Down Among the Dead Men

Chapter 3

THE ONLY ROUTE FROM the meadow to the Shores' house was via a road full of meandering curves. Occasionally, as the highway wound lazily eastwards, back upon itself, and the hedgerows parted, they caught a glimpse of the river to their right, straight as a Roman road, the sun making a tarnished sheet of glass of its sluggish green surface. It shadowed as a flock of black and brown Brent Geese rose from the nearby mud flats, swooped low over the water and headed north, their plaintive 'rott, rott, rott' cry echoing across the still countryside, as if mocking Rafferty and his habit of constructing theories before he had any facts to back them up.

After about ten minutes, tall grey chimneys reared up above the river's west bank. The Shores' place, Rafferty guessed. From this distance, it had a touch of Victorian workhouse Gothic. The gloomy drive, edged with dusty, dark green, graveyard yews, bearing a miserly scattering of scarlet berries, disappeared behind the house. The house itself echoed the sombre theme. It was grotesque. There was no other word to describe it. So ugly, it had a peculiar fascination of its own, like an over-the-top first prize-winner in a bad taste contest.

Constructed in grey stone, at a distance, it had looked merely drably institutional. It was only as they got nearer that the appalling decorative reminders of death – the great modern day unmentionable – became visible. The roof-line was broken up with the most fantastic gargoyles; satyrs and devils, with evil, grinning faces, clutched three-pronged forks and stabbed, with undisguised relish, the eternally damned human wretches sharing their strange eyrie.

Of course, to the Victorians who had built the place, s*x was the great unmentionable, Rafferty reminded himself. They had been only too familiar with death, in its many guises. As he stared again at the high-rise etchings, some details of the earlier tragedy in the Shore family came filtering back. Maximillian Shore, Charles Shore's father, had been murdered years earlier, blown to bits in his booby-trapped car. The old man had been a hard bastard, by all accounts and although the case had never been solved, there had been a suspicion that one of his business rivals had been responsible.

Maximillian Shore – or Schurr as he'd been then, before he'd anglicised it – had had a tragic beginning. His parents, his entire family, had died at the hands of the Nazis. The only survivor, he had arrived in England, with just the clothes he stood up in; penniless, parentless and homeless. Yet he had thrived. Today, the Shore family empire was international and encompassed the wide arena of newspapers, chemicals and finance. It wasn't difficult to imagine the difficulties that the traumatised orphan must have had to overcome in order to acquire the wealth that had begun it all. The grinning devils dancing on the roof must have appealed to old Maximillian when he bought the place, Rafferty reflected, as he recalled the stories the papers had dredged up after the old man's murder. With his early experiences, he would have known more about the evil core of humanity than most. After telling Llewellyn about the earlier tragedy in the family, he remarked, 'Not a lucky family, despite their wealth.'

'Every man is the architect of his own fortune,' was Llewellyn's murmured response. 'Sallust, sir,' he explained to Rafferty's blank face. 'He was a Roman historian at the time of Julius Caesar and he—'

'Yes, yes. Thanks for another piece of useless information.' Llewellyn lapsed into silence and Rafferty, noting the glint in the Welshman's dark eye, wondered, not for the first time, if Llewellyn paraded his erudition out of sheer mischief. It was impossible to deduce much from that impassive poker face. 'I mightn't know much about this Sallust Johnny,' Rafferty admitted briskly, 'but, one thing I do know, is that the Super will hang me out to dry if I make a mess of the case, so perhaps we can get on?' However, before he could carry out his good intentions, as they got closer to the house, the sound of youthful voices distracted him.

'Stupid, stupid. Mini Maxie's stupid.'

'I'm not stupid.' The older boy's deeper voice broke through the piping taunts. 'I'm not stupid,' the boy repeated. 'I'll prove it, just you wait and see.' But his boasts only brought more jeering laughter.

'You?' The younger boy's voice was shrill with spite. 'You can't even get basic grades without my father paying for extra holiday tuition.' In the precocious manner of modern children, he sneered, 'I heard him telling mother that if your mother had been his sister-in-law instead of his sister, he'd suspect you were the result of some affair and had no Shore blood at all.'

The sound of a blow broke into the stillness of the morning, and the older boy's voice, its triumphant note unmistakable, echoed towards them. 'You said it! At least I can be sure I belong here, as you'll realise before you're much older, which is more than can be said for you; with your mother.'

'You hit me!' Rafferty wondered why the younger boy should sound so surprised. He had certainly asked for it.

'Yes, and I'll hit you again, you little rat. It's about time somebody taught you some manners. Come back here!'

The next second, a well-built and weasel-faced boy of about ten raced around the side of the house, pursued by a tall, wiry youth, of about fifteen. The smaller boy easily avoided Rafferty, but the older one, probably because his eyes had that glazed, unseeing look brought on by anger, cannoned into him. He was panting heavily and, as his vision cleared, he looked wildly from Rafferty to Llewellyn and back again, before he tore himself out of Rafferty's grasp and continued his pursuit round the far side of the house.

'They must be old Max's grandchildren,' Rafferty remarked. As he wondered what relation the dead woman was to them, he spared them a moment's pity. The years of childhood were all too brief; if the relationship was a close one, it was likely that the dark, adult passions that had brought the woman's violent death would shatter their childhood forever. The thought depressed him.

He gave the gargoyles one final glance, tightened his eye-dazzling orange tie and made for the front door. Depressing or not, you've got a job to do, Rafferty, he reminded himself. Just climb out of the slough of despond and get on with it.