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when I came home and found him in bed with one of our next-door neighbours, it was the last straw. I kicked him out.’
    â€˜How long were you married?’
    â€˜Five years.’
    â€˜You never had children?’
    â€˜God no. Adam wasn’t father material. He wasn’t husband material, either, as I learned.’ She bit her lip and hurried on. ‘I married him when he was still playing professional rugby and I don’t mind admitting that I enjoyed those early days of our marriage. We were feted wherever we went. Adam lapped it up. He got rather depressed when it all ended and he looked round for another sport where he’d get the same adulation. He found one with the bimbo athletics.’
    â€˜Did he ever talk about his schooldays?’
    â€˜Did he ever. According to Adam, he was always first at everything: rugby, swimming, running. You name it and he won it. I got sick of it in the end when his subjects of conversation came down to little more than boasting or bemoaning his fate that he should have come down from the height of his fame to teaching sport to adolescent boys. Well, I imagine you can guess what it was like?’
    Rafferty nodded. He could. Stella Ainsley reminded him of his late wife, Angie. He hadn’t been able to do anything right for her. Getting her pregnant and the hasty wedding that followed were the highlights and it all went steadily downhill after that. They hadn’t had children, either – the baby she had been carrying had died in the womb very early in the pregnancy. Or so she’d claimed. Rafferty, already caught on the hook, was just as pleased there were no more little hostages to fortune.
    Stella Ainsley could recall few names from her late ex-husband’s schooldays. Adam had apparently always been the star, the winner, with everyone else as also-rans. All in all, he’d learned little more than he already had, though he suspected there was further information she could give him.
    Rafferty rang Llewellyn on his mobile once he got back to the car. ‘Any joy?’
    â€˜The first Mrs Ainsley was quite forthcoming. She even recalled a few names from the past.’
    â€˜More than my one managed. So who did she remember?’
    â€˜Giles Harmsworth. She knew him, apparently and several of the others. She went to university with Giles and Asgar Sadiq.’
    â€˜Did she now? And did she have anything nasty to say about either of them?’
    â€˜She was of the opinion that Giles wouldn’t have the nerve to drop hemlock into Adam Ainsley’s food and then calmly eat his own lunch as if nothing had happened. She didn’t know Mr Sadiq quite as well, but she did say that she checked on the Internet after we rang her and she said that hemlock, apart from being grown in Asia, is also quite commonly used as a poison on that continent.’
    â€˜Is that so? Seems Mr Gary Sadiq has moved up the suspect pecking order. Remind me we must have another little chat with him this afternoon. I’ll see you back at the cop shop.’ Rafferty disconnected and settled down to the long drive home.
    Asgar ‘Gary’ Sadiq was a light-skinned Anglo-Indian, and he had spent most of his life in England as he had undergone all his schooling there.
    â€˜A long way from home,’ Rafferty commented. ‘What did you do during the holidays? Stay with your English relatives or fly back?’
    Sadiq shook his head. ‘Neither. My mother’s family disowned her when she married my father. And it was too far and too costly to return to India in the holidays. The fees cost all that my parents could spare. No I mostly stayed with school-friends. I stayed with Giles several times and Sebastian. I even stayed with Adam once, though it was an experience that neither of us chose to repeat.’
    â€˜Oh? Why was that?’
    â€˜I’m quite competitive. Adam had never had occasion to discover this at school, as we weren’t