Bad Blood (9 page)

‘Anything of any consequence come out yet?’ Rafferty asked hopefully as he sat on the low York stone wall that encircled the block and gazed across to the park.

Llewellyn sat beside him. ‘We've made one or two interesting discoveries from the other residents. The only residents we haven't yet been able to interview are a Mr Hal Oliver, who only moved into a small, third-floor apartment a couple of weeks ago and a Mr Toombes. Mr Oliver's away from home at present, but I understand he's expected back later today.

'As for Mr Toombes, according to his wife, he went out fishing first thing this morning and has not yet returned. By the way, I've had confirmation from another resident that Mrs Mortimer's daughter's boyfriend, Darryl Jesmond, had a row with the victim around a week ago.'

'Touché,' said Rafferty. 'I've had confirmation from a third source; no less than the victim's daughter herself. Darryl Jesmond didn't look very happy about it. For a moment there I thought there might be another murder done.'

Llewellyn looked thoughtful for a moment, then he asked, 'Did he strike you as a man who would be foolish enough, only one week later, to kill a person with whom he had a very public argument?’

‘Mr Jesmond struck me as cocky and over-confident, so it's possible. There again, as he managed to acquire a nice tan with no job and presumably, given the way he and Jane Ogilvie live, no private income, either, he must have more than his share of street wisdom. Run him and Jane Ogilvie through the computer when you get back to the station, Dafyd. For that matter, run them all through the computer, including Freddie Talbot and, when we find out their names, the fathers of Mrs Ogilvie's two younger children whose identities I forgot to establish. Now, tell me about these interesting discoveries you mentioned.’

Llewellyn told him that one of the residents, a Mrs Toombes, had said that somebody had rung her and her husband's apartment bell that morning at around 6.45. Mrs Toombes, who had answered the ring, had thought little of it at the time and it was only later, on being interviewed, that she had mentioned it to Llewellyn.

Mr and Mrs Toombes lived in one of the five smaller apartments on the third floor, the one immediately above that of the victim. Mrs Toombes, to judge from the nervous chatter with which she greeted them after they had taken the lift to the top floor and knocked on her door, was no longer in any doubt about the possible significance of her information. She seemed to have worked herself into something of an anxious state about it.

Mrs Toombes was a large, ungainly woman and her anxiety struck a jarring note as if it sat uncomfortably on her slow-moving body.

After several minutes of earnest lamentations about the late Clara Mortimer and the repeated wish that her husband would return home, she urged them into her main room, a small lounge-diner, cluttered with the usual three-piece suite with a small, folding oak table in the window. A 28" television dominated the room and not only by virtue of its size for it was currently loudly blaring out some daytime quiz show.

Mrs Toombes turned the set off and invited them to sit down. Then, clearly troubled, she confirmed what Llewellyn had already told him.

‘I've been wondering since if it was the killer trying to gain entrance here,’ she confided. In her agitation, her large hands clutched at one another. ‘Imagine, if I'd opened the door, it might have been me he killed, rather than poor Clara Mortimer.’

‘What did he say, this man when you answered the entry-phone?’ Rafferty asked Mrs Toombes. ‘Can you remember?’

Obviously still upset and fixated on the fact that Clara's fate could so easily have been hers, Mrs Toombes frowned and asked him to repeat his question.

When he did so, she bridled. ‘Of course I can remember.’ His question seemed to annoy her. Her voice was raised as she replied. ‘There's nothing wrong with my memory. I haven't been able to get his words out of my head. They sounded so ordinary, so normal. That's what's so strange.’

‘I can appreciate how upset you must feel, Mrs Toombes. But if you could just let us know what he actually said?’

‘I'm coming to that. Please don't try to rush me. My husband's always doing it and it always gets me flustered.’ She paused, stared at the silent TV with a frown as if she missed its loud companionship. Having gathered her thoughts, she went on. ‘Anyway, he seemed to be looking for someone called Esme. He must have been late because he seemed keen for this Esme to know that he had hurried. ‘I ran, Esme,’ he said.

'I told him that he not only had the wrong apartment, but the wrong block, because I know there is no woman named Esme living here.

‘He didn't even thank me for putting him right,’ she complained. ‘He just put the phone down on me. I thought no more about it till I learned that Mrs Mortimer had been murdered.’ She shivered at the realisation that she, rather than Clara Mortimer, might have been the murderer's chosen victim.

‘Did you get any idea as to this man's age?’ Rafferty asked.

‘Not really, no. Though it wasn't the voice of an elderly man. Other than that, he could have been any age up to his forties.'

Defensively, as if she felt he was criticising her, she added, 'He did only say three words.’

Rafferty forced a smile. ‘Never mind. Maybe something else will strike you about this man in due course.’

Mrs Toombes's, ‘Maybe,’ sounded even less confident than Rafferty's.

After Rafferty and Llewellyn had thanked Mrs Toombes and departed, they had a quiet conference on the landing.

‘What do you think, Dafyd? That some tearaway was ringing bells at random to see if anyone was foolish enough to let him in?’

‘They may well have been,’ Llewellyn observed. ‘But it seems doubtful that Mrs Mortimer would have been so foolish as to do so. From what we've learned of her, she didn't seem to be the type of trusting old lady who become victims of crime.’

‘No. That's what I thought, too. But she's become a victim of crime all the same, so I don't think we can totally discount the possibility.’

Rafferty's lips pursed. ‘Wonder why this early-morning bell-ringer should have hit on the name Esme as the preferred open-sesame. It's hardly a common name, even amongst elderly ladies.’

‘Certainly, none of the female residents of this block bear such a name, not even as a middle name.’ Llewellyn confirmed Mrs Toombes's claim. ‘And none of the other residents reported anyone ringing their apartment bells early this morning. I've wondered if this man didn't just start at the top bell on the left, which is the one to the Toombes's apartment and then moved down to Mrs Mortimer's, which is the next in line.’

‘And struck pay-dirt, you mean?’

Llewellyn nodded. ‘Of course, the difficulty with that is the character of Mrs Mortimer.’

‘Mm. That is a bit of a poser,’ Rafferty agreed. ‘For a woman who refused to socialise with her neighbours to be willing to so naïvely open her door in the early morning, strikes against all reason. On the other hand, she is dead and dead because of a violent assault.’

He sighed and made for the stairs, followed by Llewellyn. ‘Perhaps we're expecting complications when the case is not complicated at all. Maybe it is as simple as a lonely woman letting her guard down and paying the ultimate price.’Rafferty paused, then asked, ‘Apart from Mr Oliver and Mr Toombes, have all the residents been questioned?’

‘Yes.’ Llewellyn broke off as DC Jonathon Lilley had a quick word with him. ‘But I gather Mr Oliver's returned home now. I instructed Lilley here to get a statement from him on his return. But perhaps you'd prefer to speak to him yourself?’

Rafferty glanced at his watch. He was surprised to find it was almost 6.00 p m. Tempted to make an early finish, Rafferty remembered he was meant to have altered his laissez faire attitudes. If he abandoned such an alteration so soon after the change, no one would ever notice it.

'Why not?' he asked, 'though, seeing as Mr Oliver was away from home at the relevant time, it's unlikely he'll be able to tell us anything. Still, it's always best to be thorough and in view of the red roses Mrs Atkins claimed he presented to the victim, now seems like a good time to ask him about his relationship with the late Mrs Mortimer.'

Llewellyn nodded and made for the stairs. Just in time, Rafferty remembered that, like the Toombses, Hal Oliver lived on the third floor. No way was he traipsing up all those stairs. He called to Llewellyn, 'Come on, let's take the lift. That's what it's there for. There's no point in wearing ourselves out when we need all our energies for the investigation.'

Although Rafferty, a smoker from the age of thirteen, had, this time, managed to remain off cigarettes for some months', his body seemed to have gained no discernible benefit; for he still became puffed if he climbed more than one flight of stairs. He was half-tempted to start smoking again.

As Llewellyn retraced his steps and joined Rafferty in the apartments' fair-sized lift, he sniffed the air and commented, 'You're still off the cigarettes, I take it?'

Rafferty nodded and pressed the button for the third floor.

'You're doing well. I know it's not easy.'

Rafferty's smile was more a half-grimace. The clean living Llewellyn, of course, had never smoked so how did he know how hard or easy it was to give up the habit of two thirds of a lifetime?

'I know there are one or two backsliders at the station who insist that they've still given up,' Llewellyn confided. 'They don't seem to realise the smell of stale smoke from their clothes is a giveaway that they've started smoking again on the sly.'

Rafferty, not entirely convinced that he would get to the end of this investigation without being numbered amongst the backsliders, had his excuse ready, just in case. 'Abra's started smoking in the house again. She said she's fed up having to go outside on the balcony every time she wants to smoke.'

To give Abra her due, she had continued this self-imposed banishment for two months. 'I thought she might keep it up, but she's hasn't. It's tough, Dafyd, to continue not smoking when you live with a smoker.'

Abra was Rafferty's girlfriend. Llewellyn, Abra's cousin, had introduced them in April, some two months' ago. She and Rafferty had jelled at the very first meeting.

Llewellyn gave him a sideways look from his knowing dark eyes as the lift doors opened with a groan surprising in such a plush block and they emerged on the top floor.

'Is that the sound of you getting your excuses ready?' he asked as if he had read Rafferty's mind.

'Certainly not,' Rafferty indignantly replied.

He consulted his list and marched purposefully forward. ' Here's Mr Oliver's apartment. Number 3c.'

He rapped on the door, loudly enough to block any more attempts by his sergeant at reading his mind and possible intentions.

Although
Hal Oliver, at seventy-five, had a face as cadaverous as Mick Jagger's and a neck as ropey as a yacht's equipment locker, when they met him in the entrance hall of the apartments, he still had a rake-hell's attraction about him, accentuated by the thick white hair, which flowed, with a Cavalier dash, around his sinuous neck.

His trousers were creased, attesting to the fact that currently there was no woman in his life. But for all his creased trousers and neck, for all the cadaverous folds of flesh, the confidence good looks brought was still in evidence. It was there in the bold bright blue gaze and the repose of his hands, which lay at ease on the arms of his chair as they questioned him.

When he led them in to his small apartment, Rafferty noted Hal Oliver walked with that upright, slow-paced, slight swagger of a confident man at ease with himself.

Oliver's apartment had as rakish and lived-in an air as did the man himself. For all that he had only lived there for a short time he had already put his stamp on it. There was a huge chestnut brown leather settee in front of the fireplace with a smaller one at right angles to it. Several battered leather trunks lined the walls and, above the trunks, hung many photographs of foreign parts, with Hal Oliver at various ages and with assorted attractive young women, featuring in most of them.

After he had explained the recent tragic events, Rafferty said, 'I understand you were friendly with Mrs Mortimer? Even gave her flowers – red roses.'

Hal Oliver gave a rueful laugh. 'These old biddies don't miss much, do they?' he commented. 'Though trying to be friendly would be a more accurate description, Inspector,' he corrected. 'I liked her, for all that most of the other residents said they found her standoffish. Standoffishness is something I regard as a challenge. Besides, I think I'm right when I claim we share similar interests. Clara,' he paused, then as if belatedly realising such a show of intimacy in front of the police was unwise, he corrected himself and became more formal. 'Mrs Mortimer – was a reserved woman.'

His blue eyes sparkling, Oliver flashed his devil-may-care smile. 'You could say the flowers I bought were merely a supplicant's offering, designed to knock a brick or two out of the wall she seems – seemed – to have built around herself.'

'I understand you've only recently moved to this apartment block,' Rafferty said. 'Did your friendship with Mrs Mortimer only start when you moved here?'

Hal Oliver nodded, then added enigmatically, 'Though, in a way, you could say we've known one another for years. I mean in another life, of course. I was just beginning to make Clara – Mrs Mortimer – appreciate that fact. Now-' He broke off, then made an expansive gesture from hands in which the veins stood out prominently. 'Well, you know the rest.'