‘My pregnancy didn’t ruin my hopes of a career, Inspector, as you can see. Nor did it breed resentment if that is what you were hoping.’
‘I just like to check, Miss. It’s called being thorough. A man has been murdered. He might not have been a very nice man, but he was entitled to enjoy his life.’
‘Unlike the child I was expecting? The one he gave me money to abort?’ When Rafferty didn’t answer, she questioned his silence. ‘I suppose, like Adam, you’d have wanted me to get rid of the child?’
Rafferty thought for a moment of his dead first wife, Angie, and the probably fake pregnancy that had forced him to the altar, then he said, ‘No. I’m a Catholic, too, Ms Douglas. Disposing of a life as if it was so much rubbish is not something I could ever feel comfortable with.’
‘Then you’ll understand why I decided to keep my baby. Luckily, I had an inheritance from my grandmother and was able to employ a nanny to look after Joanna while I was at university.’
‘Wouldn’t your parents help?’
‘No.’
The answer was abrupt and Rafferty was intrigued by it. ‘Why not?’
With a marked degree of reluctance, after a few moments, she admitted, ‘They were ashamed of me. They were always very strict churchgoers and thought I had let the family down. They refused to help. I learned to manage without them. You’d think they’d have given me some credit for not having the abortion that Sophie advised. They’d have been even more appalled if I’d done that.’
‘Even with your grandmother’s inheritance, it can’t have been easy.’
‘No. It wasn’t. But now I have a lovely daughter who’s about to go to university herself. She’s bright and should do well. I’m very proud of her. Her existence is a great comfort to me. And I have Adam to thank for that. I had no reason to want to kill him, Inspector. None at all.’
‘Not for your own sake, perhaps, but maybe you did for that of your daughter.’
She turned wary eyes on him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I went to see Joanna the other day. She told me that you’d agreed to invite her father to her birthday party.’
Alice’s lips tightened and she said faintly, ‘She told you that?’
Rafferty nodded.
Alice sighed and stared down at her desk. ‘You can’t know how bitterly I regretted those few glasses of wine and that stupid promise.’
‘But a promise is a promise.’
‘Yes.
‘So, did he say he’d go to the party?’
Alice raised her head and smiled at him. ‘Yes. He might not have shown any interest in the baby in my womb, but a daughter all grown up and about to go to uni intrigued him. He said he’d be there.’
‘Your daughter would have been pleased. Shame he’s dead.’
‘Yes.’
He bid her good day then and went in search of Llewellyn.
Llewellyn must have had trouble parking the car because he only entered the building just as Rafferty was leaving it. He told the Welshman what Alice Douglas had said.
‘And do you believe her that Mr Ainsley agreed to attend his daughter’s party?’
Rafferty shrugged. ‘Why not? Ainsley was no longer a callow youth, but a grown man. He has no other children that we know of, so why wouldn’t seeing his only child intrigue him?’
Showing an unlikely reluctance to let go of Rafferty’s theory, Llewellyn said, ‘To kill a man because he had rejected her child was about the best motive we had.’
‘I know.’ At least he didn’t say the only motive, thought Rafferty.
‘Though, I suppose, as you said before, she’d had seventeen years to pay him back if that had been her inclination. And it’s not as if Ainsley wasn’t high profile and easily found if she wanted to find him. She didn’t need to wait for him to attend a reunion in order to kill him.’
‘No.’ Rafferty sighed. ‘It would seem our best motive is smashed into smithereens.’
‘Maybe something had happened more recently to bring a resurgence of any hatred she might have felt then?’
‘Yes, but what?
For once, the intellectual Welshman had no answer.
Between one thing and another, Rafferty forgot all about ringing his ma again and advising her of the situation via-a-vis her new lodgers. He was only reminded of it when she got him on the phone several days later. He was in his office, wrestling with what remained of his assorted theories and trying to decide whether he should plump for one of them and pursue it for all he was worth when he was forced to acknowledge that wrestling with theories was easy as opposed to jousting words with his ma.
‘Thanks for organizing my new lodgers, son. And thanks for telling me about it. It was good of you.’
Rafferty’s mouth fell open in astonishment. How had she found out? Who could possibly have told her? The only ones who knew were Abra and Llewellyn. Had one of them . . .?
‘Have you got nothing to say for yourself?’
Rafferty felt like a naughty schoolboy dragged in front of the headmaster. ‘Sorry, Ma. I did try to ring you, but you didn’t answer your mobile and I didn’t want to leave a message.’
‘And then you forgot. Never mind, I had other ways of finding out.’
That didn’t surprise him. His ma had a more extensive network of spies than the Kremlin. ‘I suppose it was Llewellyn?’
‘You suppose wrong. Though I must say I’m surprised that Dafyd knew what you were up to and didn’t stop you.’
‘There’s no need to have a go at him, Ma. He disapproved and tried to dissuade me.’
‘Yes, well. That’s as may be. I suppose your Abra knew as well?’
His guilty silence was all the answer she needed. He quickly changed the subject. ‘So who told you?’
‘Young Karen is an old school friend of Gemma. She knew you immediately when she rang you.’
‘She never said.’ Rafferty frowned. He had thought when he’d met her that there was something familiar about the girl, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it. It didn’t help that Gemma changed her friends like he changed his shirt. There was a regular parade of them through his sister, Maggie’s front room.
‘No. She thought it a bit odd that you should be taking in lodgers. It was clear you didn’t recognize her, so she played along.’ It was a well-known family joke that Rafferty was averse to having overnight guests. ‘She told Gemma and Gemma told me. And when Karen told us the address where the rooms to rent were to be found, we soon worked out what you were up to.’
‘So you knew all along?’
‘Well, of course I did. You’ll have to grow a lot older and plenty more canny before you manage to put something over on your mother, Joseph.’
‘Are they very disappointed?’
‘Who?’
‘Well, Karen and Martin, of course. Who else?’
‘And why would they be disappointed? Sure and they like the rooms and I like them. They were worried that I’d ruin your little plot and tell them I didn’t want lodgers and for all my protestations to the contrary once I’d got used to the idea, they didn’t believe me. So I’ve been keeping in contact with them. We’ve been getting on like a house on fire. It’ll be a treat to have youngsters in the house again. It’s done me a favour, you have, though you didn’t know it. Oh and by the way. Where’s my rent?’
A few minutes later he put the phone down and turned to see Llewellyn positively grinning at him. Rafferty realized it was the first time he’d seen the Welshman’s teeth. They were as well ordered as the rest of him and gleamed with a positive relish.
‘Seems like your mother surprised you, Joseph.’
‘Yeah.’ Rafferty ran his hand through his unruly auburn hair. He still hadn’t found time to go to the barber’s. ‘You can say that again. She knew about my plan all along. Right from the start. You’d think she’d have said something.’
‘She probably thinks the same of you.’
Rafferty nodded. Slowly a grin
formed. ‘Trust ma. I’ve never got the better of her yet. One day, though. One day.’
There was something niggling at Rafferty’s brain, but he couldn’t pin it down. What could it be? But for all that he kept pressing his mind, he came up with nothing. Of course, it didn’t help that he couldn’t look forward to peaceful evenings. Cyrus showed no sign of running out of either steam or bible quotations and he was still assailing Rafferty’s eardrums every evening and giving him tea poisoning every morning.
He’d got so desperate that he’d even gone over to his ma, with his tail between his legs after his lodger stunt, to see if he couldn’t talk her into an exchange of lodgers, but she wouldn’t play ball. ‘Sure and why should I discommode them all when they’ll be packing to go home soon enough?’
‘Because I ask it of you.’
His ma smiled that smile that, for all her love of the church, hinted at devilment – no soft touch, she, and said, ‘Is it pricking your conscience what Cyrus has been doing, son? After all, you did promise Father Kelly before your wedding that you’d start going to church a bit more regularly. But he says he hasn’t seen hide or hair of you.’
Frustrated, he burst out, ‘Why did you have to go and land me with a religious maniac?’, after she had ignored his own concerns and got a poke of her own in for good measure. ‘You must have known what Cyrus is like and know very well that I don’t go in for all that stuff.’
‘Why do you think? Father Kelly and I both felt you needed a bit of religious encouragement to get you back to the Church.’
‘You mean you sicked Cyrus on me deliberately? If you think Cyrus’s presence in my home has turned me back on to religion, you’ve got another think coming.’
‘Sure and I thought it worth a try. So did Father Kelly. In fact, he was keener on the idea than I was, so if you want an argument you should go and find our holy priest. He positively encouraged me once he’d fully considered the state of your soul. You can explain your broken promise to him while you’re at it.’
‘God, Ma, you don’t just take the biscuit. You take the whole bloody packet.’
‘Don’t swear, Joseph. You know it’s a sin.’
‘Sin be damned. Cyrus is enough to make God Himself into a sinner. The man never stops. It’s a wonder Abra hasn’t left me again.’ Abra had left him and gone back to her own flat not long before their wedding and he’d despaired of getting her back. This reminder served to put his ma rather on the back foot.
‘There’s no need to exaggerate, Joseph. And Abra’s still with you, isn’t she?’
‘She is for now. But that may be because she hasn’t any longer got her own flat to swan off to. She’d probably invite herself over to Dafyd’s place only his pernickety ways get on her nerves.’
‘It’s not much to ask to have you put up a couple of cousins. Cyrus has got a good heart.’
‘He’s got an even better mouth. It never stops.’
‘You could learn something from him, son. You should listen to him instead of complaining and shutting your ears. He’s a good, Christian soul and could teach you a lot.’
‘Yes, a lot of things I’ve already been force-fed once in my life. I’m a grown man now, Ma, and able to make my own decision about religion.’
‘Yes, the wrong one. You’ll be sorry when the Day of Judgement comes.’
‘God’s all forgiving, Ma. He’ll overlook my frailties.’
‘Maybe He will and maybe He won’t. But His forgiveness is less likely, I’m thinking, when you’ve already been given the gift of the truth and persist in rejecting it.’
He gave up then, let his ma win the argument and went home.
Rafferty woke the next morning to find that the hot weather had returned in the night. It was only seven o’clock, but already the heat was intense. He grabbed a quick shower, grabbed an even quicker tea for himself and Abra, and made for the car.
Thinking the cooler climes likely to persist, he hadn’t listened to the weather forecast, and had parked the car in the drive, well away from any shading trees. Furnace-heat wasn’t in it. He opened the door and all the windows and waited five minutes for things to cool down a bit before he climbed in and drove to the station.
Llewellyn looked as if he’d found a shady spot for his car; perhaps, the prudent Welshman had taken the precaution of listening to the forecast. Not a drop of sweat sullied his brow, which immediately put Rafferty in a bad mood. ‘Tell me nothing else has come in.’
Llewellyn duly obliged. ‘Nothing else has come in.’
Rafferty sighed. ‘Has Bradley shown his face yet?’
‘Yes, the superintendent looked in a little while ago. He asked after you.’
‘I’ll bet. What did you tell him?’
‘I said you were out pursuing investigations.’
‘Did he believe you?’
‘He didn’t intimate an opinion.’
‘OK. If he didn’t “intimate an opinion”, what colour was he when he left?’
‘Strawberry going on overripe tomato.’
‘And I suppose he said I was to go up as soon as I came in?’
‘I didn’t like to say, seeing as you’re so tetchy, but, yes, as a matter of fact, he did.’
‘Stuff him. He can wait till I’ve finished my tea at least.’ Rafferty slouched back in his executive chair and tried to cool off, mind and body. But this cooling off took a good ten minutes and it seemed the superintendent wasn’t prepared to wait because all of a sudden, the door was thrust open and Bradley’s bulk filled the open space.
‘So you are in,’ he accused. ‘I said you were to come up immediately and what do I find but you taking your ease and swilling tea. Have you any interest in solving this case, Rafferty?’
Rafferty felt surly and didn’t trouble to reply. But it seemed Bradley’s question had been a rhetorical one that didn’t require an answer.
‘Well, seeing as the mountain chose not to come to Mohammed so we could speak in private, I’ll speak to you here. What’s happening, Rafferty? The investigation seems to have come to a premature halt. Have you got anything to follow up on today, but?’
Still feeling surly and out of sorts, Rafferty just managed to update him re Sophie Diaz and her possible blackmail attempt on the killer and the identity of the father of Alice Douglas’s daughter.
‘And what about their women friends? Have you questioned them?
‘That’s next on the agenda.’
Bradley consulted his watch in an ostentatious manner. ‘It’s nigh on time you got yourself out and talked to them then. And workmates? What about them?’
‘They’re next on the agenda as well. At least, for Alice Douglas. Sophie Diaz was a lady of leisure.’
Fortunately, the super was a big man and the heat seemed to have sapped his energy, for he did nothing but shake his head in a disappointed manner and bark, ‘See to it, then,’ before he slammed his way out.
‘It’s all right for him,’ Rafferty complained. ‘He hasn’t got to drive all over the country in this heat.’
‘I thought you liked making inroads into his budget. Besides, it’s scarcely “all over the country”, sir. Alice Douglas only lives in Norwich, so I presume we’re likely to find her friends there, too. At least we can question the neighbours until we’re able to ascertain who her friends are. And Sophie Diaz lived in Notting Hill and although her friends are more scattered, there are several in the area, including her best friend, Amanda Shaw, who was out when I tried before. Mary Carmody and I whittled down to three the list of Mrs Diaz’s friends to whom you might like to speak yourself. We could easily fit them all in this morning if we make a move and go back to Norwich this afternoon.’
‘Only if you put your foot down.’
This, of course, was anathema to the cautious Welshman, who believed slow and steady was the best driving course to take.
‘Come on, then.’ Reluctantly, Rafferty stood up and grabbed his jacket. ‘Let’s go. We’ll take Notting Hill and surroun
ds first. You’ve checked Sophie Diaz’s book for her friends’ addresses?’
Llewellyn nodded. ‘The London ones are all within reasonable proximity of Notting Hill, though it might pay us to park the car and take the tube.’
The thought of a hot, sweaty underground stuffed with jabbering foreign tourists and their bruising backpacks did nothing to improve Rafferty’s humour.
TEN
Adam Ainsley’s agent had his office in London, in Fulham, and Rafferty had thought he might as well kill another bird with the same stone and save himself an extra, sweaty journey, so he had got Llewellyn to arrange a meeting with him for forty-five minutes before they were due to meet Sophie Diaz’s girlfriends.
The agent, Michael Gottlieb, was a lean man, who seemed to exude energy. He pumped Rafferty’s and Llewellyn’s hands enthusiastically in both of his and invited them to sit down. Gottlieb’s walls were covered with posed photographs of his clients. Rafferty recognised most of them; it seemed Gottlieb specialized in sporting stars. He recognized Ainsley’s portrait shot off to one side on the wall behind the desk. He was posed in a rugby jersey, with a ball clutched to his chest and his head forward as if he was just about to score a try.
‘Tell me about Adam,’ Rafferty invited. ‘As his agent, you must have known him better than most.’
Gottlieb nodded. ‘You could say that. Agents are the first to get it in the neck when things aren’t going well.’
‘And they weren’t going well for Mr Ainsley?’
‘No. He was what is known in agents’ circles as a difficult client. Whatever you’d do for him, he always wanted more. More money, more appearances, more this, more that. I tried to get him set up on the speaking circuit, but he was hopeless. Never did his homework and didn’t do jokes. The bookings soon petered out. He blamed me, he blamed his speaking agency; everyone but himself.’
‘You sound as if you didn’t like him.’
‘You suppose right. In fact, I was about to send him our letter advising him to find a new agent. Life’s too short to put up with the Adam Ainsleys of this world.’
Deadly Reunion Page 15