Bad Blood (2 page)

Whether his virtue was real or feigned, the need for him to leave was plain enough. He had no choice. He just hoped his family saw it that way.

He kept his responses to Llewellyn's news brief and circumspect. Aware of his family's listening ears on the other side of the thin partition wall, he made sure his words revealed nothing that could be used against him in a kangaroo court.

As he thanked the ward sister and left her office, through the glass window of Gemma's side ward, he caught the raised eyebrows and the exchanged glances of Gemma's visiting family; they made him feel even guiltier. Not only was he sinning by commission, in a few minutes, by leaving, he would also sin by omission, an omission made worse by virtue of the fact he'd only arrived ten minutes ago. The last to arrive and the first to leave…

If the three ladies gathered like some witches’ coven around Gemma's bed let him off with a caution, he'd be doing well, though his conscience wasn't so forgiving. Already it had started to nag that he should seem to rejoice at the elderly victim's violent death. To placate it, he sent up a silent prayer for her passing.

Rafferty felt more simmering vibes of disapproval greet his reappearance at his niece's bedside. Always the party pooper, Rafferty, he muttered to himself sotto-voce, before he apologetically confirmed what, to judge from their expressions, his fellow visitors had already guessed.

‘I have to go. I'll try to pop in again later. Tell Gemma that and give her my love and congratulations.’ In an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, he said, half-jokingly, ‘Tell Gemma I shall expect her to name the baby Joseph after her favourite uncle.’

His comment brought a further tightening of Mrs Newson's thin lips.

Hastily, he bent over and kissed the forehead of the still-sleeping Gemma before walking round the bed and kissing the baby. The light touch woke the infant. The baby immediately screwed up his face, which quickly became as red as a cardinal's hat. Then the cardinal's hat began to scream.

‘Now look what you've done,’ Mrs Newson shrilled. Her thin features tightened so much Rafferty wondered she didn't cut off her own blood supply. He should be so lucky…

‘Natural father indeed,’ she snorted under her breath, but loudly enough to ensure that no one remained in ignorance of her opinion.

Reproved, Rafferty went through the mea culpa routine again, before, pursued by his new great-nephew's ever-more piercing screams, he rushed the door, pausing only to blow an apologetic kiss to the now rudely-awakened Gemma, relieved he had managed to make his escape before she added her complaints to those of her new son and his paternal grandmother.

Thankful to be out of range of both critical lungs and rebuking glances, once through the double doors that opened on to Elmhurst General's public car park, Rafferty paused to enjoy the warmth of the June sun on his face. He breathed in several lungfuls of air untainted by antiseptic and other, less pleasant aromas before he got in the car and made for the murder scene, his relief to be making his escape courtesy of a murder victim seemingly conjured up solely for his convenience, made him feel even guiltier.

Rafferty had told
Llewellyn he would meet him at the murder scene. And as he parked and got out of his car close to the front entrance to Parkview Apartments, he saw the white-suited Llewellyn, who must have been watching for him, emerge from the block.

While he waited for Llewellyn to reach him, Rafferty opened the car boot where he kept his own supply of protective clothing and began to climb in to a fresh set. As he did so, he studied the apartment's security measures: the intercom entry system, security lighting and the burglar alarm prominent on the wall. It was clear that plentiful measures had been taken to ensure the residents’ peace of mind. Yet, for all the security devices, from what Llewellyn had said, one of the residents had still died a violent death in her own home.

After Llewellyn had reached Rafferty and they had exchanged greetings, Llewellyn said, ‘The body's that of a Mrs Clara Mortimer. The SOCOs have arrived. We're still waiting for Dr Dally.’

Rafferty nodded. ‘Have you had time to discover how many residents there are?’

Llewellyn confirmed it. ‘There are ten apartments on three floors. According to the warden who supplied me with a list, most of the apartments have a single occupant.’ He handed this list to Rafferty who scrutinised it.

Of the ten apartments, five were on the third floor and presumably represented the apartments’ cheapest option. The second and first floors each contained two apartments, while the ground floor housed only the warden, Rita Atkins, and what looked from what Rafferty could see from the road, like a spacious entrance hall.

Only three of the apartments housed more than one person; married couples, seemingly. Altogether, the apartments housed thirteen people. Was the dead women unlucky number thirteen? he wondered.

The majority of the single occupants were women; a fact that could be of value if this did turn out to be a murder investigation as Llewellyn had indicated. In Rafferty's experience women tended to take a firm interest in their neighbours and would be more likely than the male residents to notice strangers. And as solitary females without a husband's demands to take up their time they would have ample scope for gazing from their windows.

Parkview Apartments were set in beautifully landscaped grounds with the rear parking accessed from a side service road. In front of the apartments immaculate lawns were broken up by flowerbeds; the ones on the left and right sides picked out the apartment's name in green on a red background, two of the colours in Elmhurst's town emblem. The larger centre bed contained Elmhurst's actual emblem: to the left or sinister side, on a red background, were the three seaxes or axes of Essex which, as Llewellyn had told him, represented the reputed arms of the Saxon kings; to the right were three leaping stags on a green background to denote that Elmhurst was once a royal hunting forest. Beneath was the ancient priory with its vast land holdings depicted by a sheaf of wheat, the whole surmounted by a crown. The town's motto – In God We Trust - was beneath the emblem and under this, the two dates 1204 – 2004, which The Elmhurst Echo, the local newspaper, had emblazoned on every front page since the beginning of the year, ensuring its readers were aware that Elmhurst was celebrating the eight hundredth anniversary of the granting of the town's charter by King John.

Rafferty sniffed the scented air appreciatively. With Priory Park opposite, it was certainly a beautiful and tranquil spot. Priory Way was mostly lined with expensive, detached houses. Its pavements were wide and dotted with troughs containing more flowers in the red and green colours of the town's emblem. Although these looked attractive, there had been no attempt by the Council to copy Parkview Apartment's commemorative motif in the park's raised beds.

As they walked towards the entrance, Rafferty nodded to young Timothy Smales, the uniformed officer on duty at the entrance to the sheltered apartments. Thankfully, Smales seemed to have recovered from the grudge he had nursed since their last murder case. His previous sulky schoolboy demeanour had now given way to self-important zeal as he clutched his clipboard and pen.

After noting down Rafferty's name as carefully as a traffic warden set on beating his own bookings record, Smales informed him portentously, ‘It's second floor front, sir - Apartment 2a.’

Rafferty nodded in acknowledgement of this information and followed Llewellyn across the threshold. He stumbled and would have fallen but for clutching at Llewellyn's arm. He regained his composure and glanced down. On top of the entrance mat proper, someone had placed what looked like a hand-made effort, a gaudy ‘welcome’ mat in bilious green with fussy, curly red lettering, which stuck up a good inch above the entrance. Rafferty grimaced; he'd had better welcomes.

As they climbed the stairs, Rafferty gazed round him. The carpet was thick and of good quality, the entrance hall and stairs were lined with paintings, not the cheap, ‘Charging Elephant’ type, either.

‘Nice gaff,’ he commented. ‘Pretty posh, considering it's sheltered housing.’

Beside him, Llewellyn said, ‘It's a private block and is rather exclusive. Has a long waiting list, I understand, especially if you haven't got an influential friend on the residents’ committee.’

‘So the victim wasn't short of a few bob,’ Rafferty remarked automatically, before he could stop himself. ‘Gives us a pointer to a possible motive.’

‘As you say, sir - a possible motive. But it's early days yet.’

Subtly cautioned by his sergeant, Rafferty smiled inwardly. He'd turned over a new leaf and was determined to never again race ahead of the evidence, though he hadn't shared his conversion with Llewellyn. After his last murder investigation, he wanted this conversion from old habits to come as a welcome surprise as the case unfolded.

Llewellyn confided, ‘According to one of the other residents, the victim was reputed to keep quite large cash sums in her apartment.’

‘Was she now? Interesting.’ Rafferty was careful to say nothing further on the subject of motivational possibilities as they climbed the last step and entered the second floor landing. There were four doors off, one apartment door on each side of the spacious hallway, with the door to a lift on their left and that of the stairwell through which they had just emerged beside it. Number 2a was on the left. The door was open with PC Lizzie Green standing to one side of it exuding her normal early morning scent of lily of the valley talcum powder.

Rafferty suspected Lizzie Green had adopted this most maiden-aunt of perfumes as a defensive measure. He wondered when Lizzie would cotton on to the fact that most of her male colleagues found the combination of the old-fashioned scent, her curly dark hair, bee-stung lips and voluptuous figure that even the police uniform couldn't disguise, more than a little beguiling.

Rafferty smiled good morning and gave his attention to the door lock. It was a sturdy 5 lever mortise and showed no signs of damage.

As Llewellyn had mentioned, most of the team had already arrived. Through the open door of the spacious lobby directly ahead, Rafferty could see Fraser, part of the fingerprint team and Adrian Appleby and his Scenes of Crime experts already hard at work in the living room.

He stepped across the threshold and entered the lobby. A large mahogany wardrobe filled half of one wall. The others were hung with more pictures and a large, ornately framed mirror.

Seven years’ bad luck for someone, he thought automatically, as he saw the shattered shards of glass littering the pale green carpet. Then he thought again of the victim, whose bad luck encompassed all eternity and his guilty feelings came back in full measure.

The body was in the living room. As, currently, Lance Edwards was hovering over it with his video camera Rafferty addressed his attention to the rest of the scene.

The living room was large, around twenty feet by twenty-five, richly furnished in an old-fashioned style, with more heavy mahogany furniture and lots of old lady's knick-knacks and ornaments, not cheap gimcrack items, either. All were tasteful in a restrained way; delicate cream-coloured figurines of ballerinas performed their elegant, eternal dance beside coy Edwardian maidens of downcast demeanour.

The victim had a huge collection of long playing records; the covers that he could see were mostly classical and neatly shelved in their sleeves. The many books lining the walls also indicated the victim had been a woman of cultured interests – the ballet featured strongly as well as opera, history and travel.

The room didn't appear to have been ransacked at all. Rafferty concluded that the intruder had panicked after discovering he had a dead body on his hands.

He took a few more minutes to study the rest of the room. He noted the pile of around half-a-dozen unopened envelopes on the mantelpiece; they looked like birthday cards. Saved for when? Surely not today? he wondered.

But as he studied the postmark on the top envelope and saw it had been posted with a first-class stamp locally the previous morning, he realised his guess must be correct. It made the murder more poignant and his guilty feelings even more pungent.

He recalled Llewellyn's remark that the dead old lady was reputed to keep money in her apartment, briefly, he wondered why the elderly should persist with such a naïve practise in today's crime-ridden world. How many stories about violent burglary did the elderly members of society need to read before they adopted more sensible measures?

Beside him, Llewellyn followed his gaze to the pile of birthday card envelopes. He murmured, ‘Perhaps her killer, like the Greeks, came bearing gifts as an excuse to gain entrance?’

‘The fates are unlikely to be that kind,’ Rafferty said. ‘It would suit me if we could confine our suspect list to the family member or friend whose card isn't still here. But I don't imagine the cards will fall our way.’

He turned away from the pile of cards whose recipient would now never open them and studied the rest of the room. There was a panic button close to the small side table next to where Clara Mortimer lay. Had she not had time to press it? he wondered. Or had fear frozen her mind and limbs?

The table held a couple of framed photographs. One, in age-faded sepia, was of a young man in an RAF uniform - a brother perhaps? If so, he would, hopefully, still be alive and would be able to tell them something of the dead woman's life, routine and acquaintances.