Down Among the Dead Men

by Geraldine Evans

  'Can we expect this case to end in the same way as your last one, Inspector?' the sharp-faced newsman taunted. 'With no arrest and no conviction?'

  Rafferty forced a smile past his teeth. Although his last case had brought no conviction, it was considered closed and successfully concluded - a fact of which Haslam was well aware. The newsman's taunt forced a reply from Rafferty that lacked even the elementary diplomacy that he had so far managed. 'It's early days yet for this case, Mr Haslam. But,' he mocked. 'For future reference, might I suggest you ask one of your colleagues to explain the difference between a solved closed case and an open unsolved one?'

  Rafferty was relieved when his sarcasm was greeted by a guffaw of laughter. Haslam sat down again, an ugly flush on his face. Rafferty guessed he had made an enemy, but for the moment he didn't care and he took advantage of the suddenly lightened atmosphere to bring the conference to a close.

  By the time Rafferty had escaped the attentions of the media, it had been too late for them to go to London to see Anne Longman. They drove up the following morning. The first Mrs Longman lived in St John's Wood, an area of north west London in which the straying husbands of the previous century had often housed their mistresses. Quite a few of the pretty Italianate villas still existed, but Rafferty was surprised to discover that Anne Longman didn't live in one. Instead, she had a flat in an anonymous sixties block. It had a run down look which suggested the leaseholders were more interested in short term profits than maintenance. It certainly wasn't the sort of home in which Rafferty expected one of the mega rich Shores to live.

  'I'm surprised Charles Shore didn't find somewhere a bit more salubrious for his only sister to live,' said Rafferty as he pressed the button for the lift. 'He was careful enough of his public image to spend a pile in buying up the local newspaper chain in order to conceal his dirtier habits, so you'd think he'd realise that the way an aspiring politician treated his nearest and dearest was also important. It's not as if he couldn't afford a decent place for her.'

  Llewellyn treated him to one of his more sagacious glances and commented, 'But we don't know that he can, do we? Companies larger than Shore's have suffered from the fluctuations of the Stock Exchange.'

  'What - do you think he might be more style than substance?' It was something Rafferty hadn't considered.

  Llewellyn gave the tiniest of shrugs.

  'It's possible, I suppose,' Rafferty conceded. 'But, somehow, in Shore's case, I don't think a shortage of the readies is the reason he houses his sister in a sixties concrete block. With him, I get the impression that the satisfaction he gets from keeping her down is amply worth the risk of a little bad publicity. Besides, if she's that dependant on him, he's safe enough. She's not likely to tell the press.'

  The lift arrived and groaned its way up to the second floor. Rafferty knocked on the door of number fifteen and waited impatiently, curious to find out what Shore's sister, and Henry's ex-wife, would be like.

  She wasn't what he had expected, but then, in his experience, people rarely were. He knew she was in her early thirties, three years Charles's senior, but she looked older. Her thick dark hair hung lifeless, and her face, although attractive in an ageing ingenue way, wasn't made-up with any great care. Her mascara had smudged and been left that way, as if correcting the small imperfection would entail too much trouble.

  Rafferty showed his warrant card and, after raising not quite matching pencilled eyebrows, she remarked, with a callousness intended to shock, 'I suppose you've come about the sainted Barbara? My brother rang last Friday, and told me she'd been murdered. Thoughtful of him not to leave me to read it in the papers.' Her lips twisted in a parody of a smile. 'Poor Henry. He seems to have trouble keeping his wives.'

  Rafferty got the impression that, under the juvenile desire to shock, her words were a form of camouflage for feelings that might otherwise overwhelm her. There was an air of suppressed excitement she couldn't quite conceal and he guessed that the whisky he smelt on her breath, as she moved back to let them in, had heightened it. It was only half past eleven and such early, solitary drinking hinted at instability, the need of a crutch to get through the day. Charles had hinted that she had a "problem"; presumably that was it, though he had implied that her problem hadn't existed before her youthful marriage to Henry. Rafferty could well believe that Henry wouldn't' exactly be a Rock of Gibraltar in the husband stakes. Had his ineffectualness and general air of helplessness driven her, despairing, into alcoholism? Or would she have followed the same route without his steering? With its succession of broken lives and tragic deaths, insecurity seemed to run in the Shore family.

  'Welcome to Chez Squaller.' She spread her arms wide as she led them into the living room. Her description wasn't far wrong. With its balding rugs and grimy, smoke-stained walls, the interior of the flat was a good match for the exterior. 'My darling little brother's the last of the big spenders, as you can see.' Her next words confirmed Rafferty's earlier conclusions. 'I think it amused him to provide me with a cheap flat in this area.' She gave a bitter laugh. 'He likes to remind me I'm a kept woman. I was my father's favourite, you see, at least until I rebelled and married Henry. It always rankled with Charles. This is his revenge.'

  Despite the drink, she was sharp, and was well aware of the reasons behind her brother's lack of generosity. There was something of the jealous child in all of us, he mused, and even international executives weren't immune. Hadn't he always known that he was his ma's favourite? Her inadequately concealed preference still brought pangs of guilt long after childhood. He remembered his younger brothers and sisters watching to make sure he didn't get the bigger helping, the better presents, the greater attention. Growing up didn't change the jealousy, it merely drove it underground. He wondered what Maximillian Shore's favourite child had seen in Henry?

  'He was kind,' she told him, startling him with the ease with which she seemed able to tune into his train of thought. But then his ma had had a similar knack. One of his sisters, in a moment of candour, had told him his face was too open. A handicap in a policeman. 'Don't look so surprised, I'm not a witch, it's just that that's what everyone always wondered. At least I thought he was kind,' she went on. 'It was only later that I discovered his so-called kindness stemmed more from weakness, from taking the line of least resistance, than from compassion. That's when I began to despise him. When you've had a father like mine, you need kindness. Or perhaps I should say I thought I did.' She shrugged and pushed her hair behind her ear again, in a gesture that betrayed the surface bravado.

  Turning her back on them both, she gazed out of the window, watching as storm clouds, buffeted by a chilly east wind, chased each other across the sky. Rafferty wasn't altogether surprised that the weathermen had got it wrong again and he was glad he'd had to postpone the visit to old Ma Thomson. He'd have been squelching in mud up to his armpits.

  Anne Longman appeared lost in contemplation and seemed to have forgotten their existence. Rafferty got the impression it was something she did often, a vanishing trick to shut out life's problems, like Henry and her father.

  But, as the rain started in earnest and began a tympanic clattering against the windows, she turned back to face them, indulging, once again, in the drinker's need to confide, to explain away their weakness. 'My father accused me of trying to take the easiest route through life by marrying Henry.' She gave Rafferty a thin smile. 'And he was right - I was. Ironic isn't it, that it often turns out to be the hardest route in the end?'

  Given the chance, Rafferty was all for the easy life himself, and having, like Llewellyn, lost his father at a young age, he wondered how it must have felt to have a parent like old Maximillian? As he recalled the unyielding expression of the portrait, with its hint of ruthless fanaticism, so well captured by the artist, he decided he'd had a lucky escape. It was hardly surprising that she'd married young. Defiance, they called it. Rebellion against authority. Hardly surprising either that she'd chosen a man like Henry. She'd been only e
ighteen when she'd married him. At that age it would be easy to mistake weakness for kindness. He pulled himself up short before he got to the stage of inviting Llewellyn's psychological opinion. You're not here as a father confessor, Rafferty, he reminded himself. Get on with it.

  He cleared his throat. 'Barbara Longman was murdered, as your brother told you. Do you know anyone who might have wished to harm her?'

  'Apart from me, you mean?' she asked flippantly, again displaying that juvenile need to defy both good sense and convention that seemed an integral part of her character. Perhaps that need had set in early? Had she attempted to shock her father in order to gain some freedom? Perhaps she had hoped that by going against his express wishes often enough, he would give up on her? Or perhaps, he thought wryly, it was just the drink talking, and he should leave the analysis to Llewellyn? 'Who could possibly want to murder the sainted Barbara? Everyone loved her.' Her mouth turned down. 'She was the fairy on top of the Christmas tree.'

  'You didn't like her though.' She'd made no attempt to hide her feelings on the point and he saw no need to ignore it.

  'Would you?' she countered. 'In my position?' She played restlessly with assorted bangles on her thin wrists. Rafferty found her fiddling distracting. 'She was the reason Henry got custody of Maxie, my son. If it wasn't for her...' Two bright spots of colour stained her cheeks and her hands tightened on the back of the chair. 'She had no right to him. He was my son, not hers.'

  Predictably logical, Llewellyn remarked reasonably, 'But surely, your son would have been about twelve, thirteen when the custody hearing was held? Old enough, I would have thought to be asked his preference. If he'd rather stay with you, he had only to say.'

  Anne Longman's eyes were scornful, as she demanded, 'What do you know about it? Charles made sure he didn't want to stay with me. Poisoned his mind against me.' She gave a sardonic laugh. 'He thought I didn't understand why, but I know my brother. Charles can be charming when he wants something. And you can be sure he pulled out all the stops on the charm front for Maxie, promised him all sorts of things that I could no longer give him, just to make sure Henry got custody and I didn't. Even as a boy, Charles was obsessed with getting his own way. I remember once, when we were children, we had a puppy that preferred me. He killed it out of spite. He could never bear anyone to have something he wanted. If he couldn't have it, he'd prefer to destroy it. Just like he destroyed the puppy.'

  She stopped her tirade for long enough to light a cigarette. The pungent smoke made Llewellyn cough, but she took no notice, so intent was she on pouring out her grievances. 'Of course, with Barbara in court, looking as sober and saintly as Mother Teresa, and promising to provide Maxie with a stable home life, I knew no judge would grant me custody. I could see that no matter how hard I tried...' Her voice broke with the easy emotionalism of the drinker and she took a couple of shuddering breaths, before drawing quickly on her cigarette. The smoke seemed to calm her, for as her gaze settled on the bottle of cheap whisky on the sideboard, her eyes gradually hardened, and she took on an astonishing resemblance to her father. 'As long as Henry was with her, I knew I'd lose.'

  'Her death would seem to have removed that difficulty,' Llewellyn remarked quietly.

  She gave a harsh laugh. 'You sound as if you think I killed her.' The possibility that they might suspect her didn't seem to trouble her. With a wide-eyed and deceptive serenity, she added tauntingly, 'I might have done, at that - if I'd thought of it.'

  'We don't know who killed her yet, Mrs Longman,' Rafferty told her quietly. How deep was the grudge she harboured against her successor? he wondered. Deep enough, certainly, to convince herself that the loss of her son hadn't been her own fault. It was strange, because, in spite of her penchant for drama, at heart she struck him as a realist. As much of a realist as her brother in her own way. Was she really capable of convincing herself that if it hadn't been for Barbara and her brother, a judge would have awarded her custody? Even if she managed to fool herself, would she have been able to pretend sobriety for long enough to fool the court? he wondered.

  There would have been social reports and the rest. Custody hearings could be nasty, with all the little human failings thrown into the ring. Hadn't he heard the way of it often enough from his divorced colleagues in the force? Although he was a Catholic, he was of the lapsed variety and had no strong feelings against divorce. If Angie, his wife, had lived longer, they'd probably have had kids and he might have followed the same route himself. With or without Barbara's presence in the court, it was likely Anne Longman's drinking habits would have got a good airing. She must know it too.

  Llewellyn took up the questioning again. 'As this is a murder investigation, you'll understand that we need to ask certain questions? Perhaps you can tell us where you were during last Thursday afternoon?' She didn't respond, but Llewellyn persisted. 'Were you at home?'

  Anne Longman took her time replying. Only after she had slid another cigarette from the packet of Galloises and lit it, did she speak. 'I imagine so. Where else would I be?' She frowned, as if the question made her realise that she didn't know where she had been, and, for a moment, her drunken forgetfulness seemed to worry her, but then she smiled and flung her arms wide in a gesture that invited them to come up with a suggestion. When they didn't respond, she repeated, 'Where else would I be?' Brazening it out, she added, 'I've no money to go anywhere. Charles makes sure of that.'

  Llewellyn tried again to get a firm answer from her. 'I'm afraid we need a more definite answer than that, Mrs Longman. Can you please try a little harder to remember.'

  Rafferty glanced at his sergeant with a wry admiration for his perseverance. Personally, he didn't think they'd get much out of her today. If they wanted to prise a straight answer from her, they'd have to get here early, before she'd braced herself with alcohol.

  But the Welshman was a creature of duty and although it was plain that Anne Longman's emotionalism made him uncomfortable, Llewellyn did his best to counteract that by adopting a firm no-nonsense policeman demeanour. On the surface, they were a walking cliche, Rafferty realised with amusement - the soft cop and the hard one. And even if it wasn't strictly a true evaluation of their roles or personalities, the customers didn't know that.

  'I am trying,' she insisted. 'But I can't remember, and badgering me won't help.' Taking another deep draw on her cigarette, she blew the smoke out and gazed at him coolly through the grey haze. 'Put me down as "at home all day," Sergeant, if it makes you happy.'

  Rafferty got the feeling she was playing with them. It seemed Llewellyn sensed it too, because his Welsh accent, which was normally barely discernible, became more pronounced; a sure sign of annoyance. 'I'm afraid guesses aren't good enough, Madam,' he asserted, his expression grim. 'Is there no-one else who could confirm you were here?'

  'A boyfriend, you mean?' She shook her head with an arch smile. 'Strictly verboten, don't you know? My darling brother thinks I'm a naughty girl and he made it plain, on the day I moved into this grace and favour flat, that it was simply to provide a roof over my head and to keep him above reproach. No followers allowed. The only male I can have staying here is my son, but they've succeeded in brainwashing him to such an extent that even that's a rare occurrence.' Her lip curled. 'I'm sure Charles pays my next-door-neighbour to spy on me.'

  She crushed her cigarette out in the ashtray and lit another, before enquiring in a tone of bright interest, as if she were enquiring about a friend's pet cat, 'How's she supposed to have died, anyway? I gather from your questions that I'm included in your list of suspects, so surely I'm entitled to know? Charles didn't say and I rarely get a newspaper.'

  As the media had already reported the brief details he had supplied at the press conference, Rafferty saw no reason not to tell her. 'According to the post mortem, she was suffocated.'

  Anne let out a peal of laughter. 'How disappointing for her.' With a glance at Llewellyn's stiff expression, she jibed, 'I don't know why you should be so shocked that I
find it amusing. Death by suffocation's hardly in the best tradition of saints, is it?'

  Rafferty stood up. He felt they had provided her with enough fun for one day. He hoped she wouldn't find their next interview quite so amusing. 'If you do remember for certain where you were on Thursday afternoon, perhaps you'd get in touch?'

  She nodded and said quickly, as if anxious to get rid of them, 'Of course. Is that it?'

  'For the moment,' Llewellyn's voice was sharp. 'We'll need to speak to you again, of course.'

  As they let themselves out, Rafferty caught the crash of bottles from inside the flat. It seemed she hadn't been quite so relaxed about their visit as she had made out. The thought made him realise he could do with a drink himself. And it was lunctime. 'Fancy a bevy?' he asked Llewellyn. 'I think we can spare half an hour.'

  'No thank you, sir.' After a pause, he added, 'I don't drink.'

  Rafferty wasn't altogether surprised. 'Taken the pledge have you?' he joked.

  'That's right. Took a vow when I was young.'

  Rafferty gaped at him as he realised his joking had been spot on. 'Really? I thought that sort of thing went out with the Ark. You mean, you've never drunk alcohol?'

  Llewellyn nodded and as he took it in, Rafferty slowly shut his gaping mouth. In all his years on the force, he couldn't recall a colleague who had willingly forsworn God's great comforter in such a way. To be able to hold your drink was almost as much a badge of office to the average copper as his warrant card. To him, Llewellyn's youthful teetotal vow was akin to a novice nun swearing to give up sex before she'd even tried it. Surely, he reasoned, bemusedly, it was the sacrificing of known pleasures that counted on the heavenly scoreboard? His shoulders slumped as he remembered he'd taken a vow himself to go on the wagon till this case was solved.