Dying For You Read Free Page B

what?’
    ‘Both.’ Beard raised his head from his paper for a moment. ‘I'm listening and or what-ing. Hang on a mo,’ he added as Rafferty made to leave. Beard's finger traced a line of print in the paper. ‘Thirteen down - enclosed place, four letters. Begins with ‘c’?’
    To Rafferty, in the frame for murder, the answer came only too-readily to mind. ‘Cell,’ he said, with feeling. He only hoped he could avoid entering the answer to thirteen down.
    As soon as he had dropped his Ma back home after they had ‘discovered’ the burglary, Rafferty stopped at a phone-box. He had told Ma he would report the burglary, but he hadn't thought his plan through to this aspect. Now, of course, he realized that reporting the burglary was the last thing he should do. It would be extremely unwise.
    This thinking on the hoof was a tricky business, he discovered. No wonder killers who murdered in an unpremeditated way so often got caught. There was no way he could afford to have his name connected with Jerry's. But amongst his many cousins there were a few more naturally obliging than others. Terry Tierney for one. Fortunately Terry was at home and ready to oblige - for a consideration.
    Once he had organised the burglary and the reporting of same, Rafferty had some minutes’ leisure to think back on how he had managed to land himself in such a mess. Like most of the little problems of life that seemed to land in his lap, he had found it simplicity itself.

CHAPTER TWO
     
    Rafferty hovered on the pavement opposite Made In Heaven's Hope Street office, garnering courage while he essayed fascination with the pharmacy's window display. Finally, alert for familiar faces, he crossed the road and walked under the agency's sign of cherubs playing hide and seek amongst billowing white clouds and through the rose-tinted glass of the dating agency's door.
    Inside, was a large and airy outer office, its walls hung with dreamy, soft-focus wedding photographs. Half-a-dozen easy chairs in soft pastel shades were grouped around low coffee tables bestrewn with magazines that followed the walls’ romantic theme.
    All the faux-romantic ambience made Rafferty want to turn tail and run. Maybe he would have done, but the pink-suited buxom blonde behind the reception desk raised her head from her magazine for long enough to smile at him with eyes that didn't focus properly on his face and asked if she could help him.
    ‘I've got a 2.00 p m appointment with Ms Durward,’ Rafferty took a deep breath. ‘Name of Blythe. Nigel Blythe.’
    The receptionist, her nose inches from the appointment diary, found his name and ticked it off. ‘Ms Durward will be free shortly. Please take a seat.’
    Rafferty selected an easy chair with its back to the window, picked up one of the magazines and began to flick through the pages. Much like the ‘wedded bliss’ pictures on the walls the magazine featured impossibly beautiful brides, gazing adoringly at their equally handsome grooms. He closed the magazine with a snap loud enough to cause the receptionist to raise her head from her own magazine and gaze in his general direction.
    Just then, a young man appeared from a short corridor off reception. He was good-looking with a cock-of-the-walk stride. The receptionist welcomed him fulsomely, calling him ‘Darius‘. He called her ‘Isobel’ and continued a conversation about his recent travels that must have started when he had first arrived. Isobel's sole contribution to the conversation was a liberal application of ‘absolutely's and ‘fab's and ‘groovey's every time there was a tiny pause. But as Darius seemed principally interested in talking about himself there were few enough of these. Thankfully, Darius must have had other urgent monologue engagements that day because he left shortly after.
    Once he had gone, Isobel turned her attentions to Rafferty. Artlessly, she confided, ‘Darius is the son of one of Mummy's friends. He lives in the most