Rafferty was thoughtful as he got back in the car. ’Try this for size,’ he said to Llewellyn. ‘What if Joey Briggs came visiting his old pal Sam Gates, discovered – much to his surprise – that he lived in such style, and decide to turn him over.’
Llewellyn turned puzzled eyes on Rafferty. ‘I thought you were set on either Mr Carver or Mrs Briggs as the guilty party.’
‘I was. Still am.’ Probably. Maybe. ‘It’s just that I keep thinking Joey was on his uppers, feeling the pinch, even with twenty grand in his back pocket. But when you’ve been living the high life, especially when it’s on the edge of a big drug baron like Charlie Carver, twenty grand probably doesn’t seem very much at all. Thinking about old times, what would be more natural for a man like Joey than to look for a patsy who owed him big time? A man whose life he had saved. And he came sniffing around, found that treasure-stuffed gem of a house, stolen treasure at that, and decided to burgle the place. After all, Sam Gates could hardly report such a burglary, could he? And Joey got himself murdered for his trouble. It struck me as a touch of Divine Justice at its more inspired. Punishing two for the price of one, as it were. God would love it.’
‘And do you really think that’s a possibility?’
‘I’ve remembered Joey’s form book, and it’s just struck me that he’d done something similar previously. Before he went to Spain, and learned from Mr Big. He got away with it that time, and lived to tell the tale.’ Rafferty tapped his teeth with his pen. ‘Only this time, he had Charlie Carver looking for revenge. Why did he nick money from a man like Carver, anyway? He knew, better than most, what Carver was capable of. Did he have some other grudge against Carver, a grudge that was so strong, it made him forget everything else, even self-preservation? He’d nicked twenty grand of Carver’s, but that was a drop in a bucket with a man like Carver. Suppose he found that wasn’t enough, thought of a way to pay Carver back, and get him away from Jude permanently? Suppose he thought, this time, with his help, we’d really make the charges stick, and succeed in getting Carver extradited from Spain? Only, he needed a fair stash of money to do it.’
‘Would he really want to court the limelight of being the central figure to bringing a Mr Big like Carver back from the Costas? Surely, he would have had the sense not to draw attention to himself so directly?’
‘You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you? But here’s the thing: Joey had been an unsuccessful small-time criminal for much of his life, so he wasn’t that smart. Not like Charlie Carver, who had the brains to move to Spain years before, and then built up a battery of lawyers once he got there to prevent him being sent back to the UK. I think it’s possible Joey Briggs out-smarted himself, and ended up getting himself murdered. Just not necessarily by Charlie Carver.’ Rafferty, seeing the doubt on Llewellyn’s face, smiled wryly. ‘Just a possibility. Nothing more than that. Just one possibility, amongst many. Don’t lose any sleep over it.’
But the likelihood of Llewellyn losing sleep – over that or any other possibility – was so far out there as to be beyond consideration. Llewellyn kept his life in separate boxes. He believed in the importance of having a fairly regimented life. Home and work were strictly segregated, and he kept up that compartmentalisation, believing in his regimes of jogging first thing in the morning, and eating small, but nutritional meals, helped him sleep soundly.
Rafferty reflected that perhaps there was something in that, because he often found himself lying awake, turning possibilities over into the small hours of the morning. Hence, he so often looked wrecked, while Llewellyn invariably looked band-box smart every morning. There again, he caught the crooks and murderers, perhaps because he thought like them, and Llewellyn—didn’t.
But by the time the working day drew to a close, and Rafferty went home, he felt a whole lot more confident. Of something, anyway, just not the possibility of charging Charlie Carver with murder.