Love Lies Bleeding
Page 1
The Rafferty and Llewellyn
Mystery Series
DI Joe Rafferty, working-class lapsed Catholic, is cursed by coming from a family who think — if he must be a copper — he might at least have the decency to be a bent one. When you add the middle-class, moralistic intellectual DS Dafyd Llewellyn to the brew the result is murder with plenty of laughs.
* * *
Dead Before Morning
Down Among the Dead Men
Death Line
The Hanging Tree
Absolute Poison
Dying For You
Bad Blood
Love Lies Bleeding
Blood on the Bones
A Thrust to the Vitals
Death Dues
All the Lonely People
Death Dance
Deadly Reunion
Kith and Kill
* * *
DEAD BEFORE MORNING
‘This often comic tale sharpens the appetite for more.’
Publishers Weekly
‘Terrific read. Loved Rafferty's relationship with his family.’
Rebecca Dahlke, Allmystery E Newsletter
‘Evans’ humour seriously added to my enjoyment of her book. The series has stand out central characters and clever plots’
Aunt Agatha's Bookshop, Ann Arbor
DYING FOR YOU
‘Evans brings wit and insight to this tale of looking for love in all the wrong places.’
Starred Review from Kirkus
‘It's bad enough being suspected of a double murder, worse still when it's your alter ego being pursued and it's the pits when you are the policeman in charge of supposedly catching yourself. I savoured this book and I'm keen to read the rest in the series asap.’
Eurocrime
ABSOLUTE POISON
‘Well, this was a real find. Geraldine Evans knows how to make a character leap off the pages at you.’
Lizzie Hayes, Mystery Women
‘An ingeniously constructed plot, deft dialogue, well-drawn characters, and a few humorous touches, make this an enjoyably intriguing read.’
Emily Melton, Booklist
BAD BLOOD
‘A spirited mix of detection, family drama and social commentary.’
Kirkus Reviews
‘Another excellent spirited mix of detection and family drama with plenty of suspects to muse over. It's another page-turner from Geraldine Evans in my opinion the English crime writing queen herself.’
R C Bridgestock
LOVE LIES BLEEDING
‘This cleverly-plotted tale has plenty of humour. It's another page-turner from Geraldine Evans and is crime writing at its best. A must for all lovers of the genre.’
Mystery Women
‘Evans concocts a plausible story with unforeseen plot twists, believable characters, and a satisfying ending. Solid fare for fans of British procedurals.’
Emily Melton
DEADLY REUNION
‘This is another excellent entry in this marvellous series. The characters spring off the page. The dialogue is sparkling, great interplay between the two detectives, and the mystery intriguing to the end.’
Eurocrime
‘An excellent mystery. I enjoy police procedurals and picked up this latest one by Geraldine Evans. The writing is seamless, the detective work believable. The mystery goes right to the end with lots of twists and red herrings. Wonderful characters. I especially enjoyed the relationship between Rafferty and his family members and would love to see more of them in the next book…’
Booklist
Love Lies Bleeding
A Rafferty & Llewellyn Mystery
by
Geraldine Evans
Love Lies Bleeding
Copyright © 2005 by Geraldine Evans
Discover other titles by Geraldine Evans at www.geraldineevans.com
Published by Geraldine Evans
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
This book is a work of fiction. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination.
Except for text references by reviewers, the reproduction of this work in any form is forbidden without permission from the publisher.
Cover photo by www.guigo.eu
Cover Design by Rickhardt Capidamonte
Digital Editions produced by BookNook.biz.
eBook design by Rickhardt Capidamonte
To George, with love
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
About The Author
Other eBooks by Geraldine Evans
Love Lies Bleeding
A Rafferty & Llewellyn Mystery
Prologue
‘Look at that daft mare.’ DI Joe Rafferty's chin narrowly missed connecting with the reception counter as Constable Bill Beard grabbed his head-propping arm and inadvertently pulled it from under him.
At the best of times, Beard, the station's self-appointed grey-sage, treated the younger officers who had attained superior rank with an over-familiar lèse-majesté. But this, thought Rafferty indignantly, even for Beard, was a lèse too far.
But he had hardly got the first word of his protest out before Beard waved his complaint aside much as he might swat away a particularly annoying probationer, pointed the podgy forefinger of his other hand across the reception desk of the police station's entrance and voiced the inviting suggestion, ‘Fancy being out of your head at nine in the morning.’
Cajoled away from his annoyance by Beard's proposal, Rafferty murmured, ‘Mm,’ and expectantly awaited the pleasant chink of bottle against glass.
Chance would be a fine thing, he realised moments later as chinks came there none. Instead, the unpleasant clunk of a cold Monday morning on sober duty impinged on his unwilling psyche.
Breathing out on a disappointed sigh, his gaze followed Beard's pointing digit and he peered, squint-eyed, through the rain-lashed glass. He picked out the fate-favoured young woman who had attracted Beard's interest just as she stepped off the opposite pavement.
Bill was right — the young woman's gait did seem uncertain. Her road sense was even more so, he realised with a wince moments later, as the furious blast of a horn followed the screech of brakes. Without looking, she had lurched into the road in front of a white van. Fortunately, she had stepped off the pavement just a couple of seconds after the lights at the pelican crossing changed to green, so the van hadn't had a chance to pick up speed.
As with many drunks, she appeared to have a guardian angel on twenty-four-hour standby, for the van juddered to a halt on bouncing springs just inches from her body. The driver, an unshaven youth of around nineteen, lowered the grimy side window. Through the gap, he thrust a face that shock had turned a paler shade of white than his grubby van and directed a tirade of abuse after her.
But the young woman continued on her unsteady path across the road, accompanied by the screech of more brakes from the oncoming traffic on the other side, seemingly as oblivious
to these as she was to the van driver's curses and to the fact that she had narrowly avoided a close encounter of the deadly kind.
Though a tiny part of him admired her disregard for the conventions that one shouldn't be the worse for drink before the hour had even hit double figures, Rafferty acknowledged that Bill's phrase ‘daft mare’ hit the spot. Although it was pouring with rain all she wore was a thin multi-coloured summer dress and a crimson, crocheted cardigan of more style than substance, which she clutched across her dress with a taut fist. She had no umbrella and the torrential downpour had plastered her hair to her skull.
Bill gave the long-suffering sigh of the endlessly put-upon. ‘What do you bet but she's another one of those sad souls from the psychiatric hospital? Get 'em in my reception regular, I do. One old dear is always begging for a shilling, as if decimalisation had passed her by entirely.’
Rafferty, having endured plenty of stints on reception in his younger, uniformed days, knew better than to accept the bet. Instead, he was about to rush out, do his shining-knight act and rescue the clearly oblivious damsel from further death-defying acts as she continued on her unsteady, if determined, path across the road. But before he had taken two steps, she reached the pavement on this side without further near-misses.
Rafferty realised he had been holding his breath. He exhaled with relief even as he wondered whether Bill's guess as to her current abode was correct.
The asylum had been built in the middle of open countryside half a mile or so beyond the market town of Elmhurst, in keeping with the Victorians' belief that insanity should be kept at a decent distance from respectable normal citizens.
But gradually the town had crept up to the hospital's gates, a process hastened in recent years as the large, once self-sufficient asylum sold off large plots of its land to developers and sent most of its patients out to receive the dubious benefits of ‘care in the community’.
As Beard had said, it was a regular occurrence to see the remaining patients wandering aimlessly in the town. Often, as if drawn by some unseen cord, they made their way to the police station, perhaps believing that its reassuring blue lantern would offer them sanctuary from life itself.
Experience had brought a shoulder-shrugging detachment to Beard and he confided matter-of-factly, ‘I have another regular — young girl she is — about the same age as that one. Early twenties, I'd guess, or thereabouts, who carries a doll around with her everywhere she goes. God knows what brought that about. I could understand it if she was an old un, as it was the normal thing back in their youth that their babies would be taken from them if their bun in the oven was put in at the wrong regulo, but—’
Bill broke off, grabbed Rafferty's arm again and said with weary triumph as the girl reached the door to the police station, ‘There, what did I tell you? She is coming in here.’
As the slender young woman tried to push the heavy door, she must have realised it needed both hands and all her weight to open it, for she released her firm grip on the cardigan. No longer tightly clutched, the cardigan fell open. Even through the drenching it had received, the bloodstains on her thin summer dress were clearly visible. The entire upper area of the bodice was so stained with blood that the dress's pattern was entirely obliterated.
Rafferty's mouth fell open. Believing she must have suffered some dreadful injury, he again stepped forward to offer assistance. But the comment Bill snorted in his ear made him pause.
‘Bet you this one's come in to report she's just murdered her husband.’
Rafferty hesitated. After almost thirty years in the force Beard had seen everything there was to see. Nothing fazed him; certainly not damsels in distress, even if they were as beautiful as Rafferty now saw this one was.
Forestalled by Beard's comment and the belated realisation that anyone with chest injuries that had bled so profusely would hardly still be walking around, he waited, his previously sleepy pulse now racing as the dazed-looking young woman, her shoes click-clacking irregularly in tune with her unsteady steps, crossed the black and white mock-marble flooring.
It seemed to the waiting Rafferty to take her an age to reach the desk. While he waited, he studied her appreciatively. For, in spite of being drenched by the chill rain of an unseasonably cold August morning, the weather had been unable to damage the beauty of her delicately boned face and deadly pale but flawless skin. Slender as a fairy's wand that could be blown over by the merest puff of wind, she swayed slightly before their mesmerized gaze as she fixed the uniformed Beard with large, grey eyes luminous with a tragedy curtained only by swooping dark lashes.
Rafferty, overcome by her beauty, took a gallant's step forward and offered a hand to assist her. To his chagrin, she didn't seem to see it, or him. As if her life depended upon it, her gaze remained firmly fixed on the reassuringly uniformed bulk of the older man. Finally, she reached the desk. With both hands, she clutched the varnish-worn wood in a death grip, again ignored Rafferty, and with a yearning desperation in her face gazed across the desk that separated her from Beard and in a voice that cracked with horror, whispered, ‘I think I've just murdered my husband.’
Rafferty had time to notice only Bill's exhalation of satisfaction at being proved right twice in one morning, before she collapsed at his feet.
Chapter One
‘And that's all this young woman said?’
At Llewellyn's bemused question, Rafferty nodded. ‘Yep, Dafyd,’ he confirmed. That's all.’
Unsurprisingly, his logically minded Welsh DS found his recounting of that morning's incident in the daily life of police station reception folk somewhat bizarre.
The university-educated Llewellyn, who had read his way through all the most infamous murder trials in the annals of British justice and injustice, and who had presumably assumed, on joining the police service, that he was going to pit his wits against some of the most cunning killers on the planet, even now still found it hard to accept that, in the main, murderers were not very bright and thus easily caught.
This latest one, at least, although being more willing than most to confess to her crime, prompted a piquant curiosity that was out of the ordinary murder run. Because, after collapsing unconscious at Rafferty's feet, the hastily summoned police surgeon-cum-pathologist, Sam Dally, had taken charge, carted her off in an ambulance and imposed an embargo on her being questioned at all.
Not, from what Dally said, that she was in a position to provide answers. According to their tame — or not so tame — medic, although now conscious the young woman who had made such a dramatic entrance was as out of it as one of the undead.
‘Surely she said something else before she collapsed?’ Llewellyn persevered with his touching belief — in spite of plentiful experience proving the contrary — that other people were not unreasonably perverse, but behaved as logically as he did himself. ‘Who confesses to murder and then says nothing more?’
With a perverse satisfaction of his own, Rafferty replied, ‘Her for a start.’
Admittedly Llewellyn was right, in that, once embarked on a confession, murderers generally didn't want to stop till they had poured it all out.
‘Illogical, I know. But seeing as Sam says she's in this deep-trance state — now, what was it he called it?’ he wondered aloud to himself. ‘Catalonia would it be? No. That can't be right.’
‘Catatonia?’ Llewellyn suggested, in a tone so dry, Rafferty's forehead creased as he suspected the better-educated Llewellyn of mocking his ignorance.
But whether he was or not, the Welshman's poker face didn't betray him and Rafferty conceded, ‘Yeah, could be. It has a familiar ring to it. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘Dally reckons our murdering zombie lady's retreated from reality. Hasn't said another word since she collapsed, not even the usual demand for a solicitor, which, given her confession, is unusual, seeing as the guilty ones invariably scream far more loudly for a brief than the innocent ever do. We don't even know who she is as she had no handbag or purse with her. Seems she just �
��did the mortal deed” — if deed she did — left her home and the husband, and came here wearing just what she stood up in.
‘Dr Dally, who was here at the time about some other matter, took one look at her and insisted she was carted off to hospital. He said he'd be surprised if she didn't develop a fever or something after the drenching she received. Of course, Dally being Dally, the knower of all things, he was happy to tell me his prediction was proved right when I rang the hospital. Apparently, she's running a high temperature and not responding to their questions. No way we could interview her.’
Llewellyn's Welsh-dark eyes gazed contemplatively at Rafferty. ‘So, what now?’
Rafferty pulled a face as, reluctantly, he dragged a pile of files towards him. ‘As this young woman's still in a world of her own, I suppose we wait until Dally says otherwise. What else can we do?’
‘But if she has attacked her husband and he's bleeding to death in their home, waiting is hardly an option,’ Llewellyn pointed out.
‘And neither is sneaking into the hospital and snatching a picture of her in her sickbed so we can give it to the media and ask the public: “Do you know this woman?” The human-rights lot would have a field day if we did.’
That was an argument guaranteed to put a stop to Llewellyn's questions. Dafyd Llewellyn, although a man of strong morals and high principles, was a firm believer in human rights; even those of young women who claimed to have committed the ultimate sin.
‘Anyway’ Rafferty added, ‘I very much doubt he's still bleeding. If I'm any judge, from the amount of blood on her dress, her husband is already long beyond our help.’
Rafferty gazed at the pile of files he had just dragged towards himself. He sighed as he opened the first of these and took in the thickness of its contents. More bureaucratic bumph from Region, he thought. When did they think he was going to get any real police work done?
More than willing to abandon, even if only temporarily, the close-typed script of yet more politically correct gobbledygook, he looked up at Llewellyn and said, ‘But on the plus side, at least we know one thing about her — that she's not from the psychiatric hospital, which Bill Beard thought favourite. I rang them, and all their patients are present and correct. I've had Jonathon Lilley ringing around the others in the area, NHS and private. None of their patients is missing, either. If she wasn't lying in the hospital, doing this zombie impression and with her bloody clothes bagged and tagged, I'd wonder if me and Beard didn't have a mutual hallucination and conjured up this self-confessed husband killer to liven up a slow morning.’He leaned back in his chair — at least it put a distance between himself and the paperwork — and said, ‘Anyway, you're meant to be the clever one.’ Still smarting from the suspicion that Llewellyn had got one over on him with the catatonia thing, he added slyly, ‘If you're so bright, you tell me how we should proceed.’