Free Dying For You by Geraldine Evans Page A

the acid reminder. ‘It was your sergeant who solved your last case, wasn't it, Rafferty?’
    Rafferty sat silent and grim-faced at Bradley's taunt, knowing he daren't defend himself. If he got his dander up who knew what he might let slip? He consoled himself with the thought that, although he hadn't gone to university like Llewellyn, and whatever Bradley might infer, he wasn't about to be voted in as the Village Idiot.
    But perhaps he was, he reflected, as Bradley slammed out of his office. After all, finding himself in charge of a double murder investigation in which he, or rather, his alter ego, Nigel Blythe, featured as chief suspect, wasn't the brightest of achievements.
    How simple it had seemed at the time. His plans had slipped into place with a magical ease previously unknown to him. But of course the magic had turned out to be of the black variety which had used a siren's voice to lure him in. Now he was snared, good and proper.
    But at least, he assured himself as he looked down at the pile of reports the super had dumped on his desk, by having this case under his own control he would be in a position to steer it away from his cousin. And while he waded through the pile of reports to ‘familiarise’ himself with the inquiry, he had the perfect excuse to avoid interviewing any of the other suspects. Better yet, Llewellyn would be back on Monday. Somehow he'd manage to palm most of the interviews off onto him. At least, by then, the changes in his appearance he had decided were necessary would have matured sufficiently to render the witnesses’ recognition of him as Nigel Blythe far less likely. He hoped so, anyway.
    Rafferty, now officially in charge of the case, made the time to get himself over to Harry Simpson's home. As the Super had remarked, Harry Simpson had a habit of keeping certain things to himself in his investigations. Rafferty was desperate to find out if Harry had kept something back on the Lonely Hearts case.
    Harry lived in a tiny flat in a shabby house on St Mark's Road, near the busy commuter station. The street was noisy, not only with the sound of trains, but also with through traffic and the revving of engines as people queued to get into the station car park a few yards down from Harry's front door.
    As Rafferty parked and got out of his car, he reminded himself to stay in his own character and out of Jerry's. Harry Simpson might be sick unto death, but he was still sharp enough to notice if he let slip something that only Nigel Blythe could possibly know.
    Rafferty pressed the buzzer for Harry's flat and waited. It was some time before Harry answered and released the front door. Rafferty climbed the stairs to the first floor, knocked and walked in through the door of the flat which Harry had opened for him.
    Harry lived alone. Divorced by a wife tired of being a police ‘widow’, he was father to four children he barely knew and never saw. Now, stripped of family, home and money, the career for which he had sacrificed everything had also abandoned him.
    The flat had two rooms plus a tiny kitchenette with bathroom off. It was a grim little place, the wallpaper faded circa 1950s drab and curling off the wall in places. The furniture screamed ‘job lot of other people's discards’. But Harry had never cared about such things. Until he had finally gone on sick leave, home, whether the marital one or this dreary bachelor flatlet, had been a place he had spent little time. He rarely even ate there as the station canteen was both Harry's larder and cafe. The police force had been his life, even when not on duty or eating, he had still spent a lot of his time loitering in the station canteen to pick up snippets of gossip about other cases.
    The only possessions of any interest in the living room were the mementoes of a lifetime in the police force. Scrap books of newspaper cuttings of his cases – both successes and failures – were piled high on every flat surface. Half-a-dozen