Love Lies Bleeding

by Evans, Geraldine

  Llewellyn left the sentence unfinished, glanced at the still-technophobic Rafferty and asked, ‘Would you like me to check out the computers and mobiles of the Raines and their family and friends for such possible purchases?’

  ‘I was just about to suggest somebody did so,’ Rafferty agreed. ‘But it doesn't necessarily have to be you. I'd rather have you carry on with checking out the rest of the Renault Clio owners — it's important that we trace this scruffy type and find out just why he was watching the Raines’ home. Even if he had nothing to do with the killing itself he might have valuable information about it.

  ‘Jonathon Lilley has proved himself a bit of a techno-buff, so he can check out the computer angle — and not just the computers and other net-connected gadgets belonging to the Raines and their various acquaintances. We've already considered the possibility that — if she is guilty — Felicity Raine could have obtained the drug from someone else; the same thing applies when it comes to if she — or anyone else used a computer in order to obtain them. And even though that check should be simple enough, perhaps you can give Lilley a hand when you've traced the man watching the Raines’ home — is that likely to take much longer, by the way?’

  ‘I shouldn't think so. The list of possibles has reduced considerably. There's only two left to check. I should have an answer later today.’

  ‘OK. Well, finish that job first. It's too important to leave on one side. As I said, you can help Lilley with the computer checks when you've finished on the Clio angle. And that will, of course, mean Stephanie Raine, other family members or work colleagues with a possible grudge against Raymond Raine, and anyone else you can think of who might have some connection to the family. Tell Lilley to make a start on that line of enquiry before you set out again.’

  Llewellyn nodded and headed off. He left Rafferty to his thoughts, thoughts which were an unsettling mix of wondering whether the still-silent Abra might decide not to return at all from her mission of mercy — if mission of mercy it was, rather than an excuse to disguise the fact that she had decided to leave him — and the worrying possibility that maybe Llewellyn was right and Felicity Raine had beguiled him.

  Not only beguiled him, but by virtue of his reaction to her beguilement, somehow induced Abra to suspect it also. She had made several waspish comments since he had told her about the case. Certainly, before she had vanished off to Wales, she left him in no doubt that she felt he was too taken with the beautiful Felicity for her liking.

  He sighed at this unhappy mix of thoughts and turned to ones less troubling. If Felicity Raine had obtained the Mogadon with the deliberate intention of murdering her husband it was unlikely she would have either obtained the drug from her GP or kept the pills once they had served their purpose. She could have thrown any tablets not used in any one of the rubbish bins en route from her home to the police station, having first made sure there was nothing on the bottle to identify her.

  But whether she had or not, since in the interval said bins had been emptied by the private refuse firm contracted by the local council, they would now have no chance of finding them, though he would still check with her doctor. People who committed murder could make the most idiotic and basic blunders so it was always possible she had obtained them from her GP.

  Armed with the toxicological evidence, Rafferty instructed the team to procure the general-practitioner details of every single one of the people even slightly connected to the case, as a priority. As he had remarked to Llewellyn, it should be a relatively simple matter to trace where the Mogadon had come from.

  Meanwhile, anxious to get one of the pressing questions in the case answered, he picked up the phone and rang Dr Henderson, the Raines’ GP, who had been out on his home visits when he had rung earlier. Fortunately, Dr Henderson had returned to the surgery.

  Rafferty was thoughtful as he put the phone down. As he had expected, neither Felicity nor Raymond Raine had been prescribed the drug by their GP.

  Dr Henderson had just confirmed what the painstaking search of the Raines’ home had already indicated: namely that neither of the Raines had ever been prescribed any sleeping tablet and, as for other drugs, their medical records indicated it was long since either one of them had been prescribed anything at all.

  So where had the drug come from? And more to the point, why was it in their bodies?

  Rafferty hoped Jonathon Lilley would soon find the answer to the first of those questions. And when he did, it just might help them find the answer to the second.

  Chapter Eight

  A day later Rafferty was no nearer to finding the answer to either question; worse, he was beginning to suspect that his careless remark to Llewellyn that tracing the supplier of the Mogadon should be a relatively simple matter was what had put the mockers on any hope of it actually being so.

  Each of the general practitioners questioned with one or more patients on their lists who had any acquaintance with the Raines had emphatically denied prescribing Mogadon for them. Neither, as their earlier checks had revealed, was either Stephanie or Mike Raine on the drug.

  Felicity hadn't been employed at all during her marriage to Raymond, so ex-colleagues were out. And, so far, so was family. They been unable to trace anyone with any family connection to her, though, as Felicity had told them she was the only child of two only-children who were both now dead, this particular search seemed fruitless and destined for failure. But fruitless or not, it was still on-going; all the lies and evasions of her in-laws had succeeded in tarring Felicity with the same brush.

  Rafferty read Stephanie Raine's statement through once again; interestingly, she made no mention that she was not a blood relative of Raymond, though admittedly, neither did she explicitly call Raymond her ‘son’.

  It was a small deception, but it struck Rafferty as being a deliberate one. What was she hoping to gain by this evasion? Was she perhaps hoping they wouldn't discover their true relationship and thus consider her — as Ray's loving mother — beyond suspicion?

  Unlikely as it seemed that she could believe they wouldn't discover the truth, she was risking nothing. What could they actually accuse her of? Failure to contradict their wrong assumption?

  Clearly, they weren't the only ones to have made the wrong assumption as the Raines’ neighbour, Elaine Enderby, had believed Stephanie to be Ray's mother. He wondered why, and decided it might be a good idea to ask her. He checked her phone number and rang her.

  Unfortunately Mrs Enderby was unable to recall how or why she had gained the impression that Stephanie was Ray's natural mother.

  ‘I'm sorry, inspector. If it comes back to me I'll call you.’ She paused. ‘Actually, I've been meaning to ring you. There was something I should have mentioned before, but shock knocked it out of my head till now.’

  ‘Oh yes? And what's that?’

  ‘Well, actually, it was more a case of wanting to show you something. Perhaps you could come over?’

  Intrigued, Rafferty put on his jacket and made for Elaine Enderby's house.

  It was a pleasant day, with a fresh breeze cooling any hint of oppression. He was glad to get out of the station and revisit the idyllic spot even if, in his mind, it would be forever tainted by the murder of Raymond Raine.

  Mrs Enderby greeted him warmly. She ushered him into her sun-bright kitchen and put the kettle on.

  While she waited for it to boil, she said, ‘I wondered after I put the phone down whether there is really any point in mentioning the diary now. Unless—’ She gazed at him hopefully. ‘Unless, that is, it might serve to help prove Raymond Raine was a violent man who abused his wife.’

  ‘Diary?’ Rafferty queried. ‘What diary is this?’

  ‘It's what I said I wanted to show you when you rang. I didn't mention before that every time I noticed fresh bruises or another black eye on Felicity's face, I made a note of it. I hoped such evidence might serve to gain her a better financial settlement should she ever find the courage to leave the brute.’

/>   Of course, Mrs Enderby could have known nothing about the terms of the Raine family trust, Rafferty reminded himself.

  She sighed and made the tea before sitting down at the table with Rafferty. ‘It's too late for that now, of course, but maybe if she did kill him, it might get the charge reduced to manslaughter.’

  She was right — such evidence of Raymond's abuse could well assist in reducing the charges against Felicity. He asked for the diary and Mrs Enderby was only too pleased to produce it, clearly hoping she might yet save Felicity from years in prison.

  ‘At least Felicity seems to have good healing skin,’ Mrs Enderby remarked as they sat companionably sipping their tea. ‘The marks of Ray's abuse never seemed to last beyond a few days. Just as well, I suppose, seeing as he made such a habit of it,’ she sadly commented. ‘Wretched man always took off on some pretend business trip or other after assaulting Fliss.’ She pulled a face. ‘I don't suppose he could bear to look at her and see what he had done, though why that should be I can't imagine, as the man had the brazen gall of the devil himself.’

  Rafferty sipped his tea. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don't know whether he thought I was blind, stupid or just losing my faculties because of my advanced age.’ She laughed at this, being no more than fifty, and Rafferty laughed with her. ‘Anyway, he obviously sensed my dislike and had the temerity to challenge me one day about why I was always so cool with him when we met. Well! The nerve of the man. You can imagine what I wanted to say. I had to bite my tongue to stop myself letting fly at him. But I thought he'd give Fliss another shiner if he thought she'd been telling me what he did to her, so all I said was, “You know why,” and left it at that.

  ‘Obviously I must have shot a dart in to his conscience, for he said nothing further about it.’

  So Raine had not only been a bully, he had been brazen with it. An unpleasant combination. No wonder Elaine Enderby had wanted to let fly at him.

  Rafferty finished his tea, thanked her for her hospitality and the diary and hurried back to the station. He was eager to compare the entries in Mrs Enderby's diary with those in Raymond Raine's business diary.

  A few minutes of checking the two diaries side by side confirmed that Mrs Enderby had been right and that Felicity's bruises and black eyes invariably seemed to coincide with Raymond setting off on one of his business trips. Mrs Enderby's entries about Felicity's bruises covered a period of the past three and a half months. Why had he chosen such a time to deliver his blows? So she would have something to remember him by while he was away?

  And what about Stephanie Raine? The discovery of her true relationship with Raymond was astonishing enough, but surely, if she had nurtured hopes of winning Raymond through murder, it would have made far more sense from her point of view if she had murdered Felicity. He had yet to question her about her continuing failure to mention her real relationship to Raymond or the fact that, with his death, her income from the trust would increase substantially.

  He had just decided it was about time he addressed these and several other questions to Mrs Raine Senior when Llewellyn returned after his latest trip to check out Renault Clio owners. Rafferty dropped Stephanie Raine's statement as he took in Llewellyn's expression.

  ‘You look like a man just back from a hot date. So what's the latest?’

  ‘Something I think you'll find interesting — not least because it muddies the waters of Felicity Raine's possible guilt still further.’

  Rafferty's eyes narrowed at Llewellyn's remark, but he sat back, careful to betray no other reaction. Once again, the brief spell of summer weather he had enjoyed earlier had vanished, replaced by another heavy, chilling downpour. Rafferty waited with as much patience as he could muster while Llewellyn divested himself of his sodden raincoat and umbrella and sat down.

  Now, as Llewellyn reported, the Renault Clio owners had been narrowed down until only one name remained: that of a Mr Peter Dunbar.

  But Mr Dunbar was no longer at the address the DVLC at Swansea had supplied. So Llewellyn had spoken to the neighbours at Peter Dunbar's old, Swansea-supplied address. ‘I learned some interesting things,’ he told Rafferty.

  ‘Come on then, let's hear them.’

  ‘After showing the photo of Felicity Raine and the one of Peter Dunbar that Swansea emailed over, I discovered that Felicity Raine and Dunbar had been married and that after Dunbar's business failed and he'd taken to drink, she left him. Couldn't stand his drunkenness, according to the neighbour. Dunbar promptly went to pieces. The marital home was sold prior to the divorce and Dunbar moved away — the next-door neighbour didn't know where. But—’

  Llewellyn's pause heightened the suspense and was entirely unappreciated by Rafferty.

  ‘Get on with it, man. I can't be doing with amateur dramatics when I've got the Super breathing down my neck for results.’

  Llewellyn shrugged and continued. ‘If Peter Dunbar — for whatever reason — had hoped to conceal his current location while he stalked either his ex-wife or Raymond Raine, he didn't make a very good job of it. I quickly traced him from the pile of credit-card statements that the new owners of his and Felicity's marital home had put aside. When I contacted the several credit-card companies that Dunbar used, they told me that most of Dunbar's recent spending was done here, in Elmhurst.’

  ‘Considerate of him to provide his own paper trail for us, especially as — along with the Renault Clio evidence — it places him nicely in the town where his ex-wife lived with Raymond Raine.’

  ‘Mm. Anyway, I had the foot soldiers show Dunbar's enhanced photo around the pubs here in Elmhurst — remember that Elaine Enderby said the man watching the Raines’ home smelled strongly of drink?’

  Rafferty nodded.

  ‘Given that information, it seemed a fair possibility that Dunbar would be known in the local pubs. And he was known. We soon had a rough description of the area of the town where Dunbar was — from the credit-card trail -believed to live. A trawl around the streets quickly revealed Dunbar's blue Renault Clio with the partial registration number as described by Mrs Enderby.’

  ‘You haven't questioned him yet?’

  Llewellyn shook his head. ‘I thought you would want to be in at the kill, as it were.’

  Damn right, thought Rafferty. ‘You've done well, Daff. So, come on — tell me the rest.’

  ‘As I said, Dunbar went to pieces when his wife left him. Apparently, according to the neighbour, he'd been going downhill for some time. His business had folded. He'd been drinking too much, staying out all night—’

  ‘Yadda, yadda, yadda, as the Americans say. The usual stuff.’ Rafferty, with his own unhappy memories of drinking too much because his late first wife wouldn ‘t leave him, had little relish for a trip down Memory Lane. Now he asked, ‘Anything else more potentially incriminating? Had he ever been heard to utter threats of violence against Raymond or Felicity?’

  ‘Yes. Or rather, the neighbour said Dunbar didn't utter specific threats. They were more generalised ones, addressed to marriage wreckers and men who stole other men's wives.’

  Although Llewellyn's reply provided an affirmative answer to Rafferty's question, it sounded unduly hesitant. Rafferty suspected Llewellyn thought he would pounce on it as evidence in Felicity Raine's favour.

  Certainly, Llewellyn was quick to add, ‘I have to stress that the neighbour I spoke to, a Mrs Lillian Anderson, an immediate next-door neighbour, who seems to have known both Mr Dunbar and his ex-wife quite well, said she thought Mr Dunbar's threats of violence were so much hot air. In her opinion they were said more to make a noise and make clear who was the innocent party in the break-up than because he really intended carrying out any threatened violence.’

  ‘That doesn't gel with him lately taking to sitting outside the Raines’ home,’ Rafferty was equally quick to point out. ‘Nor does it lessen the suspicious coincidence that Raymond Raine was murdered during Dunbar's stalking offensive. And if we take those two points with v
arious other pieces of evidence, the case against Felicity Raine is no longer looking even remotely open and shut.’ Which was a conclusion he had reached even before Llewellyn's latest discoveries.

  Llewellyn couldn't argue with that. Well, perhaps he yet might, but at least he nodded at Rafferty's statement, his second admission that an element of doubt about Felicity Raine's presumed guilt had now crept in.

  Several elements of doubt, in fact, that made Felicity Raine's conviction a thing of lessening certainty, including Dally's revelation that both the Raines had drunk the milk containing the sleeping tablets, and Jonas Singleton's revelation that Raine's cousin and business partner felt deeply wronged by Raymond hanging on to the extra 10 per cent share of the business which he felt rightly belonged to him. Now the discovery that Felicity's ex-husband, Peter Dunbar, also had reason to feel wronged — perhaps with greater cause — the sure thing that had so pleased Superintendent Bradley was unravelling before their eyes. And although part of him felt relieved that Felicity Raine wouldn't now be defenceless in the face of the charges against her, Rafferty was aware that Abra felt less than happy with his championing of Mrs Raine. Was that why she had gone off? he miserably wondered again, with Gloria Llewellyn's ‘problem’ no more than a useful excuse?

  Rafferty didn't think he had championed Felicity particularly, but he was certainly keen for her to receive the full benefit of any element of doubt; perhaps it was that element which Abra — with that seemingly infallible women's intuition that most females seemed to rely on when it came to their menfolk — had picked up on. The fact that Felicity Raine was a very attractive woman only exacerbated the trait.

  His ma was the same. She had always had an unerring eye for the tiniest misdemeanor, though why wanting to be certain that a suspect was guilty should be regarded in such a light eluded him.

  Later, maybe; he would have time for these reflections but, as the Super had reminded him only that morning, the gore-hungry British public and the obliging tabloid press who provided them with most of the red meat they required were hotly demanding satisfaction and it was his job to provide them with it.