Absolute Poison (10 page)

Absorbed in his plans, Llewellyn rattled on happily, oblivious to the consternation he had caused. Rafferty heard not a word. A heart-thumping panic had blocked most of his senses and his automatic pilot took over the driving. It wasn't difficult for him to imagine the sequence of events after Bradley learned not only of the bargain basement price of the wedding suit and its claimed and unlikely provenance, but that
his
ma had supplied it. He stifled a groan. The Marks And Sparks label wouldn't fool him for a minute, suspicious-minded git that he was. Somehow Rafferty doubted St Michael would extend his saintly protection under such circumstances. Visions of interrogations, suspension, court rooms and prison chased one another remorselessly across his inner vision; not just for him, but for Llewellyn as well. It would certainly get his and Maureen's marriage off to a flying start.

Preoccupied by this uncomfortable thought, Rafferty turned off the roundabout into Aimhurst And Son's forecourt, parked and got out before the still chatty Llewellyn had time to notice his distracted air.

Constable Smales was on the door, his boyish complexion still green-tinged from his recent post-mortem attendance. Rafferty, at the moment feeling empathy with all the troubled souls in the world—even Smales—spared him a sympathetic glance.

Smales told him that, as he had requested, the employees had been gathered in the ground floor staff room to await his arrival. Rafferty could, of course, have contacted them the previous evening and told them to stay at home, but he had felt it would be more helpful to the case to get them together on the premises and, hopefully, talking revealingly to one another.

Rafferty nodded at Smales and walked into the reception area. Hal Gallagher was hovering beside WPC Liz Green and immediately he opened the staff room door for Rafferty to enter.

As soon as he stepped into the room, Rafferty felt the tension in the air. He had warned Hal Gallagher and Albert Smith the security guard to say nothing to the staff about the murder as he wanted to gauge their reactions when they learned of it. Although he suspected it was too much to hope that the murderer—if he did turn out to be one of the staff—would react in an obvious way, there might just be something.

But if any of the staff harboured an emotion stronger than curiosity it was well concealed. Of course, with so many police officers on the premises they would be aware that something major had occurred.

As he gazed round at the faces Rafferty could discern nothing more than a heightened excitement at this interesting change to the normal routine, plus an expectation that he was the man who would provide the answers. Nobody looked guilty, fearful or even remorseful. Of course it was reasonable that whoever had killed Barstaple felt no guilt or remorse. After all, if the victim had been a dog he'd have been put down years ago as being too mean-spirited and spiteful.

Apart from Gallagher, all four of the remaining office staff were present and each of them stared at him with varying degrees of curiosity.

“Are you going to tell us what's going on?” A young blonde woman demanded. “Nobody will tell us anything.” She glanced round at her colleagues and her, “I think we've a right to know,” brought several agreeing nods.

She was an attractive girl with a sensitive oval face, shapely figure and a gleaming bob. Rafferty automatically straightened his shoulders and sucked in what Sam Dally insisted was the beginnings of a paunch. “I'm sorry,” he said. “And you are Miss-?”

“Luscombe. Linda Luscombe.

Rafferty flipped open his notebook, but wasn't surprised to discover that he was unable to decipher his scrawled notes.

Llewellyn came to his rescue and extracted the required information from his own notes which he had efficiently and speedily lifted from the staff files before they had left the office. “Miss Luscombe is here on work-experience from the local college, sir.”

Hal Gallagher stepped forward. “Perhaps I should get the introductions out of the way?” At Rafferty's nod, he worked his way round the room, naming each of the staff. He finished with Rafferty and Llewellyn and introduced them in turn.

Now that the formalities were over the staff stared at him impatiently. “Right,” said Rafferty. “I'd better start by telling you why you've all been gathered to wait in your own staff room.” Bluntly, he told them, ”I'm afraid there's been a murder on the premises.”

This produced gasps of astonishment and a certain amount of ghoulish thrill though nothing more suspicious as far as Rafferty could judge. He waited for the excited buzz to die down before adding, “Mr Clive Barstaple was found dead in his office yesterday evening.”

This shocked them and it was a few seconds before the questions came at him.

“How?”

“Who did it?”

“When exactly?”

Nobody asked “why?”, Rafferty noted.

After the first shocked questions a more wary silence took over. From the covert glances it was clear they were examining motives, opportunities, possible alibis. He guessed the last point might pose them a few problems. As he had already concluded, in this investigation the time of death was of less significance than was usually the case. It was who had had the opportunity to doctor the yoghurt pot, or more importantly, substitute it that were the questions here. He doubted any of them would have an alibi that covered the entire time from its purchase, its placing in the fridge—the timing of both of which they had still to establish—and its consumption and the substitution of the discarded pot for another.

Linda Luscombe at nineteen had the resilience of youth and recovered far more quickly from the news than her middle-aged colleagues.

“Are we allowed to know how he died?”

Rafferty could see no reason not to tell them. They were likely to find out soon enough from the security guard. “He was poisoned, Miss Luscombe.”

The colour drained from her face. “God. I shared Clive's—Mr Barstaple's lunch yesterday. If it was in that whoever killed Clive might have murdered me as well.”

Her claim was confirmed by Bob Harris, a grey-faced, worried-looking man of about 50. “That's true. They were both eating in his office around 12.30. I-I had intended to take my lunch from 12 till one,” he rambled on. “But Mr Barstaple called me into his office just as I was going for lunch. I was with him till just after 12.30 and decided not to bother going out after all.”

“Oh, Bob, how upsetting for you.” The woman Hal Gallagher had introduced as Amy Glossop had a thin, embittered face. After her comment, she glanced round at the other members of staff as if looking for approval. Instead, she got stony expressions of dislike. It seemed to spur her on. “Of course, I left just before noon and didn't realize you weren't able to meet your wife after all. You poor thing.” The sympathetic smile she directed at Harris appeared designed specifically to turn the knife. It certainly made Bob Harris look sick and caused Linda Luscombe to glare at her, a glare that said “shut up” as clearly as words.

Amy Glossop gave a glance of injured innocence around the room. “I'm sorry. Have I said something I shouldn't?” The innocence was as patently false as the sympathy. And, as she went artlessly on, sticking the knife in a little deeper, Rafferty wondered what the inoffensive Harris could possibly have done to her.

“It's just that we all know how much yesterday meant to you. I hope Eileen didn't take it too badly.” Amy Glossop turned to Rafferty and explained, “Bob here had an important date with his estranged wife yesterday lunch time. Such a shame he had to stand her up.”

Miss Glossop's staff file claimed she was forty-five, Rafferty remembered, but she looked older. And while he thought it possible that someone of Amy Glossop's age could still be naive enough to unwittingly let them know that her colleague had an additional reason to dislike his interim manager, he doubted this was so in her case. There was something about her thin lips and narrowed, bird-bright eyes that told him her comment had been calculated.

It seemed, from their expressions, that the rest of the staff thought so too. He sensed a certain drawing back from the woman. As the room was small this was more mental that physical, but it was obvious that Amy Glossop had noticed it, too. For a moment the veil lifted and raw misery briefly peered out before being as quickly hidden. She hugged herself defensively as though she, rather than Bob Harris had been the victim here.

Bob Harris looked even sicker than before. On the surface, Harris looked too defeated a man to have the energy to plan his own death, never mind anyone else's. But Rafferty had learned in the course of his career that appearances could be deceptive. Harris and the rest had been Barstaple's prey; he had stalked them as a fox stalks a rabbit. But, back the weakest prey against a wall and they'll turn on you. Hadn't Crippen been meek, mild, cowed, just like Harris? For Crippen, love had been sufficient spur to find the courage for murder. Added to his presumed anxiety about his continued employment, love could have been the spur in Harris's case, too. As Llewellyn had pointed out, it was possible Barstaple's murderer had been too blinded by hatred and misery to think as far as the possible consequences of ridding themselves of their immediate persecutor.

Rafferty questioned him further. “You say you didn't go out to lunch as you had intended?”

Harris flushed. “No. I-that is, as Ms Glossop told you, I had arranged to meet my wife just after midday. As that had fallen through, I didn't bother.”

Rafferty, who was always ready for his lunch, found this admission curious and his frank stare prompted Harris to provide a further explanation.

“My appetite had gone,” he said. “I suffer from stomach ulcers. If I don't eat at set times they begin to play up and I don't feel much like eating at all. I forced a glass of milk down.”

Rafferty nodded. But he couldn't help wondering whether, in addition to the delay in eating and the upset over missing his lunch date the conversation with Barstaple had ruined his appetite. He wondered what Harris and Barstaple had discussed. But that discovery could come later. For the moment, he wanted to set the scene, get the current crop of suspects fixed in his mind as individuals and find out who was where at what time. He turned back to Linda Luscombe.

“You said you shared Mr Barstaple's lunch. Was this a regular thing?”

“No.” She pulled a face. “He normally went out for lunch. I learned yesterday that he was on a diet.”

“You weren't aware of this before yesterday?”

“No. I go to college and yesterday was my first day back.”

“So, what did you eat?”

“Just the prawns. Clive had some yoghurts in the fridge and he had a pot later, but I don't like yoghurt. At least, I presume he ate the yoghurt. He was about to open it when he had a telephone call—a long involved call and I came out of his office and left him to it. I suppose he ate the yoghurt later.”

Unlucky for his killer, Rafferty reflected as he recalled Sam Dally's comment. Or was it? Barstaple was still dead. Could it really matter to the killer that the delay had made pinpointing the source of the poison that much easier?

Maybe Llewellyn was right and he was crediting the killer with more intelligence and cunning than they actually possessed. It was possible, he supposed, though that didn't explain the removal of the poisoned yoghurt and its substitution; that smacked of a certain intelligence, a sly determination to muddy the waters.

Rafferty glanced round at the sea of faces. It was time to glean a few facts. “Can any of you remember when Mr Barstaple placed the yoghurts in the fridge?”

They looked at one another and, as if my mutual decision, they all shook their heads. All but one. Amy Glossop seemed to have rallied. Certainly, she had no difficulty with her memory.

With a half-defiant look at the rest, she told him, “He brought them in last Friday morning. Six of them, all different flavours. He'd done the same for the last few weeks since he started his diet. It had become quite a routine for him.”

“That's helpful,” Rafferty told her. “Thank you.”

At this, Amy Glossop glanced at her colleagues, her expression smug, taunting even, the thought “I've got nothing to hide”, clearly etched.

They all ignored her, as if determined not to give her the satisfaction of knowing she had just provided information that could be dangerous for one of them.

He turned back to Linda Luscombe. This was the first hint they'd had of any woman in Barstaple's life. He was curious to see how deep the relationship went. “Had Mr Barstaple ever taken you out to lunch?”

“Sometimes.” The admission was reluctant. “He could be quite insistent.”

“She means he was into sexual harassment as well as all the other kinds.”

This comment was drawn from Marian Steadman, whom Gallagher had introduced as the office first-aider, with the smiling comment that she doled out sympathy along with the band-aid.

Marian Steadman was 33. Rafferty was surprised the information from her staff record should immediately pop into his head. Attractive in an understated way, her open features were as different as possible from those of Amy Glossop. Even though she seemed to have no patience for evasion of any kind, she also had something of a maternal quality about her, as though she made a habit of taking on other people's troubles as her own. She reminded him of his ma, as did the forthright suggestion which followed.