Deadly Reunion Page 5

  But although their statements had looked promising of further revelations, none of the four were able to add anything significant. Or so they claimed. When the last one had gone, Rafferty turned to Llewellyn. ‘We’ll find Sophie Diaz after dinner. See if she won’t do a bit of bad-mouthing about Adam to us.’

  ‘Unlikely, I would have thought. Not now he’s been murdered. It’ll be how fond she was of him and how good it had been to see him again.’

  ‘A bit of optimism wouldn’t go amiss.’

  ‘Ad astra per aspera. To the stars through difficulties. It’s the Griffin School motto. It could have been written for you.’

  ‘I don’t want to reach the stars. Only the solution to this case. But I’ll try to look on the bright side, if you will.’

  ‘I’ve always found optimism an over-rated concept. Why set yourself up for a disappointment? Logic and realism have always been the precepts by which I’ve abided.’

  ‘Don’t I know it. Come on. Let’s go down to the dining hall. We might just be in time to beg a glass of wine.’

  But it seemed that Llewellyn’s stance against optimism had been right as Rafferty not only got no wine, but he got no Sophie Diaz to talk to, either. When he asked where she was, no one knew and he learned she hadn’t been present at dinner.

  Perhaps she’d been renewing acquaintances in the village and had received an invitation to dine. Tomorrow would have to suffice. But, for now, he wanted to get the rest of the second interviews out of the way. He was curious to discover if any of the other people on his short list would expand on what they had already said.

  Of the ten witnesses left, to save them waiting in line like schoolchildren, Rafferty asked them to come up to see him at ten minute intervals. Two hours should see the job done.

  It wasn’t till the last witness that Rafferty learned something useful. Artemis Willoughby was rather a louche character, who sashayed into the room with the gait of a fashion model. Strangely, from the school gossip that he had already heard, Artemis wasn’t gay, though he certainly gave a good impression of being so, to Rafferty’s eyes. He wasn’t surprised to learn that Artemis was an actor.

  ‘Resting.’ Artemis tossed fetching golden curls. ‘Though I have hopes for the autumn. Piece of Noel Coward’s.’

  Artemis Willoughby was a good-looking, if fey, young man with the aforementioned curls and a stubble as fashionable as old Harold’s from the pub. ‘You hinted in your previous statement about some sort of secret society at the school. Perhaps you can tell us more about it?’

  ‘Oh that.’ Artemis shrugged. ‘Piece of nonsense. It was started by the girls as some sort of tribute to Reynold Ericson, one of our former classmates, who died during the summer holidays after the fifth form in a ghastly car accident. Funnily enough, the girls ended up being shut out of it as it became exclusively male.’

  ‘Were you a member?’

  ‘Not me. Never asked, darling. Not that I’d have joined. Reynold was a pompous prick who took on mythical status after his death. As far as I was concerned, the only difference was that he was a dead prick instead of a live one.’ Artemis glanced at his watch and Rafferty took a surreptitious glance at his own. It was gone ten o’clock. Abra wouldn’t invite him over to her side of the bed tonight, for sure.

  ‘Called themselves the Sons of Satan or some daft name like that.’ Artemis went on. ‘Thought they’d be able to call back Reynold’s soul. Why anyone would want to is beyond me.’

  ‘Who was a member of this society?’

  Artemis swept his carefully styled hair off his forehead; it slid back in the perfect disarray it had been in before. ‘A select little band: Adam Ainsley, Sebastian Kennedy, Giles Harmsworth, Gary Sadiq, Noel Hayles, Freddy Jones and Charles Spence.’

  Rafferty smiled. ‘What did they do? Sacrifice virgins to the Devil in return for Reynold’s soul?’

  Artemis shrugged. ‘Could be. I know it involved the use of the number of the Beast. Six-six-six and all that. Even managed to get the key to the chapel for their devilish ceremonies. Though they can’t have been very successful, as I never saw an apparition of Reynold around the school.’

  ‘When would this have been? During the last summer before you left?’

  ‘Yes. But it started right at the beginning of term, in September. Reynold died during the summer holidays after the fifth year. I think during the six weeks’ break everyone must have forgotten what an idiot he was. One of the girls painted a portrait of him and turned a corner of her bedroom into a shrine.’

  ‘Which girl?’

  ‘A girl called Annette Manners. She hasn’t come to the reunion. I remember she had her nose put out of joint when the boys decided the club was to be an all-male affair and turfed her and the other girls out.’

  ‘Why didn’t they want the girls as members?’

  ‘Oh, I think it was one of those macho things. Went in for ‘my dick’s bigger than your dick’ games. At first, that is. They only got more Devilish during that last summer term.’

  ‘I’m surprised at the members. Several of them don’t get on any better now than they apparently did then.’

  ‘You mean Adam and Giles and Seb, I suppose?’

  ‘Mmm. I wouldn’t have thought any of them would be keen to belong to a club that the others were members of.’

  ‘They were always in competition. I suppose they thought they might as well compete in the land of the dick and the Devil as about anything else. I’ll tell you who would have won the former contest every time. Adam. He wasn’t a girl magnet just because of his muscles.’

  Artemis sashayed his way out a few minutes later, leaving Rafferty bemused.

  ‘Did you ever belong to a society dedicated to calling up the Devil?’ he asked Llewellyn, who had also gone to a fee-paying school, though one lower down the social and educational pecking order than Griffin.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor me. Must be an upper class thing. All those classics lessons and myths about snake-headed monsters and the like must have turned their pubescent brains.’ He stood up and stretched. ‘Time we turned our brains for home. Not to mention the rest of us. Abra’ll be spitting fire. I bet Cyrus has been holding forth again about modern youth and how much they need religion. Abra’s inclined to take it personally.’

  ‘What about writing up the reports? We should do it tonight.’

  ‘Don’t be my conscience, Daff. I’ve a perfectly good one of my own. Tomorrow morning will do. As long as we beat Long Pockets in by an hour, he won’t be any the wiser about our backsliding. And at the speed you type, you’ll get them done in no time.’

  ‘Even so—’ Llewellyn began.

  ‘Even so, nothing. At the moment, I’m more concerned with placating my lovely bride than I am in placating Bradley. At least he’s not likely to withhold his favours as I never had them in the first place.’

  When Rafferty got home Cyrus told him that Abra had gone to bed with a headache. ‘I took her a cup of tea up. That should help.’

  Rafferty just managed a taut smile and a ‘thank you’. Poor Abra. Not only had she to deal with their four visitors alone, but Cyrus had forced more tea on her. You’re going to cop it, Rafferty told himself as he said good night and headed upstairs.

  But thankfully, whether or not her sick headache was real, Abra had gone to sleep. He crept about the bedroom, fearful of waking her. He’d have to get up extra early in the morning in order to beat Cyrus to the kitchen. It was too much to expect Abra to put up with Cyrus’s morning tea two days running.

  The next day was even busier as their interviewees were further afield. They had yet to interview Ainsley’s ex-wives. They lived on different sides of the country and Rafferty had already decided to split his forces. He sent Llewellyn and Mary Carmody to see the first wife and he took the second, on the principle that the more recent wife would be likely to bring forth more of a bitter tirade and Llewellyn could be a delicate flower about such things.

  Ainsley’s sec
ond ex-wife, Stella, lived in Somerset. He set off at nine, once Llewellyn had finished typing up the previous evening’s interviews and he had seen Bradley to give him his report on the investigation thus far.

  In the interim, Bradley had somehow found out that Simon Fairweather was at the Home Office – some arse-licker on the team, no doubt – and he interrogated Rafferty about the man and was far from satisfied with Rafferty’s answers, which, seeing as Fairweather was quieter than a whisper, meant there was little to report.

  ‘But he must have said something,’ Bradley protested. ‘Did he make any complaints, for instance?’

  ‘Not to me, he didn’t. I don’t think you need worry, sir. He doesn’t seem the complaining sort.’

  ‘Not to you, perhaps.’ God, thought Rafferty, the old bugger’s sniffy today. ‘He probably prefers to take his complaints to a higher authority. He could be the sort who make their complaints on paper so they’re always on your record.’

  And you’d know, was Rafferty’s thought.

  Bradley seemed to have got himself in a bit of a lather on the subject of Simon Fairweather, though, for the life of him, Rafferty couldn’t see what Fairweather could have to complain about. But he was perfectly happy to let Bradley stew about what memoranda might be finding their way back to the brass at Region. If he wasn’t such an arse-licker himself, Rafferty might have felt sorry for him. But as it was, he set his mind to thoughts of the coming interview and what questions to ask the ex-Mrs Ainsley.

  He made good time and reached the Somerset town of Carworth just after lunch. Llewellyn, the techno whizz-kid, had set the satnav for him and the computer had directed him faultlessly. It never did that when he set the gizmo.

  The second ex-Mrs Ainsley turned out to be tall and willowy like her house, though with what Rafferty guessed must be surgical enhancement around the bosom region. They were never natural, he thought. They certainly weren’t a matching set with the rest of her.

  Stella Ainsley was surprisingly welcoming. He soon learned why. He had been right and the bitter recriminations against her former husband set in within five minutes. It was as if she couldn’t wait to let the festering juices out.

  ‘He was like that song, you know? “He had one eye on the mirror and he watched himself go by”.’

  ‘Carly Simon.’

  ‘Was it? Anyway, he didn’t have much love to spare for a real woman’ – well as real as she got, with those bazookas, was Rafferty’s irreverent thought. ‘He loved himself too much. He used to like to fix the car out front, stripped to the waist, though we had a perfectly good garage. He’d flex his muscles for every passing bimbo. A wife can only take so much of such behaviour. And when I came home and found him in bed with one of our next-door neighbours, it was the last straw. I kicked him out.’

  ‘How long were you married?’

  ‘Five years.’

  ‘You never had children?’

  ‘God no. Adam wasn’t father material. He wasn’t husband material, either, as I learned.’ She bit her lip and hurried on. ‘I married him when he was still playing professional rugby and I don’t mind admitting that I enjoyed those early days of our marriage. We were feted wherever we went. Adam lapped it up. He got rather depressed when it all ended and he looked round for another sport where he’d get the same adulation. He found one with the bimbo athletics.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about his schooldays?’

  ‘Did he ever. According to Adam, he was always first at everything: rugby, swimming, running. You name it and he won it. I got sick of it in the end when his subjects of conversation came down to little more than boasting or bemoaning his fate that he should have come down from the height of his fame to teaching sport to adolescent boys. Well, I imagine you can guess what it was like?’

  Rafferty nodded. He could. Stella Ainsley reminded him of his late wife, Angie. He hadn’t been able to do anything right for her. Getting her pregnant and the hasty wedding that followed were the highlights and it all went steadily downhill after that. They hadn’t had children, either – the baby she had been carrying had died in the womb very early in the pregnancy. Or so she’d claimed. Rafferty, already caught on the hook, was just as pleased there were no more little hostages to fortune.

  Stella Ainsley could recall few names from her late ex-husband’s schooldays. Adam had apparently always been the star, the winner, with everyone else as also-rans. All in all, he’d learned little more than he already had, though he suspected there was further information she could give him.

  Rafferty rang Llewellyn on his mobile once he got back to the car. ‘Any joy?’

  ‘The first Mrs Ainsley was quite forthcoming. She even recalled a few names from the past.’

  ‘More than my one managed. So who did she remember?’

  ‘Giles Harmsworth. She knew him, apparently and several of the others. She went to university with Giles and Asgar Sadiq.’

  ‘Did she now? And did she have anything nasty to say about either of them?’

  ‘She was of the opinion that Giles wouldn’t have the nerve to drop hemlock into Adam Ainsley’s food and then calmly eat his own lunch as if nothing had happened. She didn’t know Mr Sadiq quite as well, but she did say that she checked on the Internet after we rang her and she said that hemlock, apart from being grown in Asia, is also quite commonly used as a poison on that continent.’

  ‘Is that so? Seems Mr Gary Sadiq has moved up the suspect pecking order. Remind me we must have another little chat with him this afternoon. I’ll see you back at the cop shop.’ Rafferty disconnected and settled down to the long drive home.

  Asgar ‘Gary’ Sadiq was a light-skinned Anglo-Indian, and he had spent most of his life in England as he had undergone all his schooling there.

  ‘A long way from home,’ Rafferty commented. ‘What did you do during the holidays? Stay with your English relatives or fly back?’

  Sadiq shook his head. ‘Neither. My mother’s family disowned her when she married my father. And it was too far and too costly to return to India in the holidays. The fees cost all that my parents could spare. No I mostly stayed with school-friends. I stayed with Giles several times and Sebastian. I even stayed with Adam once, though it was an experience that neither of us chose to repeat.’

  ‘Oh? Why was that?’

  ‘I’m quite competitive. Adam had never had occasion to discover this at school, as we weren’t competitive in the same things. But at his home we were thrown together more and we played games with his family. I beat him regularly at Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. He didn’t like it. He was barely speaking to me by the end of the holidays. Neither were his parents – they didn’t like their wonder boy having his nose put out of joint. Though they were more successful at concealing their antagonism than Adam was.’

  ‘Not a very nice experience. You must have been glad to get back to school.’

  Sadiq gave a fatalistic shrug. ‘I’ve had worse.’

  Rafferty wondered that Sadiq should choose to confide this little titbit. Admittedly, it could hardly be said to be cause for poisoning Ainsley all of seventeen years later. Unless he was being disingenuous and the rebuff had cut deep. Teenagers could be sensitive souls. Perhaps Asgar had been a particularly tortured teen, with homesickness and racism mixed into the brew. All would have been so much more painful with him so far from home and with little hope of seeing his family. Perhaps he had nursed Adam’s rebuff all these years and this reunion had been the first chance he had had to get his revenge?

  ‘Have you been back to your home in India recently, Mr Sadiq?’ Rafferty asked, curious to learn if Asgar had had opportunity to consult some Indian wise man about what plant would kill a mortal enemy in the way Adam Ainsley had been killed.

  ‘I live there now. I work in IT and India is a rising star. Rivals Silicone Valley in the States. I just came back here for the school reunion.’

  ‘Long way to come.’

  ‘Yes. But I often have to fly over to Britain on busin
ess, so it was little more expense to tag this reunion on the end of a round of meetings.’

  ‘Did Mr Barmforth, the last headmaster, keep you updated on who else would be attending the reunion?’

  ‘Oh yes. He always sent out a round robin email; Jeremy Paxton did the same when he took over. There’s an Old Griffinites’ club. A number of us meet regularly.’

  ‘What about Adam? Was he a member?’

  ‘No. We have a clubhouse in town, but I never saw him there. Admittedly, I couldn’t manage to fly over too often. And this is the first time he’s turned up for a reunion. I was surprised when I saw his name on Jeremy’s round-robin email as one of the attendees.’

  ‘Did he say why he’d come this time?’

  ‘He just said he was curious about how we’d all got on, though I think, from reading between the lines, that he was bored with what he was doing. You know he worked as a sports instructor after he quit rugby?’

  Rafferty nodded.

  ‘I got the impression he missed his life as a professional sportsman, though he didn’t say as much. Didn’t want to admit it, I suppose. He was always very fit, but he’d let himself get a bit flabby. Sure sign of lack of self-esteem, don’t they say?’

  Rafferty pulled in his incipient beer belly and said, ‘I wouldn’t know.’ Still, it was interesting that Ainsley seemed to have been letting himself go. He was currently single – neither he, nor the two ex-Mrs Ainsleys had said his love life was as red-hot as it had been when he was the school sporting hero or the professional rugby player.

  ‘I think he came to the reunion in the hope of putting out a few feelers about other work. But most of his peers went into professional careers – banking, lecturing, the medical or legal world. Or, like me, IT. Adam was never academic, so there was no way any of us could have fixed him up with a suitable job. I don’t think he found the help he was seeking. He died an unhappy, frustrated man.’

  Once Gary Sadiq had gone, Rafferty leaned back and said to Llewellyn, who had been taking notes, ‘So Sadiq had been aware that Adam Ainsley would be returning to Griffin. Asgar Sadiq is a Muslim, according to the school records in Paxton’s study. Did he nurse a grievance all these years and seize his opportunity to get his own back, perhaps encouraged by Muslim fanatics in his homeland?’