Love Lies Bleeding

by Evans, Geraldine

  She gazed at them from lacklustre eyes. ‘Yes?’

  ‘We wanted to speak to Mr Miller.’ After introducing Llewellyn and himself and showing her his warrant card, Rafferty said, ‘It's in connection with the murder of Mr Raymond Raine.’

  She immediately bridled and demanded, ‘What's that got to do with my Nick?’

  ‘Nothing, as far as I'm aware. But we need to speak to him urgently about another aspect of the investigation.’

  ‘He's out. Working.’

  ‘So where am I likely to find him?’ Rafferty asked.

  She frowned. ‘Let me see. It's Tuesday today, isn't it?’

  Rafferty nodded.

  ‘You'd better come in. I'll have to check his diary.’

  They followed her down a dim hallway to a back living room that was as uncared-for as the rest of the house.

  She walked across to a cupboard in the corner, opened a drawer and pulled out a diary. Flipping through the pages, she crossed back to Rafferty. ‘Right. Well on Tuesday mornings he does a Mrs Tindall at Rose Cottage, in Springmeadow Lane. He usually finishes there around one o'clock.’

  It was after 12.30, Rafferty noted from the clock on the mantelpiece. Just in case he missed him at Rose Cottage, he asked, ‘And what about Tuesday afternoons? Who does he work for then?’

  ‘His regular Tuesday-afternoon customer died last week. I can never remember the new one's name. Hang on,’ she said as she flipped through the diary. ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘It's a Mrs Johnson that he goes to on Tuesday afternoons now.’ She handed the diary to Rafferty, who took the opportunity to flick through the entries for the rest of the week.

  All of Nick Miller's clients were female, he noticed, and he recalled that Elaine Enderby had mentioned this little titbit. Interesting. He found himself wondering what the recently deceased customer had died of and before he closed the diary and returned it, he ‘accidentally’ let it slip open to a date a couple of weeks earlier to check the name of the previous Tuesday-afternoon client.

  To his surprise, he saw that it was Sandrine Agnew. But Ms Agnew hadn't died a week ago. He had spoken to her himself on Thursday evening. As far as Rafferty was aware, she was still very much alive. He hoped so, anyway, as he wished to question her and the other guests to get their take on Stephanie Raine's dinner party.

  So why, he wondered, had Nick Miller told his wife that Sandrine Agnew was dead? And why had Ms Agnew accepted her premature demise and the loss of her gardener? Reliable gardeners and handymen weren't so thick on the ground that you allowed one to remove you from his client list without protest. Unless she had found someone she preferred and had been willing to lose his services? Or perhaps, given her presumed lesbian sensibilities, it was simply that she had found the mucho macho Miller too much to stomach on a regular basis?

  ‘Tell me, Mrs Miller, do you and your husband act as a kind of post restante for his customers?’

  ‘Post what?’

  ‘It's just that we noticed that one of his customers ordered some goods and gave this as the delivery address,’ he explained.

  ‘Oh that. Many of Nick's customers are away from home a lot and miss important parcels. He just lets them use this address for convenience as I'm mostly at home to sign for anything that needs a signature. My Nick's a very obliging man.’

  From her expression, Rafferty guessed that Mrs Miller's husband was altogether far too obliging to his lady customers for his wife's liking.

  ‘And have you signed for anything in the last few weeks?’

  She shook her head. ‘But often I wouldn't need to. And the postman, and the delivery couriers of the firms that Nick's customers order goods from regularly, know to leave things in the greenhouse round the back if there's no one in. We never bolt the side gate. Anyone can go round and collect their parcels.’

  Which meant that whoever had ordered the Mogadon would know they would have no problem picking it up without being seen, as long as they chose their moment carefully. Another glance at the clock told him he'd better get moving if he didn't want to chase over to the other side of town where Miller's new afternoon client lived.

  As they parked up, they saw Nick Miller's muddy blue van at the kerb and Miller himself balanced on a ladder on the pavement, stripped to the waist and wielding a set of expensive electrical hedge-cutters.

  Miller was what Rafferty suspected his ma would call a ‘fine figure of a man’, with his flat stomach and the tanned and muscular physique that rippled in a way guaranteed to please the ladies as he wielded the cutters.

  Careful not to surprise him while he was up a ladder using a potentially lethal tool, Rafferty stationed himself to the side of the ladder, cleared his throat and waited for Miller to notice him.

  ‘We meet again.’ Miller turned the hedge-cutters off and climbed down the ladder. ‘What do you want? I've already told you all I know.’

  ‘Have you, though?’

  Miller scowled, and looked from Rafferty to Llewellyn and back again. ‘What's that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Merely that I remember your saying when we last met that you were unable to recall anything of significance. Perhaps now your memory's had time to recover, you've recalled something useful. Maybe the fact that we've some new evidence might help jog your memory.’

  ‘New evidence?’

  Was it his imagination or did Miller look suddenly anxious? ‘Yes,’ Rafferty said. ‘We've now learned there was a man in a car watching Mr and Mrs Raine's home. I wondered whether you had noticed him?’

  A look of relief crossed Nick Miller's face. He nodded. ‘Felicity — Mrs Raine — told me this man had been watching the house. She confided that the man was her ex-husband and that he had threatened violence against her and Mr Raine.’

  Like her stepmother-in-law and her cousin by marriage, Felicity Raine too had now been caught out in a lie. Rafferty wondered what she had hoped to achieve by lying about the man. He felt disappointed in her, a disappointment he took out on Nick Miller.

  ‘And you didn't see fit to tell us about this man threatening violence?’ he demanded. ‘Not even after Mr Raine was murdered?’

  Nick Miller, young, handsome and with as many female clients as he could accommodate, looked them over with a lazy confidence and told them, ‘It was none of my business. If Felicity suspected her ex had attacked Mr Raine she could have gone to the police herself. Obviously, she didn't suspect him, even though she seemed scared of him. She asked me to have a word with him and warn him off. That was a couple of days before Raymond died. She told me she didn't want to ask Mr Raine to speak to him as she was worried it would turn nasty.’

  He paused before adding, ‘She wasn't wrong.’ Miller smirked and looked even more pleased with himself, if that was possible. ‘Her ex called me a few choice names when I walked over and spoke to him. I thought he was going to throw a punch at me at one point, but when I told him he was welcome to try, he took one look at my muscles and backed down. He seemed to think she and I were on more intimate terms than that of mere boss and employee. I wouldn't have kicked her out of bed, but Mrs Raine was always very business-like and never so much as glanced beyond my face -not like some of the bored housewives I look after.’ He smirked again. ‘Anyway, I told her ex he had it all wrong and that the only service I provided for Mrs Raine was keeping her grass trimmed and her weeds under control.’

  He frowned. ‘It's funny, now I think of it, but he didn't seem to know her new name. “Mrs Raine?” he said, as if it was news to him. “So it was that bastard who stole her away from me.’”

  Rafferty was surprised to discover that Dunbar hadn't known the identity of the man who had seduced his wife until shortly before Raine's murder. How could he not have known? He had been watching the house for some days -surely he had seen Raymond Raine and recognised him?

  They left Nick Miller to his hedge-cutting and made for the prison again, to learn what Felicity Raine had to say for herself. Rafferty's stomach grumbled, but he told it
that lunch would have to wait.

  Felicity Raine was paler and slimmer than ever. She appeared shamefaced as she admitted, ‘I know it was cowardly of me to leave my first husband in the way I did, but I just couldn't stand another row. That's why I took my chance and left Peter when he was out of the house and just left a letter on the kitchen table. He knew Raymond socially, of course, it was through Peter that I met Ray, but he didn't know I was having an affair with him. The next time he heard from me was when my solicitor wrote to him saying I wanted a divorce. Ray's name didn't come into it.’

  Rafferty was beginning to feel sorry for Peter Dunbar. ‘I see. But that doesn't explain why it should have come as such a shock to learn your new married name when Mr Miller warned him off. Surely your ex-husband must have seen Mr Raine driving in and out of the entrance?’

  ‘Well no, actually. I doubt it. Raymond always used the back entrance. It was handier for his office. So unless my ex realised we had two entrance drives, one each, front and rear, it's unlikely he ever saw Raymond. The rear entrance goes directly to the garage which is concealed behind a high hedge at the back of the house and can't be seen from the road.’

  It was nice to get one thing at least cleared up. Rafferty now said. ‘You told me that you and Mr Raine had been arguing a lot before his death?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Did you argue on the morning of his death?’

  ‘Yes.’ She dropped her gaze. ‘God forgive me. I'd gone out to answer the door. Raymond followed me to the door to continue the argument. The delivery driver who had rung the bell was so embarrassed at the way Raymond was behaving that he forgot to get my signature for the parcel.’

  Rafferty was beginning to get a clearer picture of that fateful morning. The Raines’ front drive was fairly short, the front door easily visible from the road and from behind the copse of trees where Peter Dunbar was watching. Now he asked: ‘And was this parcel delivered before or after the milkman arrived?’

  Felicity frowned in thought, but then, as if just understanding the reason for his question, she exclaimed, ‘No! You don't still think that Peter had anything to do with Raymond's death? The idea's absurd.’

  Was it, though? Rafferty wondered. The man had been cuckolded and humiliated. When he had finally discovered the identity of the man who had stolen his wife, and the fact that he must have been the last to know it, it wouldn't have been surprising if he had wanted revenge on both of them. Killing Raymond and setting Felicity up to take the rap would have seemed the perfect vengeance. And even though it seemed they had now traced the source of the drug used on Raymond Raine, it would be interesting to learn if Peter Dunbar had ever been prescribed Mogadon …

  ‘Please, if you'll just answer the question. Was the parcel delivered before or after the milkman's arrival?’

  Felicity Raine's brow winkled. When her gaze met his, she looked suddenly anxious and not nearly as certain as she had been. She wrung her hands, as though unable, like Lady Macbeth, to clean the blood of her guilt from them. Her voice, when she finally answered, sounded stricken as she admitted, ‘Before. The parcel was delivered a good half-hour before the milkman usually arrived. But—’

  Rafferty held up his hand. ‘Please, Mrs Raine. At this stage, all I'm interested in is the facts. What conclusion they lead me to is something I'll discover in due course.’ Still, he thought, it was interesting that it was only a couple of days before Raymond's murder when Peter Dunbar discovered the identity of the man who had enticed Felicity away from him. Maybe, finally seeing Raine again in the flesh had proved too much for him. He had had two days to brood and scheme since Nick Miller had revealed the truth. Had the temptation to pay back the man who had cuckolded him proved too great?

  ‘I promise you I'm not the sort of man to run ahead of the facts and start coming to conclusions about who might be the guilty party.’

  Beside him, Llewellyn made a strangled sound, as if he was choking on the biscuits Rafferty had begged from the prison governor to fill the hunger gap caused by their missed lunch.

  But as Llewellyn had eaten none of them, Rafferty knew this wasn't the reason for the choking fit. He thumped him, harder than necessary, between the shoulder blades to clear the non-existent blockage and said, unkindly, ‘If you can't manage to eat biscuits without choking on them, Dafyd, you should leave them for those who can,’ before he stood up, thanked Felicity Raine for her time and information and knocked on the door to be let out.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When Rafferty finally arrived home after another demanding day, he put a frozen lasagne in the microwave. While it cooked, he jumped in the shower and threw some things in a bag for his trip to Wales. He was out of the door in less than an hour.

  The cross-country trip from Essex to Gwynedd in Wales, Llewellyn's old stamping ground and where his mother still lived, was as difficult as he had expected it would be. There was no direct route from Britain's east to west coasts and he had to pull over constantly and consult the map; it was the only time he'd thought a satellite navigation system, with its accompanying bossy female voice, might prove itself useful rather than Big Brother intrusive.

  He finally reached Gloria's home around one in the morning. As he parked, he glanced up at the bedroom windows; they were in darkness, as was the rest of the house apart from the hallway where, through the square glass panel in the front door, he could see that a light had been left on in expectation of his arrival.

  Even though Abra had said she would leave the key under the large flower tub to the left of the front door, he had thought — hoped — that she, at least, would have stayed up to greet him.

  He sighed and lifted the flower tub. Sure enough the key was there. He let himself in and after he had paid an urgent visit to the bathroom and had a wash and brush-up, he found the kitchen, made himself tea and ate the beef sandwich that Gloria or Abra had prepared for him.

  With his hunger sated, Rafferty revived a little. He thought of Abra lying upstairs in her lonely bed and immediately brightened. He climbed the stairs with a light but eager tread. Confronted by four closed doors, one of which he already knew to be the one to the bathroom, he wondered which one was Abra's.

  After opening one door and looking in on a Gloria who was muttering restlessly in her sleep, he tried again and got lucky.

  After using the landing light to get his bearings as to the room's layout, he shut the door, shed his clothes and climbed in beside the warm and sleeping Abra, nuzzling her neck and murmuring her name.

  She woke up the instant he put his cold hands around her bare flesh.

  ‘Ow!’ she complained. ‘It's you. Get off, you sadist.’

  ‘That's a fine greeting for a man who's just arrived on his white charger to rescue the damsel in distress,’ he commented.

  Abra snorted. ‘White charger?’

  ‘OK. It's a white Cavalier with the odd rust spot. Have you any idea how difficult it is to get a white charger nowadays? Anyway, never mind that. Give us a cuddle.’

  Abra obliged. Soon Rafferty, too, was as warm as toast as Abra's naked body put some much-needed heat into his. He was just beginning to feel he was finally getting the welcome he deserved, when Abra suddenly broke off her embrace, sat up and said, ‘I almost forgot. It's no good, Joe, you've got to go.’

  Bewildered, Rafferty said, ‘Go? Go where? I've only just got here, for Pete's sake. I'm not going anywhere—’

  ‘I don't mean you've to go home, pea-brain. Only across the landing to the other spare room.’

  ‘And why would I do that?’ Dumbfounded, Rafferty also sat up. Then he laughed. ‘You're joking, right? You had me going there, for a minute,’ he admitted as he snuggled back down in the bed and pulled Abra with him.

  Abra struggled back up and yanked his head off the pillows. ‘I mean it, Joe. I'm not joking. I'm sorry, but I know my Aunt Gloria. For herself, she wouldn't care in the slightest that we're not married but are sharing a bed in her home. But because of my late unc
le—’

  ‘The Methodist minister?’

  The very same. My uncle took a dim view of unmarried couples sharing a bedroom, so Gloria thinks it would be an insult to his memory if she allowed it in his house.’

  ‘But,’ he began. ‘But we live together for heaven's sake—’

  ‘I know. It's rough on you. Rough on both of us. But I think we ought to respect her wishes. It's only for the one night, after all.’

  The one night he'd expected to have Abra back in his bed … But after his long day's work, followed by the tiring drive, Rafferty had no energy to argue. Besides, deflated by Abra's unexpected ejection of him from her bedroom, even the energy he had summoned for love-making dissipated. Though at least now he understood his ma's reference to the bedroom accommodation in Gloria's house not being sufficient to house her as well. She might have explained it to him, he thought resentfully. But of course, as she would have known, if she had explained then he might not have so readily submitted to her machinations to get him to Wales.

  Suddenly, he felt deadly tired. Without more objections, he gathered his shoes and clothes together in a heap and crept across the landing to his lonely single bed.

  Rafferty woke reluctantly from a deep sleep around seven the following morning. He showered, shaved and dressed, then went downstairs to the welcome aroma of grilling bacon.

  The two women were both up before him. Abra put a pot of tea on the kitchen table as he entered the room, then glanced at him with a teasing smile and asked, ‘Sleep well?’

  ‘Like a top,’ he retorted. 'I didn't have your freezing feet to contend with, remember.

  Abra pulled a face as he bent forward to kiss her. He gave Gloria a quick peck, too.

  She was showing the strain of the previous few days, he noticed. It was less than a year since he'd last seen her, but she seemed to have aged five years in that time.