Prologue-3
660 Words
‘YOU'RE LUCKY YOU CAUGHT me,’ Doctor Obadiah Arkwright told them when he arrived twenty minutes later. ‘I'm off to Scotland for a fishing holiday later today.’
He sounded tired, Rafferty noticed, and badly in need of his break. Obadiah Arkwright must be approaching seventy, but he was still an impressive-looking man; tall and saturnine of face, a tendency which age had made more marked, with an air of authority worn as easily as his ancient, Sherlock Holmes style overcoat.
‘Nice secluded spot,’ Arkwright went on. ‘As far from the joys of civilisation as it's possible to get without either leaving the country or breaking the bank.’ He paused. ‘Upstairs, is she?’
Rafferty nodded, and he and Llewellyn followed the doctor up the narrow stairs to the bedroom.
The doctor approached the bed and stared down at his late patient. After a quick examination he stood back and sighed. ‘Poor woman. Of course, I know she's been depressed lately, but I never thought her the type to take this way out.’ His quick gesture took in the bottle of empty sleeping tablets on the dresser.
‘I thought we were all that,’ Rafferty quietly remarked. ‘All it needs is the right circumstances.’
‘Not thinking of copying her example, I trust?’ Arkwright asked, giving him an old-fashioned look.
But then he was an old-fashioned kind of doctor, Rafferty mused; the sort who had once existed in their hundreds. The sort whose patients clung to life as though not daring to leave it till the doctor had given his permission. The sort, too, who felt it their duty to check their patients officially off their list and on to that of an even higher authority.
Rafferty forced a smile. ‘Not me, doc. Wouldn't dare. I might be a lapsed Catholic, but I'm still as leery of mortal sin as the biggest bible-thumper.’
‘What was her name, doctor?’ Llewellyn asked.
‘Mrs Pearson. Mrs Dorothy Pearson.’
Glad to get a confirmed identification, Rafferty advised, ‘I've had young Smales looking to see if he could find any personal papers in the house, but there are none. Looks like she had a grand clearing out before she took the overdose.’
‘Doesn't surprise me,’ said Arkwright. ‘Mrs Pearson was a very private sort of person. Alone in the world, too. Probably didn't fancy strangers raking over her things. Her only son died earlier this year; not, in my opinion, that he was much of a loss.’ The doctor raised expressive hands, then let them drop. ‘But there, I suppose for her, her son's death was the final straw. She's been alone for some time. She lost her husband years ago and then—’
He broke off as Sam Dally, part time police surgeon c*m pathologist, arrived with his usual noise and bustle. The grim little bedroom with its four to five-day-old corpse was too small for all of them. Arkwright acknowledged Sam Dally, said his goodbyes and left. Rafferty and Llewellyn, after accompanying him down the stairs, waited in the living room for Sam to confirm their findings. He didn't take long. Nor, when he returned downstairs, did he pause to indulge in his usual ghoulish banter. Rafferty guessed that for Sam – who had lost his wife of thirty years to cancer only a month ago – the prospect of his own solitary old age was getting too close for comfort. He was certainly more irascible than usual, and briskly confirmed that Mrs Pearson had certainly been dead for the best part of a week. ‘Early part of the weekend would be my estimate,’ Dally added. ‘Friday night probably, or Saturday morning.’
Rafferty had already guessed as much. His brief look under the bedclothes had revealed the tell-tale signs; the body swollen with gases, the skin blisters, the leaking fluids, the smell. He swallowed hard and waited for Sam to continue.
‘Suicide, of course,’ said Dally. ‘Classic. Pills and whisky, but without the whisky. Don't suppose the poor b***h could afford that.’ He gazed around the shabby living room with its clean but worn square of cheap carpet, the cramped, dark kitchen off and added in lacklustre tones, ‘I can't imagine there'll be any grasping relatives to fight over the family heirlooms.’
‘No.’ Rafferty reflected that even his ma, with her love of ‘bargains’, would find little here to interest her.
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- Writer
