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.’
‘D
id 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?’
‘You got born, didn’t you?’
‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Birth and death, Hughes. They happen at random. Your mother didn’t know your father but you still got born. The not-knowing is irrelevant. You were there that day, you were using her granddaughter to steal from her and Mrs Gillespie knew it. You had to shut her up before she talked to us.’
‘I don’t work it that way.’
‘How do you work it then?’
But Hughes refused to say another word.
I have brought Joanna and her baby home to live with me. I could not believe the squalor I found them in when I arrived in London. Joanna has given up all attempts at caring for the child or even practising elementary hygiene. She is clearly not fit to live alone and, while I abhorred that wretched Jew she married, at least while he was alive she had some pretensions to normality.
I am very afraid that the shock of Steven’s death has sent her over the edge. She was in the baby’s room this morning, holding a pillow over the cot. I asked her what she was doing, and she said: ‘Nothing,’ but I have no doubt at all that, had I entered the room a few minutes later, the pillow would have been across the baby’s face. The awful part is that I saw myself standing there, like some ghastly reflection in a distorted mirror. The shock was tremendous. Does Joanna suspect? Does anyone, other than Jane, suspect?
There is no cure for inbred insanity. ‘Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles . . .’
Thirteen
JANE MARRIOTT MARCHED into Sarah’s office in the Fontwell surgery the following morning after the last patient had left and deposited herself firmly in a chair. Sarah glanced at her. ‘You’re looking very cross,’ she remarked as she signed off some paperwork.
‘I feel cross.’
‘What about?’
‘You.’
Sarah folded her arms. ‘What have I done?’
‘You’ve lost your compassion.’ Jane tapped a stern finger against her watch. ‘I know I used to wig you about the length of time you spent on your patients, but I admired you for the trouble you took. Now, suddenly, they’re in and out like express trains. Poor old Mrs Henderson was almost in tears. “What have I done to upset Doctor?” she asked me. “She hardly had a kind word for me.” You really mustn’t let this business over Mathilda get to you, Sarah. It’s not fair on other people.’ She drew an admonishing breath. ‘And don’t tell me I’m only the receptionist and you’re the doctor. Doctors are fallible, just like the rest of us.’
Sarah pushed some papers about her desk with the point of her pencil. ‘Do you know what Mrs Henderson’s first words to me were when she came in? “I reckon it’s safe to come back to you, Doctor, seeing as how it was that bitch of a daughter what done it.” And she lied to you. I didn’t have a single kind word for her. I told her the truth for once, that the only thing wrong with her is an acidulated spleen which could be cured immediately if she looked for the good in people instead of the bad.’ She wagged the pencil under Jane’s nose. ‘I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that Mathilda was right. This village is one of the nastiest places on earth, peopled entirely by ignorant, evil-minded bigots with nothing better to do in their lives than sit and pass judgement on anyone who doesn’t conform to their commonplace, petty-minded stereotypes. It’s not compassion I’ve lost, it’s my blinkers.’
Jane removed the pencil from Sarah’s grasp before it could lodge itself in her nostril. ‘She’s a lonely old widow, with little or no education, and she was trying in her very ham-fisted way to say sorry for ever having doubted you. If you haven’t the generosity of spirit to make allowances for her clumsy diplomacy then you are not the woman I thought you were. And for your information, she now thinks she is suffering from a very severe condition, namely acidulated spleen, which you are refusing to treat. And she’s put that down to the cuts in the Health Service and the fa
ct that, as an old woman, she is now considered expendable.’
Sarah sighed. ‘She wasn’t the only one. They’re all cock-a-hoop because they think Joanna did it and I resent them using me and my surgery to score points off her.’ She pulled her fingers through her hair. ‘Because that’s what today was all about, Jane, a sort of childish yah-boo-sucks at their latest victim, and if Jack hadn’t decided to play silly buggers, then there wouldn’t have been so much for them to gossip about.’
‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Jane tartly. ‘What they can’t get any other way they make up.’
‘Hah! And you have the nerve to haul me over the coals for cynicism!’
‘Oh, don’t assume I’m not just as irritated as you are by their silliness. Of course I am, but then I don’t expect anything else. They haven’t changed just because Mathilda’s died, you know, and I must say it’s a bit rich accusing Mrs Henderson of only seeing the bad in people when the greatest exponent of that has just left you a small fortune. Mrs Henderson’s view of people is positively saintly compared with Mathilda’s. She really did have an acidulated spleen.’
‘All right. Point taken. I’ll drop in on Mrs H. on my way home.’
‘Well, I hope you’ll be gracious enough to apologize to her. Perhaps I’m being over-sensitive but she did seem so upset, and it’s not like you to be cruel, Sarah.’
‘I feel cruel,’ she growled. ‘As a matter of interest, do you talk to the male doctors like this?’
‘No.’
‘I see.’
Jane bridled. ‘You don’t see anything. I’m fond of you. If your mother were here she would be saying the same things. You should never allow events to sour your nature, Sarah. You leave that particular weakness to the Mathildas of this world.’
Sarah felt a surge of affection for the elderly woman, whose apple cheeks had grown rosy with indignation. Her mother, of course, would say no such thing, merely purse her lips and declare that she had always known Sarah was sour at heart. It took someone with Jane’s generosity to see that other people were diplomatically inept, or weak, or disillusioned. ‘You’re asking me to betray my principles,’ she said mildly.
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