Blood on the Bones (21 page)

Her smiles were those of a person over anxious to please. From the thin lips that looked more naturally inclined to purse than smile, to the way she kept fiddling with her clothes and hair, to the way she kept fidgeting in her seat, she exuded tension.

‘I hope you didn't mind me contacting you?’ she asked Rafferty.

Even her voice betrayed her anxiety. It was high and breathy, quick, too, as if she was scared that if she didn't get the words out in a rush she wouldn't get them out at all.

‘Indeed not. We're always grateful for assistance from the public.’ Hoping to encourage her, Rafferty said, ‘You mentioned that someone has been making threats against your husband.’

‘Yes. Yes.’ A muscle fluttered high in her cheek. 'Oh, I do hope Stephen isn't going to be annoyed that I called you. He told me to ignore the threats made against him. He said the man would soon tire of making them and stop.'

‘And he hasn't?’ Llewellyn put in.

Mrs Peterson gazed anxiously between the two policeman as if worried they would think her a fool, then she admitted, in another breathy rush, ‘Well, yes. He has stopped, actually. Certainly, Stephen, my husband, has said nothing for some time about receiving more threats. But he could be keeping them from me. He knows how anxious they made me.’

‘What exactly was this man making threats about?’ Rafferty now asked. He had asked the same question when he had spoken to her on the phone, but she had been almost incoherent. He hoped, by now, she had managed to gain some clarity. ‘Was this man a patient of your husband's perhaps? One unhappy with the treatment your husband had given him?’

She shook her head. ‘No. He wasn't a patient. It was nothing like that.’ She began to play with the fussy bow at the neck of her blouse, winding the dangling string round and round her finger. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed. ‘This is very difficult. I'm beginning to think I shouldn't have rung you. Stephen told me not to. He said it might get him into trouble. But really, it was all so long ago and–’

‘This man,’ Rafferty interrupted, afraid that unless stopped, Mrs Peterson would continue in this far from enlightening manner for the rest of the day. ‘Who was he, if he wasn't a patient? Do you know?’

‘I don't know his name. All I know is that he had some grievance with Stephen about his mother's death. Apparently, she died of some pregnancy complication. I don't know the details. But he seemed to blame Stephen.’

‘Do you know when this man's mother died?’ Rafferty asked. ‘Was it recently? And what else can you tell us about him? For instance, did he ever turn up at your home to issue his threats? Or were they all made by telephone and letter? Did you see him? Could you describe him?’

‘My goodness. What a lot of questions.’

Rafferty realised he had flustered her and he cursed himself for his clumsiness. Now, slowly, he repeated his questions one at a time, not moving on to the next till he had received an answer to the previous one.

Bit by bit, slowly, tortuously, they got the story from her. The mother of the man who had made the threats against Dr Peterson had died back in the early sixties. Mrs Peterson wasn't very clear what exactly had caused the woman's death apart from the already given explanation of 'pregnancy complications'. She confirmed that this man had turned up at their home several times, the last appearance being more than two months earlier.

Rafferty and Llewellyn exchanged discreet glances as the significance of the timescale hit them. Because the cadaver in its shallow grave had been dead for around that length of time. He wondered why Mrs Peterson had waited till now to confide in them and when he asked her, she simply said that the man's silence had worried her more than his threats. She had become scared he might have been plotting something.

Mrs Peterson told them that the man issuing the threats had looked to be somewhere in his forties. ‘He was well-built and strong-looking. He seemed wild if not a little mad,’ she confided. ‘He frightened me. I was scared he might turn up here when I was on my own and break in.’

‘Understandably.’ Her description told them this man shared several traits with their still unidentified cadaver. ‘But your husband refused to allow you to contact us?’

'Yes. Stephen just said he was a sad creature who, to judge from his eyes and general demeanour, was on drugs and was to be pitied rather than reported to the police. He said the man needed help, not harassment.'

By now, overcome with her daring in defying her husband, Mrs Peterson looked ready to burst into tears.

‘You did right to tell us all this, Mrs Peterson,’ Rafferty said quickly, in at attempt to avert the latter. ‘I'm sure your husband will understand why you felt you had to contact us. Any threat should be taken seriously.’

She gave them another of her tremulous smiles. ‘Thank you, inspector. That's exactly what I thought. Exactly what I told Stephen.’ She sighed, pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. ‘I just wish he would listen to me sometimes, that's all.’

‘Poor
lady,’ was Llewellyn's comment fifteen minutes later, after they had finally managed to extricate themselves from Mrs Peterson's clingy desire for further reassurance. ‘She really doesn't seem to have grasped that we're investigating the murder of a middle-aged man. Or that the death could involve her husband. No wonder he tried to forbid her to speak to us about it. We'll have to question him again, of course.’

‘Nothing more certain,’ Rafferty agreed. ‘Let's just hope, for her sake and her husband's, that this man is still alive and well and just got bored with making his threats.’

They
found Dr Peterson in his Orchard Road surgery where they had previously spoken to him.

As on the last occasion, he didn't look pleased to see them. Though when Rafferty explained the reason for their visit, he seemed more exasperated than worried.

‘My wife is of a nervous disposition, inspector,’ he unnecessarily explained. ‘I'm sorry she's troubled you over such a trivial matter. The man issuing the threats against me finally listened to reason and understood when I explained the circumstances of his mother's death to him: that I had tried to save her life, even if it was to no avail. The blood poisoning had too strong a grip by the time she was brought to the hospital. I couldn't save her.’

‘What was she?’ Rafferty asked. ‘Another victim of a backstreet abortionist?’

Dr Peterson just nodded.

'I'd like this man's name, please Doctor. His address, too, if you have it. I'd also like to know why, when we spoke to you before, you told us that no one with any connection to the sixties, when you performed your illegal abortions, had contacted you.'

‘His name's Barry Anders. I don't know where he lives. He never told me. Though I suspect he may be living rough or in a squat somewhere in the town. As to why I chose to conceal the fact of this man's existence and the threats he made against me–’

The doctor shrugged. ‘I suppose I just thought telling you about him wouldn't help and might even delay your investigation. I knew the dead man wasn't Anders, it seemed a needless complication, easier just to keep quiet.’

‘Not so easy now that we've found out about him and that you lied to us, doctor. You must appreciate how bad it looks.’

Dr Peterson shrugged again, but made no further attempt to defend his deceit.

‘Your wife said he looked to be in his forties,’ Rafferty continued. ‘Would you agree with that?’

‘Something like that, I imagine. Though if, as I said, he was living rough, the life might well have made him look older than he was. I have reason to believe he was a drug-taker, too.’

‘So, what did he look like this man? Can you describe him?’ It would be interesting, Rafferty thought, if the doctor attempted to give them a different description to the one already supplied by his wife. However, he wasn't so foolish as to compound his errors.

‘He was tallish. He looked surprisingly well-built for a drug-taker, most of whom seem to eat little, but I wonder now whether that was more down to all the layers of clothes he wore rather than to his having well-fleshed bones. He had a scrabby beard and unkempt hair, much as you'd expect.’

‘Your wife also said he turned up at your home several times, making his threats. That must have been unpleasant. Your wife certainly found it so.’

‘I told you. My wife is highly-strung. Naturally, she became upset out of all proportion. I didn't feel the man was any real threat. I told her I'd sort it out and deal with him.’

‘And
did he, I wonder?’ Rafferty commented as, five minutes later, he and Llewellyn returned to the car and drove back through the pleasant, leafy avenues to the far from leafy environs of Elmhurst's police station. 'Better get a few bodies out to check the doss houses, street sleepers and known squats, Daff and see if we can find this Barry Anders. If he still exists at all, that is, and wasn't dealt with by the good doctor and buried before his threatening behaviour could escalate and cause Dr Peterson problems he would rather have avoided.'

But,
fortunately for the doctor, Barry Anders, the man who had issued threats against Dr Peterson, was quickly traced through the Department of Work and Pensions. Social Services had, in the interim, found him a bed-sit and promised to get him on a drug rehabilitation programme as soon as a place became available.

He was a sorry soul, this Barry Anders. As soon as he set eyes on him, Rafferty could see why Dr Peterson had dismissed his threats as nothing to worry about. Because Anders was one of those pathetic individuals who become full of bravura with drugs or alcohol, but when without either courage-inducing substance, relapsed into weak self-pity.

But, Rafferty presumed, as he gazed at the watery-eyed and sorry for himself individual that was Barry Anders, that the early loss of his mother had dealt him a cruel blow, one from which he had never recovered.

Nowadays, with so many broken families, there were thousands like Anders in the country: people who needed propping up by Social Services and charitable organisations. All needed help and support just to live, just to do the basic things that most people took for granted. For a moment, Rafferty had the urge to take Anders home to ma for some much-needed mothering, but he restrained the impulse. If she discovered a taste for taking in stray dogs, who knew where it would end?

So after asking for a look at the few documents Anders hadn't managed to lose so they could confirm his ID, they left. Rafferty, for one, couldn't help but feeling he was, somehow, walking by on the other side in leaving Anders alone in his drab, comfortless bed-sit and to the tender mercies of the 'Social'. But he didn't see what else he could do.

While Ray Payne,
Teresa Tattersall's drug-dealing ex-boyfriend was proving as hard to find and as low-profiled as most who earned their living on the wrong side of the law, to Rafferty's relief, the Almighty had condescended to give them a helping hand in one area at least.

But, even more than the Almighty, he had to thank Professor Amos, who had completed the job of reconstructing their cadaver with a remarkable and commendable speed.

Armed with pictures of Professor Amos's facial reconstruction of the dead man, Rafferty took one with him to the convent. He hoped to get confirmation that the reconstruction was a good likeness of one of their possible victims: the man who had visited the convent to learn about the late Sister Clare; Nathan McNally, Cecile's missing boyfriend; or Ray Payne, Teresa's ex-drug dealer boyfriend cum pimp.

Both Teresa and Cecile were adamant the photograph of the reconstruction bore no resemblance to either of their ex-boyfriends –

Claims easily checked out, in Cecile's case at least, as her parents and the Bells, the father and son building team, also confirmed that the reconstruction bore no resemblance to Nathan McNally. Certainly, Professor Amos's reconstruction was widely at odds with the facial features her parents had worked on with the police artist.

As for Ray Payne, he was a well-known local scumbag. They should have been able to discount him as being the victim as they had McNally. Unfortunately, Payne's features weren't dissimilar to those of the dead man as reconstructed by the professor.

And while Sister Rita and Father Kelly – who was paying one of his regular visits – were not sure either way, Mother Catherine seemed far more positive and insisted it was a good likeness to the convent's anonymous visitor in the latter part of August.

After such a time lapse, Rafferty couldn't allow himself to get too excited about Mother Catherine's certainty, particularly as it was a certainty which neither Sister Rita nor Father Kelly shared. He knew that the memory plays tricks and that in spite of the Prioress's good intentions in trying to help, she might very well be mistaken. Her weak and damaged eyesight didn't help in encouraging any such certainty.

Rafferty turned back to Father Kelly. ‘You said you left with this visitor back in August, Father. Did he take the opportunity to speak to you at all or mention where he might be going once he left the convent?’

Father Kelly gave him a sheepish smile. 'Is that what I said? Ah, to be sure and I think I might have unintentionally misled you, inspector. Now that you mention it, this young man didn't actually leave at the precise same time as me.'

It was Rafferty's turn to frown. ‘But you said–’

‘Sure and I know what I said. Haven't I just admitted as much? I made a simple mistake.’

‘How can you have made such a mistake? You gave me the distinct impression that he had left with you.’

‘Well, and so he didn't. It's a small enough matter, I'm thinking. And amn't I telling you now? No. This young man hung back to speak to Sister Rita. And as a man of the cloth, eager to get on with the saving of souls, I was in a rush to perform my other priestly duties, so I left them to it.’

Rafferty swallowed hard on the cynical eruption that Father Kelly's pious statement encouraged and turned to Sister Rita. ‘Strange, but I also gained the impression from you, Sister, that this visitor left with Father Kelly.’