Blood on the Bones (26 page)

There was one aspect of Nigel's ‘blackmail’ letters that still puzzled Rafferty and he decided he might as well get as many answers as he could while his cousin was in this expansive, gloating mood.

‘So why didn't you demand money from me in your letters?’ he asked. He still found it inexplicable that his extravagant, permanently ‘in hock’ cousin had failed to follow through on his taunts with a demand for money.

‘Demand money?’ Nigel drew his slick and stylish self to his full height, the better to display to advantage both his affront at this unwarranted slur on his character and the cut of his designer suit.

Nigel's impressive show of indignation almost managed to persuade Rafferty that he'd been wrong, all these years, to put his cousin down as a greedy chancer. Almost, but not quite. Even affront of Nigel-proportions couldn't erase all the shared memories.

‘I might be many things,’ Nigel replied, his affronted dignity surely now of Oscar-winning proportions. ‘But, unlike so many members of your family, I'm not a criminal.’

That Rafferty's family were, undoubtedly, also Nigel's family, Rafferty didn't bother to point out.

‘A joke's one thing, and the police can't touch you for it,’ Nigel went on, his ruffled dignity rising to the occasion with even more aplomb, ‘but if I'd started demanding money, it would put me into a different league. I was merely offering advice. As far as I'm aware no one can touch you for that.’

‘Advice?’ Rafferty queried. ‘Your missives all read like blackmail letters to me.’

‘Blackmail? Surely not, dear boy. As I said, that would be against the law. Read the letters again. I think you'll find I simply offered to help you resolve your difficulties. Nothing illegal in that.’

‘So if you were so keen to help why didn't you make your identity plain?’

‘Why? Because I didn't want my good name sullied by association with yours a second time should your secret ever become common knowledge.’

Nigel got down off his high horse for long enough to make an unusually honest admission: ‘Though I can't deny I was tempted to follow through.’ He waved an elegant arm around his huge, warehouse apartment. ‘Do you think this place comes so cheap that a little extra in the spondulicks department wouldn't be welcome? But even if I'd been tempted, I couldn't. Warned off, wasn't I? Just after I posted that last letter. As if you didn't know.’

Alarmed by Nigel's admission, he was deaf to the final sentence. ‘Warned off? Who by?’ he demanded. God, thought Rafferty, don't tell me there's yet another person in the know on this business. How many more are there?

‘Don't come the innocent with me, Joe,’ Nigel scoffed. ‘We both know who did the warning off.’

‘Humour me.’

‘Your dear mama, of course. I might have known you'd go running to her with your little sob story. There's a woman who has no crisis of conscience when it comes to getting in the first low blow, I can tell you. She came here with some long-haired lovely in tow. The pair of them actually threatened me.’

Rafferty bit down hard as another grin made a bid for freedom. He had little difficulty in concluding the identity of the 'long-haired lovely'. Abra, of course. Nigel had never met her – which, given Nigel's indiscriminate amorality where the female of the species was concerned, was something Rafferty had taken pains to ensure.

What more natural than that Abra should have confided in ma after she'd found the blackmail letter that had dropped from his pocket? Clearly, she'd had more confidence in ma's ability to get to the bottom of the problem and find the solution than she had in his. She'd been right, too, because clearly ma's superior detection skills had hit on Nigel as a potential blackmailer before he had managed to come to the same conclusion. And he'd had the last letter as an added pointer.

Not only that, but by Nigel's own admission, ma had sufficient on him to actually threaten his cousin should he take the action his letters implied to the ultimate conclusion.

‘So which of your sordid little secrets did ma find useful as a blackmail stopper?’ Rafferty asked.

‘Never you mind. It's enough that your mother knows. With a bit of luck she'll take the knowledge – and the evidence – to the grave with her.’

Rafferty couldn't resist saying, ‘I wouldn't bet on it.’

From his suddenly down turned lips, it seemed this was also Nigel's belated conclusion. For he nodded and said, ‘No. Not a woman to lose track of the important things in life, Kitty Rafferty.’ He couldn't help but add the taunt. ‘And who knows what sort of pickle her little soldier's going to get himself in next that needs some back up evidence of the incriminating sort to get him out of hock?’

It was a little while later, after he and his cousin had exchanged a few more pleasantries, that Rafferty left, confident that his ma's blackmail stopper, whatever it was, had halted his cousin's fun in its tracks.

It was fortunate for him that his ma had something on his cousin. Because if it wasn't for that, he wouldn't have held out much hope. The man was an estate agent, for God's sake. And, much as he might refute the possibility, Nigel was unlikely to have continued to deny himself the lure of easy money for much longer without ma's timely intervention.

And while, after what he'd put him through, Rafferty might like the idea of one of Nigel's weirder new lady friends inflicting some serious damage on his cousin, he didn't allow himself to dwell on the possibility for too long. After all, he knew from bitter experience that it wasn't wise to wish for things. You might just get them.

And the last thing he wanted was Nigel demanding the police provide him protection from one of his more sadistic S and M ladies. If he did, in spite of ma and Abra's valiant efforts on his behalf, the whole April business might yet come out.

No, Rafferty counselled himself. Keep your mouth shut, your wishes firmly in check and everything crossed. You know it makes sense. Besides, with a bit of luck, Nigel would soon tire naturally of any inclination to indulge in more such vindictive games.

This, thankfully, wasn't an impossible hope. Nigel's enthusiasms – apart from the continuing ones for more swank and lots more money – were rarely long-lived. He was also inclined to lethargy to the extent that if a woman or a property deal demanded too much effort, Nigel wasn't inclined to put in the hours to win either. It was one of the reasons his income always failed to match or exceed his expenditure.

Nigel would always prefer an easy ride and easier money. Let the wage slaves break their back while he reaped the rewards, had always been Nigel's philosophy, in as much as he had a philosophy at all.

Abra
put the light on as Rafferty, trying and failing to creep into bed in the dark and not disturb her, stumbled over the leg of a bedroom chair that had moved its position since that morning. He fell to the floor with a crash and a string of curses.

Dragged from a deep sleep, Abra stared groggily at him, before she fell back against her pillows with a sigh. ‘How did I know it was you?’

‘Rather than one of your other lovers, you mean? Sorry. I did try to be quiet. But how was I to know you'd decide to move the bedroom furniture around while I was at work?’

‘I had a sudden urge.’

‘Another one? What a woman you are for urges. I was round at Nigel's earlier,’ he explained.

‘Ah.’

‘Ah indeed.’

‘Your mother and me just put our ‘pretty heads’ together like the sensible women we are. You shouldn't complain when your womenfolk got your little problem sorted, Joe. At least it means you can get on with solving your murder. How's it going, anyway?’

‘One step forward and two steps back would about cover it.’

‘That good, huh?’

Rafferty stripped off his clothes and fell into bed, too exhausted to even hang his suit up as he had resolved to do after Abra had found the first blackmail letter that had fallen from his carelessly discarded jacket.

‘If I'm ever to solve this blasted murder, I must get some sleep,’ he muttered as he turned the light back out and aimed a kiss at Abra's cheek. ‘Night, sweetheart. Pleasant dreams.’

It took him a while to enter the Land of Nod. His mind roved over his various experiences during the investigation. He smiled into the darkness as he remembered Abra's reaction when he had confided that, much to his surprise, he had begun to enjoy the peace of the cloister.

‘God, Joe,’ she had said, ‘Don't tell me you're getting the call?’

Rafferty had smiled and replied, ‘No. I doubt there's a monastery in the country who'd have me. I'm too fond of my vices and have no desire to even try to wrestle with any of them.’

Abra had stared at him, unconvinced. ‘Vices or not, I think that place has affected you more than you know. I think you've got God.’

‘God forbid!’ But although he chose to joke and rebut her claim, Rafferty was beginning to wonder if she mightn't be right.

After all, he'd even let Nigel off without a roasting. Though, of course, that might be less because he'd become a ‘Holy Joe’ and more because of self-preservation. Rafferty had been surprised that Nigel had admitted the truth so easily. But then he hadn't reckoned on ma and Abra issuing a counter threat. And, as his ma would be sure to tell him when she finally got round to boasting of her intercession, the Nigels of this world were prone to leave themselves wide open to retaliatory blackmail. Certainly, from Nigel's reaction, he had had his strings pulled so comprehensively that ma had tied him up in knots.

With this cheering thought to comfort him, Rafferty finally dropped off to sleep. But, in spite of the resolution of his blackmail dilemma, his sleep was restless. He tossed and turned, and found himself dreaming of corpses and killers and nuns coming at him with incense burners. A nun with no face was the other side of an open grave, swinging one such burner at him, violence writ large on her wiped-smooth face. But rather than incense, what came wafting over to him across the grave was something that smelt very noxious indeed.

He tried not to breathe, but as his legs seemed to have turned to an un co-operative jelly, he was unable to hold his breath for long enough to get away. Not that he could get away anyway, because the half decayed body in the grave had a fleshless hand fast around his ankle. The broken watch on the wrist slid down the dead man's arm each time Rafferty tried to tug his leg free, and then it flew up the arm again when the skeleton pulled him back.

Rafferty made one final heave in this macabre tug-of-war and managed to release himself from the cadaver's grasp. He fell backwards and landed heavily on the ground, such was the force he had needed to break the deadly grip. The broken watch flew off the skeletal wrist and hit Rafferty on the cheek with some force as a voice shouted in his left ear:

‘Will you stop all that heaving about?’

His cheek was hit a second time. Startled, Rafferty opened his eyes and sat up.

‘What's happening?’ he demanded gruffly.

‘You're keeping me awake, that's what's happening,’ Abra complained crossly. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

‘Time?’ Still groggy, Rafferty turned his head and gazed at the illuminated clock radio on the bedside table. ‘It's 2 o'clock,’ he replied, as if he thought Abra really did want to know what time it was.

‘Exactly. What's the matter with you, anyway? Not been practising incense-swinging in your sleep to get ready for life as a Holy Joe, have you?’

‘No. I was trying to get out of the clutches of a corpse.’

‘Ugh.’ Abra shuddered, then suggested, ‘put him back in his coffin, nail it down and let's get some sleep.’

‘Aye, aye, my little ghoul. Should I dance on his grave while I'm about it?’

‘With your dancing? Certainly not. Hire a professional if you must. Now, will you please shut up or I'll tie you to the bed in the spare room.’

Faced with such a threat, Rafferty lay quiet. His mind wandered back to the idea about the murder that had come to him before his second visit to Nigel. After wrestling with the idea for ten minutes, his eyelids flew open and he sat up again. That was odd, he thought. How did–?

Beside him, he heard Abra give a long-suffering sigh.

‘Now what?’ she demanded as she thumped him. ‘I was nearly nodding off. For the fourth time tonight.’

‘Sorry. It's nothing, sweetheart. Go back to sleep. I promise I won't disturb you again.’

And he didn't. He lay very still, listening to Abra's breathing and watching the play of the lights of passing cars reflected on the ceiling. But if his body was as still as the grave, his mind was anything but and was filled with thoughts as numerous as the insect life that colonised freshly dead flesh.

By the time dawn's rosy fingers began to clutch at the room's shadows, Rafferty congratulated himself on the selfless sacrifice of a night's sleep. He thought it had been worth it.

Because his frightening dream had helped him make a connection he had failed to see before.

Of course it might yet turn out to be nothing. He'd find out if his conclusion was right later today. But if it was, and if the other suspicions that had started to edge into his mind proved correct, he believed it meant he might have found the murderer.

In dawn's subtle light, Rafferty had believed his bad dream had provided him with answers. And to a point, it had. The trouble was the answers raised even more questions, none of them with any answers. None that his sleep-deprived brain was able to find, anyway.

Morosely, he stumped off to work. It was an unseasonably hot day for October, too, which didn't improve his temper. The car felt like the gaping maw of Hell itself. The plastic seat stuck his shirt to his back, the steering wheel singed his fingers and the glare through the windscreen seemed likely to seer his eyeballs. Imagine this for all eternity, he thought, appalled. Maybe, he thought, maybe now's the time to become unlapsed.

Just then, the vagaries of the British weather, which had chosen to turn as sultry as the Masai Mara, made a second connection click in his brain. At first, he dismissed it. It seemed too bizarre. But once he reached his sticky office and sweated some more, he began to think it through. And he realised he might, this time, actually have some answers. And to think at least one of them had been staring him plainly in the face from the first day…