Absolute Poison Read online

  He sensed the shrug at the other end. “No stronger than half-a-dozen others, but he skipped before we could get a case together. Even though it happened years ago, I remembered the investigation because it happened just after I joined the department.”

  Deprived of Llewellyn's listening ear, Rafferty took the opportunity to impress the American. It gave him immense satisfaction to be able to tell him, “Well, we've found him for you. Of course, he may face charges here first, but if you want to get an extradition together-”

  “No point.” Bluntly, Swaney broke into Rafferty's self-congratulations, his manner indicating a determination to squash them. “The only witness we had totalled himself in an auto smash last year. Even if Gallagher was the murderer, it would never get to court now.” Swaney paused and allowed a hint of curiosity to enter his voice. “So you reckon our guy might have been the perp in your investigation?”

  Familiar as he was with American movies, Rafferty had no trouble understanding the Yank detective's verbal shorthand.

  “Could be,” he temporised. “But, as in your case, Detective, he's one of a number of possible suspects, but what you've told me is certainly interesting. Could you let me have a mug-shot of your Gallagher. I want to be absolutely certain it's the same man.”

  “Sure thing. I'll get it on the wire to you, like yesterday.”

  Swaney broke the connection and Rafferty sat back. No wonder Gallagher had been bumming around the continent. He couldn't go home. At the time he'd thought Gallagher made an unlikely backpacker. No wonder, either, that he had latched on to Robert Aimhurst.

  Rafferty frowned down at his forgotten tea. It had a skin on it and he thrust it away in disgust. Now he had not one, but two prime suspects. He'd been more than satisfied with the one; but two only added doubts, uncertainties.

  Dammit, he muttered again. Where the hell was Llewellyn? He really needed to talk this whole thing through with him. Accused too often of going off bull-headed after a suspect, Rafferty was becoming increasingly sensitive to the charge. He was unwilling to conduct potentially explosive interviews without Llewellyn's restraining presence. And the damn man was nowhere to be found.

  He was still sitting there an hour later. Only by then, he was no longer excited or even frustrated at Llewellyn's unexplained absence. He was good and mad. Admittedly, 11.30 at night was not a good time to begin important interviews. After driving to Devon and back, he felt too tired, anyway. But, contrarily, he decided that wasn't the point. He should have been able to rely on Llewellyn's support if he had decided to interview Smith and Gallagher. It was especially galling as he suspected his frustration at not being able to discuss his latest discoveries would probably have choked him before Llewellyn showed his face again.

  Why did the bloody man have to choose now, of all times, to do a disappearing act? It wasn't as if they hadn't had enough of those already.

  The station was surprisingly quiet. Even the drunks had stopped shouting when Rafferty's door creaked and he looked up.

  Llewellyn was standing in the doorway. “I saw the light,” he began.

  “Hallelujah,” Rafferty muttered. “Ma'll be pleased.”

  “And wondered if you might still be here.”

  “Oh, I'm here. I've been here for hours. The question is where the bloody hell have you been?” Tired and sickening with the flu as he was, Rafferty found sufficient energy to work himself into a temper. “I don't know. I leave you in charge for a few hours and you bugger off to God knows where without a word, when I-”

  “I did leave a message, sir. With Smales,” Llewellyn quickly broke in, obviously hoping to end the torrent. It was a singularly unsuccessful hope.

  “Smales?” Rafferty's eyes narrowed. “Didn't want to be found, I take it?”

  Constable Smales suffered from a chronic inability to pass on messages which could be quite convenient if a colleague wanted to cover himself.

  Llewellyn said nothing, but looked exceedingly pleased with life.

  “So what have you been doing?” Rafferty asked tartly. “Come on, spit it out.”

  “I've been using my initiative, sir, as you suggested.”

  “Initiative, is it? Don't get cocky with me,” Rafferty warned. “I'm not in the mood.”

  “I've been to Birmingham.”

  “What did you want to go there for? I thought we'd already discounted-”

  “Chasing a hunch. You didn't seem terribly interested in anyone but those you considered the main suspects and-” Rafferty went to butt in to refute this slur, but honesty compelled him to admit Llewellyn was right and he waved to him to go on. ”But it occurred to me there might have been a genuine reason for Mrs Flowers, the missing cleaner, to have hit on Birmingham when she gave Ada Collins her excuse for missing work.”

  Rafferty was about to point out that Llewellyn himself had discovered that there was some doubt whether she had even said Birmingham, but instead he asked, “And was there?”

  Llewellyn nodded. He produced a list and pointed to a name. “Bit of a coincidence, don't you think, that Anderson, the chap Barstaple sacked and who died earlier this year, should have been admitted to a Birmingham hospital?”

  Rafferty stared at him. “You think there's a connection between this Michael Anderson and Mrs Flowers?”

  “I know there is. And as we have been unable to confirm her identity, I thought we might at least confirm his.”

  Llewellyn paused as if to gather his thoughts and Rafferty burst out, “Well, go on, then. Get on with it, for God's sake.”

  “Turns out that Michael Anderson and Mrs Flowers’ son were one and the same.”

  Rafferty's jaw dropped. Stupidly, he stared at Llewellyn. “You mean…?” He frowned. “What do you mean, exactly?”

  “Remember Ada Collins mentioned that Mrs Flowers’ son had been something of a trial to her?”

  Rafferty nodded.

  “She also mentioned that he must have a police record. I borrowed one of the photographs of Michael Anderson taken at the post-mortem, plus a set of his fingerprints and checked the record and mug shot under that name. Turns out his mother was Mrs Dorothy Pearson. Anderson was her maiden name. She had him while she was still unmarried.”

  Rafferty's memory, which felt it had covered a period of weeks instead of days, had to struggle before he made the connection. “Pearson? But that's the name of the second suicide we found the day of Barstaple's murder. You mean she was actually Dot Flowers?”

  “The very same. She called herself Flowers for reasons of her own, nothing to do with concealing her identity from the authorities. At least, not directly.”

  “You mean she was never an illegal at all?”

  Llewellyn shook his head.

  “Okay,” said Rafferty. “So why, exactly, did she use an alias?”

  “I wondered about that and went round to see her GP before I came back here. I had to get him out of bed. He told me that after her husband died, she had lived with a man called Flowers for years; but he had always refused to marry her. He only died a few years ago. She kept her own name for official things like her GP’s list and for tax and insurance purposes, but adopted the name Flowers for the sake of the neighbours. People of her generation are still sensitive about that sort of thing.”

  Slowly, Rafferty nodded. Now he remembered something his ma had said about Her-Next-Door's daughter. Called herself Mrs Williams, ma had said, adding that she knew very well she hadn't any right to the name as she wasn't married to Mr Williams.

  “Pity her GP didn't think of sharing this information with us before,” Rafferty commented. “Doesn't he read the papers? We've had Mrs Flowers’ name and photofit adorning them all for the last few days.”

  “He didn't see them,” Llewellyn told him. “If you remember, he told us he was just off on a fishing trip. He's only just got back. Said he always makes a point of cutting himself off from civilisation. The place he goes to, Gartloch Lodge, is in the Scottish Highlands and makes a special fe
ature of the back to basics bit; no phones, newspapers, television or radio. Nothing but fishing and talking, and drinking.”

  Rafferty nodded again. So that explained it. Gartloch Lodge sounded just his kind of place. Perhaps he'd book a holiday there in the spring—if he managed to avoid holidaying at Her Majesty's pleasure, that was.

  “We still can't be sure that she killed Clive Barstaple,” Rafferty pointed out. “And what about Amy Glossop? You're surely not suggesting she somehow killed her as well?”

  “Hardly.”

  “So who did?”

  “No one. Amy Glossop killed herself.”

  “But why?”

  “The usual reasons, I imagine. Despair, fear of the future, loneliness.”

  “But she didn't even know what he'd died of, none of them did. All they were told was that he had been poison-” Rafferty broke off abruptly, his eyes narrowed and he swore. “Smales—got to be him who let the cat out of the bag. Who else? He was so cock-a-hoop about being right on the type of poison used. He got right up Dally's nose. Bloody idiot. I'll deal with him in the morning.” After this brief outburst, Rafferty paused again, and then said, “But surely even he wouldn't have been so stupid as to supply the gory details?

  “I don't think he can have done, do you?” Llewellyn replied. “If she'd known how awful Barstaple's death was she wouldn't have chosen the same method. Obviously, all she knew was the name of the plant. Who would have told her the gory details as you term it? And when? She went home on Thursday lunchtime after we'd interviewed all the staff and, as far as we're aware, she saw nobody else. The other staff retired to the pub without her and she'd been dead at least 18 hours by the time Marian Steadman found her. She had no opportunity to learn more about the manner of his death.”

  Llewellyn paused for breath before continuing. “So, yes, I do believe she killed herself using the same means as Barstaple's murderer. She didn't know what it had done to him, didn't know its horrific symptoms. It must have seemed both simple and expedient to use the same poison to commit suicide. Not only would she leave a miserable existence, but she would also put her colleagues under a double load of suspicion. I imagine she found the thought very satisfying. You've said often enough yourself that suicides are frequently amazingly ignorant about the means they choose to end their lives. Few of them seem to take the trouble to discover exactly what their chosen method will do to them.”

  Rafferty was silent for several minutes while he digested it all. Then he realized that Llewellyn hadn't answered the first part of his question and now he repeated it. “Okay,” he admitted, “You've convinced me. But where's your proof that Dot Flowers killed Barstaple?”

  Llewellyn produced a small plastic bottle of some pale liquid. “I found this in Mrs Flowers’ rubbish bin. Fortunately, she'd forgotten to put the rubbish out for the refuse disposal people before she killed herself. It was still there, waiting for us to find it.”

  Rafferty tried to imagine the immaculate Llewellyn voluntarily plunging his hands into someone else's rubbish and failed. “So what is it?” he asked, though he had already guessed.

  “Carbohydrate andromedotoxin,” Llewellyn replied.

  Rafferty was impressed. “Bloody hell, what did you do to get the results so fast? Threaten to blow the lab up?” Forensic were not noted for their high speed response times, as Rafferty knew.

  “I didn't send all of it to the lab. I asked an old university acquaintance on the staff of a local chemical firm to analyse some of it for me.” Llewellyn quickly defended his unethical approach. “I felt the need for speed was more important than confidentiality. Anyway, confidentiality isn't a problem. The forensic laboratory is more full of leaks than this chap.”

  “Have I complained?” Rafferty asked. “I'm all for a bit of initiative, me. Especially if it gets this blasted case over and done with.”

  His words concealed the fact that Llewellyn had robbed him of his usual glory. Briefly, he put Llewellyn in the picture about his own discoveries. They had gone decidedly flat.

  “Ironic, isn't it?” he now asked. “That Mrs Pearson or Flowers, whatever you want to call her, should care so much what the neighbours thought when the current lot obviously couldn't give a damn if she lived over the brush with ten men. They barely remembered her first name, never mind anything else.”

  “She didn't adopt it for their benefit,” Llewellyn told him. “She adopted it years ago when she and the late Mr Flowers first moved to Elmhurst. Of course, this was at a time when it was a stigma to live in sin. I suppose she felt that once she was known by the name by people in her neighbourhood, she could hardly change it back without drawing attention to her deception.”

  Suddenly, the tiredness got to Rafferty. He felt drained. He wanted to go home. Doggedly, he insisted on hearing the rest of it. “I suppose she blamed Barstaple for her son's death?”

  “Undoubtedly. Ever since he sacked him, Michael Anderson had gone downhill. He couldn't get another decent job, he became depressed, started taking drugs, sleeping rough, getting into trouble with the police. A frequent enough story these days. According to the reports, when he died of an overdose earlier this year it was the first his mother had heard of him for some weeks. It must have been a terrible shock to her.”

  Rafferty nodded.

  “I imagine her son must have mentioned that Barstaple was working at Aimhursts. You remember I told you that Michael Anderson had worked there for a short time as a cleaner?”

  Rafferty nodded again.

  “I suppose she started making her plans then,” Llewellyn continued. “Got herself taken on by Allways after her son's death.”

  “So who swapped the yoghurt containers? No.” Rafferty held up his hand. “Don't tell me.” He was determined to come up with some answers on the case. “I think I can guess.” He hoped so, anyway. He needed to feel he'd made some contribution, however small. “Eric Penn, right?”

  Llewellyn nodded. “That's my belief, though, of course, I have yet to question him. According to Ada Collins, who I have spoken to again, Mrs Flowers had taken him under her wing. She felt sorry for him. He must have been pleased she trusted him to do something for her. He must also have been bursting to tell someone about it. Only I suppose he was scared he'd get into trouble, so he said nothing. I imagine, for his own sake, she had impressed upon him that he had to keep quiet.”

  Llewellyn went on to fill in further details of his triumph, but Rafferty was no longer listening; he was nursing his bruised pride.

  It was the first time Llewellyn had beaten him to the solution of a murder investigation. He wasn't sure he liked it. In fact, he was damn sure he didn't.

  You'll have to look to your laurels, Rafferty, my boy, he told himself. Instinct was the only thing he'd had over Llewellyn; now it looked as if Llewellyn was developing some instincts of his own.

  Of course, he comforted himself, he'd been at a decided disadvantage in solving this murder, weighed down as he'd been—as he still was—with the iffy suit problem. Obviously, it had preoccupied him to such an extent that Llewellyn had been able to surge ahead in solving the case. Not only that, Rafferty now realized; he'd also taken over a large part of the initiative and Rafferty had just gone along with it. Still, it was hardly an omen of things to come, he assured himself. Nothing like it.

  Llewellyn broke into his thoughts. “I'm surprised you didn't get there before me. You always have before.”

  Although Llewellyn's tone betrayed the merest touch of that intellectual arrogance that had been much in evidence when they had worked on their first case together, Rafferty was sensitive to it. Indignant, he found himself on the brink of saying that he would have solved it if it hadn't been for that blasted suit. He stopped himself just in time.

  Instead, he winked, gave Llewellyn what he fondly imagined was an enigmatic smile, and, after telling his stirring conscience to shut up, said, “Thought it was time you got there on your own, boyo. Why don't we just call it an early wedding presen
t?”

  Although it seemed probable that Llewellyn's conclusions about the case had been correct, with the murderer herself dead before her victim they could never prove it conclusively. But, for his own satisfaction, Rafferty wanted to tie up the loose ends. He did so the next day.

  Gallagher admitted he had been a suspect in the sixties murder, but insisted he had been framed. Rafferty was inclined to believe him. He even told him he could probably return to the States now as it was unlikely the police would reopen the case.

  After being put in the picture, Eric Penn's mother got the truth from her son with little difficulty. As Llewellyn and Rafferty had guessed, Eric had swapped the containers in Barstaple's litter bin, first flushing the second container's contents down the sink. He'd done it because Dot Flowers had always been kind to him and it had made him feel important to be asked.

  Rafferty also spoke to Albert Smith and Marian Steadman. He didn't want Smith to think he'd got away entirely with his wicked behaviour.

  He found them both in Marian Steadman's home. After she had let him in he followed her into the comfortable living room where he'd dropped the twin packets of in flagrante delicto photos of Clive Barstaple on the coffee table, upending first one, then the other.

  As the shots of Clive Barstaple in his bondage gear cascaded onto the wooden table Marian Steadman gasped and her face drained of colour. Her gaze flashed quickly towards her brother, then away again. Steadily, she met Rafferty's eyes. “I don't understand. Why are you showing us these?”

  “Because whoever took them sent one lot to Alistair Plumley and the other to Alexander Smith, your great-uncle, as well as Clive Barstaple's. Bit of a coincidence that he should receive the same explicit, compromising pictures, don't you think?”

  She said nothing.

  “Mr Smith senior phoned me soon after he heard of Barstaple's murder. I went down to Devon to see him.” Rafferty gestured down at the lurid shots of Barstaple. “He had a good idea who had sent them, you see.” He glanced at Albert Smith's rigid back. “I think he was right.”