Bad Blood (16 page)

Darryl Jesmond, probably, was Rafferty's thought, If she was lucky.

Perhaps Jane had also thought it likely that Darryl Jesmond would be the third loss. If so, the thought didn't please her. Her plain, over-made-up face, turned ugly. ‘I couldn't even afford to buy my son breakfast. What sort of a crappy life is that? If my mother hadn't been so demanding and controlling I wouldn't have needed to rebel and end my education early, wouldn't now not even be earning the supermarket's poverty wages that left me permanently broke. But she gave me no choice as she thought I didn't have the right to live my life my way.’

Rafferty made no comment, but he thought that considering Jane Ogilvie had gone on to give birth to three children by three different men and miscarried several more, it seemed Clara Mortimer might have been right to fear for her wayward daughter and feel she had very good reasons for trying to control her. Clearly, somebody needed to, if only for the sake of her existing children. And now, if young Aurora was to be believed, Jane was pregnant again.

As he and Llewellyn let themselves out after learning about the expected happy event, Rafferty found himself wondering about the child Abra might be carrying. For the first time he thought about it as a potential flesh and blood human being rather than a potential problem who could come between himself and Abra.

He also wondered what it must feel like to be a child created solely – as far as he could see – to punish a parent, as Jane Ogilvie's seemed to have been. Did her children realise what had encouraged their creation? Or had Jane managed to find sufficient maturity to keep such damaging information from them?

He glanced at Llewellyn as they climbed in the car. His sergeant's face was set, his lips formed a thin, tight line as if determined they would form a barrier to speech.

Wisely, for once Rafferty refrained from commenting. With Llewellyn married to his cousin, Maureen, Rafferty had learned from his ma's sure touch on the female grapevine that Llewellyn and Maureen had decided to try for a family sooner rather than later. He also knew that after over two months of trying, Maureen was still not pregnant.

Of course, it was early days yet, though after encountering the fertile Jane and her brood, it would be surprising if Llewellyn didn't feel a little aggrieved.

Beside him, Llewellyn's sudden torrent of speech revealed his lips had lost the battle with his feelings.

‘I never thought I'd hear myself say this about anyone, but that woman, that Jane Ogilvie or whatever she chooses to call herself, is an aberration.’

Rafferty, as he eased the car out of Mercer's Lane and into the stream of traffic on Eastchepe, mischievously asked ‘Why? Because she had her kids of many colours not because she wanted them for themselves, but simply to get back at her mother?’

‘Of course. What sort of reason is that for bringing a child into the world?’

Rafferty hesitated, then decided to plunge straight in. ‘In my experience, some women have kids, not because they want the kids themselves, particularly, but because they want to snare themselves a partner. Or because they don't know what else to do with their lives and having kids not only gives them a purpose but more often than not, their own Council flat, too. Others are simply sheep-like and tend to follow the herd and if all their friends and relations are having babies, they decide to have one, too.'

He gave a twisted smile. ‘Though, having said that, I don't imagine either of my parents – if they'd been given a glimpse into the future when they got married – would have relished the prospect of producing six little Raffertys.’

And, although, for the sake of his diminishing relationship with Abra, he was trying to come to terms with the idea, in truth, he wasn't relishing the prospect, the possibility, of producing one little Rafferty.

‘Still,’ he added, in an attempt at commiseration, ‘when you think of all the people who would make great parents but who can't have kids, it does seem a bit much when women like Jane Ogilvie seem to be able to pop them out with great ease at regular intervals just to spite her mother.’

But even that wasn't strictly true, he silently acknowledged, because between Charles and Hakim's births, Jane had, according to Mary Soames, suffered several miscarriages.

By now, with Rafferty concentrating on crossing the busy High Street/East Hill junction, preparatory to entering the police station's rear entrance, the ever-cautious Llewellyn fell silent. But his sergeant's brooding thoughts felt so much like a palpable third occupant in the car that Rafferty, once he'd instructed Llewellyn to organise the team into checking out the various alibis they'd been given, was glad to park up and escape to his office.

Llewellyn made light
work of delegating the alibi checking and when he re-joined Rafferty ten minutes later, Rafferty was thankful to note that Llewellyn had recovered his equilibrium. He was anxious to review the progress of the investigation and needed the Welshman's logical input.

Rafferty, feet up on the desk and a mug of strong tea at his elbow, was unsurprised that Llewellyn should return with the news that Mary Soames had been correct in her surmise about what had happened to Aurora's long vanished daddy, Earl Ray.

Aurora's father was dead, under all of his aliases, Llewellyn now revealed. He had been gunned down two years previously in some drug gang war of attrition.

Rafferty nodded, took a gulp of his tea and remarked, ‘That leaves young Hakim's father and Jane's ex-husband as the only named outsiders still in the running.’

Though Rafferty had no reason to think either of the men were strong suspects. In the case of Abdullah, it seemed unlikely that the man who had shown no interest in his son's birth or subsequent life, would have returned to England and murdered Jane's mother. But routine checks still had to be gone through. And given the sensitive racial connotations brought by the Arabic background of Hakim's father, Rafferty had judged diplomacy a necessity, so had set Llewellyn the task of tracking him down.

‘I also think we can now safely cross Jamil Abdullah off the list of suspects,’ Llewellyn said. ‘I managed to trace him using one of my old university contacts in the Foreign Office. He made a few discreet enquiries. I've just heard back from him. He's discovered that Abdullah is back in his native Egypt and as far as he can ascertain, he hasn't been out of the country for some months – though, given the shambolic state of the Immigration Service he couldn't give me a one hundred percent confirmation of that.’

‘We can't expect miracles,’ Rafferty said, before asking, ‘Is Mary Carmody back yet? I'm keen to know if she had any joy in learning the present whereabouts of Jane's ex-husband.’

‘I saw her come in about five minutes ago. Do you want me to get her to come up?’

‘Please.’

Llewellyn picked up the phone and relayed the message.

Mary Carmody came up a few minutes’ later and reported what she had found out. She had followed Rafferty's instructions to waylay James Ogilvie's son and question him about his father's current address rather than ask Jane and invite more lies.

She had approached young Charles when he ventured forth from the family squat, she reported.

‘I managed to persuade him to let me have his father's current address, though he begged me not to let his mother know they were in regular contact.’

‘That doesn't surprise me,' Rafferty commented. 'It must be hell being the kid of divorced parents, especially when one of them is Jane Ogilvie. She's never struck me as the kind of woman to be reasonable when it came to her ex having parental contact.’

From his seat in the corner, Llewellyn butted in. ‘She didn't, to me, seem the type of woman who would be reasonable about anything, never mind something as emotive as parental rights.’

'So, where is James Ogilvie living now?’ Rafferty asked Mary Carmody.

‘He's moved abroad. France. He's married again and has several more children.’

What a talent Jane had for driving her exes either out of this world, as with Aurora's dad, or out of the country, as with her ex-husband and young Hakim's father, thought Rafferty.

Mary Carmody told him she had just come off the phone after speaking to James Ogilvie. He claimed to have been in a business meeting in the Australian branch of his firm at the time Clara Mortimer died. He had even supplied half a dozen names to verify his claim.

'I've started the ball rolling with our Australian opposite numbers to get confirmation of Ogilvie's claim,' Mary said.

'That's fine. Thanks Mary.'

After he had dismissed Carmody, Rafferty said to Llewellyn, 'Given Ogilvie's remarriage, the fact that he is able to contact his son whenever he likes and the number of witnesses he's produced to back up his story, Ogilvie seems destined to join Jamil Abdullah on the out-of-the-running list. Which – apart from the other residents still under suspicion and 'Fancy' Freddy Talbot, leaves us with Jane Ogilvie, her assorted brood and her recently disinterred 'dead' father. Certainly, Harry Mortimer and Jane must both be prime suspects. At least until we find the will that leaves her money to the Cats' Home that Jane claimed probable.' Though the finding of such a document was looking increasingly unlikely.

Rafferty told Llewellyn that he suspected the pair of collusion given that they now claimed they had been together at the time of Clara's death. 'And maybe they were together,' he added, 'in Clara's apartment, killing the old lady for the inheritance, using Jane's son as an unlooked for but undoubtedly welcome alibi bonus.'

'It's a possibility, of course.' Llewellyn sounded doubtful about this. 'But if we look at Jane Ogilvie's previous relationships, they indicate she's nothing more than a weak, immature woman whom men used and discarded. From her abandonment by her father, to her marriage to Ogilvie - which bears all the hallmarks of an unwilling shotgun marriage - to her relationships with the fathers of her two younger children, each succeeding relationship put her on a downward spiral. It seems to me that Jane Ogilvie, used to having a controlling mother, simply got herself into a succession of ‘controlling’ relationships with men. Of which her latest, with the much younger Darryl Jesmond, who seems to me to have her exactly where he wants her is, in many ways, the saddest of them all.

'And then, there's her aggressive attitude towards her mother even now she's dead – especially now she's dead – which makes me the more inclined to think she had nothing to with Clara Mortimer's murder. I can't see the immature Jane – who produced her mixed-race babies to upset her mother – likely to have sufficient sense to produce aggression as a form of alibi, one that says, If I had killed my mother, would I be so foolish as to let you know my real feelings towards her?'

'Oh, I think Jane Ogilvie has sense enough to realise that, even though Clara Mortimer seems to have done her best to keep them at arms' length, some of the apartments' other elderly residents may well have figured out Jane's true relationship with her mother, especially given the argument Darryl had with Mrs Mortimer. The apartment's residents are all retired, all with time on their hands and mostly single females at that, with the usual female inquisitiveness. Knowing she could scarcely deny it, Jane, it seems to me, may well have concluded it was better to make a defiant virtue of her poor relationship with her mother.'

Rafferty drained the rest of his tea and added, 'I think we should concentrate more on just how far Jane Ogilvie would go to keep that wandering-eyed toy boy, Darryl Jesmond, who until her mother's death, seemed to be sending out feelers – and more than feelers – to find a cosy billet with one of the neighbours.

'We've already discovered her capacity for deceit. Not only did she tell us her father was dead, she also concealed the fact that she had been sacked for theft, which concealment must have been prompted by the worry that, jobless and moneyless she would be unable to hang on to Darryl.

'And then there's Darryl Jesmond himself; an unpleasant young man who lives off women. How tempting would he have found it to rid the world of Jane's mother so he could get his hands on what Jane must have told him she would inherit?

'Did you notice how up close and personal Darryl Jesmond seems to be with Jane's young daughter, Aurora?' Rafferty now asked.

Llewellyn nodded.

Certainly that young lady, in the short time Rafferty had known her, seemed to do all she could to encourage Jesmond's attentions. What must Jane feel about that? Would it make her even more desperate? Or more ready to move on to an even more destructive relationship?

'Jane Ogilvie's nearly forty. Given what she said to me and Mary Carmody about the 'Plain Jane' tag, middle age must have made her more desperate. She couldn't know for sure where her mother had left her money. But she must have realised from what Mary Soames said, that the odds were in her favour that her mother hadn't made a will; all the more reason, then, to take her chances on inheriting a wad of cash under the intestacy rules.'

As he explained to Llewellyn, although, on the surface, at least, Jane Ogilvie seemed an aggressive person, he thought Mary Soames, in describing Jane as needy, had accurately described Jane's personality.

'Even if she had nothing to do with her mother's murder, don't you think that the 'needy' Jane, who adored her father, and who openly admitted she resented, even hated, her mother – would be more than ready to provide her father with an after the fact alibi and persuade her immature eldest son to back them up?'