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

by Geraldine Evans

  Mrs. Wilks's face seemed to crumple as she realised that her husband was right. Fresh tears filled her eyes and she looked round her neat and oppressively tidy living room with a tragic expression. She shook her head slowly, as though that, to her, was more unbearable than her daughter's death.

  'Could we perhaps have a photograph of your daughter, Mr. Wilks?' Rafferty asked, wanting to get done and out of the house as quickly as possible. 'It might help us to catch her killer.'

  'Have one?' The voice was tart. 'You can have them all. What do we want with them now?'

  One by one, he pulled every photograph of Linda from the fireplace wall and dropped them with a clatter on the low table in front of the settee on which the two men sat. His wife made no protest, but just sat rocking herself backwards and forwards staring sightlessly at nothing, as though she had retreated to a secret refuge where sordid reality couldn't touch her.

  'Ahem, Mr. Wilks?' Rafferty began tentatively. 'Can you give us any reason why your daughter should dye her hair dark?'

  Sidney Wilks blinked rapidly as he gazed down at the snapshots; family snaps taken in happier times of Linda as a baby propped up with cushions, as a toddler, as a gap-toothed and wriggling tomboy sitting on her father's lap, school photos as a teenager where she looked with sultrily half-closed eyes into the camera - perhaps even then convinced she would be a great actress.

  'It was for those acting roles she kept going for,' he told them in a curiously flat voice. 'She thought she'd stand more chance if her hair was the same colour as the character she was trying for.' He reached out a shaking hand and picking up one of the most recent photographs, rubbed his thumb over the glass. 'That was my little girl,' he told them bleakly. 'My pretty, innocent little girl.' He took out a large white handkerchief and after blowing his nose, put it carefully back in his pocket. For a moment, he looked bewildered, as though he hadn't quite grasped what a cataclysm had wrecked his orderly little world. Then, without any warning, his face contorted and he smashed the glass of the frame against the corner of the mantelpiece and yanking out the photo, he threw it at Rafferty. 'Take it. Take them all. We don't want them back. Wearing those short skirts of hers, flaunting herself, the bitch asked for it. She deserved all she got. Deserved all she got,' he repeated, as though trying to convince himself of it.

  Silently, they stood up and Rafferty picked up the photograph. Mrs. Wilks was still in a world of her own and took no further interest in the proceedings. 'I'd like to look at Linda's bedroom, Mr. Wilks, if that's all right?' Sidney Wilks just nodded. He'd washed his hands of his daughter, his expression said. They could do what they liked. 'Em. Perhaps, while I'm doing that, you could let my sergeant here have a description of what Linda was wearing that night?' he suggested.

  Llewellyn shot him a reproachful look and sat down again. Slowly, he pulled his notebook back out and began to write as Sidney Wilks's voice, drained now of emotion, described what his daughter had been wearing.

  Rafferty went upstairs and after finding which of the three was Linda's bedroom, he quickly searched it. He found the case that Mrs. Wilks had referred to, but it was empty, all the usual erotic items of a prostitute's art removed. Sidney Wilks had obviously been here before him. He must be cursing himself that he hadn't been quite thorough enough.

  He returned to the living room to collect a relieved Llewellyn, and, after drawing Sidney Wilks back from whichever hell he had retreated to, they said their goodbyes and speedily left.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Llewellyn sighed heavily as the door closed behind them, his eyes curtained by the fall of thick black lashes, he gave himself a little shake and the controlled expression was back in place, the deep emotions that had flickered across his features, stowed safely away once more. 'An unhappy man,' he commented. 'He loved her very much, in his own way, you could see that.'

  Rafferty was about to disagree, then he realised his sergeant was right. Love came in all shapes and sizes, he, of all people should know that. Dispiritedly, he began to flick through the diary once more.

  Back to normal, Llewellyn began a mournful quote, '"Love is a sickness full of woes..."', but broke off at Rafferty's involuntary groan. 'Samuel Daniel, 1562 - 1619,' he muttered under his breath. Rafferty ignored him.

  'Curious that he didn't come straight back when he didn't find his daughter,' Llewellyn remarked after a brief silence. 'It would be more usual for parents to share the shock of such a discovery together.'

  'You saw them. There was precious little attempt at comforting one another. They live only half a mile from the hospital,' he went on thoughtfully. 'Discovering that his daughter's on the game would be enough to make any man mad with rage.' At least he assumed so. Not having ever experienced the dubious joys of fatherhood, he had only his imagination on which to draw. It was certainly a strong motive for murder. 'He could have followed her - he'd been tinkering with the car when his wife found the diary and called him in. Perhaps, when Linda ran out, he picked up a spanner without thinking and followed her.'

  'He couldn't have done it, of course.' Back in his stride with a vengeance, Llewellyn threw cold water over the idea with the ease of long practice. 'Linda was found inside the hospital grounds. Where would he get a key to that gate?'

  'Perhaps he didn't need one.' Rafferty raised his head from his perusal of the diary, pleased he'd succeeded in coming up with a theory that Llewellyn wouldn't find so easy to fault. 'Maybe the person she was meeting let her in and left the door unlocked by mistake?' He tapped the slim book with a forefinger. 'Or perhaps, if she had a regular customer at the hospital, he might have given her a key. Her father did say she was going to see a medical man that night, and there's no reason why she shouldn't occasionally earn some money locally.'

  Llewellyn nodded thoughtfully. 'And her father followed her into the grounds? You could have something there, Sir. Wilks is the type to have a complete brainstorm. All that determined respectability is unnatural.' He gave Rafferty an inscrutable glance. 'As Freud said...'

  'Never mind what Freud said,' Rafferty broke in before Llewellyn had a chance to start on all that psychological mumbo-jumbo. 'We'd do better finding out what her prospective flatmates have to say. Now that we've got her name and photograph I'll get onto the papers. I shouldn't think we'll have long to wait before her girlfriends contact us.' He sent up a silent prayer for forgiveness after his comforting lies to Mrs. Wilks. 'I agree the father's a possible suspect, but at this stage, we can't afford to concentrate our investigations too much on one person.'

  Llewellyn looked down his nose at this as Rafferty conveniently forgot his previous enthusiastic concentration on Melville-Briggs. Once again, Rafferty ignored him.

  'Her girlfriends might know if Linda did have a regular customer at the Elmhurst Sanatorium, particularly if they were on the game themselves.' He opened the driver's side door of the car and was about to get in, when he saw Llewellyn's unhappy expression and relented. 'All right, you drive,' he said, handing the keys over. Rafferty opened the passenger side door and climbed in, chivying Llewellyn as he fumbled with the ignition key. 'Hurry up man,' he grumbled. 'Let's get back to the station. We've got a lot to do.' He tapped the photograph. 'I want you to get copies made of this and give them to the house-to-house team. They'll have to start over again now. And I'll want posters of her put up at bus and train stations. I want everyone within a twenty mile radius to know her face. Get the photo on the wire to the Met. She presumably met most of her johns there and it's possible there's someone in town who knew her in both identities.' Certainly better than her parents seemed to, he added silently to himself.

  Llewellyn was still taken with Rafferty's previous idea. 'If her father did do it...' He glanced back at the house as he started up the car. Someone had been watching them. As he turned his head, he just caught a quick movement as the nets were twitched back into place. 'Why would he strip her?'

  'He said she dressed like a tart. Perhaps he thought, naked, she looked more resp
ectable, more innocent than she ever could in her working gear. If it was him, I wonder what he did with them? He wouldn't have been able to burn them easily with no open fires in the house. Perhaps he buried them or threw them in the sea? It's only about a fifteen minute walk from their house. I want you to notify the search teams to be on the lookout for anything washed up by the tide.'

  Llewellyn slipped in a little philosophical comment. 'He'll blame his wife for the girl going to the bad, of course. That type always do.'

  'Well, he's got to blame someone,' said Rafferty flatly. 'It's human nature. Especially if he did do for the girl. And who else is there to blame?' Perhaps, he mused, if Linda's mother had been a different sort of woman, her father would have been a different sort of man and Linda would still be alive. But of course, he reminded himself, you could say that about anyone.

  Rafferty had been right; they'd passed the photograph to the media in time to catch the Monday papers and Linda's girlfriends had seen the item and the request for information. He and Llewellyn were on their way to see them now.

  'Let me do the talking,' he warned Llewellyn. If, like Linda, they were part-time hookers, he didn't want Llewellyn putting their backs up before they told them what they knew.

  Despite making good time, it was nearly noon when they reached Streatham and then Rafferty spent twenty minutes circling round before he could park. Finally, ignoring Llewellyn's stern exhortations about policemen not being above the law, he left the car on a double yellow line, cursing himself for a fool when he saw the flat. It formed part of a large house and the front garden had a tarmac surface which provided ample space for parking. He should have guessed. Many of the large, formerly family homes around this area had been converted into flats.

  Ignoring the sombre-suited Llewellyn's wince of pain, Rafferty straightened his dazzling orange and magenta tie and studied the array of cards and bells by the front door. He pulled a face when he realised they wanted the top floor. 'I hope they've got a lift,' he muttered as he rang the bell. The grill spluttered into life, he shouted his business and the door was released. He cursed as he saw the 'lift out of order' sign. Wasn't it just his luck? he sighed. Blowing like a pair of bellows by the time he reached the top floor, he had to hang on to the banisters for a minute, grinning foolishly at the two young women at the door. Clinging there, he had time to reflect that he had probably stopped smoking none too soon. It didn't surprise him to notice that Llewellyn's breathing seemed perfectly normal. His body was as disciplined as everything else in his life and he worked out twice a week in the police gym; something which earned a few ribald comments from the canteen cowboys at the station.

  The girls looked nervously first at each other and then at him. 'Inspector Rafferty?'

  Still gasping, he could only nod. Who the hell did they think he was? he wondered. Would any self-respecting rapist knacker himself by climbing all those stairs? As the girls still regarded him with suspicion, he pulled his identity card from his wallet. Reassured, they now became concerned at his speechless condition and one of the girls asked, 'Are you all right?'

  'Really, I'm fine,' he insisted, when he was finally able to get a word out.

  'The stairs are tough on older people,' she sympathised artlessly, while behind him, he heard a muffled snort from Llewellyn, who was still - just - the right side of thirty.

  Her comment did nothing to boost Rafferty's ego. Dammit all, he was only thirty-seven, not seventy-seven. He supposed along with giving up smoking, he ought to start taking more exercise, watch his diet, cut down on alcohol; in short, make himself as big a misery as Llewellyn.

  Apparently, the three girls all made a somewhat precarious living on the fringes of show business and although Linda had not only been a friend, but had also been about to move in, they could tell them little about her. It seemed that none of them enquired too closely into the affairs of the others. 'Please try to remember,' he pressed. 'It's very important. Did Linda say anything, anything at all, about any regular men she might see at Elmhurst or where they might meet?'

  They looked at one another and shook their heads. The blonde girl, Patsy, said, 'We knew she must have some men friends down there, of course, because sometimes, when she came up to town, she had quite a bit of money with her, money she wouldn't have been able to earn otherwise, but who they might have been, I've no idea. Perhaps Tina would know more, she's known Linda a lot longer than either of us two.' Rafferty looked about him hopefully. 'She's not here. She had a very early flight to the States last Saturday morning. Tina's a dancer,' Patsy explained apologetically, 'and her agent managed to get her a tour booking as a replacement at the last minute.'

  'Would you have a number where I could contact her?'

  'You could try her agent.' Patsy picked up the phone book and read out his name and number as Rafferty jotted the information down.

  'You don't happen to know the names of any of her men friends in London?'

  'She rarely mentioned anyone. Men were just - men - to Linda, unless she met someone who could help her career.'

  'It was that important to her?'

  Patsy smiled at him. 'Oh, yes. In fact, you might say she spent her whole life playing a part.' She handed him a photograph from the sideboard. 'That's Linda, in the middle.'

  The Wilks's family photographs hadn't really captured the dead girl. This photo gave far more of an idea of the real Linda. As Patsy had said, she was pretty enough, in a pale, unhealthy sort of way. Her hair hung over her face and though she pouted in the usual provocative manner at the camera, there was a hint of desperation in her eyes.

  'When was this photo taken?' asked Llewellyn, obviously determined to get in on the act, despite Rafferty's strictures.

  'Last year. She had a part as an extra in a film and we went to see her on set. She was so excited about breaking into films, was sure her big chance would come from it. But it was never released. They ran out of money.'

  'Did Linda ever mention the Elmhurst Sanatorium?' Rafferty queried. He didn't have much hope anything would come of it, but he had to ask. They shook their heads. 'What about Dr. Anthony Melville-Briggs or Dr. Simon Smythe?' No, they'd never heard of them either. He ran a few more names past them, but they, too were unknown to them. Still, that proved nothing. Linda had not been forthcoming about her men friends. He tapped the photograph with a forefinger. 'Is it all right if I take this?' Patsy nodded. 'I'll let you have it back as soon as possible.' He fished in his pocket for his number and handed it over. 'If you think of anything, please phone me.'

  Patsy showed them out. 'Poor Linda. All she wanted was the big break. She never talked about anything else.' She shook her head. 'It's funny, but the last part she played was that of an angel. Another flop.' Her eyes flickered upwards. 'Strange to think that if she's managed to get up there she'll be auditioning for the same part right now. You will get the man who did this to her, won't you, Inspector?'

  Rafferty did his best to reassure her on that point, wishing he felt half as confident as he sounded. He was thoughtful as he and Llewellyn walked back to the car. They had learned little and the thought depressed him, but he cheered up a bit when he discovered they hadn't been given a parking ticket. He even let Llewellyn drive and as they left the quiet residential street behind he sat staring restlessly out of the side window. The traffic lights changed to green and they rounded the corner. His ears pricked up as he heard the familiar sound of a concrete mixer. Hadn't his Uncle Pat said he was working on a building site around this way? he mused. Rafferty looked at his watch and grinned. Five to one. Couldn't have timed it better if he'd tried, he congratulated himself. 'Pull up here,' he instructed.

  'But it's a double yellow line, Sir,' Llewellyn protested. 'I can't just...'

  Rafferty sighed, unwilling to go through that all over again. 'Never mind that,' he ordered. 'I'm only asking you to pull up for a minute, not take up squatter's rights.' Muttering under his breath, Llewellyn did as he was told.

  In spite of fe
eling he was beginning to know and understand his sergeant better, Rafferty still found his unrelenting company something of a strain and he needed a break, however short. The craving for a bit of light relief made him feel guilty and the sharp edge had gone from his voice as he added, 'Get some lunch and come back for me in an hour. You'll find there's a decent pub near the common. They serve hot food and they've got a car park.'

  He got out of the car and slammed the door with the enthusiastic vigour of a convict out on parole. Crossing the pavement he quickly skirted the barriers guarding the building site and a pleased smile settled on his face as he took in the beginnings of a block of rather superior apartments rising from the dust and rubble of some previous building. He stood and watched for a little while, taking pleasure in the almost symphonic movements of the foreman and his men as they laid their bricks. As though obeying the commands of some invisible conductor, they all laid down their trowels at virtually the same moment and with a purposeful air, they followed one another down the ladder secured to the scaffolding. Lunch-time.

  Rafferty strolled over. Already he could feel his spirits lifting. Building sites always had that effect on him. He had done some of his best thinking whilst surrounded by the roar of machinery and the good-natured cussing of a building crew.