The Scold's Bridle (30 page)

"Could you describe them, Mr. Gillespie?"

"Brown calfskin binding. Gold lettering on the spines. Titles courtesy Willy Shakespeare. Ten volumes in all."

"What sort of size?"

"Eight inches by six inches. An inch thick or thereabouts." He wrung his hands in his lap. "They're not there, I suppose. Don't mind telling you, rather relying on those diaries. They'll prove she set out to defraud me."

"So you read them?"

"Couldn't," the old man grumbled. "She never left me alone long enough. Fussed around me like a blasted hen. But the proof'll be there. She'd've written it down, just like she wrote everything else."

"Then you can't say for sure they were diaries, only that there were ten volumes of Shakespeare on the top shelf which bore a resemblance to some diaries you'd bought for her forty-odd years ago."

He pursed his lips obstinately. "Spotted them the first time I was there. They were Mathilda's diaries all right."

Cooper thought for a moment. "Did Mrs. Lascelles know about them?"

Gillespie shrugged. "Couldn't say. I didn't tell her. Don't believe in emptying the armoury before I have to."

"But you told her you weren't her father?"

He shrugged again. "Someone had to."

"Why?"

"She was all over me. Wouldn't leave me alone. Pathetic really. Seemed wrong to let her go on believing such a fundamental lie."

"Poor woman," murmured Cooper with a new compassion. He wondered if there was anyone who
hadn't
rejected her. "I suppose you also told her about the letter from her natural father."

"Why not? Seemed to me she has as much right to the Cavendish wealth as Mathilda had."

"How did you know about it? It was written after you left for Hong Kong."

The old man looked sly. "Ways and means," he muttered. But he saw something in Cooper's eyes that caused him to reflect. "There was talk in the village when Gerald topped himself," he said. "Word got about he'd written a letter which his brother managed to suppress. Suicide"-he shook his head-"wasn't the done thing in those days. William hushed it up for the sake of the family. I heard the stories at the time and suggested Joanna look for the letter. Stood to reason what would be in it. Gerald was a sentimental half-wit bound to've mentioned his bastard. Couldn't've resisted it."

"And perhaps you reached an accommodation with Mrs. Lascelles as well. You'd testify in court to her real paternity if she kept you in clover for the rest of your life. Something like that?"

Gillespie gave a dry chuckle. "She was a great deal more amenable than her mother."

"Then why did you bother to go on negotiating with Mrs. Gillespie?"

"Didn't rate Joanna's chances much, not against Mathilda."

Cooper nodded. "So you killed your wife to improve the odds."

The dry chuckle rasped out again. "Wondered when you'd pull that one out of the hat. Didn't need to. If she didn't kill herself, then rather think my step-daughter did it for me. She was mightly put out to discover that her mother played the tart with her great-uncle."

Abruptly, like some guilty secret he'd decided to unburden, he fished a full bottle of whisky from where it was nicked down behind the sofa cushions, unscrewed the cap and held it to his mouth. "Want some?" he asked vaguely after a moment, waving the bottle in Cooper's direction before placing it between his lips again and half-draining it in huge mouthfuls.

The Sergeant, whose experience of drunks was considerable after years of plucking them out of the gutter in sodden heaps, watched in amazement. Gillespie's tolerance levels were extraordinary. In two minutes he had consumed enough neat spirit to put most men on their backs, and the only effect it seemed to have on him was to reduce the tremors in his hands.

"We're having difficulty establishing a motive for your wife's murder," Cooper said slowly. "But it seems to me yours is rather stronger than most."

"Bah!" Gillespie snorted, his eyes bright now with alcoholic affability. "She was worth more to me alive. I told you, she was talking fifty thousand the day before she died."

"But you didn't keep your side of the bargain, Mr. Gillespie. That meant your wife was free to reveal why you had to abscond to Hong Kong."

"Water under the bridge," came his monotonous refrain. "Water under the bloody bridge. No one'd be interested in my little peccadillo now, but there's a hell of a lot'd be interested in hers. The daughter, for a start." He raised the bottle to his mouth again, and the shutters went down.

Cooper couldn't remember when anyone or anything had disgusted him quite so much. He stood up, buttoning depression about himself with his coat. If he could wash his hands of this terrible family, he would, for he could find no saving graces in any of them. What's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh, and their corruption was as rank as the stench in that room. If he regretted anything in his life it was being on shift the day Mathilda's body was found. But for that, he might have remained what he had always believed he was-a truly tolerant man.

Unnoticed by Gillespie, he retrieved the empty bottle from the floor with his fingertips and took it with him.

Jack studied the address that Sarah had patiently cajoled out of Ruth. "You say it's a squat, so how do I get him outside alone?"

She was rinsing some cups under the cold water tap. "I'm having second thoughts. What happens if you end up in traction for the next six months?"

"It couldn't possibly be worse than what I'm suffering already," he murmured, pulling out a chair and sitting on it. "There's something wrong with the spareroom bed. It's giving me a stiff neck. When are you going to boot Ruth out and let me back where I belong?"

"When you've apologized."

"Ah, well," he said regretfully, "a stiff neck it is then."

Her eyes narrowed. "It's only an apology, you bastard. It won't kill you. Stiff-necked says it all, if you ask me."

He gave an evil grin. "It's not the only thing that's stiff. You don't know what you're missing, my girl."

She glared at him. "That's easily cured." With a swift movement she upended a cupful of freezing water into his lap. "It's a pity Sally Bennedict didn't do the same."

He surged to his feet, knocking the chair backwards. "Jesus, woman," he roared, "will you stop trying to turn me into a eunuch!" He gripped her round the waist and lifted her bodily into the air. "You're lucky we've got Ruth in the house," he growled, twisting her sideways and holding her head under the running tap, "otherwise I might be tempted to show you how ineffectual cold water is on a deprived libido."

"You're drowning me," she spluttered.

"Serves you right." He set her on her feet again and turned off the tap.

"You asked for passion," she said, dripping water over the quarry tiles. "Don't you like it now that you've got it?"

He tossed her a towel. "Hell, yes," he said with a grin. "The last thing I wanted was a wife who understood. I will not be patronized, woman."

She shook her head in fury, splattering the kitchen with droplets. "If one more person calls me patronizing," she said, "I will do them some damage. I am
trying
to be charitable towards some of the most useless and self-indulgent egotists it has ever been my misfortune to meet. And it's bloody difficult." She rubbed her hair vigorously with the towel. "If the world was made up of people like me, Jack, it would be paradise."

"Well, you know what they say about paradise, old thing. It's heaven until the horned viper pops his head out from under the fig leaf and spots the moist warm burrow under the bushes. After that all hell breaks loose."

She watched him pull on his old donkey jacket and take a torch from the kitchen drawer. "What are you planning to do exactly?"

"Never you mind. What you don't know can't incriminate you."

"Do you want me to come with you?"

His dark face split into a grin. "What for? So you can stitch him back together again when I've finished with him? You'd be a liability, woman. Anyway, you'd be struck off if we were caught, and someone's got to stay with Ruth."

"You will be careful, won't you?" she said, her eyes dark with concern. "In spite of everything, Jack, I am really very fond of you."

He touched a finger to her lips. "I'll be careful," he promised.

He drove slowly up Palace Road, located number twenty-three and the white Ford transit outside it, made a circuit of the block and drew into a space which gave him an unobstructed view of the house but was far enough away from it not to attract attention to himself. Yellow lamplight gleamed along the street, throwing pools of shadow amongst the houses, but few people were abroad at eight o'clock on a cold Thursday evening in late November, and only once or twice did his heart jump at the unexpected appearance of a dark-clad figure on the pavement. An hour had passed when a dog emerged into a swathe of light ten yards from the car and began to rootle amongst some garbage by a dustbin. It was only after several minutes of watching that Jack realized it wasn't a dog at all but an urban fox, scavenging for food.

So prepared was he for a long wait, and so entranced by the delicate scratchings of the fox, that he missed the door of number twenty-three opening. Only the noise of laughter alerted him to the fact that something was going down. With narrowed eyes, he watched a group of young men piling into the back of the van, saw the doors slam and a figure disappear round the side.

Impossible to tell if it was Hughes. Ruth had described him as tall, dark and handsome, but, as all cats are black in the night, so all young men look the same from thirty yards distant on a winter's evening. Jack, gambling on something else she had said, that the van was his and he always drove it, pulled out behind it as it drove away.

Half an hour later and well into the better side of town, the van drew to a halt in the shadows of an expensive-looking house to pick up the wide-eyed adolescent girl waiting there. The hairs began to crawl on the back of Jack's neck. He watched her climb with gawky eagerness into the passenger seat, and he knew that she was as unprepared as Ruth had been for the surprise that Hughes had waiting for her in the back.

The van took the coast road east towards Southbourne and Hengistbury Head and, as the traffic thinned, Jack allowed the distance between it and him to lengthen. He toyed with one possibility after another-should he stop to call the police and risk losing the van altogether?-should he ram the van and risk injuring himself and the girl?-should he try to deter them by drawing in beside them when they parked, at the risk of their driving off and giving him the slip? He discarded each idea in turn, seeing only their weaknesses, and suddenly felt a deep regret that he hadn't brought Sarah with him. He had never wanted the comfort of her friendship quite so desperately.

The van turned into a deserted car park on the sea front, and more by instinct than design Jack killed his lights, thrust the gears into neutral and freewheeled to a stop beside the kerb some fifty yards behind it. Every detail of what happened next was lit by a cold, clear moon, but he knew what to expect because Ruth had described Hughes's MO in all too graphic detail. The driver, Hughes for a certainty, flung open his door and jumped out on to the tarmac, dragging the girl after him. There was the briefest of scuffles before he pinioned her in his arms and carried her, kicking and struggling, to the back of the van. He was laughing as he wrenched the rear door open and flung her like a sack of potatoes into the lit interior. The square of light shone out briefly before he closed the doors and strolled away towards the sea shore, lighting a cigarette as he went.

Jack could never explain afterwards why he did what he did. In retrospect he could only really remember his fear. His actions were governed entirely by instinct. It was as if, faced with a crisis, normal reason deserted him and something primeval took over. He focused entirely on the child. The need to help her was paramount, and the only method that presented itself was to open the van doors and physically remove her from danger. He eased into first gear and motored gently towards the transit, watching Hughes as he did so to see if he picked up the throb of the engine above the wash of the waves against the shore. Apparently not. The man stooped lazily to gather stones from the beach and send them spinning out across the black water.