Dead Before Morning (Rafferty & Llewellyn humorous crime series #1 in series)

by Geraldine Evans

  'Oh.' He said no more. If Llewellyn wanted to confide in him, he would do so. Relieved to have discovered a more human side to his sergeant, Rafferty felt the stirring of a little fellow-feeling and, as they went out to the car, he explained, 'The victim rented one of those anonymous and tacky bed-sits in Streatham for her trade. But her family live near here, according to the Met. Only about half a mile from the hospital.'

  Llewellyn had brought the car round to the front earlier and now it stood gleaming in the April sunshine. The Welshman took little pleasure in anything else, but the car was the joy of his life. He probably offered such ritual cleanliness up as a sacrifice to his dour Welsh god, thought Rafferty and his earlier sympathy dissolved a little. 'I'll drive. Got the car keys?'

  Reluctantly, Llewellyn handed them over. Rafferty knew he didn't like anyone driving "his" car - particularly him, whom Llewellyn considered both fast and reckless. His expression resigned, Llewellyn got in, wincing as Rafferty revved up.

  Reaching to take his cigarettes from his pocket, Rafferty remembered he'd given them up and instead, he pulled out a bag of boiled sweets from his pocket, unwrapped one and popped it in his mouth. Glancing at Llewellyn, Rafferty noticed that the Welshman's eyes were still shadowed, even though he kept his gaze stiffly eyes-front. Anxious about the coming interview, Rafferty surmised, sucking hard on his sweet. That made two of them.

  The privet hedge surrounding the Wilks's small front garden was fussily neat and clipped as efficiently as a sergeant-major's moustache, but to Rafferty it had more of the appearance of a green, plastic wall than a living thing. As he advanced up the path, he took in the sparkling white nets draped across the louvre windows of the terraced house, each of their full folds a neat one inch from its neighbour and sighed. The short back and sides on the hedge had hinted at it, but the curtains confirmed that he and Llewellyn were likely to be regarded by the murdered girl's parents as little better than murderers themselves. Murderers of reputation and respectability and pride. He glanced at Llewellyn as he raised the door-knocker and realised the Welshman had reached the same conclusion. His face was stiff, as though it had been dipped in a bucket of Robin's starch.

  The door was opened a bare three inches and a woman's face appeared. Rafferty felt a momentary shame at the relief that flooded him when he saw her eyes were red-rimmed with weeping; they must already know, he decided mystified, yet grateful that someone else had broken the bad news to them.

  'Who are you? What do you want?'

  'Police, Mrs. Wilks,' Rafferty explained in a low voice, holding up his identity card for her to see. He cleared his throat of a sudden frog. 'It's about your daughter, Linda.'

  Her head shot up. 'Linda? What's happened? Has she been arres...' Her voice broke off abruptly. Biting her lip, she reluctantly opened the door wider. 'You'd best come in.'

  Exchanging puzzled glances, they followed her past the well-buffed horse-brasses and flower-patterned carpet of the hall. Rafferty wondered apprehensively if it was possible they'd had other bad news, something totally unconnected with the case?

  Although it was still bright outside, the curtains were pulled across the windows and the living room was shrouded in gloom. But the curtains were unlined and allowed sufficient filtered light through for Rafferty to confirm his earlier conclusions about the Wilks's respectability from a swift survey of the room. Everything was spotless and fussily neat. No books or newspapers created the usual friendly muddle that filled most people's homes. Each item had its place and remained in it. There were still more flowers here; on the fitted carpet, full-blown pink roses on the faded chintz-covered suite, delicate, tightly-enclosed buds on the wallpaper.

  Rafferty felt Llewellyn give a start, when behind them, and so far unnoticed in the gloom, a man's figure rose to his feet. Linda's father, Rafferty guessed and introduced himself and Llewellyn. Like his wife, Mr Wilks didn't seem surprised to see them. What was going on here? he wondered.

  Sidney Wilks was not an impressive man. Short and wiry, under sparse pepper-and-salt hair, his face was brick-red and a curious selection of expressions passed, one after the other over his features - shame, resentment, anger - and a quickly hidden fear which Rafferty found even more baffling.

  Invited to sit down, they eased themselves gingerly onto the edge of the chintz settee, Rafferty now almost as anxious as his sergeant for the job to be over and done with.

  'Well?' Sidney Wilks barked at them suddenly. 'Why don't you get it over with? What's stopping you? Though I don't know why it takes two of you.'

  Beside him, Rafferty felt Llewellyn jump and he quickly found his voice in case his sergeant's stern self-control gave way and he said something they'd both regret. 'I'm sorry, it's just that I thought you knew, Mr Wilks,' he began. 'You seemed...'

  'Knew? Of course we knew,' Daphne Wilks broke in before he could go on. 'Why else would we be so upset?' She glared at him, then, slowly, her gaze swung to Llewellyn and her face changed as though she saw something in the Welshman's stiff, white demeanour that suddenly made everything clear to her. All at once her face became ashen and she sat abruptly on the armchair behind her and gazed accusingly at Rafferty. 'You're the one in charge of the murder. It was in the local paper.' Her voice was now no louder than a whisper. 'Oh, my God, no! It's her isn't it? The girl found murdered at that hospital - it's our Linda. That's why you're here. And I thought...' She gave a faint, hysterical laugh. 'Stupid of me. Why else would you come to see us? She is - was of age after all. What concern is it of the parents if a girl decides to pros...'

  'Mother!' Sidney Wilks's voice was sharp. 'They're not interested in that. That's our business.' He scowled warningly at her before he turned to Rafferty with an apologetic smile. 'I'm sorry. She's not herself. It's her age, you know?'

  Rafferty stared at him, conscious that he'd made a terrible blunder. Did Sidney Wilks really imagine they were unaware of their daughter's extra-curricular activities? The way he had shut his wife up, suggested that was exactly what he did think.

  Mr. Wilks gave his hand-knitted cardigan a tug downwards as though to say, 'Glad I've got that out of the way', before he met Rafferty's eyes once more. 'Was she right? About Linda being the murdered girl?'

  Rafferty nodded and mumbled, 'We know what your daughter did, Mr. Wilks, there's no point in trying to hide it. I'm sorry.' But Wilks gave every appearance of not hearing him and he lapsed into silence.

  'Perhaps these gentlemen would like some tea?' Wilks suggested to his wife, in the voice of a man determined to observe the civilities. His daughter might have been murdered, its tone implied, but that was no reason to forget one's manners. Mrs. Wilks cast a reproachful glance at her husband before going out and shutting the door behind her.

  Rafferty found himself watching Wilks with a kind of horrid fascination. Unlike his wife, he didn't seem shocked by his revelation of their daughter's murder. Of course, shock came in many forms, but Sidney Wilks was a shade too accepting, too unemotional and Rafferty wondered if he'd already known that his daughter was dead. But how could he? Unless...? But he was jumping to conclusions again, he chided himself. It might just be that he was one of those men who considered it unmanly to show strong feelings. He was of the generation to think that way. And it seemed likely that Linda would have been the sort of girl to think nothing of disappearing for a few days without a word to her parents. Even so, his manner made Rafferty feel increasingly uncomfortable and he had opened his mouth to speak when Wilks's lack of emotion was dispelled in an outburst that was as sudden as it was furious.

  'Wanted to be an actress!' His voice scorned such an ambition. Now he seemed to need to talk, to explain feelings he had been keeping pent-up. 'I told her not to be so stupid, as if such jobs were for people like us. Security, I said, that's what you need, my girl. Told her if she persisted no good would come of it and I was right, wasn't I? No good has come of it.' He sounded satisfied that his prediction had been proved correct. Perhaps he realised how this must appe
ar, for his voice became quieter, more intense. 'I fixed her up with a good job at the Electricity Board when she left school,' he told them, as though he still didn't understand why his daughter should reject what had been good enough for him for forty years. 'Typing. They were even willing to train her on the word processors, send her on a little course. But no - that wasn't good enough for Madam Linda. She had ambitions, she told us. Ambitions!'

  Mrs. Wilks came back with the tea. Rafferty wasn't surprised that the bone china tea service had been brought out. More roses decorated the matching teapot and crockery. He was beginning to find the flowery theme of the room oppressive and he longed to loosen his tie and fling open the windows.

  Mrs. Wilks poured the tea and passed it round. The hot beverage seemed to restore her, for now she began to explain 'We had a row, the night - the night before she was found in that hospital. When I heard about it, I wondered if it could be our Linda. She hadn't come home, but then that wasn't unusual.'

  'Used this place like a hotel,' Sidney Wilks interrupted. 'Thought her mother was a launderette and restaurant combined. I told her...'

  ‘Please Sidney.' Obviously distressed, his wife cut off his flow, before going on quietly. 'Besides, I didn't want to think about it. I persuaded myself it couldn't be her. I didn't want to face...' Her voice trailed away and Rafferty came to the conclusion that Daphne Wilks would always shy away from unpleasant reality. In this instance, he couldn't really blame her. The death of a child, whatever their age, was more than most parents could come to terms with. 'She died very quickly, Mrs. Wilks,' he told her, in a futile attempt at comfort. 'She couldn't have known anything about it. The - rest - happened after death.'

  Mrs. Wilks nodded mechanically, as though she hadn't really taken in what he had told her and she went on as if he'd never spoken. 'After the row, Linda ran out and Sidney went after her.'

  'I couldn't catch her,' Sidney Wilks broke in again. 'She'd disappeared by the time I got to the end of the road.'

  'I don't know why you never came straight back,' complained his wife. 'When you knew how upset I was.'

  'I was upset too,' he defended himself aggressively. 'I wanted to be alone for a while, to think what was best to do. She told us she was moving out permanently,' he explained for Rafferty's benefit. 'She wasn't here much at the best of times. Staying with friends, she used to tell us she was. Anyway, she said she'd fixed up to move into a flat in London with some girlfriends. God knows who they were, she never mentioned any names. Had it all planned and not a word to us.'

  'Was that what caused the row?' Llewellyn asked quietly, apparently having got himself back in control.

  'No,' replied Mrs. Wilks. 'It was the - other business. You see I found her dia-'

  'Mother!' Sidney Wilks warned sharply. 'They don't need to know about that.' He turned back to the policemen, as though his word settled the matter, but Daphne Wilks had decided to face facts and she overruled her husband.

  'It's no use, Sidney,' she told him. 'We can't hide it. Linda must have had a criminal record, don't you see? How do you think they were able to identify her, when according to the papers...?' She took a shuddering breath. 'Anyway, it might help them find out who did this dreadful thing. I owe her that much. We both do.' She turned back to the policemen, ignoring her husband's ugly flush. 'I found her diary, you see. Usually she locked it away, but that evening she must have forgotten. 'I was so stupid,' Daphne Wilks went on. 'At first, I thought she'd written a series of little plays. They were all set out like that, you see. But they were all on the same theme. That was what made me suspicious. She always took a particular case with her when she went up to London. Her "auditioning" gear, she told me it was. I forced it open. She kept it hidden at the back of her wardrobe. No wonder. Inside there were the most...'

  She stopped for a moment to wipe her reddened nose with a damp handkerchief and then went shakily on. 'All I could think was "why?" What could have made her do this to us?' She gave a half-shamed glance at her husband, before continuing. 'Sidney had been in the garage, working on the car and when I heard her come home, I fetched him so we could confront her together. I was in such a state, I didn't even make sure he washed his hands first. He left a dirty smear on the wallpaper.' Her mouth formed into lines of reproach, as if she believed that, by concentrating on mundane resentments, she could push the horror to the back of her mind. 'I haven't been able to get it ou-'

  'Can I see this diary?' Rafferty interrupted before they started on mutual recriminations.

  'We burnt it,' said Sidney Wilks quickly. But not quite quickly enough, as his wife reached beneath the seat cushion of her armchair and brought out a large and expensive looking calf-skin-bound book and handed it over.

  'You promised you'd burn it!' her husband accused.

  'I know.' Her head drooped. 'I couldn't.' Slowly, she raised her head and looked at Rafferty. 'We've just got the gas fire, you see,' she explained with an air of apology. 'I'd have had to burn it out in the garden and I kept thinking what the neighbours would say if any of the pages were to blow away.'

  Rafferty guessed that what the neighbours would say had largely governed their lives. Sadly, he reflected that the neighbours would now have enough scandal to keep their tongues wagging for many a long day.

  Mrs. Wilks was right, he saw, as he flicked through the diary. Linda had set it out like a play or a film script, or as near to them as either of them would recognise. The diary contained Linda Wilks's dreams, the film-script-like layout had helped to clothe the sordid reality of what she was doing in the soft-focus lighting of a film seduction scene. Had she managed to convince herself as well that she was merely acting out a role? he wondered. Had she persuaded herself that should the acting become too brutally real the director would shout "cut"? He turned back to the first few pages. Slowly, he began to read.

  ACT 1 SCENE 1

  The scene opens in a book-lined study. We see an

  elderly man dressed in a school uniform sitting

  in front of a desk.

  CUT TO: A young woman wearing a cape and mortar-board enters.

  In one hand she is carrying a cane which she hits into

  the other palm. She walks slowly forward till she is

  standing in front of the elderly schoolboy.

  GIRL: 'You've been a naughty boy, haven't you, Simpson?'

  MAN: Cringes. 'Yes Miss.'

  GIRL: 'Do you know what happens to naughty boys?' She swishes

  the cane.

  MAN: 'Oh, yes Miss. I know.' The man's face goes pink. Now

  he seems suddenly excited.

  GIRL: 'Lower your trousers then, Simpson and bend over the

  desk.' He does as she says. 'It's six of the best for

  you.' Her cape swings open. Underneath she is naked.

  She gazes at the quivering buttocks of the man and

  raising her arm...

  Rafferty shut the diary with a snap and glanced quickly up as though he had been caught doing something dirty. From his brief flick through, the entire diary seemed filled with similar scenes. That one had been quite tame. 'I'll have to take this,' he told them apologetically.

  Sidney Wilks hissed accusingly at his wife. 'You should have destroyed it, as I said. Now the whole world will know exactly what sort of little trollop your daughter was.'

  Rafferty wasn't altogether surprised at the speed with which Wilks distanced his own relationship with the girl. The theory was that tragedy brought people together. It didn't - more often it tore them apart in a manner as savage as the original crime. He'd seen it many times and it never failed to depress him. Grimly, he looked at Wilks as he began to taunt his wife.

  'At least when that's read out in court, the papers won't need to make up anything worse,' he told her. 'Not that they could,' he added with a vicious spite as his wife gasped. 'This'll give the neighbours something to talk about all right.'

  Mrs Wilks gave Rafferty a beseeching look. 'Is he right? Will everyone hear all t
he details of what Lin...what she did? I thought you'd be able to keep it quiet.'

  Rafferty looked from one to the other and swallowed hard. How could he tell her the truth? It would be kinder to let it dawn gradually on her. 'It depends,' he temporised. 'The way she earned her living may not have had anything to do with her murder, of course, in which case...'

  'You don't really believe that though, do you, Inspector?' Sidney Wilks demanded scornfully. 'It'll come out, especially as she was going to meet another of her men that night.'

  Rafferty felt Llewellyn tense beside him. 'How do you know that?' he asked, making his second contribution to the interview.

  'She had a phone call, didn't she? About half ten that night, a few minutes after she came home. Taunted me with it when I demanded to know who it was. "One of my men friends," she said. "A medical man".' He glanced at his wife's crouching figure. 'Of course, you know we'll never be able to hold our heads up again,' he spat at her. 'We'll have to move.' This was said with such spiteful satisfaction that Rafferty felt his whole body cringe.