Rotten Apples (23 page)

‘Okay, thanks. You sound remarkably charitable for a man whose business was practically turned upside down on Scoffer's orders,' said Willow watching Wraggeley pouring the thick brown tea into two chipped mugs.

‘Ooh, I was hopping mad at the time, I can tell you. But I've mostly got over it now. I'll be free and clear of debts within the year. The only thing that still riles me is that they question every bloody thing I spend.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘Look, they think I earn more than I declare, right?'

Willow signified that she understood him so far.

‘Right. So they check through everything I've been doing, see? Take the wife on holiday? They want to see the air tickets, hotel bills, meals, drinks, bus tickets, everything—all to see if I could've afforded it on what I said I earned. Then they ask things like don't I ever buy presents for anyone? How can I buy presents, they say, if I only earn what I put on the bleeding form? And they check through everything I claim as an expense—go through it all with a tooth-comb. Not that I mind that in principle, of course.'

Willow raised her eyebrows at his bizarre idea that there could be a comb for teeth. He grinned at her, and went on: ‘If I'd known… Well, be that as it may. What I don't appreciate is having to send them so many bits of bloody paper. Luckily the wife's turning into quite a good little book-keeper and she seems to like doing it. The kids are all gone now and she has nothing else to do.'

Willow wondered how well he knew his wife, but she said nothing.

‘What I don't get is what it is you're after,' said the plumber, watching her with his head on one side.

‘Didn't I explain that? I'm preparing a report on how Scoffer carried out his investigations. As I say, you seem remarkably charitable. Do you think he treated you fairly?'

‘Since you ask me, love, no, I don't. But in the end, when he told me what they could do to me year after year till I snuff it, if they wanted. I took the line of least resistance. It was cheaper that way all in all, and I couldn't face the hassle. I hate forms and argy-bargy, and the last thing I want to do is go to court or have the bailiffs round. So I paid up. Luckily there was no effing VAT involved then.'

‘Oh, why was that?'

‘I was well under the turnover limit, wasn't I?'

‘I see. Well, that was lucky. You'd have been in a real mess otherwise.'

‘Telling me. I've a mate who got caught up with that mob, and what he told me would make your hair curl. Still, you don't want to hear about them. Horror stories about old Scoffer, eh? He's dead, i'n'e? Sure you still need to know?'

‘Yup,' said Willow, taking out her black notebook. ‘Give me a list.'

‘Tea a mite strong, is it?' he said, noticing how little she had drunk.

‘It's fine. But I know you're in a hurry.'

‘Okay. He was a bloody-minded bugger, y'know. Sorry. Bastard.'

‘Bugger's fine,' said Willow with a smile.

‘And he lied. That's what really got up my nose,' said Wraggeley, scowling at his memories.

‘What do you mean lied?'

He looked at her, took a moment to focus on the present and then smiled. ‘Well, we'd have one of those meetings and he'd say something then that he'd deny when I quoted it back at him later.'

‘What sort of thing?'

Wraggeley shrugged and picked at his left ear with his little finger, examining the nail when he had withdrawn it. Willow could see a gout of sticky brownish wax.

‘One day I told him he was daft to think I owed so much—or could pay it. I'd never seen so much money together in my life. I told him he'd no right to pick a figure like that out of the air. He said he hadn't done that; he'd used the best of his judgment.'

‘Didn't you agree?'

‘Quite frankly I told him what he could do with his effing judgment and then he lost his temper and told me that if, in his judgment, the figure should be doubled then it would be. Later, when I'd thought about it and talked to the wife, I rang him back and told him what I thought of his threats. He slagged me off and said he'd never threatened me at all. See what I mean?' He extracted the wax from under his nail, rolled it into a neat little ball and dropped it on the floor.

‘Yes,' said Willow, writing busily, ‘I think I do. And what about the surveillance?'

‘That made me bloody mad, too, I can tell you. But there wasn't a lot I could do about it, was there? They'd got all the evidence they needed, and pictures of me taking a ton in notes. I told them it was going through the books and I couldn't help it if punters liked to pay in cash, could I? Old Scoffer laughed like a drain and asked me to show him where cash payments had ever been entered in my accounts. I'd have looked a proper Charlie if I said there'd never been any before. That's when we came to our agreement. See?'

‘Right, And were you happy with it?'

‘Bloody unhappy, to be frank with you. But like I say, not a lot I could do about it and, between you and me and the gatepost…' He caught himself up as though he had suddenly remembered that Willow, too, represented officialdom. He gave her an ingratiating smirk. ‘That's about it then. Got enough for your report, have you?'

‘Yes, I think so,' said Willow, joining him in the fiction that she could not possibly have known what he had been going to say. For the first time she had some sympathy for Jason's cynicism about the honesty of his taxpayers. ‘Thank you for your time.'

Driving through the back streets of Battersea towards the hospital, she got lost in a vast one-way system and found herself trapped on the wrong side of the main railway line into Waterloo. She had to drive nearly all the way to Clapham Common to find a familiar road back towards the river. But she got to Dowting's eventually, and she went to talk to the nurses who were looking after Tom about his condition. They greeted her with well-practised smiles, but they could not tell her anything new. She thanked them and went to sit with him.

BACK AT THE HOUSE two hours later, she found Mrs Rusham alone and asked where the others were.

‘Ms Fydgett has gone to her chambers, and I persuaded Robert that he'd be better off in school.'

‘Goodness! That was brave.'

‘Not really.' Mrs Rusham smiled, but there was a look in her eyes that surprised Willow. It was wistful, almost vulnerable, and quite unlike anything Mrs Rusham had shown before, even the night when Tom had been shot. She had never looked less like a robot. Willow suddenly felt unsafe. It was as though she needed Mrs Rusham to be wholly impregnable.

‘He's just a frightened boy, you know,' the housekeeper went on earnestly. ‘All he wanted was someone to tell him what to do. He's not gone back to board yet; he'll stay here with us, but he'll do full school days and bring his prep back here. I told him you wouldn't mind that. He can do it in the kitchen with me if he's in your way.'

‘You've obviously managed to get on the right wavelength very quickly,' said Willow, trying to contain her peculiar uneasiness. ‘His aunt's been terribly worried that she can't understand him at all and keeps putting her foot in it whenever she tries to suggest anything.'

‘Well, she's never had children, has she?' Mrs Rusham's face tightened and she turned away, saying over her shoulder, ‘I'll bring your breakfast to the dining room now.'

Willow could not help staring at her back view, trying to decode the comment about Serena's childlessness. When they had first met, Mrs Rusham had told Willow that she had no children. That now sounded unlikely, but Willow was not going to ask any questions. Quite apart from needing the ostensible coolness of their relationship to continue, Willow had guarded her own privacy for so long and with such ferocity that she would never willingly violate someone else's for anything less than a murder enquiry.

She collected the newspapers and took them into the dining room.

A few minutes later, Mrs Rusham brought her cappuccino and a small, perfect omelette. ‘I can't talk about it,' the housekeeper said.

‘You must know that I'm not going to start asking you questions about your private life,' said Willow as gently as she could. ‘After all, we've worked in close proximity for several years now.'

‘Yes, I know you're not the prying kind.' Mrs Rusham nodded and disappeared back to the kitchen. Willow ate the omelette and drank the delectable coffee, leafing through her letters in a hopeless attempt to stop thinking about Mrs Rusham's uncharacteristic behaviour.

There was nothing of much interest to divert Willow's mind, except for a scribbled note from Chief Inspector Harness. Peering at the clenched handwriting, she eventually made out the words:

Dear Mrs Worth, I see I owe you thanks and an apology. Ms Fydgett's alibi has been on to me and we've been able to eliminate her. Good of you to take the trouble. Hope the news of your husband is better soon. In haste
,

Stephen Harness

She finished her coffee and was about to go into her writing room to ring him up when Mrs Rusham came through from the kitchen. Her face was unbecomingly flushed, the usually pale cheeks mottled dark red.

‘You always have two cups of coffee,' she said gruffly. Willow obediently turned back from the door.

‘Yes, I know. Thank you. You do make delectable coffee. I'Il take it with me to the study.'

Mrs Rusham opened her mouth, shut it, looked down at her shoes and then deliberately said, ‘I had a son once. Richard. He'd have been thirty this September. He was killed on his motorbike on his seventeenth birthday. I've always liked boys, you see.' She shook her head angrily and did not wait for Willow's comment, which was lucky because she did not have one ready.

That explains a lot, Willow thought as she walked slowly, cup in hand, to her study. Poor Mrs Rusham. To bear a child and watch him grow, nurse him through babyhood all the way to adolescence, see him on the verge of adulthood, only for him to the for something so stupid, so unnecessary as a road accident… No wonder she's never talked about herself or her family. No wonder I've treated her like a robot. That must have been what she wanted, too. And no wonder that we've always got on so well, however limited the way we've done it. Will it change now? What with that revelation and the feelings she couldn't hide when Tom was shot…

Willow stopped her internal conversation with herself. Her mind was suddenly full of Tom. There was no more room for Mrs Rusham or her dead son or her unhappiness. Willow leaned forwards until her head touched the desk. She tried to force away the mental pictures of life without him.

It was several minutes before she could regain control of herself, but eventually she managed it and pushed all her anxieties and her own feelings to the back of her mind. Then, in an attempt to do something useful, she tried to ring up Chief Inspector Harness. She was told that he was unavailable.

‘What a pity,' she said to the officer at the other end of the line. ‘He's written me a note. Um. I wonder…will he be in later?'

‘Yes, I expect so.'

‘Could you ask him to give me a ring? I'Il be here,' she broke off, looking down at her watch. ‘I've probably got to go out over lunchtime, but I'll be here until about twelve and then again after, say, three.'

‘I'll tell him. What's the number?'

Willow gave it and then cut the connection, flexing her fingers. There was no doubt that the burned skin was healing at last and it did not feel as though she had lost any of the movement in her hands. She thought that she might even be able to operate the keys of her word processor and turned it on.

Finding that although she was still clumsy she could type, she started to rough out her report for the minister. As she worked, she came up against all sorts of gaps in her knowledge and told herself that even if her fingers were on the way to recovery her brain was still not operating at full throttle. The telephone rang before she could lose her temper with herself.

‘Mrs Worth. Stephen Harness here. What can I do for you?'

‘Well, I really just wanted to thank you for taking the trouble to write.'

‘Good of you. I am in a bit of a hurry, so if that's all…'

‘It isn't quite,' said Willow, smiling at his Tom-like efficiency. ‘Look, now that you've eliminated Serena Fydgett, I take it that you've lost interest in her nephew as well…?'

‘I hear you've got him staying in your house,' said Harness, sounding more like the man who had questioned her straight after the fire. ‘What gives, Mrs Worth?'

‘Nothing. I've got them both here because her house was flooded after the cold water tank exploded while I was there. It was the least I could do, and I must admit that I thought it might be useful to get to know them both better. The boy's in school again during the day, but I'm worried about him and the effect that your questioning might be having.'

‘Not you too! I've had half the establishment on the phone bending my ear about that boy.'

‘Maybe, but there is no evidence against him, is there? Come on: it can hardly harm whatever case you're building to tell me that.'

‘All right,' he said after a sigh-filled pause. ‘I see what the superintendent meant. No, there's no actual evidence against Fydgett, but he's hiding something and we need to find out what it is.' Harness laughed. ‘Perhaps you could work another of your little miracles for us, or…'

‘Or what?'

There was a pause before Harness answered, sounding reluctant. ‘I wouldn't be doing my bit by your husband if I didn't warn you. I'm not sure that it's altogether wise to have a boy like that in your house.'

‘You can't think he's likely to set fire to my house,' said Willow, disliking the way he had activated her own suppressed fears, ‘whatever you think he did to his mother's tormentor.'