Free A Thrust to the Vitals by Geraldine Evans

like, with him slumped over his desk, clearly dead and with a sharp implement like a carpenter’s chisel imbedded in his back? Especially given our history of animosity.’
    Clearly reluctant to make such a damning admission, even to his big, police inspector brother, Mickey’s chin slumped several more notches as he quietly added, ‘I even recognised the make — it’s one I use.’
    This was getting better and better, thought Rafferty grimly. In need of some reassurance himself, he asked again, ‘Did anyone else at the party see you, other than the security men and this guest who directed you to Seward’s bedroom?’
    ‘No. I’ve already told you that once. How many more times? But all three got a good look at me. They’re sure to recognise me again.’
    Rafferty didn’t trouble to contradict him. Mickey was right; the security men and Ivor Bignall had got a good look at him. They had certainly provided a good description of Seward’s late visitor. Even Rafferty, not the greatest ace at recognising faces, would have felt a frisson of familiarity when he saw the first, hastily constructed photo-fit the police artist had worked up with Bignall and the others, even if he hadn’t already been primed by Mickey about his presence at the scene. But without this prior knowledge, Rafferty suspected that the self-serving denial of a brain unwilling to co operate would probably have obligingly worked its usual magic. The woeful inadequacy of such a denial would, of course, very quickly have been brought up against cold, hard reality, the sort he was now facing, the sort which he had to sort out. Somehow. For all their sakes.
    ‘What are we going to do, JAR? You’re in charge of the case. You’ve got to help me.’
    His younger brother’s voice, high-pitched and frightened into a too-late sobriety, brought Rafferty out of his reverie. As the eldest of six siblings, he had always taken the big brother approach when any of the younger ones were in trouble, so naturally he wanted to help Mickey. Of course he did. It was just that, for the moment, he couldn’t for the life of either of them, see how. The best he could do for the moment, was get him out of harm’s way, then hope that luck and inspiration came up with the rest. And, up till now, no likely helpmeet in even this most basic of endeavours had occurred to him.
    But desperation brings its own salvation. For, just as despair began to grip him by the throat, the identity of the person most likely to help him — to a brief salvation at least — came to Rafferty.
    ‘Pack a bag,’ he told Mickey. ‘If we’re to keep you away from the notice of other, less helpful, policemen, you’re going to have to do a vanishing act.’ He took out his mobile. ‘I know just the person who can help us stash you out of the way for a few days.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Algy Edwards.’
    ‘That crook? Surely you can think of someone else who can put me up for a while?’
    ‘I can’t, as it happens. It’s Algy or no one. Besides, while I admit that Algy might be a bit dodgy, his heart’s in the right place.’ Rafferty prayed he wasn’t proved wrong about that. He prayed, too, that Algy hadn’t got rid of his limited property portfolio as they hadn’t spoken for some time.
    His third prayer was that a few days was all it would be. Or need to be.
    While an increasingly agitated Mickey packed a bag as instructed, Rafferty phoned Algy, who was one of a group of the assorted, somewhat dodgy acquaintances of his long-lost youth. He was calling in a favour. He just hoped it was a call-in that he didn’t come to regret.
     
     
    Twenty minutes later, they drew up in Mickey’s girlfriend’s Renault at a caravan site further up the Essex coast. Mickey’s girlfriend was someone else Rafferty knew he would have to square away, but she would wait as she was currently staying round the corner from the flat looking after her sick mother. He filed the thought away to think about later.