A Thrust to the Vitals (20 page)

‘Perhaps, if Bignall killed Seward, he was prepared to risk it. He’s a successful businessman; most such types have taken a risk or two in their careers. He could have thought such a calculated gamble worth it if he had a strong reason to want revenge on Seward.’

‘Possibly. Mr Bignall’s clearly an intelligent man, more than capable of making such a judgement. We’ve no forensics,’ Llewellyn reminded him as they ambled along behind the tractor at a slow enough pace to admire the frost-crusted Norfolk fields stretching far into the distance on either side of the road. ‘If he did kill him, if he keeps his cool he could well get away with it.’

‘Mmm. There’s the rub:
If
he did it.’

The tractor driver, with a cheery wave, turned off and Rafferty breathed a sigh of relief as Llewellyn picked up speed. However, in Rafferty’s opinion, he didn’t pick up enough of it. Rafferty studied the speedometer and frowned. He forgot he was meant to be on a charm offensive and asked, ‘Can’t you at least match the speed limit, Dafyd? Go on, put your foot down, man. It’s not as if the roads are busy. I’m keen to question Bignall about this alleged coolness towards Seward. But before we do that, and assuming we actually get back before I die of old age, we’ll stop off at the station first. We’ve already been gone the best part of the day and I need to speak to the team as well and get up to speed on what’s been happening while we’ve been away from the station before we do anything else.’

With narrowed gaze, he watched as the speedo edged up another couple of miles per hour; they were still five miles under the limit. But Llewellyn wasn’t a man to be rushed, so Rafferty decided it would be better to spend the travelling time to some purpose than to allow Llewellyn’s careful driving style to irritate him.

‘Interesting what the Farradays had to say about the impetuous, husband-hunting Mandy Khan. It’s a wonder she and her husband haven’t come to blows. It’s a big thing for an Asian man to find himself cuckolded. Even if Khan’s only half-Asian murders have been committed for much less in that culture.’

‘Maybe his Welsh half is dominant on the matter of honour.’

Llewellyn pulled up at the traffic lights on the outskirts of Norwich just as they turned to amber.

Rafferty scowled, his good intentions forgotten. ‘You could have gone through the lights. They’d only just changed.’ They weren’t even on red, Rafferty silently fumed.

‘Not a good idea at a busy junction.’

Rafferty’s lips thinned again, but although he directed a scowl towards Llewellyn’s impervious profile, he refrained from making any further comment. As he sat, drumming his fingers on his knee, he remembered it was his turn to visit Mickey this evening and take him more provisions. He checked his watch. It was already getting on for six o’clock. It would be after eight by the time they got back and were able to question Bignall again, always supposing he was at home. He’d promised Ma he’d stop off at her house and collect the clothes she’d washed for Mickey. And then he’d have to visit a supermarket and get some bread and milk and buy Mickey a takeaway. God knew what time it would be when he got home.

But one thing he did know: he could expect a flea in his ear from his new fiancée when he finally got there.

Nothing new of any interest had turned up while they were in Norfolk. Soon, they were back in the car — Rafferty having demanded the keys— and, with a brief phone call to confirm he was at home, on their way to see Ivor Bignall.

Bignall, since the murder, seemed to have become quite the house husband. As before, he led them through to the same attractive room. Again, Dorothea Bignall was seated by the fire. She greeted them warmly and once they had sat down at her invitation, she said, ‘I didn’t expect to see you again quite so soon, Inspector. How can we help you?’

The big man seemed more subdued this time than he had been on the last occasion they’d spoken to him. In contrast, his wife Dorothea seemed quite perky, as if she felt the need to compensate for the silence of her usually gregarious husband.

‘Actually, Mrs Bignall,’ Rafferty told her, ‘it’s your husband I wanted to speak to.’

Rafferty turned to Bignall who was standing, legs spread, with his back to the fire. ‘We’ve been told that there was a distinct coolness between you and Rufus Seward during the evening of his civic reception, sir.’

Bignall raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘A coolness, Inspector? Really, I don’t know what you can mean.’

‘Let me explain. It was described by someone in a position to notice that your manner to Seward was distinctly on the chilly side. I want you to tell me why that was.’

‘Your informant was mistaken, Inspector, I can assure you, Bignall boomed. ‘I was not cool towards Seward. I had no reason to be cool towards him. Admittedly, I didn’t speak to him much. But as I believe I’ve already explained, that was because he had so many other guests who wanted to congratulate him on his home town honour. I suppose it might, to some, look as if we had had a falling out, but I can assure you we hadn’t.’

To Rafferty’s surprise, Dorothea Bignall immediately contradicted her husband.

‘For goodness’ sake, Ivor, tell the inspector the truth. There’s no need to lie. I know you think you’re protecting me and defending my feelings, but I’m not quite the piece of Dresden china you seem to believe me to be. I won’t break, you know, if you tell them the truth. It really was all a very long time ago. But in case you don’t believe I’m able to cope with the revelation and continue to lie for my sake, I’ll tell the inspector all about it myself.’

Bignall made an abrupt, silencing gesture with his hand. Rafferty presumed he wasn’t used to her contradicting him, and so forcefully. It was a surprise to both of them. Maybe Dorothea Bignall wasn’t the timid mouse he had previously assumed her to be? And maybe it wasn’t his wife Bignall was trying to protect…?

Dorothea Bignall turned to Rafferty. ‘I was upset on the day of Rufus Seward’s civic reception. Ivor found me in tears in our bedroom.’ She paused, gulped in a lungful of air and then continued. ‘We’d been trying since a year or so after our marriage to have children. But I never once conceived in all the years that followed. I thought I knew why, but Ivor had no reason to suspect. He forced the truth from me when he found me in tears for no apparent reason.’

Her eyes glistened with unshed tears as if her memory had forced a reconstruction of the events, but she continued determinedly on in a room now silent but for her low voice and the crackle of the logs burning in the grate. ‘You remember I told you that Rufus Seward and I both attended St Oswald’s, the fee-paying boarding school?’ she asked Rafferty.

He nodded. Given the revelations he had so far heard about Rufus Seward and his behaviour, he was beginning to get a suspicion of where this was going. He stole a glance at Bignall. The big man’s face was a frozen mask, whatever he was feeling well concealed behind it.

‘While I was at the school, Rufus Seward raped me and I fell pregnant. My parents insisted on an abortion. Unfortunately, the abortion was botched and I got an infection. It damaged me rather badly. Much later, I was told that the damage the infection had caused made it almost impossible for me to have children. The day Ivor found me in tears was the anniversary of the day I murdered my child and removed any possibility of being able to give my husband the large family he wanted. I hadn’t been well that day and I suppose the anniversary combined with my ill-health to make me weepy.’

‘And you learned this on the day of Seward’s reception?’ Rafferty asked Bignall.

Bignall just nodded at this, as if he no longer trusted his voice.

Rafferty found it strange that the forceful Bignall had shown such restraint at the reception and had limited himself merely to a display of coolness towards Seward. If it had been me, Rafferty thought, I’d  have punched Seward’s lights out. Or murdered him.

‘Did you speak to him about what he’d done to your wife?’

Bignall found his voice at last. ‘No, of course not. How could I? The evening of the reception was neither the time nor the place for such recriminations. It would have greatly upset my wife if I had brought up such a matter in public. Besides, it was only my wife’s word against Seward’s. There were no witnesses to the rape. Dorothea was ashamed and had told no one about it, not even her parents. They just assumed she had been careless with some boy, especially when she refused to reveal who the father was.’

‘Yet you still attended the reception? Why?’

‘I insisted, Inspector,’ Dorothea interrupted. ‘My husband had several joint business interests with Rufus Seward. Even for my sake, I wouldn’t allow him to risk a public falling out that might jeopardise these. Besides, this was a one-off occasion. I thought myself capable of getting through the evening, especially as I knew I was unlikely to have to socialise with Rufus Seward again.’

Was that because she thought it unlikely that Seward would again visit his home town? Rafferty wondered, or because she knew he was shortly to leave this life?

Bignall again insisted he had said nothing to Seward. ‘I intended to speak to him privately the next day. But by then it was too late, of course. The swine got away with what he did and I was never able to force him to confront his guilt.’

It all sounded a little pat to Rafferty. Had Bignall really managed to hold his fury in check all that evening after his wife’s tearful confession and the realisation that Seward was the reason he had never had the brood of sons his dynastic ambitions had craved?

It seemed increasingly unlikely to Rafferty the more he considered it. But until they had proof that Bignall was lying – and Bignall was saying nothing more, that much was clear — they had no reason to take him into custody.

‘Quite a revelation,’ Llewellyn commented as the Bignalls’ front door closed behind them. A chill and gusty wind had developed and they both hurried to get into the car and out of its path. ‘I’m surprised Mrs Bignall told us anything about the rape and its consequences when, on the face of it, it gives both her and her husband a strong reason for wishing Seward dead.’

‘True,’ Rafferty agreed as he started the car. ‘Either she hates her husband — I imagine he must sometimes be pretty overbearing — and wouldn’t be sorry to see him banged up or she really does love him and doesn’t think he did it. Still,’ Rafferty remarked, once he’d got the car in gear and rolling at a speed suited to the urgency of his yet to be accomplished deeds, ‘she can’t be sure which way we would jump. And as I said, old I’ve a Big’un must be a difficult man to live with. It strikes me that he might well blame her as much as Seward for the fact they have no children. He must also wonder why she chose to keep the rape and the rapist’s identity a secret. And the timing is strangely coincidental when you consider that Seward was murdered on the evening of the day Bignall finally learned the truth.’

‘It looks suspicious, I agree,’ said Llewellyn, struggling to strap himself in as the car careered round a bend, but I find it difficult to imagine a man like Bignall knifing someone in the back. As he said himself last time we spoke to him, it’s such a cowardly way to kill someone. Besides, apart from any other consideration, surely he would want Seward to see his face and understand the reason why he wanted him dead?’

‘Mayb, maybe not. It could be that Bignall thought a knife in the back was all a man like Seward deserved: a fitting death, given that Bignall must have thought Seward’s actions had knifed him in the back all those years ago.’

‘I still think the psychology of this murder is all wrong for Mr Bignall.’

‘Please, not that psychology stuff again,’ Rafferty protested. ‘Anyway, that angle, on its own, would provide a very good reason for Bignall to kill him that way,’ Rafferty pointed out as he moved up the gears after straightening up once past the bend. ‘By its very nature, such a cowardly means of murder would serve to make us more dismissive of Bignall as a suspect. You said yourself he’s an intelligent man,’ Rafferty reminded Llewellyn. ‘He’d have to be to have got where he is, with that beautiful house and substantial business interests. To me they’re a pointer that he’d be clever enough to work out the most psychologically unlikely way for him to kill someone and then to do it in just that way.’

Honestly, Rafferty thought, sometimes Llewellyn complicated the simplest things. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘if Bignall had decided to do his best to get away with murder, why would a guy with his smarts choose to do the deed in a manly, face-to-face confrontation when he must have realised doing it the back-stabbing way would speak volumes to coppers like you and any possible profiler and point you and them in entirely the wrong direction? It would be the act of a fool.

‘And even if he wasn’t smart enough to manipulate the psychological aspect to his advantage, sometimes people just behave out of character. He’d just had one hell of a shock, remember. Here was a man whose greatest ambition, after he’d built his wealth, was to produce a brood of fine sons to pass it on to. But instead he has no one to inherit it but a barren wife – a wife who had kept the true reason for her infertility a secret from him for years. Such discoveries would enrage any man. Imagine what they would do to a man with a desire to sire a dynasty.’

Rafferty grimaced as he failed to beat the red at the traffic lights. He pulled up with a sharpness that caused the car to judder, and turned to his passenger. ‘And then you’ve got to question why he agreed to attend the party at all after hearing such shocking news. Maybe the real reason was not to protect his business interests at all, as his wife claimed, but to get his revenge.’

The lights finally changed to green and Rafferty roared away.

Beside him, Llewellyn got a firm grip on the dashboard. But although clearly unimpressed by Rafferty’s incautious driving style, he didn’t allow it to distract him from putting forward some more arguments of his own. ‘I think Mrs Bignall told us the truth: that he felt he had no choice when his and Seward’s business interests were so entwined. Besides, he must have faced and accepted that they were unlikely to have children some time ago. It was an old wound that might well have healed with the years. Besides, I gained the distinct impression that it was Mrs Bignall rather than her husband who minded the most about their not having a family.’