietly simmer, he turned back to Massey and said, 'I'm sorry about this, sir, but I have to ask you where you were last Thursday evening. In view of your, er, past association with Maurice Smith, we have to check. You must realise this.'
Massey's throat produced a strangled laugh. 'Only doing my job? Is that what you're saying?'
Already finding his task as investigating officer repugnant, Rafferty shifted uncomfortably at Massey's taunt. Before he could attempt a reassuring reply, Massey asked, 'Have you got children?'
Reluctant to admit another area for possible grievance, Rafferty considered lying, but as remembered his proven lack of lie-ability, he just shook his head, Aware he was letting Massey take control of the interview, he tried to regain it. 'Mr Massey, if you could just—'
But Massey was off on a different tack. 'Do you know, Mr Stubbs – the Inspector in charge of Smith's case – told me I'd gone about getting my revenge all wrong. The attack on Smith, I mean. He told me I should have got myself an alibi organised, then beaten the shit out of him.' Broodingly, Massey stared at the carpet, as though intent on consigning its faded pattern to memory. Then he gave a shuddering sigh and looked up, meeting Rafferty's eyes with a tortured gaze. 'He came and pleaded for me at my trial. Decent chap.'
As he listened to the strange mixture of prison slang and BBC English, Rafferty found himself agreeing with Stubbs's advice. In Massey's position, if revenge had been his intention, getting a decent alibi organised first was what he'd have done. He could, he knew, have relied on any of his family to lie with the determination of Pinocchio in such a good cause.
But what was the point in telling Massey that Stubbs's advice had been sound? He was already embittered, why make him feel he had been foolishly naive as well? 'Look, Mr Massey,' he began again. 'All I want to know is where you were last Thursday evening and I'll go.'
Massey raised his head. His eyes looked haunted, but beneath that and the lager dullness, Rafferty caught the gleam of intelligence. 'That's all you want, is it?' He shook his head. 'I doubt it. When it comes down to it, you're all looking for the big one that will give you promotion. If you think I'll provide you with it, you won't let sympathy get in your way.'
Rafferty, aware that he was getting nowhere, broke in sharply. 'Have you got an alibi for last Thursday evening, or not?'
He was immediately sorry as his sharp tone caused Massey's whole body to recommence its uncontrollable trembling and, as Rafferty stared, a tic started up beneath Massey's left eye. His face, already pale, now looked ashen. The man obviously lived on his nerves to an alarming degree. Rafferty, suspecting his aggressive tone had brought back ugly prison memories, immediately felt like a complete heel. He was surprised when Massey managed to pull himself together sufficiently to frame a reply.
'As-as it happens, I have got an alibi.'
'So, where were you?' Rafferty deliberately kept his tone soft. 'Here?'
Massey shook his head, then winced. 'Have you got an aspirin?'
Rafferty, suspecting Massey was using delaying tactics while he sorted out his troubled mind, quickly fished a silver foil packet out of his pocket and handed two tablets over. Massey gulped them down and nodded his thanks. 'You were about to tell me where you were,' Rafferty reminded him.
-I went to see my daughter.'
'Well, if you were in London and she and your ex-wife can corrob–'
'They weren't in London. Alice and her mother were at the coast for a short break. I went there, only we had a row and I left.'
'Where was this?'
'Place near Clacton, called Jaywick.'
Rafferty's interest stirred. The coast? In December? And barely more than ten miles from Elmhurst? If this was the best Massey could manage in the alibi line, it was little wonder he had been caught last time. Had the man learned nothing? 'What time was this?'
Massey shrugged. 'Must have been about half five when I left them.'
'So where did you go after that?'
'I just drove around for a couple of hours, then parked in a layby out Great Mannleigh way. I—I needed a drink.'
Rafferty stared at him. Was the man a complete fool? If that was his idea of an alibi... Great Mannleigh was ten miles from Elmhurst. A short enough drive for a man still looking for revenge.
He began to wonder just how friendly Massey had become with ex-Inspector Stubbs. Friendly enough for him or Thompson, who was still on the force, to tip him the wink on Smith's whereabouts? But if that were the case, surely this time he'd have the sense to take Stubbs's advice and get himself a decent alibi? Unless, Rafferty cautioned himself, unless Massey was being twice as clever as his police advisor and had figured that the police would expect him to have a good alibi this time – especially after his previous experience, especially if he was guilty.
Anyway, why would Stubbs or any other copper leave it till ten years after the case to help Massey get his revenge? The man had been out of prison for eight years. Long enough to trace Smith himself if he'd still been set on it. But, Rafferty reminded himself, Massey was broke. And even if he had managed to trace Smith, he had already nerved himself up to give him one beating; Smith would hardly have opened his door to him.
Massey may have got older, thinner and unkempt, but he hadn't changed so much that Smith would have been unable to recognise him through his spyhole. Massey, thin to the point of emaciation, looked as if he wouldn't have the strength to tear open a milk carton, yet, from somewhere had found the strength, of mind and muscle, to beat Smith to a bloody pulp ten years earlier. You don't forget the face of the man who does that to you.
As, for the moment, Massey seemed disinclined to add anything further, Rafferty asked, 'Still drive the same car, Mr Massey?'
Massey's lashes, long, dark, girlishly beautiful, began to flutter above the still-frantic tic as he nodded. 'A white Cortina.' He looked at Rafferty, then quickly away, before adding, 'Some of your boys picked me up and brought me to the station. That would have been around s—seven, seven-thirty Thursday night. I spent the rest of the night in a cell.' He stumbled to a halt.
Rafferty looked sharply at him. Massey wore an air half-hangdog and half-triumphant. He couldn't decide if Massey was lying or playing with him, deliberately holding back the alibi that would put him in the clear in order to get some sort of revenge.
Outwardly, he didn't look capable of such tactics, but then Rafferty glanced again at the mass of well-used highbrow books and realised that the intelligence that read such heavy novels for pleasure was still there.
If Massey was telling the truth, he couldn't have killed Smith. They had the testimony of several witnesses, Smith's landlady among them, to say that Smith had certainly still been alive at seven-thirty that evening.
Rafferty stood up. 'Your story will be checked out, Mr Massey. If you were picked up by the police, it'll be on record.'
He let himself out and breathed the scarcely less malodorous air on the landing with relief. Poor bastard, he thought again. Poor stupid bastard. You should have got yourself that alibi all those years ago. But at least, Rafferty consoled his uneasy conscience, if his story checked out, he was in the clear this time.
Mrs Massey and her daughter still lived in the London house the family had moved to from Burleigh. After stopping for a bite to eat, Rafferty pulled up in the quiet suburban street. Aware the next half-hour was likely to be even more trying than the last, he lingered in the car for a few minutes, steeling himself for the interview in a short review of the facts.
Alice, Massey's daughter, was only eighteen now, but she had been through a lot; the rape, the trial and Smith's release, her father's trial and imprisonment, and then the divorce. He was worried about her likely reaction to being questioned about Smith.
He had left Detective Sergeant Mary Carmody in the car during Massey's interview, but he knew he would need her moral support for this one and finally, he turned to her and asked, 'Ready?'
Mary nodded.
Suddenly, Rafferty was even more relieved he had brought her. At thirty-four, she had a motherly air, as well as a lot of experience with rape victims. Rafferty had telephoned Mrs Massey the day before, so they were expected. In the circumstances, he felt it was a necessary courtesy. It gave her a chance to get a friend to be with her and her daughter.
Alice Massey let them in. She was small, slender, and looked much younger than her eighteen years. But, given her dreadful experiences, she seemed remarkably composed, self-contained, if reserved. Her clothes were dowdy, mouse brown and dingy khaki and came nearly to her ankles at one end and just under her chin at the other as though she was determined to make herself as unattractive to men as possible.
After inviting them in, she offered tea or coffee and, after calling her mother, served it very efficiently.
Alice and her mother seemed to have exchanged roles, Rafferty noted with surprise. It was extraordinary, but Alice treated her middle-aged mother as if she were a child, explaining who they were and mopping her up and calming her down when she spilled her coffee and became upset.
'I'm afraid my mother hasn't been well for some time, Inspector,' Alice quietly explained her mother's clumsiness, easy tears and general air of not quite being with them. 'I had hoped to keep this business from her.'
Relieved that Alice hadn't dissolved into hysterics as he had half-feared, Rafferty saw no reason why they couldn't at least spare her mother the upset of questioning. All he needed to do was to check a few facts and Alice could supply answers for both of them. He told her this and suggested her mother might like to return to whatever she had been doing before their arrival.
As though she feared he might change his mind, Alice had her mother on her feet straight away and steered her firmly through the door, shutting it gently behind them.
'Poor girl,' Rafferty commented when he and Sergeant Carmody were alone. 'Don't you think her mother ought to be in a nursing home where they have the facilities to treat her?'
Mary Carmody shook her head. 'I imagine looking after her mother is the only thing that's keeping young Alice together. I think she'd go to pieces if her mother was taken away. She probably blames herself for everything, from the rape through to her parents' divorce; rape victims often do. Can't you see how brittle, how unnatural that calm manner of hers is? It's as if she's got such a tight hold on herself because she's frightened of what might happen if she were to let go.' Sergeant Carmody glanced carefully at Rafferty. 'I think it might be a good idea if I questioned her.'
Alice came back then. 'We can talk now,' she told them. The unnatural stiffness of her smile made Rafferty realise that Mary Carmody had been right. Alice was stretched as taut as an anchor chain. She sat as far away from him as possible, perching on a hard chair against the wall rather than share the sofa with him.
He gave Sergeant Carmody the nod to begin. He listened hard as she began to question Alice.
Alice told them she and her mother had taken a planned trip to the East Coast the previous Thursday, when her father had turned up on their holiday doorstep unexpectedly.
'He upset mother. He always does. He gets so angry.' For the first time, there were signs of anger in Alice's face. Two pink spots of colour brightened her cheeks, making her appear more alive than at any time since their arrival.
'I suppose he gets upset, too, Alice,' Mary Carmody told her gently. 'I'm sure he must be concerned about you.'
'He's only concerned about himself.' Alice's voice was cold. 'He feels what-what happened to me reflects on him. It makes him feel weak, unmanly. His ego can't take that.' Her gaze hard, her expression scornful, she looked utterly unforgiving. In a girl so young, it was quite chilling. 'But he couldn't even protect himself. He was stupid. That's why he got caught when he attacked the-the man. The policeman told him what he should have done.'
'I'm sorry he upset you.'
'He didn't upset me. I told you. It was mother he upset by bringing it all back again.'
She seemed determined to make herself appear calm, as though such untidy things as human emotions had nothing to do with her. It merely emphasised all the more how unnatural her behaviour was.
'I asked him to leave. Things got a bit heated.'
Rafferty had taken it for granted that when Frank Massey had said he'd had a row and left, he had assumed he meant he had rowed with Mrs Massey, not Alice. It was interesting that she didn't always cling to her emotionless stance.
'So, where did you go, you and your mother? You said you went to the seaside?' He might as well get confirmation of where they had been while he was here, he thought.
'We went to Jaywick, along the coast from Clacton. A quiet place.' And no distance at all from Elmhurst, Rafferty thought again as he met Mary Carmody's eye. 'We stayed in a boarding house.'
'Bit chilly at this time of the year,' Mary remarked with a bright smile. 'Or are you one of these hardy types who swim in winter?'
Alice didn't return the smile. Her face, gut-wrenchingly solemn for such a young girl, she told them, 'I never swim. Not since the man.' She paused and when she went on her voice was less like that of an automaton and more that of a young woman. 'Mother had been sleeping badly here at home. If we can afford it, I always try to take her to the coast when she has a spell like that. She seems to sleep so much better beside the ocean. Sometimes, I can hardly get her to wake the next morning.'
They left shortly after. They didn't trouble Alice for the name of the boarding house. As she had said, Jaywick was a small place. It should be easy enough to trace. Rafferty was half-afraid of what they might discover. Alice looked a lot younger than her years, small and slenderly-made, unthreatening. Smith might easily have opened the door to her. But now, Rafferty felt certain that her outward composure concealed more emotions than she had wanted them to see. He had sensed her anger; she was full of it. An anger that she appeared to bottle up. An anger that only the cork of determination kept bottled. Had something shaken her up so the cork had briefly popped? If so, he felt certain her rage would be all the more powerful once it escaped that unnatural hold she kept on it.
'I'd like you to go along to Jaywick when we get back,' Rafferty said to Mary Carmody, when they were in the car and pulling away. 'Check out her story. There can't be much bed and breakfast business in Jaywick in December, so if Alice and her mother were there, they would likely be remembered.'
Mary Carmody nodded and glanced across at him. 'Do you think she might have killed Smith?'
Rafferty prevaricated. 'Do you?'
She didn't answer and Rafferty reluctantly admitted, 'She's a possible. She admits she was in the general area. Of course, she didn't have any transport, but I've one or two ideas about that and it would have been easy enough for her to dose her mother with something to keep her quiet so she could slip out.'
As though determined to push him to examine the evidence against Alice, she asked, 'But how would she know where to find Smith?'
'If ex-Inspector Stubbs or Thompson became friendly enough with Frank Massey, as, at least to a certain degree, Stubbs must have done to offer to stand as a character witness at his trial, he may well have tipped Massey off about Maurice Smith's address on the quiet. Easy enough for her to get it out of her father when he was on one of his drinking binges.'
'Even if she managed to gain access to Smith's flat and kill him, how would she get him from his flat to the woods? She doesn't have a car. Can't even drive, as far as we know.'
'All right,' Rafferty snapped. 'So she had help.' He jammed his lips tightly together, aware he was being unprofessional and feeling doubly-annoyed because of it. Why was it, he asked himself, that when other people tried to manipulate him into facing up to unpleasant possibilities, he reacted so unreasonably?
Conscious he could evade the issue no longer, he saved Mary Carmody the trouble of dragging the rest of his conjectures out of him. 'Sinead Fay and her friends were watching Smith – parked outside his flat in a car. To my mind, there's damn all doubt about that, even though we're still waiting for proof of it. From where they were parked on the other corner, they had a clear view front and back. They could have seen anyone using the fire stairs at the back of Smith's flat. There was a full moon that night and there's a street lamp right on the corner, so they'd have had no trouble seeing her. I reckon they'd have been only too delighted to help her.'
'But I understood that they didn't know her,' Mary Carmody objected. 'Why should they help her? Why should they even care what she did?'
Rafferty was cheered a little at the reminder.
'Sergeant Llewellyn told me that none of them had ever counselled her, so how would they, ten years later, recognise her as one of Smith's victims?'
Unfortunately, Rafferty's brain raced ahead of her and reluctantly, he added, 'Even if they consider men far from being the greatest thing since sliced bread, I don't suppose they elect to remain in purdah. I imagine they visit other Rape Support Groups from time to time. For all we know or are likely to be able to find out after all this time, one of them met her on a visit to Burleigh and befriended her. Ellen Kemp's the most likely. She's the right age to have done so. And even if they didn't help her, there's always her father. He has a car.'
'But according to you, by that time he'd been picked up by the police.'
'According to Massey he'd been picked up by then. We've yet to check it out. But did you notice — his car's got two aerials? The betting is he's got a car phone. God knows why or how he affords it. But there's a phone box on the corner of Smith's road; maybe, if she killed Smith, she contacted her father from there and told him what she'd done. Do you really think her own father would have left her to take the consequences? Especially after he'd made such a hash of things ten years ago. He'd have helped her get rid of the body.'
Mary Carmody called a halt to her questioning for long enough to filter her way on to the M25, the ring road around London. It was busy. The rush hour started earlier and earlier, particularly in the lead-up to Christmas. Rafferty was thankful to have a respite from her prodding questions. But, the respite didn't last long and five minutes’ later, they resumed.
'So who moved the body from the wood?'
'Who else but Sinead Fay and her friends? We know full well where their sympathies lie – certainly not with the police. They'd have been only too happy to muddy the waters of the police investigation into Smith's death. Even if they didn't help Alice herself, they must have seen it all, as it's pretty certain that it was them watching Smith's flat. They were probably hoping to make sure he didn't do a bunk after he received their “outing” threat and elude their punishment. If, as I think most likely, Frank Massey helped his daughter shift the body to the wood, those women would have followed and removed it.'
'So why would they — presuming it was them — string it up again?'
God knows, Rafferty thought. I certainly don ‘t. But, just in time, instinct came to his aid. ‘'Because they'd acted on impulse, hadn't really thought through the consequences. Then cold, hard, common sense set in and they got scared.' Rafferty, aware his thoughts were still muddled, fought for answers. 'It would only be later that they would have been likely to appreciate what they’d done; that they had a corpse on their hands, or rather, in Sinead Fay's car boot. They could hardly leave it there. As Smith was strung up again, I imagine they decided that Massey and his daughter had had the right idea in the first place. Smith was dead. They might as well get some useful publicity from his death. Hiding his body served no purpose so they decided to put it back where they found it. They just took the precaution of removing his wrist ties and the hood in an attempt to confuse us and protect his killer.
'Unfortunately for them, they didn't realise we already had a description of how the body had originally been left. Though, even if we hadn't known, the cord on his wrists had left recognisable marks. I don't suppose they noticed those as they must have done the necessary in a great hasty panic. I doubt they even looked at him much. Easy to miss such a giveaway in the circumstances. Easy too, to miss the fact that he was stabbed, as most of the bleeding was internal and his tracksuit, being dark, would have meant the blood wouldn't have shown up too well.'
He glanced quickly across at her, almost asked how he was doing, but decided such a question was beneath his dignity. Instead, he said, 'Shame we've no proof one way or the other; no prints, no nothing. Smith's visitor didn't even shed a hair, according to forensic.'
Carmody glanced quickly back at him. 'But Alice doesn't necessarily know that.'
Rafferty stared at her as her quiet comment penetrated. 'Are you suggesting we deliberately try to entrap a young girl into admitting she was there, that she killed him? After what he did to her?' He frowned. 'Hardly seems sporting.'
'But we're not involved in a friendly soccer match, sir,' she reminded him. 'Admittedly, it wouldn't make you the most popular boy in the school, but the question is, do you want to catch Smith's killer or not?'
Rafferty didn't answer her question. Unfortunately it was one he had already asked himself several times. And even though, during the course of the slow, stop-start journey, he had plenty of time to think about it, he still didn't have an answer when they finally reached Elmhurst.
Liz Green and Llewellyn had still not returned by the time Rafferty and Mary Carmody got back to the station. After a quick refreshments break in the canteen, Sergeant Carmody set off for Jaywick to check out what Alice Massey had told them.
Rafferty, left alone with his troubling thoughts, tried to keep busy. He got on the phone to Great Mannleigh station to corroborate Frank Massey's statement but the two officers who had picked him up were off duty and the Custody Sergeant to whom he was put through was interrupted by wild, drunken shouting before he could check his records. Yelling down the line, 'I'll get back to you,' the officer put the phone down.
Rafferty sighed and glanced at the clock. He'd chosen a bad time to call. Christmas drinking started early and like Elmhurst, Great Mannleigh’s charge room would be cluttered with the human detritus of pub brawls and domestic violence, their numbers swelled by the seasonal revellers. He sighed again as he realised it might be some time before the Mannleigh Custody Sergeant was able to get back to him.
He reached in his pocket for the bag of boiled sweets that had earlier that year taken the place of the habitual cigarettes. However, the bag was empty. Aware that if his urge for lemon sherbets wasn't quickly appeased the older habit might resurface, he pulled on his coat and headed for the sweet shop round the corner from the High Street.
It was a still afternoon, the air crisp but with the bite of a wild animal and, after buying a fresh supply of tooth-rot, Rafferty was anxious to get back to his warm office. He'd only walked a few yards when he heard music coming from the High Street. He retraced his steps and turned the corner.
A Salvation Army band had struck up beside the Christmas tree and, in spite of the icy greyness of the weather, a crowd had gathered. Illuminated by the lights of the tree, the breath of each rose like a little phantom and seemed, as it mingled with the rest, to encourage a warm camaraderie to which Rafferty's current low spirits were drawn.
The crowd, encouraged by the band's enthusiasm and probably a tot or two of something even warmer, were soon singing along to the carols with gusto. When the band struck up with God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Rafferty, who loved a good singsong as much as most bad singers, forgot his problems for long enough to join in, belting out the words in his off-key voice. It was only when the opening bars of Mary's Boy Child, Jesus Christ gentled the mood that he recollected himself.
What the hell are you doing, Rafferty? his conscience demanded, as it reminded him: You're in the middle of a murder investigation. You've no business to be singing carols. He crept away, hoping no one had recognised him.
When he got back to the station he tried to concentrate on reading the reports that had accumulated in his absence. But, apart from noting that no one had come forward to say they had seen what time Smith had arrived at the Bullocks' flat last Thursday evening and that Sam Dally had rang back to confirm that some of Smith's bruising had occurred ante-mortem, he took little in.
Try as he might to stop it, his mind kept returning to what Mary Carmody had said. Was he committed to finding Smith's killer? he asked himself again. Or would he prefer just to go through the motions and report a failure at the end of it? Part of him couldn't help feeling that bringing Smith's wretched life to an end was the best thing for all concerned, Smith included. Yet, the other half of him chimed in, is anyone, no matter what the provocation, entitled to act as judge, jury and executioner?
Backwards and forwards his internal arguments went. No final answer presented itself, but one thing he was sure of was that if he couldn't put himself heart and soul to the task of catching Smith's killer, he should consider asking to be taken off the case.
But, before he took such a step, he needed advice. To ask the opinion of any of his family would be worse than useless. Their own petty foibles apart, the Raffertys were staunch members of the hang-'em and flog-'em brigade. They would think that Smith had got what he deserved and that the family’s token copper shouldn't strain himself to catch his killer.
The only other person he felt he could ask for advice was Llewellyn. He wondered what the Welshman would say if he went to Bradley and asked to be taken off the case. But there was no comfortable answer there, either. He didn't have to ponder the question for long before concluding that, Llewellyn, although understanding of human frailties, was also a staunch believer in right and wrong, the rule of law and personal responsibility and he would think he was trying to avoid his own responsibility. He would be sure to remind him that a policeman's job didn't just consist of catching vicious killers, but also the perpetrators of the less clear-cut, more grey-shaded crimes, like this one.
And whether black, white or any shade in between, Llewellyn would believe their duty as policemen was clear. Rafferty wished he found it easy to separate the instinctive, human reactions from those of the law enforcer in the way that the Welshman seemed able to.
Although still niggled by Mary Carmody's question when Llewellyn returned, to his surprise, his dour sergeant provided a little light relief. Even better, it seemed that something had dragged the Welshman's mind from the gloomy contemplation of his love life, for now, Llewellyn's long and generally lugubrious face quivered with something close to outrage.
'That family!' Llewellyn never swore, but the way he ground the words out from between clenched teeth was the closest he was likely to get. 'They shouldn't have charge of a cat, never mind a child. Yet they seem to have a dozen or more of each roaming around that yard and cats and children both look hungry and neglected.’
Rafferty gaped at him. He'd never heard Llewellyn go in for such sweeping judgementalism; that was more his style. He just managed to hold back a grin. 'I take it you're talking about the fruitful Figg family?'
Llewellyn nodded. 'Do you know what one of Tracey Figg's uncles said to me?' he demanded. 'At least.' He frowned. 'I presume from his age and the family likeness that he's one of her uncles. He said that if Smith hadn't broken her in – his words, someone else would have. He even suggested she must have taken to rough loving – his words again, as she always got herself knocked up, made pregnant, by her more violent boyfriends. It never seemed to occur to him that the early assault and subsequent feelings of worthlessness experienced by so many rape victims might go a long way to explaining her choice of partners.' Llewellyn threw up his hands. 'What do you do with such people?'
'Not a lot you can do,' Rafferty told him. 'Though, if it'll make you feel any better, you can take your frustration out on my expensive new chair. Giving it a good kicking always does the trick for me.'
Superintendent Bradley had ordered the new furniture. Since being made Great High Wallah Wallah in the Masons, his self-importance knew no bounds. And, although the cost had strained Long Pocket's natural parsimony, pride had dictated that the GHWW and his acolytes must be suitably seated. Frankly, even though they whizzed about with a far more satisfying vigour than most of the force, Rafferty doubted the chairs would catch many criminals.
'Families like that are sent to try policeman, Dafyd,' he soothed, when Llewellyn had calmed down a little. 'They just don't think in the same way as you or me. I doubt if thinking as such occupies much of their time at all. In my experience, such people operate on a different level altogether; one of instinct and appetite.'
'You make them sound like so many wild animals.'
Rafferty shrugged. 'They're human enough. Maybe I should say they haven't evolved – too much in-breeding perhaps accounts for it – you've only got to look at some of our so-called aristocracy to see the problems that can cause. Anyway, with people like the Figgs, the usual civilizing influences seem to pass them by. How do you instil a sense of responsibility, morality even, in people who have no real understanding of either?'
Unwillingly reminded of his earlier brooding on where his own responsibilities lay, Rafferty leant back in his chair and determinedly concentrated his thoughts on the Figgs. 'I remember when I was young, there were two or three families on our Council estate like the Figgs. They all left school — when they went at all — without having learned much that employers would regard as useful. Yet they were all canny enough. The men could all figure out, without benefit of pen, paper, or calculator, what their winnings should be from a four-way accumulator. And the women were all adept at bamboozling whatever petty official the Council sent to enquire why the rent hadn't been paid.'
His grin escaped his previous firm control. He couldn't help it. Part of him admired people who managed to get the better of authority. He suspected he shared something of the Figg outlook himself. 'I bet, if I asked any of the current breeding stock, they could all tell me exactly what they were entitled to from the Social, whether it's a new cooker or a cage for the budgie.' He paused consideringly. 'So, apart from learning that compassion is their middle name, what else did you discover?'
'That's just it.' Llewellyn slumped in his chair — a less grand version of Rafferty's, but still impressive. 'I learned absolutely nothing. The men, those who didn't just sidle out as soon as we arrived, all seemed to be called either Jack or Jason. And the women all called themselves Mrs Figg, whether they wore a wedding ring or not. The Jack who elected himself as spokesman insisted they were all at home on Thursday evening, watching pre-recorded films on their enormous television. Though, I'd have thought, given the size of the screen, the quantity of Figgs, and the smallness of the room, there would scarcely be space for half of them. WPC Green was of the opinion they'd need to eat, sleep and watch television in relays.'
'What about the daughter, Tracey? Did you manage to see her?'
Llewellyn scowled as he was forced to admit, 'I've no idea. She might have been there – there were several young women around the right age, but it was impossible to ask them anything. They all seemed to have two or three toddlers and babies scrambling all over them and half of the offspring were screaming. And the smell!' Llewellyn gave a fastidious shudder.
Rafferty had known it was a mistake to send the bandbox fresh Llewellyn to see the Figg family. He'd have been so busy stopping sticky fingers pawing at his beautiful suit that he'd have been only too glad to leave; even the high moral ground Welshman had his weak points. 'Never mind. We'll go and see them together tomorrow.'
Like a bloodhound on downers, Llewellyn's whole face seemed to droop at the news. Rafferty was just about to remind him that it was all part of a policeman's lot, that he'd said himself that they had to take the rough with the smooth, when, just in time, he remembered that Llewellyn had had no part in his earlier internal monologue on duty and responsibility. Still, the family had to be investigated, and he was damned if he was going to be the only one the babies were encouraged to throw up over when the Figgs tired of being questioned.
'It might be a good idea to borrow someone from Burleigh nick next time. Most of the Figgs are, I gather, regular customers there. If nothing else, they'll be able to tell us who's who.' Rafferty paused. 'What about the Denningtons? Any joy there?'
With every appearance of relief, Llewellyn turned to the other family. 'They seem to be out of it. Mother and daughter were both at a pantomime at a London theatre that evening. The neighbourhood got up a coach party and most of the street went. The coach didn't get back to Burleigh till after midnight. I checked and they were both on the coach back from London and their neighbours vouched for their presence all evening. So they had no opportunity to kill Smith.'
Rafferty nodded. Llewellyn's outburst had made him forget to ask about Stubbs and Thompson, and now he did so. 'Any joy on the policeman front?'
Llewellyn met his eyes steadily. 'Depends on your point of view,' he told him. His words indicated that he had guessed some of Rafferty's inner battle. 'Stubbs goes over to his friend Thompson's house regularly once a week, usually on a Thursday, though it depends what shift his relief is on.'
'I take it he went there on Thursday last week?'
Llewellyn nodded. 'Though, according to a witness I spoke to, neither man remained there. They went out in Thompson's car around eight that evening – the neighbour saw them go past his house and they still hadn't returned by nine-thirty.'
'Mmm.' Rafferty pulled thoughtfully at his ear. 'You didn't alert Stubbs or Thompson to our interest in them?
Llewellyn shook his head. 'All Stubbs will find out is that I called to see him again, which is something he must have been expecting anyway. And I doubt he'll even give the chap I spoke to the chance to tell him that much, as he seems to keep the neighbours at arms' length. As for Thompson, all he's likely to learn is that a stranger admired his house and was told it was unlikely to be open to offers.'
'Good. If they're innocent, I don't want to make things difficult for them. Thompson is still in the police service, after all. But now we know they're still in the running we're going to have to question both of them more thoroughly. We've given them every consideration so far, but it's time to take the gloves off. I want to know where they went that night and why, and police officers, or no, they'll answer.' He paused and gave Llewellyn a faint grin. 'Working with you might not have given me the wisdom of a Solomon, Daff, but you must admit my grammar's improving.'
Llewellyn made no comment and Rafferty's grin faded. 'Let's hope ex-Inspector Stubbs appreciates the grammatical quality of my English when I question him again.' Quickly, Rafferty related what he had learned in London and added, 'I'm waiting for Great Mannleigh nick to get back to me.'
Mary Carmody put her head round the door. 'I've just got back from Jaywick, guv. Alice Massey and her mother were there all right, from late Thursday afternoon to the Sunday morning. They were staying at a guest house called 'Sunnyside'. Mrs Johns, the owner, confirmed Frank Massey's visit and the times he arrived and left, though she couldn't swear to it that neither Alice or her mother didn't slip out later without her noticing.
'It's only a half hour walk to Clacton along the seafront. They could have got a train from there to Elmhurst. There's also a bus service from both Jaywick and Clacton to Elmhurst. I asked the staff on duty at both the train station and the bus depot, but no one recognised my descriptions of Alice or her mother. I'll check again when the staff shifts are due to change.'
Rafferty nodded.
'DC Lilley's in the canteen waiting to see you, guv. Shall I send him in?'
'Only if he's got good news,' Rafferty told her glumly. He hated this stage of a case when all the ends still seemed to be dangling, with various suspects with poor or non-existent alibis. He was beginning to feel like a juggler with too many balls in the air and too few hands; constantly in danger of dropping one of them.
Lilley's news turned out to be neither good nor bad, only more of the same. Smith's neighbour had still not found the piece of paper with the registration number of the Zephyr.
Rafferty decided he could no longer delay checking out the other Zephyr owners and he told Llewellyn to get it organised. 'Though it'll probably be a waste of time.' He stuffed a sherbet lemon in his mouth and crunched. 'Kids tend to borrow their parents’ cars without always bothering to ask or even mentioning their borrowing afterwards. And if they find out that Mr Plod the policeman is investigating Daddy's Zephyr they'll keep shtum for sure.'
The phone rang and Rafferty broke off his complaints. After listening for a while, he asked a few questions, then replaced the receiver and looked at Llewellyn. 'That was Great Mannleigh. They confirm they picked up Frank Massey last Thursday. Though at nine-thirty, not seven-thirty as Massey claimed. He was drunk as a lord, and kept shouting something about proving he was a man after all.'
Llewellyn raised an eyebrow. 'He didn't say what form this machismo test took, I suppose?'
'No, worse luck. Unfortunately, he threw up all over the arresting officer's boots before he could confide in him further. He went rather quiet after that. Could be something, could be nothing. Maybe no more than that he's got lucky with some woman. Still, at least now we know he had ample time to kill Smith.'
Llewellyn nodded and made the same observation that Rafferty had made in London. 'Great Mannleigh is only ten miles from Elmhurst. Certainly a short enough drive for a man looking to prove his manhood.'
Rafferty repeated the thought that had already teased him several times. 'Makes you wonder just how friendly Massey became with Stubbs and Thompson, doesn't it? We already know that Smith had received an “outing” letter. They would be aware any attempt to use the police computer to locate Smith could be traced back to them, so would need to use other means of finding him.
'Could be they got a sympathetic female friend to ring the Social and persuade that young clerk to part with Smith's address and then passed it on to the breakaway Rape Support Group. Why would either of them draw the line at passing the same information to Massey? Especially as Massey was already a friend, and a hard-done-by friend at that. Especially as, like Stubbs and Thompson, the case concerned him so intimately.'
'If Stubbs and Thompson were involved and had used Thompson's official uniform to gain Massey entrance to Smith's flat, they would hardly have left him to cover up his own tracks,' Llewellyn objected. 'His stupid lie would seem to indicate that if he did kill Smith, he didn't have police help to do it.'
'That's true.' Rafferty felt relieved when Llewellyn pointed out the obvious. He didn't relish the prospect of arresting either Stubbs or Thompson.
Trouble was, he wasn't over-keen on proving anyone guilty. 'So, whose help did he have?' he demanded. 'Smith's door was undamaged, remember. Yet, if Massey had been alone, he'd have had to break his way in. Smith certainly wouldn't have opened the door to him.'
As he'd mentioned to Llewellyn, Massey was an intelligent man. He'd been out of prison for eight years; if he'd been determined on it, he could have traced Smith long ago. So why hadn't he? Against that, he came back to the fact that Massey had lied to them. Why else would he do that?
Round and round went Rafferty's thoughts, when, into the middle of them popped the words: maybe he was protecting someone. Which led him back to the earlier reluctant suspicions that Mary Carmody had forced him to confront. Into his mind came a picture of Massey's daughter, Alice; petite, young-looking for her age, and with all that pent-up emotion waiting to be released. He tried to push the picture out again.
'I wondered earlier whether Massey might have gone in for the double-bluff of again failing to provide himself with an alibi, but thinking about it, I really don't believe – even after his prison education – that the man has the type of mind for such deviousness. Which means either that he's innocent. Or guilty, but unconcerned about getting caught.'
'The latter's unlikely, I would have thought,' Llewellyn commented. 'Could he take another prison sentence?'
'Maybe.' Reluctantly, Rafferty confided his suspicions concerning Alice Massey. 'If he felt that by doing so, he was protecting someone even less likely than himself to survive in prison – his daughter, for instance. You haven't met Alice Massey, but Mary Carmody will confirm that she seems such a mass of bottled-up rage she could easily go looking for revenge on her own account. If she did, I think Frank Massey would sacrifice himself in order to protect her. He’d lost her love, her respect. For Massey, such a sacrifice would be a way to regain both.'
He shoved another sweet in his mouth and sucked fiercely. 'Let's face it, she would have had a much greater chance of getting Smith to open his door than Massey would. She's small, dainty — just the way Smith liked 'em. And she looks much younger than eighteen. Maybe she sweet-talked him into opening the door and he was so flattered he let her in.'
For a change, Llewellyn didn't immediately apply his usual cutting logic to shoot his theory down in flames. All he said was, 'Do you want them both picked up for questioning?'
Rafferty's conscience juggled with the opposing demands of natural justice and duty. Duty won, but only just. However, still squeamish, he postponed its application. 'It's a bit late to drive up to town. Massey'll keep till morning.'
Perhaps Llewellyn suspected Rafferty's internal battle where this case was concerned, for he immediately said, 'And the daughter?'
Rafferty struggled a bit more, before deciding. 'Just Massey. He's the one we've found out in a lie. If we get nothing from him we can speak to his daughter again. Mary Carmody and Hanks can pick him up.' He consulted his watch and got up from his comfortable chair. 'And while it may be too late to journey to the great Metropolis, it's still early enough to take a little drive to see Jes Bullock. Even if he didn't kill Smith, he's certainly hiding some guilty secret. And now that we've got Sam Dally's report on Smith's bruises we might be able to use it to lever it out of him.' The thought was a satisfying one.
Glad of something to get his teeth into at last, Rafferty set off happily. He didn't like Jes Bullock and he was relieved this case had thrown up one suspect who didn't make him feel like the rope in a tug of war contest.
When they reached Bullock's flat, Rafferty didn't shilly-shally, but came straight to the point. 'Why did you lie to us, Mr Bullock?'
Jes Bullock stared blankly at him. 'I don't know what you're talking—'
'I'll explain it to you.’ Rafferty cut off Bullock’s expected denials. ‘You told us your stepson visited you on the Wednesday before he died. Strange that you should forget that, whatever he did on Wednesday, he certainly visited you on the Thursday. He was seen by two witnesses.'
'Well, I didn't see him.' Bullock thrust a belligerent face inches from Rafferty's. 'Who told you I did? Some lying little toe-rags, was it? Tell me their names and I'll—'
He'd been drinking. Rafferty could smell the sour lager on his breath and hoped it might make the man more incautious than even nature had intended. 'You'll what?' Rafferty broke in. 'Arrange to have them beaten up like you tried to do with your stepson?'
Bullock's lips clamped shut and he backed away, but Rafferty was relentless. Aware that he was taking his other frustrations out on Bullock, he was, nevertheless, unable to stop himself. 'We know you offered to pay someone to beat up your stepson, so you needn't trouble to deny it.'
`Bullock shouted back at him. 'All right, so what if I did? If you know that, you also know that no one took me up on it.' His heavy features, thrust forward aggressively, challenged them to contradict him.
'Was that when you decided to do it yourself?' Bullock said nothing and Rafferty went on. 'We know you stormed out of the pub, shouting you'd do the job yourself. We also know from the pathology report that your stepson had sustained a number of bruises before death and—'
'What does that prove?' Bullock broke in. 'He bruised easy and he was always awkward. As a young 'un he'd trip over a matchstick, likely as not. Even now, old as he is – was – he was as likely to bump into the furniture as avoid it. Ask anyone.'
Rafferty's lips tightened. Damn the man. He knew as well as they did that Maurice Smith's anti-social lifestyle provided few, if any, current witnesses to contradict his assertion. He signalled to Llewellyn to take over the questioning.
'We understand you were later than usual arriving at the public house the evening your stepson died, Mr Bullock,' Llewellyn quietly began. 'Perhaps you could tell us what delayed you?'
Suddenly, Bullock lost his temper. Rafferty guessed it would be an unstable element in the man's personality at the best of times.
'I'm telling you nothing,' he roared. 'I didn't kill him and that's all you need to know. You should try hounding that bunch of mad bitches he had on his tail instead of trying to—' Abruptly, Bullock clammed up.
Rafferty and Llewellyn exchanged a glance. So, it said, in spite of his previous denials, Bullock had known about the “outing” letter.
Rafferty silently reviewed what they had so far learned about the letter. The Document Examiner's report had told them that while inevitably the envelope had many prints as it passed through the postal system, the “outing” letter itself had only Smith's prints on it.
Other checks had revealed no saliva on either the seal or the stamp on the envelope, indicating that it had been sent by someone knowledgeable about DNA and the dangers inherent in leaving bodily fluids behind.
Taken together with the stencilled address, which negated handwriting identification while ensuring the envelope arrived at its destination without drawing too much attention to itself, it pointed pretty conclusively to the probability that this had, in fact, been the envelope in which the “outing” letter had arrived. And, according to their information, Maurice Smith hadn't received it till after he returned from the Bullocks' on Wednesday evening, as Mrs Penny had taken it in with her own post that morning and forgotten about it till Smith's return.
So, Rafferty now mused, if, as Bullock claimed, he hadn't seen Smith at all on the Thursday, how had he known about this letter? Smith hadn't gone out again on the Wednesday night, according to his landlady. She had told them that she often slept badly and that night had been no exception. She had said she had heard Smith pacing about till the early hours. Now, Rafferty asked, 'Do you have a phone, Mr Bullock?'
Bullock didn't answer straight away, but as the matter could easily be checked, he finally admitted that the flat had neither landline nor mobile.
'You stepson didn't receive this letter till the Wednesday evening after he returned from his visit to you, so perhaps you can explain how you knew about it?'
Rafferty could almost see the metaphoric clunking and whirring taking place inside Bullock's brain as he sought to provide an answer that didn't implicate him further. He had already admitted that his stepson's notoriety had caused him and his son a lot of difficulties in the past. Once he had learned of the “outing” threat had he decided enough was enough? He had certainly uttered threats in the pub. Had he gone one further and carried them through himself? After all, as young Darren had said — Maurice was dead.
Bullock's brow unfurrowed. His air became quite jaunty. 'He dropped a note through the door didn't he? Sometime last Thursday, mentioning this threat he'd received. Of course, I'm only guessing that it was women behind it. Maurice didn't say either way. But, I do read the papers and to my mind, this has got man-hating bitch written all over it, just the same as those other cases I've read about. It's the sort of thing these bloody feminists would go in for. Anyway, he asked my advice as to what he should do.'
Aware he had been snookered, Rafferty tried to put a brave face on it and continued to stare Bullock down. 'So, where is it, this note?'
'Threw it away, didn't I? What would I keep it for? Not my problem.'
'What about your son?' Llewellyn broke in. 'Did he see it? Surely you mentioned it to him.'
Bullock transferred his truculent gaze to Llewellyn. Again the whirring and clicking were evident as Bullock presumably decided whether to strengthen the lie by committing his son to confirm it, or whether to brazen it out. Given his belligerent personality, it wasn’t surprising when brazen won. 'Why would I do that? Not his problem either, was it? He never saw it and I never mentioned it to him. Saw no reason to.'
Rafferty took over again. 'When did you find this note? Morning? Afternoon?'
Bullock shrugged. 'Afternoon. Found it on the mat when I got in.'
'Was this before or after your threats in the pub?' Rafferty questioned.
Bullock ignored him and went on with his explanation as to what he had done with the note as if Rafferty had never interrupted.
'Screwed it up and threw it over the balcony when I'd read it, didn't I? Nothing to do with me.'
'Oh, come on!' Rafferty countered. 'Nothing to do with you? If you felt that way why did you try to get him beaten up that very day?'
Bullock's lips drew back. Rafferty could practically see the words hovering. But then he clamped his lips shut. Rafferty cursed inwardly as Bullock showed he still had sufficient wit to say nothing.
'He asked for your advice,' Llewellyn pointed out reasonably into the sudden silence. 'Are you saying you never tried to contact him?'
Bullock dropped into an armchair, leaned back and, as if aware that victory was his, demanded softly, 'Why should I? Told you, it was his problem. Nothing to do with me.'
'Apart from any other considerations, you were his step-father.'
Bullock scowled and slumped in a chair. 'Hardly my fault. I married his mother — I got him as well. Doesn't make me responsible for him for life.'
Presumably exhausted at successfully answering so many ticklish questions, Bullock now tried for the sympathy vote as if hoping to waylay any more awkward questions. 'If you'd known what it was like for us in the past you'd understand why I didn't want to know.'
He reached for another can of lager and sucked on it for comfort, like a baby with a dummy. 'Couldn't even send my lad to school when Maurice was arrested. Killed the Missis, of course. Killed her stone dead, the shame and worry of it. Nobody thinks about the families, do they? Nobody thought what it would be like for us when they let him go.'
Although Rafferty was reluctant to sympathise with the man, grudgingly he found himself nodding. But sympathy didn't stop him saying, 'You realise I'll need an alibi from you for Thursday evening? It's up to you, of course, but you must understand that it would be better from your point of view to admit that you beat him up earlier that evening and give us the names and addresses of anyone who can give you an alibi for later, than be suspected of anything worse.'
A crafty look came into Bullock's eye as if he realised Rafferty had deliberately not pointed out the other alternative.
'Beat him up? My own stepson? Not me, Inspector.' He drained the can of lager, threw it in the general direction of the kitchen and opened another. Apparently, he realised that this late declaration of paternal affection was unbelievable, because he added, 'I admit I shouted my mouth off a bit in the pub. But I was upset at the thought that all the trouble was going to start up again. I didn't really mean it. Course I didn't. I've barely laid a hand on him since he was fifteen. As a matter of fact, I met a few mates to talk business that evening. We're thinking of buying a dog — a greyhound.' He mentioned two names and where they were likely to be found.
Damn the man, thought Rafferty again as he recognised the names of two persistent troublemakers, both with several convictions. He thought he'd got him rattled enough not to realise he had a get out. He so much wanted Bullock — rather than anyone else — to be guilty of Smith's murder, he'd been over-eager.
'You ask my mates,' Bullock continued confidently. 'They'll confirm I was with them last Thursday. And none of us saw Maurice. If he came round here that night, as you say, I never saw him. I wasn't in. He must have gone home again.'
Rafferty's lips clamped shut and he fought to get his own temper under control. The desire to charge Bullock with something, even if it was only assault, was strong. Now, it looked as if he was to be denied even that small satisfaction.
Although Mrs Penny, Smith's landlady had told them Smith had been at home at seven-thirty that evening, it was only a few minutes’ drive from his flat to the Bullocks' place. He could easily have gone out after she had left the house. Darren had said he had seen Smith leave; he hadn't mentioned seeing him arrive. And, so far, no one else on the estate who had been questioned had admitted seeing Smith arrive either. It could have been as Bullock claimed and that Smith had turned up at the flat only a few minutes before eight and, finding no one home, had left immediately. And unless and until they found someone to say otherwise Bullock was off the hook.
Brusquely, Rafferty thanked him for his time, turned on his heel and left, trailed by Llewellyn.
It was only when they turned into the station car park that Rafferty finally remembered who it was that Bullock senior reminded him of. It was Dobson, Fatty Dobson, his old junior school headmaster, and as ardent a sadist as Rafferty had ever encountered.
Dobson and Bullock both shared that truculent, aggressive air, the menace not far below the surface, though Dobson's had been smoothed off by education. Instinctively, Rafferty sensed they also shared a pleasure in the infliction of pain and he wondered how many beatings Maurice Smith had taken at his stepfather's hands.
Rafferty, one of the back row rebels as a schoolboy, winced as he remembered his buttocks’ sting after he had paid yet another of his frequent trips to the headmaster's study.
About to remark to Llewellyn on the similarity between Dobson and Bullock, he wisely kept silent. Llewellyn wouldn't understand his instinctive feeling that Bullock was a thoroughly nasty piece of work; certainly a liar and a bully and probably worse. He doubted the Welshman had ever been on the receiving end of a vicious caning; he'd have been the school swot, at the front of the class, first with his hand in the air and first with the answers. He wouldn't understand Rafferty's instinctive dislike of Bullock at all.
Rafferty recalled the aftermath of another beating he had suffered at Dobson's hands. It had been the last. The headmaster had never touched him again. The evening of the beating, he had been in the tin bath in front of the fire trying to soothe his wounds. This had been before they had been allocated the Council flat with its proper bathroom and he had been at that self-conscious age that demands privacy. The younger children were in bed, his father was up the pub and his mother, after he had insisted that he was old enough to bathe himself, had been banished to the scullery. He had been climbing out of the tub when Ma had bustled in in her usual busy manner, his request for privacy either forgotten or suspected as a ruse to avoid clean ear inspection. Of course, she had seen the scarlet stripes criss-crossing his buttocks. He'd never forgotten what followed.
The next morning, she had marched him to the school, his brothers and sisters running behind in an awed silence and straight into the headmaster's study. Before Rafferty had realised her intentions, from the wall, she had grabbed the thinnest, most venomous of Dobson's instruments of torture and set about the headmaster with it, lambasting him across his back, across his legs, across his quivering, jelly-buttocks. Dobson hadn't shown his face in the school for a week. Rafferty chuckled. The memory always amused him. His ma had been lucky Dobson hadn't sued her for assault.
'What's the joke?' Llewellyn asked, as he finished his careful parking manoeuvres.
Rafferty glanced at him and his chuckles subsided. 'Nothing. I was just remembering an incident from my schooldays, that's all. You wouldn't appreciate the joke if I told you.'
Llewellyn shrugged and climbed out of the car without further comment.
The last of Rafferty's amusement vanished at the thought that, for Maurice Smith, there had been no "Ma" to stand up for him. According to Records’ information on the family, the mother had been a weak, not over-bright woman and had been as much a victim of Bullock as her son. Bullock could have beaten him black and blue if he'd chosen and no one would have tried to stop him. And, Rafferty reminded himself, Smith's body had been black and blue, some of the bruising was confirmed as having occurred before death. And not long before death, either. Such a beating would certainly explain why Darren had said Smith had driven like a maniac. After a beating at the hands of a man like Bullock, it would be surprising if Smith was able to drive at all.
Rafferty found himself wondering who was the real criminal in all this: Smith, or the stepfather who had treated him little better than a despised cur.
The worst thing was, he realised as he followed Llewellyn into the Bacon Lane back entrance to the police station, that Bullock would get away with it. And it was his fault. He'd handled the interview badly. He should have brought Bullock to the station to question him. It was too late now. If he had been lying he'd have already contacted his mates from the nearest public phone box and primed them with what they were to say. And his mates, being no friends of the police, would undoubtedly be more than happy to back him up.
Although he was beginning to share Llewellyn's feeling that it was unlikely that Bullock had actually killed his stepson or had any involvement in subsequent events, Rafferty felt it could be said that Bullock had effected a killing of sorts; a slow, long drawn-out killing of whatever spirit Smith had had, and in so doing, had created another monster
Rejected by society, rejected and beaten by the nearest thing he had to a family, Maurice Smith had still clung on, desperately seeking a sense of belonging. Had that desperation encouraged him to willingly open his door to his murderer? Massey, for instance? Hoping a plea for forgiveness, for understanding, would be heard, had he instead, been forced to plead for life itself?
Perhaps, Rafferty thought, as he climbed the stairs to his office and the endless paper mountain that always awaited his return, he'd find out tomorrow when they questioned Massey again.
The next morning, while Mary Carmody and Hanks drove up to London to see Frank Massey, Rafferty, with no great hopes, went through the motions of checking Jes Bullock's alibi. He wasn't surprised when Bullock's friends confirmed his story. According to them, they had all been at the flat of Mick Coffey, another of Bullock's cronies, from about seven-forty till just before nine-thirty on Thursday night, when Bullock had left for his usual drink.
Rafferty was disinclined to believe them, but he couldn't prove they were lying. Still keen to give Bullock his comeuppance, he had despatched Llewellyn and Lilley to question Coffey's neighbours. But again, as with their inquiries about Smith, the icy weather had kept most people indoors, so their questioning was fruitless. No one had seen Bullock either arrive at the flat or leave it. Nor had anyone seen or heard his car even though it was a sad and rusty Ford, and, according to Bullock's own neighbours, had an engine as wheezy as an asthmatic's chest.
Still keen to charge Bullock with something, on their return, Rafferty sent Lilley out to try again.
'You don't want me to go with him?' Llewellyn asked.
'No. I've got another little job for you,' Rafferty told him. He nodded to Lilley and the young officer went out. 'You're coming with me to see Stubbs and Thompson to find out what alibis they come up with.'
'I thought we'd already concluded that they hadn't—'
'I know we've managed to talk ourselves out of suspecting that they helped Massey,' Rafferty broke in. 'But we haven't done the same if the scenario changes to them acting without Massey. He's not the only one still under suspicion, not by a long chalk.'
'He's the only one to be caught out in a lie,' Llewellyn reminded him.
'Exactly. The only one to be caught. But if the liars and thieves in the population only consisted of those caught out, what a wonderful place the world would be. Come on. Let's get it over with.'
However, it wasn't so easy to catch Stubbs and Thompson out in lies. Prompted either by innocence or canniness, they claimed to have recently discovered a mutual interest in angling and that they had gone night fishing the previous Thursday evening. Although they had no other witnesses but each other to back up their story, instead of telling tall fishermen's tales to add verisimilitude, each was smart enough to say they had caught nothing, thus ensuring that freezers empty of fish didn't weaken their lies.
‘If they were lies,’ Llewellyn had felt obliged to put in as they left Thompson's home after he had backed Stubbs' story.
'Bit of a coincidence that they should both take up such an uncomfortable hobby recently. And in the middle of winter, too,' Rafferty retorted. Although far more favourably disposed towards them than to Bullock, Rafferty couldn't persuade himself to believe them either.
Frustrated by stalemate on several fronts, Rafferty hoped their visit to the Figg family might produce something more than yet another exercise in futility. Unfortunately, even with the assistance of "Curly" Hughes, one of Burleigh's most experienced officers, they had been unable to get the Figgs to shift from their previous dogged stance.
Of course, as Rafferty was aware, families like the Figgs knew how to use the law to their advantage; they'd had plenty of practice at it if what Hughes had told them was anything to go by.
They had finally managed to speak to Tracey Figg. She had turned out to be timid, and, as Rafferty had feared, had not only looked to her father for the answer to each question, but, in general, appeared so cowed that she would have made a hopeless witness even if they succeeded in getting anything valuable out of her. But her parrot-like repetitions of her father's promptings was all they got and, like a cow chewing the cud in a favourite part of the field, she couldn't be shifted from it.
Only nineteen, she already had three children – all with different fathers if the range of skin tones were anything to go by. She had a collection of bruises, too, which to judge by their coloration, were fairly recent. Of course, in a family like the Figgs, who were likely to hit first and ask questions after, if at all, violence was probably a way of life; the bruises didn't necessarily indicate that she had been persuaded to collude in the concealment of murder.
The interviews, like Llewellyn's previous efforts, were conducted in the noisy squalor of the family's living room. And, as Rafferty had prophesied, one of the children had thrown up over Llewellyn's trousers just as Tracey had made her first stumble in the obviously rehearsed tale. And when the nauseous toddler had started up an unearthly wailing which set his siblings and cousins up in sympathy, they had beaten a hasty retreat to the relative peace and freshness of the yard.
Rafferty paused long enough to check if any of the vehicles differed from those which Llewellyn had noted on his previous visit. They didn't. And none of them had been noticed as being parked near Smith's flat on the evening of his murder, either. Not that that proved anything, of course. That was the trouble, Rafferty fretted as he followed Llewellyn and Curly out of the Figgs’ yard. Proof — of anything — was in very short supply.
'I did warn you what they were like,' Llewellyn muttered in aggrieved tones as he dabbed ineffectually at his trousers with a wad of tissues. 'I wouldn't be surprised if they coached those children to vomit to order.'
'Very likely. You must admit it's an effective ploy. That and the bawling got rid of us pretty sharpish.'
Hughes, brought along as the local expert on the Figgs and their tricks, and reduced to red-faced fury when he had proved inadequate to the task, suggested hauling them into the station one by one. After mopping his gleaming bald head, he said, 'We should be able to get 'em for something. If nothing else, those dogs of theirs look vicious. They're sure to have bitten someone.'
Like Llewellyn, Rafferty had had enough of the Figgs. Anyway, given the family’s tendency to violence, he doubted they'd get anyone to come forward even as a witness to the viciousness of the Figgs’ dogs let alone anything else, so he vetoed the plan. 'Didn't you say the sons have a reputation for being handy with knives?'
Curly Hughes nodded.
'Would you like to get on the wrong side of such a tribe? If I was one of their neighbours, I'm damn sure I wouldn't. No. Thanks for the offer, but we'll leave it and concentrate on the Elmhurst end. At least, if the Figgs are involved, any witnesses we turn up there are unlikely to know them or their reputation and would be less likely to be shy at coming forward.'
After dropping Curly Hughes off they made their way back to Elmhurst. At the station, Llewellyn disappeared into the toilets to wash the Figgs from his trousers. Rafferty's rumbling stomach beckoned him to the canteen for a bacon sandwich and a consoling mug of tea. It was there that Llewellyn found him twenty minutes later.
'Carmody just phoned,' he said. 'Bad news, I'm afraid.'
Rafferty grunted, 'That makes a change,' and carried on sipping his tea.
'Frank Massey's gone missing.'
Rafferty's tea slopped over the canteen's chipped table. He'd been complaining that the case had come to a standstill and he wanted something to break, he reflected. But this wasn't quite what he had had in mind. Llewellyn's choice of words penetrated and he demanded sharply. 'You said "missing". You don't mean—?'
'No. He's just missing. An entirely voluntary disappearing act, according to Sergeant Carmody. When he didn't answer her knock, she persuaded his landlady to let her and Hanks into his room. His passport's gone and so have most of his clothes. His car is also missing. No one seems to have seen him since about eight last night when his landlady saw him drive off.'
Rafferty was relieved to learn that even if he'd despatched Carmody and Hanks to collect Massey when they first got the truth from Great Mannleigh nick, it wouldn't have made any difference. Now, at least, he realised why Massey had told them such a stupid, easily disproved lie. It had given him time; time to get away. And that was all he had wanted.
'What about his books?'
'Books?' Llewellyn frowned. 'She made no mention of books. Is it important? If so, I can get her on the radio.'
'It'll keep. It's just that he was a book-lover, like you. They were his escape from reality, if you like. Or, perhaps,' Rafferty corrected, as he recalled some of their titles, 'they were a form of hair-shirt – a constant reminder of the past and his own failures. And if he's left them all behind, maybe it's because he no longer has a need for them in that way.'
'They're symbolic, you mean? That the failures are a thing of the past, not the present.'
'Could be.' Rafferty swallowed the rest of his tea at a gulp, thrust his chair back and strode back to his office. When he got there, he glanced at the wall clock. ‘One o’clock,’ he muttered as he did some swift calculations. 'If Massey left yesterday evening he's had, what? Seventeen hours or so to make good his escape. He could be anywhere. Still, at least his doing a bunk would seem to let his daughter out of the running, wouldn't you say? He'd hardly skedaddle and leave her to face the music alone if she was the one to kill Smith.'
Llewellyn nodded. 'Sergeant Carmody said she spoke to Alice Massey again when they discovered the girl’s father was missing and she now believes Alice had nothing to do with Smith's murder. The girl's mother says they spent that evening playing scrabble and that Alice certainly didn't slip out at all. She was extremely shocked when she realised the reason for Carmody's questions.
'Another point in the girl's favour is that when Sergeant Carmody went back first thing this morning to check the bus and train staff again, no one recognised the descriptions of Alice or her mother. They all swore they didn't see either of them travelling to Elmhurst on Thursday evening, at least. Jaywick's a small place and out of season strangers would be likely to be noticed and remembered.'
Rafferty nodded. Mary Carmody was a good officer. And, even without Frank Massey's disappearance, if she was now convinced that Alice had had nothing to do with the murder, he would have been inclined to trust her judgement. Another point against Alice's involvement, he now realised, was her anger. If she had either killed Smith herself or known that her father had finally avenged her, that anger would surely have subsided? It hadn't. It was still bottled up inside her. One less ball to juggle, Rafferty told himself.
'Do we have any idea how much money Massey had with him?' he now asked.
'Carmody's checking that now.' Llewellyn paused. 'She did learn one thing that might be significant. According to Massey's wife, he and Elizabeth Probyn used to be very close at one time. They were all three at college together, I gather, though in different years. She claims her ex-husband and Elizabeth Probyn had an affair then. The implication being that Ms Probyn might have helped him get away.'
Rafferty frowned. 'I can't see Elizabeth Probyn risking her precious career because of some ancient sentimental attachment between her and Frank Massey.'
'Not so ancient, according to Mrs Massey. She seems to think that her ex-husband and Ms Probyn might recently have become friendly again. If it's true he might have confided his intentions to her.'
Rafferty thought it unlikely and said so. 'Still.' He tapped his pen against his lips. 'We've got to cover all avenues, though I can't say I relish the prospect of questioning our esteemed prosecutor about her love life. How the hell do you tactfully ask her if she's into aiding and abetting murder suspects to do a bunk?'
Llewellyn, aware that Rafferty frequently had trouble in the diplomacy department said, 'Perhaps I should–'
'No.' Rafferty shook his head. As he explained to Llewellyn, he felt he owed her the courtesy of questioning her himself. 'Not that she's likely to appreciate it. What about Mrs Massey herself? I don't suppose she had any idea where he might have gone? Or the daughter?'
'None. Massey said nothing to either of them. And though Mrs Massey didn't have any idea where he might be, according to Carmody, she did express the hope that it was somewhere very warm.'
Rafferty grinned and joked, 'Love, that many splendored thing, hey? Where does it all go? Sounds like she shared my old man's views on holy wedlock; that two hours before you die is time enough to get hitched.' He stopped abruptly, appalled to find himself talking about love with Llewellyn. It was not a sensible move. Llewellyn's next words confirmed it.
'Clever trick to manage,' Llewellyn muttered and added half to himself. 'Maybe I should bear it in mind.'
'No,' Rafferty hastily answered. 'The two hours before you die philosophy is only for cynics like my old man and worn down women like Mrs Massey. You're too young and innocent to follow such a creed. Anyway,' he finished with a forced cheerfulness. 'It's too late. Ma's bought her hat.'
Fortunately, Llewellyn didn't take the opportunity to confide any other thoughts he might have on love, splendored or otherwise. And Rafferty, already hung about with an uneasy feeling that his well-intentioned nose-poking had dragged a divisive Mrs Llewellyn too early into the lovers' embrace, hastily broke the silence before it encouraged such confidences.
'To get back to the task in hand, I want the number of Massey's car circulated. If he's left the country as seems likely, it may be dumped at one of the air or sea ports. Get on to them, Daff. You know the drill. We need to know if Massey has left the country, and if so, where he's headed for. Does he speak any foreign languages, do you know?'
'Only a smattering of schoolboy French, according to his wife.'
'What about family or friends? Any contacts abroad?'
'None. Unless Elizabeth Probyn knows of any. There are the Walkers, of course – the family who emigrated to Australia after their daughter killed herself. Might be worth getting in touch with them, or at least with their local police. Their daughter was another of Smith's victims; an even more tragic victim than the rest. It could create a bond.'
'I'd rather not trouble the Walkers at this stage. They've been through enough. For the moment just let their local police know the situation. Send them a description of Massey and ask them to keep an eye out for any sudden visitors to the house. It's a long shot. I doubt that Massey would be able to find the money to get to the other side of the world, especially at Christmas, when it's high summer and the most expensive time of the year to get there.'
'Unless Elizabeth Probyn helped him.'
Rafferty's eyes narrowed. 'You've changed your tune. Just a few days ago you thought the sun shone out of her—'
'No,' Llewellyn corrected. 'I merely pointed out that she's not the ogre you seem to think her. It's called being impartial.'
'You can call it what you like,' Rafferty butted in. 'I've got another name for it altogether.'
Llewellyn's thin lips became thinner and Rafferty, regretting his taunt, didn't clarify his statement. Instead, he muttered, 'If you'll stop putting the temptation to be otherwise in my path, I'll try to be impartial.'
I'll even try to keep my cool when I question her, he added silently to himself. Though, considering the delicacy of the questions he had to put to her and her likely reaction, he didn't hold out much hope of succeeding.
After flicking through his desk diary and checking Elizabeth Probyn's office number, he dialled and spoke to her secretary. The secretary told him her boss had taken a few days' leave. He shared the news with Llewellyn, adding, 'The secretary suggested I try her at home. She even gave me the number. Funny, I'd have sworn I was on the black list.'
But Elizabeth Probyn wasn't at home, either. Rafferty cocked a hopeful eyebrow at Llewellyn. 'Maybe she's done a bunk with Massey.'
Llewellyn didn't need to bother to point out that Rafferty's impartiality had died a quick death; his expression said it for him. However, he did say he thought it unlikely.
So did Rafferty, but, try as he might, he found it impossible to entirely abandon the fantasy that the ever so correct Elizabeth Probyn had finally blotted her copybook and eloped with one of the criminals she seemed so fond of.
'Didn't her cleaning lady say her daughter's in hospital? She'd hardly take off, if so.'
'I'd forgotten that.' With a regretful sigh, Rafferty put the tattered rags of his fantasy behind him. 'I bet she's at the hospital now.'
He picked up the telephone directory and flicked though till he got St Saviour's, Elmhurst's general hospital. After fighting his way past the switchboard, he got through to Admissions. But they had no record of a Miss Probyn as a patient.
'Probably at some fancy private clinic,' he muttered, as he replaced the receiver. 'I suppose it will wait till she returns home.' Anyway, he realised, the likelihood of her having any involvement in Massey's disappearance was slim at best, and huge quantities of wishful thinking were unlikely to fatten it.
Putting Elizabeth Probyn to the back of his mind, he busied himself with overseeing their enquiries into Massey's whereabouts, checking out the usual mistaken identifications of car and man that such a search always brought.
It was after eight before he gave Elizabeth Probyn another thought. But when he tried her number again, there was still no answer. 'Maybe, she's run off with Massey, after all,' he muttered to himself.
But, true to form, Llewellyn immediately robbed him of such a self-indulgent thought. 'I've just remembered,' he said. 'She's appearing in the Scottish play at the church hall. If you recall she gave me two tickets. I imagine you'll find her there.'
Rafferty nodded. He'd forgotten. Llewellyn had tossed the tickets to him, evidently of the opinion that Rafferty was in greater need of exposure to culture than himself. What had he done with them? He rummaged in his pockets, finally finding them in the lining where they had fallen through a hole and been idly screwed into a ball by fidgety fingers. He smoothed them out. 'Bingo. It's the last night. I'll get along there, then.'
He glanced at the clock. With any luck, he'd catch her in the interval. He hoped so, anyway. He didn't relish having to sit through a great dollop of Shakespeare in order to question her.
Llewellyn, ever keen to encourage Rafferty's limited interest in the arts, suggested he did just that. 'Although they're only an amateur group, they're very good. I saw them last year in their production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Why not stay and watch the play to the end? It is only for a few hours and if Massey turns up you can be back here in a matter of minutes. It's not as if anything else is breaking.'
'You know I'd like nothing better, Daff,' Rafferty hastily assured him. 'But, as Ma says, life shouldn't be given over entirely to the pursuit of pleasure. Duty must come first.'
To forestall any acerbic comment from Llewellyn concerning this previously unsuspected rectitude, Rafferty picked up the mobile phone from his desk, stuffed it in his torn pocket and headed for the door. 'You can contact me on this if anything comes up.'
As Rafferty drove off, he thought about Frank Massey. Things looked black for him, all right. The man was a fool to do a bunk; but was he a guilty fool? The question occupied him all the way to the church hall, which took some time as he hit every red light on the way.
To his annoyance, he arrived too late for the interval and the doorman, a self-important Jobsworth, refused to let him wait backstage.
'Can't do that,' he was told, as, with arms folded over the brown overall, Jobsworth's tiny, piggy-pink eyes subjected him to a top-to-toe examination. Rafferty realised he'd failed the test when Jobsworth told him tartly, 'Get too many so-called theatre lovers back here already. Light-fingered the lot of them. Now I don't let nobody back here unless they're vouched for. More than my job's worth. You got anybody to vouch for you?'
Rafferty rallied and whipped out his warrant card. 'Only the Essex Police Service.'
Jobsworth nodded sagely, as if he'd suspected as much. It soon became clear he had no higher opinion of police honesty than he did of the theatre lovers’.
'Had some of your lot in here last week,' he informed Rafferty. He sniffed and looked down his nose. 'Unruly bunch. Discovered my spare uniform cap was missing after they’d left. You can be sure I'll do my best to make certain they can never hire this hall again.'
Rafferty gave up and conceded victory to Jobsworth. Resigned to either waiting in the car or sitting to watch the play, he realised that if he didn't want to risk missing Elizabeth Probyn altogether, he'd have to do the latter.
The hall was packed. He spotted one empty seat halfway down a row on the right-hand side. Accompanied by tuts from the theatre-lovers, he crept towards his seat, throwing apologies left and right as he stumbled over feet. Subsiding into his chair with a sigh of relief, he squinted at his neighbour's programme.
As Llewellyn had reminded him, they were doing Macbeth, the play that dare not speak its name and he stifled another sigh. For although he had never seen the play, he'd heard enough about it to know that it contained plenty of blood and gore; just what he needed in the middle of a murder inquiry.
He gazed up at the stage, but under the actors' wigs, costumes and stage make up, he couldn't pick out Elizabeth Probyn. Eventually, after another sideways sneak at his neighbour's programme, he twigged that she was playing Lady Macbeth, whose character had already committed suicide. Thank God for that, anyway, Rafferty thought. Steeling himself for further tuts and muttered, 'Well, really’s!' of the usual British theatre audience, he got up and made for the door, dispensing more apologies as he went.
Luckily, Jobsworth had taken himself off to be obnoxious elsewhere and Rafferty had no trouble finding the dressing room of the female members of the cast. He knocked on the door and Elizabeth Probyn opened it. Surprisingly, she was alone. Unsurprisingly, she didn't seem pleased to see him.
'I didn't have you down as a theatre lover, Inspector,' she coolly commented as she turned back to the mirror and sat down. 'Did Sergeant Llewellyn bring you?'
'No.' Irritated by the implication, especially as it was true, that he'd have to be brought to culture like a horse to water, he instantly bridled and then checked himself. 'He gave me the tickets though.’ He forced an unwilling grin. He knows I'm a sucker for culture.'
'Really?'
Too late, he realised he had laid himself open to an enquiry as to why such a self-proclaimed culture-vulture would voluntarily abandon the last part of the play. Fortunately, if she had the impulse to ask such an awkward question she managed to control it and simply resumed collecting various tubes and jars and packing them away in a bag.
'You're here on an autograph hunt, perhaps?' she dryly suggested. 'Or did you just want to congratulate me on my performance?'
'What?' Rafferty stared at her. 'Oh. Yes. Sorry.' Not having actually witnessed her performance, he judged it tactful to lie and hope she wouldn't question him. 'You were very good. Actually,' he began, 'I wanted to speak to you about another matter.' He paused, unsure how to go on, and only too aware of her prickly personality. He had always seemed to have the knack of rubbing her up the wrong way and, given the subject matter, this meeting was even more likely to follow the usual wrong-rubbing course than most of their previous ones.
'Another matter?' she encouraged.
'Er, yes.' Maybe I should have let Llewellyn tackle this one after all, he thought, and be blowed to professional courtesy. But it was too late now, so, taking a deep breath, he blundered on. 'We've just heard that Frank Massey, one of the suspects in the Smith murder case, has done a runner.'
In the mirror, her eyebrows rose and Rafferty deduced from her expression that she had guessed why he was here and wasn't going to make it easy for him. 'So? What has that to do with me?'
‘His ex-wife told us you and Massey had been quite close at one time and had recently become reacquainted. I wondered–'
She didn't give him time to finish. 'You wondered whether I might know where he had gone? Really, Inspector, the implication of that leaves me quite breathless. Let me assure you that I remember my position and the responsibilities it carries even if you do not.'
'I'm sorry. But you must see that I had to ask?'
She dropped the make-up bag and turned to face him. 'Why? In case I still carried a torch for my first love, you mean?' The idea seemed to amuse her, for she gave a twisted smile. 'What a romantic heart you must have, Inspector Rafferty. I'd never have guessed. I wish I could help you, but I have no idea where Frank Massey is. He didn't confide in me. He certainly didn't ask for my help.' She turned back to the mirror and consulted the watch sitting on the table. 'Now, is that all? Because I'm due to go and take the curtain call with the rest of the cast.'
He had little choice but to accept his dismissal. Anyway, he was inclined to believe she was telling the truth. What would a woman like Elizabeth Probyn want with a wreck like Massey? She would, he told himself, probably despise him even more than she does me.
Still, he had a feeling she was keeping something back, something that perhaps she didn't consider important enough or sufficiently relevant to mention. The trouble was, he doubted she would be co-operative if he were to question her further now. Pausing at the door, he nevertheless made a tentative attempt to encourage her confidences.
'If you should happen to think of anything, anything at all that might help us, I'd be grateful. Whether it concerns Frank Massey's long-forgotten haunts, any long-lost friends he might have in foreign places, or anything else.'
She inclined her head imperiously, as though she were still in the role of Lady Macbeth. 'As I said before, Inspector, I wish I could help you. I really do. Naturally, if anything occurs to me, I'll contact you.'
She adjusted her queenly headdress and softly added, 'What a pity the police didn't do their job properly all those years ago. I know that, inexperienced as I was, ex-Inspector Stubbs thought he could lay all the blame at my door for the failure to secure a conviction. He certainly tried his best to do so.
'But if he hadn't botched Smith's interview in the first place, he'd wouldn't have had to look round for a scapegoat in an attempt to salvage his career and he'd have saved everyone a lot of grief into the bargain; the victims who came forward as well as the one who didn't; Frank Massey, who wouldn't now be on the run; you, who would avoid the embarrassment of asking me insulting questions; and me, who'd be saved the indignity of answering them.'
Touché, thought Rafferty. Thankfully, the ringing of his mobile phone saved him from ignominious dismissal and gave him the excuse he was looking for to make a more dignified escape. Waving the ringing phone at her stiff, mirrored face, he decamped into the corridor only to find Jobsworth bearing down on him.
It was Llewellyn on the phone. They'd found Massey's car. It had been abandoned in the port town of Harwich.
'Harwich,' Rafferty muttered. He scowled as he strained to hear Llewellyn over Jobsworth's loud reproaches. 'Whose ferries operate from there?'
'I've checked,' Llewellyn told him. 'Sealink and Scandinavian Ferries both run services from there; Sealink to the Hook of Holland and the Scandinavian line to Esbjerg and Gothenburg.'
'Could be he's headed somewhere else altogether. Left the car at Harwich to fool us and took a train to Portsmouth, Dover, New Haven, Felixstowe or some other sea or airport. He could still be just about anywhere.'
'I gather Ms Probyn wasn't able to help you then?'
Rafferty grimaced. His answer was brief and to the point. 'I'll be back there in five minutes. You've spoken to the ferry staff?'
Llewellyn confirmed it. 'None of those we've so far been able to question noticed a single man fitting Massey's description. Of course, they're busy at this time of the year and I don't imagine they had time to notice individuals, anyway.'
'All we can do is keep plugging.' He paused and tried to wave Jobsworth away. Apart from the oddness of Smith letting Massey into his flat at all, there was still another question he remembered that had yet to be answered. Hopefully, he asked it. 'I don't suppose that neighbour of Smith's has found the note with the registration number of that Zephyr yet?'
He supposed right.
'No. I rang him earlier. A Christmas party was obviously in full swing though, so I doubt either he or his wife have tried too hard.'
Rafferty swore. 'What's the matter with the bloody man? Surely he realises how important that piece of paper could be? Get onto him again, Dafyd. Put the fear of God into him if you have to, but make him promise to have a thorough look for it first thing tomorrow morning.'
Llewellyn said he'd try and with that Rafferty had to be content, though putting the fear of God into anyone wasn't exactly the Welshman's strong suit.
He broke the connection, put his face close up against the still expostulating Jobsworth and muttered a few choice Anglo-Saxon expletives before he strode out to the car park and got in his car, his only satisfaction the fact that he'd managed to miss the bulk of the wretched play.
Christmas Eve dawned with a hard frost and when Rafferty went out to start his car, he found he'd not only neglected to cover the screen, but had also used the last of his de-icer. Cursing, he set to scraping the glass, bruising his knuckles in the process. Few of his neighbours had stirred, he noticed. Lucky devils had probably already started their holiday.
The thought made him realise that they probably wouldn't be the only ones putting their feet up. The search for Frank Massey might as well go on hold, he thought, for all the chance they'd have of finding him over the Christmas period. Policemen, too, liked to put their feet up; somehow he doubted his continental opposite numbers would stir out of their warm stations in any numbers for anything less than a full-scale riot.
Anyway, he reminded himself, just because Frank Massey had lied to them and then taken off, it didn't automatically make him guilty of murder; stupidity yes, blind panic yes, murder — not necessarily.
Massey had not done his time at an open prison; his had not been a white-collar crime and the cushy billets were mostly reserved for crooked accountants, bent city whizz-kids and the like. Instead, cultured, sensitive Frank Massey had spent his time with the violent criminals, rapists, murderers, pimps and pushers.
Rafferty needed to do no more than recall the haunted look in Massey's eyes when he'd introduced himself and revealed the reason for his visit to know what he must have suffered. Even eight years had evidently not been long enough to dim the memory. He'd have been picked out as a soft target practically on his arrival; a natural victim.
Rafferty found it hard to believe that Massey would be willing to risk a repeat of the experience. Earlier, he'd concluded that the only thing that would make him take the risk would be if his daughter had pleaded for his help; then, he might be prepared to sacrifice himself. But they were pretty sure now that she had had nothing to do with Smith's murder.
When his car had finally slid its way to the office, he was dragged away from his internal arguments by Llewellyn, who remarked that whether Massey was a murderer or just a fool, they still had other suspects to keep them busy while the hunt for Massey continued.
'True,' Rafferty admitted. 'And no leads for any of them.' He shoved his hands deep in his trouser pockets. Something rustled in the left-hand side one, and idly, he pulled out the piece of paper.
It was Mrs ffinch-Robinson's list of poachers, he discovered and a guilty dart pricked his conscience. Like Llewellyn's unwanted and unasked-for tickets for Shakespeare, he had appeased Mrs ffinch-Robinson by the simple expedient of shoving her list in his pocket and forgetting about it.
'What's that?' Llewellyn enquired. 'Your Christmas list?'
'Bit late for that, if so. No. It's a list of local poachers, courtesy of Mrs ffinch-Robinson. She seemed to think it might be useful.'
Llewellyn reached for it. 'She could have a point.' He jabbed a bony finger at the name and address at the top of the list. 'This chap, Fred Skeggs, lives right by Dedman Wood.'
'He'll have already been checked out by the house-to-house teams,' Rafferty reminded him. 'And, presumably, had nothing to tell them.' He remembered, a lifetime ago it seemed now, reassuring Mrs ffinch-Robinson that her poachers would be checked out. It hadn't been a lie, but they perhaps hadn't been interviewed in depth, as she had undoubtedly expected.
'Still,' Llewellyn persisted, 'a personal visit might prove rewarding. And a least we'll feel we're doing something.'
Rafferty shrugged. Most of his irritation at Mrs ffinch-Robinson's high-handed ways had now faded. Although she still rang up regularly to enquire into the progress of the case, Rafferty had left orders that she wasn't to be put through to him: Llewellyn could do diplomacy and soul-soothing so much better than he could. But, now that he had been reminded of the list, he decided he might as well look into it, to appease his conscience, if nothing else.
Fred Skeggs looked about a hundred, though he was probably no more than seventy. Small and wizened, his eyes were as sharp and full of mischief as the nanny goat who had chased them up the path to Skeggs' isolated cottage.
'So, Mr Policeman.' Fred fixed Rafferty with a gimlet eye. 'What makes you think I can help you?' he asked, after Rafferty had explained why they had called. 'Sit, sit.' He waved his hands at them. 'You're making my kitchen look untidy.'
Rafferty couldn't imagine that their presence could make the tiny room look any more like a rag and bone merchants than it did already, stuffed to the rafters as it was with verminous looking clothing, rusting enamel basins, bait boxes and discarded tobacco tins, but he looked around for a chair. There was only one; a stout, wooden affair that was clearly the old man's. Glad he had put on his oldest, darkest suit that morning, Rafferty sat on a pile of dusty sacks and gestured Llewellyn to find a pew. There was nothing else but a pile of dog-eared and grubby copies of the Farmers Weekly to sit on – an ancient job lot that had been obtained at a sale by the look of them.
Llewellyn's face was a study as, with a cloud of dust wafting around him, he perched his expensive, pale-grey suited posterior on this precariously balanced edifice.
Rafferty wondered if Llewellyn’s puritan soul appreciated minimalism of this extent. He choked back a chuckle, but Fred Skeggs, obviously less inhibited, sniggered and flashed his toothless gums at them. 'You'll take a cup of tea with me? Not often I entertain peelers. Usually, it's t'other way about.'
'Tea would be very welcome,' Rafferty thanked him, ignoring Llewellyn's quick shake of the head. 'We're trying to find anyone who might have been in Dedman Wood last Thursday night between say eight and ten.'
Fred turned his head sharply away from the blackened stove. 'What would I be doing in the woods at that time of night?' Rafferty went to break in but the old man forestalled him. 'Given up the poachin', Mr Policeman, iffen that's what you're gettin' at. Too old for such larks, now.'
Rafferty doubted this. For his age, Fred Skeggs seemed pretty sprightly. Rafferty kept his eyes averted from the outhouse, where, even through the begrimed windows, he could make out what looked suspiciously like the small bodies of hare and pheasant hanging from the roof. Instead, he nodded at the stringy mutt who hogged the opposite side of the hearth to that occupied by his master's chair. 'I wasn't implying you might have been in the woods poaching, Mr Skeggs.' Not much. 'No, I thought maybe you walked your dog there as it's right on your doorstep.'
'Old Growler?' Fred scratched under his filthy cap as though considering Rafferty's readily-provided excuse. But just then, Old Growler staggered to his feet, wobbled his mangy body around on arthritic legs, then slumped again with a weary old-age sigh to toast his other side at the fire and Fred abandoned the idea.
'Takes himself for a walk iffen he wants one. Not that he bothers much now. Goes no further than the back garden to do his business.' He turned back to the stove and made the tea, handing them theirs before he hitched up his baggy string-belted trousers and sat down.
The mugs were cracked, badly stained, handle-less; the tea dark brown and scaldingly hot. Although he kept a nanny goat who had a kid suckling, Skeggs evidently didn't believe in wasting the goat’s milk on policemen.
Rafferty quickly found a space on the cluttered table and put the hot mug down before it stripped the skin off his palms. He noticed Fred seemed impervious to the heat. His first proffered excuse being rejected, Rafferty tried another. 'What about you, Mr Skeggs? You look as if you'd still enjoy a stroll in the moonlight on a crisp night?'
Skeggs appeared startled at this suggestion. Rafferty had often noted that most countrymen were unsentimental about nature's beauties. Skeggs was no different and gave the impression that the only interest he had in nature was for the bits of it that he could kill and eat. But he seemed prepared to consider the idea that he was a closet nature lover and Rafferty nodded encouragement. If Fred had seen or heard something on Thursday night, he wanted to know about it. He was prepared to turn a blind eye to a little light poaching.
'Thursday night, you say?'
Rafferty gave another encouraging nod and Fred rubbed his whiskery chin thoughtfully. Rafferty half expected the desiccated skin to crumble away like the dried up leaves it so resembled.
However, Fred's face stayed intact and suddenly he barked at Llewellyn, who, unable to stretch across to place the mug on the table in case he tumbled from his precariously balanced paper throne had been passing the piping hot brew from hand to hand. 'Are you going to drink that tea or play with it, young feller? Made it special, I did.'
Llewellyn, obliged to humour the old man if they wanted to get anything out of him, screwed up his eyes in the manner of one taking a particularly nasty medicine and obeyed, his Adam's apple shuddering with each swallow, as though attempting to jump aside from the molten brown stream as it gushed past. Scarlet and breathless, Llewellyn lowered the empty mug, only to have Fred leap from his chair, his gums bared with a peculiarly malevolent humour, as he snatched the mug. 'Can see you enjoyed that. I'll make you another.'
Llewellyn looked aghast and Rafferty frowned him to silence. It was too late anyway, as Fred thrust another piping hot brew at him. Rafferty buried his grin in his own mug. Fred's crockery must offend against every hygiene regulation known to man, not to mention the extra ones that only ‘elf and Safety’ and the hygiene-obsessed Llewellyns of this world knew about. Llewellyn would have to comfort his Virgo-pure soul with the thought that the mug's plentiful germs would be killed by the boiling water. Most of them, anyway. Rafferty turned his attention back to Fred Skeggs.
'We were talking about last Thursday,' he reminded him. 'And whether you might have enjoyed a stroll in the woods that night.'
Fred nodded and confided artlessly, 'As it happens, I do like a bit of a stroll.' He sat down again and sipped his tea, slapping his sunken lips together in obvious enjoyment. 'And, as you say, the wood's right on me doorstep. Shame not to make use of it.'
'That's what I thought.'
'Mind, as I told them other young fellers you sent, I'm not sayin' I was there. Not for certain. Might not have been Thursday.' He studied Rafferty through the steam rising from his mug. 'Might have been another night. Mebbe you can jog me memory?'
Rafferty had anticipated that a bit of memory jogging might be required and had brought the necessary. He pulled a £5 note from his pocket and placed it on the table.
Faster than any professional conjuror, Fred made it disappear, before taking another sip of tea and confiding, 'It were Thursday night, now I think about it. Funny how it comes back to you. Mind,' he added, as though reluctant to get Rafferty's hopes up, 'I can't tell you what the time were. A light in the wood, it was, that drew me attention. Someone had a torch and I could see a car parked right on the verge near the old Hanging Tree. Thought it were that sneakin' old bugger, Jenkins at first, and though I were only enjoyin' the moonlight, like you said, I were about to scarper.'
Jenkins was the official warden of the nature reserve. An unctuous, humourless man, Rafferty had found him, and one who would, without doubt, insist on prosecuting poachers, so he could understand Fred's concern.
'Then I 'ear this woman muttering under her breath. Pretty rum. Don't get many wimmin in the woods at night, certainly not alone. Not nowadays, with so many of these 'ere crim'nals about. Anyways, I creeps forward and takes a look. She were just getting' in her car by the time I got close.'
'Would you recognise her again?' Rafferty asked quickly, eager for a firm description.
Fred looked at him as if he were mad. 'She were just a woman,' he told him, in tones that made Rafferty realise that, to a solitary man like Fred Skeggs, women, like Chinamen to a Little Englander, were probably all alike. 'Mind, she had a big arse.' He cackled, drawing his lips over his gums. 'I remember thinking that fat rump'd make many a fine meal.'
'What about the car?' Llewellyn asked in a strangled voice as his scalded throat recovered, determinedly wiping his hands and mouth with a pristine white handkerchief as though he felt he would never feel clean again.
Rafferty bit his lip as he noticed that, this time, Llewellyn was careful not to finish his tea, just in case Fred’s sadistic streak proved perverse enough to insist on another refill.
'Were you able to make out what style of car it was or to get the registration number?'
Fred spared the Welshman an even more scornful look; he seemed to have a vast store of such expressions. 'Are ye daft, man? The moon had gone in and it were black as my old dad's fingernails under the trees. Besides, I don't take me reading glasses with me. Not when I'm strolling in the woods, enjoyin' the moonlight. And cars is all the same to me.'
Like wimmin, Rafferty muttered under his breath. Needless to say, Fred hadn't noticed whether Smith's corpse had still been hanging from the tree either. Rafferty was surprised that the old man hadn't simply supplied them with a steady stream of made-up information in exchange for more fivers. But it seemed Fred Skeggs had a moral code of sorts. He'd told them all he knew, which was that one unidentifiable woman, in an unidentifiable car, had driven away from Dedman Wood on Thursday night at an unidentifiable time. He was really glad he'd come.
To Llewellyn's obvious relief, they successfully evaded any more of Fred's determined hospitality, though on the way out, the goat proved to have an even more mischievous character than her owner. Having missed making their acquaintance on their arrival, she made sure she didn't miss the pleasure on their departure. Llewellyn had a hell of a job to shake her off when she took a fancy to his trouser leg. He was still complaining bitterly about the trouble this case was causing his wardrobe as they got in the car and pulled away; it was all Rafferty could do to keep them on the road for stifled laughter.
'I think we should contact Sinead Fay and the other women again,' Rafferty commented, when Llewellyn climbed back in the car after insisting they stop at his flat so he could change his clothes. 'See what they have to say for themselves. One of them might let something slip. If one or more of them didn't kill Smith, it's becoming obvious that they followed the person who did to Dedman Wood, and know their identity.'
'And if they refuse to admit it, what could we do?' Llewellyn asked shortly, as usual putting his finger on the nub of the matter. 'We would have shown our hand and be forced to back down. After all, what have we got? A Zephyr parked near Smith's flat that might or might not be the one belonging to Ms Fay; a car that might be the same one seen on the road near the woods and Fred Skeggs, who, I might add, is scarcely the most reliable witness, who saw an unknown car and an unknown woman in the woods at an unknown time. As I've already pointed out, we wouldn't have them in the station more than five minutes before the merest journeyman solicitor would have them out again. You're a gambling man, I would have thought you would realise the dangers of showing your hand prematurely.'
Deflated, Rafferty asked, 'What do you suggest we do then — ignore the evidence we do have, and these women, and hope something breaks?'
'Something already has – Massey. I have a feeling it won't be long before he's found. From what you said it doesn't seem likely he's equipped for a life on the run. I doubt he's equipped either to withstand determined questioning. Once we've got him, and if he's aware of the involvement of Sinead Fay and her friends, he'll certainly implicate them – if they're involved, that is. So, yes, I do think we should do nothing. At least until then.'
Although champing at the bit to do something, Rafferty knew that Llewellyn was right again. As usual. All the evidence they had against the breakaway Rape Support Group women was circumstantial. Although Rafferty had finally made the decision to investigate the other Zephyr owners more deeply, little had been turned up.
Out of the twelve other vehicles they had found, three were rust heaps which the neighbours had assured them hadn't gone for months. Of the others, the their owners and their families all seemed respectable enough – not that that proved anything, Rafferty told himself. His own family looked respectable enough but thought nothing of breaking laws they regarded as minor.
The checks into the Zephyr-owners were continuing, but Rafferty was convinced it would lead nowhere. He was still certain that Sinead Fay's car was the one that had been parked outside Smith's flat. The only thing was, it was looking increasingly likely that he'd never be able to prove it.
Still frustrated by the desire to be doing something – anything, he turned the engine back on, rammed the gear lever into first, and as he pulled away from the kerb, said, 'All right, we'll leave them alone for now. But if Frank Massey isn't caught soon, we may have to think again. You know what the Super's like. He wants results and it's up to us to give them to him.'
He consulted his watch. It was almost lunchtime. 'You might as well get off. No point in the two of us sitting in the office on Christmas Eve twiddling our thumbs. Your mum's seen hardly anything of you. I'll drop you at Ma's.'
Llewellyn glanced at him. 'Why don't you take a few hours off yourself and meet her?'
Rafferty, suspecting that Llewellyn was looking for moral support, took the coward's way out. 'Better not. I'm already taking most of tomorrow off. And even though nothing's breaking, I should be there, on the spot. Besides, you never know, if I sit quiet, something might occur to me to get this case back on track.' He pulled up as close to his Ma's house as he could get and dropped Llewellyn off.
'You've got your mobile?' Llewellyn questioned. Rafferty patted his pocket and nodded. 'Don't hesitate to contact me if anything breaks in the meantime.'
Llewellyn seemed reluctant to leave. Several times he began to say something, then broke off. Rafferty found it unnerving. Convinced Llewellyn had finally geared himself up for an uncharacteristic emotional outpouring, he did his best to sidestep it by saying firmly, 'I'll see you tomorrow.'
Tomorrow, he thought. The nose-poker's day of reckoning. If, as he suspected, the visit of Llewellyn's mother had driven a wedge between him and Maureen, the next day would be soon enough to discover it. Soon enough, too, if Llewellyn and Maureen's romance was teetering on the brink of disaster, to face the fact that it would be largely his fault.
Rafferty came into the office bright and early on Christmas morning, through streets that, overnight, had been clothed in a light sprinkling of snow. The air was hushed, expectant and even though he was usually caustic about what he regarded as sentimental religious mush, he was forced to acknowledge a sense almost of awe.
Nothing to do with babies in mangers or any similar tosh he had been force-fed as a child, he insisted to himself. It was something to do with the rare peace and beauty of the December day; like the pavements, the roads were practically empty and, with most of the populace still at home, the snow retained a purity of look and texture that brought magic even to the meanest street. It would be spoiled soon enough as the Great British public indulged the annual humbug of family togetherness which the rising divorce statistics put in perspective.
The pleasure in the morning vanished as he remembered he would soon form part of the visiting hordes himself, and he turned glumly away from admiring the lacy patterns on his office window, sat down and tried to concentrate on the latest reports. There were few enough of them and as they brought nothing in the way of new areas of investigation, his mind was soon free to return to the problem of Llewellyn.
Why did I ever suggest this visit? he asked himself for the umpteenth time.
He put off leaving for as long as he could, but eventually, he could prevaricate no longer. His ma had already had him on the phone several times asking when he could be expected as she'd put the dinner back twice and if he didn't get a move on it would surely be spoilt.
Slowly, like a man going to his execution, Rafferty put on his coat, quietly shut the office door behind him and headed towards his nemesis.
Rafferty had imagined Llewellyn's mother, when he had found the courage to think of her at all, as being as long and thin and forbidding as those tall black hats Welsh women traditionally wore. So, when he finally met her, he was prepared for the worst. Although surprised to find that Mrs Llewellyn was a rather elegant woman, tall, small-featured and, at fifty-five, still pretty, he had more than half-expected her to have a sharp tongue and decidedly old-fashioned attitudes. And, with the introductions barely over, she didn't disappoint him, though the attack came from an angle he hadn't expected.
Tapping him on the arm, she said, 'I understand you've been introducing my son to the local public houses. He's told me all about it and I have to say I'm surprised. I never thought to live to see the day when he entered what his father always called Dens of Iniquity.'
Rafferty threw an accusatory look at Llewellyn, who was sitting on the sofa with Maureen, before he attempted to defend himself. 'I'm sorry if you don't approve, Mrs Llewellyn,' he began, looking desperately round his family for some moral support. But they all seemed to find his predicament fascinating. Conversations died and everywhere he looked he met bright eyes and elbow nudges. They were enjoying his discomfiture, he realized indignantly. Taking a deep breath, he attempted to defend himself. 'I didn't mean,' he began. 'That is, I can assure you he didn't—'
A howl of laughter went up round the room as she tapped him on the arm again and said simply, 'I hope you'll take me, too, while I'm here, if you can find the time. Dafyd might have taken a vow of abstinence to please his father.' For the first time, Rafferty noted the laughter in her eyes, as she added, 'But I didn't. I imagine he knew I was a lost cause as far as that went.'
Another howl of laughter went up. Even young Gemma, whey-faced and unnaturally quiet in the corner of the room, managed a tiny smile.
'Your face, Joe. It's a picture.' Maggie, the eldest of his three sisters and the one he had always felt closest to, teased him before she took pity on him and explained. 'Gloria was a dancer before she met Dafyd's father. Case of opposites attracting, you might say.'
Gloria, Rafferty repeated the name and realised it was the first time he'd heard Mrs Llewellyn's forename. Pity he hadn't heard it before, he reflected, then his imagination mightn't have worked overtime turning her into a monster. He'd known a few Glorias in his time and they'd all known how to enjoy life.
'Dafyd takes after his father, apparently,' Maggie advised him.
'Who'd have guessed it?' Rafferty muttered. Obviously Dafyd's likeness to his father was in character not looks, for he and his mother were both dark and remarkably similar, superficially at least. But, as Rafferty began to discover, where his sergeant was all long-faced lugubriousness, she was lightness and laughter. She smiled often and obviously enjoyed a good joke as much as any of the other Glorias he had known. And not only did she and his Ma appear to have reached a remarkable level of understanding and friendship, but Maureen and her prospective mother-in-law also seemed delighted with one another. There was no trace of the imagined breach. It had all been in his mind. But something had put it there, he reasoned. And that something had undoubtedly been Llewellyn. He resolved to have a quiet word with his sergeant as soon as he got the chance.
'I don't know quite what he expected when he saw you, Gloria,' Kitty Rafferty commented mischievously. 'Some kind of fire-breathing dragon, I dare say.'
Rafferty managed a sheepish grin. 'Not at all,' he insisted. 'Take no notice of Ma,' he advised Gloria. 'She's always had this tendency to exaggerate.'
As the conversation in the rest of the room returned to its previous volume, he turned back to Gloria and confided, 'Though Ma's right. I was a bit apprehensive about meeting you. Especially as your visit was my idea and I was more or less responsible for getting Dafyd and Maureen together in the first place. I was afraid—–' He paused, reluctant to admit just what he had been afraid of.
Gloria continued for him. 'You were afraid that, as Dafyd's my only son, I'd come between them.'
Rafferty nodded. 'It's just that Dafyd's talk of his childhood coloured my expectations, especially when he mentioned that you didn't even have a television. I suppose I thought—'
'He thought you must be a terribly dour, humourless woman, Gloria,' Ma chipped in again. 'And isn't he ashamed of himself now.' She darted a glance at Gemma before confiding, 'Gloria's been that sympathetic, Joseph. Her visit and good sense has made us all feel so much better about the baby.
'Anyway.' She got to her feet. 'I must dish up. No, you stay there Gloria,' she insisted when Mrs Llewellyn went to get up and help. 'Perhaps you can persuade Joseph that he's too old to be still playing the field. Maybe, if you tell him it's time he settled down, he'd listen.'
Gloria smiled at him when his Ma had bustled off to the kitchen. 'Don't worry. I wouldn't dream of telling you any such thing. And, actually, I do have a television set. Just don't tell Dafyd.’ They shared a conspiratorial smile. ‘He adored his father and, even now, he would upset if he thought I wasn't living up to his father's high-minded principles. I'd rather he didn't realise I'm just a fallible mortal like everyone else, so, whenever I know Dafyd's coming for a visit, I hide the TV. It's only a small portable, so it's quickly enough done. That and the radio go under my bed.'
Her gaze strayed to the upright figure of her son, as he sat chatting to Maureen and Maggie and she added softly, 'His father was killed by a hit and run driver – drunk, the police thought. The man was never caught. I think it was that which prompted him to join the police. He never actually said, but I think he wanted to try to make sure that other people received the justice that we were denied. Promise me you won't tell him my secret?'
‘May the Lord curse me with a far-arsed wife and a huge brood from her child-bearing hips, if I do,’ Rafferty promised, hand on heart. Gloria grinned and winked.
Just then his Ma carried the turkey in. It was the plumpest turkey he had ever seen and as the aroma of the well-stuffed bird wafted past his nostrils, his mouth watered, making more speech impossible. His sisters followed on with dishes piled high with vegetables and everyone came to the table.
There were eighteen round the dinner table this year; it was fortunate that his sister, Maggie, lived only a few doors away and had cooked a second turkey and all the trimmings. Fortunate, too, that ma had had the two downstairs rooms knocked into one. As it was, the younger children were seated round a painter's board and trestle. It was covered with a large white linen sheet and made as festive as the table proper with crackers and tinsel garlands and snow-sprayed pine cones that marched across the cloth, stuck down with double-sided Sellotape.
Rafferty smiled. Ma always went to town at Christmas and the tables were a glorious riot of over-the-topness.
As soon as Ma had said Grace, everyone set to with a will. Even Maureen's mother, no doubt given the jollop of something as Ma had threatened, soon became as lively as any of the drunks overnighting in Elmhurst's nick, and began teasing an embarrassed Maureen and recounting such tales of her own courtship days that she had Rafferty's "Uncle" Pat blushing for shame.
The party was still going strong at midnight, the tables pushed back against the wall and the ancient radiogram by now piled with romantic ballads for the close-dancing couples. Ma and Gloria, both widowed for many years, were up dancing with a couple of Ma's gentleman neighbours who had popped in and Rafferty and young Gemma were the only wallflowers.
Even in the now dimmed lighting, he could see that her pretty face was still as unhappy and strained as it had been for most of the day. She had been the first grandchild in the family and had been a bit spoiled by them all. Rafferty, a couple of years out of his teens when she had been born, had fussed over her as much as anyone. Of course, as the rest of the grandchildren arrived, the novelty had worn off. But Gemma remained special to him.
He sighed. And now she was going to be a mother herself. His attempts during the day to try to cheer her up hadn't succeeded. How could they? What did a single, childless man of thirty-eight say to a young girl of sixteen who was soon to be responsible for a new life? But she looked so wretched, that he knew he had to have another try and he made his way through the crush of bodies.
'All right, Moppet?' he asked.
She shrugged.
It was apparent she didn't want to talk. She'd probably listened to enough advice and admonishment to last through a dozen pregnancies as the women of the family thrashed out her future. Instead, he said, 'What do you say we take a twirl and show these shufflers how it should be done?'
That brought a smile as he'd known it would. Gemma had been dance-mad until just lately; ballroom, Latin-American, jive, every time Rafferty had seen her, she'd inveigled him into partnering her, till he'd become pretty adept a dancer himself.
Now, before she could refuse him, he grabbed her hand, shouted, 'Make way for the champions,' and after putting one of Ma's livelier records under the needle, led her into a much-practised jive that cleared the floor and brought a welcome sparkle to Gemma's eyes.
'See,' Rafferty gasped into her ear as the record came to an end and he struggled to regain his breath, 'being a single parent is not the end of the world. You can bring up kids alone and still find time to enjoy yourself. I mean — look at Ma.'
Kitty Rafferty, mother of six, grandmother to twelve, and soon to be a great-grandmother, was now ensconced on the middle of the settee, a gentleman friend on either side of her and flirting like mad with both of them.
Gemma giggled. It was the first time Rafferty had heard her usually infectious giggle all day. Relieved, he put the same record on for a second spin, whirled her around, turned her with a flourish that Nureyev in his heyday would have died for and set off back up the room.
It was much later when Rafferty sought Llewellyn out. By now, emboldened by his success with Gemma and more than his share of Jameson's whiskey, he was ready to put the rest of the world to rights. He followed the Welshman when he went to the bathroom and demanded a few answers. After all he had been put through, he felt he deserved them. He fixed Llewellyn with a bleary-eyed stare and said, 'I don't get it. Your mum's come down, met Maureen, they get on like a house on fire — so why have you been looking as miserable as a doctored poodle all week?'
'Surely you can guess?'
'I wouldn't ask if I could. Come on, out with it, man.'
Llewellyn hesitated. Then he blurted out, 'It's Maureen. She's your cousin. So tell me, how would you go about asking 'Daisy' the cow if she'll consent to your putting a ring through her nose?'
Rafferty gave a shout of laughter, but quickly sobered when he saw Llewellyn was serious. 'You mean you haven't even asked her yet? What the hell have you been doing all this time?'
'Trying to pluck up the courage,' Llewellyn finally confessed. 'A task not made any easier by the fact that both your mother and mine seem to assume that asking her is a mere formality. I even tried seeking your advice several times,' he admitted, 'but each time I tried you seemed to cut me off.' Rafferty shuffled his feet guiltily. 'You know Maureen. She's a woman with very modern, feminist ideas. She may not even want to get married.'
'You must at least have pinned her down to a general opinion on the subject?'
Llewellyn shook his head. 'Not exactly.'
Exasperated, Rafferty exclaimed, 'For God's sake, man, why ever not? Perhaps if you and Maureen had socked old Socrates and his mates into touch once in a while and discussed the basics, you might know where you stood. Maureen's not stupid. Do you think she doesn't know that both your mother and mine have got you married off already? Especially when Ma hasn't stopped teasing the poor girl about wedding bells all day. And then when her mother chimed in about keeping the guest list small and select' – which he guessed meant as few Raffertys as possible — 'I wouldn't have thought she could have much doubt of the way the wind's blowing.'
'I realise that,' Llewellyn retorted. 'But even you must have noticed she looked more embarrassed than pleased about it and immediately changed the subject. What does that tell you?'
'What does that tell me?' Rafferty repeated incredulously, as through his mind, in swift succession, were paraded all the tortures he'd suffered because of Llewellyn's wimpish wooing. That they'd stemmed almost entirely from his own over-active imagination, he disregarded.
'I'll tell you what it tells me.' He realised he was shouting and lowered his voice. 'Has it not occurred to that over-sized intellectual brain of yours that the poor girl was embarrassed — not, as you seem to think — because she doesn't want to marry you, but because you haven't bloody asked her!'
He again dragged his voice down to a loud whisper and demanded, 'What else do you expect her to be when she must think you don't want to marry her? I'd be bloody mortified in her position.'
While Llewellyn absorbed this, Rafferty thrust his advice home with the poke of an index finger in the chest. 'Do everyone a favour, find the courage of your convictions and ask her.' Rafferty's eyes narrowed. 'Or do you expect Maureen to do the asking? Let me tell you something, Mo might be a modern sort of girl with plenty to say for herself on other matters, but on this subject she's likely to be as traditional as my Ma. Besides, it's hardly good for a girl's ego to have to confess to her friends, her workmates, her snotty-nosed mother, for God's sake, that she had to do the asking.'
Rafferty paused for breath, then went on. 'Do you think that mother of hers wouldn't rub her nose in it every time they had a falling out? And Maureen would blame you. Ask her. That's my last word on the subject. Now.' Rafferty removed his body from its doorframe prop, staggered a little and aimed himself at the front door. 'I'm going home.'
As Rafferty drifted off to sleep, Gemma's face kept passing in and out of his dreams. each time, gazing pensively at him from the frame of a photograph. It was as if, in his dream, she was trying to tell him something.
The dream moved on, became tangled up in the lives of the other young girls involved in the case, their emotions, their vulnerabilities. Perhaps it was the combination of those things which set his mind on the correct path at last. But, all at once, in his sleeping state, anyway, he had the answer.
Of course, it had faded by morning, but certainly, when the phone woke him at seven and groggily, he surfaced from an alcoholic sleep, stretched out a hand and sent the bedside lamp clattering to the floor, he was aware of a vague sense of having dredged up something vital. He shook his head to clear it, winced, finally found the phone and said, 'Ugh?'
He sat up pretty quickly when he absorbed what the voice was saying in his ear. When his head had stopped spinning, he said, 'They're sure it's Massey?'
He listened for a while, asked a few more questions, then hung up. Rubbing his hands over his face, he tried to think. Phone Llewellyn, his brain instructed.
Llewellyn was already up, that much was obvious. He heard Maureen's voice in the background and despite his throbbing head, he managed a grin. 'Been keeping a welcome in that there hillside?' he asked Llewellyn. The Welshman refused to dignify his question with a reply, so Rafferty shrugged and continued. 'Guess what? The station's just been on. Massey's turned up — only trouble is, he's dead. Hanged himself in some Dutch barn.'
'Hanged, you say?'
It was obvious that the method of suicide Massey had chosen had stirred up Llewellyn's suspicions.
Rafferty paused to accommodate them, then continued. 'According to the Dutch police, he's been living rough for the last few days. The farmer said he saw this wild man in the woods near his place and reported it, but the police took their own sweet time in looking into the matter. Unfortunately, in the meantime, Massey must have made up his mind to end it all. The farmer found him early this morning hanging from the beam in his barn.'
'So, apart from the usual mopping-up operations, the investigation's over?'
'What?' Something went click in Rafferty's brain and the dream of the night returned in its entirety. 'No,' he said. 'The poor bastard didn't do it. Massey isn't the one who killed Smith.' That was another poor B entirely, he thought and I'm the poor sap who has to make the arrest.
Already depressed in body by alcohol, the thought depressed his spirit and he wondered again if he was really cut out for police work. 'I think the poor sod was just terrified of being on the receiving end of another piece of injustice. After all, he had no reason to think the law would get it right this time any more than they did last time.
'No,' he repeated, 'Massey didn't do it. I've finally figured out who did.' He paused and crossed his fingers. 'At least I think I have. I've got a few things to check out first. I'll see you at the station in forty minutes and I'll explain then.'
Rafferty replaced the receiver before Llewellyn could ask any more questions and slumped on the bed. Was it his fault that Massey had killed himself? Had he driven an innocent man to suicide? Maybe if he'd been smarter, quicker to work out the clues that had been there all the time, the poor bastard might still be alive.
Slowly, his hand reached out again for the phone.
The Elmhurst Private Sanatorium might now be called "Green Lawns" and be under different ownership, but as Llewellyn drove through the gates, Rafferty saw that the place looked much the same as he remembered from when it had been the scene of an earlier murder.
The hushed air that, in a noisy modern world, only the wealthy could afford, still hovered over the manicured lawns, their well-nourished lushness emphasised by the light dressing of December snow.
Even the gate-porter to whom they had shown their identification was the same. Rafferty searched his memory for his name. Then it came to him. Gilbert — that was it. From what he knew of the man, he was surprised he still had his job.
After enquiring at the reception desk they were directed down a thickly carpeted corridor to the rear of the Georgian house which accommodated the administrative offices and into the much more recently added wings which contained the private rooms.
Elizabeth Probyn didn't look up when the door opened, but simply went on spooning the breakfast cereal into the girl's mouth, tenderly, carefully, making sure none was spilt. She didn't turn her head when he called her name, but continued to deliver spoon from bowl to mouth as though it were the most important thing in the world to her. It probably was, Rafferty reflected.
A silence took hold, which Rafferty forced himself to break with a careful warning. 'I feel I ought to tell you, Ms Probyn, that we know pretty well everything now.'
Still, she said nothing.
Rafferty had never had occasion to caution a Chief Crown Prosecutor before, though there had been many a time when he'd wanted to, particularly this one. That desire had faded. He'd disliked, resented her, for so long, that the feeling of pity that had replaced such emotions didn't sit comfortably. Still, it was strong and threatened to unman him. He wished he could forget what he knew, what his phone calls had confirmed, sweep it under some wide, grey carpet out of sight of man's justice. But he couldn't. He reminded himself that he had fantasised about arresting this woman. And now — now it was the hardest, most gut-wrenching thing he had ever had to do.
He found his voice again. 'This is your daughter?'
She nodded. 'How did you find out?'
'It was the pictures that led me to the rest.'
'Pictures?'
'The photographs of your daughter in your home. It suddenly struck me you only had pictures of her as a new-born baby and as a young woman, with nothing in between, no photographic tracing of all the stages from toddler to school photographs in her uniform. I wondered why. Then it came to me. You only had early pictures and more recent ones because you hadn't seen her in between. Had no idea what had happened to her in between because she'd been adopted. Only then, when she reached eighteen, she traced you. And you found out what had happened to her: that she'd been Maurice Smith's fifth victim.
'Suddenly, it all made sense; most of it, anyway – the security you had installed and why, your daughter's woman's trouble, emotional and mental rather than physical, the fact that Smith had no qualms about letting his killer into his flat, and the ritual stringing up of his body.'
Her head swivelled and she glanced briefly at him, before turning back to the girl. 'I underestimated you, Inspector. You seem to have worked it out very well.'
'Frank Massey was the father?'
Her bowed head acknowledged it. 'He wanted me to have an abortion. We rowed about it and I didn't see him again till my delayed return to college after the long summer holidays, after the birth, after the adoption. I told him I'd had the abortion he'd been pressing for.' She faltered, went on. 'He still doesn't know he had another daughter.'
Rafferty's breath suddenly quickened as he remembered she didn't know Massey was dead, that now he'd never know about his other daughter.
'I doubt I would ever have told him about her, but then Sheena — my daughter — traced me, wanted to know who her father was, to meet him. Only before I could bring myself to confess the truth to Frank, Sheena met Maurice Smith again. God knows she was a nervy enough girl before that, distraught whenever I had to leave her alone in the house. I hadn't known he had moved to Elmhurst. There was no reason I should, of course, but if I had known, I could have saved her from the trauma of meeting him again. I'd persuaded her to go shopping with the daughter of a friend of mine.'
She took a shaky breath and continued. 'She bumped into Maurice Smith in the town centre. Smith, the beast who raped her when she was a little girl. Sheena had little trouble recognising him: His is the face in her nightmares, after all. She became hysterical and ran home. I was at work, of course. She was alone for hours; refused to answer my friend's pleas that she open the front door. So my friend rang me and I came home. She'd locked herself in the bathroom and we had to break the door down.'
Gently, she pushed the dark hair off her daughter's forehead. 'We found her much as she is now. It was only later, after the doctor had been and sedated her, that I got the full story of what had happened from my friend's daughter.'
She clutched the now empty cereal bowl and gazed at Sheena, who sat cradling a Raggedy-Ann doll in her lap, whispering to it in a lisping childlike voice.
'The doctors say she relapsed into childhood. She seems ... happier there.'
Rafferty cautioned her again before she said any more. But she ignored the caution. She seemed to have a need to talk, to make them understand.
'She's my only child. I'd been told after her birth that it was unlikely I could have another baby, so you can imagine my joy when she traced me. Imagine, too, my horror when, shortly after our reunion, she broke down and told me she had been another of Smith's victims. I'd had no idea till then that he'd attacked a fifth young girl.' She raised her eyes to Rafferty's. 'How did you know there had been a fifth victim? I thought no one knew.'
'Stubbs mentioned it. He and Thompson went to see Smith after the trial. He told them then. Of course, even Smith had no idea who the girl was — she was just some little girl with a fiddle. Neither she nor her parents had come forward, there was nothing Stubbs could do. There was no point in mentioning it to anyone, including you. He confirmed when I rang him this morning that you hadn't been told.'
She nodded. 'And you found yourself wondering how I knew there had been a fifth victim.' Suddenly she smiled. 'She's inherited my love of music. Piano's her thing now, rather than the violin, so I bought her the best instrument I could find. I-I hoped we could practise together.' Her voice faltered and the smile faded. 'I doubt we'll ever do that now.'
Tenderly, she again smoothed her daughter's dark hair from her forehead. 'She told me she was coming out of her music lesson when Smith accosted her.'
Again, she faltered for a moment and as she went on, her voice hardened 'Her adoptive parents reacted in the worst possible way when she told them what had happened to her. At first they refused to believe her, told her she was wicked to tell such lies. Even when she recognised his face in the newspapers when he was charged with the rape of the other little girls and finally accepted she hadn't been lying, they refused to come forward, refused to let her speak of it, even. She was made to feel it had been her fault. She said they had told her she was never to tell anyone about it because it was so shameful. Hardly surprising she never got over it.'
Silence descended again. The only sound was Sheena's voice chattering to her doll. Now, in the silence, Rafferty could make out what she was saying and he wondered how Elizabeth Probyn could bear it as Sheena whispered the same words over and over again, 'Naughty girl to tell such lies. You must be punished. Naughty girl to tell such lies. You must be punished. Naughty girl—'
'Frank Massey went missing,' he burst out, unable to stand the dreadful repetition. He wanted to get it over with, all of it and get out of this room with its claustrophobia, its misery. 'You remember I told you?'
'Yes.'
He hesitated, then it came out in a rush. 'I'm afraid I've bad news. We found him — or rather, a Dutch farmer found him. In his barn.' Again, he hesitated, but then forced himself to go on. 'He'd hanged himself.'
She didn't seem surprised. 'Poor Frank. Ironic when you think about it. He wanted me to kill our baby, instead my actions have resulted in his death.' Sighing, she added, 'He wasn't strong either mentally or emotionally.' Her gaze rested sadly on the girl. 'I'm afraid Sheena takes after him. He couldn't take prison. I know he had some kind of breakdown. Archie Stubbs made sure I knew that; I suppose he still wanted to punish me.
'Thankfully, he was unaware of our earlier affair. After he learned that Smith had been murdered Frank was terrified that he might be charged with his killing, might end up in prison again, especially as he had no alibi. He rang me, wanted my reassurance. I did my best to convince him he was safe, that the police would believe him, that no one would think he had anything to do with it. Obviously, he didn't believe me. Perhaps I didn't try hard enough.' Her eyes shadowed. 'Maybe Archie Stubbs wasn’t the only one keen to punish the guilty and I still wanted to hurt him, to punish him for his weakness when I was young, pregnant and frightened.'
Quickly now, as though she wanted to get it over, she told them the rest. Ellen Kemp, the eldest of the three breakaway RSG women had given birth to her daughter, Jenny, at the same time as the young Elizabeth Osborne had had Sheena. They'd been in adjoining beds and had kept in touch ever since. She told them that, by following Ellen Kemp's daughter's progress, she felt she was following that of her own daughter; the first words, the first steps, the first venture into the wider world.
‘When my daughter traced me and told me what had happened to her, I contacted Ellen Kemp for advice, in the hope that her expert counselling might help my daughter. But, after Sheena had encountered Smith for the second time in her life, it was too late, the damage had gone too deep.’
'It was then that Ms Kemp and her friends sent Smith the “outing” letter?' Rafferty questioned.
She nodded. 'Though I only learned about that later. I didn't realise they were watching his flat to make sure he didn't escape the punishment Ellen and her friends had decided upon. Ellen was the one watching the flat when I went there that night. She saw Smith open the front door and let me in. Saw me come out again, down the fire escape this time, and guessed, from what I’d told her previously, that it was Smith's body I was struggling to get down the stairs. I'd bought rubbish sacks to cover him; fitting, I thought.
'Anyway, Ellen told me afterwards that she had assumed I had simply stunned Smith. She followed me, hoping to prevent me doing anything worse. She was too late, of course. I'd already killed him at the flat. The stringing up afterwards was something, like the rubbish sacks, I just felt fitting. Symbolic. By the time she reached Dedman Wood, I had already driven off.
'Ellen took Smith’s body down and put it in the boot of her car; instinctively she felt she had to hide it. Only, of course, it wasn't her car. It belonged to one of the other women. And when she told them what she had done, they persuaded her to put the body back, without the hood or wrist binding. They panicked, hoped it would be thought Smith had killed himself. Of course, they didn't realise I had stabbed him. I can't imagine they examined him too closely and his dark clothes would have hidden any bloodstains.'
Rafferty nodded. He had been right. The RSG women had acted exactly as he had outlined to Mary Carmody. The realisation brought little satisfaction. He had been right, too, in the supposition that it had been one of Smith's victims they had helped. Elizabeth Probyn, Ellen Kemp's friend for eighteen years and her daughter's "Aunt Beth", had been as much Smith's victim as any of the raped girls.
Llewellyn's throat-clearing broke the silence. 'There is one thing — no — two, I don't understand.' She waited expectantly. 'Why he opened the door to you and how you knew his landlady would be out that night.'
'As for the latter, surely you haven't forgotten my "treasure", my cleaning lady? I learned of the reunion from her. Her mother was going, she told me. She also told me, not once, but a dozen times, the names of her acquaintances who were also to attend the reunion. Mrs Chadden likes to talk. It gives her a perfect excuse to avoid doing any work. And, of course, by then, I'd found out where Smith lived, the name of his landlady and as much about him and his habits as possible. I knew that Thursday would be perfect.'
'It was you who rang the Social and got his address?' Llewellyn asked and when she nodded, he reminded her of his other query.
'As far as Smith knew, Sergeant, I was a representative of the law, not a vengeful parent. When he saw me through the spy hole in his front door he didn't see me as a threat. He remembered me from the trial: I still had my old security pass in my maiden name. I showed him that, told him I was researching for a book about men like himself and the raw deal he and other victims of justice had.
'He swallowed it whole, was pathetically eager to talk. He told me that his stepfather had beaten him up that very evening when he'd gone over there to see him. He was feeling sorry for himself and wanted a sympathetic ear. I did my best to oblige.'
Rafferty, glad to learn that he had been right, too, about the beating Smith’s stepfather had administered, was only sorry that it was hearsay evidence and inadmissible.
'So, as I said, I was sympathetic, did my best to gain his trust, just as he had set out to gain my daughter's trust and the trust of those other little girls. It helped that I'm well-spoken. I don't suppose he imagined that a woman with a correct BBC accent would be capable of violence. He got quite chatty.
‘Of course, I couldn't afford to let his self-pitying rambles go on too long. I had to get back to the church hall before I was missed. I only had the interval and the last act of the play to accomplish my plan. I couldn't afford to waste time, still, I had to let him talk for a few minutes to gain his confidence. I'd brought a tape recorder with me and set it up on the table in front of his armchair.
'After a little while he seemed happy just to chat into the microphone, telling me about his grievances, while I wandered round the room. It was how I was able to get behind him. He had no suspicions. None at all. My one regret is that he died too quickly, happily pouring out his complaints into the tape recorder.'
Her gaze was steady as she met Rafferty's. 'I had to do it, Inspector, you of all people must realise that. You were right about the injustices of the British legal system. I know that now.'
Her voice was bitter, full of a passion Rafferty had never before heard in her voice. He hadn't believed her capable of such a depth of emotion.
'The law wouldn't give my daughter justice. I knew that. Who better? Maurice Smith destroyed my child and by that act he also destroyed my belief in the law. Worse, under it all, I was conscious that I was the one who had helped him destroy her, I the one who had failed her. First at her birth, when I was too weak, too scared to stand up to my parents when they insisted on adoption. Then at Smith's trial, when by my own eagerness to make a name for myself I not only deprived those other little girls of justice, but also, unknowingly, convinced my own daughter that her adoptive parents had been right all along. In her mind, if Smith was innocent, then the rape must have been her fault. I knew I had to avenge her. No one else would.'
Rafferty placed a hand on her shoulder. 'I'm sorry.' The words were, he knew, woefully inadequate.
She made no reply, just sat, gazing at her daughter. She seemed beyond pain now; like her daughter, she had retreated from the real world. Who could blame her?
Quickly, he told Llewellyn to summon a nurse. He didn't want to leave her daughter alone. He wanted to reassure Elizabeth Probyn that Sheena would be looked after. But they both knew that this place cost a fortune. Once Elizabeth Probyn's money was gone, her daughter would be moved from this quiet sanctuary to the less-than-sanctified bedlam of a National Health Service general ward.
He took refuge in silence. When the nurse came, Rafferty took Elizabeth Probyn's arm. Surprisingly, she didn't resist, just kissed her daughter, once, on the forehead, and allowed herself to be led away. Of course, she knew that if she resisted, if she cried or struggled she would only upset the girl.
She had done her duty as she saw it and in so doing, had destroyed herself. Rafferty had long ago lost belief in the infallibility of the law. But she had believed in it, he knew, believed in it implicitly, even after the Smith case. But then had come the knowledge, the discovery that her own daughter had been one of Smith's victims. It had torn the foundations out of her world. She looked empty, anchorless, beyond reach. He had no choice. He had come this far, he had to go on. As he spoke the words of the caution, he had never hated his job more.
He may have done his policeman's duty, but in his heart, he still felt he had perpetuated an injustice. What made it worse was that his arrest of Elizabeth Probyn would, after all the sensational coverage Smith's murder had received in the media, mean that the investigation would get a thorough raking over from his large family. He knew they would feel he'd have done better to ignore the clues and let natural justice prevail. He couldn't help thinking they had a point. What, after all, would Elizabeth Probyn's arrest achieve apart from more misery?
Predictably, he could hear Llewellyn's answer echoing in his head: it removed the stain of suspicion from others involved in the case. He supposed he'd have to be satisfied with that.
It was much later that day, after Ellen Kemp and her friends had been brought to the station and charged, when Rafferty and Llewellyn were getting ready to go home, that the phone rang. Rafferty had been prepared to let it ring, but Llewellyn, never one to ignore duty's call, picked it up. The conversation didn't take long.
'Guess who that was,' he invited Rafferty once he’d put the ‘phone down.
Rafferty shrugged.
'Remember our travelling salesman who noted and lost the registration number of the Zephyr?'
He nodded.
'He's finally found the piece of paper and surprise, surprise—'
'It's the same as that on Sinead Fay's car,' Rafferty finished for him. Llewellyn nodded. 'Pity he didn't manage to find it before.'
'If he had we may well have concentrated our attention more strongly on them and never got beyond the fact of their involvement. If Frank Massey hadn't begun to feel he was our number one suspect and gone missing, we might never have learned about his and Elizabeth Probyn's youthful liaison, you would never have begun to wonder about that liaison, and about the strange limit to the photographs of the daughter that no one seemed to know anything about and what exactly was the matter with her and why.'
Rafferty wasn't sure he wouldn't have preferred it that way. But he kept the opinion to himself. It wasn't the sort of thing a police inspector should bruit about.
At least the telephone call had succeeded in breaking the melancholy silence that the discovery of the truth and Elizabeth Probyn's painful confession had brought because Llewellyn went on. 'By the way, thanks for the advice.'
'Advice?' Rafferty's head began to thump as his hangover returned. Oh God, he thought, I haven't been dishing out more of the stuff, have I?
He could hardly believe it after all the anxieties the last lot had caused him. Trouble was, he couldn't remember. Half suspicious, half wary, he stared at his sergeant, trying to discern the emotions behind the impassive countenance; never an easy task at the best of times, especially when Llewellyn was indulging his love of irony at his expense. And, in the past, Rafferty's unasked for and carelessly handed out pearls of wisdom had had a painful boomerang tendency that had only served to encourage the Welshman's withering wit. 'All right,' he muttered, 'out with it. What have I done this time?'
'You advised me to pop the question.'
Rafferty took a deep breath and asked, 'So what happened?'
'It was a beautiful night, still and silent, made for poetry, for declarations of love and—'
'For God's sake, Dafyd, can you cull your inner poet and just tell me what happened!'
Llewellyn's long face actually split into a grin. 'I asked her. She said yes.'
Thank God for that, Rafferty thought and breathed a sigh of relief. The next minute, qualms forgotten, he clapped Llewellyn on the back. 'There – what did I tell you? Trust your old Agony Uncle Joseph to know what's what. Now you can start worrying about how much it's all going to cost. First it'll be the engagement ring, then—'
Llewellyn shook his head. 'Maureen doesn't believe in such things. She—'
Rafferty held up his hands. 'Don't tell me. She thinks engagement rings are symbols of male oppression, right?' A ring through the nose of 'Daisy' the cow, Rafferty repeated irreverently to himself.
Llewellyn nodded.
'Jammy devil. Mind, I wouldn't bet on such luck lasting. Wait till that mother of hers gets to work on her. That woman's got to have something to boast about. Bet you a fiver you end up paying for a stone that Liz Taylor would envy.'
Before Llewellyn could remind him that he didn’t bet, Rafferty thrust his chair back and pulled on his coat. 'Anyway, you can worry about that later. Now, I think it's time you bought the matchmaker a drink. We'll pop into the Green Man. It's not every day my sergeant gets himself engaged, with or without the ring.'
It wasn't every day you arrested a Chief Crown Prosecutor either, he reminded himself. He wasn't sure whether the drink for that would be a celebratory one or a drowning of sorrows.
'So when's the happy day planned?' he asked as they walked out to the car.
'Not for some time. It doesn't do to rush these things. Though,' Llewellyn gave a faint smile, 'as your mother has bought her hat and has also found me the most wonderful new suit, I don't think we ought to disappoint her too long.'
'A new suit?' Rafferty queried, as an uneasy memory stirred.
'Yes, your mother showed it to me after you left last night.' Llewellyn smiled. ‘She asked me not to mention it to you. She said she didn’t have another one to suit you. Perhaps she thought you’d be jealous? But I don’t suppose she’ll mind me mentioning it. Not in the circumstances. Not with you being the one to bring Maureen and me together. And it really is of a marvellous quality. And surprisingly reasonable. Your mother really has got an eye for a bargain.'
Rafferty gave him a sickly smile. 'Hasn't she though?'
If you have enjoyed this novel, the author would be grateful if you would take the time to give it a review. Here are the links with the book’s Amazon pages:
UK: The Hanging Tree by Geraldine Evans
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Geraldine Evans is the author of twenty published novels, including fifteen in the Rafferty and Llewellyn procedural series. Her previous publishers include Macmillan, Severn House, Hale, St Martin’s Press and Worldwide (US).
She started writing in her twenties, but never finished anything. It was only when she hit the milestone age of thirty that she managed to complete a book. For the next six years she completed a book a year, only the last of which was published. That was her romance, Land of Dreams.
When her follow-up romance was rejected, she felt like murdering someone. So she did. She turned to crime. Dead Before Morning, her first mystery novel and the first book in her Rafferty and Llewellyn mystery series, was taken from Macmillan’s slush pile and published, both in the UK and the US. It was the beginning of a long and successful career as a mystery author.
Geraldine Evans is a Londoner, but moved to Norfolk in East Anglia, in 2000.
Rafferty & Llewellyn procedural series
Kith and Kill #15
Deadly Reunion #14 (Orig Pub: Severn House)
Death Dance #13 (Orig Pub: Severn House)
All the Lonely People #12 (Orig Pub: Severn House)
Death Dues #11 (Orig Pub: Severn House)
A Thrust to the Vitals #10 (Orig Pub: Severn House)
Blood on the Bones #9 (Orig Pub: Severn House)
Love Lies Bleeding #8 (Orig Pub: Severn House)
Bad Blood #7 (Orig Pub: Severn House)
Dying For You #6 (Orig Pub: Severn House)
Absolute Poison #5 (Orig Pub: Severn House)
The Hanging Tree #4 (Orig Pub: Macmillan)
Death Line #3 (Orig Pub: Macmillan)
Down Among the Dead Men #2 (Orig Pub: Macmillan)
Dead Before Morning #1 (Orig Pub: Macmillan)
Casey & Catt procedural series
A Killing Karma #2 (Orig Pub: Severn House)
Up in Flames #1 (Orig Pub: Severn House)
Standalones
International Medical Suspense Novel
The Egg Factory
Historical Novel
Reluctant Queen, (Orig Pub: Hale)
Romantic Novel
Land of Dreams, Hale