RAFFERTY & LLEWELLYN BOXED SET: BOOKS 1 - 4

by Geraldine Evans

  Massey had not done his time at an open prison; his had not been a white-collar crime and the cushy billets were mostly reserved for crooked accountants, bent city whizz-kids and perjuring politicians. Instead, cultured, sensitive Frank Massey had spent his time with the violent criminals, rapists, murderers, pimps and pushers.

  Rafferty needed to do no more than recall the haunted look in Massey's eyes when he'd introduced himself and revealed the reason for his visit to know what he must have suffered. Even eight years had evidently not been long enough to dim the memory. He'd have been picked out as a soft target practically on his arrival; a natural victim.

  Rafferty found it hard to believe that Massey would be willing to risk a repeat of the experience. Earlier, he'd concluded that the only thing that would make him take the risk would be if his daughter had pleaded for his help; then he might be prepared to sacrifice himself. But they were pretty sure now that she had had nothing to do with Smith's murder.

  WHEN HIS CAR HAD FINALLY slid its way to the office, he was dragged away from his internal arguments by Llewellyn, who remarked that whether Massey was a murderer or just a fool, they still had other suspects to keep them busy while the hunt for Massey continued.

  'True,' Rafferty admitted. 'And no leads for any of them.' He shoved his hands deep in his trouser pockets. Something rustled in the left-hand side one, and idly, he pulled out the piece of paper.

  It was Mrs ffinch-Robinson's list of poachers, he discovered, and a guilty dart pricked his conscience. Like Llewellyn's unwanted and unasked-for tickets for Shakespeare, he had appeased Mrs ffinch-Robinson by the simple expedient of shoving her list in his pocket and forgetting all about it.

  'What's that?' Llewellyn enquired. 'Your Christmas list?'

  'Bit late for that, if so. No. It's a list of local poachers, courtesy of Mrs ffinch-Robinson. She seemed to think it might be useful.'

  Llewellyn reached for it. 'She could have a point.' He jabbed a bony finger at the name and address at the top of the list. 'This chap, Fred Skeggs, lives right by Dedman Wood.'

  'He'll have already been checked out by the house-to-house teams,' Rafferty reminded him. 'And, presumably, had nothing to tell them.' He remembered, a lifetime ago it seemed now, reassuring Mrs ffinch-Robinson that her poachers would be checked out. It hadn't been a lie, but they perhaps hadn't been interviewed in depth, as she had undoubtedly expected.

  'Still,' Llewellyn persisted, 'a personal visit might prove rewarding. And a least we'll feel we're doing something.'

  Rafferty shrugged. Most of his irritation at Mrs ffinch-Robinson's high-handed ways had now faded. Although she still rang up regularly to enquire into the progress of the case, Rafferty had left orders that she wasn't to be put through to him: Llewellyn could do diplomacy and soul-soothing so much better than he could. But, now that he had been reminded of the list, he decided he might as well look into it, to appease his conscience, if nothing else.

  FRED SKEGGS, THE FIRST poacher on Mrs ffinch-Robinson’s list, looked about a hundred, though he was probably no more than seventy. Small and wizened, his eyes were as sharp and full of mischief as the nanny goat who had chased them up the path to Skeggs's isolated cottage.

  'So, Mr Policeman.' Fred fixed Rafferty with a gimlet eye. 'What makes you think I can help you?' he asked, after Rafferty had explained why they had called. 'Sit, sit.' He waved his hands at them. 'You're making my kitchen look untidy.'

  Rafferty couldn't imagine that their presence could make the tiny room look any more like a rag and bone merchants than it did already, stuffed to the rafters as it was with verminous looking clothing, rusting enamel basins, bait boxes and discarded tobacco tins, but he looked around for a chair. There was only one; a stout, wooden affair that was clearly the old man's. Glad he had put on his oldest, darkest suit that morning, Rafferty sat on a pile of dusty sacks and gestured Llewellyn to find a pew. There was nothing else but a pile of dog-eared and grubby copies of the Farmers Weekly to sit on—an ancient job lot that had been obtained at a sale by the look of them.

  Llewellyn's face was a study as, with a cloud of dust wafting around him, he perched his expensive, pale-grey suited posterior on this precariously balanced edifice.

  Rafferty wondered if Llewellyn’s Puritan soul appreciated minimalism of this extent. He choked back a chuckle, but Fred Skeggs, obviously less inhibited, sniggered and flashed his toothless gums at them. 'You'll take a cup of tea with me? Not often I entertain peelers. Usually, it's t'other way about.'

  'Tea would be very welcome,' Rafferty thanked him, ignoring Llewellyn's quick shake of the head. 'We're trying to find anyone who might have been in Dedman Wood last Thursday night between say eight and ten.'

  Fred turned his head sharply away from the blackened stove. 'What would I be doing in the woods at that time of night?' Rafferty went to break in but the old man forestalled him. 'Given up the poachin', Mr Policeman, iffen that's what you're gettin' at. Too old for such larks, now.'

  Rafferty doubted this. For his age and in spite of looking about a hundred, Fred Skeggs seemed pretty sprightly. Rafferty kept his eyes averted from the outhouse, where, through the begrimed windows, he could make out what looked suspiciously like the small bodies of hare and pheasant hanging from the roof. Instead, he nodded at the stringy mutt who hogged the opposite side of the hearth to that occupied by his master's chair. 'I wasn't implying you might have been in the woods poaching, Mr Skeggs.' Not much. 'No, I thought maybe you walked your dog there as it's right on your doorstep.'

  'Old Growler?' Fred scratched under his filthy cap as though considering Rafferty's readily-provided excuse. But just then, Old Growler staggered to his feet, wobbled his mangy body around on arthritic legs, then slumped again with a weary old-age sigh to toast his other side at the fire and Fred abandoned the idea.

  'Takes himself for a walk iffen he wants one. Not that he bothers much now. Goes no further than the back garden to do his business.' He turned back to the stove and made the tea, handing them theirs before he hitched up his baggy string-belted trousers and sat down.

  The mugs were cracked, badly stained, handle-less; the tea dark brown and scaldingly hot. Although he kept a nanny goat who had a kid suckling, Skeggs evidently didn't believe in wasting the goat’s milk on policemen.

  Rafferty quickly found a space on the cluttered table and put the hot mug down before it stripped the skin off his palm. He noticed Fred seemed impervious to the heat. His first proffered excuse being rejected, Rafferty tried another. 'What about you, Mr Skeggs? You look as if you'd still enjoy a stroll in the moonlight on a crisp night?'

  Skeggs appeared startled at this suggestion. Rafferty had often noted that most countrymen were unsentimental about nature's beauties. Skeggs was no different, and gave the impression that the only interest he had in nature was for the bits of it that he could kill and eat. But he seemed prepared to consider the idea that he was a closet nature lover and Rafferty nodded encouragement. If Fred had seen or heard something on Thursday night, he wanted to know about it. He was prepared to turn a blind eye to a little light poaching.

  'Thursday night, you say?'

  Rafferty gave another encouraging nod and Fred rubbed his whiskery chin thoughtfully. Rafferty half expected the desiccated skin to crumble away like the dried up leaves it so resembled.

  However, Fred's face stayed intact and suddenly he barked at Llewellyn, who, unable to stretch across to place the mug on the table in case he tumbled from his precariously balanced paper throne had been passing the piping hot brew from hand to hand. 'Are you going to drink that tea or play with it, young feller? Made it special, I did.'

  Llewellyn, obliged to humour the old man if they wanted to get anything out of him, screwed up his eyes in the manner of one taking a particularly nasty medicine and obeyed, his Adam's apple shuddering with each swallow, as though attempting to jump aside from the molten brown stream as it gushed past. Scarlet and breathless, Llewellyn lowered the empty mug, only to have F
red leap from his chair, his gums bared with a peculiarly malevolent humour, as he snatched the mug. 'Can see you enjoyed that. I'll make you another.'

  Llewellyn looked aghast, and Rafferty frowned him to silence. It was too late anyway, as Fred thrust another piping hot brew at him. Rafferty buried his grin in his own mug. Fred's crockery must offend against every hygiene regulation known to man, not to mention the extra ones that only ‘elf and Safety’ and the hygiene-obsessed Llewellyn’s of this world knew about. Llewellyn would have to comfort his Virgo-pure soul with the thought that the mug's plentiful germs would be killed by the boiling water. Most of them, anyway. Rafferty turned his attention back to Fred Skeggs.

  'We were talking about last Thursday,' he reminded him. 'And whether you might have enjoyed a stroll in the woods that night.'

  Fred nodded and confided artlessly, 'As it happens, I do like a bit of a stroll.' He sat down again and sipped his tea, slapping his sunken lips together in obvious enjoyment. 'And, as you say, the wood's right on me doorstep. Shame not to make use of it.'

  'That's what I thought.'

  'Mind, as I told them other young fellers you sent, I'm not sayin' I was there. Not for certain. Might not have been Thursday.' He studied Rafferty through the steam rising from his mug. 'Might have been another night. Mebbe you can jog me memory?'

  Rafferty had anticipated that a bit of memory jogging might be required and had brought the necessary. He pulled a £5 note from his pocket and placed it on the table.

  Faster than any professional conjuror, Fred made it disappear, before taking another sip of tea and confiding, 'It were Thursday night, now I think about it. Funny how it comes back to you. Mind,' he added, as though reluctant to get Rafferty's hopes up, 'I can't tell you what the time were. A light in the wood, it was, that drew me attention. Someone had a torch and I could see a car parked right on the verge near the old Hanging Tree. Thought it were that sneakin' old bugger, Jenkins at first, and though I were only enjoyin' the moonlight, like you said, I were about to scarper.'

  Jenkins was the official warden of the nature reserve. An unctuous, humourless man, Rafferty had found him, and one who would, without doubt, insist on prosecuting poachers, so he could understand Fred's concern.

  'Then I 'ear this woman muttering under her breath. Pretty rum. Don't get many wimmin in the woods at night, certainly not alone. Not nowadays, with so many of these 'ere crim'nals about. Anyways, I creeps forward and takes a look. She were just getting' in her car by the time I got close.'

  'Would you recognise her again?' Rafferty asked quickly, eager for a firm description.

  Fred looked at him as if he were mad. 'She were just a woman,' he told him, in tones that made Rafferty realise that, to a solitary man like Fred Skeggs, women, like Chinamen to a Little Englander, were probably all alike. 'Mind, she had a big arse.' He cackled, drawing his lips over his gums. 'I remember thinking that fat rump'd make many a fine meal.'

  'What about the car?' Llewellyn asked in a strangled voice as his scalded throat recovered, determinedly wiping his hands and mouth with a pristine white handkerchief as though he felt he would never feel clean again.

  Rafferty bit his lip as he noticed that, this time, Llewellyn was careful not to finish his tea, just in case Fred’s sadistic streak proved perverse enough to insist on another refill.

  'Were you able to make out what style of car it was or to get the registration number?'

  Fred spared the Welshman an even more scornful look; he seemed to have a vast store of such expressions. 'Are ye daft, man? The moon had gone in and it were black as my old dad's fingernails under the trees. Besides, I don't take me reading glasses with me. Not when I'm strolling in the woods, enjoyin' the moonlight. And cars is all the same to me.'

  Like wimmin, Rafferty muttered under his breath. Needless to say, Fred hadn't noticed whether Smith's corpse had still been hanging from the tree either. Rafferty was surprised that the old man hadn't simply supplied them with a steady stream of made-up information in exchange for more fivers. But it seemed Fred Skeggs had a moral code of sorts. He'd told them all he knew, which was that one unidentifiable woman, in an unidentifiable car, had driven away from Dedman Wood on Thursday night at an unidentifiable time. He was really glad he'd come.

  To Llewellyn's obvious relief, they successfully evaded any more of Fred's determined hospitality, though on the way out, the goat proved to have an even more mischievous character than her owner. Having missed making their acquaintance on their arrival, she made sure she didn't miss the pleasure on their departure. Llewellyn had a hell of a job to shake her off when she took a fancy to his trouser leg. He was still complaining bitterly about the trouble this case was causing his wardrobe as they got in the car and pulled away; it was all Rafferty could do to keep them on the road for stifled laughter.

  'I THINK WE SHOULD CONTACT Sinead Fay and the other women again,' Rafferty commented, when Llewellyn climbed back in the car after insisting they stop at his flat so he could change his clothes. 'See what they have to say for themselves. One of them might let something slip. If one or more of them didn't kill Smith, it's becoming obvious that they followed the person who did to Dedman Wood, and know their identity.'

  'And if they refuse to admit it, what could we do?' Llewellyn asked shortly, as usual putting his finger on the nub of the matter. 'We would have shown our hand and be forced to back down. After all, what have we got? A Zephyr parked near Smith's flat that might or might not be the one belonging to Ms Fay; a car that might be the same one seen on the road near the woods, and Fred Skeggs, who, I might add, is scarcely the most reliable witness, who saw an unknown car and an unknown woman in the woods at an unknown time. As I've already pointed out, we wouldn't have them in the station more than five minutes before the merest journeyman solicitor would have them out again. You're a gambling man, I would have thought you would realise the dangers of showing your hand prematurely.'

  Deflated, Rafferty asked, 'What do you suggest we do then — ignore the evidence we do have, and these women, and hope something breaks?'

  'Something already has—Massey. I have a feeling it won't be long before he's found. From what you said it doesn't seem likely he's equipped for a life on the run. I doubt he's equipped either to withstand determined questioning. Once we've got him, and if he's aware of the involvement of Sinead Fay and her friends, he'll certainly implicate them if they are involved. So, yes, I do think we should do nothing. At least until then.'

  Although champing at the bit to do something, Rafferty knew that Llewellyn was right again. As usual. All the evidence they had against the breakaway Rape Support Group women was circumstantial. Although Rafferty had finally made the decision to investigate the other Zephyr owners more deeply, little had been turned up.

  Out of the twelve other vehicles they had found, three were rust heaps which the neighbours had assured them hadn't gone for months. Of the others, their owners and their families all seemed respectable enough—not that that proved anything. His own family looked respectable enough but thought nothing of breaking laws they regarded as minor.

  The checks into the Zephyr-owners were continuing, but Rafferty was convinced it would lead nowhere. He was still certain that Sinead Fay's car was the one that had been parked outside Smith's flat. The only thing was, it was looking increasingly likely that he'd never be able to prove it.

  Still frustrated by the desire to be doing something—anything, he turned the engine back on, rammed the gear lever into first, and as he pulled away from the kerb, said, 'All right, we'll do it your way, and leave them alone for now. But if Frank Massey isn't caught soon, we may have to think again. You know what the Super's like. He wants results and it's up to us to give them to him.'

  He consulted his watch. It was almost lunchtime. 'You might as well get off. No point in the two of us sitting in the office on Christmas Eve twiddling our thumbs. Your mum's seen hardly anything of you. I'll drop you at Ma's.'

  Llewellyn glanced
at him. 'Why don't you take a few hours off yourself and meet her?'

  Rafferty, suspecting that Llewellyn was looking for moral support, took the coward's way out. 'Better not. I'm already taking most of tomorrow off. And even though nothing's breaking, I should be there, on the spot. Besides, you never know, if I sit quiet, something might occur to me to get this case back on track.' He pulled up as close to his Ma's house as he could get, and dropped Llewellyn off.

  'You've got your mobile?' Llewellyn questioned. Rafferty patted his pocket and nodded. 'Don't hesitate to contact me if anything breaks in the meantime.'

  Llewellyn seemed reluctant to leave. Several times he began to say something, then broke off. Rafferty found it unnerving. Convinced Llewellyn had finally geared himself up for an uncharacteristic emotional outpouring, he did his best to sidestep it by saying firmly, 'I'll see you tomorrow.'

  Tomorrow, he thought. The nose-poker's day of reckoning. If, as he suspected, the visit of Llewellyn's mother had driven a wedge between him and Maureen, the next day would be soon enough to discover it. Soon enough, too, if Llewellyn and Maureen's romance was teetering on the brink of disaster, to face the fact that it would be largely his fault.

  Chapter Sixteen

  RAFFERTY WAS IN THE office bright and early on Christmas morning, after driving through streets that, overnight, had been clothed in a light sprinkling of snow. The air was hushed, expectant, and even though he was usually caustic about what he regarded as sentimental religious mush, he was forced to acknowledge a sense almost of awe.

  Nothing to do with babies in mangers or any similar tosh he had been force-fed as a child, he insisted to himself. It was something to do with the rare peace and beauty of the December day; like the pavements, the roads were practically empty and, with most of the populace still at home, the snow retained a purity of look and texture that brought magic even to the meanest street. It would be spoiled soon enough as the Great British public indulged the annual humbug of family togetherness which the divorce statistics put in perspective.