The Scold's Bridle (35 page)

Hughes, who was suffering from sleep deprivation and niggling doubts about the continued obedience of the youngsters he had so successfully controlled, was subdued when he faced Chief Inspector Charlie Jones across the table in the interview room at Freemont Road Police Station. Like Cooper, he was in pessimistic mood. "I suppose you've come to stitch me up for the old cow's murder," he said morosely. "You're all the same."

"Ah, well," said Charlie in his lugubrious fashion, "it makes the percentages look better when the league tables get published. We're into business culture in the police force these days, lad, and productivity's important."

"That stinks."

"Not to our customers it doesn't."

"What customers?"

"The law-abiding British public who pay handsomely for our services through their taxes. Business culture demands that we first identify our client base, next, assess its needs, then, finally, respond in a satisfactory and adequate manner. You already represent a handsome profit on the balance sheet. Rape, conspiracy to rape, abduction, holding without consent, conspiracy to hold without consent, assault, sexual assault, theft, conspiracy to commit theft, handling stolen goods, corruption, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice-" he broke off with a broad smile, "which brings me to Mrs. Gillespie's murder."

"I knew it," said Hughes in disgust. "You're gonna fucking frame me for it. Jesus! I'm not saying another word till my brief gets here."

"Who said anything about framing you?" demanded . Charlie plaintively. "It's a little co-operation I'm after, that's all."

Hughes eyed him suspiciously. "What do I get in return?"

"Nothing."

"Then it's no."

Charlie's eyes narrowed to thin slits. "The question you should have asked me, lad, is what do you get if you don't co-operate? I'll tell you. You get my personal assurance that not a stone will be left unturned until I see you convicted and sent down for the abduction and rape of a child."

"I don't do children," Hughes sneered. "Never have done. Never will. And you won't get me for rape neither. I've never raped a girl in my life. I've never needed to. What those other punks did is their affair. I had no idea what was going on."

"For an adult male to sleep with a thirteen-year-old girl is rape. She's under age and therefore too young to give consent for what's done to her."

"I've never slept with a thirteen-year-old."

"Sure you have, and I'll prove it. I'll work every man under me until he drops in order to turn up just one little girl,
virgo intacta
before you raped her, who lied to you about her age." He gave a savage grin as a flicker of doubt crossed Hughes's face. "Because there'll be one, lad, there always is. It's an idiosyncrasy of female psychology. At thirteen, they want to pass for sixteen, and they do. At forty, they want to pass for thirty, and by God they can do that, too, because the one damn thing you can be sure about the female of the species is that she never looks her age."

Hughes fingered his unshaven jaw. "What sort of cooperation are you talking about?"

"I want a complete run-down on everything you know about Cedar House and the people in it."

"That's easy enough. Fuck all's the answer. Never went in. Never met the old biddy."

"Come on, Dave, you're a pro. You sat outside in your van over the months, waiting while Ruth did her stuff inside. You were her chauffeur, remember, turned up day after day during the holidays to give her a good time. How did she know you were there if you couldn't signal to her? Don't kid me you weren't close enough to watch all the comings and goings in that place."

Hughes shrugged. "Okay, so I saw people from time to time, but if I don't know who they were, how's it gonna
help you
?"

"Did you ever watch the back of the house?"

The man debated with himself. "Maybe," he said guardedly.

"Where from?"

"If you're aiming to use this against me, I want my brief."

"You're in no position to argue," said Charlie impatiently. "Where were you watching it from? Outside or inside the garden?"

"I sometimes used to park the van in the housing estate at the side. Ruth reckoned it was safer, what with all the yuppies living there. Wives commuting to work along with their husbands so no one in during the day," he explained obligingly. "There's some rough ground next to the fence round Cedar House garden, easy enough to hop over and watch from the trees."

The Inspector took an ordnance survey map out of his briefcase. "The Cedar Estate?" he asked, tapping the map with his forefinger.

Hughes sniffed. "Probably. Ruth said the land once belonged to the house before the old lady sold it off for cash, though Christ knows why she didn't flog the rest while she was about it. What she want with a massive garden, when there's people living on the streets? Jesus, but she was a tight-fisted old bitch," he said unwarily. "All that frigging money and no one else got a bloody look-in. Is it true she left the lot to her doctor or was Ruth just spinning me a yarn?"

Charlie stared him down. "None of your business, lad, but I'll tell you this for free. Ruth didn't get a penny because of what you forced her to do. Her grandmother took agin her when she started stealing. But for you, she'd have had the house."

Hughes was unmoved. "Shouldn't have been so quick to open her legs then, should she?"

Charlie looked at the map again, fighting an urge to hit him. "Did you ever see anyone go in through the back door?"

"The cleaner used to sweep the step now and again. Saw the woman from next door pottering about in her bit and the old boy sunning himself on his patio."

"I mean strangers. Someone you wouldn't have expected."

"I never
saw
anyone." He put unnatural emphasis on the verb.

"Heard then?"

"Maybe."

"Where were you? What did you hear?"

"I watched Mrs. Gillespie go out in her car one day. Thought I'd take a look through the windows, see what was there."

"Was Ruth with you?"

He shook his head. "Back at school."

"Refusing to co-operate, presumably, so you had to find out for yourself what was worth stealing. You were casing the place."

Hughes didn't answer.

"Okay, what happened?"

"I heard the old lady coming round the path so I dived behind the coal bunker by the kitchen door."

"Go on."

"It wasn't her. It was some other bastard who was nosing around like me."

"Male? Female?"

"An old man. He knocked on the back door and waited for a bit, then let himself in with a key." Hughes pulled a face. "So I legged it." He saw the triumph on Jones's face. "That what you wanted?"

"Could be. Did he have the key in his hand?"

"I wasn't looking."

"Did you hear anything?"

"The knocking."

"Anything else?"

"I heard a stone being moved after the knocking."

The flowerpot.
"How do you know it was a man if you weren't looking?"

"He called out. 'Jenny, Ruth, Mathilda, are you there?' It was a man all right."

"Describe his voice."

"Posh."

"Old? Young? Forceful? Weak? Drunk? Sober? Pull your finger out, lad. What sort of impression did you get of him?"

"I already told you. I reckoned it was an old man. That's why I thought it was
her
coming back. He was really slow and his voice was all breathy, like he had trouble with his lungs. Or was very unfit." He thought for a moment. "He might have been drunk, though," he added. "He had real trouble getting the words out."

"Did you go round the front afterwards?"

Dave shook his head. "Hopped over the fence and went back to the van."

"So you don't know if he came by car?"

"No." A flash of something-
indecision?
-crossed his face.

"Go on," prompted Jones.

"I'd never swear to it, so it's not evidence."

"What isn't?"

"I was listening, if you get my meaning. He gave me a hell of a shock when I heard him coming so I reckon I'd've heard a car if there'd been one. That gravel at the front makes a hell of a row."

"When was this?"

"Middle of September. Thereabouts."

"Okay. Anything else?"

"Yeah." He fingered his shoulder gingerly where Jack's car door had slammed into it. "If you want to know who killed the old biddy then you should talk to the bastard who dislocated my fucking arm last night. I sussed him the minute I saw his face in the light. He was forever sniffing round her, in and out that place like he owned it, but he made damn sure Ruth wasn't there at the time. I spotted him two or three times up by the church, waiting till the coast was clear. Reckon he's the one you should be interested in if it's right what Ruth told me, that the old woman's wrists were slit with a Stanley knife."

Charlie eyed him curiously. "Why do you say that?"

"He cleaned one of the gravestones while he was waiting, scraped the dirt out of the words written on it. And not just the once neither. He was really fascinated by that stone." He looked smug. "Used a Stanley knife to do it, too, didn't he? I went and read it afterwards ... "Did I deserve to be despised, By my creator, good and wise? Since you it was who made me be, Then part of you must die with me." Some bloke called Fitzgibbon who snuffed it in 1833. Thought I'd use it myself when the time came. Kind of hits the nail on the head, wouldn't you say?"

"You won't be given the chance. They censor epitaphs these days. Religion takes itself seriously now the congregations have started to vanish." He stood up. "A pity, really. Humour never harmed anyone."

"You interested in him now then?"

"I've always been interested in him, lad." Charlie smiled mournfully. "Mrs. Gillespie's death was very artistic."

Cooper found the Inspector enjoying a late pint over cheese and onion sandwiches at the Dog and Bottle in Learmouth. He lowered himself with a sigh on to the seat beside him. "Feet playing you up again?" asked Charlie sympathetically through a mouthful of bread.

"I wouldn't mind so much," Cooper grumbled, "if my inside had aged at the same rate as my outside. If I felt fifty-six, it probably wouldn't bug me." He rubbed his calves to restore the circulation. "I promised the wife we'd take up dancing again when I retired, but at this rate we'll be doing it with Zimmer frames."

Charlie grinned. "So there's no truth in the saying: you're as old as you feel?"

"None whatsoever. You're as old as your body tells you you are. I'll still feel eighteen when I'm a bedridden ninety-year-old and I still won't be able to play football for England. I only ever wanted to be Stanley Matthews," he said wistfully. "My dad took me to watch him and Blackpool win the FA cup in 1953 as a sixteenth birthday present. It was pure magic. I've never forgotten it."

"I wanted to be Tom Kelley," said Charlie.

"Who's he?"

The Inspector chuckled as he wiped his fingers on a napkin. "The photographer who persuaded Marilyn Monroe to pose nude for him. Imagine it. Marilyn Monroe entirely naked and you on the other side of the lens. Now, that really would have been magic."

"We're in the wrong business, Charlie. There's no charm in what we do."

"Mrs. Marriott hasn't raised your spirits then?"

"No." He sighed again. "I made a promise to her, said we wouldn't use what she told me unless we had to, but I can't see at the moment how we can avoid it. If it doesn't have a bearing on the case, then I'm a monkey's uncle. First, Joanna Lascelles was not Mrs. Gillespie's only child. She had another one thirteen, fourteen months later by Mrs. Marriott's husband." He ran through the background for Charlie's benefit. "Mrs. Marriott believed Mrs. Gillespie killed the baby when it was born, but on the morning of the sixth, Mrs. Gillespie told her it had been a boy and that she'd put it up for adoption when it was born."

Charlie leaned forward, his eyes bright with curiosity. "Does she know what happened to him?"

Cooper shook his head. "They were screaming at each other, apparently, and that little tit-bit was tossed out by Mrs. Gillespie as she closed the door. Mrs. Marriott says Mathilda wanted to hurt her, so it might not even be true."

"Okay. Go on."

"Second, and this is the real shocker, Mrs. Marriott stole some barbiturates from her father's dispensary which she says Mathilda used to murder Gerald Cavendish." He detailed what Jane had told him, shaking his head from time to time whenever he touched on James Gillespie's part in the tragedy. "He's evil, that one, blackmails everyone as far as I can judge. The wretched woman's terrified he's going to broadcast what he knows."