Bad Blood (17 page)

Although Llewellyn still appeared unconvinced by his arguments, Rafferty nodded to himself. He could easily see the needy little girl in Jane's psyché being prepared to do whatever it took to regain the love of the adored father who had abandoned her as a child.

Rafferty, who, from Llewellyn, had absorbed a certain amount of pseudo-psychology, thought Jane's aggression concealed a damaged soul, a vulnerable little girl who had never been quite good enough for her parents’ love. What more natural than that Jane, the Plain Jane who felt unloved and used rebellion, even in to adulthood, as a form of defence, should use aggression against her mother as her best self-defence?

When he had mentioned some of his thoughts on these lines to his sister, Maggie, her only comment had been, ‘Oh Jar. Can you not see that this Jane is simply a woman who's not good at being on her own? She'd rather have a man – any man – than face up to being alone.’

‘I can see that. I understand that,’ Rafferty had retorted. And he could see it, more or less – hadn't he got into such difficulties during his last case because he'd been feeling alone and lonely? Not that even his favourite sister knew about the problems he had experienced back in April. But the difference between himself and Jane Ogilvie was that bitter experience had taught him that loneliness was preferable to being in a lonely partnership with the wrong person.

He had gained this knowledge painfully, during his marriage to Angie, his late wife. That marriage had brought home to him that that sort of loneliness was worse, far worse, than being ‘alone’.

Jane's biggest problem, he thought, was that her father hadn't been around when she had been a young girl. Harry Mortimer struck Rafferty as having always been too concerned with his own needs to have enough love or concern to spare for his ‘needy’ and plain little daughter.

Llewellyn it was, Rafferty thought, who had once said to him that young girls learned how to give and receive love from their fathers. And if their fathers didn't show them affection or were absent in some way, little girls were not only less likely to be able to form loving, male/female relationships, they often spent the rest of their lives searching for the love they had never had, often in damaging partnerships. Jane Ogilvie's relationship record demonstrated the truth of this.

And after such a damaged childhood, what, for Jane, could be more damaging than to have her selfish, irresponsible father re-enter her life and ask her to prove her love for him by protecting him from the latest consequences of his actions?

Although naturally inclined to think most modern psychobabble so much hogwash, Rafferty conceded that there might be something in that particular claim about little girls and their fathers.

On the other hand, he argued to himself while the conscientious Llewellyn went through the latest reports, surely the same thing applied to sons and their mothers?

He had known since he was a toddler that he was his ma's blue-eyed boy, yet here he was, rapidly heading towards 40 and it was only now that he was thinking about settling down with a woman he truly loved – if, that was, given their current difficulties, when she finally surfaced, Abra decided to have him at all.

His mind returned to his and Llewellyn's conversation about Jane Ogilvie and her aggression towards her mother. Llewellyn had made clear that he considered such an open aggression made Jane the less likely to be her mother's murderer.

But – and it was an important but – Llewellyn's reasoning about the likelihood of Jane killing her mother only applied if they were considering Jane without her father.

Rafferty suspected that the sums would come out rather differently if, as their latest alibi indicated, Harry Mortimer entered the equation.

Jane Ogilvie – like Rafferty, heading for her 40s, with a figure not improved by childbearing – struck him as a typical product of her generation; so many of whom never seemed to have really grown up. They were the 'me' generation, encapsulated in the lifestyle of the eternal teenager; with the too-short skirts, the unsuitable boyfriends and sexual habits which might be okay for a year or two while one ‘found oneself’, but which were not a good idea to continue at length, certainly not for the length of time that Jane had carried them on.

Maybe now, with no mother to rebel against, Jane Ogilvie would finally begin to grow up; unless, of course, she was guilty of the murder of her mother, either alone or in collusion with her father, in order to bring about the release of the funds of which Jane certainly and her father possibly, seemed to need so desperately. If she had murdered her mother, Rafferty could foresee little hope of a happy maturity for Jane.

By now, Rafferty's
head was so full of thoughts he felt past getting a grip on any of them.

He checked with Llewellyn as to whether the latest reports carried anything of interest and when Llewellyn replied in the negative, he said, ‘I don't know about you, Dafyd, but I reckon we both deserve an early night. Too much work makes a man and his brain dull and I can't help feeling we're missing something important. Maybe a good night's sleep will yet supply us with our ‘Eureka’ moment in this investigation.’

After
a surprisingly restful night, given the several anxieties currently besetting him, Rafferty arrived bright and early at the station on Sunday morning. He was so early that he even beat Llewellyn in, which was a pity, he thought as he observed the latest reports piled on his desk awaiting his attention. Llewellyn was the paperwork wallah. Rafferty much preferred his sergeant to give him a brief resumé of their contents.

After arming himself with strong tea from the canteen, Rafferty made a start on the pile. He was skim reading his way through when Llewellyn arrived.

Distracted, Rafferty gave a brief nod in response to Llewellyn's greeting. After skimming through the current report, he put it face down to the left of the pile and picked up the next.

As his gaze flew over the typed report, Rafferty's heart started hammering as he realised they might just have found their first breakthrough.

After he had read the report through a second time, he gave a wide grin and handed it over to Llewellyn.

‘Take a look at that,’ he invited. ‘I think we might just have found our ‘Eureka’ moment.’

This latest report was on the alibi provided by yet another member of the murdered woman's family the checking of which he had set Llewellyn to organise the previous day.

It revealed yet another disturbing discrepancy.

'What a family they are for telling lies,' Rafferty remarked as he and Llewellyn climbed in the car. 'Wonder how many more they'll feel it necessary to concoct before this case is concluded?’

Charles Ogilvie, the latest member of the family whom they had caught out in a falsehood, was still in bed when they called round at the family home.

Rafferty
despatched his half-sister Aurora from her seat on the settee next to Darryl Jesmond to rouse him.

When he finally appeared some twenty minutes later, Charles looked haggard and bleary eyed, with the trembling hands that brought back for Rafferty unwelcome reminders of his own mornings-after sufferings following too many bibulous nights.

Given his increasingly haggard looks, this morning it was extraordinarily easy, in Charles, to see his grandfather as a young man. But although Charles's haggard countenance and bleary eyes betokened a heavy night, Jane's eldest had made some effort to make himself presentable, though Rafferty soon discovered that the young man's ablutions hadn't included the provision of an essential wash and brush up to his previous answers.

‘Mr Ogilvie?’ Rafferty again addressed his question to the bent head of Charles Ogilvie as he slumped in the threadbare green armchair. ‘I asked you where you were on the morning your grandmother died. You may have met your mother and grandfather for a picnic breakfast as you and they claim, but what you didn't do was travel up from Liverpool Street on the early train. It was cancelled. So when did you arrive?'

Charles eventually admitted. ‘I arrived the day before.’

‘So why lie about it?’ Rafferty asked.

Charles Ogilvie blinked and protested. ‘But I didn't lie.’ He frowned. ‘At least, I don't think I did.’

Roused suddenly from his sleep as he had been, Charles exhibited an uncertainty that seemed to agitate him. He stuttered and stammered and seemed unable to put together a coherent sentence.

His sister, Aurora, although considerably younger, was clearly made of more steely stock. Suddenly, she came to Charles's defence and rounded on Rafferty.

‘Why don't you leave Charlie alone?’ she demanded. ‘He couldn't have had anything to do with our gran's death. He didn't even know where she lived. Mum never stopped going on about the fact that she hadn't heard from him for months. Charlie hasn't been in touch since the old woman moved into that sheltered block at the new year.

‘Besides, he was her pet, the only one of her grandkids she bothered to send birthday and Christmas presents to. The miserable old cow never sent me or Hakim anything, ever. '

As though sensing they would infer resentment on her part for this failure, she added, 'That wasn't his fault. Me and Hakim knew that. We've never held it against him.’

Charles looked so startled by this claim that Aurora's pretty face flushed and she added, ‘Well, not much. And even if we had, he's still our brother - half-brother. He's family, so don't you come round here with your suspicions and your leading questions, ‘cos I won't let him answer them, him or Hakim.’

Rafferty, with the impression that Charles felt guilty about being the only one of the three with both a legitimate father and a grandmother who sent him presents, was secretly amused and rather admiring of the young Aurora's staunch championship of her elder brother.

He wondered if she would put up quite such a sterling defence on behalf of her mother if he were to reveal that he now remembered it hadn't been Charles who had lied about the precise date of his arrival – that had been Jane.

Had she unwisely lied to them in the rash, unthinking belief that in doing so she would strengthen both her own and her father's alibis? If so, her lie had caught her out.

Although Charles, at least, hadn't contradicted her claim – bitter experience had probably taught him not to contradict his mother when she bent the truth for her own advantage, now Rafferty recalled that Darryl Jesmond had looked surprised at her claim. Certainly, Rafferty recalled Jesmond had begun to say something when he had thought better of it.

It was unfortunate for Jane that the train she claimed her son had been on was cancelled, thus exposing her as a liar for the third time. She had even brazenly challenged them to check her son's alibi, he recalled. She must have more confidence in the country's transport system than most of its customers, he thought. Or perhaps it was more a case, as Llewellyn had commented, that her temperament was of the type that acted first and thought afterwards.

Now, as Charles Ogilvie revealed he had actually arrived the previous day, rather than on the morning of his grandmother's murder, Rafferty wondered why the young man had been carrying a suitcase – and what it contained - when he and Jane had finally turned up after his and Mary Carmody's arrival to break the news of the murder.

To judge from his anxious countenance, Charles Ogilvie seemed concerned that he might inadvertently spill several sorts of beans. He had begun to stammer an attempt at an answer but this attempt soon reverted to a silence that was even more intriguing especially when it came not only in the face of Rafferty's continuing questions, but also when, shamefully for Charles, his defence seemed reliant on his little sister fighting his corner for him. What could he be concealing when the latter humiliation was insufficient to stir him in to speech?

Even the younger Hakim bridled at his younger sister's attempt to speak for him.

‘If I choose to answer questions or not answer them, I shall do so,’ Hakim now told Aurora haughtily. ‘I do not need a little girl to speak up for me. If your brother has insufficient pride in his manhood and honour that he lets–’

‘Our brother,’ Aurora was quick to correct Hakim.

Hakim ignored the interruption. ‘If your brother is so lacking in manhood that instead of speaking for himself he lets you do it for him he has no business calling himself a man. Whereas I–‘

Whatever Hakim had been about to proclaim got no further, as just then, Jane Ogilvie, dressed in a skimpy black dressing gown that revealed legs decorated with thread veins, entered the room.

In a tight repressed voice that was unlike her usual speaking voice, she told her younger son, ‘All right, Kimmy, put a sock in it.’

To Rafferty's surprise, this morning, instead of exhibiting 'need' or aggression, Jane seemed to have discovered a new resolve. Was it the desire to protect her father that had brought it about? he wondered.

It seemed that even Hakim recognised the new authority in his mother's voice, for although he bridled at the childish ‘Kimmy’ diminutive, after casting one burning glance at Jane, both his boasts about his own manhood and his taunts to Charles about his lack of same came to an abrupt, if simmering halt.

‘And yes, Inspector,’ Jane turned her attack on Rafferty. 'As he has just told you, Charles did arrive the day before my mother's death. But it was me who told you that, not my son, so take it out on me, not him And as for the question I sense hovering on your lips, the suitcase Charles carried contained our family laundry. I picked it up before I met Charles for breakfast and he was sweet enough to insist on carrying it for his mother, especially as I told him I'm preg–‘