The Hanging Tree (3 page)

'Thank you.' Rafferty paused. 'I gather Maurice Smith's been here about
two years now?'

She nodded and as she handed over the key, asked, 'You won't disturb
things too much? Only he'll be upset if I have to tell him you've been going
through his things. He can be very secretive.'

Rafferty reassured her. 'Have you any idea what he was wearing yesterday
evening? It would help our enquiries to know.'

She nodded. 'He was wearing a navy and maroon tracksuit.'

 Rafferty and Llewellyn exchanged glances.

Mrs Penny hadn't missed the exchange. In a shaky voice, she added, 'He
was wearing it when I went up to say goodbye at seven-thirty.' She hurried on
as if reluctant to enquire further as to what significance they placed on the
tracksuit. He preferred such clothes to shirts and proper trousers. Didn't show
the dirt and saved ironing, he said, though I'd have willingly done his laundry
for him, and his cleaning, if he'd let me. But, as I said, in many ways he was
a very private person and he was wary about getting too close. He didn't like
letting anyone in his room; he told me he'd had threats made against him in the
past. He always kept his front door on a chain and never released it till he
had checked his caller's identity through that spyhole he drilled in his door.'
She paused, and, eyes clouding with anxiety, she added, 'The jogging suit should
be in his laundry basket. He always went to the laundry on Thursday nights.' Obviously,
even without their confirmation, she had concluded for herself that this
tracksuit was important, for before turning away, she added, 'I hope you find
it.'

So did Rafferty.

Rafferty put the key in the lock and opened the door to Maurice Smith's
flat. Though 'flat' was a grand name for what was little more than a large
bedsit with cubbyhole kitchen and tiny bathroom. Bathroom was another misnomer,
as there was no bath, merely a shower cubicle and a grubby toilet. He wondered why
Smith hadn't taken Mrs Penny up on her offer to do his cleaning, because it was
obvious he didn't trouble with such chores himself. The place was filthy, with
the sour odour of unwashed sheets, discarded food and rarely opened windows.

Rafferty was about to make a derogatory comment on Smith's slovenly
housekeeping when a fleeting picture of his own bathroom with its less than
sparkling white enamel made him think better of it. But, he persuaded himself,
his bathroom did not the man make. Obviously other habits had far more bearing
on character. He checked through the laundry basket. Though it had several
items of dirty clothing, the navy and maroon tracksuit wasn't amongst them.

With downturned lips, Llewellyn surveyed the room: from its leaning tower
of yellowing newspapers, to the unmade bed with its soiled grey sheets, to the
mismatched crockery piled in the kitchen sink. 'Tidy chap, wasn't he?' he
commented, his words revealing that he not only shared Rafferty's distaste for
Smith's sluttish housewifery, but also the growing conviction that Smith was
dead.

Rafferty smiled crookedly and advised, 'Just be grateful we remembered
our Marigolds,' as he pulled the thin protective gloves from his pocket and put
them on. 'And, although this is not yet an official murder investigation, that
doesn't mean it mightn't be, soon, so try not to move the dust around too
much.'

 They didn't know what they might find here, he reasoned. If Smith was
dead, as seemed increasingly likely, given the build-up of evidence, it was
possible the flat might yield valuable clues to his murderer's identity.

There was a battered sideboard against the far wall, and Rafferty made
for it, with the unkind thought that it would do his fussy Virgoan sergeant the
world of good to plunge his suit and his sensibilities into the newspaper
collection of Grub Street's outpourings that Smith seemed to have amassed. Besides,
he added to himself in mitigation before his conscience could chime in, the
sideboard seemed the most likely place for Smith to keep anything of a personal
nature and was therefore the inspector's prerogative.

Behind him, Llewellyn sneezed as he began to dismantle the pile of
newsprint. 'These are all about the court case,' Llewellyn told him shortly, as
he held the yellowed
Elmhurst Echo
of ten years ago at arms' length and
began to read from its front page. '"Maurice Smith freed on legal
technicality. The Court was in uproar after the Judge's decision to free self-confessed
rapist, Maurice Smith. In the public gallery, the crowd were on their feet,
shouting, screaming, demanding justice. Outraged, several of the victims'
fathers yelled, 'We'll get you, you b —' at the defendant.

'"In the dock, the defendant's face, shocked when the judge
declared the evidence inadmissible, now became positively ashen, his body visibly
shaking. He looked terrified. As the police bustled twenty-year-old Smith out
of the courtroom, several of the crowd managed to get in the odd punch, the odd
kick. The police officers didn't appear to try too hard to stop them."'

'Maurice Smith's fifteen minutes of fame,' Rafferty commented when
Llewellyn paused. 'Mrs Penny gave us the impression he wanted help, hated
himself, yet the fact that he kept that pile of newsprint would seem to
indicate that his notoriety had fed a fair-sized ego. Makes you wonder.'

Rafferty eased his back and bent again to his searches. Like the first,
the second drawer was stuffed to overflowing with paper. Unsurprisingly,
Maurice Smith's correspondents, in the main, seemed to have been the Social. From
the timescale of the correspondence it was evident that Smith hadn't had a job
since the court case, though, from what Rafferty had since read about him,
Smith had seldom held down a job before it either and was apparently inadequate
in more ways than the obvious.

Incredibly, or perhaps not so incredibly, given his amassing of
newspapers giving details of the case, Smith had also kept the hate mail that
had been directed to his original family home. There were about fifty in a bunch,
held together by a thick elastic band. Rafferty flicked through them. In the
way of such missives, they were unsigned and contained the usual badly spelled
bile. They were well-fingered, in some places split along the folds as though
Smith had found a masochistic thrill in reading and re-reading the messages of
hate he had spawned.

Rafferty put the letters to one side, and was just about to push the
drawer back in, when he noticed the corner of another piece of paper poking over
the back edge of the wood. Pulling the drawer completely out, he put it on the
floor before retrieving the paper. This one differed from the rest, he
immediately saw. For one thing, the paper looked new, still crisp, still white.

His heart began to thump as he turned the paper over and saw that
someone had taken the trouble to painstakingly cut out letters from a newspaper
and stick them down on the sheet. The rest of Smith's hate mail had been either
typed or hand written.

'Dafyd,' he called. 'Come and take a look at this.'

Llewellyn abandoned his newspaper scavenging with alacrity and came
over.

'"Your identity is known,"' Rafferty read. '"You can hide
no longer, your evil deeds will soon be brought to public notice once again. Confess,
confess, and admit your crimes. Beg your victims for forgiveness or further action
will be taken against you. You have twenty-four hours."' It was unsigned.
'Seems like he was threatened with 'outing',' Rafferty commented.

'Outing', the practise originally directed by gay-and-proud-of-it activists
at closet homosexuals in high-profile positions in society to force them to
admit their sexual identity, had recently taken another turn. It was now used
against rapists like Smith, who had got off on legal technicalities, and who
were either living under aliases for their own protection, or whose names, to
protect the identity of their victims, had never been released to the general
public. It was suspected the information about the rapists’ whereabouts was
supplied by disgruntled police officers.

 Although the more militant elements in women's groups were almost
certainly the main proponents of 'outing', they were careful enough to cover
their tracks and had never admitted their involvement. Rafferty had often
wondered what stopped them, as they would surely welcome the publicity a
criminal prosecution would bring to their cause.

There was a Rape Support Group locally. Rafferty knew Mrs Nye, their
spokeswoman personally, and he doubted she would be involved in 'outing'
rapists or allow any of her members to do so. Still, someone had attempted it.

He pulled an evidence bag from his pocket and carefully slipped the
missive inside. In view of the care the writer had taken to hinder handwriting
identification, he thought it unlikely they'd find any fingerprints on it, but
if Smith didn't turn up soon, he'd get it checked out by the Document Examiner.
He hunted for the envelope the 'outing' letter might have come in and
eventually found one that looked a possible. It was in the small wicker
wastepaper basket. Plain white, with a first-class stamp, someone had taken the
trouble to use a stencil set to write Smith's name and address. He checked the
postmark; Tuesday morning, so it had presumably arrived some time on Wednesday.
The letter had given Smith twenty-four hours to come clean about what he had
done — no wonder he had spent that evening and the next pacing his floor; and
now he was not only missing but reported dead. Ironic really, Rafferty thought.
After all, Smith had already confessed, all those years ago.

 Rafferty found another couple of bags, one for the envelope and one for
the hate mail, then carried on with the search. He was about to return
downstairs to ask Mrs Penny if she had known of the letter or if she could confirm
by which post it had arrived, when his mobile phone rang. It was Smales. And if
Rafferty had ever heard of the warning to be careful for what you wished as
your wish might come true, he had no premonition that he was about to learn the
truth of the adage.

'Sir? You know that body that was hanging in the woods?'

Rafferty, warned by the deliberate drama in Smales' voice, pulled the
mobile closer to his ear and said sharply, 'What about it?'

'It's only turned up again, sir. Hanging in Dedman Wood, like before. Lilley
is there now, guarding it in case it does another vanishing act.'

Just like a child on Christmas morning, when Santa had brought him
exactly what he'd asked for, Smales could hardly contain his excitement. Rafferty
smothered a sigh and reminded himself that Smales was still very young, very
inexperienced, and looked even younger than his years, traits which caused some
of the women officers, who found his boyish ways endearing, to make a bit of a
pet of him. Rafferty, in an attempt to compensate for this smothering, found he
had frequently to play the stern father role. It didn't come easily.

'Try to remember, Smales, that this cadaver – if it's not just a figment
of Lilley's eager-beaver imagination – was somebody's loved one.' Unless it was
Smith, of course, Rafferty reminded himself. Smith; unloved and sure to be
unlamented by everyone except his landlady. 'If you concentrate on that
thought, you'll find it tends to take the edge off the hormones.' Besides,
Rafferty told himself, not very convincingly, the body mightn't even be
Smith's. Though the chances of two different cadavers hanging in Dedman Wood in
the space of twelve hours was pretty slim.

There was an embarrassed throat-clearing at the other end of the phone.

'So what makes you so sure this is the same body? Have you got a
confirmed identity?'

'No doubt about it, guv.' Some of the earlier excitement edged its way
back into Smales' voice. 'Lilley got Liz Green to take a copy of Smith's
mug-shot out to the woods when the warden told him he'd found a body. It's
Maurice Smith, all right.'

Rafferty silently congratulated Lilley's initiative. Obviously, he had
taken to heart his words of warning and was doing his best to impress. However,
he changed his mind as Smales's voice ran breathlessly on, and advised that the
body was right by where Mrs ffinch-Robinson's cadaver had vanished.

'Is that so?' Rafferty frowned. 'Lilley was supposed to be guarding the
scene of crime,' he snapped. 'So, how come it was the warden, rather than
Lilley, who found the body?'

This time Smales wasn't quite so ready to push his opinions and a
deathly silence wafted down the airwaves.

'Get a touch of the ghostly ghoulies, did he?' Rafferty asked. 'Sat his
sentry-go duties out in his car, I suppose?' Rafferty couldn't altogether blame
him as he knew his own imagination would have gone into overdrive in the same
situation. His gaze settled on Smith's armchair and narrowed. Was he seeing
things, or did one of the stains on the back of the armchair look fresher than
the rest?

'..didn't seem likely there'd have been two different bodies hanging in
the woods in such a short space of time, sir,' Smales continued to gabble in
his ear, repeating his own earlier conclusion. 'Funny thing, though. Lilley
told me that last time, the witness claimed the body was bound and had a hood
over his head. He has neither this time, though he's still wearing the navy and
maroon tracksuit an d—'

Rafferty broke into Smales's rhetoric. 'Tell me, has he any injuries? A
stab wound, for instance?'

'Funny you should say that, sir.'

Rafferty smiled at the astonishment in Smales's voice, and guessed his
detecting skills had gone up a notch in the young copper's estimation. ‘Just
call me Sherlock, son,’ he muttered to himself.

'He's been stabbed high in the back, according to Lilley. Slap bang
through the heart.'

Rafferty nodded to himself. Although he had no reason to think Lilley an
expert on forensic pathology, it was likely he was right. According to his
record, Smith was a small, slight man. He couldn't be sure, of course, but it
was his guess that the stain and slit in the armchair were exactly where he'd
expect to find them if a man of Smith's height had been sitting in it when
stabbed through the heart.

Rafferty, remembering what Mrs Penny had said on the subject, found
himself wondering who Smith would have trusted enough to let enter his room? Taking
the 'outing' letter in conjunction with the earlier hate mail he had received
after the case, he would surely have been even more wary than usual?

Swiftly, he gave his instructions to Smales. He wanted a team sent to
Dedman Wood and another to Smith's room. 'You know what to do to get it
organised. Sergeant Llewellyn will wait here for the arrival of the second
team.'

Rafferty thought it probable that Smith had died in his flat but the
sooner they knew for certain the better. He decided to postpone questioning Mrs
Penny again. For the moment he felt it was more urgent to confirm the cadaver's
identity for himself. Besides, he reasoned, if it was Smith, he'd rather
question her further when he broke the news to her. 'Has Dr Dally been
contacted?'

'Not yet, sir. Lilley only just called it in.'

'I'll give him the good news myself,' Rafferty decided. 'Off you go.' He
told Llewellyn what had happened, drew his attention to the armchair and told
him to point it out to the forensic team when they arrived. Then he dialled Sam
Dally’s number. Surprisingly, Sam Dally answered immediately the switchboard
put him through. 'You're eager, Sam. Got nothing left to cut up?'

'Why?' Dally countered. 'Are you volunteering?'

Rafferty checked his heart. It was still ticking. 'Not yet. I'll get my
GP to let you know when I'm ready for the slab.' He paused. 'Got a live one for
you.'

 'You mean you're letting me kill the customers as well as cut 'em up
now? That should keep me in business till I collect my pension.'

'A live dead one,' Rafferty corrected himself. 'A swinger, though I
doubt the rope killed him as, according to young Lilley, he was stabbed through
the heart, and this is his second stringing up.' Quickly Rafferty explained
about the earlier episode. 'The troops are on their way. I just thought I'd
ring you myself and give you a chance to fill your flask with a warming nip of
something. It's bitter out there.'

'What a thoughtful wee laddie, you are, Rafferty. So, where is it, this
swinger?'

Rafferty told him. 'I'll see you there.'