Bad Blood (19 page)

‘What about other customers?’

‘There weren't any. Me and my father were the only ones there.’

Convenient for Jane, if not for Rafferty, Llewellyn and the investigation. In the unlikely event that she was telling the truth this time, the note she claimed the manager had left on the door might back up her story. Rafferty got her to supply the Laundromat's location so he could have the manager questioned, then he and Llewellyn left, it becoming clear to Rafferty that they would get nothing further from either Jane or Charles.

Even Hakim who had earlier spoken contemptuously about Charles's manhood, stared defiantly at Rafferty and offered no further comment.

The Ogilvie family were closing ranks. They might all be at loggerheads, their expressions said, but they would stand together against any police inclination – as they would no doubt regard it – to turn one of them into a scapegoat.

Of course, as Rafferty remarked to Llewellyn on their way out. These defensive family walls held a weak link in the form of Darryl Jesmond.

And like all weak links, Rafferty thought Jesmond would repay a little probing. Now he had discovered Jane was expecting a fourth ‘happy event’ Jesmond might be less prepared to plaster over the cracks of the family's many lies than he had been before.

They found Darryl
Jesmond in the nearest pub. He was in a side booth, chatting up a woman whom Rafferty assumed from her costly, but unsubtle jewellery and expensive-looking, low cut top that exposed a more than generous expanse of creamy bosom, must be the Mrs Rich Divorcée that Aurora had mentioned.

The chatting up was obviously going well as a matchstick wouldn't have fitted between the pair so closely entwined were they.

The lady into whose ear gigolo Jesmond was whispering sweet nothings exuded money in anyone's language. And although even the skilfully applied make up couldn't conceal the fact that she must be several years older than Jane Ogilvie, to Jesmond she must appear an increasingly attractive proposition to a Jane whose financial future was not only uncertain, but mired in murky murder.

The shining sweep of chestnut curls brushing against Darryl's shoulder had received a far more professional colouring job than poor Jane's home-bleached blonde locks. From the immaculate make-up, the purse as well stuffed as a chipmunk's cheeks that peeped as tantalisingly from the top of her open handbag as her bosom from the blouse, to her encouraging strokes of Darryl's tanned and well-muscled arm, she clearly had the wherewithal to catch a baker's dozen of the world's Darryl Jesmonds.

Off with the old and on with the even older, was Rafferty's cynical thought as he assessed the cooing lovebirds.

So absorbed were they in each other that Rafferty had to tap Jesmond on the shoulder to attract his attention.

Jesmond's expression became thunderous when he turned and saw who had done the tapping.

‘This is harassment,’ he complained. ‘I've a good mind to make an official complaint.’

‘That's up to you, sir,’ Rafferty blandly remarked. ‘But as you rushed out of the house before I could speak to you further, I thought I'd take my chances at your local. We've one or two questions we believe you may be able to help us with.’

‘Who are these gentlemen, Darryl?’ Mrs Rich Divorcée murmured in a suitably husky voice as her warm dark eyes swept a bold, assessing glance over them.

Rafferty could feel the waves of embarrassment emanating from Llewellyn at this frank scrutiny; even marriage, it seemed, couldn't save the Welshman from his unfortunate predilection to blushing when scrutinised by the more forward members of the fair sex..

‘Coppers,’ Darryl muttered. ‘They're looking into the death of Jane's mother. Can you give us a few minutes, hon?’

Mrs Rich Divorceé, if such she was, pouted becomingly at this dismissal.

'I'll let you boys have your little chat,' she said to Darryl. 'But,' she warned, in a voice from which some of the previous warmth had vanished, 'make sure it is no more than a few minutes, hon, or I might be forced to find myself other male company.'

After she had slid her swaying, voluptuous femininity past Darryl and Rafferty, she lingered a while in front of the blushing Llewellyn, then, with a low-throated laugh, she sashayed over to the bar where, much to Darryl Jesmond's obvious chagrin, she quickly attracted the thrusting attentions of a bevy of lunching business types.

After he had directed a warning frown in the direction of the competition, Jesmond turned back, scowled at Rafferty and issued the churlish invitation, ‘Well, get on with it, then. I haven't got all day.’

'And there was me envying you your leisure hours,' Rafferty retorted in the soft voice that Llewellyn was always advising him turned away wrath, 'I didn't realise being a bone idle gigolo was such a taxing profession. Still,' he glanced towards the bar and then down at Jesmond's wrist on which the birthday present watch bought for him by the lady at the bar gleamed with gold's unique sheen, 'the perks look good.'

Before Jesmond could offer a response to this, Rafferty and Llewellyn sat down in the booth, up close and uncomfortably personal – from Jesmond's viewpoint – one either side of Jesmond.

Their close proximity seemed to worry Darryl. To conceal his betraying body language, Jesmond leaned back as if at ease – no doubt for the benefit of his lady friend at the bar, who eyed them with amusement before she tapped her watch to indicate that the precious minutes she had so graciously granted for their talk were passing.

‘Perhaps you can explain something to me, Mr Jesmond, ‘Rafferty began. ‘I wondered what prompted Mrs Ogilvie to lie about her son's day of arrival. You failed to contradict her when she told us her son had left London the morning of her mother's murder. Why was that exactly?’

‘I did contradict her,’ Jesmond blustered, before, with a frown, he must have recollected the true version of events as outlined by Rafferty. ‘At least I started to. Then I thought, ‘what the hell?’

Jesmond put on an unconvincing display of loving solicitude for his middle-aged partner. 'I thought Jane had enough grief, with police in her living room, without me calling her a liar in front of you.’

‘Very chivalrous of you, I'm sure.’

Darryl gave a Tony Blair, I'm that kind of guy, shrug and took a giant gulp of his lager.

Just then, a harassed young mother with a screaming baby in her arms entered the bar and headed for the beer garden. Their arrival must have reminded Darryl of his own prospective fatherhood, for he gave a ferocious scowl. His next remark revealed a noticeable lack of chivalry.

‘Besides, I knew how she felt about her mother. I couldn't help but wonder afterwards if Jane hadn't had something to do with the old woman's death and was using the lie about Charlie as a shield; I wouldn't put it past her. She can be a devious bitch. I mean – look at how secretive she's been about this latest brat she's breeding.’

Darryl folded his arms decisively across his manly chest and for the first time met Rafferty's eye readily. ‘It's her you should be questioning, not me. though God knows, you're not likely to get much sense out of that daft mare as she's been behaving oddly lately.’

‘Oddly?' Rafferty questioned. 'In what way?’

Darryl shrugged. ‘I wondered if she was starting an early change of life. After all,’ the much younger Darryl gave a man-to-man snigger, ‘she is nearly forty. They do say that some women's brains go haywire when they get to the change.’

Jesmond must have recalled that Jane was certainly not having an early menopause, for he scowled again. ‘Know better now, though, don't I? Bloody bitch. If she thinks –‘

‘Never mind that for now,’ Rafferty interrupted what was obviously going to be another rant at Jane and the fates for his unwanted paternity. ‘Let's get back to what you said before about Jane behaving oddly. Could you be a bit more specific?’

‘Well, let me see. There are a couple of things I can think of right off the top of my head. Take that argument with her mother, for instance. Jane started it. There was I painting the old bag's living room, good as gold, the old woman stirring the paint and bringing me tea and biscuits. Then Jane turns up and starts having a go at her mum.

'Me and old Mrs Mortimer had been getting along fine before that, much better than I'd expected after hearing Jane go on about her mother. But once Jane turned up, before I knew it, Jane had managed to turn the old girl's question to Jane as to whether she'd seen some money the old woman kept on the side into an accusation that I'd stolen it.’

‘And had you?’ Rafferty enquired.

‘No, I bloody hadn't.’ After a drumbeat's pause, with disarming candour, Jesmond added, ' Wish I had now, though.'

‘So what happened next?’

‘Jane went mad – mad at me. Jeez, you know, one minute I'm minding my own business, painting her old mother's walls ‘cos Jane wants to get on her mum's right side and the next it's my fault that her bloody mother's forgotten where she put her money. Jane had a right go at me. Told me I had no balls if I allowed her mother to accuse me of theft and get away with it.

‘By this time, with all Jane's taunts, I'd pretty well forgotten that the old girl hadn't accused me of theft at all. Anyway, to placate Jane, I started having a go at the old woman myself. By this time, we were out on the landing. I was still shouting at Jane's mum, though Jane had already gone quiet. Then, all of a sudden, Jane grabbed my arm, told me, loudly, to leave her mum alone, and hustled me away.’

Jesmond shook his head. ‘I still don't understand what it was all about. First off, out of the blue, Jane starts a barney with her mother, gets me involved, then once I'm going full throttle, equally as suddenly, she calls a halt to the row and backs off.’

It was certainly strange – if Darryl's version of events was to be believed.

Rafferty found himself wondering if Jane had deliberately set Darryl up as her patsy to get back at him for flirting with her young daughter and for his unsubtle dalliance with the lady at the bar who was amassing a growing collection of expensive cocktails.

Had Jane deliberately forced the argument, making it sound to the late Clara Mortimer's elderly apartment neighbours as if it was Darryl, not Jane, who had reason to bear a grudge against Mrs Mortimer?

What was it Amelia Frobisher had said? That she hadn't realised Jane had been in Clara Mortimer's apartment at all.

‘I certainly never heard her,’ she had told them. ‘All I heard was that young man she lives with shouting at Clara and Clara shouting back that he was a thief. I only realised Jane was there at all when I happened to glance out of the window a few minutes later and saw her drive off in that dilapidated old car of hers, her young man beside her as she pulled out of the car park and turned on to Cymbeline Way.’

Such a setting-up of Darryl could indicate premeditation before the fact of matricide on Jane's part. Though of course, with Jane Ogilvie, it might simply indicate that she had taken umbrage that Darryl and her mother were getting on well together – even sharing the decorating duties in an amicable manner. Rafferty could see that would put irritating grit in the oyster of Jane's personality.

From Darryl Jesmond's other side, Llewellyn asked, ‘And the other strange behaviour, sir?’

‘What? Oh, yeah. To get back to what you said earlier about Charlie's arrival. It's funny that Jane should have tried to make a big production out of it when I'd already said the day before, when he arrived out of the blue, that he could stay for a few days. That's what I mean when I say she's been behaving oddly.’

He scowled down at his beer. ‘Though given the little bombshell she dropped earlier, it's likely her hormones are all over the place, right?’

Jesmond picked up his lager and took another huge gulp that emptied half the pint pot, before he asked plaintively. ‘Is that it? Only I'd like to get my lady friend back before one of those suits at the bar make her forget about me entirely.’

Judging from the reassumed cock-of-the-walk body language and the sneer he directed at the pigeon-chested and be-suited bar-proppers, it was clear Darryl Jesmond thought the last unlikely.

It
was later the next day when Llewellyn finally managed to get to speak to the Imam at the local mosque.

He was thoughtful when he returned.

'I've just found one more of Mrs Ogilvie's brood out in a lie,' he said to Rafferty. 'Remember that Hakim told us he was studying at the local mosque at the time of his grandmother's murder?'

Rafferty gave the required nod to this rhetorical question and waited to see what Llewellyn's discreet enquiries had turned up.

'According to the Imam, Hakim wasn't at the mosque that morning. He should have been as he had instruction regularly every week, but the Imam said Hakim's interest in religion has taken a downward turn lately and he's missed a few of these instruction periods. The Imam, who seemed a kindly man, was of the opinion that young Hakim has discovered girls and when we questioned him he was too embarrassed to admit it, especially in front of his mother whom, the Imam said, young Hakim regards as a scandal.'

Rafferty nodded. Now he thought about it, Hakim's manner had seemed unnecessarily defensive. He wondered if the Imam was right and the handsome, sixteen year old Hakim had been doing what teenage boys had done through the centuries – trying to persuade a girl to go to bed with him.