A Thrust to the Vitals

by Evans, Geraldine

  It was DI Apsley, the opposite number he had spoken to when he and Llewellyn had visited the Norwich officer’s patch who, aware of Rafferty’s investigation, repaid his previous courtesy by notifying them about the latest deaths. The Norfolk Police had found the bodies of the twins shortly after they had been called in when one of the late Sir Rufus Seward’s staff went to their cottage after they failed to turn up for work and found them both dead.

  The twins had overdosed on some seriously pure heroin. Rafferty assumed it was the same stuff that he had read about in the Norwich newspaper. They hadn’t even had time to get the needles out of their arms before they died.

  After Inspector Apsley had given him the gist Rafferty expressed his suspicion that someone had helped the twins to eternity. It seemed that Apsley thought so too, because he and his team had taken the twins’ cottage apart. And while they hadn’t found any contact details for their drug supplier, they had found a stash of heroin which the forensic laboratory had confirmed was fatally pure. They had also found a collection of interesting paperwork, tapes and photographs that confirmed Rafferty’s ideas about how the twins had been able to afford to indulge their various expensive hobbies.

  After thanking Inspector Apsley, Rafferty put the phone down and said to Llewellyn, ‘Get your coat on. We’re off for another trip to Norfolk.’

  As they hurried out to the car park, Rafferty filled Llewellyn in about the twins as well as his own conclusions as to the murderer’s identity.

  ‘What do you think are the chances of making an arrest?’ Llewellyn enquired after he observed an excited Rafferty climb eagerly into the driver’s seat and had resignedly walked round to the passenger side.

  Rafferty gunned up the engine, grinning to himself as he sensed Llewellyn wince. ‘For the twins’ murder, every chance. Apparently there’s a concealed CCTV camera opposite the end of the road where the police discovered the Norwich dealer has his dirty den. With any luck, we’ll get a nice picture of our killer to add to our hall of fame. We’re also in with a good chance of getting him for Seward’s murder, because I think he’ll cough once he knows we’ve got him for the twins’ murders. He’ll want to get something out of all this. I don’t think he’ll be able to stop himself explaining how cleverly he almost pulled it off.’

  Rafferty drove out of the car park at record speed, just avoided colliding with a traffic island, and headed in the direction of the A12.

  ‘Remember I told you what a sneaky pair of low-lifes the Farraday twins always were?’ He didn’t wait for Llewellyn’s reply. ‘They had quite a collection of stuff on various of Seward’s associates and other assorted enemies, including our boy. Lots of nice little earners, apparently. The Farraday lads were always ones to keep their eyes open and their ears to the ground in search of blackmail booty. According to the Norfolk plods, the twins’ cottage had been seriously pulled apart before they got there.

  ‘But our killer didn’t find what he was looking for. The Farradays had their blackmail evidence stash too well hidden for anyone but a professional searcher. Thankfully, Norfolk’s finest put their backs into it and managed to find the twins’ hidey-hole. The twins had each even written and signed witness statements about what they’d seen on the night of Seward’s murder. The mad, greedy little bastards were blackmailing Seward’s murderer for his inheritance. The one he wasn’t even going to get. Adds a nice touch, I thought. I doubt it took him long to figure out who amongst those at the party had played “I Spy”, with him as the answer. But as he wasn’t down to receive a fat legacy from Seward at all, they were demanding the one thing he was unable to give them. So, instead, he gave them what he could — death and silence at the end of a needle.’

  As Rafferty’s racing-driver motoring out of the car park had indicated, he was impatient to get to his destination. They even got to Norwich in one piece, though not without reducing Llewellyn’s sallow Welsh colouring to something approaching tallow.

  But Rafferty had ignored all Llewellyn’s cautious warnings on the way, as he ignored all his recriminatory reproaches once they had arrived at the Norwich police station and parked up.

  ‘Quit griping, Daff. Do you want these Norfolk boys to steal all our thunder? Which they will if we don’t manage to get there before they find the right piece of CCTV footage.’

  They were immediately directed up to the viewing room, which was filled with excited Norwich cops working their way through the pile of tapes and talking about ‘compooters’ in their Norfolk accents.

  There was a roar of laughter as they recognised a well-known national politician gaze furtively to left and right on the tape, before he gained admission to the dealer’s house.

  ‘Nice to know we’re represented by such pillars of the community,’ one officer commented. ‘What is it with these politicos? If it’s not drugs, its mouthy mistresses or rent boys. Aren’t fat pay cheques, very long holidays, free foreign jollies and index-linked pensions enough for the greedy bastards? If this politician and his liking for mind-altering substances is anything to go by, it’s no wonder they come up with such naff, ill thought-through laws that we’re expected to make work.’

  ‘Bastards are probably all high as kites, half the time,’ another jaded detective commented. ‘When they’re not drunk from propping up one of the numerous bars at the Houses of Parliament. Or both.’

  ‘Mmm,’ a third commented. ‘God knows how they’d manage if most of them weren’t lawyers by trade.’

  ‘Might manage some common sense for a change,’ Apsley offered. ‘So whose turn is it to leak it to the press?’

  Enthusiastic volunteers clamoured vociferously for the job, but before Apsley could choose his favourite, he held his hand up, asked for hush and added, ‘Hang on. We can toss for that pleasure later. For now, he turned to Rafferty and said, ‘Take a look at that tousle-haired guy. Is he our John?’

  Rafferty pushed his way nearer to the screen. ‘Wind it back,’ he tersely instructed. ‘I want to take a closer look.’

  The Norfolk officer seated before the screen threw a dirty look in his direction, but did as he was told.

  Rafferty squinted hard at the grainy tape as the man on the CCTV footage approached the dealer’s terraced home and climbed the steps to the door. He checked the date on the tape. Yesterday. Then he grinned and punched the air. ‘Yes!’

  Because even though Marcus Canthorpe had tried to disguise himself with a scarf pulled around the bottom half of his thin face, there was no disguising his mop of fair hair, which vanity had probably made him reluctant to crush under a concealing hat.

  ‘I didn’t have Canthorpe down as a druggie,’ Rafferty commented later as he and Llewellyn took advantage of the Norfolk force’s canteen facilities to grab a bite of lunch with Inspector Apsley. Canthorpe had been picked up and was safely stashed in the cells and Rafferty had been given permission to join the local officers in questioning him. He was looking forward to that.

  ‘I don’t think he is,’ said Apsley just before he took a giant bite of his burger in a bun. He was forced to chew hard before he could go on. His dentures flashed brilliant white in contrast to his jowly, mottled, beer and junk food raddled face. Rafferty caught a glimpse of well-chewed burger and bun before he hastily averted his gaze.

  ‘We’ve had this back-street drug den under regular surveillance for some time and not just via the CCTV. There have been several fatalities since this pure heroin hit the streets over a week ago. The usual druggies, of course, but also one high-profile media type, which had the Chief Constable pressing all our buttons after the dead media bloke’s family had doubtless pressed his. At least he agreed to fund the surveillance, which he mightn’t have done without the media mogul’s death. Reckon this media type must have slept with someone in high office.’

  ‘Those bastards are all under one another’s duvets,’ a sour and grizzled uniformed officer offered.

  ‘Anyway,’ Apsley went on, ‘as I said, your boy hasn’t showed up on our
surveillance cameras before, but this pure heroin has received plenty of publicity locally. Maybe your suspected perp just read the papers like anyone else, put a few feelers out and got the dealer’s name. Rocket science it ain’t. The doziest new scumbag in town manages to score with hardly any trouble at all. Your suspect must have thought that with his victims already being keen and enthusiastic druggies it was a perfect method of getting rid of the twin dangers to his future without any suspicion landing on him.

  ‘They’d treated themselves to a batch of this pure and deadly stuff and overdosed on it, is what we must have been expected to think. Probably what we would have thought if you and I hadn’t had our little chat,’ he told Rafferty. ‘I imagine he must have helped himself to Seward’s master keys and waited till they were out of the way, then searched their cottage till he found where they kept their stash and swapped it for this deadly heroin. After all,’ he shrugged, ‘what could be more likely? What more common than another dead drug addict or two? Devious bastard.’

  ‘Might have got away with it, too, as you said, but for his own vanity and for the fact the twins were well-known for being a pair of grasping little gits,’ opined Rafferty as he sipped his tea before re-applying himself to the steaming plateful of chicken curry. ‘And,’ he added airily, ‘if I hadn’t already hit on him as chief suspect. But,’ he also added, in pursuit of future co operation, ‘I doubt we’d have got him without your help. Thanks, Inspector.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Just do the same for me one day.’ Apsley turned his red face around on his fat neck and shouted across the canteen. ‘Hey, Jenkins, you sorted out yet who’s going to leak the news on the druggie politico?’

  Before Jenkins had a chance to answer, Apsley added in a voice that brooked no argument, ‘We’re doing it in order of rank, I take it? None of this Buggins’s turn mallarkey?’

  Once he’d gained Jenkins’ reluctant agreement that he was top dog in this particular kennel, Apsley turned back and gave Rafferty a self-satisfied smile.

  He had a piece of burger stuck to his dentures, Rafferty noticed. Saving it for later, probably.

  ‘Why should politicians be the only ones to get the perks?’ Apsley asked of no one in particular. ‘Still, it’s a good job our glorious leader pushed for the surveillance after the media guy turned his toes up. Heard he threw a right hissy fit with the holders of the purse strings till he got his way.’

  Rafferty, not usually one to have anything to thank the force’s brass for, sent up a silent song of gratitude to the hissy-fitter-in-chief.

  The drive back to Elmhurst was a rather more leisurely one than the outward journey had been. Possibly this was down to the fact that Llewellyn had grabbed the car keys and inserted his slim body into the driver’s seat in a determined fashion before Rafferty had a chance to object.

  Rafferty shrugged. He was in no rush, not now. The Norfolk cops had Marcus Canthorpe safely in custody and although he wasn’t singing yet, as Rafferty had already concluded, he didn’t think it would be too long before Canthorpe gave in to the temptation to show them how clever he had been.

  He had almost done so once already, when Rafferty had sought confirmation as to how Canthorpe had managed to learn that he didn’t, after all, feature in Seward’s will.

  But, as Rafferty had finally realised, after Abra had encouraged some sideways thought on the problem, Canthorpe was in and out of Seward’s solicitors, McCann, Doolittle and Steel, all the time. Doubtless, he had become such a familiar face, that, like himself with Bill Beard’s station reception the other evening, Marcus Canthorpe had practically a free run of the place. So, the secretaries had become careless, much as Bill Beard had been when his urgent need to use the gents’ toilet had inclined him to leave his post in reception to Rafferty’s tender care and he’d returned to find his jealously protected Mirror crossword had been completed in his absence.

  There must have been plenty of opportunities for Canthorpe to help himself to the solicitors’ branded envelopes. Once he’d done that, all he had to do was open the envelope containing the latest redrafted will when it arrived, read it and discover what a treacherous chiselling cur was his boss, reseal it in one of the stolen envelopes and drop it into the outgoing post tray at the solicitor’s so that when it was franked it bore their logo.

  After that, as Rafferty had remarked to Canthorpe’s ‘No comment’, it had simply been a matter of plotting how best to get his revenge on his employer for his failure to include the generous legacy in his will as he had promised.

  Canthorpe’s room had been taken apart. They had found a safety deposit key and the box was revealed to contain fifty grand that he had presumably stolen from Seward’s safe. He had, it was clear, intended to have his revenge and his legacy, even if it was a legacy he had decided to provide for himself.

  Alongside his ‘No comment’, Canthorpe had merely smiled his thin smile when he heard they had found the money earmarked for his R and R in the sun. It was a smile that hadn’t reached his eyes; they glittered with a malevolent fury that his plans had gone awry that Rafferty found more than satisfying. He was confident that Canthorpe, denied everything else that he had hoped for, would want to get something out of the last weeks. Even if it was only the reluctant admiration of a bunch of plods.

  Rafferty felt that, having endured so much grief and anguish, he had more than earned a reward himself, even if it was just the petty one of being proved right, though he admitted to himself that he was a bit put out that Superintendent Bradley would also gain some satisfaction at the successful conclusion to the case. Because, of course, he had seen a blond vanish through the door to Seward’s bedroom, only it had been the fair mop of hair of the slimly-built Marcus Canthorpe, not that of a young woman at all. Seen from the back with Bradley’s short-sighted eyes, it was an easy mistake to make, which the super hadn’t been slow to point out.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was the night before Christmas. Rafferty had received an early gift. For Marcus Canthorpe had begun to sing. Fortunately, his chosen airs weren’t Christmas carols, but the truth about Seward’s murder.

  Rafferty was pleased he had been right in his expectation that Canthorpe would tell all sooner rather than later. They had proof enough of his guilt over the twins’ deaths, so why should he continue to deprive himself of the satisfaction of explaining just how clever he’d been over the murder of Sir Rufus Seward? He was going to jail whatever happened. Why should he care if it was for three murders rather than two?

  Rafferty and Llewellyn, recalled to Norwich Police Station by DI Apsley for another session with Canthorpe, had hardly entered the interview room before Canthorpe launched into his torrent.

  ‘Shame that old bastard, Seward, never mentioned that Mickey Rafferty had a police inspector for a brother,’ he observed bitterly before he paused and admitted, ‘But, perhaps I should give him the benefit of the doubt on that. After all, I don’t suppose he troubled to keep in contact with his carpenter classmate. It was his wealthy, influential peers he was keen to impress and network with. Over the years of working for him, I discovered most of the tales about what Seward had done to people in his youth. He used to boast about them. The humiliations, the bullying, the lies. I looked up some of these people when I knew this civic reception in Seward’s home town was in the offing. I thought I might be able to entice one or two of the more gullible amongst his earlier victims along to the reception.’

  ‘So, what made you pick on Mickey to take the rap for Seward’s murder?’ Rafferty asked.

  Canthorpe shrugged. ‘Sheer fluke, really. Your brother was the only one of the unimportant, under-achieving nobodies to reply to the invitation and actually turn up. The others of his ilk to whom I had sent invitations contented themselves with sending back rude RSVP responses. Apart from Sir Rufus’s local charity cases who all left early, the other invitees who accepted were way too rich and powerful for me to even consider trying to use one of them as a patsy for murder.’

>   ‘How did you even know my brother had arrived?’ Rafferty questioned. ‘He told me he never saw anyone but the security guards and Ivor Bignall.’

  ‘Simple enough, Inspector. All the guests had been requested to report to reception when they arrived. I instructed the duty receptionists to ring through to the suite to advise of each guest’s arrival so I could be at the door to welcome them. I was warned when he was on his way up.’

  ‘And Mickey gave his name at reception?’ Dumbfounded, Rafferty stared at Canthorpe. If that was the case, how on earth had Mickey’s identity remained undiscovered? They had questioned the reception staff closely. None had mentioned a Mickey Rafferty amongst the party guests, so how—?

  ‘Come now, Inspector. Surely you’ve worked that one out by now? You’ve done so well with the rest, after all.’

  Rafferty felt his blood pressure rising at Canthorpe’s patronising tone. He did his best not to show his irritation. Instead, he frowned, glanced at Llewellyn for inspiration, changed his mind about that and was finally forced to shake his head.

  Canthorpe breathed out on a sigh as if Rafferty had disappointed him. ‘Let’s just say your brother’s invitation was couched a little differently to the others. But over the years, even though we’ve never actually met, I’ve felt I’ve come to know him rather well. I thought an invitation inscribed with the name Michael “Browncock” Rafferty likely to stir the memory sufficiently that he would be sure to provide merely a brief flash of his invitation at reception and a garbled name. Few indeed of the other guests that night were of a retiring disposition or given to garbling either their names or their syntax. It wasn’t hard to guess that the “Mickey Orr” that the receptionist reported as the latest arrival was the man I was waiting for. You’ll understand why I didn’t tarry at the door to greet him as I had with the other guests. I had another, more pressing task to perform.