The Scold's Bridle (25 page)

"She was okay for the odd screw, no great shakes but okay. Look, I told you, they only make out with me because they want to get back at their folks. So what am I supposed to do? Tug my forelock in gratitude for the use of their very ordinary bodies? I can get as good if not better down the nightclub of a Saturday." He grinned again, a captivatingly wicked grin, guaranteed to melt female hearts but totally lost on Jones and Cooper. "I do the business for them, give them their thrills, and I only complain when they try and lay their fucking thieving on me. It really gets up my nose, if you want the truth. You're such bloody suckers, you lot. A pretty face, a posh accent, a sob story, and, bingo, get Dave Hughes down here and give him the works. You just won't accept that they're slags, same as the prozzies on the streets in the red light district."

Charlie looked thoughtful. "That's the second time you've called Miss Lascelles a slag. What's your definition of a slag, Mr. Hughes?"

"The same as yours, I guess."

"A vulgar, coarse woman who sells her body for money. I wouldn't say that was a description of Miss Lascelles."

Hughes looked amused. "A slag's an easy lay. Ruth was so bloody easy, it was pathetic."

"You said she was no great shakes as a screw," Charlie carried on imperturbably. "That's a very revealing admission, don't you think?"

"Why?"

"It says more about you than it does about her. Didn't she fancy you? Did you have to force her? What is it you like doing that she didn't like you enough to go along with? I find that fascinating."

"I've had better, that's all I meant."

"Better what, Mr. Hughes?"

"Lovers, for Christ's sake. Women who know what they're doing. Women who handle themselves and me with more fucking finesse. Screwing Ruth was like screwing blancmange. It was me had to do all the work while she just lay there telling me how much she loved me. It pisses me off, that, it really does."

Charlie frowned. "Why did you bother with her then?"

Hughes smiled cynically at the all-too-patent trap. "Why not? She was free, she was available, and I get horny like the next man. Are you going to charge me with doing what comes naturally?"

Charlie thought for a moment or two. "Did you ever go into Cedar House?"

"The old biddy's place?" He shook his head. "No way. She'd have done her nut if she'd got wind of who Ruth had hitched herself to. I don't go looking for trouble though you'd be amazed at the girls. Half of them think their parents are going to welcome me with open arms." He mimicked the clipped diction of the upper classes. "Mummy, Daddy, I'd like you to meet my new boyfriend, Dave." The boyish grin again. "They're so bloody thick, you wouldn't believe."

"There've been a lot of these girls then. We thought there might have been."

Hughes tilted his chair back, relaxed, complacent, unbelievably confident. "I appeal to them, Inspector. It's a talent I have. Don't ask me where it comes from, though, because I couldn't tell you. Perhaps it's the Irish in me."

"On your mother's side, presumably."

"How did you guess?"

"You're a type, Mr. Hughes. Probably the illegitimate son of a whore who screwed anything for money, if your extreme prejudice against prostitutes is anything to go by. You wouldn't have a clue who your father was because he might have been any one of fifty who shafted her during the week you were conceived. Hence your contempt and hatred for women and your inability to conduct an adult relationship. You had no male role model to learn from or emulate. Tell me," he murmured, "does getting it free make you feel superior to the sad, anonymous little man who paid to father you? Is that why it's so important?"

The blue eyes narrowed angrily. "I don't have to listen to this."

"I'm afraid you do. You see, I'm very interested in your pathological dislike of women. You can't speak about them without being offensive. That isn't normal, Mr. Hughes, and as Sergeant Cooper and I are investigating an extraordinarily abnormal crime, your attitude alarms me. Let me give you a definition of psychopathic personality disorder." He consulted the piece of paper again. "It manifests itself in poor or non-existent job performance, persistent criminality, sexual promiscuity and aggressive sexual behaviour. People with this disorder are irresponsible and extremely callous; they feel no guilt over their antisocial acts and find it difficult to make lasting relationships." He looked up. "Rather a good description of you, don't you think? Have you ever been treated for this type of disorder?"

"No, I fucking well haven't," he said furiously. "Jesus, what is this garbage, anyway? Since when was thieving an abnormal crime?"

"We're not talking about thieving."

Hughes looked suddenly wary. "What are we talking about then?"

"The things you do to the girls."

"I don't get you."

Charlie leaned forward aggressively, his eyes like flints. "Oh, yes, you do, you filthy little nonce. You're a pervert, Hughes, and when you go down and the rest of the prisoners find out what you've been banged up for, you'll learn what it's like to be on the receiving end of aggressive behaviour. They'll beat the shit out of you, urinate on your food and use a razor on you if they can get you in the shower alone. It's one of the oddities of prison life. Ordinary prisoners hate sex offenders, particularly sex offenders who can only get a hard-on with children. Whatever they've done themselves pales into insignificance beside what you and people like you do to defenceless kids."

"Jesus! I don't do kids. I hate bloody kids."

"Julia Sefton had just turned sixteen when you did her. She could almost have been your daughter."

"That's not a crime. I'm not the first man who's slept with someone young enough to be his daughter. Get real, Inspector."

"But you always pick young girls. What is it about young girls that gets you so excited?"

"I don't pick them. They pick me."

"Do older women frighten you? That's the usual pattern with nonces. They have to make out with children because mature women terrify them."

"How many times do I have to tell you? I don't make out with children."

Abruptly Jones switched tack. "Ruth stole some diamond earrings from her grandmother on Saturday, November the sixth, the same day that Mrs. Gillespie killed herself. Did you take Ruth there that day?"

Hughes looked as if he was about to deny it, then shrugged. "She asked me to."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did she ask you to take her? What did she want to do there?"

Hughes looked vague. "She never said. But I never went in the frigging place and I didn't know she planned to steal any frigging earrings."

"So she rang you at your squat, asked you to drive all the way out to Southcliffe to pick her up, take her from there to Fontwell and then back to Southcliffe, without ever explaining why."

"Yeah."

"And that's all you did? Acted as her chauffeur to and fro and waited outside Cedar House while she went in?"

"Yeah."

"But you've admitted you didn't like her. In fact you despised her. Why go to so much trouble for someone you didn't like?"

"It was worth it for a screw."

"With blancmange?"

Hughes grinned. "I felt horny that day."

"She told my Sergeant she was absent from school for upwards of six hours. It's thirty miles from Southcliffe to Fontwell, so let's say it took you forty minutes each way. That leaves some four and a half hours unaccounted for. Are you telling me you sat in your van in Fontwell village for four and a half hours twiddling your thumbs while Ruth was inside with her grandmother?"

"It wasn't that long. We stopped on the way back for the screw."

"Where exactly did you park in Fontwell?"

"Can't remember now. I was always waiting for her some place or another."

Charlie placed his finger on the crumpled page of paper. "According to the publican at the Three Pigeons your van was parked on his forecourt that afternoon. After ten minutes you drove away, but he saw you stop beside the church to pick someone up. We must presume this was Ruth unless you are now going to tell me you took a third party to Fontwell the day Mrs. Gillespie 'killed herself'."

The wary look was back in Hughes's eyes. "It was Ruth."

"Okay, then what were you and Ruth doing for four and a half hours, Mr. Hughes? You certainly weren't screwing her. It doesn't take four and a half hours to screw blancmange. Or perhaps it does for someone who suffers from a psychopathic personality disorder. Perhaps it takes you that long to get it up."

Hughes refused to be needled. "I guess there's no reason for me to protect the silly bitch. Okay, she asked me to drive her to this backstreet jeweller somewhere in Southampton. I didn't ask why, I just did it. But you can't do me for that. All I did was act as a taxi. If she stole some earrings and then sold them, I knew nothing about it. I was just the patsy with the wheels."

"According to Miss Lascelles she gave the money to you as soon as she sold the earrings. She said it was six hundred and fifty pounds in cash and that you then, drove her straight back to school in time for her physics lecture."

Hughes didn't say anything.

"You profited from a crime, Mr. Hughes. That's illegal."

"Ruth's lying. She never gave me any money and, even if she did, you'd have to prove I knew she'd thieved something in the first place. She'll tell you it was all her idea. Look, I don't deny she funded me from time to time, but she said the money was hers and I believed her. Why shouldn't I? The old granny was rolling in it. Stood to reason Ruth would be as well." He grinned again. "So what if she did give me cash from time to time? How was I to know the silly bitch was stealing it? She owed me something for the petrol I wasted acting as her frigging chauffeur in the holidays."

"But she didn't fund you that day?"

"I already said no, and no's what I mean."

"Did you have any money on you?"

'"A fiver, maybe."

"What was the name of the backstreet jeweller in Southampton?" Charlie asked abruptly.

"No idea. I never went in the place. You'll have to ask Ruth. She just told me to go to a road and stop at the end of it."

"What was the name of the road?"

"Don't know. She had a map, told me right, left, straight on, stop. I just did what I was told. You'll have to ask Ruth."

"She doesn't know. She says you drove her there, told her which shop to go into, who to ask for and what to say."

"She's lying."

"I don't think so, Mr. Hughes."

"Prove it."

Charlie thought rapidly. He had no doubt that Hughes was telling the truth when he said he hadn't entered Cedar House or the jewellers', not in Ruth's company anyway. The beauty of his scam was that he didn't handle the stolen goods himself, merely transported the girls and the goods to someone who would. That way, the only person who could ever implicate him was the girl, and she wasn't going to because, for whatever reason, she was too frightened of him. "I intend to prove it, Mr. Hughes. Let's start with an account of your movements after you dropped Ruth back at school. Did you go to this nightclub you mentioned? It'll be expensive, they usually are, and coke and ecstasy don't come cheap, both of which I suspect you're on. People will remember you, especially if you were throwing money about."

Hughes saw another trap and giggled. "I already said I hadn't got any money, Inspector. I drove around a bit and then went back to the squat."

"What time was that?"

He shrugged. "No idea."

"So if I find someone who says a white transit van was parked in the vicinity of a Bournemouth nightclub that night, you'll say it couldn't have been yours because you were just driving around."

"That's about the size of it."

Charlie bared his teeth in a predatory smile. "I have to inform you, Mr. Hughes, that you will be transferred shortly to Learmouth Police Station where you will be questioned at length about the murder of Mrs. Mathilda Gillespie." He gathered his notes together and thrust them back into his pocket.

"Shit!" said Hughes angrily. "What crap are you trying to lay on me now? You said she killed herself."

"I was lying. She was murdered and I have reason to believe you were involved in that murder."

Hughes surged aggressively to his feet. "I told you I never went in the fucking place. Anyway, the publican's my alibi. He saw me in his car park and watched me pick up Ruth. How could I murder the old lady if I was in my van the whole time?"

"She wasn't murdered at two-thirty. She was murdered later that evening."

"
I
wasn't there later that evening."

"Your van was. The publican says you returned that evening and, as you yourself have just told us, you and your van have no alibi for the night of November the sixth. You were driving around, remember?"

"I was here in Bournemouth and so was the van."

"Prove it." Charlie stood up. "Until you do, I'm holding you on suspicion of murder."

"You're really out of order on this one. I'll get my brief on you."

"Do that. You'll be allowed your phone call at Learmouth."

"Why would I want to kill the old cow anyway?"

Charlie lifted a shaggy eyebrow. "Because you have a history of terrorizing women. This time you went too far."

"I don't bloody murder them."

"What do you do to them?"

"Shag 'em that's all. And I don't short change 'em neither. I've never had a complaint yet."

"Which is probably what the Yorkshire Ripper said every time he came home with his hammer and his chisel in the boot of his car."

"You're way out of order," said Hughes again, stamping his foot. "I didn't even know the old bitch. I didn't
want
to know her. Jesus, you bastard, how could I kill someone I didn't even know?"