Asking For It: Rafferty & Llewellyn British Mysteries, #16

By Geraldine Evans

ʻAlways a good read.’

A Little Laughter. A Little Mayhem. A Little MURDER…

Detective Joe Rafferty thinks: nice easy sex murder, when young schoolteacher Laura Scott is found murdered and half-naked. It puts his problems – from his brothers accusing one another when ‘stuff’ goes missing from their lock-up, to the Chief Constable’s porno-starring granddaughter – in perspective.

Until it doesn’t. Because his brothers, amateur entrepreneurs in a small way till now, have started to branch out. And the CC’s porno-star granddaughter? He’s to make it all just go away, though the message isn’t clear about just how he is to accomplish this convenient disappearing act in these days of videos going viral on Youtube.

Even his nice easy sex murder—isn’t. Laura Scott might have been murdered, but she wasn’t raped or interfered with in any way. In fact, the case gets a whole lot more complicated. Because it seems Laura Scott was all things to all people, and everyone can’t be right. To Rafferty, like Russia to Winston Churchill, Laura turns out to be ‘A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’ But it is only by finding the real Laura that he can find her murderer.

There are seventeen in this series so far. I'm working on #18.

Rafferty & Llewellyn British Mystery Series</b>

Dead Before Morning #1

Down Among the Dead Men #2

Death Line #3

The Hanging Tree #4

Absolute Poison #5

Dying For You #6

Bad Blood #7

Love Lies Bleeding #8

Blood on the Bones #9

A Thrust to the Vitals #10

Death Dues #11

All the Lonely People #12

Death Dance #13

Deadly Reunion #14

Kith and Kill #15

Asking For It #16

The Spanish Connection #17

WEBSITE/BLOG: http://geraldineevansbooks.wordpress.com

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Geraldine Evans
• Release date: Jan 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386953128

Geraldine Evans

A Little Laughter. A Little Mayhem. A Little MURDER... British mystery author Geraldine Evans is a traditionally published author (Macmillan, St Martin's Press, Hale, Severn House) who turned indie in 2010. Her mysteries include the soon-to-be 18-strong Rafferty & Llewellyn series of British Mysteries, whose protagonist, DI Joe Rafferty, comes from a family who think -- if he must be a copper -- he might at least have the decency to be a bent one. Her second is the 2-strong Casey & Catt British Mysteries, with protagonist DCI 'Will' Casey, whose drugged-up 'the Sixties never died', hippie parents, also pose the occasional little difficulty. She has also published The Egg Factory, a standalone mystery/thriller set in the infertility industry, Reluctant Queen, a biographical historical, about the little sister of Henry VIII, romance (under the pseudonym of Maria Meredith), and non-fiction (some under the pseudonym of Genniffer Dooley-Hart). Geraldine is a Londoner, who moved to a Norfolk (UK) market town in 2000. Her interests include photography, getting to grips with photo manipulation software, learning keyboards and painting portraits with a good likeness, but little else to recommend them. Why not sign up to her (irregular) newsletter for news of new releases, bargain buys and free offers? You can unsubscribe at any time and your email address will be kept private. Here's the newsletter link: http://eepurl.com/AKjSj WEBSITE: http://geraldineevansbooks.wordpress.com

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Asking For It

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

‘Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

BOOKS IN THE RAFFERTY AND LLEWELLYN BRITISH MYSTERIES

Geraldine Evans’s Amazon Books Pages

About The Author

BRITISH ENGLISH USAGE AND SPELLING

CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COPYRIGHT PAGE

Asking For It

Geraldine Evans

Copyright Geraldine Evans 2015

Discover other books by Geraldine Evans at http://geraldineevansbooks.wordpress.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual people, locations or events is coincidental or fictionalised

Except for text references by reviewers the reproduction of this work in any form is forbidden without permission from the author.

License Note: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy of each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover Design by Nicole of covershotcreation.com

All Rights Reserved

Chapter One

This book is written in British English, but if there is a word or phrase you haven’t come across before, there is a handy British translation listing in the back of this novel.

Detective Inspector Joe Rafferty thumped his fist into the scarred door of the council lock-up, and shouted, ‘I’ve had it with you two. If Ma hadn’t begged me to come over and sort you out, I wouldn’t be here.’ His two brothers squared up to him. ‘So come on: Which one of you is the thief?’

They stopped shouting at one another. But it was only so they could re-direct their abuse at him.

‘What the hell’s this to do with you, anyway?’ Patrick Sean, his middle brother, yelled. ‘Go back to your ‘pig’-pen, why don’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ Mickey, Little Sir Echo, added, ‘if we want to fight, we’ll fight. Just ‘cos you’re Ma’s blue-eyed boy you think you can—’

‘Bloody ingrate you are.’ Rafferty’s lips thinned to a taut line as his brain had time to process the pain from his fight with the door. The lock-up was clearly out of his league. He stifled a groan, shoved his throbbing hand behind his back, and stealthily massaged his knuckles.

He shivered in the April chill and wished he’d worn his thick overcoat. Had his little brother forgotten it wasn’t that long ago he’d saved his sorry arse from being charged with murder by his pig-pen colleagues? He looked hard at him, but it seemed Little Sir Echo hadn’t forgotten because he went red and shut up.

‘You think I want to be here, trying to sort out your petty squabbles?’ Rafferty tapped the pocket containing his mobile. ‘Llewellyn had me on the phone while I was parking up. I’ve got a new murder awaiting my attention back at the ‘pig-pen' as you so charmingly call it. You pair can do your Cain and Abel act for all I care. Better that than I have Bradley on my tail again.’ Superintendent Bradley didn’t need any excuses to find fault, so the last thing he needed was provide him with a ready-made one.

‘If it was up to me, you pair of idiots could punch one another’s lights out and welcome. Instead of bad-mouthing one another, why not try doing something constructive? Like figuring out which of you was last here. And forgot to secure the lock-up.’

Mickey pointed the finger. ‘That was him. And he didn’t forget to lock-up. He’s been selling our stuff behind my back.’

Patrick Sean tried for lofty disdain, in imitation of their suave estate agent cousin. ‘Not me, little bro. Pot and kettle springs to mind.’ He turned his attention to his older brother. ‘And less of the idiots, JAR. You’re not lecturing a pair of tearaways.’ The lofty disdain didn’t quite come off, Patrick Sean not being Cousin Nigel. The grubby, torn jeans, and the roll-up hanging from the corner of his mouth didn’t help.

Rafferty cut to the chase. ‘And was the stuff here then? What’s missing anyway?’

The pair shuffled and seemed to find the dirty and cracked concrete beneath their feet absorbing.

Rafferty’s gaze narrowed. ‘Like that, is it?’ He shook his head. ‘I might have known. So what’s gone missing? Some stolen TVs, is it? A laptop or thirty? A round score of iPhones?’

‘Nothing like that. What do you think we are?’

Rafferty thought they’d already established that.

’And never mind what’s gone missing. That’s not important.’ Patrick Sean dismissed the stock’s ID with the nonchalant shrug of a practised offender pleading ‘Not Guilty’, which, to Rafferty, was further proof of culpability. ‘The fact that stuff’s missing is the important thing, and the fact that he’ – It was Pat’s turn to point the finger – ‘helped himself while I was out of the way.’

‘Let’s not get into all that again.’ Rafferty studied his watch in a marked manner. ‘Was this mysterious stuff here then or wasn’t it? Surely you know?’

Patrick Sean nodded. ‘It was here. That’s because I didn’t steal it.’

Rafferty held his hand up before Mickey could butt in. ‘Are you sure you locked up?’ Rafferty asked again.

‘Well, of course I locked up. I’m not stupid.’

‘Debatable.’ Before his automatic response stirred up World War III, he said, ‘Then you must have had a break-in.’

‘No break-in,’ said Mickey. ‘The lock wasn’t damaged and there’s no window.’

‘You’re meant to be the Great Detective,' Patrick Sean scoffed. ‘Surely you can figure out who’s the criminal? Mickey here’s had it away with the goods, sold them, and kept all the profits.’

‘I’ve done no such thing,’ Mickey protested. He squared up to Patrick Sean. ‘I reckon it’s you who helped yourself to them and—’

Rafferty had had enough. They were rapidly reaching either impasse or a punch-up. There could be nothing official that was for sure. The last thing he wanted was to involve his colleagues and make the theft official, not with the gear probably being hooky. His brothers were certainly involved in some sort of illicit enterprise.

‘Shut up, the pair of you. Look, I’ve got to get to work. I’m already late.’ Again. Besides, the lock-up was in a veritable wind tunnel. The Siberian blasts were currently making his ears numb and painful—surely an impossibility. ‘I’ll see the pair of you for a drink tonight and talk it out some more.’

Their truculent expressions would have made for a wonderful pair of Toby Jugs on either end of his mantelpiece, so he was forced to add the necessary inducement. ‘I’m buying. Eight o’clock in The Wheatsheaf. Be there.’

***

‘Run it by me again.’ Rafferty perched on the edge of his desk, sending his in-tray teetering on the brink. ‘You said on the phone that a woman’s body’s been found.’

Llewellyn rescued the tray and nodded. ‘In a field adjacent to Dedman Wood. If the bag found lying close to the body belongs to the victim, her name’s Laura Scott. She was a teacher at Elmhurst Comprehensive. According to uniformed she’d been strangled. Most of her clothes are missing.’

‘They’ll have disturbed the scene then, to get her identity so quickly. The SOCO team can barely have got there yet. Who was it? I’ll—

‘It wasn’t uniformed,’ said Llewellyn quickly. ‘They know better than that. It was the farmer that found her body and called it in.’

‘Bloody idiot. Surely the man watches CSI Miami like everyone else?’ Rafferty stood up. ‘Better get over there. I had Bradley giving me the evil eye from his office window as I parked up. He’ll be sending me one of his special bloody emails next just so he’s got something on paper against me that he can file. He must have enough of them by now to write my autobiography.’

Llewellyn merely muttered ‘biography’ under his breath, went to the door and held it open for his boss.

Rafferty teased a grin out from under his scowl as he grabbed his raincoat from the stand and strode to their office door. ‘Just don’t forget who gets to write yours.’ He hoped the reminder would prove sufficient to stop Llewellyn from correcting his imprecise use of the English Language. But he doubted it.

***

He gave Abra a quick call as they got in the car. ‘Hi, sweetheart. How are you?’

‘About the same as I was when you asked me thirty minutes ago.’

‘But you’re feeling all right? You’re sure? No twinges or—?’

‘Joe. Please stop fussing and ringing me every half-hour. My boss is going ballistic. I’m pregnant not—’

‘Yes, but—’

‘No buts. You’ll get me the sack. The bastard hates pregnant women. According to the grapevine, he’s always managed to get rid of them before. Thinks his star clients will be offended at the sight of a pregnant woman.’

‘Offended? Most of his clients have littered the landscape with pregnant and discarded former lovers. They should be used to it.’ Abra worked for an agent in the entertainment world whose star clients were the usual demanding divas.

‘You know that and I know that, but ‘Mr Entertainment’ thinks they’re delicate flowers that need nurturing. Or, at least, he falls over himself to keep them sweet in case they’re lured away by the competition. But it comes to the same thing.’

‘It’s you he should be nurturing, not his two-bit celebrities.’ But Rafferty’s conscience criticised: ‘And where was your nurturing last time? Yet you expect her boss to—

‘Two-bit? Hardly, Joe. He’s got some top-notch clients, and if it wasn’t all done automatically now, he’d need a truck to cart the cash away.’

‘Yeah, well. Never mind him. You look after yourself. And if I think he’s pushing you, I’ll come over there and—’

Abra laughed. ‘And what, Joe? Mark his card? Can you imagine the headlines? You’d be so famous he’d have to sign you up. Once his face stopped throbbing.’

‘Yeah, well,’ he said again. ‘Just remind him you have rights and that—’

‘Get real, Joe. What would it cost him if he sacked me and I decided I needed the aggravation of taking him to an Industrial Tribunal? Half a wheelbarrow of his cash-stash, probably. He can afford it. Besides, I wouldn’t mind being a stay-at-home mum for a while.’

While Rafferty, too, would love her to be able to stay home, he knew they couldn’t afford it. The mortgage on their new house cost a fortune. His annual income didn’t look nearly as impressive on paper once all the deductions were taken out of his salary. There was little to spare for luxuries like stay-at-home new mothers-to-be. It made him feel a double failure in the nurturing department.

‘Look, Joe, I’ve got to go. I’m getting the look. Text me next time, okay?’

Although Rafferty hated texting – his fingers fumbled with the fiddly keys, and he liked to hear her voice – he found himself agreeing. ‘Okay, Abs. Love you. Take care.’ He snapped his mobile off, still torn between a desire to deck ‘Mr Entertainment’ and a need to transform himself in Abra’s eyes into a caring, nurturing father-to-be. The latter might prove a bit tricky if he punched her boss unconscious. He felt Llewellyn’s gaze and looked across.

‘Abra being difficult?’ Abra was Llewellyn’s cousin and they were close.

‘Not her. Her boss. Looking for an excuse to sack her, it sounds like.’

‘Ah. And you’re providing it with the constant phone calls?’

‘Apparently.’

Llewellyn turned the car into the narrow lane beside the field where the body had been found.

Rafferty expected the picky Llewellyn would take forever to slot himself into the narrow space behind the police cars. But for once he decided he was perfectly aligned first time, much to Rafferty’s relief.

The day was raw, sleet coming from the north-east stung their faces as they got out of the warm car, while heavy sky threatened something worse.

The body had been discovered by the usual dog walker, a woman who had been badly shaken by her dog’s find. Mrs Atkins had had to be comforted and served tea back at the station. Thoroughly questioned, she was able to reveal nothing more than the fact of the find, and Rafferty had ordered she be driven home.

The farmer who owned the barren field where the body of the presumed Laura Scott had been found, had given his hedges a skinhead cut, and the wind knifed its way through Rafferty’s three thin layers of shirt, thin jumper and raincoat as efficiently as a butcher cut through a large joint.

He took off his raincoat and hurriedly climbed into the protective coveralls in the hope that they would afford him protection, too. They didn’t. He tucked his frozen fingers under his armpits for warmth and surveyed the scene.

The field, winter-bare and seemingly stretching to the horizon was, to Rafferty, a desperate place to meet your maker. What had the victim been doing here? Surely she hadn’t agreed to meet someone at this godforsaken spot? Or had she perhaps been snatched from the street by some passing, opportunist pervert, raped and murdered?

He and Llewellyn were entered on the scene log by young Timothy Smales, whose fresh face was mottled by the chill and who looked even more perished than Rafferty felt. They followed the marked out cordon to where the body lay, a short thirty yards into the field.

He shivered as he studied the mostly naked flesh of the young woman, and felt a strong desire to cover her to give her some protection from the wind, which felt more like winter than spring. Not an entirely altruistic desire as her exposed skin made him feel even colder.

But he was thankful that the killer had done his work close to the edge of the field so they were spared the cross-country hike of a previous investigation. Not that this small consideration seemed to gladden the heart of Dr Sam Dally when he arrived five minutes later.

‘Och, these young women. Why can’t they get themselves murdered in a nice, snug, centrally-heated house somewhere? Inconsiderate, I call it.’

‘Perhaps she’ll take your advice in her next life, should she be unfortunate enough to get murdered in that one as well,’ Rafferty remarked, while the selfish, frozen to the marrow part of him, had to admit that Sam had a point. A nice ‘domestic’ murder made everyone’s lives easier. Sam got his centrally-heated murder scene, and Rafferty got an automatic and almost certain guilty party in the ever-loving spouse.

He watched as Sam knelt on the hard-packed earth by the body. His knees cracked loudly, temporarily, at least, drowning his moans as he began his examination.

Rafferty’s teeth chattered and his toes felt frostbitten, prompting a half-smile as he realised what a snowman must feel like. He let his gaze drift over the scene, while his face was pelted by sleet. He pitied the milling Crime Scene team; they’d be here for hours, examining every tuft and furrow for evidence. He didn’t envy them. At least in a short while he’d be back in his warm office with a hot cup of tea. Or at least somebody else’s office with a cup of wet and warm.

For once, Llewellyn had no sombre quotation to offer, and Rafferty glanced at him in surprise. ‘You’re quiet, Daff. Haven’t your Ancient Greeks got some suitable observation on this one? They’re not usually backward in coming forward.’

‘You’re not always very welcoming of their wisdom though, are you, sir?’

True enough. But that was because on the Welshman’s lips they generally turned into the beginning of a lecture, which the less-than-competently-educated Rafferty resented.

Dally didn’t take long, thank God, because any longer and Rafferty felt that he’d be turned into a snowman for real.

‘Will someone, for the love of God, get me up from here? My knees have seized up.’

Llewellyn turned his neatly-coiffed head in Dally’s direction. How did his sergeant’s hair stay so immaculate? Rafferty would have sworn he’d entered a pact with the devil, but the Welshman was a staunch Methodist and immune from such devilish blandishments. Llewellyn strode forward, and offered the plump older man a hand up. Not that Dally showed much appreciation for Llewellyn’s punctilious assistance, as once up, he shrugged Llewellyn’s hand aside, bent over to grab his bag, and hurried over to Rafferty.

‘I’m done here. Strangled, as you can see for yourself.’

Rafferty nodded. ‘Was she raped?’

‘Well, what do you think?’

‘I’d guess that she was. The missing clothes suggest—’

‘Well, I guess you’ll be relieved to hear that I don’t do guesswork, Rafferty. It’s all weighed, balanced and measured. Any trace of man or beast on her person will be reported in the usual manner.’

Rafferty shook his head ruefully. ‘You set me up for that you old codger.’

Dally gave an impish smile. ‘And you fell into it nicely. Obliging of you.’

‘One thing I won’t guess at—what she was doing here. She’d have to be a masochist to come here for outdoor hanky-panky with a lover.’

‘Plenty of masochists about,’ Dally observed. ‘Some people enjoy suffering. I mean, look at those maniacs who go for an annual dip in the briny over Christmas. And I’m willing to bet there are still some religious types who go in for self-flagellation. Human beings, Rafferty, as I’m sure you know, find their pleasures in some strange ways.’

Rafferty nodded again. He didn’t know whether the young woman’s killer was a masochist. He was certainly a sadist, though. Presumably,