Bad Blood (3 page)

The second photograph was a much more recent snap. It showed a colourful seaside scene, in the forefront a young boy smiled with the gap-toothed charm of a seven-year-old. Rafferty guessed that the broadly smiling middle-aged female behind the boy was the younger version of the dead woman.

He looked round the rest of the room, but there were no other photographs. Such a paucity of photographs indicated that either Clara Mortimer had little in the way of family or that she had been remarkably unsentimental – unusual in a woman who Llewellyn had told him must be in her late sixties or early seventies.

Out of keeping with the quiet elegance of the remainder, the décor struck a jarring note. Two walls had recently been painted – badly, with runs and missing patches clearly visible – a bright, peacock blue that argued with the muted green colour scheme of the rest.

He checked the windows and noted that, like the door, none of them showed signs of having been tampered with.

At last, as Lance Edwards moved away from the victim, Rafferty walked over to the body.

Clara Mortimer lay sprawled on her back. Her skirt had rucked up as she fell, exposing sensible white knickers and skinny, old lady's thighs: the ultimate indignity of death. The right side of her forehead was staved in. The blow had crushed one eye in its socket; the other stared pitifully up at him, its pale grey iris already fading. Rafferty thought he could read a plea for help in the sightless eye as it gazed at him.

Avoiding again meeting that beseeching orb whose owner was now beyond anyone's help, he hunkered down beside the body and checked for other injuries. None was evident, not even defence injuries to her hands, though clearly she had been attacked from the front. Along with her failure to use the conveniently positioned panic button to summon aid, it was another pointer to her having been frozen with fright and unable to defend herself.

From her elegantly styled and now bloodied white hair, gathered in a French pleat at the back of her head, to the expensive cashmere jumper and dainty, real? pearls, in her ears, to the low-heeled leather shoes rather than the more common bedroom slippers of early-morning, Clara Mortimer appeared far from the usual run of sad and vulnerable elderly ladies they saw at scenes of violent death.

Rafferty stood up and turned to Llewellyn. ‘Let's go and have a look round the rest of the apartment. Then I want a word with the warden, Mrs Atkins. She should be able to let us have details of Mrs Mortimer‘s family.’ He tapped the list Llewellyn had given him. ‘The residents will all have to be questioned as a matter of priority.’

Clara Mortimer's apartment had two spacious bedrooms off the lobby, both with double beds, though the bed in the second bedroom wasn't made up and the room had an entirely unlived-in appearance.

Rafferty, expecting to find more family photographs in Clara Mortimer's bedroom, was surprised and saddened when they found none. He immediately pictured his Ma's living room with its walls crammed with family photographs and felt that, for all her obvious riches, the dead woman cut as pitiful and lonely a figure as more impoverished elderly and lone-living victims of crime.

There was no sign that anyone else lived in the apartment; there were none of the welcoming touches usual in a guest room. Old lady's clothes in expensive fabrics; summer silks and winter cashmere, were the only clothes in the cavernous mahogany wardrobes. He presumed Mrs Mortimer's husband must be dead and found himself hoping – and not just for the sake of the murder investigation – that the victim hadn't been as all alone in the world as she appeared to be.

There was one way to find out and he said to Llewellyn, ‘Let's go and speak to the warden.’

They left the rest of the team to get on with their work and went back to the ground floor where, according to the residents’ list, the warden had a small apartment. He followed Llewellyn through a door to the rear of the entrance hall. It led to a short, wholly-enclosed and dimly-lit corridor. It smelt musty. The opulence of the rest of the block ended abruptly. Here there was no expensive carpet or original artwork. In their place was cheap vinyl and bare walls, the warden's apartment seemingly squeezed in as an afterthought.

Although the morning was now well-advanced Rita Atkins, a small, slight woman, answered their knock in a none-too-clean woollen dressing gown in an unflattering shade of beige. As she peered up at them in the enveloping gloom, her expression appeared glazed. And as she stood aside to let them in, Rafferty caught a whiff of whisky. So it wasn't only the shock of sudden, violent death that had caused the glazed eyes. He could hardly blame such a tiny, vulnerable woman for taking a nip of something restorative in the circumstances. When he thought of Clara Mortimer's smashed in eye and the other one, staring up at him, Rafferty felt he could do with a restorative nip of something himself. But as Dr Sam Dally, who could always be relied upon to supply such liquid refreshment had yet to arrive, Rafferty had perforce to do without.

Rita Atkins's apartment seemed as tiny as the exterior had indicated. As she led them the short step from her apartment's front door to her living room, he took in the rest. A single, small bedroom led off the two yard square hallway. An overflowing wardrobe and a single bed took up all the floor space. Beside it was a bathroom that looked to have dimensions no bigger than a large broom cupboard. A tiny kitchen was immediately off to the left of the front door. It looked out on the covered dustbin enclosure. Rita Atkins's living room had a musty, uncared-for air and shared the kitchen's unattractive outlook.

In total contrast to the first floor apartment of Clara Mortimer, here were family photographs by the score, but he saw no sign of any interest in music or books. The only reading matter was a scattering of tabloid newspapers, a television guide with the day's viewing already marked and women's magazines of the celebrity worshipping variety. These battled for space on the small coffee table with TV and video zappers, cigarettes, an overflowing ashtray and a veritable Highland Clan of miniatures of Scotch whisky.

Mrs Atkins must have observed Rafferty's interest in the latter for, perhaps in order to staunch any suspicion that she was into solitary morning drinking, she was quick to explain them away.

‘The apartment residents bring them back for me from their various exotic holidays; probably bought on the plane home as last-minute gifts for ‘Poor Rita’, who never goes anywhere.’

Although she laughed and tried to make a joke of it, Rafferty caught a hint of resentment in her voice. He couldn't really blame her if she should dislike being patronised in return for miniatures of the least expensive whisky on the market, especially as it didn't seem likely that Rita Atkins would be in a position to frequently jet off to exotic climes.

He felt a brief urge to ask her if she could spare him one or two of the full miniatures; thankfully the urge passed.

Although she had been quick to explain that she hadn't bought the bottles herself, Rafferty noted that, although the full ones were artfully placed round the outside as if to act as a shield, most of the collection of twenty or so were empty. He wondered why she kept them. But a quick glance around the living room told him that Rita Atkins was a collector of the trifles that other people threw away; empty miniatures, curling postcards, even personally addressed junk mail seemed to be treasured. The hoarding of the latter indicated that Rita Atkins received little in the way of personal mail.

Invited to sit down, he and Llewellyn perched companionably on a scarred, red leatherette two-seater settee and waited for Rita Atkins to squeeze past and settle on the matching armchair set at right angles to the settee before he asked her if she could provide him with a list of Clara Mortimer's known visitors.

She fetched a writing pad and pen from the top of the TV cupboard and jotted down some names. It didn't take long. As Mrs Atkins kept up a running commentary while she jotted down the names, they learned that the victim's only visitors had been her daughter, Jane Ogilvie, Darryl somebody – surname unknown – the daughter's current live-in boyfriend and a woman, Mary Soames, who, as Rita Atkins explained, until Clara Mortimer's recent move to the sheltered apartments, had been a close neighbour and long-term friend of the victim.

‘Nice woman. Always has a friendly word,’ she remarked.

Unlike whom? Rafferty wondered; the late Clara Mortimer, perhaps? Though if Mrs Atkins had considered bringing any grudge against Mrs Mortimer to its ultimate conclusion, Rafferty couldn't see the tiny, bird-like Rita Atkins in the role of murderer, not least because she was unlikely to instil frozen panic in anyone, certainly not the much taller and stronger-looking Mrs Mortimer.

A few minutes’ questioning of Rita Atkins elicited the information that Clara Mortimer had been more or less estranged from her family.

‘They rarely visited,’ Rita Atkins was quick to confide, as though anxious for them to know that for all her evident wealth, Clara Mortimer didn't share her rich endowment of family ties. ‘All the other residents noticed and remarked on it.’

Rita Atkins skin, which Rafferty guessed would normally be as pallid and washed out as her dressing gown, this morning bore mottled red patches, though whether these were caused by nerves or drink, he had no idea.

‘Her daughter, Jane Ogilvie – or whatever she's calling herself this week – was only an occasional visitor. Even when she turned up, she never stayed for long. Her boyfriend – Darryl, I think he's called – he's younger than her – also turned up a few times lately, and made a half-hearted attempt at decorating for Mrs Mortimer. Trying to curry favour, I took it. But it didn't last long.’

That explained the half-finished and amateurishly applied blue paint on Mrs Mortimer's living room walls, which he had already noted. Perhaps, as Mrs Atkins said, the half-done decorating had been started in an attempt to curry favour. It hadn't worked, as Rita Atkins explained.

‘Mrs Mortimer sent him packing. She accused him of stealing from her. I heard them arguing about it on the landing outside her flat. Going at it hammer and tongs, they were, with him ranting about her being ungrateful.’

Rafferty glanced at Llewellyn. ‘When was this?’ he asked the warden.

She frowned. ‘It must be a week ago now. I haven't seen him or Jane since. Though as I said, Jane wasn't what you'd call a regular visitor. Sometimes weeks would go by between visits.’

‘Do you know where Mrs Mortimer‘s daughter lives?’ Llewellyn put in. ‘You said her surname's Ogilvie?’

The warden pulled a face. ‘I know she lives in Mercer's Lane; it's off the High Street, near the East Hill end. Go up Eastchepe and it's the first road on the right. Jane lives at number twelve, I think. But as for her name… Maybe she's calling herself Ogilvie again, or maybe she's adopted her latest boyfriend's name. Your guess as to what it might be this week is as good as mine. She has a habit of calling herself by the name of her latest live-in boyfriend,’ she explained with an accompanying sniff. 'I got the impression there's been quite a succession of them. I understand that not one of her children has the same surname – she had three children last time Mrs Mortimer mentioned them; a bit of a Heinz 57 varieties they are, too. I've seen them out together a couple of times, though I've never seen any of them visiting Mrs Mortimer since she moved here.

‘Jane Ogilvie doesn't bother to bring them to see her mother. But then, as I said, she rarely troubled to visit her mother herself. It must have been upsetting for poor Mrs Mortimer, though she never talked about it. Too proud to be willing to acknowledge how far her family had fallen, I suppose.’

Rafferty and Llewellyn exchanged another glance at this. Rafferty wondered how Mrs Mortimer had felt to be the recipient of pity from Rita Atkins. Clara Mortimer and her daughter sounded as if they must have been total opposites. Even in death Mrs Mortimer had looked well-groomed and fastidious. If she was as old-fashioned as her furniture and other possessions indicated and her daughter was as promiscuous as she sounded it was no wonder they were estranged.

Rafferty was pleased to learn about Mary Soames, the victim's previous neighbour. It sounded as if she must have known Clara Mortimer for some years so should have valuable information to share. Although Rita Atkins didn't know her address, she was able to tell them Mrs Soames lived in a big house a bit outside the southern outskirts of Elmhurst, so shouldn't be too difficult to track down.

Rafferty asked her to add the names of those among the other residents that she knew to have been on visiting terms with Clara Mortimer.

Mrs Atkins looked doubtful, but after some thought added another three names, those of a married couple, the Toombes and the other newcomer to the block, Hal Oliver.

‘I think he might have been sweet on her,’ Rita Atkins confided. ‘I saw him knock on her door once, shortly after he moved in, carrying a big bunch of roses. They were red, too.’ She sounded bemused by this and not a little envious.

But if Rita Atkins envied Clara Mortimer her gentleman caller, Rafferty, for one, was pleased to hear that the solitary Clara Mortimer had an admirer. He took the list the warden had compiled and thanked her.

‘There might have been other visitors,’ Mrs Atkins told them. She immediately added, in a sharp tone, as if worried they might think she did so in order to fill her own empty existence, ‘I don't keep a guard on the door to watch all the comings and goings, so the names I gave you are the only ones I know for certain.’