Deadly Reunion (18 page)

Diaz indicated his permission with a wave of his hand, before he sank back into his chair and his introspection, clutching the paper with the scribbled numbers and staring at them as if he sought to find the reason for his wife's murder scrawled in his shaky hand.

The Diaz marital bedroom was lavish, with wall-to-wall wardrobes and a carpet so thick Rafferty longed to take off his shoes and socks and feel his feet embraced by its softness. Getting poetical again, Rafferty, he warned himself. Don't go there. Not now, anyway.

There was a large en-suite with a sunken bath and double shower, but there was nothing in there that interested Rafferty. He pulled out the drawer in the bedside table on the side that, from the pile of girlie magazines and romantic comedies, was clearly Sophie's, but there was little but an assortment of sleeping tablets and anti-depressants, certainly no diary which would ‘tell all'.

Llewellyn was checking the wardrobe; it stretched the length of the room, which must have been twenty-five feet and not far off as wide. Rafferty thought – if they weren't to be there all day – that he'd better help him, so he started checking through pockets at the other end. But countless expensive-looking outfits later, the pockets had yielded nothing. There were not even any soiled tissues or forgotten lipsticks. Clearly Sophie Diaz was a woman who valued her clothes and looked after them. Rafferty glanced briefly at some of the labels and was impressed; even
he'd
heard of some of them. The wardrobe seemed to contain nothing but Sophie Diaz's clothes, shoes and handbags and Rafferty presumed that her husband's clothes had been banished to a spare room. Next, he checked out the handbags, of which there were a large number. Abra had a bit of a thing about handbags and he guessed that she'd love these. They came in every size and a rainbow of colours. But, like the clothes, these also yielded nothing.

Dispirited, Rafferty plumped his behind down on the king-size. ‘I've got a theory,' he told Llewellyn's back.

Llewellyn turned. ‘Oh yes?' he said in tones of discouragement.

Rafferty smiled, aware that his educated Welsh sergeant had probably had a surfeit of his inspector's theories since they'd been working together. He knew he tended to the outlandish and outrageous. He wasn't sure whether it was just the Irish in him or whether he did it because he knew it riled Llewellyn.

‘Don't say it like that,' Rafferty protested mildly. ‘This is one of my better ones, promise. I was wondering, seeing as Sophie Diaz was a woman who seemed to love money so much, whether she might not, now her husband's as poor as an unfrocked vicar, have found another way of making the old spondoolicks.'

‘Like what?'

‘Blackmail.'

‘Blackmail,' Llewellyn repeated. ‘Again. You thought the unexplained thousand pounds a month going into Mr Ainsley's bank account might have been the proceeds of blackmail.'

‘Yes, I know. Perhaps both of them were going in for it? I don't know. I'm only going on the evidence, Dafyd, and unexplained money and secrets shout blackmail to me, loud and clear. You heard her husband say that she'd seen something she thought there might be money in at this reunion. Rather than a job for Diaz, I was wondering if she saw Adam Ainsley's murderer in action.'

Rather to his surprise, Llewellyn didn't immediately squash the idea, so he added, ‘and got herself murdered when she tried to put the squeeze on the killer.'

‘A bit stupid of her.'

‘No one said she had a brain to rival Einstein's. You've seen her wardrobe. Shopping seems to have been her greatest love, not mind expansion. She might think it worth it, down to last year's fashions as she was, to try to get her hands on some of the folding stuff that her old man had stopped providing.'

‘It's a possibility, certainly,' Llewellyn opined slowly.

‘Gee, thanks. Don't go too overboard.' A bit miffed at this ponderous response, Rafferty demanded, ‘Well, what's your theory? Or don't you have one?'

‘Personally, I've always liked to wait until I have some solid evidence before I start constructing theories. But, as you say, there would seem to be something there to support this theory. I wonder whether she tried to take any kind of precautions before she approached the killer.
If
she approached the killer.'

‘Doesn't seem likely, does it? Seeing as she got herself murdered.'

‘I can't believe anyone, even a woman obsessed with clothes, could be so foolhardy as to embark on blackmail without taking care to safeguard themselves.'

Rafferty, glad as he was to have another possible theory to play with, had to agree. ‘Perhaps she thought there was safety in numbers and that the killer wouldn't go after her, surrounded as she was by all the other reunees.'

‘I would have thought that the murder of Mr Ainsley himself would have folded away that particular comfort blanket. Besides, the reunion was only for a week. Could she really have thought the killer wouldn't target her once she got home?'

Rafferty tutted, as the Welshman dissected his theory and found it wanting. ‘So what's your theory?' he challenged. ‘You do have one, I take it?'

‘Not as yet, no.' It was Llewellyn's turn to look peeved. ‘Maybe we'll find some proof, one way or the other, when we speak to Mrs Diaz's girlfriends?'

Rafferty grinned as he was reminded that even though Llewellyn had just demolished his latest theory, life had its compensations. ‘Take a look in her address book, Daff. See how well spaced out they are around the country. With a bit of luck they live all over and it will cost plenty to get there and back. This case might be giving me the pip, but it'll be nice to think that Bradley's going to break his dentures on a few himself before we're done.'

With a pained expression, Llewellyn opened Sophie Diaz's address book and, after leafing through it, confirmed Rafferty's hopes.

‘You want the pleasure of telling Bradley that his budget's about to go through the roof? Oh, I don't know, though, what's the point of having the rank if you don't get the rewards that go with it? I'll do it. I like to watch him turn purple.'

Alice Douglas hadn't put the name of the father on her daughter's birth certificate, as Llewellyn discovered the next day, though whether that was her choice or whether the father – whoever he was – had refused to allow his name to be put on the document was anyone's guess. At any rate, Ms Douglas was still refusing to reveal the identity of the father. Her refusal irritated Rafferty. What was she hiding? It might be worth having another word with the daughter. Even if she didn't know her father's name, she might still, unbeknownst to herself, be able to provide them with a clue to his ID.

So while Llewellyn was hunting down Sophie's girlfriends with Mary Carmody to discover if there was anything worth following up, he would drive over to Norwich and see if he couldn't catch the daughter on her own.

Joanna Douglas, Alice's daughter,
was
home alone, which was a bit of luck. Rafferty got himself invited in without any trouble this time and accepted the cup of tea that was offered, confident that he could spin the drinking of it out to twenty, thirty minutes. In his experience, there was nothing like tea and sympathy for encouraging confidences.

After they had spoken for a little while about the degree course that Joanna would start in the autumn, Rafferty got on to what he really wanted to talk about. ‘You said, last time I spoke to you, that you hoped to see your father at your birthday party in April. When did your mother promise to ask him?'

‘Just before she went for that silly old reunion. I don't know why she went. She never has before though she gets an invitation every year.'

‘Perhaps that was the only way she could contact your father? Working backwards from your birthday, your mother would have fallen pregnant with you during the July of her last term at Griffin, so it seems logical to suppose that one of her fellow students was your father. If she had lost his address and phone number, his attendance there would tell her that she would be able to speak to him then. I know a list of attendees is circulated among the old boys and girls, so your mother would know he would be there.'

‘You know, I never thought of that. But you're right. She did speak of asking my father to my birthday party just after she'd received this year's invite from the school. The post hadn't come by the time she went to work and I remember she was late home that day. She had several large glasses of wine as soon as she came in and only then opened her post. She said she'd had a hard day. I think she only agreed to ask my father to my eighteenth party because she was tipsy. She became quite cross about it when I reminded her the next morning. But, as I said, she'd promised. She couldn't
un
promise.' Joanna stared at him excitedly. ‘So do you think my father must be an Old Griffinian?'

‘I don't know, but it sounds possible. She didn't say anything else about him at the time?'

‘No. Not a thing. At least that gives me something to go on; I don't want to wait till April to meet him. It would be so much nicer to have become acquainted before then.'

Rafferty was disappointed that his attempt at further digging had got him nowhere. That Joanna's father was probably an old Griffinian was hardly news. But he wasn't done yet. He had an idea how he could find out who the father was. Or, rather, who he wasn't. It just required the girl's cooperation. He was thankful that Llewellyn hadn't come with him as he would be sure to disapprove of what Rafferty hoped to have the opportunity to do next.

NINE

‘
A
re you sure my mother didn't say anything more about my father last time you spoke to her?' Joanna asked as he sipped his tea. ‘I so want to know him. How can I wait all the months till April? It's light years away.' Breathlessly, she demanded, ‘Are you sure mum didn't tell you who my father is? You're not keeping it from me, are you?'

‘No, Joanna. Your mother didn't tell us. I'm sorry.'

Joanna's eyes filled with tears and Rafferty, under the attempt to comfort her, saw the answer to his dilemma and took it. It was unethical, of course, but cousin Nigel, the smooth-talking estate agent, wasn't the only one in the family who could ignore the ethics of a situation when it suited. He embraced the crying girl, patted her back and went, ‘there, there.' Then, with some difficulty, he managed to hook the buttons on his jacket's sleeve around Joanne's long hair and in his apparent efforts to disengage them, he tugged several strands of hair, with their roots, from her head. He clutched them in his fist and hid his hand behind his back until he could put them in an evidence bag. ‘Sorry, Miss,' he said. ‘I hope I didn't hurt you?'

‘No.' she said as she took the surprisingly clean tissue that Rafferty offered and wiped her eyes. ‘I don't know why mum has to keep him such a secret. It's not as if I won't find out. Just wait till I'm eighteen. I'll be able to apply for a copy of my birth certificate then and she won't be able to keep it a secret any longer. I want to know something about him before my party, even if it's only his name.'

Aware that Joanna, destined to find a blank space where her father's name should be, was heading for another disappointment, he asked, ‘Have you considered that your mother might have kept your father's identity a secret to save you from hurt?'

‘No. Though maybe she's done it to save herself from embarrassment. Who knows? I might be the result of a tacky one-night stand, with a man whose name she didn't even remember. Maybe, in spite of her drunken promise to ask him to my party, she hasn't because she can't. Because she knows nothing about him.'

Rafferty, the not-so-innocent partner in a few tacky one-night stands of his own in his younger days, sprang to Alice Douglas's defence. ‘I doubt that's true, or why would she, drunk or sober, feel able to make that promise? It's not as if your mother was promiscuous in her younger days, no one we've spoken to has said that. They've all said she was a studious girl and that they couldn't remember her dating anyone.'

‘All the more reason then, I would have thought, for me to be the result of a one-night stand.'

Rafferty could no more argue with her logic than he was ever able to argue with Llewellyn's, so he just said, ‘However you were conceived, your mother's brought you up, looked after you all these years. Surely that counts for something?'

Joanna didn't answer, but simply rose up from the settee in one swift movement and ran out of the room. He could hear her feet thumping on the stairs, leaving him in possession of the living room. Allowing himself a few indulgent seconds to feel pity for the girl, he carefully placed the hairs in an evidence bag and put it in his pocket. This was an opportunity to snoop that was too good to pass up.

But twenty minutes later, he had to admit defeat. He had found nothing of interest, nothing that might tell him the identity of Joanna's father. Doubtless Alice Douglas would keep such sensitive stuff in her bedroom, carefully locked away from her daughter's eyes. And even he didn't feel able to sneak up the stairs to find Alice's bedroom. He might just happen on Joanna's instead and then he'd have some explaining to do.

His attempt at playing a Dutch uncle clearly as much of a miserable failure as his hope of immediately discovering the identity of Joanna's father, Rafferty consoled himself that at least, with Joanna's hair and attached roots in an evidence bag, he was in with a chance of finding out who he
wasn't
. And even if it was later rather than sooner and the answer unofficial and inadmissible, the results might be far more revealing than that. Superintendent Bradley wouldn't like it, of course, but then he'd make sure he never found out. Rafferty, keen to get ahead in the case somehow, was sure that if he could find out the identity of Joanna's father for his own purposes, he would be able to get her mother to admit the truth without too much difficulty. A confident air and a knowing smile could work wonders.