Death Dues

Chapter One

Chapter One

WHEN RAFFERTY GOT OUTSIDE, it was to discover that not only was it was raining as if Noah had pulled the plug on the Ark, but a fierce wind blew through his hair until it was wearing that ‘just got out of bed’, look, that was so fetching on Abra. It picked up the sides and hem of his raincoat till it danced a veritable Irish jig.

Rafferty wished he was feeling as lively as his raincoat. As he rushed through the rain for the car, trying to restrain the whirling-dervish antics of his mac, he just hoped nobody got themselves murdered today. He didn’t fancy hanging around street corners in a downpour, the idle moments filled with musings on the type of house Abra might fancy in place of the flat. The way things were going, Buckingham Palace wouldn’t be grand enough.

He hoped she hadn’t meant it and had only said it to wind him up. The last thing he needed along with all the wedding expenses was to have the cost of moving to contend with. It wasn’t as if the flat wasn’t big enough. With three bedrooms, it could easily house a family. If she was serious, he would have to dissuade her from it. He could only hope he had more luck with that than he was having with the spiralling wedding costs. She might be trying to emulate Princess Diana’s fairy-tail wedding, but he, no more than Prince Charles had been, was no Prince Charming. He also lacked the princely income.

He drove through the lashing rain from his home through the streets of Elmhurst, an attractive Essex market town — which even the grey day couldn’t make ugly — to the police station’s back entrance in Bacon Lane.

The car park was full; even the super had beaten him in he saw, as he took in the shining, top of the range, Lexus, parked in the bay nearest to the station’s rear entrance, a space sanctified as his by God and the superintendent. Rafferty had once or twice trespassed on its holy space and been roundly rebuked for his presumption.

He opened the door to the station’s rear entrance and dripped his way up the concrete stairs, depositing little slippery droplets to catch the unwary with each squelching step upward. He could only hope the sainted super had reason to come down again shortly and slip and injure his fat dignity on the Rafferty-dropped rainwater. At least it would be one satisfying result for the day.

He walked along the second floor corridor to his office, wringing out his hair and his raincoat as he went, and wishing, in spite of their differences over the wedding arrangements, that Abra would even now be in the midst of organising, that he was still at home and in bed with her, her let down hair and silky nightie. He quelled the thought of this appealing prospect as inappropriate to the beginning of another working day, and opened the door to his office.

His sergeant, Dafyd Llewellyn, had beaten him in as usual. He was sitting at his corner desk, looking both industrious and bandbox smart, also as usual, with a workspace that was as neat as conscientious industry could make it.

After fighting his way through the wind and rain across the car park, Rafferty felt like something the cat had dragged in. He smiled to himself as he realised that, like Llewellyn, he, too, was a good match for his desk.

He smoothed his unruly auburn hair into some sort of order, and sat down behind the towering piles of files and other impedimenta to a well-ordered day. ‘So what have we got, Dafyd?’ he asked. ‘Anything new come in?’

‘No,’ Llewellyn replied evenly. ‘Unless, of course, there are any further muggings, it looks as if we’ll have a quiet day.’

‘Less of the fate tempting, if you please.’

‘Oh, and there’s still that report on your desk that Superintendent Bradley wants you to read and initial.’ Llewellyn’s voice had the slightest tinge of disapproval as he added, ‘It’s been there nearly a week.’

Rafferty, heard the disapproval, pulled a face, and said, ‘I suppose you’ve read it?’

Llewellyn nodded.

‘Give me the condensed version, then. You know how wordy these bloody reports are. Not the way for a man to start the day by ploughing through a load of bumf.’

Llewellyn proceeded to explain the report. But as he proved almost as wordy as the report itself, Rafferty stopped him when he got to Section 2 Subsection ivc. ‘That’s enough. Just nod if the powers that be are ordering yet another meeting on the subject to discuss their preliminary findings.’

Llewellyn nodded.

‘Thought so. Meetings, and yet more meetings. It’s a wonder we ever get time to solve any crimes at all. I’ll just initial it. They’ll still be meeting to discuss it come Doomsday. Anything else?’

‘Superintendent Bradley said for you to pop in to see him if you haven’t arranged a prior engagement.’

Rafferty groaned. ‘What does he want?’ Sarky, git, he thought. Trust the super to make it sound like he was given to making spurious appointments so as to avoid him. He’d only done it twice before. Or it might have been thrice. But even so... ‘Not to discuss this with me, I hope.’ He thumped the weighty report in disgust.

Llewellyn’s lips twitched slightly. ‘No. I think not. I understood him to say that he wishes to speak with you about the spate of muggings against the local moneylenders’ collectors.’

‘And he wants to know what I’m doing about it I suppose?’ Truth was, he wasn’t doing a lot. Some, if not most, of the local loan sharks’ collectors, were no more than thugs, adept at putting the frighteners on little old ladies who got behind with their payments. Mugging was too good for such people. ‘Put a few grand-sounding phrases together for me, Daff. You know I’m no good at that sort of thing. Something that’ll impress the super. You know the drill. Sentences with lots of long words and loads of Politically-Correct bollocks. He’ll like that.’

Llewellyn raised dark eyebrows that were as neat as the rest of him and said, ‘Something along the lines of: “We’re proceeding with our enquiries and have a number of promising leads,” you mean?’

‘That’ll do for starters.’ He threw a coin across the desk. ‘Get the teas in, will you? While you’re doing that, you can think up a few more bunches of bullshit. One of the muggers was thought to be Asian, so I’m sure you can work in something about ethnic sensitivities while you’re at it. A few such lines should keep him off my back for a while.’

‘Wouldn’t it be easier to investigate the muggings?’

‘Probably. Tell me when you run out of the right lines in PC speak to say to him and I’ll think about it. Oh,’ he shouted just before the door closed behind his sergeant. ‘Get me a hot cross bun while you’re at it.’

Llewellyn’s head reappeared. ‘I think you’ll find it should be called a hot lined bun, now. Religious symbolism also being on the veto list.’

‘Veto my arse. Not by me, it’s not.’ But Llewellyn had gone, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Rafferty sighed. Because no matter how many politically-correctly worded explanations for his lack of progress on the muggings Llewellyn came up with to appease the super, he supposed he’d have to do a little something about the case no matter how limited his taste for it. He pulled a thin file on the investigation towards him and began to read.

He was interrupted by the ringing of the phone. It was the superintendent.

'Ah. Rafferty. You're in, then?'

The intimation that he had been late wasn't lost on Rafferty. He crossed his fingers in protection against the fates as he uttered the white lie, 'Here, bright, shining and ready to go, Sir, after putting in a couple of hours’ working from home.'

This brought a stunned, disbelieving silence, then he was told, ‘Right. You can start by coming along to my office. I’m sure Llewellyn told you I wanted to see you first thing.’ Rafferty kept shtum. ‘I want to talk to you about these muggings.'

When he got to Superintendent Bradley’s office he found the super in lecturing mode.

'You'll have to do better than this you know, Rafferty.' The super waved a thin sheaf of papers in the air under Rafferty's nose. 'Your reports on this investigation are sparse, very sparse. You don't seem to have done a lot.'

Rafferty began his explanatory spiel, wishing the super had rung after Llewellyn had come back from the canteen and primed him with the correct verbiage. He did his best. But his best evidently wasn't good enough, because the super interrupted him before he'd got out more than a couple of excuses.

'It won't do, Rafferty. It won't do at all. I want you to apply yourself much harder to solving these cases. I've had the Deputy Chief Constable on my back about them. Turns out he’s a golfing buddy of one of the money-lenders whose collector was assaulted. You know how little I like to get on the wrong side of the brass. If I do, you'll get on the wrong side of me. Do I make myself clear?'

As crystal, thought Rafferty, as he nodded and made his escape. Just his luck that the loan shark boss had friends in high places. It meant that Bradley would stay tight on his tail till the investigation was solved. It was a bad start to a day that only got worse.

He'd barely got back to his office when the phone went again. It was Abra, full of the wedding—something he'd thought he'd postponed till this evening.

'Hi Joe. I've been ringing round a few of the venues. I can't get them to drop their prices. I wondered how much to spend.' She named a figure that made Rafferty's eyes water.

'How much?' he said. 'All that for a measly chicken salad with a fancy name?’ How anyone would have the gall to think the addition of a few olives entitled it to a swanky name and even swankier price, escaped him. He didn’t even like bloody olives. ‘What do they do in their spare time? Rob graves?'

'It's a normal quotation, Joe. You're behind the times. What did you have served at your first wedding? Sausage butties at the corner chippie?'

He didn't dignify that with a reply. 'Look, Abra. Can we talk about this tonight? I'm up to my eyes here.'

'You're always up to your eyes, according to you. I'd have thought planning our wedding would be as important to you as solving a few muggings. Muggings are ten a penny, but our wedding will only happen once.' Abra's tone was acerbic, and it was with some difficulty that he placated her and got off the phone. That was two people he'd upset and it wasn't even ten o'clock yet. So when the phone rang for the third time he braced himself.

It was uniformed Constable Timmy Smales reporting a suspected murder.

'Where?'

'In an alleyway adjacent to Primrose Avenue.'

'How was he killed?'

'Several blows to the back of his head.'

'Any idea of the victim's identity?'

'No, Sir. Not yet. His wallet's missing. Though Constable Lizzie Green thinks he's a man called John "Jaws" Harrison. Works as a collector for Malcolm Forbes, one of the local loan sharks.'

Oh great, thought Rafferty. He put the phone down, gulped his now lukewarm tea, and bit into his hot cross bun, all the while thinking that young Constable Timothy Smales was finally learning the art of brevity. Then he forgot about Smales, and began to brood on the investigation and how to keep Superintendent Bradley off his back.

With the latest phone call, Rafferty knew he would have to do rather more than ‘a little something’ about the loan shark muggings. Especially now they’d escalated to murder.