Bad Blood (14 page)

The cooler tempered Llewellyn supplied the logical answer. ‘I would presume because such behaviour was necessary. Unless her attacker was in some way deranged and found amusement in acts of sadism, I imagine Mrs Mortimer was still conscious at that stage. How else – other than by dragging her around with him - would the murderer have been able to prevent her from hitting one of the panic buttons while he was otherwise occupied in wiping his prints?’

'Why didn't this inept individual just wear gloves?'

Llewellyn shrugged. 'Why didn't Miss Frobisher use a cloth or something similar to hold the envelope of the birthday card when she opened it? People don't think. We both know that many amateur burglars don't bother to go properly equipped. They're opportunists who see an opportunity, take it and realise where they went wrong afterwards.'

'So now you're thinking that Clara Mortimer died because some moron couldn't even manage to make a proper job of burgling a defenceless old lady?’

Llewellyn merely shrugged again and said, 'With this latest discovery, it looks that way, though that conclusion fails to address the question of why Mrs Mortimer let him into her home. It could be that her assailant was known to her and left such clues deliberately to confuse matters.'

Did that mean they were back to Amelia Frobisher as a suspect? Rafferty wondered., before he threw the forensic report down on his desk. He gazed at it in disgust, his emotions charged not simply by the brutal treatment Clara Mortimer had received, but also by his continuing dismay that Abra had still not replied to his increasingly desperate appeals for forgiveness.

All his telephone messages remained unanswered, his visits to her flat received no welcome buzz in, only the lonely, no one at home echo.

Where was she? More worrying, what was she doing and thinking? With her hormones probably out of kilter she might be capable of anything.

Her silence and the worry this engendered, was, to Rafferty, a slow torture. It was only by remaining busy that he could keep the anxiety down to a dull ache. With this thought in mind, after a quick scan of the reports, he decided to leave them till later. After reading about how the elderly Clara Mortimer had been so brutally manhandled he was in the right frame of mind to question Amelia Frobisher about her snooping.

At
first, Amelia Frobisher tried to deny tampering with Clara Mortimer's mail. But confronted with the indisputable evidence, she brazened it out.

'I'm sure any woman would have done the same when she saw her chap's handwriting on a card to a rival. I admit I was curious.' Amelia Frobisher's countenance frosted over. 'To think before I read his borrowed poetry I was thinking of taking him back. The nerve of the man, ringing me up, making up to me and asking for my forgiveness when all the time he was still making a play for Clara Mortimer.'

Beside Rafferty, Llewellyn cleared his throat. 'Be that as it may, Miss Frobisher, but you must see that your discovery of Mr Talbot's continuing betrayal gives rise to some serious questions; one of them being exactly when you found and opened the card.'

'When I found the card?' What can you mean? You know perfectly well when I found it. Right after I saw Clara Mortimer laid out dead and bloody on the floor.'

In spite of further, rigorous questioning, from this stance Amelia Frobisher wouldn't budge. In fact, instead of budging, she came back at them with an accusation

'If it hadn't come to this I would have continued to say nothing, but–'

'Say nothing?' Rafferty sat forward, careful this time to evade the sofa's too familiar embrace. 'Say nothing about what exactly?'

'About seeing Freddie Talbot hanging around the apartments on the morning Clara was murdered. I flattered myself he was trying to pluck up the courage to ring my bell, but it never rang all that morning. You don't know him. I do and poor Freddie doesn't take rejection well. He never did. I'm surprised he hasn't attempted to murder me.'

Miss Frobisher gave what could only be described as a titter as the inclination of her voice more than suggested that Freddie Talbot might well have murdered Clara Mortimer.

Certainly, if what she said about his inability to take rejection was true, the rejection he had received from the late Mrs Mortimer had, from Rita Atkins's account, been withering.

"You can ask Rita Atkins if you don't believe me,' she told them.

'But I understood from Mrs Atkins that she slept late that morning.'

'She may well have done, but if you ask her she'll tell you that Freddie was certainly lurking around the apartments in a most suspicious manner the two previous mornings. We both saw him. In fact we had a little chuckle about the silly man.'

Amelia
Frobisher had certainly managed to muddy the waters.

'Come on,' Rafferty said as he hastened down the stairs. 'Let's question Mrs Atkins and see if she can corroborate this.'

Rita Atkins seemed astonished to find herself nodding agreement to Amelia Frobisher's claim.

'But when I asked you if you'd seen anyone hanging about the apartments you told me you hadn't,' Rafferty complained.

'You asked me if I'd seen any strangers hanging about,' she was quick to correct him. 'Freddie Talbot's not a stranger. He's been coming round here for months to my knowledge, trotting about after that frosty Frobisher like an obedient poodle. It made me sick to watch him, with his, 'Yes Amelia's and his 'No Amelia's. She certainly had him where she wanted him. God knows what either of them got out of the relationship, but I suppose they must both have got what they wanted from the other or why bother?'

Chastened, Rafferty walked out of the apartments, climbed in his car and sat brooding. Now what? he wondered. Every time he turned round he seemed to gather more suspects. Trouble was he wasn't how sure to proceed with any of them.

Llewellyn climbed in the car beside him. 'What now?' he asked.

'God knows,' Rafferty replied. 'I'm damn sure I don't.'

'There's always Jane Ogilvie. We haven't yet questioned her about her many lies.'

Rafferty brightened at this reminder. 'You're right. That's a bloody good idea. It's about time she had the opportunity to explain why she lied to us about her father being dead. I feel just in the right mood to sort the wheat of the truth from the plentiful chaff of her lies.’

But, as on
the day of her mother's murder, when they got round to Mercer's Lane, Jane Ogilvie wasn't home. Only Darryl Jesmond and her children were there.

It was the first time Rafferty had seen all three half-siblings together. They were as dissimilar as it was possible for siblings – even half-siblings – to be.

Hakim, the half-Arab middle child, could be no more than sixteen, but he already sported a shadowy beard. He had extraordinary honey coloured eyes that seemed not to need to blink and was, Rafferty thought, far too handsome for his own good.

Aurora, the youngest, was also an attractive child. It was only Charles, the eldest, who seemed to have missed out on the good looks of his half siblings. Perhaps it was only the warm skin tones of Hakim and Aurora that made Charles look unnaturally pale Certainly, with his smart suit and reserved manner, he seemed to take after Clara Mortimer far more than did Jane.

Jane's eldest son lived in London. He had told them he had left his last job the previous month and was soon due to start a new position for a financial outfit in the City. Jane had told them he had snatched a few days’ break with his family before he joined his new employers and had caught the 6.30 train from London's Liverpool Street Station on the morning of her mother's murder. He had rung his mother on her mobile and arranged to meet her when she finished her night shift and treat her to a café breakfast. He had arrived at the family home with his mother only to find Rafferty and DC Mary Carmody there with the news of his grandmother's murder.

What a home-coming, Rafferty had thought as he had added Charles Ogilvie's name to the growing list of those whose alibis had still to be checked. As if it wasn't bad enough to visit his mother and find Darryl Jesmond in residence, without also learning about the murder of his grandmother.

Mary Carmody had questioned the neighbours again and had learned they were more than willing to gossip about this unwanted band of squatters in their midst. Although the neighbours’ teenage daughters had mostly seemed smitten by the broodingly handsome sixteen-year-old Hakim, their mothers all, with only one exception, said that he was a haughty, arrogant youth who acted as if all females were his inferiors. With – in the neighbours’ words – a mother who was a slut, and coming from a family that lived in a squat, they had all said much the same: what reason did Hakim think he had for acting so superior?

Hakim Mohammed Abdullah, as the younger boy insisted on styling himself, was, as Rafferty had already observed, a strikingly handsome youth. He held himself as proudly as any desert sheik and responded as briefly as possible to their questions.

But it was clear, even from his brief responses, that he had resented the white grandmother who had ignored him all of his life. I am a grandson to be proud of, his flashing dark honey eyes declared.

And when he spoke of his mother it was apparent that he considered it shameful to have to acknowledge the relationship at all.

‘Do not ask me about the woman who gave birth to me,’ he told them, with a disdainful lift to his chin. ‘It would not be honourable for me to revile her to strangers.’

Darryl Jesmond sniggered at this, which brought an angry flush to Hakim's chiselled olive cheeks.

When questioned as to his whereabouts at the time of his grandmother's death, he said, ‘I was at the local mosque, studying the Doctrine of Islam with the Imam as my Muslim faith instructs, not murdering the old lady. That is the behaviour of cowardly British youths.’ His nostrils flared as he swept a disdainful gaze over the assorted collection of full-blooded Anglo-Saxon and Celtic males currently littering the living room.

Rafferty began to see why Hakim Mohammed wasn't popular with the neighbourhood adults. Bemused that Hakim, who had been born and brought up in Essex, should choose to speak in a stylised manner that indicated English wasn't his native tongue, Rafferty felt a fleeting pity for the youth. Although apparently abandoned by his father and left to Jane's tender maternal mercies, it was clear he believed everything Arabic superior and everything English was to be despised; doubtless he would grow out of it.

Rafferty guessed that if consulted about Hakim's twisted outlook, Llewellyn would tell him that the boy's response revealed the psychological damage brought by his father's rejection. Strange, he thought, how often the undeserving parent received the lion's share of the love. Like mother, like son, for the same was true of Jane – another rejected child who, according to Mary Soames at least, had adored the father who had deserted her.

Hakim, presumably in a desire to emulate his absent Arab father, although aloof and clearly unhappy to be subjected to their questioning, nevertheless managed to retain that exquisite politeness with which Arabs were reputed to treat strangers.

Rafferty could have wished for a bit less politeness and rather more in the way of ready information. Because the boy refused point-blank to provide the Imam's name, doubtless thinking that to speak the man's name in front of infidels would somehow sully his holy virtues.

But, out of a desire to prove that not all ‘infidels’ were the ill-mannered louts that Hakim clearly believed them to be, Rafferty responded with a similar politeness and didn't press the point. Besides, the last thing he wanted was cultural offence – and all that implied – to rear its head.

To avoid such a clash, he decided it would be prudent to assign to the more culturally sensitive Llewellyn the task of checking Hakim's alibi.

Further questioning of Hakim elicited only an increasingly distant manner along with the implication that, in demanding fuller answers, they were impugning his honour.

At the end of the questions, obviously deeply offended, Hakim retreated to the far end of the room and stared at them in such a brooding manner that Rafferty wondered if the boy was putting some kind of ancient Arabic hex on them.

Frustrated, but only too aware the politically correct thought police that nowadays ruled police actions would – even in a murder enquiry – fail to back him if he continued to demand answers from this determinedly Muslim youth, he turned with relief to the more open-featured Aurora.

At least the half-brothers’ twelve-year-old half-sister seemed friendlier. A pretty girl with a café-au-lait complexion, Aurora, curled up in the corner of the tatty green settee, looked like a dusky-peach rosebud discarded amongst garden refuse.

Aurora and Darryl Jesmond seemed to have something of a mutual admiration society in operation Rafferty noted. Because when Jesmond had flung himself down on the settee after answering their rap on the knocker-free door and sat unnecessarily up close and personal to Aurora, she didn't draw back; far from it. With her precocious coquette's hair tossing and eyelash batting, she seemed to be encouraging his attentions.

Little wonder Jane Ogilvie seemed so aggressive and ready to hit out at the world, Rafferty thought, if her own daughter was prepared to compete for Darryl's attentions. He wondered whether the phrase – what price rebellion, now? – didn't occasionally enter Jane's head.