But after half-an-hour's brooding solitude, Rafferty knew that wasn't going to happen. If it went away it would only be because he made it do so. But at least his lengthy lavatory-languish had given him some respite and time to engage in a game of ‘What If?’ which resulted in the tiniest oddity about the case forcing itself from subconscious hibernation into the half-light of his dim cubicle.
It had been the gossip-loving Lancelot Bliss, he thought, who had made the comment that was currently tickling Rafferty's curiosity. It might be nothing, of course. Probably was. Even so, it was the first lead he'd had. Maybe Bliss would be able to enlighten him further. He seemed to know everything else about all those with a connection to the dating agency.
Rafferty felt a shiver run through his body. And knew it was the first stirrings of hope. He hurriedly left the toilet and made his way to his office where he flicked through the list of the party attendees and found Lance Bliss's phone number.
In the way of such things, that one oddity had reminded him of another. The two of them added up to one very interesting pointer to guilt. Mercifully, it wasn't pointing at him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Unfortunately, Lancelot
Bliss seemed to have become elusive. After trying the doctor's consulting rooms and learning it was one of his studio days, Rafferty obtained the studio number. But Bliss, busy recording his TV show, was unable to come to the phone. Rafferty left a message, but when forty minutes later, Bliss still hadn't got back to him he rang the studio again only to learn that Bliss had left. Next he tried the doctor's mobile, but it was turned off. His medical secretary told him Bliss wasn't expected in at all.
And although he rang the mobile number repeatedly throughout the rest of the day, Bliss failed to respond. Surely, a doctor like Bliss would make certain he could be contacted at all times? So why was he so determinedly out of reach now?
After leaving messages at all the locations at which he thought Bliss might turn up, he put the man from his mind. He could do no more about him for the moment. He had left Llewellyn in charge of the Incident Room and now Rafferty decided to remain quietly in his office, hoping that since his faulty memory had released one piece of information, others would follow.
But further pieces of information proved as elusive as Bliss. In the end, he decided to stop badgering his mind and wait for it to throw up facts when it was ready.
By
the end of the day he had read the latest reports in between ringing Bliss, who remained as untraceable as any other titbits of memory.
Rafferty remembered he was expected at his ma's that evening. He'd promised to do a bit of weeding and some late spring pruning. He considered putting her off, but perhaps some physical work would free up his reluctant brain. Besides, he knew, if he didn't go, he would only sit brooding at home into the early hours, allowing his hopes to rise that he might be on the way to solving the case – and all on the basis of a couple of scraps of remembered conversation which might turn out to be of no importance at all. And might even – given his shaky recall – not even be accurately remembered.
His
ma looked him up and down when he arrived. ‘Whatever have you been doing to yourself?’ she asked. ‘You look like something the cat dragged in.’
‘I've not been sleeping well,’ Rafferty admitted.
‘It's this unsettled life you lead, Joseph, all this dashing off chasing murderers and interrogating practiced liars can't be good for a person. A man needs some stability, some certainty in his day-to-day affairs. I don't suppose you've been eating properly either?’
Rafferty, who had hardly been eating at all, though he'd been drinking plenty, was about to deny this, anticipating she would use any such admission to arm her insistence that what he needed was a wife.
But to his surprise, she said nothing of the sort. Instead, she made him sit down by the fire and wouldn't hear of him tackling her garden until he'd had an hour's rest, a cup of tea and a sandwich. She didn't torment him with questions, either, but let him sit quietly while she got on with her knitting.
With all his troubles, Rafferty had almost forgotten ma's first great-grandchild was due in a few months. But the rapidly-growing little lemon cardigan dangling from his ma's knitting needles reminded him. It was a shock to realize that young Gemma's baby would make him a Great-Uncle and elevate him to the generation that was supposed to set an example, not turn into a signpost showing the way to Folly Road.
It gave him something else to think about during the two hours he spent on the garden, pruning, weeding, and generally doing the heavy work that his ma was no longer able to manage.
An inquisitive blackbird flew down while he was working and stared at Rafferty from a distance of two feet, his head on one side as if to enquire what Rafferty was doing in his garden.
‘I suppose you want me to find you some worms?’ Rafferty asked it. The blackbird didn't deny it, so Rafferty dug his spade into the soil of the shrub border. He struck one of the slug baits his ma had dotted around the garden. Filled with beer, her baited jam-jar trap had worked a treat; it contained two bloated and very drunken slugs. He eased them out, whacked them with a spade and tossed them towards the blackbird, who bobbed his head as if in thanks, seized one of the fat slugs and flew off.
Half-an-hour later, Rafferty eased his aching muscles and stood back to admire his efforts. The garden looked good and he felt pleasantly tired after his exertions. He put the tools away, washed and returned to the living room, where he sat down and prepared to let his ma spoil him. Yes, he said, he was more than willing to stay for a bit of home cooked supper. Anticipating his arrival, his ma had shopped for and cooked one of his favourite meals: steak and kidney pie with more vegetables than he could eat, with apple crumble and custard to follow. Although he had intended going home after the meal, instead, pleasantly full, he sat down and gave his digestive system a chance to work. And as he watched a film on TV with his ma, a curious thought sidled into his brain.
At first, he doubted the conclusion the thought brought him to, but when he put it together with the other scraps he had earlier recalled, the more it seemed to him that he might be on to something at last, something tangible.
Though the possibility excited him, it couldn't fight the heavy meal or the mental, physical and emotional tiredness and he dosed off. To his horror, when he woke from the midst of another nightmare, it was to find his ma staring at him.
‘Whatever's wrong, Joseph? You were screaming out something that sounded like, ‘My God, the blood, the blood. What have I done?’ She sat beside him on the sofa and asked plaintively, ‘What have you done? I know something's badly wrong.’
Worn down between the twin horrors of his nightmares and his guilty conscience, his earlier hopes forgotten, Rafferty gave in to the increasingly urgent desire to confess. He had to unburden himself to someone and with her flexible attitude to the law and law-breakers his ma was the obvious candidate, even if, once she knew of his various follies, she'd give him even more Hell than he was currently experiencing.
But once again she surprised him and heard him out in silence as he told her the whole story; about joining the dating agency using his cousin's identity; that his ‘Nigel’ was suspected of murdering the two girls; about the pretend burglary he'd set up with her unknowing connivance and about all the pressures he had been under for days – from Nigel himself, from Superintendent Bradley, from the retraction of Kylie Smith and Kayleigh Jenkins’ alibis and Timothy Smales's initiative that had brought these about. But – even to Ma – he couldn't bring himself to confess the fear that his nightmares might turn out to be true.
She took every one of his confessions in her stride. And after asking why he had felt it necessary to pretend to be someone he wasn't and why being a Rafferty wasn't good enough for him, she became briskly practical.
‘They can't prove you've been masquerading as Jerry?’
Rafferty shook his head. ‘Not unless Jerry comes clean, which he's several times threatened to do.’
‘Leave Jerry Kelly to me. I know one or two things about that young man that he wouldn't like to see the light of day. If anyone does happen to ask where you were on those two nights, you can say you were here, with me.’
Rafferty was doubtful. ‘The police generally don't give much credence to alibis provided by mothers,’ he said.
‘Do they not? Sure and I'd like to see your superintendent call me a liar to my face.’
So would Rafferty.
‘Besides,’ she added, ‘Is it not up to them to prove you weren't with me? Innocent until proven otherwise, that's what you've always told me the law says. And I should know because you've blasted the ears off me often enough about it every time some fool of a judge lets a violent criminal evade justice. But if I'm not enough of an alibi, we can always ask one or more of your brothers or sisters to alibi you, too. The more the merrier. We can say we were having a family get-together. ’Two family get-togethers, she corrected herself
‘Too complicated, Ma,’ Rafferty said as he thought how easily such a claim could be disproved. ‘Best to keep it simple.’
‘Simple it is,’ she agreed. ‘So, tell me more about these nightmares.’
Rafferty was still reluctant to tell her what it was about the nightmares that terrified him the most. But, of course, she got it out of him in the end.
‘And you brought all this trouble on yourself because you didn't want me to know your business?’ She shook her head. ‘Sure and hadn't you only to say, son. Surely you knew that?’ Luckily, she didn't give him the chance to deny it.
‘So these nightmares you're so worried about – I take it you've convinced yourself your dreams might be recreating the actual event?’
Rafferty nodded. ‘I can't get these pictures out of my head, Ma. The nightmares have degenerated to such an extent that in them I'm now the murderer. I see my face, all covered in gore and with a mad light in my eyes. I wake up with the shakes. I've never suffered such dreams in my life.’
For the first time during his revelations his ma looked disconcerted. ‘Far be it from me to add to your troubles, son,’ she said, ‘but yes, actually, you have. Surely, you remember the nightmares you suffered when you were about ten? It was after you nearly killed your sister, Maggie. You must remember.’
Dumbfounded, Rafferty could only shake his head to both questions.
‘It was years ago as I said, when the six of you were kids. Unbeknownst to me, you'd all been playing a game of ‘stretch’ on the patch of grass behind the flats where we used to live in London. Your sister swore you deliberately threw the knife at her head instead of at the ground as you were meant to. Luckily, you helped yourself to my old, blunt knives instead of my best ones or you might well have done more damage. As it was, the knife just bounced off her head. She was hardly scratched for all her screaming that you'd tried to kill her. I told her that was nonsense. As if you'd do such a thing.’
Was it nonsense? Rafferty asked himself? Or had Ma merely been reluctant to admit to herself that her blue-eyed boy might be capable of such an act? Strangely, he had no recollection of the event. It had vanished from his memory. Why? Was it another case of guilty conscience? Another bout of violence that he'd managed to successfully bury even from himself?
He knew he would have to ask his sister for her version of events on that long-ago day. But for the here and now, Rafferty knew, if he was ever to be truly convinced of his own innocence then he had to prove who had killed the two girls and do it very soon. For his own peace of mind, his own sanity, it was essential he find out the truth – whatever it might turn out to be. He couldn't carry on much longer, not knowing for sure. But at least now he had something to go on.
Much
later, when his Ma had unearthed the bottle of brandy he had given her for Mother's Day, and they had both had several glasses, she returned to his reasons for joining the dating agency.
‘Do you think me so lacking in understanding of what it is to be lonely that you felt you needed to do such a thing in secret, Joseph? The Lord knows, I've had lonely times enough in my life.’
Rafferty's head jerked in surprise; Ma lonely? Such an idea had never occurred to him. She had a more lively social life than he did – not that that was difficult – but between his sisters, brothers, the grandchildren and the neighbours, his mother could hardly be short of company.
‘I'm not talking about now,’ she told him. ‘Though living alone is not something I ever thought I'd get used to. I'm talking about when I was younger. Sure and wasn't I widowed in my thirties with you six to bring up on my own?’
Rarely, too rarely, Rafferty shamefacedly realized, had he thought of his mother and how she'd been left at his feckless father's sudden death. As she said, she'd been a relatively young woman – younger than he was now. He couldn't imagine being left alone and broke with total responsibility for six kids and he found himself looking at his Ma with new eyes.
‘I confess I'm hurt that you didn't turn to me earlier. I am your Mammy, son. Haven't I often tried my best to find you a good woman?’
‘Perhaps that was the trouble, Ma,’ he said with sudden honesty. ‘Didn't you tell me your mother did the same to you? And you took against every man she tried to fix you up with. And then you married Da.’