A Thrust to the Vitals

by Evans, Geraldine

  Rafferty abandoned any further thoughts of window shopping for Abra’s Christmas present and finding his way back into her good books. He would have to get himself out to the caravan park pronto to see what was happening to his brother. He’d sounded panicked about something.

  The rain started coming down in earnest and he was forced to switch the wipers to double speed, but they were still having trouble coping with the deluge. Talk about it never rained but it poured.

  Suddenly, as a hefty gust slewed the car towards the pavement, and he had to struggle to correct it, it occurred to him to wonder what it must be like in a flimsy caravan when the weather was this windy.

  Feeling as panicked now as Mickey had sounded when he had struggled to transfer the word ‘injured’ over the air waves, Rafferty was finally able to put his foot down and aqua-planed his way through the puddles, earning more than a few clenched first salutes and more colourful expletives from the soaked pedestrians he passed that, thankfully, for his delicate sensibilities, blew away on the wind.

  But although he mouthed several useless ‘Sorry’s’ through the rain-drenched windows, Mickey’s well-being took first claim. He was now too worried about what might have happened to his brother to allow himself to be distracted by his own road-hoggery.

  The anxious dash through the storm turned out to have been needless. Mickey was perfectly all right, as Rafferty discovered when he had finally fought his way through the wind and rain, risking his own neck in the process. As he squelched his way across the caravan park, getting thoroughly soaked in the process, it was to find Mickey standing in the caravan’s doorway, one of their Ma’s best blankets around his shoulders, peering out at the weather.

  When he saw Rafferty, he shouted, ‘…took your time…been scared witless….’

  The wind took away most of his brother’s words, but the ones remaining were sufficient to tell Rafferty that Mickey was in a foul mood. He just hoped he hadn’t managed to persuade one of the family to bring him more anger-stoking alcohol.

  Rafferty reached the van, angrily pushed his brother aside and barged past him. When Mickey followed him, Rafferty turned accusingly. ‘What did you have to get me all worried like that for? You’re not injured. There’s damn all wrong with you as far as I can see. You’re not even wet,’ he remarked begrudgingly, ‘unlike me. And as for the storm—‘

  This had died down somewhat in the last few minutes. OK, he conceded, it might have been a bit gusty before, but it was quiet enough now.

  They must have been in a lull, for just then the caravan rocked alarmingly from side to side. Rafferty and Mickey looked at one another, then they made a simultaneous dash for the door before the wind could blow the caravan right over. In their rush to escape, they both reached the door together, then promptly got wedged in the opening. The caravan teetered even more violently and threatened to land on top of them.

  They fought free of each other’s shoulders, waited till the wind which was thrashing and crashing its way around the park like some unearthly predator forced the caravan to lean the other way, then they both jumped free to land on the hard-standing. Rafferty turned an ankle. He hobbled, roughly dragged by an unsympathetic Mickey, till they reached the protected lee of the concrete toilet block from where they stood and watched the storm do its worst.

  By some miracle, and, it had to be said, to Mickey’s bitter regret, when the storm finally died out two hours later and they went to inspect the damage, it was to find that although battered, the hated caravan was still standing and was ready to resume its job of harbouring Mickey’s fugitive and reluctant body.

  As they tidied up the thrown-about contents, Rafferty asked, ‘Why on earth didn’t you abandon the bloody thing if you were frightened and take refuge somewhere out of the wind?’

  ‘And where was I meant to go, exactly?’ a sullen Mickey demanded. ‘You told me to stay inside, out of sight.’

  ‘True, but I didn’t mean for you to remain in the van, you idiot,’ Rafferty contradicted, ‘if you felt you were in imminent danger of being blown out to sea. I assumed I could rely on you to use your common sense.’ Why had he made such an assumption? he wondered as he took in his brother’s features dimly glowering at him in the gloom. He sighed. ‘The storm’s over, let’s get you bedded down for the night. I was expected home hours ago.’

  ‘Nice to have a home to go to,’ Mickey muttered.

  Rafferty decided his best response to this was to ignore it. He had little compunction about leaving his ingrate of a brother to his own devices a short time later. In his panic, he had neglected to buy any food; something else about which Mickey wasn’t slow to complain.

  Muttering every inch of the way, Rafferty slid and squelched his way back across the park to retrieve the forgotten bag of clean clothes from the boot along with the replacement and, by now, lukewarm hot water bottle. Wordlessly, he thrust them at his brother before heading home, doubtless to listen to the anticipated further complaints from his neglected fiancée.

  By the following morning, the night’s storm had turned into a penetrating drizzle, which, although light, had an unpleasant way of stealing under the collar and soaking through the soles of one’s shoes, causing a miserable dampness of the spirit as well as the body.

  When Rafferty had reached home the previous evening, Abra had been in bed with her back turned. And after his other brother, Patrick Sean, had rung to plead that he stand in for him on the Mickey mercy run, his memory of such a cool welcome encouraged him to make an early visit the following evening to re-provision his brother so as to be able to get home at a reasonable hour.

  Peeved at having to visit Mickey two evenings running, Rafferty plodded his way through the puddle-bestrewn police station car park. Somehow, he got through another day’s work on the investigation, without once feeling he was even coming close to fingering the murderer and so enabling his brother to regain his freedom. His continuing failure to do that went down even worse than his failure to refill Mickey’s food stocks. Rafferty scowled. He seemed to be getting it in the neck from all sides.

  That evening, once he’d decreed that work was over for the day, Rafferty stopped off at the twenty-four-hour supermarket on the outskirts of Elmhurst, before heading for the caravan park. He arrived to find the sea of mud went even deeper than the previous night. He took one look and decided to leave the car on the road, scared it would get bogged down. Of course this meant his mud-mired pathway was even longer. He slipped and fell face-first in a particularly cloggy spot. With difficulty, he dragged himself from the mud’s clutches and heaved himself upright, feeling several stone heavier with the weight of the mud. The rain, now not quite as light as it had been and even more penetrating, lashed his unprotected head with a spiteful vigour.

  Bitterly, Rafferty cursed his brother, the weather and Rufus Seward for landing him with such a mess. He was in no mood for more of his brother’s ingratitude, especially as he felt Mickey should be thankful it wasn’t him out in all weathers making grocery deliveries. No, he could stay nicely tucked up in the caravan rather than risk an undignified and impromptu mud bath.

  But Mickey, when a mud-coated Rafferty reached the van, didn’t seem to share this viewpoint. And rather than being appreciative of Rafferty’s efforts on his behalf, he did nothing but complain as soon as Rafferty stuck his dripping head round the door.

  After taking in the supermarket carrier bags, he said bitterly, ‘I see. ‘I’m to go without a hot meal again, am I?’ His face hung about with a heavy scowl, Mickey threw himself back down on the banquette and observed, ‘I don’t know why you bother to bring me food at all if that’s the best you can do.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Rafferty retorted, ‘when you’re such a miserable git, so don’t tempt me. I’ve got plenty of other things I could be doing instead of dancing attendance on you, believe me.’ He slammed the carrier bags down on the table with such force that the pull-out leg collapsed and deposited his purchases on the floor where they
rolled in the dust of months, the uncut loaf in its flimsy wrapping included.

  ‘I’m not eating that now,’ Mickey told him.

  Rafferty, not as fussy as his less physically robust brother, said, with the brusque impatience of the rarely sick, ‘For God’s sake, just give it a dust over with that tea towel Ma wrapped around the hot water bottle yesterday and it’ll be fine. It’ll probably do you some good to get a few germs down your neck. I don’t think all Ma’s molly-coddling when you were a kid did you any favours at all.’

  He abandoned his brother to do what he could with the soiled loaf and made for the door. ‘I’ve got to get going. I still have a murder to solve, remember?’

  He just managed to duck as said loaf came flying towards his head.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Between one thing and another, Rafferty realised he had forgotten to look at the security tapes from Seward’s Norfolk home. There had been so many people to check out and question – those who had attended the party, all the acquaintances in the contacts book and Seward’s diary – that it was several days before he even remembered their existence.

  Normally, he would have delegated such a task to a junior member of the team. But as this was a case in which he already had plenty to conceal, he thought it prudent to do the job himself.

  And when he did, it was to make the discovery that ‘dear’ Nigel had been amongst those who had visited Rufus Seward at his Norfolk estate in the days prior to Seward’s death. He had, therefore, had the opportunity to help himself to one of the blank invitations, an opportunity the ever-networking Nigel was unlikely to have denied himself.

  Fast-forwarding his way through these tapes, cursing as he went, it had been a matter of hours only before Rafferty had observed Nigel’s arrival and admission to the house. After that, it had taken even less time to extract an explanation for these events from Canthorpe when he got him on the phone.

  As well as helping himself to an invitation, Nigel must also have taken the opportunity when left alone in the office for a short while, to access Marcus Canthorpe’s computer and enter his name on the official guest list, because it was certainly there. How very entrepreneurial, was Rafferty’s reluctantly admiring thought at this discovery. He might have felt a greater admiration for his cousin’s nerve, it if wasn’t for the fact that, invariably, with Nigel, he generally managed to get someone else to take the rap for him. This time, if he was responsible for the murder, however unlikely this still struck Rafferty as being, his fall guy was not going to be Mickey. Even if his brother was being a prickly, ungrateful git.

  Canthorpe had already identified the majority of the other visitors to Seward’s home during the relevant time. Strangely, he had forgotten all about Nigel’s visit. But perhaps, because Canthorpe revealed that Nigel had turned up out of the blue and uninvited, that wasn’t so strange. With Rafferty jogging his memory, providing a description of Nigel and, from the tape, the date and time of his arrival, Canthorpe recalled Nigel’s visit. And, with his memory jogged, he recalled the visit with a greater clarity than Nigel would doubtless have liked. Given that his name was now associated with the murder scene and the victim’s home, he would probably have preferred any memory of this visit to be beyond anyone’s recall.

  During their telephone conversation, Canthorpe told Rafferty, ‘I didn’t know this Nigel Blythe at all. He insisted he was a recent business acquaintance of Sir Rufus and that he had an urgent proposition to put to him relevant to previous discussions they had had together. He was very persuasive, as I recall.’

  The art of persuading the unwilling was Nigel’s speciality. He was a born salesman. ‘But surely you would have known about this proposition and what it involved? You were Sir Rufus’s assistant, after all.’

  Canthorpe had laughed. ‘You’re right, Inspector. Yes, mostly, I did know. But Sir Rufus always had one or two little schemes up his sleeve that he kept to himself until he was ready to reveal them. I just assumed this was one of those. As I told you, this Mr Blythe was very insistent – most of Sir Rufus’s visitors are used to getting their own way – and he said that my boss would make my life hell if he missed this golden opportunity because I failed to notify Sir Rufus of his arrival. Though as he had no appointment, I don’t quite understand why he was so sure my boss was even at home.’

  Rafferty did. The scenario had Nigel’s MO all over it — supreme confidence allied with the guile to snatch his opportunity. He had probably paid some gullible work-experience youngster to watch the gate and warn him of Seward’s arrival on the off-chance that he would find his quarry in a benign, agreeable mood. And for all that he was inclined to be lazy and rarely pursued things to the ultimate if they proved difficult, at the beginning of the chase, Nigel could be persistence itself.

  ‘Did you leave this gentleman alone in your office at all?’ Rafferty questioned. He must have done, since Nigel’s name didn’t get on the computer-compiled guest list all by itself. Rafferty wasn’t surprised when Canthorpe replied in the affirmative.

  ‘Naturallly, I assumed, as someone Sir Rufus was prepared to do business with, that this Mr Blythe must be above petty theft. Besides,’ Canthorpe said in his defence, ‘at that stage, I had no reason to doubt his credentials as a business acquaintance of Sir Rufus.’

  ‘And later?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Rafferty sensed the wry smile from Canthorpe’s end of the phone. ‘Later, I certainly had reason to doubt his claims, particularly as Sir Rufus refused to see him. My boss had told me to leave him undisturbed for an hour a short time before this gentleman, Mr Blythe, arrived. Anyway, this Mr Blythe insisted on waiting out the hour. He was perfectly amicable about it. He didn’t even attempt to start throwing his weight about at being kept waiting.’

  ‘So what did Sir Rufus say when you told him that Mr Blythe was waiting to see him?’ Rafferty asked, pretty sure, by now, that he could guess the answer.

  Canthorpe paused, probably feeling embarrassed as Seward had surely used intemperate language in his rebuff of the importuning Nigel. ‘He was pretty rude. Unsurprisingly, I have a vivid recall of his words. He said: “You can tell that f____ing devious excuse for a snake oil salesman to get off my property. I wouldn’t do business with that shyster if I was down to my last million and desperate. Get rid of him before I’m forced to come out there and kick his sorry arse out the door myself.”’

  Well, Rafferty thought, that was pretty unambiguous. ‘And was Mr Blythe likely to have heard what Sir Rufus said?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes, I don’t doubt it. Sir Rufus was something of a champion shouter when crossed. And Mr Blythe didn’t wait for me to relay the message. He took himself off pretty smartly, looking decidedly put out.’

  Rafferty nodded to himself. Even Nigel, who, as an estate agent, so often tried to impose himself on the unwilling and received the inevitable rebuffs, had a limit to how much rudeness he could swallow. And it sounded as if he might have reached his limit with Seward. But, with the blank invitation clutched in his sticky, thieving paw, he had surely got what he came for. Anything else would have been a bonus. And even the ever-optimistic Nigel must have known he was chancing his arm in trying to impose himself on a man who clearly considered Nigel not the sort that he wanted to do business with.

  ‘Strange that Mr Blythe said nothing of this when we interviewed him,’ Llewellyn commented later when Rafferty recounted the conversation.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Rafferty replied. But both Nigel’s little stunt and his attempt to conceal it were very much in character. This latest discovery had produced a number of answers and yet more questions, one of which was how ‘put out’ had Nigel been at the way Seward had dismissed him? Insults were, in Nigel’s line, an occupational hazard and accepted as such, but even the Nigel’s of this world had their limits. And if he had been deeply offended to be so rudely ejected from Seward’s home, how likely was it that he had crawled out of the shadows and revenged himself?

  Rafferty shook his head. He
had already once before considered Nigel in the role of murderer in this investigation. He still couldn’t see it even if Nigel’s ejection from Seward’s home had upped the anti. Such an upfront murder would never be Nigel’s style. Like a creature of the night, which was how Rafferty sometimes thought of his cousin, if Nigel wanted someone dead, he’d employ a sly and subtle poisoning rather than the open thrust of a blade. That way, he wouldn’t even need to be around when death occurred.

  Llewellyn had been silent while Rafferty brooded on the fact that Nigel appeared to be yet another unofficial party guest. But now, Rafferty became conscious of Llewellyn’s questioning gaze upon him.

  ‘Mr Blythe seems to be making a habit of popping up in the middle of our investigation,’ Llewellyn observed. ‘Firstly at the Elmhurst Hotel reception and now we find he also turned up at Sir Rufus’s home. Do you think he’s aiming for a hat-trick?’

  ‘Search me,’ Rafferty replied, ‘though I think this is just an unfortunate coincidence. Murder’s not Nigel’s style — at least not this sort of murder. He hasn’t got the bottle for it. Though it makes you wonder, after he’d instructed Canthorpe in no uncertain terms that Nigel was to leave his home, how Seward reacted when Nigel turned up at the party. It doesn’t seem likely he’d have given him a warm welcome, yet no one’s mentioned any kind of rumpus at his appearance.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Llewellyn murmured. ‘That strikes me as odd, too. I can only surmise that Sir Rufus must have concluded that Mr Blythe was one of the council’s invitees. But he had only to ask Ivor Bignall if this was the case, yet, according to Mr Bignall, not only was Mr Blythe not on the council’s guest list, Sir Rufus failed to question him about the possibility.’

  ‘Maybe that was because I’ve a Big’un was giving him the big freeze treatment. Anyway, between one thing and another, Nigel managed to gate-crash the swanky do and get his feet under the table, his nose in the trough, and his name nicely networked amongst the town’s high flyers without being challenged and thrown out on his ear.’