Death Line Extract A Rafferty and Llewellyn Crime Novel

One

Jasper Moon, internationally renowned 'Seer to the Stars', had signally failed to
predict his own future. He lay sprawled on the dark carpet of his office at
Constellation Consultants with the back of his skull caved in. A small crystal ball -
presumably the murder weapon - lay beside him.

A black silk cloak covered the torso, leaving only the head and feet exposed.
Disconcerted to see that, like himself, Moon sported a pair of vivid emerald green
socks, Rafferty turned his attention back to the cadaver's other end. The waxy,
heavy-jowled profile was in ghastly relief to the dyed black hair and the midnight
richness of the silk. A crescent-shaped scar under lis left eye showed up with a
lividity it had lacked in life. Rafferty imagined that the reputedly vain Moon would
have been glad that the cloak lent his podgy, middle-aged body a certain dignity, a
touch of elegance. An elegance certainly not shared by the room.

Obviously Moon hadn't subscribed to the 'less is more' style of interior design. Even
Rafferty, not normally one to flinch from the garish, spared only a cursory,
deprecatory glance at the night black ceiling with its mother of pearl stars and scale
paintings of the planets and what he assumed were astrological symbols decorating
one of the walls.

Unlike Sergeant Llewellyn, whose face evinced its usual Sphinx-like inscrutability,
Rafferty had never learned to mask his emotions. He was reminded of this flaw when
Edwin Astell, a tall, spare man and the victim's business partner, commented from
the doorway, 'You shouldn't judge Jasper by ordinary standards, Inspector. In his
own way, he was as much of a star as his clients - they mostly came from the
entertainment world. You could say that Jasper shared their showmanship and taste
for the dramatic.'

So did his murderer, thought Rafferty. There was a TV and video in the corner. The
video was undamaged, though empty of film, but the screen of the television had
been smashed in; it looked as though someone had taken a hammer to it. The
drawers had been removed from the desk and stacked on top of it, dislodging a vase
of late roses which lay strewn on the floor in front of Moon's desk, as though thrown
in tribute by a mourner.