Blood on the Bones

by Evans, Geraldine

  Which meant he couldn't discount the possibility that any one of his ex fellow Made in Heaven members might be the blackmailer.

  It had to be one of them, surely? he reasoned. One of those who had met him both as Nigel Blythe, the alter ego he had, at the time of the Made in Heaven investigation, felt it essential to adopt before signing up as a fellow lonely heart and Made in Heaven member, and as Inspector Joseph Rafferty, the policeman who found himself at the same time both the chief suspect and the officer charged with investigating the violent murders of two lady members.

  It wasn't beyond the bounds of possibility that one of his fellow members had seen through the disguise he had been forced to adopt in order to conduct the investigation and avoid anyone recognising him and months down the line had decided to have some fun and financial gain at his expense.

  Rafferty forced himself to think back over a period of his life he would really prefer not to dwell on, as he studied the letter again.

  Its words remained the same and were every bit as threatening as on all the previous readings. In his earlier anxiety, he had been unable to recall all the names of the Made In Heaven dating agency's members amongst whom he had adjudged himself most likely to find the culprit responsible for the blackmailing letter. And even now, back in the quiet seclusion of his office, he was still able to recall the names of only one or two, those of the rest still eluded him.

  But he was wasting time. At the thought that Llewellyn might well, by now, have finished questioning Dr Peterson and be on his way back to the station, Rafferty abandoned the hunt through memory and instead began what he had returned to the office to do: which was to find the list of other members. He invariably threw into his desk drawers any discarded scribbles from a concluded investigation. He had intended to clear the entire shebang out as it was becoming difficult to close the drawers. But now, he thanked God that such good intentions had gone the same way as previous ones. And as he smoothed out screwed up piece of paper after screwed up piece of paper, only to see that each successive missive didn't contain the information he sought, he pleaded with his neglected God to help him.

  Christ, some of these names went back years, he realised, aghast.

  Please God, he pleaded again. Let their names be here or I'm sunk before I've even begun to try to find out who sent me the blackmail letter.

  His desk was littered with paper scraps before he finally found what he was looking for. He sat back with a sigh of relief as he scrutinised the names on the list.

  There had been Dr Lancelot Bliss, the flamboyant TV doctor and his producer friend, Rory Gifford, with his careful and cynical adoption of a rakish, bohemian image. And then there had been Ralph Dryden, the on-his-uppers property developer, and Adam Ardley, the website designer and the barrister, Toby Rufford-Lyle: not that he looked short of money from what Rafferty had seen of his house and motor. But, as he had already concluded, that didn't necessarily remove the desire for more of the folding stuff.

  And then there were the partners and staff. Such as Caroline and Guy Cranston and the other partner, Simon Farnell. And though Rafferty thought it less likely that Caroline could have had anything to do with the blackmail letter, it wasn't impossible. And on the staff side, there was Isobel Goddard and the efficient part timer, Emma Hartley.

  Isobel, at least, as he had learned during the case, was capable of selling her soul for money, so would hardly be likely to hesitate if the opportunity for a little blackmail came her way.

  In view of his current desperate situation, it was fortunate that he hadn't done that much mingling on either of the nights he had attended the agency's parties, which lessened the number of potential blackmailers. He could surely cross off the names of those members who hadn't had the opportunity to view his features at close quarters?

  Actually, he thought he would have to discount them. He was barely at the beginning of another murder inquiry and would never have the time to check them all out as potential blackmailers. So that left how many?

  Rafferty had a quick count up as he studied his list of names. There were ten of them. He thought it most likely that he would find his blackmailer from amongst the ranks of those ten people. The realisation caused him to sag in the middle.

  Because he had no idea how he could possibly make an approach to one of their number, never mind ten. He wasn't even sure he should. Did he really want to rattle the blackmailer's cage? And what the hell was he supposed to ask them, anyway?

  ‘So when did you realise that the inspector in charge of the Lonely Hearts’ murders and Nigel Blythe, the original suspect, were one and the same?’ didn't strike him as the most discreet question he could pose.

  But he had to do something. And to think, with the passing of the months, he had begun to hope that that time and all the trouble it had caused him was firmly behind him and he was free of it.

  But the past, he was discovering, like life itself, had a nasty habit of creeping up on you and biting you in the bum. Mostly, when you least expected it.

  When he'd joined the agency under the name borrowed from his cousin, Nigel Blythe, he'd adopted the alter ego touch, amongst other understandable reasons, simply to stop his ma from finding out that he'd joined a dating agency. He knew that if she had found out she would have enthusiastically re-launched her own matchmaking campaign. It was because he had been heartily sick of her efforts to galvanise his love life that he had joined the dating agency under an assumed name in the first place.

  At the time, he'd considered the alter ego adoption a masterly touch and that, should he find that special woman, he could confess all and they'd have a laugh about it. He'd found the special woman. In fact, he'd found two of them, but neither had done much laughing. Nor had he once the Made in Heaven nightmare began.

  He slouched in his chair, sighed again, and stared with the brooding countenance of a latter day Heathcliffe at the untidy pile of unscrewed discards while he pondered a possible course of action.

  Trouble was, of course, that now he'd found the list he wasn't sure what he could do with it. As he'd already realised, the last thing he should do was go and see each person on the list and ask them pertinent questions. But what else could he do? Hope for Divine intervention? Fat hope that was.

  Stumped, Rafferty threw his head back and closed his eyes. When he opened them again a few seconds later, it was to find his DS, Dafyd Llewellyn had returned from seeing Dr Peterson and stood, gazing in wide-eyed astonishment at Rafferty and his paper mountain.

  Llewellyn stared for a few more moments, apparently speechless at the apparition before him. Then he protested, ‘But it was only this morning that I filed all the accumulated paperwork that had gathered on top of your desk.’

  For once, Llewellyn's thinly-handsome face betrayed some emotion and it wasn't pleasure. ‘Where on earth has that pile appeared from?’

  'My desk drawers, ' Rafferty told him as he gazed, with even more emotion than Llewellyn had displayed, at the paper he had piled in front of him. Frantically, trying not to betray his anxiety, he tried to locate the blackmail letter. The last thing he wanted was for Llewellyn to see it. Even though his sergeant knew all about his uncomfortable secret, he would prefer he didn't also learn that his secret had now grown horns.

  But thankfully, he realised that the blackmail letter was buried out of sight beneath the other scraps of paper and he sat back as he wondered how he could possibly retrieve it without piquing Llewellyn's curiosity even further.

  ‘Are you going to tell me the reason for the mess?’

  ‘Are you going to tell me the reason for the mess, Sir,’ Rafferty corrected, resorting to what, even to his ears, sounded uncomfortably like priggish pedantry while he sought a believable explanation.

  Unsurprisingly in the circumstances, Llewellyn didn't grace this particular piece of rank-pulling with any more attention than it deserved.

  Rafferty acknowledged that his rank-pulling was pathetic. It hadn't done any good, either, becau
se Llewellyn continued to complain as if he recognised that Rafferty's attempts to make him ‘sir’ him had merely been done for distraction purposes.

  But perhaps that wasn't so surprising. As Rafferty admitted, he had tried repeatedly to get Llewellyn to put aside such formality, but, at least while they were at work, Llewellyn was still invariably punctilious in his address. Even stranger, given that they were now related, since Llewellyn had been married to Rafferty's cousin, Maureen, for the last six months.

  ‘But–’ Llewellyn was still seeking an answer when Rafferty interrupted him.

  ‘I thought I'd have a clear out,’ Rafferty now confided, aware that his obsessively tidy sergeant would certainly feel entitled to an explanation of his litter-bugging. It quickly became apparent that this explanation was not one of his finest.

  ‘A clear out? You?’ With the faintest tinge of the sarcasm which he usually considered the lowest form of wit, Llewellyn added, ‘Sir,’ reached out a hand to the visitor's chair in front of the desk and sat down with exaggerated care as if concerned the shock of Rafferty's revelation might cause his legs to give way.

  ‘OK, sarky, You can cut that out,’ Rafferty advised him. ‘I might not tidy too often, but when I do, I'm thoroughness itself.’

  ‘So I see. Would you like me to order a skip?’

  ‘My, aren't we the comedian today? What's Maureen been feeding you on? The contents of Christmas crackers? Because that's about the level of your wit.’

  Llewellyn sighed and climbed back to his feet. He reached out a hand again, as though to pick up handfuls of the desk detritus. But Rafferty grabbed his wrist before he could do so. Hastily, he snatched up the list of names. ‘I want that,’ he said as he stuffed it in his pocket out of sight, conscious that although he might as yet have no idea what he was going to do with it, if he did eventually hit on a cunning plan to discover the identity of the blackmailer, he'd by stymied without the list of names and their contact details. It wasn't as if he relished leaving his name with either computer or filing clerk in such a connection. Discretion being the better part of valour and not being found out.

  ‘And I said I'm doing the clear out,’ he insisted. ‘No assistance required.’

  ‘Yes, but will you?’ Llewellyn questioned, his expression indicating more than a little doubt at this claim. ‘Or will it still all be piled there in the morning when I come in? Along with all the usual duties that seem to be my responsibility at the beginning of another murder inquiry?’

  ‘Oh ye of little faith. Just watch.’ With that, Rafferty picked up the litter basket he kept for papers requiring shredding and swept the pile off the desk and into the small container. The overflow landed on the floor to the accompaniment of another sigh from Llewellyn. Then Rafferty sat back. Sweeping an arm over the now paper-free desk with the flourish of a conjurer, he joked, ‘See? It's almost like magic, isn't it?’ Though he didn't feel much like laughing.

  Certainly any such inclination vanished altogether when Llewellyn's next words revealed that not only had he succeeded in incurring his sergeant's curiosity, but that his Welsh colleague was as sharp eyed as ever.

  ‘The Lonely Hearts’ case?’ he commented as he nodded at Rafferty's jacket pocket wherein he had speedily secreted the list of names. ‘Why on earth do you want to retain that particular scrap of paper? Sir. The case was solved.’

  ‘I know that.’ Rafferty urged his brain to hurry up and provide him with a believable excuse for its retention. Then he hit on one. ‘It's got sentimental value for me.’

  Llewellyn's usual poker face was getting more than its usual workout. His elegant dark eyebrows rose over matching dark eyes. ‘I would have thought that would be the one case you'd prefer to forget. Especially–’

  ‘Well you'd be wrong. I had my heart broken during that case. Twice over, in fact,’ Rafferty reminded Llewellyn, hoping the sympathy vote would do it for him. He wasn't lying, either. The memory of the love he had briefly felt for the two victims was only now beginning to fade.

  But the relentlessly logical Llewellyn didn't do sentimentality. Nor did he believe that one should hold a torch for other women when one was in a relationship, as he wasn't slow to tell Rafferty.

  ‘But you're with Abra now, sir. Memories of old loves that came to nothing are surely better put through the shredder with the rest of life's sad past events? It doesn't do to start wallowing.’

  Abra, Rafferty's live-in girlfriend, was Llewellyn's first cousin, so it was natural that he was concerned that Rafferty should appear to be dwelling a little too heavily on past lady loves, even if both romances had been of extremely short duration and both the ladies were dead.

  ‘I'm not wallowing, as you call it,’ Rafferty retorted sharply. Eager to get away from this Welsh inquisition, he grabbed his jacket and coat, for a glance out of the window at the trees opposite the station told him the October evening had turned blustery. ‘I've going to question Father Kelly,’ he said. 'I only stopped off here for a spare notebook and got sidetracked. Knowing what a garrulous man he is, he's sure to run through my current one. You can tell me what Dr Peterson had to say when I get back.' He made his escape before Llewellyn began to dig deeper.

  He was halfway down the stairs when he froze. Christ, he realised, Llewellyn's nagging had made him forget all about the blackmail letter. Originally at the bottom of the paper pile on his desk it was, presumably, now perched somewhere near the top of the rubbish basket and open to Llewellyn's scrutiny. That was the last thing he wanted.

  He raced back to his office and grabbed the litter basket, much to Llewellyn's further astonishment. But his hasty snatching caused him to knock the basket over. Half of its contents ended on the floor.

  Rafferty scrabbled inelegantly on his knees until he found the blackmail letter. He stuffed it in his jacket pocket, aware of his sergeant's growing astonishment as he did so.

  Carelessly, he thrust most of the rest back in the bin and hurried out of the office for the second time, before Llewellyn's surely increased curiosity could find further voice.

  Chapter Six

  Father Roberto Kelly lived, with two other priests, in the Priests' House beside the parish church of St Boniface. The two buildings were situated in the ancient High Street, with its mishmash of building styles from the sizeable, detached, Victorian property on three floors that the priests shared, to the smaller, timber-framed, Tudor houses and others, older still, their small bricks pillaged from Roman remains.

  Rafferty remembered his ma telling him that as well as sharing a home, the priests also shared the services of a housekeeper, though he had gained the impression that Father Kelly made rather more use of the housekeeper's services than did his brother priests.

  The door was opened to Rafferty's knock by the latest in a long line of these housekeepers; a pretty, curly-haired young woman wearing a frilly white apron and a short black dress. A creature from male fantasyland, he thought. Lucky old Father Kelly.

  The frilly apparition told him that Father Roberto Kelly was at home working on his Sunday sermon and couldn't be disturbed. But Rafferty asked her to tell the priest of his arrival anyway, thinking it likely that he would welcome any interruption from such a task.

  She returned with the news that Father Kelly would see him and as he followed her down the hall, Rafferty mused that, with a mixed Italian and Irish parentage, perhaps it wasn't so surprising that the ageing priest should have turned out to be a not-so-secret mix of Lothario and reprobate.

  ‘Ah, inspector. Come away in,’ Father Kelly jovially invited when the pert housekeeper ushered Rafferty into the priest's stuffy study.

  After Father Kelly had patted her equally pert behind, she told him he was a naughty priest and should learn to keep his hands to himself. But this rebuke was spoken in tones more flirtatious than offended. With a twitch of her bottom, she went out, shutting the door behind her.

  ‘Come to confess your sins, have you?’ the priest asked Rafferty, with a broad grin
. With a dramatic flourish, he consulted his watch. ‘Sure and I've got a few hours to spare before my bedtime cocoa.’ He nodded at a chair and invited, ‘Clear my junk from that and take a load off,’ before he threw down his pen and turned his face away from his sermon with, as Rafferty had so rightly anticipated, all the glee of a schoolboy abandoning his maths homework.

  Rafferty, sneaked a glance at the sermon's title as he removed several books from the chair and sat down. He wasn't surprised the priest should so readily turn aside from it.

  'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone', had undoubtedly been prompted by self interest. But perhaps the text had served more as a reminder that if there was to be any stone throwing Father Roberto Kelly was more likely to be on the receiving end of the missiles. Not a comfortable message for the boozy old roué.

  ‘I called to find out what you could tell me about the sisters at the convent,’ Rafferty began as he glanced round the over-stuffed study and thought that even Llewellyn would have his work cut out getting it into some sort of order. Books and papers were piled everywhere: on the floor, on the cheek-by-jowl chairs, even on the mantelpiece where they balanced precariously above the roaring fire. Clearly the young housekeeper's talents didn't extend much to housework

  Rafferty was surprised the infernal heat from the fire didn't, for Father Kelly, conjure up unpleasant visions of the Hellfire that must surely be awaiting him in eternity as punishment for his un-priest-like behaviour over the years. But if it did, his countenance retained a remarkable equanimity at the prospect.

  ‘I'm sure you'll have heard on the grapevine by now that one of the sisters stumbled across a man's body there today, buried in a shallow grave,’ Rafferty began.

  Father Kelly stared unblinkingly at him, his rheumy eyes blotchy red circles of surprise. For a few seconds, he was uncharacteristically speechless. It seemed that, for once, the priest had signally failed in his usually masterful connection to the grapevine by which he kept tabs on his parishioners. But although losing the advantage, he quickly recovered the use of his tongue.