Llewellyn expelled a long held-in sigh as the door closed behind them. His eyes curtained by the fall of thick black lashes, he gave himself a little shake, and the controlled expression was back in place, the deep emotions that had flickered across his features safely stowed away once more. 'An unhappy man,' was his taut comment. 'He loved her very much, in his own way, you could see that.'
Rafferty was about to disagree, then he realised his sergeant was right. Love came in all shapes and sizes, he, of all people should know that. His expression bleak, he began to flick through the diary once more as they made for the car.
Back to normal, Llewellyn found a mournful quote to enrich the experience still further. '"Love is a sickness full of woes",' he began. But Rafferty's involuntary groan caused him to break off mid-flow. 'Samuel Daniel, 1562—1619,' he muttered under his breath.
'Miserable git. Bet his family held one hell of a coffin-dancing Wake when he popped his clogs.’
‘Curious that Wilks didn't come straight back when he didn't find his daughter,' Llewellyn remarked after a brief silence. 'It would be more usual for parents to share the shock of such a discovery together.'
'You saw them. There was precious little attempt at comforting one another. They live only half a mile from the hospital,' Rafferty went on thoughtfully. 'Discovering that his daughter's on the game would be enough to make any man mad with rage.' At least he assumed so. Not having ever experienced the dubious joys of fatherhood, he had only his imagination on which to draw. It was certainly a strong motive for murder. 'He could have followed her—he'd been tinkering with the car when his wife found the diary and called him into the house. Perhaps, when Linda ran out, he picked up a spanner without thinking and followed her.'
'He couldn't have done it, of course.' Back in his stride with a vengeance, Llewellyn threw cold water over the idea with the ease of long practise. 'Linda was found inside the hospital grounds, not outside. Where would he get a key to that gate?'
'Perhaps he didn't need one.' Rafferty’s head rose from his perusal of the diary, pleased he'd succeeded in coming up with a theory that Llewellyn wouldn't find so easy to fault. 'Maybe the person she was meeting let her in and left the door unlocked by mistake?'
He tapped the slim book with a forefinger. 'Or perhaps, if she had a regular customer at the hospital, he might have given her a key. Her father did say she was going to see a medical man that night, and there's no reason why she shouldn't occasionally earn some money locally.'
Llewellyn nodded thoughtfully. 'And her father pushed through after her once she’d unlocked the gate? You could have something there, Sir. Wilks is the type to have a complete brainstorm. All that determined respectability is unnatural.' He gave Rafferty an inscrutable glance. 'As Freud said—'
'Never mind what Freud said,' Rafferty broke in before Llewellyn had a chance to start on all that psychological mumbo-jumbo. 'We'd do better finding out what her prospective flatmates have to say. Now that we've got her name and photograph I'll get on to the media. I shouldn't think we'll have long to wait before her girlfriends contact us.' He sent up a silent prayer for forgiveness after his comforting lies to Mrs. Wilks. 'I agree the father's a possible suspect, but at this stage, we can't afford to concentrate our investigations too much on one person.'
Llewellyn looked down his nose at this as Rafferty conveniently forgot his previous enthusiastic concentration on Melville-Briggs. Rafferty ignored him.
'Her girlfriends might know if Linda did have a regular customer at the Elmhurst Sanatorium, particularly if they were on the game themselves.' He opened the driver's side door of the car and was about to get in, when he saw Llewellyn's unhappy expression and relented. 'All right, you drive,' he said, handing the keys over and walking around.
Rafferty opened the passenger side door and climbed in, chivvying Llewellyn as he fumbled with the ignition key. 'Hurry up man,' he grumbled. 'Let's get back to the station. We've got a lot to do.' He brandished the photograph of Linda. 'I want you to get copies made of this and give them to the house-to-house team. They'll have to start over again now. And I'll want posters of her put up at bus and train stations. I want everyone within a twenty mile radius to know her face. Get the photo off to the Met. She presumably found most of her johns there and it's possible there's someone in town who knew her in both identities.' Certainly better than her parents seemed to, he added silently to himself.
Llewellyn was still applying his logical mind to Rafferty's previous idea. 'If her father did do it, why would he strip her?'
Rafferty glanced back at the house as Llewellyn started up the car. Someone had been watching them. As he turned his head, he just caught a quick movement as the nets were twitched back into place.
'He said she dressed like a tart. Perhaps he thought, naked, she looked more respectable, more innocent than she ever could in her working gear. If it was him, I wonder what he did with them? He wouldn't have been able to burn them easily with no open fires in the house. Perhaps he buried them or threw them in the sea? It's only about a fifteen minute walk from their house. I want you to notify the search teams to be on the lookout for anything washed up by the tide.'
Llewellyn slipped in a little philosophical comment as he slid the gear stick into first. 'He'll blame his wife for the girl going to the bad, of course. That type always does.'
'Well, he's got to blame someone. I bet your friend, Freud, would agree it's human nature. Especially if he did do for the girl. And who else is there to blame?'
Perhaps, he mused, if Linda's mother had been a different sort of woman, her father would have been a different sort of man and Linda would still be alive. But of course, he reminded himself, you could say that about anyone.
Rafferty was gratified to find he was in the right for once. They'd passed Linda’s photograph to the media in time to catch the Monday papers, and Linda's girlfriends had seen the item and the request for information. He and Llewellyn were soon en route to south London to see them.
'Let me do the talking,' he warned Llewellyn. If, like Linda, they were part-time hookers, he didn't want Llewellyn going all moral on him and putting the girls’ backs up before they shared what they knew.
Despite making good time, it was nearly noon when they reached Streatham, and then Rafferty spent twenty minutes circling round before he could park. Finally, ignoring Llewellyn's stern exhortations about policemen not being above the law, he left the car on a double yellow line. He gave Llewellyn a smug smile as he dug in his back pocket, and slapped a ‘Police’ sticker on the windscreen, a la ‘Del Boy’ Trotter with his ‘Doctor on call’ homemade effort. ‘”Be prepared”, is my watchword, Daff.’ The Welshman wasn’t the only one who could come out with quotations, even if his own weren’t of his sergeant’s preferred highbrow sort. ‘”Dib, dib, dib, dob, dob, dob.”’
Llewellyn’s aquiline nostrils quivered a fraction at this, but he said nothing, beyond the accurate observation, ‘You were never a Boy Scout.’
‘True. I didn’t fancy sewing on all the badges I’d have won. Bet you were, though.’
Llewellyn didn’t deny it.
Rafferty cursed when he saw the flat. It formed part of a large house, with a tarmac front garden that provided ample space for parking and would have saved them the half-mile trudge back to the car. He should have guessed. Many of the large, formerly family homes around this area had been converted into flats.
Ignoring the sombre-suited Llewellyn's wince of pain, Rafferty straightened his dazzling orange and magenta tie and studied the array of cards and bells by the front door. He pulled a face when he realised they wanted the top floor. 'I hope they've got a lift,' he muttered as he rang the bell.
The grill spluttered into life, he shouted his business and the door was released. Rafferty cursed again as he saw the 'lift out of order' sign.
By the time he reached the top floor, his breathing was phone-pervert heavy, and he had to hang on to the banisters for a minute, with nothing but a helpless grin to ward off the wary looks of the two young women at the door. While he clung there, Rafferty had time to reflect that he had probably stopped smoking none too soon. His lip curled as he noted Llewellyn's breath was perfectly measured. The Welshman’s body was as disciplined as everything else in his life, and he worked out twice a week in the police gym; something which earned a few ribald comments from the canteen cowboy beer guts at the station.
The girls looked nervously first at each other and then at him. 'Inspector Rafferty?'
Still gasping, he could only nod. Did they really think any self-respecting rapist likely to knacker himself by climbing all those stairs?
As the girls still regarded him with suspicion, he pulled his identity card from his wallet; wordlessly, he thrust it at them.
Reassured, they now became concerned at his speechless condition and one of the girls asked, 'Are you all right?'
'Really, I'm fine,' he gasped, when he was finally able to get a word out.
'The stairs are tough on older people,' she sympathised artlessly, while behind him, he heard a muffled snort from Llewellyn, who was still – just – the right side of thirty.
Her comment did nothing to boost Rafferty's ego. Dammit all, he was only thirty-seven, not seventy-seven. He supposed along with giving up smoking, he ought to start taking more exercise, watch his diet, cut down on alcohol; in short, make himself as big a misery as Llewellyn.
Apparently, the three girls all made a somewhat precarious living on the fringes of show business, and although Linda had not only been a friend, but had also been about to move in, they could tell them little about her. It seemed that none of them enquired too closely into the affairs of the others. 'Please try to remember,' he pressed. 'It's very important. Did Linda say anything, anything at all, about any regular men she might see at Elmhurst or where they might meet?'
They looked at one another and shook their heads. The blonde girl, Patsy, said, 'We knew she must have some men friends down there, of course, because sometimes, when she came up to town, she had quite a bit of money with her, money she wouldn't have been able to earn otherwise. But who they might have been, I've no idea. Perhaps Tina would know more, she's known Linda a lot longer than either of us two.'
Rafferty looked about him hopefully.
'She's not here. She had a very early flight to the States last Saturday morning. Tina's a dancer,' Patsy explained apologetically, 'and her agent managed to get her a tour booking as a replacement at the last minute.'
'Would you have a number where I could contact her?'
'She forgot her mobile. You could try her agent.' Patsy picked up the phone book and read out his name and number as Rafferty jotted the information down.
'You don't happen to know the names of any of her men friends here in London?'
Patsy shook her head. 'She rarely mentioned anyone. Men were just – men – to Linda, unless she met someone who could help her career.'
'It was that important to her?'
Patsy smiled at him. 'Oh, yes. In fact, you might say she spent her whole life playing a part.' She handed him a photograph from the sideboard. 'That's Linda, in the middle.'
The Wilks's family photographs hadn't really captured the dead girl. This photo gave far more of an idea of the real Linda. As Patsy had said, she was pretty enough, in a pale, unhealthy sort of way. Her hair hung over her face in the expected provocative manner, and though her mouth held a matching pout for the camera, there was a hint of desperation in her eyes.
'When was this photo taken?' asked Llewellyn, obviously determined to get in on the act, despite Rafferty's warning.
'Last year. She had a small part in a film and we went to see her on set. She was so excited about breaking into films, was sure her big chance would come from it. But it was never released. They ran out of money.'
'Did Linda ever mention the Elmhurst Sanatorium?' Rafferty queried. He didn't have much hope anything would come of it, but he had to ask. They shook their heads. 'What about Dr. Anthony Melville-Briggs or Dr. Simon Smythe?' No, they'd never heard of them either. He ran a few more names past them, but they, too, were unknown to them.
Still, that proved nothing, Rafferty reassured himself. Linda had not been forthcoming about her men friends. He held up the photograph. 'Is it all right if I take this?'
Patsy nodded.
'I'll let you have it back as soon as possible.' He fished in his pocket for his number and handed it over. 'If you think of anything, please phone me.'
Patsy showed him out. 'Poor Linda. All she wanted was the big break. She never talked about anything else.' She shook her head. 'It's funny, but the last part she played was that of an angel. Another flop.' Her eyes flickered upwards. 'Strange to think that if she's managed to get up there she'll be auditioning for the same part right now. You will get the man who did this to her, won't you, Inspector?'
Rafferty did his best to reassure her on that point. He wished he felt half as confident as he sounded.
He was thoughtful as he and Llewellyn walked back to the car. They had learned little and the thought depressed him, but he cheered up a bit when he discovered they hadn't been given a parking ticket. He even let Llewellyn drive and as they left the quiet residential street behind he sat staring restlessly out of the side window. The traffic lights changed to green and they rounded the corner. His ears pricked up as he heard the familiar sound of a concrete mixer. Hadn't his Uncle Pat said he was working on a building site around this way?
Rafferty looked at his watch and grinned. Five to one. Couldn't have timed it better if he'd tried. 'Pull up here,' he instructed.
'But it's a double yellow line, Sir,' Llewellyn protested for the second time. ‘I really can't just—'
Rafferty sighed, unwilling to go through that all over again. 'Never mind that,' he ordered. 'I'm only asking you to pull up for a minute, not take up squatter's rights.'
Llewellyn muttered under his breath, but did as he was told.
In spite of feeling he was beginning to know and understand his sergeant better, Rafferty still found his unrelenting company something of a strain and he needed a break, however short. The craving for a bit of light relief made him feel guilty and the sharp edge had gone from his voice as he added, 'Get some lunch and come back for me in an hour. You'll find there's a decent pub near the common. They serve hot food and they've got a car park, with no double yellows in sight.'
He got out of the car and slammed the door with the enthusiastic vigour of a convict out on day-release. He crossed the pavement and skirted the barriers guarding the building site. A pleased smile settled on his face as he took in the beginnings of a block of rather superior apartments rising from the dust and rubble of some previous building. He stood and watched for a little while, taking pleasure in the almost symphonic movements of the foreman and his men as they laid their bricks. Then, as though obeying the commands of some invisible conductor, they all laid down their trowels at virtually the same moment and with a purposeful air, they followed one another down the ladder secured to the scaffolding. Lunch-time.
Rafferty strolled over. Already he could feel his spirits lifting. Building sites always had that effect on him. He had done some of his best thinking whilst surrounded by the roar of machinery and the good-natured cussing of a building crew.
'Hello, Uncle Pat.' It was a courtesy title as Pat was really a first cousin; his oldest and favourite cousin, in spite of the fact that he was always ready to take a rise out of him. At least he didn't hold his job against him.
The black-haired giant glanced round and his broken-toothed mouth curved into a grin. 'Joseph Aloysius! It's yourself, is it?' His eyes twinkled as he clapped him on the back with a heavy hand. 'What's this I hear about you and our Maureen? Your Ma's told me you're sweet on her.'
Rafferty sighed. Maureen was Pat's eldest daughter, and his second cousin. She was very bright and usually managed to reduce Rafferty to tongue-tied inanities in ten seconds flat, an obstacle to love that his ma seemed happy to ignore in her desperation to see him married again.
The trouble was that his ma couldn't see beyond the fact that, in a country of increasing non-believers, Maureen was a "good Catholic girl", and likely to encourage the religiously lax Rafferty back to the paths of righteousness. As if that wasn't recommendation enough for his mother, she came from a good breeding family—his own. Hadn't his ma drawn his attention to Maureen's child-bearing hips more than once? Unfortunately, for his ma they seemed to confirm that the match was made in heaven.
'When's the wedding?' Pat enquired, still grinning. 'Sure an' it'll be useful having a policeman as a son-in-law.'
Rafferty managed a sickly grin.
'Don't look so worried, lad. It's only pullin' your leg, I am. My girl knows her worth, her ma's made certain of it. Surely, you know she goes for the intellectual type?'
Rafferty hadn't, but, as he did his best to stay out of her way, that wasn’t surprising. Still, he made a mental note, just in case this fact should come in useful one day.
‘She's on the hunt for a professor, at least,' Pat went on. 'I'll give you ten to one she wouldn't think of throwing herself away on a skinny carrot-top copper, whatever your ma hopes. It's my bet you'll stay on the shelf a while yet, Joseph.'
Amazingly, Pat had married an educated woman with ambitions, and, after twenty-five years together, they were still happy. It must be the attraction of opposites, mused Rafferty, uneasily reminded of Maureen.
Pat put his great arm round his shoulders and gave him the same disarming grin that had persuaded the middle class highbrow, Claire Tyler-Jenkins, up the aisle and into his arms. 'Chin up, son. A little disappointment in love is good for a man. Sure and you'll get over it.'
Since being bowled over by his uncle's determined romancing, Rafferty’s ‘Auntie’ Claire had transferred her ambitions to her children. Rafferty was grateful to have confirmed his conviction that none of those ambitions included marrying one of her daughters to him. But he still suffered a twinge of unease. Because his ma was also a woman of ambition. And Kitty Rafferty had a way of eroding a person's resistance that was positively tidal.
'Enough of this mournfulness.' Pat punched him playfully on the shoulder with sufficient force to break a bone. 'Come away in the hut and have a bite to eat with the lads.'
As he sat in the hut, wedged between his Uncle Pat and his son, Sean, Rafferty for the moment forgot his troubles. The atmosphere in the hut was cheerful, the tin mug in his hand held tea, strong, sweet and piping hot and his ma, Llewellyn, The Elmhurst Sanatorium and Dr. Melville-Briggs seemed a million miles away. For the moment, he was content.
Although the A11 was fairly quiet, it was late afternoon by the time they got back to Melville-Briggs’s sanatorium and their dreary little office.
'Get hold of Dally,' Rafferty instructed the Welshman. 'Remind him that I'm still waiting for the results of the post-mortem. Anyone would think he had a conveyor-belt of corpses awaiting his attention.'
Of course, there was no answer from Sam Dally’s end. And as he listened to Llewellyn leave a message Rafferty checked down his lists. 'We'd better get on. We've only one or two more members of staff to go and three more patients. Right, let's have—' He paused, unable to read his own handwriting. 'Nurse White.'
'Nurse Wright, is, I think you'll find, the young lady's name, Sir,' Llewellyn supplied confidently, secure in the ivory tower of his own perfect script.
'Whatever,' Rafferty mumbled. 'Let's have her in.'
Nearly three quarters of an hour later, Rafferty knew he was in no danger of ever forgetting the wretched woman's name. He felt like cursing it and her from Llewellyn's ivory tower.
Nurse Wright mightn't have been sufficiently academic to have studied for the higher, RMN qualification, Rafferty reflected, but she was smart enough to know on which side her bread was buttered. It had taken him all that time to drag her story out of her and, even then, it came reluctantly. Disgruntled, he wondered if she was hoping for promotion to Melville-Briggs's bed.
Nurse Wright told them a young woman had handed her a note for Melville-Briggs just as she had arrived at the side gate for duty on the night of the murder. Of course, she hadn't thought to give it to them when Linda Wilks's body had been found the next morning. She'd actually thrown it away. Or so she said.
She also claimed this young woman had told her she would wait till 11.30 p.m. for Melville-Briggs to contact her on her mobile. But as Nurse Wright claimed it was only when she got no answer to her knock on the door of Melville-Briggs’s hospital flat that night that she realised he was elsewhere, so had thrown the note away.
Of course, the note had vanished. Rafferty wondered if she'd handed it to Melville-Briggs at the first opportunity and hadn't thrown it in the waste-basket at all. He cursed as he thought of the hours likely to be wasted raking through dustbins. He'd had to take men off the other search teams to look for it. Remembering Nurse Wright's tight white uniform and the fashionably tousled blonde curls under the saucily-positioned cap, he hoped Melville-Briggs would be grateful for her attempted discretion.
They'd almost certainly lost the element of surprise in questioning Melville-Briggs about the matter. He'd be expecting them to demand an explanation. Well, Rafferty determined, he wasn't going to—at least not yet. Apart from his Boy Scout motto, Rafferty had another one: never do what people expect you to do. It left them unbalanced which was just what he wanted. He'd see Gentleman Jim when he gauged vertigo was ready to tip the doctor over into some useful disclosures, and not before.
Tuesday morning was fresh and bright. The tantalising intimation of spring made Rafferty reluctant to head straight for their grim temporary office. Instead, he lingered in the hospital grounds for a few precious moments of peace. But at a sound behind him, he realised that brief respite was to be denied him.
'Psst.'
Rafferty stopped and turned, but there was no-one in sight. He shook his head and told himself he’d be seeing pink elephants next.
'Psst.'
There it was again. It seemed to be coming from the trees bordering the perimeter wall and he tried to peer through this newly-leafed bower. 'Who's there?' he called.
'Shh. Be quiet can't you?' he was asked in a furious whisper. The voice sounded whinily familiar. 'Come over here, for God's sake, before somebody sees you.'
Rafferty put his hands in his pockets and, after a casual glance around to see if he was being observed, sauntered as nonchalantly as curiosity permitted, towards the trees and the urgent, whispered summons.
He wasn't altogether surprised to find that it was Gilbert, the gate porter who had found the body, who was indulging in such James Bondian tactics. 'Not got the sack, yet, then?' he enquired dryly, which conversational gambit only earned him a scowl. 'What do you want, Gilbert?'
'Got something that might interest you, 'spector,' said Gilbert, with a quick, furtive glance over his shoulder. 'I meant to tell you before, like, only it slipped me mind.'
What dreadful secret could be pummelling Gilbert's flexible conscience? Rafferty had told the little man to consider him as a priest; perhaps he was now to be treated to a confession? He hoped Gilbert didn't realise that full confessional secrecy was not something that he personally had any truck with. 'I'm listening, Gilbert,' he responded, assuming as pious a stance as he could muster. 'Go on.'
'I wanted to tell you about who I saw in the local pub the night the girl was killed. As I say, I meant to tell you bef—'
'And who might that be?' Rafferty interrupted.
'Simple Simon.'
'Dr. Simon Smythe do you mean?'
'That's right. Simple Simon. Only he didn't meet a pie man.' Gilbert sniggered at his own wit.
Rafferty smiled obligingly and waited for him to elaborate.
'He met a girl. And 'im meant to be on duty, too.' He sniffed, adopting the self-righteous tones of a man who knew his duty and did it, come what may.
'You're sure it was the night of the murder?'
'Course I'm sure. He was in the small, private bar; knocking back whisky like it was going out of fashion. 'e didn't see me as the angle was awkward, but I saw 'im all right. I only caught a glimpse of the girl, though.'
'This girl—are you saying it was our murder victim, Linda Wilks?'
'I'm not saying nothin'. I'm just tellin' you what I saw, ain’t I?'
'But Linda Wilks was a local girl and Elmhurst's a small place. Are you saying you didn't know her?'
'I wish you'd stop tryin' to put words into me mouth,' Gilbert complained. 'I didn't say I didn't know Linda. I did.' Hastily, in case, Rafferty should think he had murdered her, he added, 'Just to nod to like, when she was 'ere, which wasn't often.
‘Anyway, all I'm sayin' is that the girl I saw could 'ave been Linda. But as I only caught a glimpse of the back of 'er 'ead, before the landlord came and served me and blocked me view, I can't swear to it. I can't be sure who she was. But Linda must 'ave been in Elmhurst that night, mustn't she?' he remarked slyly. 'She managed to get 'erself murdered, after all. Bit of a coincidence that, to my way of thinkin'. Mind, I'm not sayin' that Simple Simon done it. That's fer 'im to know and you to find out, ain’t it?’
Rafferty sighed. Who'd have suspected that Gilbert had such delicate scruples? For some reason, he wanted to drop Simon Smythe in it, but his strange code wouldn't let him make a proper job of it, wouldn't let him say anything definitely helpful to the police.
'Mind,' Gilbert went on, confidingly. 'If it was Linda Wilks, we all know what 'e was doin' wiv 'er, don't we? Simple Simon rarely 'ad a girlfriend. Not a proper one, like.' He sniggered. 'You might call Linda Wilks more an improper one, mightn't yer?'
Ignoring the salacious look in Gilbert's eye, Rafferty asked, 'Did they come in together?'
Gilbert shrugged. 'Don't know. I only noticed them at the last knockin's.'
'Can you describe this girl?'
Gilbert screwed up his face, as though to emphasise the difficulty of casting his mind back in time the vast distance of four days. 'Let me see. She had long, dark hair,' he at last revealed. 'Admittedly, Linda Wilks was blonde the last time I saw 'er, but I generally never saw 'er with the same colour 'air twice in a row, so that don't mean nothin'. Bit on the skinny side. Meself, I prefer a woman with a bit more meat on her bones.'
'Never mind about that. Get on with it.'
Gilbert tutted. 'I'm tellin' you ain’t I? She was about nineteen, twenty, I'd say. Quite tall, about 5' 7".'
Gilbert seemed to be having few problems with his memory now, Rafferty noted. He suspected that the real reason he was the recipient of Gilbert's news was that the porter had tried to get Simon Smythe to cough up in return for keeping quiet and had been refused.
Smythe’s hitherto unsuspected bravery surprised him. Unless it was that the poor sap just hadn't had the wherewithal to buy the porter's silence.
Gilbert continued in an even more confiding tone. 'I'm not normally a man to snit