A Thrust to the Vitals (8 page)

Clearly reluctant to make such a damning admission, even to his big, police inspector brother, Mickey’s chin slumped several more notches as he quietly added, ‘I even recognised the make — it’s one I use.’

This was getting better and better, thought Rafferty grimly. In need of some reassurance himself, he asked again, ‘Did anyone else at the party see you, other than the security men and this guest who directed you to Seward’s bedroom?’

‘No. I’ve already told you that once. How many more times? But all three got a good look at me. They’re sure to recognise me again.’

Rafferty didn’t trouble to contradict him. Mickey was right; the security men and Ivor Bignall
had
got a good look at him. They had certainly provided a good description of Seward’s late visitor. Even Rafferty, not the greatest ace at recognising faces, would have felt a frisson of familiarity when he saw the first, hastily constructed photo-fit the police artist had worked up with Bignall and the others, even if he hadn’t already been primed by Mickey about his presence at the scene. But without this prior knowledge, Rafferty suspected that the self-serving denial of a brain unwilling to co operate would probably have obligingly worked its usual magic. The woeful inadequacy of such a denial would, of course, very quickly have been brought up against cold, hard reality, the sort he was now facing, the sort which he had to sort out. Somehow. For all their sakes.

‘What are we going to do, JAR? You’re in charge of the case. You’ve got to help me.’

His younger brother’s voice, high-pitched and frightened into a too-late sobriety, brought Rafferty out of his reverie. As the eldest of six siblings, he had always taken the big brother approach when any of the younger ones were in trouble, so naturally he wanted to help Mickey. Of course he did. It was just that, for the moment, he couldn’t for the life of either of them, see how. The best he could do for the moment, was get him out of harm’s way, then hope that luck and inspiration came up with the rest. And, up till now, no likely helpmeet in even this most basic of endeavours had occurred to him.

But desperation brings its own salvation. For, just as despair began to grip him by the throat, the identity of the person most likely to help him — to a brief salvation at least — came to Rafferty.

‘Pack a bag,’ he told Mickey. ‘If we’re to keep you away from the notice of other, less helpful, policemen, you’re going to have to do a vanishing act.’ He took out his mobile. ‘I know just the person who can help us stash you out of the way for a few days.’

‘Who?’

‘Algy Edwards.’

‘That crook? Surely you can think of someone else who can put me up for a while?’

‘I can’t, as it happens. It’s Algy or no one. Besides, while I admit that Algy might be a bit dodgy, his heart’s in the right place.’ Rafferty prayed he wasn’t proved wrong about that. He prayed, too, that Algy hadn’t got rid of his limited property portfolio as they hadn’t spoken for some time.

His third prayer was that a few days was all it would be. Or need to be.

While an increasingly agitated Mickey packed a bag as instructed, Rafferty phoned Algy, who was one of a group of the assorted, somewhat dodgy acquaintances of his long-lost youth. He was calling in a favour. He just hoped it was a call-in that he didn’t come to regret.

Twenty minutes later, they drew up in Mickey’s girlfriend’s Renault at a caravan site further up the Essex coast. Mickey’s girlfriend was someone else Rafferty knew he would have to square away, but she would wait as she was currently staying round the corner from the flat looking after her sick mother. He filed the thought away to think about later. Maybe, by then he would have come up with some believable tale?

Fortunately, the site where the bitterly complaining at the early phone call, but eventually obliging, Algy Edwards had a caravan wasn’t one of those sites that catered for year-round caravan hire. Neither did it have any residents permanently on site. Rafferty had made sure to check on both points before settling on it.

From what they could see of it in the gloom, the place looked deserted, desolate, even. Which was just what Rafferty had been hoping for. At last, he thought, something was going right. He immediately cursed himself for a fool and crossed his fingers for the second time since he had been brought abreast of Mickey’s situation.

In the raw, pre-dawn hours of the December morning, there was a forlorn air about the place. It reminded Rafferty of one of those old Wild West ghost towns that featured in so many of the cowboy films of his youth. It lacked only the windblown tumbleweeds to complete the impression of a place long since abandoned by man. But what it might lack in tumbleweeds, it didn’t lack in appropriate sound effects: somewhere close, he could hear a creaking door that, presumably assisted by the rising wind, was spookily effective. It certainly sent a shiver up his spine, so he could guess what it did to his already more than spooked little brother.

It was still too early for the sun to have struggled over the horizon. The only illumination was provided by the Renault’s headlights. Between the lights, the shifting misty miasma coming off the sea and familiar to those with a nodding acquaintance with the chill, pre-dawn hour, and the caravans themselves, which seemed like huge, crouching beasts ready to spring on the unwary, the whole scene contained an atmosphere so eerie and filled with such hidden menace, that it made the skin crawl.

Their arrival at this quiet, bottom-clenching, sometime sanctuary — not to mention the unsettling caravan monsters that had them surrounded — not surprisingly, appeared to comfort Mickey not one jot. He hadn’t once troubled to question Rafferty about their destination during the journey, presumably having questions of even greater magnitude to occupy him.

But now, somehow, in the Stygian gloom, light must have dawned, for Mickey spluttered, ‘B—but you can’t leave me here!’

The horrified quiver in his voice made it all too plain that he was aghast at the prospect. As Rafferty would have been, he admitted to himself, had their positions been reversed. But it wasn’t as if either of them had a choice in the matter — time had been limited and options even more so. The dodgy Algy Edwards and his less than luxurious caravan was the best Rafferty could do in the circumstances.

Aware that he had to be tough for both their sakes, he just said bluntly, ‘Quit moaning. At least it’s quiet and out of the way.’

‘So was Dracula’s castle,’ Mickey muttered, but I wouldn’t want to stay there, either.’

Rafferty hardened his heart. ‘You’re staying. Get used to the idea. It’s this or a cell in the police station. As long as you don’t use a light or do anything else to draw attention to yourself, it’s likely that no one will notice you’re here.’

Reminded of the police cell alternative, Mickey shut up.

As they began hunting along the rows of caravans for the one belonging to Rafferty’s sometime friend, they left the Renault’s lights behind. Rafferty fumbled his way in the darkness, stubbed his toe on a gas canister and cursed. He finally persuaded the torch he had taken from the car to provide a half-hearted light. Flickering and inadequate as it was, with its begrudging assistance, he squinted at each of the caravans’ numbers, trying to find the one he sought so he could stash Mickey and get back to the station before someone started searching for him in earnest.

The torch’s batteries were clearly running on empty and its light fluttered and died just as he at last located the right caravan. Plunged into the total darkness that is night-time in the country, he fumbled with the key, which they had collected en route, and managed to open the caravan door.

Mickey followed him, stumbling up the steps and adding his own blue curses to Rafferty’s.

From behind him, Rafferty heard his brother muttering to himself  — ‘If this is the best you can do—’ The rest trailed off, presumably, as Mickey, again considering the alternative that Rafferty had so bluntly pointed out, thought better of finishing the sentence.

Oh, wise little brother, Rafferty thought. He had begun to grin in perverse appreciation of their plight when he banged his nose on a cupboard. He swore again instead and decided he would, after all, comment on his brother’s base ingratitude.

‘Yes, actually, this
is
the best I can do. If you can do any better for yourself, feel free. What did you expect?’ he demanded of the shadowy contours, which were all he could see of his brother. ‘A top-notch hotel like the Elmhurst, smack in the centre of town and convenient for all amenities?

‘I suggest you get real, bro. Surely you’ve grasped by now that you need to lie low? This, unfortunately, is what lying low means, whether you like it or not.’

The inescapable truth of this utterance must have suddenly struck Mickey with some force, for he fell silent and, feeling behind him in the gloom to ensure he didn’t land on his arse on the floor, he slumped heavily on one of the caravan’s side banquettes. With his head in his hands, he said, ‘God, I sincerely hope it is only for the few days you said.’

So did Rafferty. Because Abra would be home by Sunday night and expecting him to have organised the romantic dinner he had promised her before she left for Dublin.

Having finally plucked up the courage — with recourse to the Dutch stuff his brother had earlier so freely imbibed — Rafferty had proposed. Somewhat to his surprise, Abra had accepted. The girly weekend had been long-planned and un-getoutable-of, so, to make up for its interrupting their own celebrations, they had promised each other some quality time on Abra’s return. Rafferty had been deputed to find the time to get this celebratory quality time organised.

Now, with this latest murder inquiry and the unwelcome complication of Mickey’s involvement, Rafferty knew he would be hard-pressed to honour that promise and keep both Abra sweet and his brother safe. Especially if, as seemed only too likely given the many distractions, he failed to promptly put a name to the real murderer.

Maybe he would be able to find a restaurateur willing to provide them with a celebratory engagement meal at midnight? Their ‘Cinderella’ celebration, he could call it. Of course, Abra, being Abra and sharing more than a smidgeon of her cousin Llewellyn’s logic, would remind him that Cinders’ perfect evening ended at midnight, rather than began then.

Rafferty felt a bout of hysterical laughter fighting to break free. But as he glanced again at his head-in-hands brother, the urge to laugh vanished as suddenly as it had come. He was beginning to feel that life had turned him into some kind of hydra-headed monster with all the heads striving to control the direction he took. He certainly felt he had no control over anything right now.

The only thing he knew for sure was that each and every one of these heads was going to make increasingly unreasonable demands on him in the days and weeks to follow.

In need of some light relief from the doubts that he would be able to rise to any of the challenges the fates had thrown before him, Rafferty eased his weary bones on to the banquette opposite where Mickey was slumped. And as his brother seemed to have nothing further to say on any subject, he returned to contemplating his Cinders evening with Abra. He supposed that, if Abra found fault with his logic, he could always do his Blarney-Stone spiel and say-‘Sure and begorra, and isn’t it Oirish I am? And don’t we always do things in a fey, charming and about-face way from all the other eejits?’

Abra would laugh. Hopefully. Though, as a prompt, he might first have to offer her the moon, the stars and a Caribbean honeymoon. Women could be so mercenary.

Thinking about women, Rafferty knew there was one other female in his life who would expect him to pull his finger out — Ma.

But until he told her about Mickey’s little problem, he would be safe from that pressure at least. Of course, Rafferty knew his and Mickey’s Ma was entitled to be told what had befallen one of her sons, and told at the earliest opportunity. He would never hear the end of it if he didn’t soon break the unwelcome news. That was yet another little chore that stood between him and a few hours of much- needed sleep.

Between the latest inquiry, his brother’s current difficulty and the romantic dinner à deux with his new fiancée, Rafferty was beginning to wonder if he would ever see his bed again.

Chapter Six

In the course of a very busy Saturday morning, once he had hardened his heart, abandoned his brother to the chill, unwelcome embrace of a damp out of season caravan, and driven back to Elmhurst, Rafferty pushed his team hard. It was imperative, if they were to reduce the suspect list still further, that they speedily contact the rest of the elusive guests. Even if the early departure of so many of them from the party precluded their inclusion on the suspects’ list as he had already concluded, it was possible that one or more of them had seen something during the evening that could provide them with a useful pointer to guilt.

While the team were occupied with this task and the second imperative of chasing up the rest of the entries in the dead man’s contacts book, Rafferty again performed his will-o’-the-wisp act, and sidled his way out to the car park, only too conscious that he had yet more discreet chores to perform. It was essential that he drive home, equip himself to make some anonymous purchases and get to the shops. The necessity of making these purchases had only dawned on him just before he had left the hotel after the initial questioning of the witnesses. Unbidden to his mind, had come the recollection of the phone calls made some years earlier by the royal family that had been recorded by unscrupulous people, making him wary of leaving even details of the numbers he called open to scrutiny. Certainly, if questions were ever asked about his conduct, one would invariably be why he had found it necessary to call his elderly mother in the early hours when his telephone records would reveal he had never done so before.

No, he decided, it was better if he kept off the phone as much as possible. Anyway, even if he was prepared to risk making the phone call, his Ma was entitled to hear the bad news about Mickey in person. He would have to find time later in the day to go round to her home to break the news; maybe, he thought hopefully, she could be persuaded to take on the task of breaking the news to Mickey’s girlfriend. For certain it was that he didn’t fancy coping with the likely ensuing hysteria.