Deadly Reunion Page 18

  Once in the car, Llewellyn glanced at him and said, ‘It is intriguing, isn’t it? Given his own well-kept and potentially career-damaging secret, I really can’t imagine Adam Ainsley attempting to blackmail someone else about their guilty secret.’

  ‘No. I think you’re right. That would be a bit too close to home for comfort. He would have thought, there but for the grace of God . . .’

  Llewellyn nodded.

  For once they were in agreement. Rafferty grinned to himself at the realization. Though he’d still like to know where that grand a month came from.

  On the way to the Paxtons’ home, Rafferty borrowed Llewellyn’s notebook, found the telephone number of Ainsley’s agent and rang it.

  Gottlieb’s secretary quickly put him through and after reintroducing himself and reminding him of the reason he was calling, Rafferty asked, ‘Did you know Ainsley was gay?’

  Gottlieb said yes. ‘Give him his due, he told me when we first signed the contract. It wasn’t a problem. He was never a painted queen. He dressed conservatively and did his best to project a macho image. He was tall and broad shouldered, which helped. I’ve often wondered if his inability to give more of himself when he did appearances wasn’t partly down to the fact that he was gay. He was always scared someone would out him and choose one of his public appearances at which to do it. You remember there was a spate of outings of celebrities some years ago?’

  ‘Why didn’t he come out and save himself the worry?’

  ‘Because he hadn’t come out to himself. He hated that side of his nature and did his best to sublimate it in the image that all his photos proclaimed: that of a manly professional, who’d made his name in the most physical of sports.’

  It was much the same as what Ainsley’s first wife had told them. All in all, Ainsley’s homosexuality seemed to have been a very well kept secret. Had someone outside the charmed circle of his agent and his ex-wives found out about it? But that wouldn’t explain the thousand pounds that had found its way into Ainsley’s bank account every month. The money would be going out of the account, not into it if Ainsley was a victim of blackmail. And if he was why was he also a murder victim? Blackmailers didn’t often kill their victims. Why lose a nice little earner? It was a puzzle and he didn’t like puzzles. Not ones that he seemed unable to solve, anyway. It was some consolation that his clever sergeant seemed unable to solve it, either.

  Mr and Mrs Paxton were a middle-class couple in their forties and lived in some splendour in an Edwardian mansion in Chichester. Although they were perfectly polite, Rafferty sensed a reserve in the couple, as if they would prefer not to talk about their dead son and he set his secret weapon, the ever so diplomatic Llewellyn on them. Dafyd Llewellyn, unlike Rafferty, tended to think before he spoke. He chose his words with care and wouldn’t offend anyone’s sensibilities. But then, with his Methodist minister father’s insistence on his young son accompanying him to break news of death, he’d had plenty of practice. And even though he fought shy of such situations, the Welshman had a delicate way of handling potentially awkward encounters.

  Rafferty watched in admiration as the Welshman sidled up to the subject of their son’s suicide and the reason for it.

  ‘The loss of a child is one of the worst forms of bereavement. I can’t imagine how you must have felt. Still feel.’

  Mrs Paxton thawed at this show of sensitivity. ‘Yes. What made it worse, was that David was an only child. I could only have the one,’ she told them. ‘I was too upset to delve too deeply into the reasons for my son’s suicide for some time. I didn’t even read the note David left. It was still too raw, too painful. I suppose, also, that I was scared he’d blame me. I just handed it to the first policeman who showed up and left it at that. It was only later, when the worst of my grief had passed, that I started wanting to know more. To know why. David had everything to live for. Or so I thought. My son was bright, attractive, popular. He excelled at sports and loved his rugby. What possible reason could he have for killing himself?’

  Rafferty, beyond curious, wanting some quick answers, forgot his resolve to leave the questioning to Llewellyn and interrupted to ask, ‘You mentioned his rugby. Was that how he met Adam Ainsley?’

  Mrs Paxton looked sharply at him, then she admitted, ‘Yes. Yes, it was. If only he hadn’t, my son would still be alive.’ She cast a single, tight-lipped glance in her husband’s direction, then looked down at her tautly clenched hands.

  Rafferty forbore from suggesting that their gay son, in denial and vulnerable, could have suffered just as much from an association with another mature and predatory gay male. Professional sport had its share of such men – and women – as any other walk of life.

  ‘David hero-worshipped him. He’d followed the local rugby team from the time he was a young boy. He went to every home game. He joined the supporters’ group and played for the youth team.’ Mrs Paxton’s lips tightened some more and her next words, when they came, were bitter. ‘He was easy prey. My son had always been a too sensitive boy. That was why my husband suggested he take up rugby again after he left school.’

  ‘I thought it would toughen him up,’ Mr Paxton said and although he was a no-nonsense Northerner, the defensive note in his voice was evident. Rafferty guessed the question had been gone over more than once between the couple. He could imagine that Paxton would have little time for his son’s sensitivity. Between his doomed first gay love affair and someone of his father’s character, David Paxton must have felt he had no one to turn to. No wonder Mrs Paxton seemed to blame her husband for the boy’s death.

  ‘Did he confide in you at all?’ Llewellyn picked up the questioning again. ‘I know teenagers often find it impossible to talk to their parents about sex. It’s such a difficult age. Such a difficult subject.’

  Mr Paxton answered when his wife hesitated. ‘No. He didn’t confide in us. I don’t think he confided in anyone.’

  Mrs Paxton interrupted. ‘He was a boy for bottling up his feelings. If only he’d felt able to tell us he was gay . . . I would have understood, accepted it. He was my son, after all.’

  Mrs Paxton’s fingers gripped ever more tightly together and Rafferty wondered, would she, though? Would he? David had been an only child, the only chance of them having grandchildren. Would they have been so accepting with that in view? Perhaps their son had sensed the opposite, which would explain why he had told them nothing about being gay, nothing about his abortive first venture into homosexual love with Ainsley.

  Mrs Paxton seemed to have read his mind because she said, ‘He as good as killed my son. He seduced him. Made him fall in love with him. Then he dropped him. Just like that. David put it all in his suicide note.’

  ‘Really? I don’t remember reading anything about it.’ But if what his mother said was true, the boy, after his earlier hero-worship, must have been even more vulnerable when Adam Ainsley had befriended him, seduced him, even more devastated when he had chucked him.

  ‘You wouldn’t. The Coroner suppressed the contents of my son’s letter. Though whether he did it for my sake or his own is debatable. He was another rugby fan,’ she added flatly. ‘Another of Ainsley’s admirers. If it wasn’t for the thought of the journalists we’d have camping on the doorstep, I’d give the news to the media myself.’

  ‘Not much point now,’ said her husband. ‘Not with Ainsley dead. And I wouldn’t want David’s name bandied all over the press. Nor mine neither. Do you think I could bear the pity?’

  His wife shot him a sharp glance, looked as if she was about to say something, then deflated as if she recognized the pointlessness of it, the pointlessness of everything now her only child was gone.

  ‘Why did Ainsley drop him?’ Rafferty asked her. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘Because he was still denying his own homosexuality – that’s what Annabel, his wife, told me. Poor Annabel. Did you know she found my son in bed with her husband? In her own bed?’

  ‘She told us.’

  ‘He
dated woman after woman trying to chase away his real desires. My husband told me he saw him out on the town several times with other women, though he never told me at the time. A male solidarity thing, I suppose. Anyway, Ainsley could never succeed in subduing his real preferences. His wife told me all about it and about how she’d found my son and Ainsley in bed together. This was some months after David’s death and the inquest.’ Mrs Paxton knitted her hands together. Her husband, beside her on the sofa, began to put his arm around her, but she edged away. ‘I’ve tried to be charitable. Adam Ainsley, the great sportsman, the great rugby hero, had never admitted his homosexuality. He’d never come out. He was as much in denial as David. If he’d the courage of his convictions, he wouldn’t have dropped David so abruptly, so cruelly, to my son’s devastation. And death.’

  Rafferty got behind the wheel of the car, but he didn’t turn the ignition. ‘Given this latest information, we really need to speak to Jeremy Paxton. Shame the bugger’s on holiday in Portugal.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Llewellyn asked. ‘Are you thinking that it’s likely that Mr Paxton would want revenge for his half nephew’s suicide? I have to say, I don’t agree. After all, his relationship with the boy was fractional. And from what Mrs Paxton said, he can have hardly known David.’

  ‘I know.’ Llewellyn was expressing the thoughts that had already occurred to him, debunking his latest theory before he’d even mentioned it. ‘But it’s got to be investigated, even if it comes to nothing. Maybe his neighbours would know exactly where in Portugal he went?’

  But in the event, they didn’t have to talk to Jeremy Paxton’s neighbours. Because when they drove round to their street, they saw Paxton’s car on his driveway and the man himself, sponge in hand, in the process of washing it.

  ‘Mr Paxton. I thought you were on holiday?’

  ‘I was, Inspector. But my wife convinced me that I should come home. She felt it wasn’t right for us to be sunning ourselves on a Portuguese beach when two people have died at my school. It’s the sort of thing the newspapers would jump on, quoting term fees and making us sound heartless. All bad publicity for the school, and the governors wouldn’t be happy. So . . . how is the investigation going?’

  ‘We have various avenues that we’re pursuing,’ Rafferty told him without going into any of them. Paxton didn’t pick him up on it. ‘I’m glad to see you because I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Yes. I understand that Adam Ainsley could be held morally responsible for the suicide of your young half nephew, David. I wondered how you felt about that?’

  ‘How I felt about it?’ Paxton looked thoughtful. ‘I know of his suicide, of course. It’s tragic. But I scarcely knew the boy.’

  He sounded somewhat wistful. Rafferty had learned that Jeremy Paxton was the father of three daughters; perhaps he would have liked to consider young David a proxy son but hadn’t received any encouragement from his half brother.

  ‘I gather from my half brother that David was sports mad. Anyway, he was nearly always out when I visited, which wasn’t often. Perhaps a couple of times a year. My half brother and I are not close.’

  ‘I see. So you didn’t want revenge for David’s untimely death?’

  ‘Revenge? I’m a Christian, Inspector. I turn the other cheek.’ He smiled. ‘Or I try to.’

  ‘There are many Christians who don’t.’

  ‘I’m not one of them. Besides, there was no reason for me to want to kill Adam. As I said, I hardly knew my half nephew and there was no way I could have poisoned Ainsley.’

  That was true enough. Which left them with Alice Douglas. Rafferty bid Jeremy Paxton good day and returned to the office. There, he sat and watched Llewellyn while he typed up the reports of their latest interviews, updated Bradley and then went home.

  TWELVE

  The previous night, after their late return from the restaurant meal Abra had organized to celebrate Angel and Louis’s fortieth anniversary, Rafferty had told her about his and Cyrus’s conversation in the pub. It was another humid night and they’d thrown the covers off along with their clothes.

  Rafferty lay, admiring the curve of Abra’s thigh, as she admitted she felt as embarrassed as he did that Cyrus and the others had picked up on their less than wholehearted welcome.

  ‘Let’s try, then, during the remainder of their stay, to make sure they have a good time,’ she said. ‘I suppose I have been a bit mean. And he’s a nice enough bloke. He just talks too much.’

  ‘I can take Cyrus out again, give you a break. I thought a pub-crawl with my brothers? Maybe I’ll even invite Nigel.’ Nigel Blythe, or ‘Jerry Kelly’, the moniker his proud parents had bestowed on him and which had met with a distinct lack of approval from their upwardly mobile, estate agent son, was a cousin on his mother’s side. It was about time he shared some of the familial burden of this reunion. He’d got away scot-free so far.

  ‘Why not? Just don’t get Cyrus too sozzled. I doubt Wendy would like it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry. The way he’s been going at my whiskey, he can handle his drink better than I can.’

  ‘Even so. And as for you, you said you told Cyrus you were hoping to be a daddy. We don’t want your sperm getting so pie-eyed that they lose their sense of direction.’

  ‘That’s the excuse I made to Cyrus for our less than sociable behaviour. I didn’t mean that we had to go in for having a kid for real.’

  Abra put her head on one side, threw her plait back over her shoulder and said thoughtfully, ‘Maybe we should. Let’s face it, you’re no spring chicken, Joe. You don’t want to be on a Zimmer frame by the time any kid of ours hits eighteen.’

  ‘Succinct, as always, my sweet.’

  ‘Someone’s got to call a spade a bloody shovel. So what do you say? Should we get the ball rolling in the sprog department?’

  Rafferty was thoughtful for a few moments, then he nodded. ‘Perhaps we’d better. After all, when you think about it, I’m not the only one in this marriage that’s ageing at a rate of knots. Your eggs are getting on for three decades old.’

  ‘Delicately put.’

  ‘I thought so. But if we are going in for having a kid, for God’s sake don’t tell Ma. She’ll give us the third degree for sure if she knows. If you don’t get pregnant immediately she’ll think I’m doing something wrong.’

  Abra laughed. ‘She might be right. You know how uptight you are about sex.’

  ‘I’m not uptight,’ Rafferty defended himself. ‘I just prefer to do it within marriage. Blame religion. With all his exhortations against fornication on a Sunday when I was a kid, Father Kelly’s brainwashed me. I have fewer inhibitions about getting down and dirty now we’re married.’

  ‘Mmm. I noticed. But I don’t see why we shouldn’t tell your ma. Between us we should sort you out if you show yourself lacking in the baby-making department. And if you don’t get me up the duff immediately, we can always consult Father Kelly,’ she teased. ‘He’s got a direct line to God, after all.’

  ‘So has Cyrus, and I don’t intend to consult him, either. No. Please, Abra. Let’s keep it just between ourselves for now. Well, between you, me and Cyrus.’ He just hoped Cyrus could keep a secret. He must impress on him that the impregnating of Abra was at a delicate stage and not to be bandied abroad. Particularly not to Ma.

  Rafferty glanced across at Abra as she lay beside him. He put a possessive hand on her flat belly and said, ‘right, Mrs Rafferty, what say we get down to making Ma and Father Kelly a Catholic baby they can dote on?’

  ‘You romantic old thing, you. I thought you’d never ask.’

  The next morning, Rafferty was juggling the statements of the most likely possibilities amongst the suspects. ‘We ought to get ourselves along to the rugby club. Talk to the manager and players and hangers-on. Never know, we might learn something to our advantage.’

  Llewellyn nodded, said, ‘I’ll slot it in.’

  Five minutes later, Rafferty murm
ured, ‘Alice Douglas. She’s still odds-on favourite for me. What about you?’

  ‘I should think so,’ said Llewellyn. ‘Her life can’t have been easy as a single mother without support. At the very least, she must have held a grudge against Mr Ainsley. Like most men in these situations, he got away lightly.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Rafferty thought of his own prospective fatherhood and felt quite smug. It would put him one up on Llewellyn, who, in spite of marrying before him, had yet to produce a child. He wondered if his intellectual blue stocking cousin, Maureen, wanted kids at all or whether she preferred to concentrate on her career. He must ask Ma. She’d be sure to know. There again, perhaps that wasn’t a good idea. Get Ma started on the subject of kids and God knew where it might end up, although he had a pretty good idea.

  ‘So we’ve got Alice Douglas, who could have killed Adam for her daughter’s sake; we’ve got Jeremy Paxton doing the deed for the sake of his dead half nephew; we’ve got Gary Sadiq, who could have done ditto for his pride’s sake after Adam gave him the silent treatment and made racist comments about him. Then we’ve got Sebastian Kennedy and Simon Fairweather – their pride must also have taken a few dents after Ainsley bullied them at school.’ Rafferty, with a younger brother who had suffered in a similar way, knew how long the victim could brood about it. How much they wanted closure of the sort that would give them back their pride. ‘What about Victoria Watson and Giles Harmsworth? Has the team come up with anything more on them yet?’

  ‘Not so far.’

  ‘Tell them to keep trying. Shame Ainsley’s two ex-wives weren’t at the reunion lunch that day. We might have been able to make a good case against one of them.’

  ‘Perhaps we should stick to the possibles, rather than the impossibles.’

  ‘Just doing a bit of wistful musing, that’s all.’

  ‘Or theorising from the basis of no evidence at all. I thought you already had all the theories you could handle.’

  ‘You take all the fun out of police work, Dafyd, did I ever tell you that?’