Bad Blood Read Free Page A

shelved in their sleeves. The many books lining the walls also indicated the victim had been a woman of cultured interests – the ballet featured strongly as well as opera, history and travel.
    The room didn't appear to have been ransacked at all. Rafferty concluded that the intruder had panicked after discovering he had a dead body on his hands.
    He took a few more minutes to study the rest of the room. He noted the pile of around half-a-dozen unopened envelopes on the mantelpiece; they looked like birthday cards. Saved for when? Surely not today? he wondered.
    But as he studied the postmark on the top envelope and saw it had been posted with a first-class stamp locally the previous morning, he realised his guess must be correct. It made the murder more poignant and his guilty feelings even more pungent.
    He recalled Llewellyn's remark that the dead old lady was reputed to keep money in her apartment, briefly, he wondered why the elderly should persist with such a naïve practise in today's crime-ridden world. How many stories about violent burglary did the elderly members of society need to read before they adopted more sensible measures?
    Beside him, Llewellyn followed his gaze to the pile of birthday card envelopes. He murmured, ‘Perhaps her killer, like the Greeks, came bearing gifts as an excuse to gain entrance?’
    ‘The fates are unlikely to be that kind,’ Rafferty said. ‘It would suit me if we could confine our suspect list to the family member or friend whose card isn't still here. But I don't imagine the cards will fall our way.’
    He turned away from the pile of cards whose recipient would now never open them and studied the rest of the room. There was a panic button close to the small side table next to where Clara Mortimer lay. Had she not had time to press it? he wondered. Or had fear frozen her mind and limbs?
    The table held a couple of framed photographs. One, in age-faded sepia, was of a young man in an RAF uniform - a brother perhaps? If so, he would, hopefully, still be alive and would be able to tell them something of the dead woman's life, routine and acquaintances.
    The second photograph was a much more recent snap. It showed a colourful seaside scene, in the forefront a young boy smiled with the gap-toothed charm of a seven-year-old. Rafferty guessed that the broadly smiling middle-aged female behind the boy was the younger version of the dead woman.
    He looked round the rest of the room, but there were no other photographs. Such a paucity of photographs indicated that either Clara Mortimer had little in the way of family or that she had been remarkably unsentimental – unusual in a woman who Llewellyn had told him must be in her late sixties or early seventies.
    Out of keeping with the quiet elegance of the remainder, the décor struck a jarring note. Two walls had recently been painted – badly, with runs and missing patches clearly visible – a bright, peacock blue that argued with the muted green colour scheme of the rest.
    He checked the windows and noted that, like the door, none of them showed signs of having been tampered with.
    At last, as Lance Edwards moved away from the victim, Rafferty walked over to the body.
    Clara Mortimer lay sprawled on her back. Her skirt had rucked up as she fell, exposing sensible white knickers and skinny, old lady's thighs: the ultimate indignity of death. The right side of her forehead was staved in. The blow had crushed one eye in its socket; the other stared pitifully up at him, its pale grey iris already fading. Rafferty thought he could read a plea for help in the sightless eye as it gazed at him.
    Avoiding again meeting that beseeching orb whose owner was now beyond anyone's help, he hunkered down beside the body and checked for other injuries. None was evident, not even defence injuries to her hands, though clearly she had been attacked from the front. Along with her failure to use the conveniently positioned panic button to summon aid, it was