Blood on the Bones (16 page)

But he wasn't to be left to wonder about his ma's secrets for too long. As he discovered when he got back to the flat he shared with Abra.

He would have done well to take his ma's advice, Rafferty realised within half an hour of returning home. Especially as it clearly hadn't been her secrets to which his ma had so elliptically referred.

Give Abra her due, he admitted. She had waited till their delayed, evening meal was over, given him ample time to 'confess', before she pulled from her jeans a letter he had cause enough to instantly recognise.

Even so, she brought on galloping indigestion when she told him: ‘This fell out of your pocket when I picked your jacket up off the floor where you dropped it the other night.’

Rafferty swore silently. For the first time he wished he was as careful about his clothes as his Beau Brummelesque sergeant.

Llewellyn would never hang his clothes on the floor and leave Maureen, his wife, to find an incriminating blackmail letter.

But then, of course, Llewellyn, his clever, logical, university-educated sergeant, would never be so foolish as to do something which might lead to threats of blackmail.

‘So?’ Abra said. And, try as he may, he couldn't miss the hurt in her voice as she continued, ‘You were going to tell me about this, weren't you, Joe? Is it, as your mother suggested, that you were just waiting for the right moment?’

At Abra's words,
Rafferty clutched his aching belly with its shock-induced indigestion, and slumped on the settee. ‘Tell you about it?’ he said. ‘What's the point? From the sound of things ma's brought you pretty well up to speed.’

Abra shook her head, gazed at him steadily and said,. ‘No. When I showed her the blackmail letter, she said I should speak to you about what happened in April.’

Her face seemed to take on a feminist, ‘I will survive', harmony, which sent Rafferty's already down-plunging hopes reaching Titanic depths. Especially when she added in sad tones, ‘Which is what I'm doing.’

As his dinner sunk more stone-like than ever, Rafferty began to splutter. ‘I can explain.’

‘Can you?’ Abra's expression left reason to doubt this. She looked sad. And he acknowledged that he had hurt her. Again.

‘Go on, then,’ Abra invited, as she sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. ‘You can begin by explaining why you told me nothing about whatever it was that you got up to in April. But before you do that, tell me, did my cousin, Dafyd know all about it?’

‘No. Of course not.’

But clearly, his hasty answer had warned Abra that he might be being economical with the truth.

‘So when did he find out about your mysterious secret?’

‘It wasn't till later. Till near the end of the investigation.’

‘OK. I'll buy that.’ She said nothing further, but simply sat, arms folded and waited for him to begin.

Stumblingly, Rafferty related the sorry tale of his signing up for the Made in Heaven dating agency and why it was that he had decided that using his cousin, Nigel Blythe's, name as an alias had seemed like a good idea.

‘Apart from any other consideration, you know what a fuss ma would have made if she'd found out. And then there were my colleagues at the station to think about. I'd have been the butt of their jokes for weeks if they'd discovered what I'd done.’

As he drew his confession and his excuses to an end, Abra at first said nothing. Then, in a hurt voice, she asked, ‘Have you got any other secrets you've kept from me? The odd axe murder, for instance?’

‘No. there's nothing more, I swear.’ And there wasn't. Nothing that he could recall, anyway. Though, in his family, there were generally so many secrets of the criminally-edged variety, that he couldn't hope to remember them all.

‘So why didn't you tell me all about it?’ Still sounding hurt, in that voice that made Rafferty squirm, she added softly: ‘I suppose I was the only one who knew nothing?’

‘No. That's not true,’ he protested. ‘Apart from Dafyd, who figured things out for himself during the case, only Deputy Assistant Chief Constable Jack Mulcahy and ma knew about it. No one else. And the way things panned out, I didn't really have any choice about telling the last two. Believe me, I'd have sooner not.’

‘Aren't you forgetting someone else?’ Abra waved the letter under his nose. ‘Apparently your blackmailer knows all about it, as well.’

Rafferty gave a mournful nod. ‘Him, too, of course.’ And the Lonely Hearts’ case victims' murderer, he silently reminded himself. But he said that to himself rather than Abra.

‘So, what are you thinking of doing to counter this blackmailer's threat?’

Rafferty shrugged. I was thinking of lighting a few candles in Father Kelly's church, he felt like saying. The bit of the universal

God that hung around in that particular holy enclosure must, he thought, be an understanding sort, given that, unlike himself, the old priest always seemed to get away with his sins.

But he said none of this. Instead, he admitted, ‘I don't know. Yet. But I'm exploring a few possibilities.’

‘That must mean you've got some inkling as to who might be responsible for this letter,’ she was quick to point out.

There were even fewer flies on Abra than on her smart cousin, Dafyd Llewellyn, Rafferty thought, as he admitted, ‘Let's just say there are one or two’ – or ten – ‘who come to mind as possibles.’

Abra frowned at him for a few more seconds. Then she sighed heavily, rose and crossed decisively to the cupboard in the corner and removed a bottle of Jameson's and two glasses.

‘Maybe a dram or two of this will help your head free up the identities of a few more potential suspects.’

Rafferty doubted it. He'd already travelled that particular path to enlightenment several times without reaching a firm destination. But at least, if whiskey provided no answers, it brought a welcome anaesthesia.

He held out his hand for the glass. Besides, it was how he was to neutralise the blackmailer that was what he needed to know. He already had his ten most likely suspects lined up, all in a row.

As he sipped the warming whiskey, it struck him that Abra had taken his revelations with an astonishing calm. He was just congratulating himself on being saved the expected rants, raves, slamming doors and sulks when he realised they might have been preferable.

Because an Abra who reacted so calmly was simply another anxiety to add to his growing collection. What was she planning? Please God, he pleaded. Don't let her have put her head together with ma's and come up with some nefarious plot to save me from myself. If she does, I'm likely to end up in even more lumber than I'm in now, he thought.

But it seemed more a case that Abra had been brooding about the blackmail letter and his confession, rather than going over any ma- inspired plot for flaws. For later, when they had retired to bed, she became very quiet, which was unlike her. Usually, after a few drinks, she became talkative.

She waited until they had extinguished the bedside lights before she suddenly blurted out: 'Why didn't you tell me about all this before,

Joe? And why didn't you tell me about the two dead women you took such a shine to?'

In the darkness, Abra's voice sounded small and distressed as if tears weren't far away.

Rafferty sat up, turned the bedside light back on, and reached for her. Cuddling her close, he kissed her hair, breathing in its fragrance. 'I'm sorry, sweetheart. I didn't mean to upset you. That's the last thing I want to do, now or ever. And yes, OK, I did take a shine to those women, but it's you that I'm living with. You that I love.

‘I suppose,’ he admitted, ‘ that I hoped to deal with it on my own without troubling–’

‘My pretty head?’

Rafferty's lips drew back in a smile against her hair. ‘Something like that.’ He breathed deeply, thought for a second, then plunged on. ‘Only remember, my Abracadabra, that this all happened before I met you. Can you really blame me that when Dafyd introduced us and we were struck by love's dart, that I wanted you to think well of me? Hardly impressive, I thought, to show myself a fool quite so early in the relationship.’

‘No,’ she agreed. 'It's always best, I've found, to try to conceal one's more foolish traits and actions, if possible. Certainly from the world at large, anyway. Only Joe, remember this; most women suspect in their hearts that they're partnered by fools. We can only help in the concealment of this truth if we're kept in the loop.'

Although stung by Abra's words, Rafferty's lips couldn't help but curl in unwilling amusement. For in his heart of hearts, he suspected she was right. All men were fools.

Perhaps, he comforted himself, perhaps only a man who's a little less foolish than the rest is capable of acknowledging this truth.

‘So? No more secrets, Joe?’

Rafferty kissed Abra and reached for the light. ‘No more secrets,’ he agreed as he pressed the switch and plunged the bedroom into darkness. Though he was careful to cross his fingers under the bedclothes, just in case. After all, there were some secrets it would be too foolish to share. And with his family, Rafferty could never be sure that one such wasn't waiting just around the corner for him.

While
Rafferty grappled with a murder case that seemed to be going nowhere, with a 6 – 8 week old corpse with no clothes, no ID, distinguishing marks, face or convenient criminal record, and waited for some obliging dentist to claim the body as his own, he strived to cope with his taunting blackmailer. A blackmailer, moreover, who, inexplicably, had so far failed to make any demands at all.

What was he waiting for? Rafferty wondered. But answer came there none. Though at least he'd come to a decision. After all, he thought, when dealing with a low-life such as a blackmailer, it must surely help to have the advice of another low-life?

To that end, Rafferty had decided to go to see his cousin, Nigel Blythe and ask his advice about what he should do about the blackmailer. If anyone in his family knew more about ducking and diving and getting himself out of self-induced trouble, his foppish, estate agent cousin was the man to do it.

But when Rafferty that evening turned up uninvited at Nigel's expensive apartment, he didn't exactly receive a cordial welcome. Not that he'd thought such a welcome at all probable. Nigel didn't like unexpected visitors.

Understandable really. As Nigel spent a lot of time avoiding disgruntled clients whose properties he had sold at under priced values to the benefit of himself and his roguish acquaintances. Not to mention those equally disgruntled husbands whose wives had submitted to Nigel's determined charm.

Eventually, Rafferty managed to persuade his cousin to let him past the outer door to the block. But even when Nigel opened his apartment door, the welcome was decidedly cool.

‘It's not convenient,’ Nigel immediately told him. ‘I'm expecting a visitor.’

The ambience of dimmed lights and seductive music evident through the open door of the living room were confirmation that Nigel wasn't telling a porkie just to get rid of him. ‘Sorry to intrude,’ Rafferty said. ‘It won't take long, I just wanted to ask your advice.’

‘My advice?’ Nigel's elegantly superior, salon-plucked eyebrows rose enquiringly. ‘Thinking of selling that grotty little flat are you?’

‘No. It's nothing to do with the flat. It wasn't your professional advice I was after. It's to do with this.’ Rafferty pulled the blackmail letter from his jacket pocket and thrust it at Nigel.

His cousin simply stared at the letter, skimmed fleetingly over it, but made no attempt to take it for a longer study.

‘What makes you think I can help you?’ he asked coolly.

‘As you can see, it's a blackmail letter. I wanted to ask you about it.’

Still cool, Nigel seemed wary. ‘Ask me what, exactly?’ he demanded.

‘Ask your advice as to what I should do about it,’ Rafferty told him.

Nigel smiled, a more relaxed smile than he had hitherto given and said: ‘I see. Well, don't stand on the door step. Come in, my dear fellow. Though I don't know what I can advise, exactly.’

Nigel led Rafferty through into the huge, starkly modern and supposedly stylish open-plan reception room. He even offered Rafferty a drink, which he declined.

Once they had both sat down on Nigel's latest extravagance– two enormous black leather sofas, Nigel said, ‘So, I gather from the letter that this is about what you got up to in April?’

Rafferty nodded. It was humiliating to lay himself open to his cousin's contempt for the second time in less than a year. But he was desperate.

At least, to his credit, Nigel didn't laugh. He even showed himself willing to read the correspondence once more. Again, it didn't take long as the letter was brief and to the point.

Suddenly, it hit Rafferty that the letter's brevity might have been deliberate, as if the blackmailer had been concerned that a longer epistle might enable him to guess the identity of his unwelcome correspondent.

‘Sticky situation,’ Nigel remarked as he handed the letter back. ‘It certainly seems someone has you by the short and curlies, JAR. So what are you going to do about it?’

Rafferty shrugged. ‘I don't see what I can do. I have my suspicions as to who might have sent it, though.’

‘Oh really?’ Nigel looked expectantly at him and asked: ‘Who, exactly?’

Rafferty told him.

Nigel leant back against the leather-buffered comfort of his expensive settee, smiled and nodded. ‘Makes sense. You haven't spoken to any of them yet, I take it?’

‘No. There's the tricky matter of how I approach them. I still haven't found a way round it.’

‘You could always try coming clean to your boss, of course,’ Nigel suggested. ‘It's what I'd do.’

Astonished at the suggestion, Rafferty stared at his cousin. To his knowledge, Nigel had never owned up to anything in his life.

‘It would take away the blackmailer's power over you,’ Nigel pointed out smoothly. ‘Have you considered doing that?’

Rafferty shook his head. 'Not an option. Given that Superintendent Bradley would love an excuse to boot me out of the police service, I'd rather continue to put up with this blackmailer. At least he's only likely to bleed me dry financially. Bradley would hang me out to dry and invite all the usual banes of a copper's life, like the media, the PC brigade and the politicians, to take chunks out of me, too. Not to mention slapping a charge on me that was likely to land me in prison alongside some of the violent old lags I've banged up in the past.'