A Thrust to the Vitals

Chapter One

Chapter One

This novel uses British English, so if there is a word or phrase you don’t understand, there is a handy list at the back of this novel.

IT WAS JUST ANOTHER day, yet another murder inquiry. And then Rafferty’s mobile rang. It changed everything.

‘JAR? That you?’

Detective Inspector Joseph Aloysius Rafferty immediately recognised his younger brother Mickey’s voice, even though it sounded a bit strange.

‘What do you want Mickey? Now’s not a good time.’ Rafferty frowned as he watched the white-suited forensics team bustle busily around him at the scene, their practised routine ensuring they didn’t get in one another’s way, even if he got in theirs.

It was one o’clock in the morning and he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. The last thing he needed right now was a phone call from a member of his family. A call at such an hour was unlikely to herald good news. But Mickey was his brother, so he relented, and said, ‘Come on, then. Spit it out. What can I do you for?’ And then braced himself for trouble.

From the other end of the line came a swiftly-indrawn breath. It made Rafferty’s frown fiercer. These facial gymnastics attracted the interest of his sergeant, Dafyd Llewellyn. Rafferty turned away from this scrutiny as Mickey said, ‘I just heard on the local radio that you’re in charge of the Seward murder investigation.’

Bloody hell, Rafferty thought. The dead man’s not even cold yet. Who let that cat out of the bag? But the suspects for this violent death were too numerous for him to even consider issuing reprimands right and left. News of the murder must have gone round the four-star, 100 bedroom, Elmhurst Hotel and Conference Centre venue like nits round a nursery school. It was impossible to keep a clamp on the wagging tongues of so many.

His brother’s voice interrupted the tail end of these thoughts and forced Rafferty from his wool-gathering.

‘Sorry, Mickey. What did you say?’

‘Christ, Joe. Can’t you listen? This is important.’

‘So’s my murder investigation,’ Rafferty retorted. ‘And I’d quite like to get back to it.’ Actually, what he’d rather do was go home and retire to bed with a nightcap. But chances were that wouldn’t be on the cards for hours.

Shoulders slumped, he leaned back against the nearest wall. Grumpily, he told his brother, ‘Spit it out so I can get started organising one more triumph for British justice, there’s a good lad.’

‘That’s just it,’ Mickey told him, his voice sounding increasingly tense. ‘I’m scared this case might turn out to be yet another injustice. You asked me what you could do me for. I’m worried, once your inquiry gets started, that you might think you have reason to do me for something. That something being this murder.’

Aghast, Rafferty felt a deep foreboding, followed by an unwillingness to delve any further. But Mickey’s words gave him no choice, and he demanded, ‘What are you talking about?’ But before his brother could reply, Rafferty became conscious of the many listening ears surrounding him. Telling Mickey to hold on, he slipped from the murder scene in the plush penthouse suite of the Essex market town’s Elmhurst Hotel. He found a quiet corner in the corridor where he could see and be forewarned of all the comings and goings, before he put the mobile back to his ear. Then, he said, in a harsh whisper, ‘Christ, Mickey, don’t tell me you were a guest at last night’s civic reception for our esteemed prodigal, Sir Rufus bloody Seward?’

Please don’t let him tell me that, Rafferty prayed to his long-ignored God. Fortunate it was that God chose not to ignore him, because his prayers were answered in the positive with an immediate and unexpected speed when Mickey said, ‘ No. I wasn’t at the party.’

Rafferty brightened, but only for a moment, because his brother barely paused for breath before he rushed on to tell him, ‘I know you won’t believe this, but I got an invite from Seward himself. I didn’t go. But, seeing as he was here in Elmhurst, I took the opportunity to go to see him later on in his hotel suite when the party was all but over.’

‘You did what?’ Rafferty realised he was shouting. Worse, he’d attracted odd looks from a couple of the uniformed officers guarding the outside door to the murder suite. They quickly averted their eyes when they caught sight of his scowling countenance. He was thankful to realise that his words sounded less incriminating than admonitory, as if he was giving some unfortunate a bollocking. Even so, he forced himself to calm down. He even managed to find a tight smile for Dr Sam Dally as he emerged from the lift, rolled in that familiar, bouncy way on the thickly carpeted hallway towards Rafferty, and raised an eyebrow in greeting.

Rafferty told his brother to hang on again. He waited as Sam struggled to insert his generous body into his protective coveralls and disappeared into Seward’s suite. It was too public here, he thought, to be having this conversation—too close to the police and forensic bustle that surrounded the discovery of recent, violent death. The thought made him even more uneasy. His uneasiness forced him to lower his voice again till it was all but inaudible. But his brother, with his fear-heightened senses, still managed to hear him. Rafferty hoped no one else could.

But, never mind not having this conversation here. Rafferty thought it was undoubtedly a conversation he shouldn’t be having at all.

‘What on earth did you go and see Seward for?’ Rafferty was becoming more seriously concerned for his brother as admission followed admission. ‘It’s not as if you were ever best buddies, is it? Even at school, you always hated his guts. And with good reason, as I recall.’

Rufus Seward had always been a bully. And Mickey, having never been tall or well-built, had been a natural target for Seward’s nastiness.

Rafferty had protected his younger brother as much as he could, but bullies always found their moment, and it wasn’t as if he had been in a position to guard his brother all the time: they were different ages and therefore in different classes. Besides, Rafferty had been raised to stand up for himself, and part of him expected Mickey to be able to do likewise without help from him.

‘I—I had something I wanted to discuss with him. A bit of business...’

Mickey sounded awkward, and Rafferty wondered, even as his unease grew and developed love handles, why his little brother felt it necessary to lie. He’d never been any good at it; it was a trait they shared. What possible business could his brother, a poor carpenter, just like Jesus, have with Sir Rufus Seward, the local bad boy prodigal made good?

Sir Rufus Seward had returned to his home town in triumph to receive Elmhurst Council’s civic honours and acclamations by the bucketful, after his knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List. This was the same Rufus Seward, who, in his youth, had made Mickey’s life – and those of so many others smaller and weaker than himself – a misery, until, fortunately for Mickey, Seward’s other physical pursuits had caused him to be all but chased out of town by a posse of angry fathers of tearful teenage girls.

In the intervening years, Seward had made his pile. He had returned to Elmhurst only the day before, for the first time since his involuntary departure, to receive his home town’s accolades after his ennoblement. Sir Rufus’s civic honours had been awarded with all the dignity and pomp even his self-regard could desire. He had also received another, unanticipated honour: the attentions of a murderer who, unlike our own dear Queen with her gentle shoulder-tapping sword, had thrust a sharpened carpenter’s quarter-inch wood chisel deeply and far from gently, through Seward’s back and into his heart.

A clammy hand seemed to clutch Rafferty’s own heart. It gave it such a sharp squeeze that the organ paused in its beat for a few worrying seconds, before it resumed its thud, thud, thud again.

As a carpenter, Mickey worked with such chisels. They were the daily tools of his trade. He also had reason – several of them – to hate Rufus Seward. If Rafferty had been any other copper, after his brother’s admission that he had been in Seward’s suite on the evening of his murder, he would have concluded Mickey had means, motive and opportunity in plenty, and slap the cuffs on him. Fortunately for Mickey, if not for himself, as his brother had said, Rafferty was in charge of the investigation.

Last night’s reception had been attended not only by those who had peopled Seward’s past, but also by the great and good who had peopled what had been his present. And from what Rafferty had learned from uniformed’s early questioning of the few guests who remained, Seward, during the party, had not hesitated to rub a number of his guests’ noses in his success. It must, if the reported accounts concerning his behaviour from several of the more unguarded attendees were anything to go by, have left some of the party guests feeling the urge to plunge something sharp between Seward’s meaty shoulders. For all his wealth and success, the man, like the boy, had been both a bully and a poor judge of people. Certain it was that he had badly misjudged someone, otherwise that someone wouldn’t have given into the plunging urge.

Rafferty could only pray that guilty someone hadn’t been his little brother. Because he knew – who better – how much rage Mickey nursed in his heart against his youthful persecutor. Mickey also had a temper; one he hadn’t always managed to govern.

Now Rafferty, in an attempt to dispel his growing anxieties, did some confiding of his own. ‘You’re not the only family member with cause to be worried about Seward’s murder,’ he told Mickey. ‘You’ll never guess who else amongst our relatives received an invite. Only “dear” Nigel.’

‘Not Slimy Nigel?’

‘The very same.’

Nigel Blythe or Jerry Kelly, the name he had held before he had spurned it as being too common, was cousin to the Rafferty brothers, whom he considered himself a cut above.

‘Trust him to slime himself an invite to such a swanky do.’

‘Mm. Muck, brass and Nigel always did form a natural, unholy trinity.’

In spite of his brother’s worrying admissions, Rafferty felt humour bubble up, and he added, ‘Bet he wishes he’d kept his distance from all that undoubtedly dodgy money for once. Even if he didn’t kill Seward, with the number of crooked deals that estate agency of his goes in for, I imagine the last thing “dear” Nigel wants is the police having a reason to sniff round.’

‘Especially if he’s the one who topped the pompous prat.’

‘True.’ But although Rafferty tried hard, for Mickey’s sake, he somehow couldn’t see his devious cousin Nigel – who always had one eye on the main chance and the other on the exit in case a swift flit was required – committing this particular murder. It seemed too little thought-through and spur-of-the-moment for Nigel. If he had wanted to kill someone, unlike the less than cool-headed Mickey, he would bide his time and await his best chance of doing the deed without unpleasant repercussions. Like getting caught. Mickey, by contrast, could be a bit of a hothead. This was a worrying trait in view of his late night visit to the long-loathed victim, and the other, steadily accumulating, list of circumstantial evidence potentially linking him to the crime.

Rafferty’s lips thinned. And as his gaze followed the busy Scene of Crime team, he wondered if Mickey had left a trace of his presence behind. Anxiety over his brother’s problem, as well as the increasingly pressing need to get back to the murder scene, made him curt, and he asked, ‘Where are you?’

‘At home. Sweating.’

‘Stay there,’ Rafferty quietly instructed. ‘I suppose you’re on your home phone?’

Rafferty sighed as Mickey confirmed it. He wished his brother had had the nous to ring him from a public phone. If questions were asked at a later date, calls to his mobile from his brother’s home at such a time would make it harder for him to deny either knowledge or complicity. ‘Did anyone see you in Seward’s suite?’

‘The two security guards on the door and one of the guests,’ Mickey confirmed.

‘Did they get a good look at you?’

‘Yes.’

Well, of course they had, Rafferty told himself. Stupid to ask really.

Mickey’s third confirmation was even more worrying than the previous two, as was his clearly reluctant admission that he had actually asked the guest where to find Seward. The fool had left a trail that even young Tim Smales could follow.

Conscious of time ticking away, Rafferty said, ‘I’ve got to go. I’m still at the scene. There’s no way I can leave yet—I probably won’t be able to see you for hours, but I’ll come to your flat as soon as I can get away. We need to put our heads together.’ He would also need to separate the truth from the lies Mickey had already told him. The idea of his little brother having a ‘bit of business’ with the wealthy and successful Seward was about as likely as him reforming the band he had played guitar with in his youth, and them having a smash hit. So why had Mickey lied? The question stirred even more uneasy feelings and yet more questions.

‘In the meantime, stay where you are and keep out of sight. I’ll try to think of somewhere I can stash you, since you clearly can’t remain at the flat. Somebody’s bound to recognise you when the witnesses’ photo fit is circulated.’ He’d delay this as long as he could, but it would be only a short-term holding measure until he had time to organise moving Mickey somewhere safer and more low-profile.

Although he missed her dreadfully, it was fortunate that Abra, his live-in girlfriend, was away on a hen party weekend in Dublin, and wouldn’t be around till late on Sunday night to notice his absence, while he tried to sort Mickey out with the essential bolt-hole.

In spite of the promise he had made to Abra in October, only a couple of months back, about not keeping things from her, this was one secret he would have to keep to himself—certainly until he had had a chance to think of who was most likely to be able to supply him with a place to stash Mickey, where he would, for the foreseeable future at least, have the best chance of staying hidden. Because Rafferty didn’t relish the prospect of having to charge his brother with murder.

Even less did he relish having to listen to what their Ma would say if he did such a thing. But as neither possibility bore thinking about, he put both from his mind.

With a grimace, after warning Mickey not to panic, and do anything they might both regret, he said goodbye to his brother, pocketed his mobile, and returned to the scene of Seward’s murder.

It was going to be a very long night.