A Thrust to the Vitals (7 page)

Certainly, someone had brought that sharpened chisel to the celebratory party, indicating more than a degree of premeditation, and had determinedly plunged it deeply between Seward’s shoulder blades. And as Rafferty believed his younger brother was innocent of the crime, it was down to him to discover who else among those still at the party when Seward died could have done it or could have had reason to do it.

Rafferty, some hours later at last back at the police station after organising the various strands at the start of yet another murder inquiry, stuck his head out of his office and looked left and right. Thankfully, the corridor was deserted. Most of the team had gone home for a well-earned rest and the uniforms’ shift replacements were at morning prayers. But not for him the draw of bed and sleep; he would have to wait for both.

Gently, anxious not to make any noise and attract unwanted attention, he closed his office door behind him. Careful not to bump into any of the team who had yet to remember they had homes to go to, or to encourage unwelcome questions from any other stray, passing pig or piglet late in their attendance at duty allocation, he slipped down the rear stairs and out the back way. Even at such an ungodly hour, he was lucky enough to hail a passing taxi. It was a good omen, Rafferty told himself before he realised his fate-tempting faux pas, and hurriedly crossed his fingers to ward off trouble.

He sat back in the cab and as the car moved swiftly through the practically empty streets, he found his mind racing equally quickly through the options of what he could do with Mickey.

He’d have stashed him at Ma’s, but although the fact she lived alone might have indicated her place would be ideal for his purposes, she really wasn’t as alone as ‘living alone’ implied. Her home provided too much of an open house to all and sundry — an unguarded cough or sneeze would be enough to betray Mickey’s presence. Besides, he thought harbouring Mickey might prove too much of a strain for her. She would be upset enough when she learned the news without him making her an accessory after the event.

Rafferty took a brief glance at his wristwatch as the cab passed under a streetlight. He must try not to be gone too long. With his car back in the car park, he hoped, should anyone came to his office and discover he wasn’t there, that they would assume he was still somewhere in the station, though it was possible that Llewellyn, with his bloodhound tendencies, might prove less easily put off the trail.

He must just hope that Llewellyn had already taken himself off home to Maureen as Rafferty had instructed. If, for a change, the fingers of fate were crossed in his favour and the ever-dutiful Llewellyn had done as he was told, he should manage to pass off his absence without raising any awkward questions.

Chapter Five

As he paid off the taxi in the road where his brother lived and glanced around the dark street, empty but for the tail end of a milk float disappearing around the corner, Rafferty pulled his collar up to shield his face and tucked his chin into his chest. The last thing he needed was a neighbour with a crying child peering out of a bedroom window and spotting him. He was a frequent visitor to his brother’s flat and his face was well known, so the fewer people able to identify him or reveal his presence here this morning, the better.

The early December day was, at just after six o’clock, still pitch black, with a chill wind that brought with it a feeling of foreboding. It had Rafferty shivering in his thin suit jacket. He had been forced, just in case he had met anyone in the station precincts, to leave his warm overcoat on its hook. If anyone had entered his office and noticed it was missing, it would be a sure pointer that he wasn’t somewhere in the building at all, but had left the station.

Mickey must have been watching for him because as soon as Rafferty crossed the pavement and hurried down the path to the door of the terraced house that had long since been converted to flats, the door to the ground floor flat was quickly opened. Rafferty’s no-longer-slender body was somehow, involuntarily and not without a degree of pain, roughly pulled and squeezed through the barely nine-inch opening that was all that his brother, in the circumstances, thought prudent.

Rafferty swallowed his protests along with the suspicion that such strange behaviour was more likely to draw the attention of any lurking watchers than a more bold approach. ‘Discretion is us,’ he murmured under his breath. With a sigh, he followed his brother down the narrow hall to the small untidy living room at the rear, feeling, with each step, the sinister breath of the Stazi chilling his shoulders through the inadequate jacket.

But, as he had previously suspected and could now see and smell for himself, Mickey was clearly beyond sober precaution; and as he caught sight of the nearly empty bottle and the amber liquid in the glass beside it on the small side table, his suspicions were confirmed. Clearly, his brother had been consoling himself with some calming alcohol while he awaited Rafferty’s long-delayed arrival.

Rafferty breathed out on an even heavier sigh and he was hit with the realisation that Mickey was again the kid brother with more mouth than nous. And it was up to Rafferty to look out for him. He was still unsure how he was to do this. Although he had taken the precautionary delaying tactic of locking the preliminary photo-fit picture of his brother in his desk drawer instead of immediately sending it out to the media, he had yet to come up with somewhere to hide Mickey. He needed someone discreet who owed him a favour and who would be willing to take Mickey in at such short notice without asking too many questions. Such people were not in plentiful supply, so, for the moment, he let his subconscious worry away at this problem while he addressed himself to questioning Mickey.

It didn’t take long for Rafferty to coax his brother’s sorry story from him. The clumsy lies, too, were soon penetrated.

Mickey had gone to see Sir Rufus late, around eleven thirty on the Friday night and, as Rafferty had suspected, his visit had not been for the reasons of business that his brother had earlier claimed — not, as a trained detective or big brother, that he had ever been likely to believe that hastily constructed tale.

No, Mickey had gone to have a showdown with Seward, and to tell him what he thought of him. Presumably, like the murderer, he had thought it might be the only chance he would get.

The party had been virtually over by the time Mickey had arrived, though, and once his invitation had got him past the bored security on the door, Mickey had felt at a loss. Intimidated by the suite’s expensive grandeur, he had lingered in the entrance passageway for a minute. Until, that was, a guest leaving the bathroom had pointed him in the direction of Seward’s bedroom where, he was informed, his host was currently ensconced. This guest, they now knew, was Ivor Bignall, the local councillor. Just before this guest appeared, Mickey said he had heard loud voices coming from a partly open door down the hall directly in front of him.

‘Did anyone else see you?’ Rafferty asked.

Mickey shook his head.

‘Not even cousin Nigel?’

Again Mickey shook his head.

‘You’re sure?’ Rafferty persisted, wanting desperately to be certain.

‘I told you – no,’ Mickey sharply replied.

Relieved on this point, Rafferty continued to probe. ‘So, what did Seward say when you tackled him?’ he asked once he sat wearily down on his brother’s sagging settee. He rubbed a hand across his face in an attempt to force himself to stay awake and get some answers; it would be useful if he could reduce the current approximate time of Seward’s death. ‘According to the security men on the door, you had an invitation. I gather they didn’t trouble to tick you off on their guest list?’

Mickey shook his head.

Which was just as well as Mickey wasn’t on it.

‘Tell me about that. How did you get the invite?’

‘It came through the post. Rufus Seward invited me himself.’

Rafferty’s eyebrows rose in disbelief at this. He hadn’t questioned the likelihood of this earlier as time had been too pressing to start an argument. But he did so now. ‘Oh, come on. Don’t take me for a fool. Not exactly likely, is it?’

Mickey bristled. ‘Likely or not, I’m telling you that’s what happened. He even enclosed a note with it.’ Mickey paused as if his recollection had failed him, then he stumbled on. ‘It said he had sent the invitation because he felt guilty about the way he’d treated me in the past when we were both youngsters and that since his knighthood he had come over all noblesse oblige, or something.’ Mickey shrugged, and clearly in need of the alcohol, he picked up his glass and downed the remaining contents in one swallow. ‘Anyway, he was keen for me to agree to let bygones be bygones.’

Rafferty – given Rufus Seward’s character – thought the last highly unlikely, but he managed not to raise his eyebrows again, it would only encourage Mickey’s drunken truculence to increase even further. ‘So where is this note?’

Mickey gestured towards the log fire, burning merrily to ward off the chill December morning. ‘I threw it in the grate.’

Of course you did, thought Rafferty. ‘When did you receive the invitation?’

‘The day before the party.’

‘It must have been a last-minute invitation,’ Rafferty observed quietly, hoping to tone the proceedings down a little. ‘All the other invitations went out weeks earlier.’ But then, he supposed, the vast majority of the other attendees were VIPs whose engagements were always organised well in advance. Seward’s diary already had dates pencilled in for the end of the next year. ‘I checked the guest list. Your name doesn’t appear on it.’

Apart from that of Superintendent Bradley, who had already said he was unlikely to make it, Mickey’s was the only name not on the list. Even Nigel’s made an appearance, which, to Rafferty’s amazement, indicated that his cousin really must have been a bona-fide guest after all.

Mickey shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about that. But, thinking about it, it doesn’t altogether surprise me. Seward would hardly be likely to shout about the fact he had sent me the invitation. His note might have claimed he wanted to apologise, but I didn’t think it likely he would be keen to eat much humble pie. I can’t see Seward becoming so humble no matter how sorry he might be. Anyway, I had an invitation. I showed it to one of the two security blokes on the door of Seward’s suite, and he let me in.’

‘From what I understand after questioning the security men and that guest you met in the hallway, you’d had a few drinks before you arrived.’

Mickey shrugged, but didn’t trouble to deny that he’d needed the fuel of Dutch courage to get him there.

‘You’ve admitted you went there to have a showdown with Seward. Did you relish the opportunity to hear him apologise and maybe make him grovel a bit?’

Mickey glared at him but made no other response. He didn’t need to. Rafferty already knew that Seward had concocted some damaging lies in their youth, lies that had resulted in Mickey losing the young love of his life to Seward himself. ‘For all the claims you said he made in his note, I don’t suppose he was magnanimous enough to actually apologise? People like Rufus Seward rarely feel the need, in my experience.’

It was more likely that Seward had invited Mickey, as he had invited the other humble invitees from his youth, merely to boast about his success and humiliate him all over again, though Rafferty found enough tact to keep this thought to himself.

Only Mickey had ruined the sport by turning up late when nearly all the guests had gone.

‘You’re right,’ Mickey told him. ‘He didn’t apologise, but that was more a case of couldn’t than wouldn’t.’

Rafferty frowned as an unpleasant suspicion took wing. ‘Don’t tell me you’re saying he was already dead when you went into his bedroom?’

‘I won’t then.’

‘Don’t play stupid games, Mickey. Was he dead or wasn’t he?’

Mickey nodded. ‘He was well dead. On the way to hell, I hope.’

Exasperated, Rafferty demanded, ‘So why didn’t you tell someone about it?’ Clearly, Mickey had not done so: if he had, he would scarcely have had the chance to leave the scene. The only plus factor was that his brother’s identity was still unknown, though for how much longer that happy state of affairs would last… ‘Did you touch him at all? Or anything in the room?’

Mickey shook his head. ‘Only the doorknob. I was too shocked to think of wiping it.’

Rafferty supposed that was something. At least forensics wouldn’t find Mickey’s clothing fibres or DNA on the body. Not that they needed to in order to link him to the scene. Apart from the possibility he had shed a hair or two from his head and left fingerprints on the doorknob, three witnesses had already reported him as showing up drunk shortly before Canthorpe found the body, one of them, Ivor Bignall, with the additional, damning information that he had demanded to speak to Seward. They had also provided pretty good descriptions; descriptions that were likely to be improved before the day was out and after the three had had the opportunity to work on them with the police artist.

It was suspicious, too, that Mickey should have left only minutes after arriving at the party. That he had left shortly before the body was found made Mickey’s defence even more problematic. He had certainly done a damn good job of incriminating himself. As circumstantial evidence went, it was doubly damning.

More in sorrow than anger, Rafferty said, ‘You realise, that by running away, you lost your one chance to be quickly exonerated? Your best chance to be proved innocent?’

His brother’s already downcast face drooped some more. Mickey’s brow was furrowed in lines of misery, the belligerence now nothing more than a fading memory. He told Rafferty, ‘I suppose I panicked. You’re right: I’d had a few drinks - more than a few - before I went to see him. I needed them. The bully who made my life a misery as a boy had become a man of substance. And although I had intended to have it out with him, I admit I felt a bit overawed, a bit out of my depth in such plush surroundings. A bit antagonistic, too, if you want the truth. Besides, don’t you think I could see what it would look like, with him slumped over his desk, clearly dead and with a sharp implement like a carpenter’s chisel imbedded in his back? Especially given our history of animosity.’