Rafferty was astonished to learn from Jesmond that Jane was at work – though why anything that a member of this family did should still surprise him, Rafferty was unable to fathom.
Jane had already freely revealed her true feelings for her late mother. That she should return to work so soon after Clara Mortimer's brutal murder was par for the course.
Given her sorry lack of grief, Rafferty decided that Jane Ogilvie neither required nor deserved the soft handling a victim's family usually received. If she was so unfeeling as to return to her supermarket shelf stacking, she must be up to answering some simple questions, particularly as her own lies had provoked the need for them.
He glanced at his watch. It was well after ten. Jane Ogilvie's evening shift must surely have finished some time ago. So where was she?
Darryl, when questioned, merely responded with a noncommittal shrug.
‘Which supermarket was it you said Mrs Ogilvie worked?’ he asked Jesmond.
Darryl managed to tear himself away from Aurora's youthful charms for long enough to drawl, ‘I didn't say. But since you ask, it's at the branch of Motson's on Northway, near the swimming pool. They're short-staffed, so I'd guess she's doing a bit of overtime.’
Rafferty nodded, forced out an unwilling 'Thank you.'
Ignored by the sulking Hakim, Rafferty told Charles and the playful pair on the settee that they would see themselves out. Then he and Llewellyn left, to make their way to Jane Ogilvie's place of employment.
But when Rafferty spoke to Mr Empson, the young manager of the local Motson's supermarket and asked to speak to Jane Ogilvie, he discovered that Jane Ogilvie had told them more lies. Rob Empson informed them he had sacked her for theft the week before.
It was apparent Jane had chosen not to tell Darryl that she was out of work; Rafferty concluded that Jane must suspect the jobless gigolo Darryl would not be pleased that his milch cow would no longer be able to supply his needs.
This was unsurprising, because Mary Carmody had learned on the neighbourhood grapevine that one of the neighbours – a woman whose divorce had left her financially comfortable – had been making approaches to Darryl, including buying him an expensive watch for his birthday, which Darryl had been more than pleased to accept. How had Jane felt about that? Rafferty wondered.
It struck Rafferty that Darryl Jesmond was hedging his bets. Certainly, until her mother's murder, few of the neighbours had believed that Jane had any hope of keeping the fickle Darryl's affections when she faced such ready-spending competition.
And now? he wondered. If Darryl's gigolo tendencies were anything to go by, Rafferty was with the neighbours in suspecting he would choose to stick with Jane a while longer. With her mother dead, there could well be an affluent lifestyle waiting in the wings, if he hung around, was what Rafferty concluded had been Darryl's thoughts.
The reading of Clara Mortimer's will would certainly make for an interesting spectator sport – if it existed at all, which was looking increasingly unlikely as the firm of solicitors Mary Soames had mentioned denied having such a document in their safekeeping.
‘So Jane Ogilvie was caught stealing,’ Rafferty responded to the store manager's news. ‘You didn't prosecute?’
Rob Empson shook his head, squeezed himself past the edge of his desk in his cubby-hole of an office and reached in to the filing cabinet.
‘Not worth the hassle.’ He handed Rafferty a slim buff folder taken from the cabinet. ‘That's the brief, unimpressive history of Jane Ogilvie's employment with us. If she hadn't been caught helping herself to our merchandise, she'd have been on the way out anyway. Her timekeeping was worse than most of the part-time teenagers we employ and her treatment of the customers was unfortunate, to say the least. In the modern parlance, she had an attitude problem. Jane Ogilvie thought the world – or her mother – owed her a living.’
‘You weren't worried she'd take you to a tribunal?’ Rafferty asked. But as he glanced through Jane Ogilvie's work record, he realised why Rob Empson's answer was in the negative. It contained plenty of notes about late arrivals and days off sick as well as one written warning.
‘Apart from the fact she was still on probation and had already received several verbal and one written warning, she was caught red-handed – literally – trying to leave by the staff exit with half-a-dozen of our best Scotch fillets in her bag, and a couple of bottles of our most expensive red wine. Stupidly, she hadn't thought to wrap the bottles in something to stop them clinking together. One of our security staff stopped her. They called me and I sacked her on the spot.’
He shrugged. ‘It's the firm's policy, instant dismissal – cheaper and more effective than prosecution. Not a lot of point suing someone who has no money and who needs to filch stuff from a supermarket to provide her boyfriend with a birthday treat.’
‘Has she found another job, do you know?’ Rafferty enquired as he handed back the file.
‘If she has, she hasn't given my name as a referee. But, in the circumstances, that's scarcely surprising.’
‘Was she particularly friendly with any of your staff?’
‘She wasn't well-liked. But let me call in a couple of the women she worked evenings with most often. They've both transferred to day shifts so are on duty.’ He paused to speak into the store intercom on his desk.
Within a couple of minutes, the already crowded office was verging on rush-hour tube train claustrophobia.
‘I'll leave you to it,’ Rob Empson volunteered, as, with much breathing-in by all parties, he squeezed past Rafferty, Llewellyn and Jane Ogilvie's shelf-stacking colleagues.
The two work colleagues Rob Empson had selected were both middle-aged women. They claimed Jane was always complaining about lack of money, but as her colleagues testified, this was hardly surprising, as she ran up credit on various department store cards.
‘Up to her ears in debt,’ one of her colleagues confided. ‘Getting desperate, she was. Of course, that pretty boyfriend of hers cost a packet. You'd think she'd have more sense at her age than to go in for such dainties.’
It was clear that Jane Ogilvie hadn't been well regarded by her female colleagues and, to judge from what they said next, Jane was considered a ‘bit of a goer’ and no better than she ought to be by her male colleagues.
Could Jane have killed her mother for what she hoped to inherit? Rafferty wondered and in order to hang on to the faithless Darryl? It seemed evident she kept up the connection with her mother only because she wanted to get money out of her.
After thanking the women, he and Llewellyn went in search of the manager. Rafferty thanked him for his time and told him he could have his office back.
‘So where do you reckon Jane spends her nights seeing as she's no longer stocking her fridge and wine rack from Motson's?’ he asked Llewellyn as they wound their way through the supermarket's aisles and out into the pleasant warmth of the bright June morning. ‘Keeping tabs on Darryl Jesmond, would be my guess. I'd be keen to know what that young man gets up to through the midnight hours,’ he said. ‘And if he was into anticipating Jane's expected inheritance…?’
As if suspecting that Rafferty was about to start his well-known theorising in advance of proven facts, as they climbed in the car, Llewellyn said, ‘Jesmond struck me as an idle young man. It's clear he lives off women. Can you see him doing something – like murder – which, in this case, required early rising and effort?’
In mitigation, Rafferty countered. ‘Maybe – if he saw profit in it for Darryl, which in this case, he would. One morning's early rising, followed by the bashing-in of an old lady's head, could have set him up for life. I think that might appeal to our Darryl. God knows his claimed alibi isn't up to much.’
Darryl had given the names of a couple of his drinking mates as alibis. He had claimed they had had a late night gambling session and had crashed out around two in the morning. From what DC Lilley, who had questioned these friends, had said about them, they sounded about as reliable as Jesmond himself.
‘Strange then, that Jesmond hasn't put himself out to show Mrs Ogilvie much in the way of love and support. If he expects her to inherit from her mother, I'd have thought he would do his best to keep her favour.’
It was a valid point, certainly. But as Rafferty commented, he thought Darryl belonged to the treat ‘em mean and keep ‘em keen school of courtship. It was clear, that between Jane, her daughter and the neighbouring divorcée that the method worked for Darryl.
'Let's get back to Mercer's Lane,' Rafferty instructed as Llewellyn slowly made for the exit of the supermarket's car park. 'Maybe Mrs Ogilvie is back home by now.'
As confirmed by Aurora who opened the door to their knock, Jane Ogilvie had indeed returned home from her ‘work’ by the time they arrived back at Mercer's Lane.
Of the rest of the family no one was in evidence. The living room to which Aurora led them, was empty.
‘I suppose you want to ask Mum why she lied to you?’
‘You knew she had lied?’ Rafferty questioned sharply.
Aurora shrugged. ‘I heard her and Dazza arguing about it.’ She grinned. ‘Few things stay secret in this house, with all the shouting matches that go on. Mum's in her bedroom. I'll call her.’
Aurora went to the door and hollered, ‘Mum, the cops are here again. They want to speak to you.’
Aurora turned round and came back into the room while they waited for her mother to join them. ‘I don't blame her for lying. Why should my Granddad get put in the frame for murdering the old woman?’ She paused, then grinned. ‘Though our dear Grandmamma was right about one thing – my mum is a slut. I heard her throwing up this morning; I think she's got another sprog in her belly. She hasn't told Darryl – probably scared he'll do a runner like the rest of the daddies when he finds out.’
Before Rafferty could make any comment on the precociously knowing Aurora's claim, Jane thrust open the living room door and gazed suspiciously around as if she had felt her ears burning and suspected they had been talking about her.
'Now what?' she demanded, before she threw herself down on the settee like a sulky teenager.
She just gave a defiant shrug when they confronted her with her deceit about her employment.
‘What did they expect?’ she demanded. ‘When you're surrounded by stuff you can't afford to buy on the miserable wages they pay? Naturally, you're going to help yourself. It was one of the perks. Everyone did it.’
‘The manager, Mr Empson, didn't seem to think so.’
‘What would he know?' Jane demanded scornfully. 'He's a graduate trainee and wet behind the ears. If he'd started as a lowly shelf stacker he'd have learned the wrinkles that the old hands went in for. I only got caught because I was in a rush and got careless.’
Realising this line was getting them nowhere, Rafferty questioned her about her other little deceit.
‘Why did you tell us your father was dead?’
Jane Ogilvie pulled out a cigarette packet and lighter from her jeans pocket and lit up before she replied; a time-wasting trick with which Rafferty was familiar.
‘Why do you think?’ she demanded once she had finally persuaded her cheap lighter to work. When she received no answer to this question, she shrugged and added, ‘I told you my father was dead because I wanted to save him all the hassle I knew he'd get if you discovered who he was. I knew you'd consider him the chief suspect just because he lived in the same block and was my mother's estranged husband. It's not as if he killed her.’
‘You're sure of that? I suppose you must be, considering he's now changed his alibi and says he was with you and your eldest son around the time your mother died.’ He paused. ‘Is that true, Mrs Ogilvie?'
Although he had reason to doubt she was capable of telling the truth if her life depended on it, he asked anyway, 'So, if all three of you were together around seven on the morning your mother was murdered, as your father now claims, where exactly did this happy family gathering take place? Some all-night café, perhaps?'
As she hesitated, he added, 'Only before you reply, remember we'll check your answer out. You've already told us more lies than enough. Any more and we might begin to suspect you're the one with something to hide.'
She stared at him. ‘Me? Just because I told a couple of stupid lies, you surely can't think I had anything to do with my mother's death?’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘I doubt if I'm even in the old bitch's will. Knowing how impossible she was, she's probably left it to a cats’ home just to spite me.’
For all Jane Ogilvie's protestations of innocence, Rafferty noted she still hadn't revealed her true whereabouts at the crucial time. He brought this failure to her attention.
She scowled and yelled at him. ‘I forget where we were. Just bumming around, I suppose. It was a fine morning, nice for walking. We stopped for some filled rolls and coffee at a working men's café and sat in that little wooded glade across the footbridge over the river and had breakfast.’
Jane Ogilvie hadn't struck Rafferty as likely to be a keen walker or much of a picnicker either.
‘But I understood you met your eldest son and you had breakfast together?’
‘That was the original arrangement,' she quickly agreed. 'But then my father rang on my mobile and we decided to have a picnic instead. Check with Charlie, if you like. He'll tell you the same as me and my father. God,' she complained, 'surely I can be forgiven for forgetting such a small detail when I've so much on my mind? First I lose my job, then my mother.’ She pulled a face. ‘Wonder what I'll lose next?’