Deadly Reunion

by Geraldine Evans

  ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘Right.’ He paused for thought. Llewellyn’s comment had touched a raw spot, and tentatively, he added, ‘Maybe we’ve been concentrating our forces a little too narrowly. I think we should have another bash at Victoria Watson, Sebastian Kennedy, Simon Fairweather, Gary Sadiq and Giles Harmsworth. You’d better check whether Sadiq is still in the country or if he’s returned home to India.’

  ‘We’ve interviewed them all twice and failed to discover good enough reasons why they would want Mr Ainsley dead.’

  ‘I know that. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Perhaps it’s just a bit less obvious than Alice Douglas’s bastard daughter or Paxton’s dead half nephew. Get on that phone and set up the interviews, Daff. Let’s not give Bradley the opportunity to think we’re slacking. Besides, it’ll be good to spend a bit more of his precious budget.’

  The first of the interviews that Llewellyn had set up was for the following morning, at the rugby club, but they learned little more there than they had elsewhere, only that Ainsley had been a selfish player, with no close friends, and with a tendency to hog the ball rather than pass it, which they could have surmised from their other evidence.

  Next came their interview with Sebastian Kennedy, the idle trust-fund reunee. Kennedy lived in a bachelor pad in Hampstead, one of a group of twelve apartments. The apartment was even swankier than that of the upwardly mobile cousin Nigel, with marble floors and leather-covered walls, which displayed pictures of more naked ladies than Rafferty had ever seen in his life. He didn’t know where to look.

  Kennedy must have noticed his dilemma because he laughed. ‘No need to get a Catholic conscience about looking at my pretty ladies, Inspector. I don’t. The female form is to be enjoyed, whatever those spoilsport priests thought back when we were both young. Can I get you a drink? You look like a whiskey man to me.’

  ‘I won’t, thank you, sir.’ It was barely ten o’clock in the morning and a bit early even for an Irishman, though it seemed Kennedy didn’t agree, as he poured himself a large one.

  ‘I can’t offer you coffee. My machine’s on the blink. Besides, I never learned how to use it and my man is out.’

  His man! Rafferty was astonished to learn that anyone still had a man. It was like something out of P G Wodehouse. It sounded odd coming from the lips of Sebastian Kennedy, the school rebel, who had also, as the computer had revealed, been a member of the communist party in his youth. Marches and sit-ins and protests seemed to have occupied most of his time after he’d left school, when he wasn’t swanning off to the continent to spend his inherited wealth. ‘That’s all right, sir. I’m not thirsty.’

  ‘I am.’ So saying, he downed his first whiskey and poured himself a second, even larger, one. ‘And what’s with the “sir”? I thought we were drinking buddies. Call me Seb, why don’t you? Everyone does. Or Sebastian at least.’

  ‘Right. Sebastian. My sergeant here will have explained why we’ve come when he rang.’

  ‘He said you’re covering your backs.’ Rafferty darted a sharp glance at Llewellyn and Kennedy laughed again. All in all, he seemed to be finding their visit a laugh a minute. ‘Oh not in so many words, but I got the drift. You’ve been through the most likely possibilities – whoever they are – and now you’re starting on the less likely because you haven’t been able to make a case against the former. Does that about sum it up?’

  It did. A bit too well for Rafferty’s liking. He gave a strained smile and said, ‘If we could sit down?’

  ‘Of course.’ Kennedy waved an expansive arm. ‘Feel free. My home is your home and all that.’

  They sat and Rafferty gave Llewellyn the nod to begin the questioning.

  ‘We’ve made one or two discoveries since we last spoke to you, Mr Kennedy,’ said Llewellyn, who didn’t believe in getting too chummy with potential suspects. Not for the more formal Llewellyn the casual use of Sebastian. ‘One of them was that Mr Ainsley was homosexual.’ Nor did he go in for the modern ‘gay’ euphemism, preferring the more formal version.

  ‘Queer? Really? It seems I had a narrow escape then.’

  ‘You mean Mr Ainsley never made advances to you?’

  ‘Advances?’ Kennedy laughed. ‘How very maiden aunt of you, Sergeant. No, he never made “advances” to me. I’d have known where to kick him if he had.’

  ‘Even though you admit that he bullied you?’

  ‘I was a scrawny kid. An easy victim. The sort Ainsley liked. But he never tried it on with me. Perhaps he just didn’t fancy me? Besides, he was too busy working his way through the girls at school to have time for me. He must have been horrified that his macho school sporting hero self was queer. No wonder he tried to work it off by shagging as many girls as he could. What a result.’

  Kennedy sounded triumphant rather than surprised to learn of Ainsley’s real sexual orientation. And though Ainsley hadn’t, apparently, forced him into sex, or rather, that was what he claimed, Rafferty reminded himself that he had still been a victim of Ainsley’s bullying. He wondered how far that had gone and how frequently it had happened. It could still be a motive for wanting to kill Ainsley. Meeting him after so many years, it seemed likely that it would have come into the forefront of his mind where he’d brooded on it. Maybe he had thought it was time he got his own back? But if that was so, Kennedy didn’t seem worried or remotely repentant. He was positively chirpy during the rest of the interview and showed no sign of the Catholic conscience that would have bedevilled Rafferty if he’d been guilty of the mortal sin of murder. But then, he’d shown no evidence of finding unmarried sex a guilt-trip, either. But Rafferty thought he could tag the carefree Sebastian as amoral. If he’d been poor he’d have probably turned to crime. It was only his wealth that protected him from a seamier lifestyle. Some people had it every which way.

  The drive to Cambridge to see Victoria ‘Brains’ Watson was smooth, with no traffic hiccups and they arrived just before lunch. Ms Watson saw them in her college rooms. She didn’t invite them to eat with her at High Table. Which was a shame, as Rafferty was starving and he’d heard how well college professors did for themselves at table, particularly the older, richer colleges like Corpus Christi. He supposed he’d have to settle for sandwiches from the nearest baker’s.

  Victoria Watson’s rooms were utilitarian in the extreme, with none of the lavish ostentation for which Rafferty had heard Oxbridge professors were renowned. He and Llewellyn perched on a wooden settle by the window and Victoria Watson sat on an equally uncomfortable looking upright chair opposite them. She seemed to have no interest in clothes, either, because she wore another of the shapeless jumpers that he remembered from her reunion visit to Griffin School. Her hair was a short, no-nonsense style with a few more hints of grey than there had been since their last meeting. Once again, she wore no make-up. She reminded Rafferty of his blue-stocking cousin, Maureen, though at least, if her hair was greying, Maureen took the trouble to apply a concealing dye.

  ‘I still have no idea who killed Adam,’ she told them once the courtesies were gone through. ‘Though, given the way he had always carried on, I would have thought a jealous husband might have fitted the bill. Poison rules that out, of course.’

  ‘Unless he was carrying on with the wife or girlfriend of one of his table-mates.’ Or one of their husbands, was Rafferty’s irreverent thought. He didn’t share it with Victoria Watson, who seemed to be unaware of Adam Ainsley’s proclivities.

  ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t listen to gossip. I find all this casual modern-day infidelity very tedious and pay it no heed. I was never what you’d call a people person, so I didn’t notice if there were any subtle nuances during the day he died. I’ve always preferred the certainties of science to the illogicality of man. And before you ask, I don’t know who murdered Sophie Diaz, either.’

  Altogether, for a woman with the school nickname ‘Brains’, she didn’t seem to know much, was Rafferty’s thought. Although, given the sparsely furnished room a
nd the baggy jumpers, he could well believe that Victoria Watson’s interest was solely invested in her love of science, rather than people or things.

  ‘Tell me, Ms Watson – did you like Adam Ainsley?’

  ‘Like him?’ She wrinkled her forehead as if such an emotion was a strange concept. She shrugged. ‘I never had that much to do with him. Even at school, we were in different streams and had different interests. His were always in sport and mine in science. I had no reason to hate him, if that’s what you mean.’

  As their investigations so far had told them. But perhaps, like Alice Douglas and Sophie Diaz, the young Victoria had experienced the usual uncontrollable adolescent urges? Perhaps she had had a crush on a pop star? Or the school sporting hero? If she had been solely concentrated on her schoolwork before that, she could have been knocked sideways by the intensity of first love. How would she have felt if she’d been rebuffed or worse, used and discarded? Was it possible that she, again, like Alice, had fallen pregnant? Or, like Sophie, had thought she had? The teenage, science-mad Victoria was unlikely to have been on the contraceptive pill, so a pregnancy was a possibility. And somehow, he thought that Victoria would have dealt with an unwanted pregnancy in a pragmatic way and without confiding in anyone, unlike Alice Douglas who had succumbed to the usual love affair between mother and foetus and gone in for the messy, difficult business of single parenthood. He decided to ask her outright and see how she responded.

  ‘Have you ever had children, Ms Watson? Or contemplated the possibility of them?’

  ‘Children? What an odd question. What has it to do with Adam’s death? Or Sophie’s, for that matter?’

  Nothing, as far as he knew, was the answer. But he wondered why she was prevaricating by turning the questions back on him. ‘You’d be surprised at the avenues that have to be explored during a murder investigation. We never know where we might get to in the way of evidence. But if you could answer the question.’

  ‘Very well. No, I’ve never had children. I haven’t contemplated them much, either. I seem to lack maternal feelings, though I admit, once or twice, lately, I’ve wondered how any children of mine might have turned out. But such thoughts haven’t had me rushing to an Italian gynaecologist for help in family planning. There was never any room for children in my life.’

  ‘Not even when you were a teenager?’

  ‘God, no. I’m not like Alice, Inspector. I could never have contemplated being a single mother. I doubt I’d have achieved my professorship here if I had.’

  ‘You knew she had a child?’

  ‘I only found out at the reunion. Adam told me. Though why Alice should tell him is beyond me.’ Rafferty smiled to himself. Here was another indicator that Alice Douglas had talked to Ainsley about their daughter. ‘Sophie had mentioned that Alice had fallen pregnant at the end of that last year, but she’d thought she’d had an abortion. She hadn’t seen her since.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to mention it to us?’

  Victoria looked puzzled. ‘Mention it to you? Why would I? Again, what has Alice’s pregnancy to do with these murders?’

  Perhaps a lot. Perhaps nothing. Rafferty wished he knew. He also wished he knew for certain how Ainsley had taken Alice’s news that he had a grown up daughter. He must have got the shock of his life when Alice told him that, rather than having their child aborted as he’d expected and paid for, she was shortly to celebrate her majority.

  On the drive back to Elmhurst from Cambridge, Rafferty decreed that they would stop for a proper lunch, rather than just buying sandwiches. ‘Though we’re not stopping here in the city. Cambridge is such a tourist trap, it’s going to have tourist-type prices that Bradley will be sure to kick off about. Even I’m not foolish enough to goad a bull elephant too far.’

  ‘I always found the prices reasonable when I was a poor student here,’ Llewellyn said.

  ‘That was a long time ago,’ Rafferty told him. ‘Times change. Anyway, I’m not lining the pockets of some profit-hungry landlord here in the city. I’d rather do it a few miles down the road, where the profit might be a bit leaner.’ As he hated the food at roadside so-called services, he pulled off the main drag and made for one of the villages sprinkled like confetti around the city and found a pretty, but unpretentious pub within a few minutes’ drive. The food on the menu sounded simple but wholesome and Rafferty plumped for rump steak with all the trimmings.

  Llewellyn, who went for the cheaper, salad, option, said, ‘I thought you were paying heed to Superintendent Bradley’s strictures on spending?’

  Rafferty sniffed. ‘I am. But I don’t see any point in going too far. Where’s the fun in that?’

  The food was plentiful when it came and they both tucked in with a will. Rafferty had staved off the worst of his hunger when something struck him. ‘Mrs Paxton,’ he said. ‘Did you notice that she kept referring to David as ‘my’ son, rather than ‘our’ son?’

  ‘Did she?’ Llewellyn frowned in recollection. ‘Yes, she did, didn’t she?

  ‘I got the distinct impression that she blamed her husband for the boy’s death, at least in part, even if only subconsciously. Thinking about it now, she certainly seemed to. If their son was the sensitive type she said he was, he and his father must have been chalk and cheese. She must have wondered if David would have confided in his father about his troubles if he’d been a different man. It would be only human to do so.’

  He stabbed a particularly succulent morsel of steak and forked it into his mouth. It was wonderfully tender and the pepper sauce was particularly flavoursome, way better than their local steak house’s offerings.

  ‘Could be,’ said Llewellyn as he finished his meal, pushed his plate aside and reached for his mineral water. ‘Tragic situation.’

  ‘Mmm. Do you want that last bread roll?’

  Llewellyn shook his head.

  The Welshman had made appointments for the next day with the other three reunees: Gary Sadiq, Giles Harmsworth and Simon Fairweather; Rafferty mentioned these appointments and with regard to the latter, said, ‘I’ve always wanted to see where the Home Office mandarins work. I’ve heard they do even better for themselves than Cambridge professors.’

  ‘I’ve heard the same. In fact, some time ago, I remember watching a documentary about the Home Office as part of a series on the great offices of state.’

  ‘Shucks. I missed it. Good was it?’

  ‘Revelatory.’

  Llewellyn said no more, but just sipped his water.

  ‘Well come on, then,’ said Rafferty. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me all the gory details?’

  ‘I didn’t think you were interested.’

  ‘I’m interested. I’m interested. So, what amazing revelations did the programme make?’

  Llewellyn took his time. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and smiled. ‘Amongst other things that the mandarins are every bit as tricksy as we’ve always thought them to be.’

  Rafferty pulled a face. ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They have to deal with politicians every day, who are an even more tricksy bunch. So, is that it? The full Monty?’

  ‘As the mandarins would say. I couldn’t possibly comment. Have you finished?’ he asked as Rafferty downed the remains of his pint of Adnams. ‘Shall we go?’

  Whatever Llewellyn had discovered from watching his documentary, there was nothing revelatory awaiting them on their return to the station. Apart from Superintendent Bradley who they met on the stairs and who revealed that he wasn’t happy with the progress of the case.

  Tell me something new, was Rafferty’s thought, before he forced a polite, subordinate’s smile to his face and asked with what aspects, in particular, his beloved leader wasn’t happy.

  ‘All of it, Rafferty. You’re jigging up and down the country, eating up the miles and doing the very devil of damage to my budget and what are you achieving?’

  Nothing much would have been the honest response. But Rafferty had learned in the course o
f his career under Bradley that honesty was definitely not the best policy when it came to the super. The truth needed to be painted over, gilded, decorated with scented roses, anything but delivered plain and unvarnished. So now he said, ‘We’ve several worthwhile leads. I’ve already told you about Alice Douglas having an illegitimate daughter by Adam Ainsley and—’

  ‘Yes, yes. As you say, you’ve already told me about it. What else have you found out?’

  ‘That Adam Ainsley was gay and—’

  ‘Gay. Gay. Don’t use such euphemisms with me, Rafferty.’ Bradley was another blunt Northerner, in the mould of Stephen Paxton and, like Abra, was inclined to call a spade a bloody shovel, though, of course, since the advent of the politically correct brigade into positions of high office, Bradley had tempered his language and could, when he had to, use euphemisms and long-winded circumlocutions with the best of them.

  ‘As I said, Ainsley was gay. Homosexual. And could be said to be morally responsible for a young lad’s death.’ He went on to explain about the connection to David and Jeremy Paxton.

  ‘A bit tenuous, isn’t it, but?’ The super repeated what he himself had earlier thought. ‘The dead boy wasn’t even a proper nephew, which, I agree, might have given Paxton a motive.’ Bradley drew himself up and his red face developed a scarlet tinge. ‘And that’s it? The sum total of your discoveries?’

  Unwillingly, Rafferty admitted that it was.

  ‘And you’re off out on your excursions again tomorrow?’

  Rafferty made the second admission. It earned him a scowl. To hear Bradley talk, you’d think their trips out were to Disneyland.

  ‘Eating costly meals on expenses, I suppose?’

  ‘Even lowly sergeants and inspectors have to eat, sir. We try to be as economical as we can.’ Which was an out and out lie. Wait till he sees the bill from the pub for rump steak, was his next thought.

  After another few minutes’ interrogation, Bradley took himself and his congested visage off back to his first floor lair, grumbling as he went. And Rafferty headed off to their office to see if there was anything interesting awaiting their return.