Deadly Reunion Read online

  Paxton, beyond supplying them with their room, the map of the school and the list of the reunion’s attendees and their home addresses, had been able to provide them with little other information. Of course, he had been in post for less than a year. Rafferty made a mental note to find out the name and current address of the school’s previous headmaster, who had, according to Paxton, been in situ for several decades and who had certainly been in his post when the current reunees had attended the school.

  They returned to the station and while Llewellyn typed up the interviews of the seven suspects, Rafferty sat and made a list of chores for the next day. If he was to find out about possible vendettas, soured love affairs and the like, he would need to go and see Adam Ainsley’s parents, who lived in Suffolk. And he would need to send somebody to question Adam Ainsley’s two ex-wives. For that he thought a woman’s touch was called for and Mary Carmody, the motherly, thirty-something, sergeant sprang immediately to mind. People confided in her; even Superintendent Bradley tended to seek her out in the canteen and bend her ear over budgetary worries and insubordinate inferiors – not that Mary had betrayed his confidence – but Bradley’s earnest stance over the tea cups and Mary’s motherly, head on one side air, had given it away. That, and the fact that, even when he was whispering, Long-Pockets Bradley had something of a booming voice. Quietness wasn’t in the man. Yes, he’d despatch Mary with Llewellyn, who was diffident with women, to one ex, and he’d take the other himself.

  As for the suspects, the number of these was thankfully small, as after speaking to the cook and the seven reunees, he couldn’t see that anyone else but those on the same table as Adam Ainsley would have been able to administer the hemlock. Coffee and biscuits had been served on the reunees’ arrival on that first morning, but that was all. Their first – and only, as it turned out – meal all together had been the lunch. And he thought it almost certain that the hemlock must have been administered that Tuesday lunchtime in Ainsley’s meal, as it was too far-fetched to imagine he would accept any part of the plant from anyone. What possible reason could be given for proffering such a thing? No. It was the not-so-magnificent seven who were in the frame.

  Rafferty yawned and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was ten o’clock. It had been a long day and tomorrow would probably be longer. ‘You get off home,’ he told Llewellyn once he had typed up the statements from the seven suspects. ‘We’ll make an early start in the morning.’

  After Llewellyn had said goodnight and left, Rafferty spent some time wondering how he was going to explain to Abra that they were about to have some unexpected houseguests. She wouldn’t be any more pleased than he was himself, especially as she still had hopes of persuading him to get started on the decorating, which the presence of guests would make impossible.

  How to break it to her, though? Could he perhaps claim that Ma was celebrating a special birthday that required the attendance of the wider Rafferty and Kelly families? He shook his head. No. Abra was the one who remembered all the family birthdays; he hadn’t had to trouble since they’d started living together. She’d know that Ma wasn’t anywhere near a particularly special birthday.

  No, there was nothing for it but to break it to her straight and wait for the fallout.

  As it happened, when Rafferty got home, he found he didn’t need to break the news to Abra after all as his ma hadn’t wasted any time after staking her claim on his spare rooms that morning and had used her key to ensconce the visitors in Rafferty’s home. And he’d been right, there were four of them. Never one to waste an amenity, she had made the unilateral decision that his second spare bedroom was just the thing.

  Abra was forced to employ only a fierce whisper to berate him as she dished up the hastily organized home delivery meal that evening.

  ‘You knew about this and you didn’t tell me?’ she accused as she spooned up the Balti Chicken.

  ‘No I didn’t,’ Rafferty whispered back. ‘Ma sprung it on me out of the blue this morning. But she never mentioned that she was bringing them over today. And, until today, I was under the impression that she was only expecting two cousins and their partners, whom she was going to put up. She never mentioned any more. What, do you mean they all just turned up and you found them here when you got home?’

  ‘No,’ she conceded. ‘Your ma rang me at work to let me know. Kind of her.’ She dished out the rice with a vicious chop of the serving spoon. The metal on earthenware clang reverberated around the kitchen. Rafferty hoped their guests couldn’t hear it.

  ‘I think it came as something of a surprise to her, too,’ Rafferty said in an attempt to placate her. ‘I think the reunion just snowballed once she got on the internet and discovered more family than even she knew we had.’

  Abra wasn’t to be placated. ‘How would you like it if my mother dumped two brace of my relatives on us?’

  Rafferty gave an uneasy grin as if to demonstrate that he’d have been happy to accommodate them. It wasn’t true, of course, as Abra well knew. He had had little chance to say anything other than a surprised ‘hello’ to their guests since he’d got in. Abra had been forced to entertain them since six o’clock when she’d got home from work. She’d even had to make up the beds as, not expecting any guests, they hadn’t bothered to make up the one spare room that was furnished since they’d come back off honeymoon at the beginning of July. His ma had, apparently, even sent the other spare bed over with his two brothers, who had spent two hours sweating over it before he came home as they tried to get it assembled.

  In spite of having little love for guests of any sort, Rafferty found himself suppressing a grin. He supposed they’d have to feed his brothers as well. He hoped Abra had ordered enough food for them all.

  It was now half-past ten. He’d had a long day and would have liked nothing more after his meal than a hot bath and an early night. But that wasn’t on the cards. One of their guests had a touch of the Bradleys about him and spoke in a loud voice as if he was addressing a meeting sans microphone – Rafferty could hear his Southern twang from here. Cyrus Rafferty had been holding forth ever since he’d got home. It didn’t bode well for his chances of retiring before midnight.

  Rafferty glanced at the clock as the bedside radio switched itself on that Thursday morning and groaned before his head slumped back on the pillow. He reached out an arm and turned off a way-too-chirpy Chris Evans. How could anyone be that full of beans before breakfast? It was unnatural.

  Cyrus Rafferty had indulged in a monologue till midnight and beyond on what appeared to be his favourite subject – the lax morals of the modern generation. Wait till he found out about his teenage niece, Gemma, and her illegitimate little boy, was Rafferty’s thought.

  It turned out Cyrus was a lay preacher from America’s Bible Belt and was inclined to climb into the pulpit with no encouragement whatsoever. Rafferty, sober as a judge after four large ones, had hunted in vain for a topic of conversation that didn’t set him off again. But after he’d made inroads into Rafferty’s best Irish whiskey, Cyrus had been nigh on unstoppable. His wife, Wendy, had tried to restrain him, but even she had fared no better and Rafferty had been forced from politeness, to resign himself to listen to the never-ending sermon. It had been like being a kid again and forced to endure Father Kelly’s at St Boniface, without benefit of the sly humour that Father Kelly would interweave into his words of reproach for the parish ne’er-do-wells.

  He braced himself and lifted his head again. It was thumping and he had little white lights dancing about in his eyes. He blinked, but they were still there.

  He levered himself out of bed, considered hunting for his one dressing gown and thought ‘Oh, sod it’, and went to the kitchen in search of tea in his boxers. He was dismayed to find Cyrus there before him.

  ‘See here, Joe,’ he said in his pulpit voice. ‘Ah know how you Brits love your tea. Wendy said Ah had to make some for you and Abra’, and he thrust two mugs full of weak cat’s piss towards him.

  Ra
fferty managed a sickly smile. He hated weak tea. So did Abra. He supposed this meant he’d be on the receiving end of more verbals when he gave it to her. Perhaps he’d be able to sneak down in five minutes and make fresh cups.

  ‘What’s this?’ a sleepy Abra asked as he handed her the mug.

  ‘Morning tea,’ he told her. ‘Courtesy of Cyrus.’

  ‘Yuk. Does the man not even know how to make a decent cuppa? I thought he had Irish blood in his veins.’

  ‘Fair dos, Abra. He’s drinking it himself. It was meant well. Still, it’s no wonder Americans marvel at our British love of tea. If we drank this swill for pleasure, I’d marvel at it as well. Give it here. I’ll chuck it out the window. I’ll give it five minutes for the coast to clear and then I’ll make some fresh.’

  Once again, Rafferty made it down to the kitchen, creeping past Cyrus and Wendy’s room, only to find Cyrus still in the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher. He insisted on making him and Abra a second cup. Rafferty accepted them with forced politeness and returned upstairs to get showered and dressed. He thought better of presenting Abra with another cup of cat’s piss and deposited it down the bathroom sink.

  He had a little chuckle at the thought that Cyrus and Wendy as well as Angel and Louis, their other two guests, must be dying for a decent cup of American coffee. He could see that he would not only have to get a decent brew in, but that he would also have to train Cyrus up in the gentle art of tea-making, or this could go on for the entire fortnight.

  Rafferty left early for the station, not stopping for breakfast in case Cyrus appeared again and decided to play the helpful guest and make him yet a third cup of undrinkable tea. He arrived before Llewellyn, which wasn’t something that happened too often – usually only when he’d felt glad to leave the house to escape a domestic.

  He got himself a builder’s brew from the canteen, put Llewellyn’s on his desk in expectation of his imminent appearance and started to read through the statements that uniform had taken from the other hundred school reunees. The first half-dozen were very short and circumspect, as though those interviewed had felt it unwise to confide youthful school indiscretions in which they or the rest had been involved. But then he started to read the seventh statement and realized he must have reached the school gossip, for here was food in plenty for a suspicious policeman.

  ‘Adam was always a girl magnet,’ confided someone called Trudy Teller. By God, that wasn’t a misnomer, as he discovered. ‘Most of the sixth form were smitten with him as well as plenty of the fourth and fifth formers. Even mousy little Alice Douglas used to give him the moon eyes. Not that he’d have looked at that little swot once, never mind twice. Sophie Diaz was mad about him, too and they had a sizzling affair all that last summer, right under old Barmpot’s nose.’ ‘Barmpot’ was their endearing nickname for the then headmaster, Cedric Barmforth. He was someone else he must make time to interview, along with Ainsley’s parents. Uniform had already broken the news to them, of course, as his death had originally been thought to be a natural one, but he felt he ought to go along too and let them know what little he had discovered as well as find out what they might be able to tell them about their only son. He was glad he was able to say that their son had been a popular boy; maybe they’d known that already, but it would bear repetition. It might be some comfort to them.

  He put Trudy Teller’s gushing confidences aside as someone worth a second interview just as Llewellyn appeared and did a double-take to see his superior in the office so early.

  ‘Not another domestic with Abra?’ the Welshman asked. ‘You’ve only been back from your honeymoon a month.’

  ‘No, though if I’d have stayed we might have,’ said Rafferty. He explained about his visitors and wasn’t surprised to see the Welshman’s thin lips curl faintly upwards. He was just recounting about Cyrus and the tea when Superintendent Bradley popped his head round the door.

  ‘You still here, Rafferty? Should have thought you’d be back up at Griffin School, but. Some very influential people on the Board of Governors there, you know. I want you to give the case tip-top attention and clear it up asap.’

  ‘Plenty of overtime, then, Super,’ Rafferty said deadpan as he suppressed a grin. ‘That’s good.’

  Bradley’s lardy face fell into lines of anguish at this mention of Rafferty’s possible inroads into his precious budget. But he recovered admirably, to tell Rafferty, ‘I shall want daily reports on this one. There’s a cabinet minister’s son at that school, so I don’t want it getting round that we’re less than efficient as a force.’

  Rafferty’s lips itched to tell him that one of the suspects was a civil servant in the Home Office. That would be likely to turn him purple and foaming at the mouth. But he really didn’t fancy risking having to give mouth-to-mouth. Not on Cyrus’s cat’s piss tea. Once Bradley had slammed his way back out, Rafferty spent a few seconds wondering again why the superintendent had assigned him to the case, given his less than princely confidence in him. Maybe it was Bradley trying to play both sides against the middle again. He’d done this before – sending him into posh environments, presumably hoping he’d make such a cock-up that, after the ensuing inquiry, he’d be either demoted or fired. Rafferty suspected the super would have gladly risked a poor showing on the crime statistics if it meant he could get rid of him.

  He split the rest of the statements in half and handed Llewellyn his share. ‘Never mind Bradley. It’s my case and I’ll decide what gets done when. We’ll get these read and see who needs a second interview before we head back to the school. But before we go there, I think we ought to take a drive to Suffolk and speak to Ainsley’s parents. We might learn something useful from them.’

  Two hours later, Rafferty had a little pile of statements put aside, their authors worthy of a second grilling. He finished his fourth cup of tea of the morning and stretched. ‘Right. We’ll head off for Suffolk. Maybe, by the time we get back, our witnesses might have remembered another tasty morsel or two for our delectation.’

  The ride out to Adam Ainsley’s parents’ home in Suffolk took around an hour. They lived in a pretty village a few miles from Ipswich in which the thatched roofs vied with the black and whites for the title of most picturesque home. There was even a duck pond that seemed to be home to a particularly territorial swan, because as they parked and got out of the car, he came rushing across to them, wings flapping threateningly and emitting the most horrendous row.

  Rafferty beat a hasty retreat, waving his arms and uttering placating noises as he went. He hurried to put the car and Llewellyn between it and himself.

  ‘God,’ he said. ‘The wildlife around here’s none too friendly. If I’d have known I’d have brought some bread to distract him.’

  Thankfully, baulked by the width of the car from getting his beak into his intended victim, the swan decided to seek less mobile prey and approached an elderly woman who was hobbling along with a stick. But she must have been a local because she was well able to deal with the beast and shook her stick at it, whereby it beat its own hasty retreat.

  Mr and Mrs Ainsley were older than Rafferty had expected. Well into their seventies, and clearly crushed by the loss of their son. There was a photograph of Adam with his parents on the mantelpiece. He looked around the mid-thirties in it so it must have been pretty recent, and the change in his parents was striking. They looked quite sprightly in the photograph, but now they seemed ten years older and weighed down by their grief. They were inconsolable at the loss of their son. It was clear they’d doted on Adam, clear, too, that he was an only child from the lack of photos of other offspring – no wonder he’d thought so much of himself, was Rafferty’s rather unkind thought. Must have been a Change baby and all the more precious for that.

  There were pictures of him on every surface; every tiny achievement was recorded on film. Even the loss of his first baby tooth had been the occasion of a photo opportunity. Rafferty felt like a murderer himself, especially as the couple were lik
ely to learn a few unwelcome things about their only son during the course of the investigation.

  The visit brought no additional information about the dead man. Mrs Ainsley seemed able to do little more than clasp a photo of her son to her bosom and moan, ‘My son, my son’, over and over again and Mr Ainsley wasn’t a lot better. He insisted on dragging them up to Adam’s boyhood bedroom and proudly showed off all his cups and medals and rosettes.

  ‘Excelled at everything.’ Andrew Ainsley’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I don’t know where he got it from as my wife and I were never the sporty type. It seemed to come effortlessly to him. And friends. There were always friends in the house, lots of them. Used to eat us out of house and home during the holidays from Griffin. Though we wouldn’t have had it any other way. It was wonderful to see how well liked he was.’

  ‘When did you last see your son, Mr Ainsley?’ Rafferty asked him as Ainsley stood polishing one of his son’s many prize cups on his handkerchief.

  Andrew Ainsley shuffled a little on the thick carpet before he answered. ‘It’s . . . it’s a little while now. I can’t quite remember. But he was such a busy person, always, taking boys abroad for schoolboy championships for this and that. He was never still for a moment. My wife will tell you.’

  His carefully controlled grief was painful to see and Rafferty was as glad as Llewellyn to escape the claustrophobic cottage and get out into the fresh summer air. Rafferty looked around nervously in case the swan decided to come back with reinforcements, but there was no sign of the bird and they reached the sanctuary of the car safely.

  ‘Back to the station, sir?’ asked Llewellyn.

  ‘No. Not just yet. I know a nice little pub just up here. We’ll have a meal. They’ll only be having lunch back at Griffin School, so we might as well. Besides, I didn’t have any breakfast. I thought I’d better get out of the kitchen before Cyrus appeared and made me another cup of tea. We can kill two birds with one stone, as we might bump into one or two people who knew Adam Ainsley when he was young. We might learn something unsavoury that his parents wouldn’t tell us.’