Rafferty & Llewellyn Boxed Set Books 5-8

Prologue-4

THE FUNEREAL WEATHER and the discovery of another lonely death were more than enough to get a man down. But thoughts of ma and her ‘bargains’ reminded Rafferty that he had yet another reason to be gloomy; one that had, like the weather, been getting him down since Christmas. Unfortunately, unlike the weather, the cause of the other low depression was going to require some input from him. And as he walked back down Mrs Pearson's path, dodging puddles as he went, Rafferty reflected that a solution was as far away as ever.

Needless to say, his family were at the root of his problem. When weren't they? he muttered. Without his knowledge, his ma had persuaded Llewellyn to buy one of her dubious ‘bargains’—a suit of quality as superior as its provenance and price were inferior. A suit which Rafferty had good reason to believe had formed part of an insurance fiddle by a tailor down on his luck.

Ignorant of both the suit's likely provenance and Ma Rafferty's back of the lorry bargain-hunting propensities, Llewellyn had snapped up the suit. And, as Rafferty had afterwards learned, intended its first outing to be on the occasion of his wedding to Rafferty's cousin, Maureen.

Rafferty climbed in the car and wondered again how he was going to dissuade the Welshman from wearing the suit without revealing it was bent; a task made no easier given the first-class quality of its tailoring and the Beau Brummel tendencies of his sergeant.

With anyone else, of course, this wouldn't be a problem. With anyone else all he'd need to do would be to have a discreet word. Not with Llewellyn though. Oh no, thought Rafferty. Nothing so simple. In fact, there was a distinct possibility that if he shared his suspicions the morally-upright Welshman would shop ma out of a sense of duty. Rafferty wished he didn't find it so easy to imagine Llewellyn explaining, quite kindly, that the law applied to everyone, even the mothers of detective inspectors.

Yet if he didn't tell Llewellyn, there was a good chance that someone at the wedding would admire the suit and ask Llewellyn where he had bought it. There were sure to be a fair number of their police colleagues at the reception, and if one of them sniffed out the truth and it got back to Superintendent Bradley... But that possibility didn't bear thinking about.

It seemed a petty problem after the morning they'd had. But then, Rafferty had found that life was generally made up of an endless variety of such problems. Maybe it was the last in a long line of them that had prompted Dorothy Pearson to give up the struggle and bow out.

The unwitting catalyst of Rafferty's latest little poser climbed in the car beside him. After they had watched the mortuary van pull away, Llewellyn asked, ‘Back to the station, sir?’

Rafferty nodded absently and sank back into his thoughts. For the umpteenth time he'd tried to make ma see the error of her ways, but, as usual, his attempt had failed miserably.

‘A suit's a suit,’ she'd said. ‘One's much the same as another. Though, seeing as you made such a fuss about its lack of labels, you'll be happy to know I sewed a Marks and Spencer tag in it.’

‘St Michael?’ Rafferty quoted the name of the store's old garment label. ‘Patron Saint of Clothing? Oh well,’ he had remarked tartly, ‘that's my mind put at rest. No danger of anybody mistaking it for dodgy gear while St Michael's on guard duty.’

‘It's only doing Dafyd a favour, I was,’ Ma had told him indignantly. ‘There's no need to get on your high horse. Sure and he'll have expense enough with this wedding without paying over the odds for a suit that Maureen's ma won't turn her nose up at. At least he'll have no worries on that score.’

‘That'll be a comfort to him when he spends his honeymoon on remand in Costa Del Pentonville,’

‘Pentonville?’ his ma had snorted. ‘Don't be ridiculous. As if I'd sell Dafyd a suit likely to send him to prison.’

Rafferty had said no more, realising it was a waste of breath. Ma was incorrigible. She would never give up her love of ‘bargains’, policeman son or no policeman son. His only consolation was that, as the wedding date had yet to be settled, he had time on his side. Anxious to confirm this happy state of affairs still existed, Rafferty adopted a casual tone as he asked Llewellyn, ‘Named the day yet?’

Llewellyn didn't reply till he had negotiated the busy junction by Elmhurst mainline train station. Then he said, ‘It's not that simple. Maureen's a Catholic, like you. I'm a Methodist. And as my late father was a Methodist minister, my mother's sure to expect me to marry in that faith.’

Rafferty grinned. ‘You mean Ma hasn't managed to convert you to Catholicism yet?’

Llewellyn shook his head.

‘Must be losing her touch. Of course, these days her mind's taken up with other things than our love lives. She can hardly put it to anything else but my niece, Gemma, and the prospect of becoming a great-grandma in the summer. I'd take advantage of that if I were you,’ Rafferty teased, confident that the Welshman's in-built dislike of haste would preclude him doing any such thing, ‘and fix up a quick register office wedding before she's back to normal.’

Rafferty said no more. But now he relaxed back against his seat, happy that religious differences and Llewellyn's natural caution would ensure the wedding was a long way off. It meant he had plenty of time to resolve the problem of the groom's dodgy suit.