Maybe, now she had learned his secret, Caroline would be persuaded to reveal a few of her own. He hoped – well, he wasn't sure exactly what he was hoping for, but he tooled himself up with a mike and recorder just the same. Rafferty didn't know how he'd persuade her to talk – he has no clear proof. All he had was a series of coincidences, some odd facts and his old friend, gut instinct, but he had a strong feeling that this meeting might be his one chance to save himself, completely exonerate his cousin and trap the murderer of two beautiful young women. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.
Conscious that he was five minutes’ too late in so doing, he switched off Nigel's mobile. Then, slowly, he rose and went out to meet Caroline Cranston.
Rafferty drew up at the Cranston's gates, got out and pressed the intercom to identity himself. The gates swept back with barely a sound.
Caroline came out through the front door before he had a chance to drive his vehicle through the hedge to the side car park. She waved him down and told him, ‘Leave your car here, Inspector. Guy's away in London, so he can't object.’
Rafferty did as instructed and was about to head for the still open front door when Caroline again stopped him.
‘Let's go for a walk in the grounds. I've always liked walking at night.’
Rafferty fell in beside her. The grounds were extensive. Soon, they had breasted a small rise and left the house and its welcoming lights behind.
The April night was black as Satan's soul, the moon and stars hidden behind a deep bank of rain-clouds. Caroline didn't stumble once. Sure-footedly, she led Rafferty to a small glade behind the trees and stopped.
Dead autumn leaves were still on the ground. Rafferty kicked at a pile and uncovered a dead animal. It was small and too far gone in decay to tell what kind of creature it had once been. He shuddered, and moved away.
Suddenly, he felt the cold clammy hand of fear clutch his heart. Was this how Estelle had felt? He wondered, when she realized all her hopes and dreams were about to end? Jenny too, had met death all unready for it.
Rafferty told himself he was being foolish; the clutch of the clammy hand was probably no more than a throwback to his childhood when he'd had a fear of the dark. He'd forgotten how densely black a moonless country night could be; easy to understand why he and countless superstitious generations before him shared such an atavistic emotion. God knew he had plenty of things to fear tonight; like the loss of his career and his freedom. He didn't think losing his life was likely to be numbered amongst them.
That was why it came as such a shock when he saw the gun appear in Caroline's hand. Noticed how steadily she held it. Now he understood why some primitive bodily instinct had warned him he had reason to be afraid. It wasn't much consolation to know he had been right in his conviction that Caroline Cranston was the double murderer.
‘So, Inspector – or should I call you Mr Blythe?’
Her words brought back clearly to Rafferty his early conviction that Caroline Cranston was the one most likely to see through his disguise. But in true Libran style he'd chosen to bury the anxiety. Now, too late, he realized she had known from the start that he wasn't Nigel Blythe. Unfortunately, he thought he understood her motives for keeping his secret. He wished he didn't. It was a suspicion she confirmed when he asked her if she had known.
‘I have a very good eye for faces,’ she told him. ‘It was clear to me when I looked at the photograph on your driving license that you weren't the real Nigel Blythe. Whoever he is, he has a certain style that you lack.’ Mockingly, she added, ‘I imagine his suits fit him rather better, too.’
‘So why-?’
‘Why didn't I say so at once and put an end to your foolish charade? Surely you've worked that out by now?’
Rafferty suspected he had, but he let her explain anyway.
‘You suited my requirements perfectly. I knew immediately I would be able to make use of you. I'd been planning it all for some time, you see. And when I discovered you were a policeman it fitted my plans even better. It gave you so much more to lose. You really have told an awful lot of lies, haven't you, Inspector? Do you think anyone will believe you didn't commit suicide when you knew you were about to be exposed as a double murderer?’
‘But we both know I didn't kill those girls,’ Rafferty protested automatically, too shocked by her revelation of his fate to be able to find a stronger argument. ‘No one will believe–’
‘They'll believe all right,’ she cut in sharply. ‘Do you really think me so foolish not to have made sure of it? But this isn't about you, though before you start protesting your virtue, perhaps you ought to reflect on the thought that but for your own deception, you wouldn't be in this situation. No. This is about the faithless husband that I used to love so deeply.’
‘A case of love to hatred turn'd?’
‘Precisely. And when, after your death, it's revealed – as it will be, I made sure of that as well – that Guy had been seeing both of those dead trollops – I will retract my statement that gives him an alibi. Once your colleagues check him out, they'll find it's his DNA on their skin and clothes – fibres from his clothes and the hair from his head – my faithless husband will go to jail for a very long time.’
Caroline smiled. It was a smile to chill the soul and make one believe that – if there wasn't a God – there was certainly a Devil abroad on the Earth.
‘Not that he'll be able to stand it in jail. Guy is used to the finer things in life. I know him, you see, so well. He'll commit suicide before a year is out and then I'll be a very rich widow. When I killed his first wife I thought I'd be able to get Guy to marry me. I was right about that. But as I discovered, all I got was the man, not his love or the faithful behaviour his first wife enjoyed. Still, I haven't come out of it too badly. I'll be free to sell her house, the house Guy loved and which I've always hated. Free to burn all my predecessor's ghastly tat and those amateur daubs Guy fondly calls art. Free, according to my Catholic faith, to marry again and have the children Guy always denied me.’
It was a warped, twisted, but very Catholic logic. The kind of logic that prompted the slaughter during the Spanish Inquisition and the burnings at Smithfield during Mary Tudor's reign; executions which had been carried out with such pious rectitude that, when he had read the accounts, Rafferty had wondered at the un-Christian hypocrisy of it all and that intelligent beings had managed to convince themselves such slaughter was God's work.
The same kind of logic, which wouldn't permit Caroline to divorce her philandering husband, had no difficulty in approving an Old Testament exacting of vengeance in killing two young women, framing one foolish man and murdering another.
It was the kind of logic, too, that would kill Jenny Warburton without mercy, but that wouldn't permit the dishonesty of putting her credit card through the machine and ‘charging’ her for her non-existent membership of the agency.
It explained, too, why Estelle's body hadn't been nearly as brutalised as Jenny's. Jenny had dared to trespass on Caroline's home and husband, even if home and husband were both hated and Jenny hadn't known that Guy was married till Isobel had mentioned it at the first party. In all innocence, she had come to spend a loving evening with her boyfriend. No wonder she had gone quiet when Rafferty turned up, swiftly followed by a hundred more lonely hearts and her boyfriend's wife. No wonder either that she had been so short with Guy immediately after. Truly, she had gone like a lamb to the slaughter.
Rafferty wondered whether Caroline would feel any remorse if he told her that Jenny had been an innocent. Somehow, he doubted it. Caroline was too far gone down the hatred and revenge road to allow herself any compassion or regret for the death of one innocent girl and one – Estelle – perhaps not so innocent.
The last pieces of the puzzle now clicked into place and he understood why Estelle, too, had been murdered. Isobel had been right when she had said she thought Estelle had been trying to prove something in dating so many men on the agency's books. Now it was
clear to Rafferty that she had signed up with the agency, dated the men, so she could do so right under Guy's nose. She had wanted to prove that other men found her attractive and to make Guy jealous after he had dumped her. She had succeeded on both counts. But it hadn't been only Guy's jealousy she had stimulated. That brief triumph had ensured her death.
Isobel had had a lucky escape. Because Rafferty didn't doubt she would have been the third victim of Caroline's jealous rage and determination to punish Guy. No wonder she had fled to her parents’ home, feeling as if ‘someone has walked over my grave’. Better for her if she had stayed there because Rafferty believed Caroline might just be mad enough to kill again if her plans for himself and Guy went smoothly.
Lance Bliss's comment that Isobel had made nuisance phone calls to Guy had prompted him to ask Bliss which number she had rung, unable to believe that even Isobel would be so blatant as to ring Guy and Caroline's home, especially when Guy was hardly ever there and it was likely to be Caroline who answered. Nor could he see the urbane and sophisticated Guy Cranston being foolish enough to hand out his mobile number to his occasional bed companions. It was then that Lance had told him about the pied-à-terre Guy kept in town. That realization had helped, of course, but it was the memory of his Ma's baited slug traps that had given him most of the rest.
Caroline had deliberately set up the venue ‘error’ in order to catch Guy out. Like Ma with her beer slug-catcher, she had baited her trap, giving Guy to think she would be out for the entire evening and the house was his to do what he would. No wonder when he had walked in on them Guy had looked at him oddly as if wondering what Rafferty was doing there. At the time, Rafferty had felt so self-conscious and anxious that he had assumed Guy had seen through his borrowed designer suit to the unsophisticated copper that lay beneath and had considered showing him the door.
The way Guy had smoothed over this initial awkwardness and made him welcome had put the scene from his mind. But when put together with the rest everything became clear.
Guy had fallen neatly, predictably, into each one of the traps Caroline had set for him. She had even, when questioned by Llewellyn, provided Guy with an alibi for both murders. She had told Llewellyn that Guy had been with her for fifteen minutes either side of the suspected murder times. She had arranged these alibis deliberately to fool her husband into thinking she was desperate to protect him from police suspicions. He had probably even been grateful. Because they would both know the police would have him down as a serious suspect if they discovered he had been the lover of both murdered girls.
In reality, of course, Caroline had used her husband to provide herself with an alibi until such time as it suited her to expose him.
Caroline had already killed three people. Rafferty was wondering why she was taking so long to claim her fourth when he saw her steady her grip with her other hand. Now, he told himself, it's your turn to die.
The shot, when it finally came, was a head shot. He felt a searing pain at his temple and began to fall. But before infinity darkened his vision he had the satisfaction of knowing the microphone had recorded every damning word of her admission.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Fortunately, his ‘thick Irish skull’ as Sam Dally liked to describe it, had saved him from serious injury. Well, that and Llewellyn.
Later, when Caroline had been handcuffed and placed in the back of the police car summoned by Llewellyn his sergeant explained, while they awaited the ambulance, that he had seen Rafferty leave in his car from the police car park and had followed him to ‘have a little talk’ with him. It had been his flying tackle that had ruined Caroline's aim.
Although Caroline had stayed silent ever since being restrained and bundled into the police car, Rafferty thought it unlikely her silence would long endure. She would want to strike out, to hurt and damage as many people as she could, including him. Her lonely life within an unfaithful marriage had helped to turn her obsessive nature into that of a killer. But no, that couldn't be right, he told himself through waves of dizziness. Hadn't she admitted killing Guy's first wife?
Perhaps her nature had its roots deep in childhood. The unloved, criticised child that Rafferty suspected she had been had turned into an unloved woman, unable, by her very nature, to keep the love of her ‘on-the-rebound’ husband.
But maybe he'd be lucky. As the pragmatic Jack Mulcahy had remarked after Llewellyn had got him on the phone to tell him what had happened. ‘I wouldn't worry. I reckon you'll get away with it. The woman is clearly barking so who'd believe her? I doubt she'll be considered fit to ever stand trial. Count your blessings Rafferty and learn from them.’
After having kept his own shameful secret for so long, it was a relief to Rafferty to know he could confide in Llewellyn. He was surprised when the Welshman didn't tell him how wrongheaded he had been.
All Llewellyn said was, ‘You didn't need to feel so alone, you know. You're always welcome at our home. I thought you knew that.’
‘And you just back from honeymoon?’
‘Honeymoons don't last forever,’ Llewellyn told him portentously. ‘As a matter of fact, we thought we might start entertaining. Do you feel you might be up to a dinner party next week? Only I have a cousin I'd rather like you to meet.’
‘This cousin – Welsh is she?’
‘Not quite, no.’
Rafferty frowned at this, but let it pass. ‘And what's this cousin called?’
‘Abra. I did offer to introduce you to her before if you remember,’ Llewellyn reminded him. ‘But from what you've said in the past you abhor any attempts at matchmaking.’
Rafferty nodded. He remembered now. It had been this Abra that Llewellyn had been trying to fix him up with on the morning of his wedding and on several occasions since. ‘Blame Ma. She's the reason I don't like anyone trying to match-make for me. I mean, look at Ma's efforts. Did you know she thought at one time that me and your Maureen would make a natural couple?’
‘No,’ said Llewellyn. He blinked and stared at Rafferty as if he was having trouble absorbing the idea. ‘What decided her against the idea?’
‘I did,’ Rafferty told him. ‘And aren't you glad I did? Maureen's far more your sort of girl. But if Ma had got her way, it might have been Maureen and me just back from honeymoon.’
It was ironic really, Rafferty thought as he fought against the increasing dizziness. After all the traumas he'd endured since joining the dating agency to avoid his ma's matchmaking endeavours, he was now the proud possessor of two matchmakers. Strangely, he felt an unexplained certainty that the efficient Welshman would be the better of the two.
Llewellyn gave the brief, uncertain smile of the unpractised matchmaker. ‘Abra's name, at least, should please Mrs Rafferty.’
‘Oh? Why's that?’
‘It means ‘Mother of Multitudes’.’
‘Mother of Multitudes!’ was Rafferty's last coherent thought, before he gave into the growing waves of blackness and fainted.
Rafferty was nervous. It was the night of Llewellyn and Maureen's dinner party. At least, this time, he could attend the party as himself, in his own clothes, his own name and with his own accent. Please God, he thought, tonight I won't be involved in murder.
He readjusted his burdens of wine and flowers and was reaching out his finger to press the doorbell. But before he could do so the door was yanked open.
He had expected Llewellyn to answer the door – he was usually punctilious in fulfilling the social duties of a host. But tonight, instead of Llewellyn, he was greeted by an elfin, dark-haired girl in bare feet.
‘Oh. You must be ‘The Inspector’, as Dawdlin’ calls you. For some reason he always seems to say it in capitals. I'm Abra.’ She eyed the bandage wrapped round his head. ‘He said you'd been in the wars, though he wouldn't tell me why.’
Rafferty was relieved to hear it. He felt enough of a fool already without the world, his wife and Llewellyn's cousin knowing just how much of an idiot he'd been. But he supposed,
in a way, he should be grateful to Caroline Cranston.
If she hadn't shot him, the doctors might never have found the blood clot on his brain that had been causing the blackouts and forgetfulness. ‘Dawdlin?’ he queried as the name penetrated the bandages.
‘What I call my cousin, Davy. Don't get me wrong. Guy's a sweetheart. But his innate caution makes him slower than a hibernating tortoise. He's never learned how to let his life jive.’ She opened the cigarette pack she held, saw it was empty and swore. ’I left home in a rush. I thought I had two full packs.’
Rafferty plunged his hand in to his off licence carrier bag and pulled out the smoker's equivalent of the nursery rhyme plum. ‘Have these.’ Strangely, that very afternoon, he had broken his cigarette ban and brought sixty strong ones. After his Made In Heaven experiences, taking up smoking again seemed a safer use of his cash than using the money saved to sign up with another dating agency.
Abra's dark eyes lit up when she saw the cigarettes. ‘You darling man. I think I love you already. Dawdlin’ said I would.’
‘Did he?’
‘Mm,’ she murmured as she removed the cellophane from the cigarette packet. ‘Told me we were probably a match,’ she struck against the side of the Swan Vestas and drew smoke deep into her lungs, ‘made in Heaven.’
Briefly, Rafferty closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw Abra was looking intently at his rattling carrier bag.
‘Thank God. You've brought more booze,’ she said. ‘Not only a plentiful supply of fags but, decent-sized bottles, too. I could kiss you.’
‘I don't think your cousin would approve on such a short acquaintance.’
‘Dafyd can be such a stuff-pot,’ she agreed before she turned on her heel. ‘Hang onto that.’ She handed him her burning cigarette with the instruction, ‘Stay there. I'll get us some glasses.’ She was back in moments. She sat down on the front step and patted the place beside her. ‘Take a pew.’
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