The Hanging Tree Page 5

  'Mr Bullock, you told my sergeant here that your stepson didn't visit regularly and that you last saw him on the Wednesday before his death.' He paused for Bullock's nod. It was slow in coming. 'I gather you didn't seem very sure of the times involved in your stepson's last visit and I wondered if you'd thought any more about these?'

  Jes Bullock licked his plump lips and darted a glance at his son. 'What do you reckon, Kevin?'

  Kevin didn't have the winning personality of his father. He was sullen, and, unlike his father, made no attempt to pretend to a grief he didn't feel. Clearly he had resented his half-brother. Although he didn't utter the words, his curled lip said 'good riddance' as clearly as words. Rafferty found this lack of hypocrisy more refreshing than his father's pretence. It was understandable, too. He and his father must have gone through many difficult times because of Smith, who had still been living at home at the time of his arrest. His family would have drawn nearly as much bile as Smith himself. It must have been especially hard on his younger brother who could only have been in his early teens at the time. Such experiences would hardly endear Smith to either man.

  Kevin's mouth was a thin, tight line, as though he was reluctant to tell them anything. But finally, he admitted, 'He was here for only half an hour on Wednesday. Left around seven-fifteen. That's the last we saw of him.'

  His father gave a quick nod. Rafferty thought he seemed relieved, as though uncertain his son would answer their questions at all, and as he spoke, his voice grew increasingly confident. 'Kevin's right. I remember now. We'd been out since lunchtime, celebrating my birthday and we left the pub when the chippie opened around five.'

  Llewellyn broke in to enquire which pub he meant and with an evident reluctance Jes Bullock told them it had been the one on the corner, the Pig and Whistle. 'We'd hired a couple of videos for the evening and Maurice arrived partway through the first one.'

  'Yeah,' Kevin chipped in. 'Right when it was getting exciting.'

  His father shrugged his meaty shoulders as if to say, what else could you expect? 'He brought my birthday present over.'

  Rafferty found it hard to believe that unloved and unloving loner, Maurice Smith, would waste a chunk of his giro on buying such a stepfather birthday presents. However, he made no comment.

  Although he chose not to question him further about times at the moment, Rafferty was surprised also that Kevin should be so precise. He would have thought the earlier birthday celebrations likely to render time-keeping uncertain. But, for the moment, he didn't challenge this statement either, but turned to another matter. 'You must remember the hate mail and threats he received after the trial. Were you aware of any more recent threats? Serious threats?'

  Kevin shook his head. 'No. Occasionally the lads around the flats here would chase him and rough him up a bit, but that's been going on for ages and was only because he was such a dipstick. Nothing to do with the court case, if that's what you think - nobody around here knows anything about that.' He scowled as he remembered the murder. 'Bloody well will now, though, won't they? Sod Maurice. If we have to bloody move again..'

  Rafferty turned to his father. 'What about you, Mr Bullock?'

  Jes Bullock shook his heavy head ponderously. 'He never said nothing to me.'

  'And you're quite sure you've not seen him since Wednesday evening?'

  'That's right.' Kevin glowered, as if challenging them to make something of it. His father chipped in.

  'Not one for visiting, wasn't Maurice. We'd see him half-a-dozen times a year, at most. Kept himself to himself.'

  'So you definitely didn't see him the next evening? The Thursday?'

  'Haven't I just said?' Kevin demanded, the heavy jaw that was so like his father's thrust forward. 'We went out the next night. Up the pub. Maurice wasn't invited.'

  'Not a pub man, Maurice wasn't, Inspector,' Jes Bullock informed them cryptically, as if trying to imply that if he had been, he, as his stepfather, would have been the first to extend an invitation.

  They left soon after. The Bullocks lived on the second floor, and as they reached the car, Rafferty glanced up to see Jes Bullock watching them from the balcony. As he caught Rafferty's eye, he backed away and re-entered his flat.

  Rafferty again had the impression that Jes had something on his mind. And he was willing to bet a month's salary that it wasn't grief. The man reminded him of someone, he realized. He wrinkled his brow, but he couldn't remember who. He was certain it was no one connected with the case and knew it would drive him mad till he remembered.

  As they got in the car, he mentioned his suspicions to Llewellyn. 'The Bullocks have every reason to dislike Smith. Every reason to wish him dead. Think they could have done it?'

  Llewellyn considered it unlikely. 'Why would they wait till now to kill him? Unlike the families of the victims, or whoever sent that 'outing' letter, they've known where to find him all the time. Besides, if their alibis check out, they were in the public house all evening, presumably with plenty of witnesses.'

  Rafferty started the car. 'Maybe they're trusting in their bereaved status and imagine their story won't be checked out.'

  However, Llewellyn was right about one thing; they had known where Smith lived and, as far as they had yet discovered, they had less reason to wish to be rid of him now than they'd had ten years ago when the fury over the case was at its height.

  'But Jes Bullock's worried about something,' Rafferty insisted. 'I intend to find out what it is. Kevin's information was very precise — too precise for my liking. Get on the radio and get Hanks — no, he's busy — Andrews then — to ask around the flats. Tell him to find out if anyone saw Smith arrive and leave. They said they went to the pub on the Thursday night. Get him to ask the landlord what time the Bullocks' got there that night and if anyone saw Smith pay a second visit to his family on the Thursday night.'

  While Llewellyn contacted the station, Rafferty consulted his watch. It was nearly time for the post-mortem. 'We've just got time to grab a sandwich if you want one.' Rafferty's stomach rumbled, but he ignored it; there'd be no lunch for him. 'I hope Sam can narrow the time down, as I've got a feeling time might be very important in this case.'

  Sam Dally was waiting for them, freshly scrubbed and gowned and wearing a cherubic smile.

  'Lunched well, I trust?' he asked Rafferty. 'Don't want you fainting away from hunger, do we?'

  'Get on with it, you old sadist,' Rafferty muttered.

  After another even more cherubic smile, Sam did so. He confirmed that Smith had been strung-up after death. He also confirmed that the cause of death was the stab wound to the heart and that he had, in all likelihood, died immediately, thus confirming Rafferty's suspicions that he had not only died in his own flat, but in his own armchair.

  Although Smith's armchair had fresh stains, they had been few enough. Sam explained why. 'Unlike incised knife wounds where the edge of the blade makes cutting gashes, stab wounds, where the point of the knife enters the body followed by the rest of the blade, generally cause internal bleeding. The wound has one acute angle cut and one blunt, indicating that the knife used had only one sharp edge.'

  Rafferty nodded. This weapon had yet to be found. It hadn't been left at the scene. He was still musing on this some time later as the attendant with the power saw cut through the top of Smith's skull.

  Swallowing hard, Rafferty hastily dragged his gaze from Smith's face to his torso. As this had already suffered the usual indignities his gaze didn't linger long. But it was long enough for him to comment, 'He seems to have a lot of bruises.'

  'Nothing gets past you, does it, Rafferty?' Sam taunted. 'It's only taken your rapier-like gaze the best part of two hours to notice the blindingly obvious. How does he do it?' he demanded of the room at large.

  'It's your fault, Sam.' Rafferty, a firm believer in the notion of attack being the best form of defence, immediately went on the offensive, and under the noise of the saw, murmured, 'You shouldn't have such stunners as assistants. Can
't take my eyes off them.'

  As each of Sam's female assistants bore a striking resemblance to Eeyore, the only strategy Sam judged necessary was a loud snort. Ignoring this as well as Llewellyn's pained sigh at such blatant political incorrectness, Rafferty asked, 'Reckon someone beat him up before knifing him?'

  'If you paid more attention to my pearls of wisdom, Rafferty, and less to controlling your lusts and the rumbling of your empty stomach, you'd know contusions can occur post-mortem as well as ante-mortem. And, as you've already said he was moved, not once, but thrice after death; once when he was taken to the woods, once when he was removed from thence and once when he was strung up again, bruising is to be expected. But, rest assured, my rapier-gaze is well ahead of you. I noted each contusion before you even got here.'

  Sam gave a happy sigh as he paused to admire his gleaming array of silverware. 'He was probably concealed in the boot of a car each time, so his body would have been thrown around a fair bit, rupturing blood vessels, particularly those areas engorged with post-mortem hypostasis, causing them to ooze blood into the tissues. As you can see,' Sam pointed his blade at the cadaver, 'such contusions look just like bruising to living flesh.'

  Sam broke off again to make more comments into the microphone, then continued. 'But, I'll of course test the injury sites for leucocytes — white cells to you — the things that rush to the site of an injury to begin the healing process. An abnormally high number of white cells would indicate some of the damage happened before death. It'll take a bit of time, though, the contusions are quite extensive.'

  Rafferty nodded and managed to keep his end up pretty well through the rest of the post-mortem by musing on Sam's conclusions about the bruises. Although, as Sam had remarked, Smith had been transported about sufficiently after death to suffer extensive bruising, he couldn't help but wonder, if some of the bruises had been inflicted before death, who was the most likely person to administer a beating. It didn't take long for Jes Bullock's face to float into his consciousness.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was already getting dark by the time they came out of the mortuary. Rafferty turned the car round and drove towards Habberstone, the busy market town about four miles west of Elmhurst, where ex-Inspector Stubbs had settled on retirement.

  Before he did anything else, like interviewing Smith's victims, their families, and Mrs Nye of the Rape Support Group, Rafferty wanted to speak to the inspector who had been in charge of the Smith case. He wanted his opinion of Smith's victims' families, to gain his impression of them as people - and as possible would-be murderers.

  His flimsy recollection of the case had been well-bolstered by Smith's newspaper collection. One man interested him greatly - Frank Massey, the father of one of Smith's victims who had beaten Smith up and served a term in jail for it. Of course, that had been before Smith and his family had moved to a secret address, but even after such an event, there were ways and means of finding out someone's whereabouts if you were determined enough or rich enough. Was he the only one amongst the four families capable of vengeful violence? Rafferty wanted to know. Or were others equally as capable, given the opportunity? One of his victims, the young Walker girl, had killed herself when Smith was freed. Her family had even stronger reasons than Massey to still wish Smith dead.

  Innocent or guilty, Rafferty was determined to handle them all with kid gloves, and as the law had already failed them once, he was all the more anxious to prove to them and any other doubters, that the law could be efficient, caring, just. It would be bad enough for them having all that emotion stirred up again, but to know that, for the second time in their lives, Maurice Smith was the cause, would, for some of them, be almost too much to bear.

  Rafferty took a deep breath. First things first, he reminded himself. Let's get this interview over with before you start worrying about the next ones. God knew, from what he'd learned on the phone when speaking to some of Inspector Stubbs' old colleagues, this one was likely to be difficult enough.

  Archie Stubbs was reckoned to be a lonely and bitter man. It was odds on that he'd resent their questions, their prying into his conduct of the Smith case, the implication that if it hadn't been botched the victims and their families would have suffered much less. Certainly, Massey would probably never have tried to extract his own justice; never have gone to jail, lost his job, had his marriage torn apart. The Walker girl would likely still be alive. Uneasily, Rafferty realized he had yet to discover what other tragedies might have sprung from Smith's release. Who amongst them had additional reasons to hate Smith?

  Stubbs; Rafferty repeated the name of his next interviewee uneasily to himself. In a way, he had become another of Smith's victims. He had lost his career, been pushed into early retirement from the force, he'd even lost his wife shortly after. Yet, if Stubbs had wanted revenge, he could have extracted it long before this, as easily as the Bullocks; with his contacts he could have found out Smith's whereabouts with little difficulty.

  Maybe he had done so, but had, until now, been satisfied to simply keep tabs on the man. Until now, Rafferty repeated to himself and wished he could ignore the fact that an ex-copper like Stubbs would have the knowledge and experience to commit murder and get away with it. That he hadn't done so ten years ago was no reason to discount him as a suspect now.

  Rafferty pulled up in front of the grim, grey-painted bungalow that was Stubbs' home. He had only to compare the difference between Stubbs's property and those of his neighbours', to know that the years had done little to diminish Stubbs's bitterness.

  Although it was December, the front gardens of the other bungalows in the row were still gay and colourful, the plants obviously chosen specially to withstand winter's blasts. Rafferty, who had recently taken over the care of his mother's garden, which task was beginning to get beyond her, immediately recognised the cheery yellow of the winter jasmine, the equally bright and sunshine flowered witch hazel, the pink and white flowered Viburnums bright against the glossy evergreen leaves of the Mexican Orange Blossom; all defied the chill and proclaimed not only their owners' contentment with their lot, but a certain quiet happiness. Archie Stubbs's garden displayed no such emotion; in his, every season was the same, from fence to wall and back to fence, the rich soil supported only a tough, black tarmac.

  Stubbs appeared as uncompromising and as unwelcoming as his home. He was fairly short, certainly at the lower levels of the old height requirements. Short and grey, of face and manner, being monosyllabic to the point of rudeness, and so obviously reluctant to talk to them that Rafferty thought they were going to have to conduct their conversation on the doorstep. But Stubbs as suddenly relented when one of his neighbours, a gnome-like little man of cheery red face and genial air, shouted across to him that it was nice to see he had visitors.

  Archie Stubbs scowled and told them, 'You'd best come in, before Happy Harry comes across to join us.'

  Although spotlessly clean, the inside of Stubbs's home was a repetition of the outside; drab, grey and depressing. Rafferty and Llewellyn exchanged a glance as, through the partly-open door of the dining room, they both glimpsed the yellowing piles of newspapers stacked on the table. Before Stubbs noticed their interest and shut the door, Rafferty had read the headline on the uppermost, and guessed the rest, too, were about the Smith case.

  As they followed Stubbs to the living room and sat down, Rafferty wondered how Stubbs would react if he told him that he and Smith had shared an obsession. His earlier anxieties returned as he realized that, if anything, Stubbs's old colleagues had minimized the extent to which the professional failure had affected him. He knew that Stubbs's wife had died soon after the move from Burleigh; from what he'd learned, she'd never been strong, and the strain of coping with her husband's bitterness had taken its toll. They'd had no children, and even though his colleagues had made an effort to keep in touch, gradually Stubbs had cut off contact with all but one of them.

  Rafferty found it easy to understand how, alone in this lonely
little grey box, the man's bitterness could fester till it became consuming. Once again, he reminded himself, that, as an ex-copper, Stubbs had the contacts to discover Smith's current whereabouts. Had he done so and brought about what he must consider a belated justice?

  In the force, Stubbs had been a thirty-year man, and Rafferty, over twenty years on the force himself, desperately wanted to be able to scratch his name off the suspect list. But this ambition, he now realized, might not be as quickly accomplished as he had hoped. He was wondering how best to continue the interview when Stubbs ended his self-imposed monosyllables with the gruff comment:

  'You said on the phone you wanted to speak to me about the Smith case. I wish you'd get on with it and go.'

  'Very well.' Rafferty paused, then asked, 'How do you feel about his death?'

  'How do I feel?' Stubbs's forehead wrinkled, then he admitted, 'I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't glad. For his victims more than for me. Perhaps, now the bastard's dead, they can finally put the past behind them and make something of their lives.' The words, It's too late for me, were implied by Stubbs's whole demeanour.

  Rafferty nodded. 'You mentioned Smith's victims — I wanted to talk to you about them and their families. You must have come to know them all well.' Rafferty had explained over the phone the manner of Smith's death and what had followed, and now he went on, 'Although the stab through the heart caused his death, his stringing-up afterwards had all the hallmarks of a ritual execution, a punishment. Would you say any one of them in particular would be capable of such an act?'

  Rafferty's prophecy that few people would be willing to help them catch Smith's killer seemed to be borne out by Stubbs's reaction. He seemed determined to assist them as little as possible, as his answer made clear.