Death Dues Read Online Free Page B

feel even more irritated. After all, it had been Llewellyn who had tempted the fates.
    Rafferty, already in an ill-humour and determined to think the worst, ignored Llewellyn’s last comment. ‘So we’ve got the proverbial see no evil and hear no evil. Great. I suppose its inevitable given the identity of the victim. All the people who owed money to Jaws Harrison’s boss will be glad to see the end of him and his heavy-handed tactics. Maybe Forbes’ next collector will be full of the milk of human kindness. Not.’
    ‘Most of the residents wouldn’t even admit to knowing Mr Harrison,’ Llewellyn said, raising his soft voice against the howling wind. ‘Stupid really as we shall shortly have records of the debtors in the street from Mr Forbes.’
    ‘Mmm. Instinctive reaction I suppose. Speak first, in denial, and think about what you’ve said afterwards. No one wants to be connected to murder. Have you sent someone to get the debtor list from Forbes’ office?’
    ‘I was just about to.’
    ‘Send Lizzie Green. Maybe her particular feminine touch will ease things along. Got a nice way with her has Lizzie.’ Plump in all the right places, Lizzie Green exuded the great aunt’s perfume of Lily of the Valley talcum power partnered by a Bardotesque pout. It was a killing combination that warmed Rafferty even in the face of the stinging rain.
    ‘Anything else you’d like me to organise?’
    ‘Yeah. Get Lizzie to find out the victim’s address and his next of kin while she’s at Forbes’s office. We’ll need to go along once we’re finished here and break the news. Oh and give Dally a bell. See what’s keeping him. I’m keen to learn as quickly as possible if our victim did or didn’t die in that alley. It would be good to reduce the potential suspects early in the game.’
    Llewellyn walked off clutching his mobile and his umbrella, still looking as pristine as at his arrival, while Rafferty, by now so wet through that he felt he could get no wetter, grew resigned, planted his feet firmly as anchorage against the wind and did some more studying of the location.
    The cul-de-sac was made up of fourteen terraced houses, seven on each side of the road with parking on the street. Each house had a tiny front garden separating it from the road. Two or three were well-kept, with pots of now battered and mostly petal-less spring bulbs brightening them, but the majority housed rusty bikes and weeds. The houses on the left backed on to the alley where the dead man had been found. Had he died there? Rafferty wondered again. Or had he been taken there after being killed elsewhere? And how come no one saw anything? Although it was now well into the evening, it was still light and although the street, owing to its dead end nature, would have lacked through traffic, there were still kids about, it being the Easter holidays and women going to and from the local parade of shops.
    And what of the youths who claimed to have seen nothing? True, the dead man had been found between numbers eleven and thirteen – unlucky for some – around the bend in the alley and out of their line of vision, but they must know roughly what time he had arrived in the street.
    Was this killing merely an escalation in the violence of the previous muggings or was it something more? A planned and deliberately executed killing? Could it be that a turf war had broken out among the local loan sharks? But if that was the case, Rafferty argued to himself, surely the murder would have been much more showy and designed to serve as a warning. Whoever did it, given the number and ferocity of the blows, had certainly been determined to remove Jaws Harrison from this world.
     

Chapter Three
    Rafferty caught up with two of the uniformed officers on house-to-house duties. ‘I’ll want a list of everyone in the street asap. Especially those in the odd house numbers one to thirteen. They had the best access to the alley. How many people are we talking about on