A Thrust to the Vitals (12 page)

This, to the ambitious, determinedly career-minded and hungry-for-good-publicity, Bradley, would have been far worse than Rafferty’s previously considered scenario of Seward possibly making a cuckold of him. It was certainly a treachery unlikely to be either forgiven or forgotten by Bradley.

Which made his attendance at the reception even more intriguing.

OK, it was well known that Bradley, as if he was a film star rather than a policeman, would have gone to the opening of the proverbial envelope, just to get his face in the papers. Given this propensity, it was possible that he had managed to swallow his grudge against Seward for a short while so as to indulge his ego.

But even if that partly explained his presence, it didn’t preclude the possibility that Bradley had indulged rather more than his ego that night.

Chapter Eight

After what he had learned from Bradley himself as well as what Bill Beard had confided, Rafferty was curious to find out if the two security men at the hotel would support Bradley’s claims that a young blonde woman had been another late arrival at Seward’s party. Or, indeed, if anyone could back up his assertion about her entering Seward’s bedroom late on the night he was murdered.

But, as with his questioning of both Bradley and Beard, these were conversations he preferred to remain confidential. So, before he left the station, Rafferty took the time to make sure that Llewellyn had a pile of statements to wrestle his way through and thus provide Rafferty with an excuse for leaving him behind.

He thought he’d got away with it, but Llewellyn stopped him just as he reached his office door.

‘Is there something you’re not telling me about this case?’ he asked, so quietly that Rafferty almost didn’t hear the question — he wished. But, tempted as he was to ignore it, Rafferty knew better than to do so. If he did, it would only encourage Llewellyn to believe he was being kept in the dark about something, which was the last thing Rafferty wanted. Especially as it was true.

Instead, Rafferty turned and directed a look of puzzlement towards his sergeant. ‘Something I’m not telling you?’ he repeated, careful not to overdo the air of injured innocence. Polite bafflement was the note to aim for. ‘How do you mean, exactly?’

Llewellyn gazed at him so steadily that Rafferty almost gave in to the urge to indulge in some nervous fiddling — with his hair, his tie, the change in his pocket. He restrained this revealing urge with difficulty and waited for Llewellyn to respond.

‘It’s just that I get the feeling you’re shutting me out. And you keep vanishing. Each time, I’ve looked around the station, but haven’t been able to find you anywhere.’

Rafferty tried a nonchalant laugh; it sounded strained even to his ears. ‘You just didn’t look hard enough, Daff. I was here. Where else would I be?’

‘I don’t know. Which is the reason I asked if you’re keeping something from me.’

Nonchalance hadn’t worked, so Rafferty tried bombast. ‘Am I meant to be chained to my desk 24/7 on the off-chance that you might want to speak to me?’ he demanded. ‘Why didn’t you try my mobile?’

‘I did. It was switched off. I asked around and nobody else had seen you either.’

‘Checking up on me?’ Rafferty’s shrug made another attempt at nonchalance. ‘So, I locked myself in a cubicle in the bogs for a while. I had the trots.’

‘For two hours? Perhaps you should see a doctor? Though you certainly weren’t in the toilets when I checked.’

Rafferty had had enough of this conversation. ‘What is this? he demanded. ‘The Spanish Inquisition?’ He ignored Llewellyn’s last comment and addressed the one in the middle. ‘And perhaps
you’re
the one who should see a doctor? A trick cyclist. You’re getting paranoid, man.’

Llewellyn denied it. ‘It’s only paranoia when your obsessions aren’t true. When they are it’s called realism. Or truth as opposed to fantasy.’

Rattled and cross, Rafferty opened the office door, threw a ‘You’re nuts,’ over his shoulder, and removed himself from the room as quickly as his size twelves would allow. God, he thought, as he headed along the corridor and made for the stairs at a run in case his questioner should decide to chase after him, Llewellyn turning inquisitor was all he needed. Haven’t I got enough to cope with without having to fend off my own sergeant’s suspicions? he muttered self-pityingly to himself.

The two security guards, Jake Arthur and Andy Watling, both denied letting any mystery blonde visitor into the suite late on the evening of Seward’s party. They were so vehement about the matter that they insisted Rafferty look at the security tapes.

Rafferty would have done this anyway, as a matter of routine, as soon as possible. Conscious of his need to try to keep his super’s presence at the party low-profile,, Rafferty, who had picked up Hanks and Tim Smales on his way out, set them the task of checking through the hotel’s earlier tapes of the evening. He kept for himself the task of checking the later ones; those that should feature the late-arriving Bradley and his wife, Mickey and the mysterious blonde that Bradley claimed to have seen.

It was some time later, when Rafferty, in the security guards’ subterranean lair in the hotel, sat back, satisfied, after having viewed the final security tape. Because, of Bradley’s late-arriving blonde, there wasn’t a sign. Strangely, the only existence she seemed to have was in the super’s imagination.

So why had he lied? And with a lie that was so easily disproved? Had he just panicked?

It certainly seemed that way. Rafferty couldn’t help but wonder just how much Bradley must be sweating at the certain knowledge that his deception would be discovered. Unless he had something else to sweat about than just being found out in a clumsy deception? Such as murder. Given what Rafferty now knew about Bradley’s antipathy for Seward, the thought was one that refused to go away

After they had finished checking out the security tapes, Rafferty sent Hanks and Smales back to the station, but before he followed them, he asked the security men to direct him to the maintenance department. The wood chisel that had removed Sir Rufus Seward from his wealthy, comfortable life, was a professional tool, as Mickey had said, rather than the cheap type available at DIY stores.

The chisel hadn’t looked new, either. It could have been stolen from any carpenter’s workshop when the carpenter’s back was turned. He thought it worth checking out if the Elmhurst’s maintenance department was missing a chisel.

Unfortunately, this line of thought proved inconclusive as Des Carpenter, the aptly named man responsible for basic maintenance, turned out to be a man after his own heart. When he knocked and entered, Rafferty saw, as his hopes sank, that there were tools everywhere. The workshop looked even more chaotic than Rafferty’s own office. But he asked anyway.

Des Carpenter, after Rafferty had introduced himself and asked if the man was missing a wood chisel, simply scratched his head, shrugged and said, ‘Search me. I have people coming in here all the time when my back’s turned and helping themselves to stuff.’

‘Don’t you keep the door locked?’

‘I used to. But I‘d already lost my key and then I lost the spare and had to force the door open. I’ve never got around to replacing the lock. Wouldn’t make a lot of difference if I did as the other staff would only help themselves to the spare in the key cupboard.’

‘Could you check anyway?’ Rafferty asked.

But, although Des did as he was bid, it was a half-hearted effort at best and even when he said that he didn’t
think
he was missing a chisel, the lack of conviction in his voice meant his claim was hardly conclusive.

Rafferty thanked Carpenter and returned to the car park. Beneath overcast skies that matched his sombre mood, he drove back to the station to pick up Llewellyn for the next round of interviews.

As he negotiated the busy roads filled with Christmas shoppers who darted dangerously through the traffic as some must-have bargain on the other side of the street took their eye, he pondered how he could best use the discovery about the super’s deceit to Mickey’s advantage.

In one way, on top of his earlier failure to come forward about his presence at the party, to have caught the super out in a second deception could provide welcome additional ammunition should he need it. But he knew it would have to be handled carefully, very carefully, if it wasn’t to blow up in his face.

It was fortunate, from a time-saving point of view, that even though the three members of Seward’s staff who had attended the reception had now returned to their late employer’s Norfolk estate, most of the remaining suspects lived in or around Elmhurst itself.

Samantha Harman, the party waitress, and Randy Rawlins, the barman, both lived in staff accommodation at the Elmhurst Hotel, which was the nearest, so as he pulled out of the station yard, a disconcertingly quiet Llewellyn beside him, Rafferty decided to begin the next round of questioning with them. And even if neither of them had had anything to do with Seward’s murder, it was possible they had noticed something, the significance of which they had perhaps not realised at the time. Hotel staff were trained to keep their eyes open and their wits about them, even if it was more to prevent petty pilfering by the guests rather than murder.

They spoke to Samantha Harman first. But beyond confirming that Seward had been offensively rude to Rawlins, she was able to tell them little.

‘I was kept very busy,’ she explained. ‘It might have been a buffet reception, but you’d be surprised how many of these bigwig types still demand table service. Too up their own arses and used to being waited on hand and foot, some of them, to get off their fat backsides and serve themselves. I didn’t even get a chance to visit the bathroom during the earlier part of the evening.’

‘What about later? Say from around ten-thirty when Sir Rufus retired to his bedroom — did you leave the main reception room at all after that’

She shook her head and supplied the names of several of the guests she thought might have noticed and be able to back her up — one of these guests was the party wallflower, Dorothea Bignall, whom Rafferty thought the most likely to have noticed the waitress’s comings and goings.

They thanked her and, after asking for directions, headed for Randy Rawlins’ room. Rawlins, the weedy boy that Rafferty remembered from his youth, and who had been everybody’s victim, had become, if not any less weedy, then a lot less timid. Perhaps ‘coming out’ as gay had helped provide him with more confidence. Certainly, in Rafferty’s estimation, even in these ‘gay and proud of it’ times, he would have had to find some confidence to proclaim his sexuality.

Randolph Rawlins, in his spare time and out of the staff uniform of white shirt, black trousers and scarlet waistcoat, was, Rafferty discovered, quite the snappy dresser. And although Rawlins’ room was small, its limited space was restricted even more by clothes and clothes rails. They cluttered all of the area that wasn’t occupied by the bed and side table. There was even one rail crammed behind the door — as Rafferty found out when he was forced to compromise his professional dignity and squeeze through the nine-inch gap that was all this obstruction allowed.

This
infra dig
moment, as his Latin-quoting sidekick would doubtless refer to it, brought an unwelcome flashback to his early morning arrival at Mickey’s flat after his brother had confessed he was in the frame for Seward’s murder. Momentary panic gripped his throat as the difficulty of extricating them both from the mess hit Rafferty anew and he had to swallow hastily to restore some measure of calm. But, he reminded himself, as long as Mickey had the sense to keep out of sight, at least during daylight hours when there were likely to be people about, and no one made a confirmed ID, they were in with a chance.

Besides, he could do little or nothing to prevent Mickey behaving foolishly. He had to concentrate on the investigation and the here and now if he was to have any hope of helping his brother.

And as he followed his own advice and concentrated on Rawlins, Rafferty acknowledged a certain surprise that the hotel didn’t, on health and safety grounds if nothing else, demand their employee had a bit of a clear out.

One clothes rail, as Rafferty saw when he had finally fought his way through the limited door opening, contained nothing but shirts: plain, frilly, silk and satin in all the colours of the rainbow and then some. Every style and hue was there. The same with the trouser and suits rails. Rafferty had to blink to reassure himself that he hadn’t wandered into Elton John’s room by mistake. And, after he had given Llewellyn the nod to begin the questioning, he found himself wandering how the waiter could afford so many clothes. Most of them looked to be from the high gloss end of the designer trade — something the snappy-dressing Llewellyn should be able to confirm.

From his perch on the radiator, a pillow beneath him to prevent scorch marks, Rafferty, only half listening to Randy Rawlins’ monotone answers to Llewellyn’s questions, took a swift inventory of the garments hanging from the rails and reckoned there must be several thousand pounds worth of schmutter there. He certainly liked quality, did Randy. Yet, as Rafferty knew, most workers in the hotel business earned low wages. Of course, he would get tips and he had no accommodation costs to find, but even so….

Rafferty told himself that how Randy Rawlins managed to afford such self-indulgence was none of his business. Not unless it had any connection to Seward’s murder. This thought brought him back to Superintendent Bradley and why he had lied about seeing the blonde. It could only be to divert suspicion away from himself. But that didn’t make any sense, because even in a panic, Bradley was enough of a policeman to realise that inventing this non-existent blonde was the surest way of concentrating that suspicion.

Bradley had admitted that he’d visited the suite’s main and only non-en-suite bathroom, a bathroom situated close to the short corridor that led to Seward’s bedroom. It would have been the work of moments only to instead enter Seward’s room, creep up on him as he sat at his desk with his back to the door, and stab him.