Asking For It

Chapter One-1

Chapter One

This book is written in British English, but if there is a word or phrase you haven’t come across before, there is a handy British translation listing in the back of this novel.

Detective Inspector Joe Rafferty thumped his fist into the scarred door of the council lock-up, and shouted, ‘I’ve had it with you two. If Ma hadn’t begged me to come over and sort you out, I wouldn’t be here.’ His two brothers squared up to him. ‘So come on: Which one of you is the thief?’

They stopped shouting at one another. But it was only so they could re-direct their abuse at him.

‘What the hell’s this to do with you, anyway?’ Patrick Sean, his middle brother, yelled. ‘Go back to your ‘pig’-pen, why don’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ Mickey, Little Sir Echo, added, ‘if we want to fight, we’ll fight. Just ‘cos you’re Ma’s blue-eyed boy you think you can—’

‘Bloody ingrate you are.’ Rafferty’s lips thinned to a taut line as his brain had time to process the pain from his fight with the door. The lock-up was clearly out of his league. He stifled a groan, shoved his throbbing hand behind his back, and stealthily massaged his knuckles.

He shivered in the April chill and wished he’d worn his thick overcoat. Had his little brother forgotten it wasn’t that long ago he’d saved his sorry arse from being charged with murder by his pig-pen colleagues? He looked hard at him, but it seemed Little Sir Echo hadn’t forgotten because he went red and shut up.

‘You think I want to be here, trying to sort out your petty squabbles?’ Rafferty tapped the pocket containing his mobile. ‘Llewellyn had me on the phone while I was parking up. I’ve got a new murder awaiting my attention back at the ‘pig-pen' as you so charmingly call it. You pair can do your Cain and Abel act for all I care. Better that than I have Bradley on my tail again.’ Superintendent Bradley didn’t need any excuses to find fault, so the last thing he needed was provide him with a ready-made one.

‘If it was up to me, you pair of idiots could punch one another’s lights out and welcome. Instead of bad-mouthing one another, why not try doing something constructive? Like figuring out which of you was last here. And forgot to secure the lock-up.’

Mickey pointed the finger. ‘That was him. And he didn’t forget to lock-up. He’s been selling our stuff behind my back.’

Patrick Sean tried for lofty disdain, in imitation of their suave estate agent cousin. ‘Not me, little bro. Pot and kettle springs to mind.’ He turned his attention to his older brother. ‘And less of the “idiots”, JAR. You’re not lecturing a pair of tearaways.’ The lofty disdain didn’t quite come off, Patrick Sean not being Cousin Nigel. The grubby, torn jeans, and the roll-up hanging from the corner of his mouth didn’t help.

Rafferty cut to the chase. ‘And was the stuff here then? What’s missing anyway?’

The pair shuffled and seemed to find the dirty and cracked concrete beneath their feet absorbing.

Rafferty’s gaze narrowed. ‘Like that, is it?’ He shook his head. ‘I might have known. So what’s gone missing? Some stolen TVs, is it? A laptop or thirty? A round score of iPhones?’

‘Nothing like that. What do you think we are?’

Rafferty thought they’d already established that.

’And never mind what’s gone missing. That’s not important.’ Patrick Sean dismissed the stock’s ID with the nonchalant shrug of a practised offender pleading ‘Not Guilty’, which, to Rafferty, was further proof of culpability. ‘The fact that stuff’s missing is the important thing, and the fact that he’ – It was Pat’s turn to point the finger – ‘helped himself while I was out of the way.’

‘Let’s not get into all that again.’ Rafferty studied his watch in a marked manner. ‘Was this mysterious stuff here then or wasn’t it? Surely you know?’

Patrick Sean nodded. ‘It was here. That’s because I didn’t steal it.’

Rafferty held his hand up before Mickey could butt in. ‘Are you sure you locked up?’ Rafferty asked again.

‘Well, of course I locked up. I’m not stupid.’

‘Debatable.’ Before his automatic response stirred up World War III, he said, ‘Then you must have had a break-in.’

‘No break-in,’ said Mickey. ‘The lock wasn’t damaged and there’s no window.’

‘You’re meant to be the Great Detective,' Patrick Sean scoffed. ‘Surely you can figure out who’s the criminal? Mickey here’s had it away with the goods, sold them, and kept all the profits.’

‘I’ve done no such thing,’ Mickey protested. He squared up to Patrick Sean. ‘I reckon it’s you who helped yourself to them and—’

Rafferty had had enough. They were rapidly reaching either impasse or a punch-up. There could be nothing official that was for sure. The last thing he wanted was to involve his colleagues and make the theft official, not with the gear probably being hooky. His brothers were certainly involved in some sort of illicit enterprise.

‘Shut up, the pair of you. Look, I’ve got to get to work. I’m already late.’ Again. Besides, the lock-up was in a veritable wind tunnel. The Siberian blasts were currently making his ears numb and painful—surely an impossibility. ‘I’ll see the pair of you for a drink tonight and talk it out some more.’

Their truculent expressions would have made for a wonderful pair of Toby Jugs on either end of his mantelpiece, so he was forced to add the necessary inducement. ‘I’m buying. Eight o’clock in The Wheatsheaf. Be there.’

***

* * * *

‘RUN IT BY ME AGAIN.’ Rafferty perched on the edge of his desk, sending his in-tray teetering on the brink. ‘You said on the phone that a woman’s body’s been found.’

Llewellyn rescued the tray and nodded. ‘In a field adjacent to Dedman Wood. If the bag found lying close to the body belongs to the victim, her name’s Laura Scott. She was a teacher at Elmhurst Comprehensive. According to uniformed she’d been strangled. Most of her clothes are missing.’

‘They’ll have disturbed the scene then, to get her identity so quickly. The SOCO team can barely have got there yet. Who was it? I’ll—

‘It wasn’t uniformed,’ said Llewellyn quickly. ‘They know better than that. It was the farmer that found her body and called it in.’

‘Bloody i***t. Surely the man watches CSI Miami like everyone else?’ Rafferty stood up. ‘Better get over there. I had Bradley giving me the evil eye from his office window as I parked up. He’ll be sending me one of his special bloody emails next just so he’s got something on paper against me that he can file. He must have enough of them by now to write my autobiography.’

Llewellyn merely muttered ‘biography’ under his breath, went to the door and held it open for his boss.

Rafferty teased a grin out from under his scowl as he grabbed his raincoat from the stand and strode to their office door. ‘Just don’t forget who gets to write yours.’ He hoped the reminder would prove sufficient to stop Llewellyn from correcting his imprecise use of the English Language. But he doubted it.

***