Bad Blood Read Free

Llewellyn's arm. He regained his composure and glanced down. On top of the entrance mat proper, someone had placed what looked like a hand-made effort, a gaudy ‘welcome’ mat in bilious green with fussy, curly red lettering, which stuck up a good inch above the entrance. Rafferty grimaced; he'd had better welcomes.
    As they climbed the stairs, Rafferty gazed round him. The carpet was thick and of good quality, the entrance hall and stairs were lined with paintings, not the cheap, ‘Charging Elephant’ type, either.
    ‘Nice gaff,’ he commented. ‘Pretty posh, considering it's sheltered housing.’
    Beside him, Llewellyn said, ‘It's a private block and is rather exclusive. Has a long waiting list, I understand, especially if you haven't got an influential friend on the residents’ committee.’
    ‘So the victim wasn't short of a few bob,’ Rafferty remarked automatically, before he could stop himself. ‘Gives us a pointer to a possible motive.’
    ‘As you say, sir - a possible motive. But it's early days yet.’
    Subtly cautioned by his sergeant, Rafferty smiled inwardly. He'd turned over a new leaf and was determined to never again race ahead of the evidence, though he hadn't shared his conversion with Llewellyn. After his last murder investigation, he wanted this conversion from old habits to come as a welcome surprise as the case unfolded.
    Llewellyn confided, ‘According to one of the other residents, the victim was reputed to keep quite large cash sums in her apartment.’
    ‘Was she now? Interesting.’ Rafferty was careful to say nothing further on the subject of motivational possibilities as they climbed the last step and entered the second floor landing. There were four doors off, one apartment door on each side of the spacious hallway, with the door to a lift on their left and that of the stairwell through which they had just emerged beside it. Number 2a was on the left. The door was open with PC Lizzie Green standing to one side of it exuding her normal early morning scent of lily of the valley talcum powder.
    Rafferty suspected Lizzie Green had adopted this most maiden-aunt of perfumes as a defensive measure. He wondered when Lizzie would cotton on to the fact that most of her male colleagues found the combination of the old-fashioned scent, her curly dark hair, bee-stung lips and voluptuous figure that even the police uniform couldn't disguise, more than a little beguiling.
    Rafferty smiled good morning and gave his attention to the door lock. It was a sturdy 5 lever mortise and showed no signs of damage.
    As Llewellyn had mentioned, most of the team had already arrived. Through the open door of the spacious lobby directly ahead, Rafferty could see Fraser, part of the fingerprint team and Adrian Appleby and his Scenes of Crime experts already hard at work in the living room.
    He stepped across the threshold and entered the lobby. A large mahogany wardrobe filled half of one wall. The others were hung with more pictures and a large, ornately framed mirror.
    Seven years’ bad luck for someone, he thought automatically, as he saw the shattered shards of glass littering the pale green carpet. Then he thought again of the victim, whose bad luck encompassed all eternity and his guilty feelings came back in full measure.
    The body was in the living room. As, currently, Lance Edwards was hovering over it with his video camera Rafferty addressed his attention to the rest of the scene.
    The living room was large, around twenty feet by twenty-five, richly furnished in an old-fashioned style, with more heavy mahogany furniture and lots of old lady's knick-knacks and ornaments, not cheap gimcrack items, either. All were tasteful in a restrained way; delicate cream-coloured figurines of ballerinas performed their elegant, eternal dance beside coy Edwardian maidens of downcast demeanour.
    The victim had a huge collection of long playing records; the covers that he could see were mostly classical and neatly