Absolute Poison Read Online Free Page A

sufficient. The wording of all of them reminded Rafferty of Superintendent Bradley at his more pedantic. All were signed by the dead man. His earlier pity evaporating, Rafferty wondered sourly if Barstaple had issued a reprimand for his own recent over-use of the toilet facilities.
    Barstaple's office was streamlined and functional. Its sole decoration, on the solid wall behind the desk, was several framed posters of some grey mechanical gadget called the Aimhurst Widget.
    Rafferty, aware he'd have offended against nearly every one of Barstaple's dreary edicts, thought fondly of his own office, which in spite of Superintendent Bradley's frequent exhortations about tidiness, still remained as cosily ramshackle as ever.
    Overcoming his distaste, Rafferty transferred his attention back to the dead man. The cadaver was half in, half out of his chair, which had tumbled to the floor with its load.
    Barstaple must have cracked his head as he fell, he thought, as he noted the skin on his forehead was broken. As if to confirm his conclusions, he now saw there was a smear of blood on the corner of the desk.
    “Find out the name of the key holder and get them over here please, Dafyd,” he instructed. “But before you do that, get on the blower and call Dally and the team out. When you've done that, have a word with the security guard on the desk. With a bit of luck he'll be an ex-copper and might have something useful to tell us. I'll speak to the woman who found the body. Where has Smales put her?”
    “In the ground floor staff room with the rest of the cleaners,” Llewellyn told him before heading off to make his phone calls.
    Slowly, trying to compose his mind for the coming interviews, Rafferty followed him down the steep stairs to the ground floor and walked along to the staff room. Along with a collection of staff photographs, there was the same profusion of notices here as there had been in Barstaple's office. They even contained the same diktats.
    WPC Green and PC Smales were there, along with the three members of the contract cleaning firm. Smales was doing his best not to look smug and failing. His face, so boyishly smooth that Rafferty guessed he rarely needed to shave, was pink with excitement and Rafferty smothered a sigh.
    The cleaners, two women and a man, stared anxiously at him. Incongruously, the male cleaner still sported a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves.
    Rafferty nodded to Smales and after a quick, whispered, “Well done. It looks as if you were right,” he added, in an attempt to curb some of Smales’ more obvious adrenalin surge, “I'll want you to take notes, Constable.” He spoke briefly to the contract cleaning staff before asking, “Which one of you found the body?”
    “I did.” A plump middle-aged woman in a faded blue nylon overall answered.
    “And you are?”
    “Mrs Collins. Ada Collins.
    Rafferty was relieved to see that she seemed a sensible, level-headed kind of woman. Even after the shock of finding the body, she appeared remarkably composed and when Rafferty told her he'd like to speak to her first, she simply nodded and followed him down the corridor to the reception area.
    The building was on two floors. It wasn't a large concern, and, as he now learned from a
sotto-voce
Smales, consisted of a reception area, conference room, four offices, and a staff room on the ground floor and a large open-plan office and male and female lavatories on the first floor. The open-plan office also incorporated a kitchen halfway down its length and the victim's own glassed-in office just inside the door.
    As Llewellyn returned from his telephoning and took the security guard to an empty office, Rafferty led Mrs Collins to the seating area on the far side of the reception. Smales sat importantly on the other side of her, notebook and pen much in evidence.
    Although composed, Ada Collins had had an unpleasant experience and Rafferty spent the first few minutes gently drawing her out about herself