Chapter Five-4
655 Words
WHEN RAFFERTY HAD FINISHED going through the staff records, he pulled some sheets of paper towards him and started to make a list.
After writing ‘Things to Do’ in his best writing at the top, he paused, waiting for further inspiration. As usual, when it came to paperwork inspiration was slow in coming, and his mind began to wander.
They had yet to find the yoghurt pot containing the poison; he’d had all the rubbish searched as a matter of routine and, although there had been other empty yoghurt pots, a strawberry flavour one hadn’t been amongst them. He frowned as he tried to figure out if there might not be another reason other than the one Sam had suggested for the killer to substitute the poisoned pot for a normal one but he couldn’t come up with anything. Probably, it was as Dally had suggested, and that, if it meant anything at all, it was that the killer was merely trying to ensure that the yoghurt was found innocent.
Rafferty gave himself a mental shake, grasped his pen firmly and wrote:
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1.Find out who was in the victim’s office after, say, one o’clock in the afternoon, by which time, at the earliest, Barstaple would presumably have consumed the yoghurt and discarded the pot in his bin.
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2.Of particular relevance to the above, find out if anyone was in Barstaple’s office alone at any time that afternoon, and had the opportunity to retrieve the poisoned yoghurt pot and substitute it. Presumably, Barstaple, too, made occasional visits to the lavatory, so was likely to have left his office empty at least once that afternoon.
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3.Find out which members of staff were the last to leave on Wednesday evening, as the same opportunity as in 2 would have been available to them.
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4.Check if any more informal visitors came to the offices that day.
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HAVING MADE A START, Rafferty sat back. That carton of yoghurt was, he felt, the key to the case. If they could pinpoint who had the opportunity to remove it he was pretty certain they’d find the killer, too. Or at the very least an accomplice.
Pleased with his efforts, Rafferty began on another list; this one of those who were known to have been alone in the victim’s office at the relevant times.
At the top he wrote the name of Ada Collins, the contract cleaning supervisor. Beside her name, he put the work ‘unlikely’. She didn’t work for Watts and Cutley, so unless she had been one of those rationalised by him in an earlier episode, she had been safe from Barstaple’s particular brand of nastiness. Furthermore, she had claimed never to have met the man. Rafferty still considered that unlikely. In his consultancy capacity, Barstaple had been the acting manager and earned a tidy sum if the brand new Porsche was anything to go by. He’d hardly pack up dead on 5.30 every single evening, and according to both Gallagher and Eric Penn, he hadn’t done so.
He made another note against Ada Collins’ name, a reminder to check her background, then paused again. Before he sat back, he added the same against the names of the other contract cleaning staff.
He gazed happily at his neat lists for a few moments, before he remembered they were only a start. And as he thought of all the other checking that lay ahead he slumped in his chair. Maybe it wasn’t too late even now to follow his uncles, cousins, and brothers into the building trade? Of course, Superintendent Bradley might yet make the decision for him, and give him a shove in the direction of such an alternative career—as a trustie in a prison carpentry shop. But Rafferty immediately put that thought aside. Dafyd Llewellyn was a cautious soul, so it was hardly an imminent danger. The wedding suit would hang in the closet for a year or two yet, gathering moths and dust and – with a bit of luck – the label ‘unfashionable’ to boot. It was a comforting thought and cheered Rafferty immeasurably.
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