Jane broke off, her oh-so-recent air of authority vanished. She cast an anxious glance at Darryl who was lounging in the corner smirking as the latest in-house entertainment rolled by.
Jane hadn't broken off quickly enough as became evident when Darryl's smirk vanished. His tanned face darkened several shades as he leapt up from his seat and covered the floor space between himself and Jane in two strides.
He thrust his face inches from Jane's and demanded aggressively, ‘Especially as you're – what?’
Jane backed away. Involuntarily her hand went to her belly in a protective gesture.
The gesture didn't escape Darryl. He moved forward, his hand raised as if to strike her and Jane took another hurried step back.
Darryl stared at her, his face full of loathing. ‘I get it. You bloody bitch. Did you really think you could saddle me with one or your bastards,’ he shouted at her.
Before the situation had a chance to turn even nastier, Rafferty intervened.
‘All right. All right. Let's calm things down here.’ To Jesmond, he unthinkingly remarked, ‘Surely the responsibility for any child is as much yours as Mrs Ogilvie's?’
His intervention rebounded on him – because, as his zealous Catholic conscience wasn't slow to remind him – couldn't the same be said to apply to himself and the baby Abra suspected she was carrying? Was he as bad as the feckless Jesmond, after all?
Well, perhaps he wasn't quite as bad, he consoled himself as his remark was greeted with scorn by Darryl.
‘Just as much my responsibility?’ Jane's toy boy jeered. ‘Hardly. With her track record? Who could blame me for believing she must, by now, have learned something about contraception?’
Darryl gave the cowering Jane a dirty look, then barged past Llewellyn and slammed out of the house.
After a few seconds’ awkward silence, Jane spoke in a determined, if shaky voice, to upbraid her daughter.
‘I heard you shouting as I came along the hall. If you have nothing better to do than have a go at the policemen investigating my mother's murder, you can get yourself down to the corner shop. We've nothing in for this evening's meal.’
‘Don't tell me what to do,’ Aurora immediately stormed at Jane. ‘I won't be told what I'm to do and not do. Jeez, man, you're getting just like that dead old mother of yours that you always used to complain about.’
Jane reared back at this. ‘What do you mean?' she demanded. 'I'm nothing like my mother.’
'Yeah. Right.' Aurora laughed this claim to scorn and shot a look of triumph at Jane. Clearly relishing the discovery that she had found a stick with which to beat her mother, she set about using it with a will.
'So you're not bossy and blinkered and convinced your way's the only way to do anything, just like you always told us she was?’ Aurora demanded before she shook her head. ‘I've seen the photos of her that Charlie used to keep in his room when he was younger. Funny, but the older you get, the more like her you become.’ Cruelly, she added, ‘Next, you'll be seeing her face when you look in the mirror. Isn't that what they say happens? Middle-aged women turn into their mothers?’ She touched her mixed race, café-au-lait skin. ‘I'm safe from that, at least.’
Jane didn't react for a few seconds, but when she did, it was with a ferocity that was totally unexpected, not least by Aurora.
Jane slapped her daughter's face so hard that the girl's head jerked violently on her neck.
‘Don't you dare taunt me with my mother,’ she screamed at the girl. ‘She's dead, or have you forgotten?’
Aurora's eyes filled with tears. But they were tears that Rafferty guessed Aurora was determined not to shed. As if she would force them back, with an unnecessary harshness she rubbed the cheek where her mother had struck her and where the finger marks were visible. As she blinked back her tears, she stared at her mother with a wordless fury.
But Aurora's silence didn't last long. Rallying, she quickly found words designed to wound and screamed back, ‘Don't pretend you cared a toss for your mother. We all know you hated her, God knows you made it plain often enough. The only thing you loved about her was her money that you used to buy Darryl's attention.’
The precocious Aurora, with the ruthless confidence of youth and beauty, delivered the coup de grace to her middle-aged mother. ‘At least I never needed to resort to bribes to get him to pay me attention. If you knew how many times he's tried to get into my knickers…'
When Jane, obviously stunned, failed to respond, Aurora added dismissively, 'as if I'd want him. I only played up to him to get to you. But I think we both know where Dazza will be headed if your old mother has left her money to some Cats’ Home. He'd trample over us all in his rush to move in with Mrs Rich Divorcée down the road.’
White-faced, Jane stared at her daughter. In spite of her previous throwaway remark that her mother had probably left her out of her will, it was clear that Jane hadn't really believed the conventional Clara would actually do so. But Aurora's sharp retort had clearly brought the possibility home to Jane. Not only that, but Aurora's prediction about Darryl Jesmond's likely reaction if Aurora's taunt turned out to be true seemed likely to make her mother lash out once more.
But after a quick glance at Rafferty as if just recalling his presence, Jane got herself under control and instead of slapping her daughter again, she just hissed, ‘Get out of my sight,’ at Aurora. ‘And if I catch you making your harlot's eyes at Darryl again, you'll get another slap.’
With a ‘see if I care’ shrug, Aurora made the second slammed door exit of the morning, leaving a strained silence behind her.
Happy families, Rafferty mused. What was it that Llewellyn quoted about them? Something some Russian bloke had said, he thought, though his musings on this didn't get the chance to get beyond first base, as after raking a hand through her untidy hair, Jane gave a shaky laugh as if to prove she was unmoved by her daughter's remarks.
‘Kids,’ she said, as she raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Who'd have ‘em?’
Although she tried to shrug off Aurora's comments, she was clearly rattled by them. But she rallied sufficiently to have another go at Rafferty, as if still convinced that aggression was her best defence.
‘You seem to have a down on my eldest son,' she accused, adding tartly, ‘and as he seems unable to speak up for himself, if you've got anything else to ask him you'd better do so while I'm here to do it for him.’
For a moment, Rafferty was surprised that Jane should belatedly exhibit a previously unsuspected maternal streak in thus defending the defenceless Charles. But, of course, her latest attempt at the old best defence is aggression ploy wasn't necessarily put on for her son's sake. Clearly, Charles didn't share the family fluency for lies. Jane couldn't risk him blurting out anything else; next time he might just incriminate either her adored father or herself.
Rafferty was just considering inviting Charles to accompany them to the station so they could get at the truth without Jane's intervention – he was legally of age, after all. But Charles's bemused looks persuaded him that such a step might not be necessary after all. Instead, he decided to reply to Jane's challenge.
‘Now you mention it, yes, there was one other thing I wanted to ask him.’
He turned back to Charles. ‘We've contacted your previous employers and it seems you weren't head-hunted at all. Not only do you not have a new employer, your previous employers sacked you for unreliability.' Another family trait? Rafferty mused. 'Perhaps it will be second time lucky,’ Rafferty added slyly as, again. Charles failed to come up with an answer, ‘Seeing as you failed to explain why you went along with your mother's lies about the day of your arrival.
‘I'm waiting,’ he told Charles. ‘I'm curious to see if you can manage to come up with some answers, all on your own this time, to explain the latest Ogilvie family deceit in this investigation.’
Charles, for all his fancy suits, looked like a little boy again – a little boy about to cry. His nose began to run. He wiped it quickly with the back of his hand. He looked to his mother; he didn't look in vain. Whatever claim Hakim might make about his elder brother's lack in the manhood department, he certainly wasn't short on stalwart feminine defenders as Jane rounded on Rafferty for the third time.
‘So he was sacked? So what? It's hardly a hanging offence. The best of us have been sacked at one time or another.’
‘I'm not disputing that,’ Rafferty told her. As he had come pretty close to being sacked – and worse – once or twice himself, he admitted he wasn't in a position to argue with her assertion. ‘But the fact is your son deliberately deceived us.’
For that matter, so had Jane, who had claimed she had still been on duty at the supermarket around the time her mother died. Now, here was another member of Clara Mortimer's family without an alibi – or rather, between Jane, her father and now her son - with an insubstantial triangle of self-supporting alibis which looked to have no more strength than thistledown.
‘I don't know why you're picking on Charlie,’ Jane said to Rafferty. ‘Why on earth should you think he would want to hurt the grandmother that loved him?
‘That opinionated daughter of mine is right about one thing. Charlie didn't know my mother's address. He hasn't been in touch since before she moved, so how could he know it?’
Her obvious disgruntlement at this lack of filial devotion caused Charles's head to droop even further and a ‘Sorry, Mum. I did mean to get in touch,’ rose up from his downcast head.
‘Yes, well. Try a bit harder in future.’
Jane turned her attention back to Rafferty. ‘It would make more sense if you picked on one of my other kids, as they had no reason to love my mother, but Charlie?’
‘Then if he's got nothing to hide he won't mind telling me where he really was around seven o'clock that morning.’ When Charles's head still hung, Rafferty said, ‘I'm waiting Mr Ogilvie.’
‘I–‘
But before Charles could utter more than that one, strangled word, Jane interrupted. ‘If you must know, he was waiting outside the supermarket for me to finish work. Darryl hadn't exactly made him feel welcome when he arrived the previous day, so he decided to clear out of the house early before Darryl got up and stay out till Darryl went for his regular visits to the bookies and the pub around eleven. Happy now?’
‘So why couldn't you tell me that before?’ Rafferty asked Charles.
Charles shrugged. ‘I don't know. I suppose I was still feeling raw about getting fired. I was worried about how I'd pay my rent. And I've got some debts...’ He tailed off and added lamely, ‘I suppose I wasn't thinking straight.’
He'd managed, unprompted by his mother, to think straight enough to lie about his employment, was Rafferty's first thought. ‘So you hadn't told your son you'd lost your job at the supermarket?’ he asked Jane.
Jane shook her head. ‘I didn't want to worry him. He knows how tight money's been around here lately. Besides, I didn't want Darryl to know. I thought if my kids knew I was out of work again one of them might have blurted it out to Darryl.’
The words, particularly that little madam, Aurora – hung unspoken in the air.
‘So what did you do when your mother didn't appear at the supermarket's staff exit after her presumed night shift?’ Rafferty asked Charles.
‘I asked a couple of the other women where she was.’ He pulled a face. ‘They told me she'd been sacked. So I gave her a ring on her mobile and she came and got me.’
‘I'd have been on time to meet him, too, if the drying machine at the Laundromat hadn't been playing up,’ Jane complained. ‘And he'd have been none the wiser about my getting the sack.'
This revelation caused Jane to cover her mouth with her hand, as if, too late, she would try to prevent the escape of her first truthful utterance.
'Well, well, well,' Rafferty commented. 'What is it they say, Dafyd? The truth will out?' He turned back to Jane and said, 'I can understand you being in the Laundromat doing the family washing at such an early hour; it wasn't as if you could arrive back here before your supposed continuing night shift was over without alerting Darryl. But your father? What reason did he have for needing to be out and about so early?’
‘He hasn't been sleeping well lately,’ Jane replied defensively.
‘So why didn't he make use of the laundry room at Parkview Apartments if he was so anxious to put his smalls through the wash and spin cycle? Last time I looked they had all the mod cons the most house-proud wife could desire.’
‘Then seeing as you're so observant, you might also have noticed the number of mature single white females resident in my father's block. As a lone, male of equally mature years, my father's fair game. He told me that any chance they get several of the old women there are in his face. The laundry room at the apartment's their special hunting ground. Do you wonder he preferred to do his washing elsewhere?’
Rafferty gave a sigh. Jane Ogilvie had more stories than the bible. Determined to pin her down as to the accuracy of one of her, her son's and her father's so-called alibis, he questioned her further. ‘I presume you reported the faulty machine to the Laundromat manager?’
Jane shook her head. ‘I couldn't. He wasn't there. He'd left a note on the door saying he'd been called away to another one of the shops.’