Deadly Reunion Read online

  ‘Spent it as soon as he earned it,’ said Mary Carmody, ‘according to this same lady, on wine, women and song. The usual story. It seems he used his money to buy the popularity that his personality didn’t attract. Certainly he did so once his sporting career was over and he had no other means of attracting attention.’

  ‘Hangers-on, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. If he went out to dinner he would always end up picking up the tab. I’m afraid the only friends he attracted were the fair-weather sort.’

  Rafferty nodded. ‘Thanks Gerry. Thanks Mare. You’ve done well. What a turn-around from his schooldays,’ Rafferty said to Llewellyn once Gerry Hanks and Mary Carmody had gone. ‘Whatever happened to that popular boy his parents and Cedric Barmforth spoke about?’

  ‘The usual too much too soon, I imagine,’ opined Llewellyn. ‘That and the modern cult of celebrity which makes stars out of nobodies or second-raters. As we know, Mr Ainsley never reached the top of the tree in his sporting career. Perhaps that niggled away at him and encouraged him to make more of less.’

  ‘Oh well. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know now what drove him.’

  Sophie Diaz had told them that no one else amongst her old schoolmates had confided anything to her. Rafferty wasn’t sure he had believed her. After all, as the school ‘bike’, Sophie Diaz was an unlikely confidante of the quiet girl that Alice Douglas had been, so maybe it was possible that she was also the unlikely confidante of a few of the others. There was nothing like the aftermath of lovemaking for getting secrets out of a man – wasn’t that something the old Soviet Union had turned to good use? What secrets could she have had whispered to her in her youth and what had she done with them? Had she discreetly forgotten them? Or harboured them against a rainy day? Perhaps, tomorrow, her widower would be able to tell them.

  Edward Diaz had already been told of his wife’s death by the Met, but Rafferty was keen to speak to him and not only to find out if his wife had used her mobile to apprise him of the latest happenings amongst her old school friends. He had always regarded it as a courtesy to speak with the bereaved as soon as practicable.

  Besides, they were now armed with the results of the toxicology tests, Rafferty having begged and pleaded to have them moved up the queue, and could now let Mr Diaz know the cause of his wife’s sudden death. It had been the same poison that had killed Ainsley, which wasn’t any great surprise.

  They stopped off at the local nick as another courtesy, to let them know he and Llewellyn were on their patch. ‘How did he seem, Mr Diaz?’ he asked the uniformed inspector he’d been directed to.

  ‘Much as you’d expect him to seem,’ said Inspector Trent. He stared at them curiously. ‘So what brings Essex CID on to the Met’s ground? I thought it was a natural death.’

  ‘So did we. At first. For a while. But no. We had an earlier death at the school where she was staying. Poisoning. The toxicology results came in before we left Elmhurst this morning and Mrs Diaz was poisoned also. Hemlock. Same stuff as killed Socrates,’ said Rafferty, keen to display his recently-garnered knowledge.

  ‘Socrates? That footballer, do you mean?’

  Rafferty sighed. He could see that his newly gained erudition was wasted on Trent. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Didn’t know he was dead. Can’t have been very old. Sad.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  Edward Diaz was waiting at home for them as Llewellyn had rung him earlier to let him know to expect them. He lived in some style, in a three-storey, plus basement, house, the likely cost of which made Rafferty’s eyes water. But he was a banker, he recalled and had the high earnings that Rafferty had been given to understand Sophie had thought was her due, though it was strange that the Griffin rumour mill had implied that she hadn’t been up to the minute in the fashion stakes for her school reunion. Abra had taught him that was unusual: women were always keen to impress other women with their clothes and their style.

  Edward Diaz was – given his surname – surprisingly fair, with light brown hair and sandy lashes. He was also older than Rafferty had expected, being fifty-five at least, and was fleshy, with the look of a man who indulged all his appetites. But this morning, he seemed a husk of a man. There were violet shadows under his eyes and a listless air about him that Rafferty put down to sleepless nights since the loss of his wife. He seemed almost pathetically glad to see them and immediately began talking about his wife as if he was anxious to keep her name alive.

  ‘Who could want to kill her?’ he asked, plaintively, once they had sat down in the large and opulent drawing room with its enormous TV and tiny stereo and explained how his wife had died. ‘She had no enemies. She loved shopping and cooking and entertaining our friends. There was no harm in her. Everyone liked her. Who could want to kill her?’ he asked again.

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Rafferty. ‘But we’ll do our best to find out. To that end, I’d like you to tell me everything you can about your wife. We’ve already learned she was a woman that others confided in and—’

  ‘Was she? I didn’t know that. Of course I heard her swapping girlie gossip on the phone, but that’s all. I didn’t realize she was some kind of agony aunt.’

  Edward Diaz’s comment didn’t sound hopeful from Rafferty’s point of view, but he pressed on optimistically. ‘Yes. I wondered if she rang you while she was away at Griffin School?’

  ‘Yes, yes, she did. We spoke every day.’

  ‘And did she speak to you about the other reunees? Did she tell you anything she learned about them or from them?’

  Diaz frowned. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Anything – the sort of thing that they probably wouldn’t want to go any further.’ He saw that Diaz was still floundering and he helped him out. ‘Things like sexual peccadilloes, unwanted pregnancies, money problems. That sort of thing.’

  Diaz’s frown deepened, but it looked as if he was having trouble garnering his thoughts as a minute went by with no response.

  ‘Mr Diaz?’ Rafferty encouraged. ‘The other reunees. Did your wife speak of them?’

  ‘Sorry. My mind wandered off on to thoughts of Sophie. Yes. She said she was enjoying catching up on her fellow old boys and girls. She said a chap called Giles Harmsworth was as pompous and self-important as ever and was even trying to assume the lead of the police inquiry. That amused her.’

  Rafferty, sensitive about his secondary modern background amongst the educationally privileged scions of Griffin School, wondered what she’d found so amusing about it and what she’d said about him.

  ‘She said that a chap called Seb was still the lazy good-for-nothing he’d been at school.’

  That wasn’t the sort of thing Rafferty was interested in hearing. He knew all that already. ‘Did she tell you anything more intimate?’ he asked.

  ‘Intimate? Like what?’ To Rafferty’s frustration, he immediately returned to his own miseries. ‘Sophie was in a twin room with another woman so there was little privacy for sharing even the normal marital intimacies. I missed that,’ he said sadly. ‘My last memories of her are of brief phone calls rather than lengthy cuddles. Now all I have is memories. I don’t know how I’m going to get through the days without her.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll feel better when you get back to work, sir,’ Rafferty suggested. ‘Less time to brood.’

  ‘Work? What work? I was made redundant after Christmas. I was a banker,’ he told Rafferty, who nodded. ‘I was one of those culled at the height of the recession.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ was Rafferty’s inadequate response. Here was yet another secret, something that Sophie Diaz had chosen not to confide to the other Griffin reunees. Or him. It certainly explained her turning up at the reunion in last year’s fashions. It seemed that, for Sophie Diaz, the rainy days had arrived. ‘Still you must have friends.’

  ‘Not many. Life in my world was more about competing with colleagues than making bosom buddies of them. The pursuit of money doesn’t make one many friends, Inspector.’
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br />   ‘Like the pursuit of criminals,’ Rafferty murmured. ‘But to get back to the other reunees,’ he tried again. ‘Did your wife really not discuss anything more serious than pomposity or idleness?’

  Diaz frowned. ‘She said – something. What was it?’

  They waited.

  ‘She said that she had seen something.’

  ‘Seen something?’ Rafferty repeated, imagination going into overdrive. ‘Seen what, exactly, sir?’

  ‘Sophie didn’t elaborate. I got the impression that whatever it was, she thought there might be profit in it. God knows we – I – could do with the money as all my savings are gone. Not that I was ever a great saver. Live for the day was a motto Sophie and I shared. I got the impression that Sophie had put out feelers for a job for me with her old friends and wouldn’t say anything more until she was certain of it.’

  Or maybe, was Rafferty’s thought, she was trying to put the touch on the killer, having witnessed him or her slipping the hemlock in Ainsley’s lunch. ‘And you say your wife said nothing further?’ How frustrating was that? Rafferty had come here hoping for secrets from beyond the grave. Or at least beyond the mortuary slab, but all he’d found was a man pathetic in his grief who could tell them little.

  ‘No. That was all she said as far as I can remember.’ He wore a shame-faced expression as he admitted, ‘I’m afraid my mind’s turned to mush these last seven months. Lack of use, I suppose. And even if it was an employment possibility that Sophie had come across I really didn’t see her pulling off a job for me, not from amongst her thirty-something old school friends. I’m a good few years older than Sophie and even with all my contacts I’ve been unable to get another post. I rather doubt I ever will.’

  ‘Have you no prospects?’

  ‘Beyond people who said they’d put a word in for me? No. And nothing’s come of them so far. I’m considering re-training as a teacher as I think my days of being a big-earning banker are behind me.’

  ‘What did your wife think of that?’

  Diaz pulled a face. ‘Sophie liked the money. Sometimes I think she loved that more than she did me. But no, I mustn’t think like that. It’s just that Sophie was used to the good things in life. She liked the latest designer fashions and the best restaurants. We’ve had to cut back a lot. Sophie even had to get rid of her beloved sports car. We were able to get her a cheap run-around with the money, but it wasn’t very reliable. She had to take the train to the Griffin reunion as my own car was in the garage getting repaired. She was a bit upset about that. She was a bit upset that she had to wear last season’s fashions when she got there as well. She always liked to cut a dash.’ He brushed his hand across suddenly damp eyes. ‘I was worried she’d leave me,’ he told them, brokenly. ‘I was never good-looking or witty. All I had was my income. My family don’t have money. I was the first one to make any decent cash. Sophie was a very attractive woman. She could have had anyone. I was always amazed that she settled for me.’

  These grief-stricken confidences made Rafferty uncomfortable. But they also told him something about the dead woman. A woman who was ‘used to the good things in life’, and ‘the latest designer fashions’. He’d never have guessed she wasn’t wearing up to the minute stuff without the input of the other female reunees. Sophie Diaz had always looked very smart every time he’d seen her – chic, he supposed Llewellyn would call it. Women’s clothes all looked the same to him. He wouldn’t have recognized a designer dress if it had leapt up and emptied his wallet.

  They’d searched the possessions that Sophie Diaz had brought to the reunion with her, but had found nothing of interest. Now, Rafferty said, ‘I wonder, sir, if we could look through your wife’s things?’

  ‘Sophie’s things? There’s only her clothes and her jewellery and we’ve sold the best bits of that. Why would you want to look through them?’

  ‘I’m hoping there might be something more, sir. Did your wife keep a diary?’ They’d found none amongst her belongings at Griffin.

  ‘A diary? No. Nothing like that.’ He gave a taut smile. ‘Unless she kept a secret one in which she complained about me.’ He tried to laugh, but the laugh only ended in more tears, through which he said, ‘Look if you like. I can’t imagine you’ll find anything. Sophie wasn’t a woman for confiding her thoughts to paper. She has a laptop, but she hardly used it; she preferred the phone. You’ll find it in our bedroom if you want to check it out. She preferred to confide in her women friends on the phone and in person. Many are the confidences I’ve interrupted as I’ve walked past when she’s been on the phone, though none that would concern your murder case,’ he was hasty to add.

  ‘Her women friends,’ said Rafferty thoughtfully. ‘Maybe they’ll be able to tell me more about your wife’s life? Could you let us have their details?’

  ‘There’s an address book in the hall. I’ll get it.’ He lumbered his bulk off the sofa, across the drawing room and into the hall. He moved very slowly, like an old man whose legs were stricken with rheumatism. He was back more quickly than Rafferty had expected, as if it had occurred to him that for whatever reason his wife had been killed, she might indeed have confided something relevant to her girlfriends and he wanted to speed up their checking of it out.

  He was holding a bulging pink book, which he, with evident reluctance, handed to Rafferty. ‘You should find the names and addresses of all Sophie’s girlfriends in there. She was particularly close to Amanda Shaw.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Diaz held his hand out. ‘Let me just take a note of a few numbers. Sophie’s friends might be able to tell me something.’

  Rafferty handed the address book back and waited while Diaz found a pen and paper to scribble down the phone numbers, then he handed the book back with a look of regret.

  ‘Don’t worry, sir,’ Rafferty reassured. ‘We’ll let you have it back shortly. We’ll look upstairs now, if that’s all right?’

  Diaz indicated his permission with a wave of his hand, before he sank back into his chair and his introspection, clutching the paper with the scribbled numbers and staring at them as if he sought to find the reason for his wife’s murder scrawled in his shaky hand.

  The Diaz marital bedroom was lavish, with wall-to-wall wardrobes and a carpet so thick Rafferty longed to take off his shoes and socks and feel his feet embraced by its softness. Getting poetical again, Rafferty, he warned himself. Don’t go there. Not now, anyway.

  There was a large en-suite with a sunken bath and double shower, but there was nothing in there that interested Rafferty. He pulled out the drawer in the bedside table on the side that, from the pile of girlie magazines and romantic comedies, was clearly Sophie’s, but there was little but an assortment of sleeping tablets and anti-depressants, certainly no diary which would ‘tell all’.

  Llewellyn was checking the wardrobe; it stretched the length of the room, which must have been twenty-five feet and not far off as wide. Rafferty thought – if they weren’t to be there all day – that he’d better help him, so he started checking through pockets at the other end. But countless expensive-looking outfits later, the pockets had yielded nothing. There were not even any soiled tissues or forgotten lipsticks. Clearly Sophie Diaz was a woman who valued her clothes and looked after them. Rafferty glanced briefly at some of the labels and was impressed; even he’d heard of some of them. The wardrobe seemed to contain nothing but Sophie Diaz’s clothes, shoes and handbags and Rafferty presumed that her husband’s clothes had been banished to a spare room. Next, he checked out the handbags, of which there were a large number. Abra had a bit of a thing about handbags and he guessed that she’d love these. They came in every size and a rainbow of colours. But, like the clothes, these also yielded nothing.

  Dispirited, Rafferty plumped his behind down on the king-size. ‘I’ve got a theory,’ he told Llewellyn’s back.

  Llewellyn turned. ‘Oh yes?’ he said in tones of discouragement.

  Rafferty smiled, aware that his educate
d Welsh sergeant had probably had a surfeit of his inspector’s theories since they’d been working together. He knew he tended to the outlandish and outrageous. He wasn’t sure whether it was just the Irish in him or whether he did it because he knew it riled Llewellyn.

  ‘Don’t say it like that,’ Rafferty protested mildly. ‘This is one of my better ones, promise. I was wondering, seeing as Sophie Diaz was a woman who seemed to love money so much, whether she might not, now her husband’s as poor as an unfrocked vicar, have found another way of making the old spondoolicks.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Blackmail.’

  ‘Blackmail,’ Llewellyn repeated. ‘Again. You thought the unexplained thousand pounds a month going into Mr Ainsley’s bank account might have been the proceeds of blackmail.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Perhaps both of them were going in for it? I don’t know. I’m only going on the evidence, Dafyd, and unexplained money and secrets shout blackmail to me, loud and clear. You heard her husband say that she’d seen something she thought there might be money in at this reunion. Rather than a job for Diaz, I was wondering if she saw Adam Ainsley’s murderer in action.’

  Rather to his surprise, Llewellyn didn’t immediately squash the idea, so he added, ‘and got herself murdered when she tried to put the squeeze on the killer.’

  ‘A bit stupid of her.’

  ‘No one said she had a brain to rival Einstein’s. You’ve seen her wardrobe. Shopping seems to have been her greatest love, not mind expansion. She might think it worth it, down to last year’s fashions as she was, to try to get her hands on some of the folding stuff that her old man had stopped providing.’

  ‘It’s a possibility, certainly,’ Llewellyn opined slowly.

  ‘Gee, thanks. Don’t go too overboard.’ A bit miffed at this ponderous response, Rafferty demanded, ‘Well, what’s your theory? Or don’t you have one?’

  ‘Personally, I’ve always liked to wait until I have some solid evidence before I start constructing theories. But, as you say, there would seem to be something there to support this theory. I wonder whether she tried to take any kind of precautions before she approached the killer. If she approached the killer.’