Deadly Reunion Read online

  Of course, Llewellyn wasn’t slow to remind him that Sadiq hadn’t been the only one to receive Paxton’s round robin emails, which had listed Adam as an attendee at the reunion. All the reunees would have had them and could have planned accordingly; the hemlock alone indicated that planning had gone into this murder. And murder, Rafferty was convinced, this was, even though Sadiq had tried to paint a picture of a man on the brink of possible suicide. He had found time to have a chat with Ainsley’s doctor and he had said that Ainsley hadn’t struck him as being a suicide prospect. The anti-depressants had been prescribed as the reflex action of a hard-pressed GP, he admitted. He told them that he had thought Ainsley more frustrated and lacking ego-fuel than depressed. And for all that Adam Ainsley hadn’t been academically bright, he had received an excellent education and was as capable of looking up poisons on the Internet as the next person. It seemed unlikely in the extreme that he would have selected the paralyzing hemlock as the means to his own destruction. Everyone they had spoken to had described Ainsley as proud of his physique and his physical abilities. And even if his body had become a bit more lardy than it had been in his youth, Rafferty had seen his corpse and he had still been what his ma would have described as ‘a fine figure of a man’. Somehow he doubted that a man prone to such self-love would choose to render himself a blind paraplegic at the end. After such an easy, successful life, he would choose an easy death.

  ‘Let’s look at what we’ve got so far,’ Llewellyn suggested. ‘We have Asgar Sadiq possibly nursing a grudge all these years after Adam Ainsley had given him the silent treatment. Though why he told us about it, if so . . . He had no need. Mr Ainsley’s parents were hardly likely to give him away seeing as to reveal that Adam Ainsley had been piqued to be beaten by Mr Sadiq at Scrabble would have shown their son to be a petulant young man. We have Sophie Diaz whom he dumped when he learned she had slept with most of his classmates. We have Alice Douglas, who is supposed to have made moon eyes at Adam and been ignored. It’s not much, is it? What else?’

  ‘Nothing else. Unless we count Mrs Benton, the cook and Harrison the groundsman. The first because Adam perhaps sneaked to the head about her lumpy custard and the latter because Adam had stubbed out one spliff too many on his manicured lawn. Hmm, you’re right. We’ve not got a lot to go on. There must be more. And we’d better find it before the weekend or we’re going to be chasing our tails all over the country. They’re all due to go home on Sunday and we’ve not got the evidence to keep hold of any of them.’

  After musing on this for a few moments, Rafferty suggested they went in search of lunch in the village before Llewellyn sought out Alice Douglas again. As he told the Welshman, he thought better on a full stomach.

  Sebastian Kennedy and Simon Fairweather were in the pub in the village when they got there. When Rafferty and Llewellyn had got their drinks and ordered their lunch, Rafferty asked if they could join them at their table.

  ‘If you must,’ said Sebastian Kennedy, the rebellious pig-hater, as he sat back and gave them an insolent, challenging stare.

  ‘Charming as ever, I see,’ said Rafferty as he sat down.

  ‘That’s the glory of being rich, Inspector. It allows a man to be as rude as he likes and there’s no comeback. No one’s going to sack you or refuse to employ you. No one’s going to tear you off a strip or give you a bad work assessment or try to put you down. And it doesn’t much matter if they do. Money’s a great comforter.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Rafferty, as he thought of the super. Bradley specialized in several of the above. ‘So what are you doing in here? Fed up of school meals?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Kennedy told them. ‘Plus the fact they don’t serve up my preferred booze at lunch or dinner.’ Kennedy had a pint in front of him. ‘It’s all fine wines from the school’s excellent cellar and they’re meant to be savoured, not thrown back with gay abandon.’

  Rafferty laughed, being something of a gay abandon man himself, and sipped his Adnam’s bitter. He gradually brought the conversation round to what Simon Fairweather did at the Home Office – if only to have something with which to appease Superintendent Bradley if the investigation dragged on.

  ‘I’m not a politician,’ Fairweather replied to his question. ‘I’m a civil servant. An Under-Secretary. I joined the Home Office straight after university.’

  ‘Double First, our Simon,’ Kennedy told them. ‘They were lucky to get him. But, God, Si, how do you stand all that bureaucracy and paper shuffling?’

  Simon Fairweather smiled. He had a particularly engaging smile – it altered his rather solemn face amazingly and gave him a mischievous pixie quality – most unsuitable in a civil servant, was Rafferty’s thought, where inscrutability was the norm.

  ‘It’s rather more than that, Seb. We deal with day-to-day policing, security for the royal family, combating terrorism. We have rather a wide field of responsibility. I’ve never regretted joining the civil service as a career. And there’s plenty of scope for the ultra-ambitious.’

  ‘My boss has been getting his knickers in a twist about your involvement in the case,’ Rafferty revealed, without a blush for any possible disloyalty.

  ‘Why?’ Fairweather flashed that impish smile again. ‘Has he been fiddling the overtime figures?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘Then he’s nothing to worry about. And I’ve nothing to complain about. So far.’

  Rafferty nodded. ‘That’s good.’ He paused, took another sip of his bitter, and then went on. ‘Bit awkward for you, this case, isn’t it? In your line.’

  Fairweather gave another impish smile. ‘Certainly, we’re not encouraged to get caught up, as a suspect – which I suppose I am – in murder investigations. But I think Griffin School can be regarded by the senior mandarins as being a suitable place for me to socialize. After all, several of my colleagues attended the school and some come back to the reunions. I won’t get a black mark on my record.’

  ‘Unless you killed Ainsley,’ Kennedy quipped. ‘You might get a bit more than a black mark then, even from the mandarins.’

  ‘As far as I’m aware, Sebastian, the killer, whoever he is, aside, you’re the nearest the school comes to harbouring a criminal. Though, I have to say that, as an anarchist, you’re too lazy to be a very enthusiastic one.’

  ‘That’s me put in my place,’ Kennedy said. ‘Trust a civil servant to get the last word.’

  ‘I rather think you just did that, Seb.’

  Their meals arrived then and Rafferty tucked in heartily to his roast beef and Yorkshires. The beef was melt-in-the-mouth tender and the potatoes were delicious; crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, just as he liked them. He hadn’t expected much from a small village pub, but he made a mental note to put this one in his address book as a possible place to take Abra.

  Sebastian Kennedy had started on his fourth pint by the time Rafferty had finished his meal. He gave Llewellyn the nod and a twenty pound note and his sergeant got up to get more drinks. ‘Will you boys have one with us?’

  Like old Harold previously, Sebastian Kennedy pretended to be horrified. ‘What? Drinking with pigs? Go on then, I’ll have a large Martel.’

  ‘Are you taking the mick out of a poor Mick pig, Mr Kennedy?’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it. And call me Sebastian, seeing as we’re now drinking buddies. I’m a Mick myself on my father’s side. Limerick.’

  ‘Dublin.’

  ‘Not the land of the Sniffy Liffey?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘We want to be careful or Si here will have us both investigated for IRA sympathies. I take it you’re not a Prod?’

  ‘No. Seriously lapsed Catholic.’ Seeing as they were getting so pally, Rafferty decided to ask a straightforward question. ‘Tell me, Sebastian, who do you think killed Adam Ainsley?’

  Kennedy shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Don’t much care, either. As long as I don’t get fitted up for it.’

  �
�Don’t worry. I don’t do fitting-up.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. I’d hate to do jail time for Alki.’

  ‘Alki?’

  ‘One of my other names for Adam Ainsley. AA. Alcoholics’ Anonymous.’

  ‘And was he? An alki, I mean?’

  ‘Never used to be. Was always a keep fit fanatic. But he didn’t look so hot to me. Running to seed. He was definitely sinking the vino pretty heavily that lunchtime for all his show of going for a run afterwards. Drank the best part of two bottles of wine; good job several others didn’t want their share or I might have gone short. I’ve never been one for keep-fit. I mean, look at Adam. Goes out for a run and dies. Not much of an advert for exercise.’

  ‘He was poisoned, Sebastian, according to the inspector,’ Simon Fairweather reminded him. ‘He didn’t have a heart attack like that middle-aged jogger who died some years ago. His death had nothing whatsoever to do with exercising.’

  ‘What about you, sir?’ Rafferty turned to Simon Fairweather before the conversation had a chance to develop into an argument. ‘Have you any idea who did it?’

  ‘No. Though don’t they say that poisoning’s a woman’s crime?’

  Typical mandarin to pass the buck. ‘Yes. But then, that saying might just be taken advantage of by one of a bunch of private-school educated men as a cover for their own misdeed.’

  ‘Ha. I do hope you don’t intend to arrest me Inspector?’

  ‘No fear, sir. Not unless you did it, that is. Did you?’

  ‘Under the protective auspices of the Home Office, you mean?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘My dear chap. You need have no fears. No one’s going to come down on you with a heavy hand if you do arrest me. I’m not that high up the pecking order.’

  Rafferty smiled, but he didn’t believe him. The Home Office would look after its own. They always did. He’d be the one in the mire, most likely, and it wasn’t as if Bradley would do anything to get him out of it. He’d be only too delighted. And if he did manage to climb out of the mire, he’d probably push him back in.

  ‘Oh well,’ he said as he stood up and picked up the dirty glasses to return them to the bar. ‘Back to it.’

  ‘Are you getting anywhere, Inspector, do you think? asked Fairweather.

  ‘Hard to tell yet, sir. But at least we’ve been able to whittle down the suspects early in the case, which is always a good thing. We’ll get there.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. I didn’t particularly like Ainsley, he was something of a bully when we were at school and I don’t think he’d changed over the years. But I’m not a believer in people meting out their own justice. That’s what the courts are for.’

  Rafferty, thinking again of possible motives, asked, ‘Do you know who, in particular, he bullied?’

  ‘So you can bully them in turn? No Inspector. I won’t give you that information, though I’m sure you can find it out elsewhere. Besides, it was all a very long time ago.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like mandarin-speak. It seems you’re a bit of a rebel on the quiet also, sir.’

  ‘I’ve had my moments. This particular civil servant has never believed in speaking with Sir Humphrey’s esoteric brand of the truth. It probably explains why I’m still just an Under Secretary.’

  It probably did, at that, Rafferty mused. A readiness for speaking the truth rather than going in for police office politics hadn’t done a great deal for his career, either. ‘Anyway, we’ll see you gentlemen later. Come on, Llewellyn.’

  ‘That’s the first mention that our Mr Ainsley was a bully,’ Rafferty commented when they got outside. ‘Find out who his victims were, Daff. Try asking the ladies. I’ve always found them less inclined to keep mum over such things. But before you do that, find Alice Douglas and Sophie Diaz, the latter, her of the “sizzling” affair, might have something interesting to confide, supposing we can prise it out of her, so I want to speak to her first.’

  FOUR

  Once back at the school, Llewellyn went off to find Sophie Diaz and Rafferty went in search of tea. Surprisingly, the feisty Mrs Benton proved amenable to stopping her dinner preparations and making him a cup. He took the opportunity of asking her about bullying at the school during the reunees’ time there.

  ‘Oh, there was bullying right enough. I nipped it in the bud when I saw it. Nasty little devils, some of them. That Adam was a prime example. He was tall and well built for his age. He’d often start picking on the younger ones when he was in the queue outside my kitchen. I gave him a good smack on the knuckles once with a heavy metal soup ladle when he started bullying that wouldn’t-say-boo Simon Fairweather. I didn’t put up with bullying in my dining hall, as I told the old headmaster when that Adam complained.’

  ‘What did Adam do when you hit him?’

  ‘Him? Nothing. Looked ashamed of himself for once. A few decent leatherings would have done him the world of good. My own children got a smack when they deserved it and they’ve all turned out well.’

  ‘What was the school’s attitude to bullying?’

  ‘Mr Barmforth seemed to leave the kids to it to fight their own battles on the principle that that’s what they’d have to do in life. I don’t hold with such an attitude. If you’re in loco parentis as the head and teachers are, they should impose a parental discipline. Bullying needs stamping on or it’ll get nastier and nastier.’

  Rafferty nodded. He agreed with this sentiment. His own younger brother, Mickey, had been bullied at school; he’d been a bit of a runt then. He’d filled out since and his work as a carpenter had given him muscles to spare.

  Mrs Benton made him a second cup of tea as well as one for Llewellyn and he took both upstairs to their allocated office. But there was no one there. He poked his head around the door of the Senior Common Room and found Llewellyn. The Welshman was standing in what looked like a very convivial little circle with Victoria Watson, Giles Harmsworth and Sophie Diaz, discussing some play or other that they’d all seen. Llewellyn looked as animated as he’d ever seen him and, in an instant, Rafferty felt again the wave of resentment for his sergeant’s superior education that he’d felt when they’d first worked together. Cambridge versus Secondary Modern was no contest. No wonder he always felt inferior in spite of being the superior.

  ‘Sergeant.’ Rafferty’s voice was sharp and Llewellyn looked over in surprise.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’ve been looking for you all over. If you’re going to hobnob with Griffin’s old boys and girls, I wish you’d let me know.’ His sarcasm wasn’t lost on Llewellyn, who flushed, though whether from embarrassment or anger wasn’t clear. However, he murmured a few words in Sophie Diaz’s lavishly gold-encrusted ear and the two of them moved towards the door.

  Rafferty sat down behind the desk and sipped his tea. He apologised that he didn’t have one for Sophie.

  ‘I don’t drink tea.’

  ‘Really? How do you get through the day?’

  ‘I don’t regard my day as something to be got through.’

  ‘Lucky lady.’ Unsurprising, with a rich banker for a husband, was Rafferty’s thought. Probably spent her days in the enjoyable pastime of reducing his wealth.

  ‘Now, Mrs Diaz, I’m sure you can help me get a more rounded portrait of Mr Ainsley. I understand you dated him steadily for several months during your last term at the school.’

  Sophie Diaz nodded. ‘Yes, we were an item for a while. It was nothing serious, of course, just a fun boy/girl thing.’

  ‘Oh? I understood it was rather more than that.’

  Sophie Diaz lowered her gaze and asked, ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. But I was told that you and Ainsley had a “sizzling” affair that summer term and that he dumped you when he found out you and he weren’t quite the love’s young dream he thought you were.’

  ‘It’s my recollection that it was more of a mutual thing,’ she murmured. ‘I admit that Adam was a bit upset when he found out I’d
slept with one or two of his friends, but our break up was amicable in the end. It was good to see him at the reunion.’ A single tear formed in her right eye. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I learned he was dead. Murdered. Who could want to do such a thing?’

  ‘I was rather hoping you might tell me that.’

  ‘Me? I can’t tell you anything, Inspector.’

  ‘I’m sure you can if you just try a little. Adam must have confided things to you during your time together. After all, you were an item for quite a long time in adolescent terms. You must be able to tell me more than, say, Victoria Watson or Alice Douglas, both of whom seem to have been the studious sort during their time at Griffin.’

  ‘Huh, you’d be surprised. Alice wasn’t quite the prim and proper little swot by any means.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh Alice indulged in at least one little love affair during her time here.’

  ‘Really? Who with?’

  Sophie’s beautifully made up face looked piqued. ‘I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. Though she did tell me one thing.’

  ‘Oh, yes? What was that?’

  Sophie smiled. ‘I wasn’t the only naughty girl, Inspector. Alice “the swot” Douglas fell pregnant during the last few weeks of term. She came to me for advice. I told her to get rid of it.’

  ‘And did she?’

  ‘What do you think? With parents like hers she wouldn’t have dared do anything else. Oh she got rid of it all right, though God knows where she’d have got the money from as her parents kept her on very short rations. I suppose the boy, whoever he was, paid up in the end, though Alice told me he hadn’t wanted to know at first. She said he’d denied the kid was his. But you’d better ask her about that.’