The Scold's Bridle

by Minette Walters

  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.

  The doctor has written ‘heart failure’ as the cause of Father’s death. I had difficulty keeping a straight face when I read it. Of course he died of heart failure. We all die of heart failure. Mrs Spencer, the housekeeper, was suitably distraught until I told her I’d keep her on while she looked about for another niche for herself. After that she rallied with surprising speed. That class has little loyalty to anything except money.

  Father looked very peaceful in his chair, his whisky glass still clasped in his hand. ‘Taken in his sleep’ according to the doctor. How very, very true, in every respect. ‘He drank far more than was good for him, my dear. I did warn him about it.’ He went on to assure me that I need have no fears about him suffering. I made an appropriate response, but thought: What a pity he hadn’t. He deserved to suffer. Father’s worst fault was his ingratitude. James was really very lucky. Had I realized how easy it was to get rid of drunks, well, well . . . enough said.

  Unfortunately, Joanna saw me. The wretched child woke up and came downstairs just as I was removing the pillow. I explained that Grandpa was ill and that the pillow was to make him more comfortable, but I have the strangest feeling she knows. She refused to go to sleep last night, just lay looking at me with that very unnerving stare of hers.

  But what possible significance could a pillow have for a two-year-old . . .

  Fifteen

  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 o
n 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.

  Jack coasted to a halt behind the van and left the engine purring while he unbuckled his belt, drawing it from around his waist and wrapping the end about his fist. He took the heavy rubber torch in his other hand, clicked open the door and slipped out on to the tarmac, sucking in great draughts of air to still the thudding of his heart.

  In the distance, Hughes turned round, took in the situation at a glance, and started to pound up the beach.

  Adrenaline plays tricks. It floods the body to galvanize it into colossal and spontaneous effort, but the mind observes what happens in slow motion. Thus time, that most relative of phenomena, ceases to exist in any meaningful way, and what Jack would for ever insist took several minutes, in reality took seconds. He burst the van doors open and brought the torch down on the head of the man nearest him, bellowing like a bull. The startled white face of another youth turned towards him and Jack flicked the belt across it in a vicious backhand swipe, crooking his elbow round the first man’s neck as he did so and pulling him backwards on to the tarmac. He released his hold and brought the torch round in a scything arc to smash under the chin of the face he’d whipped, toppling the youth off balance into thin air behind him.

  The three men left in the van, two holding the girl down, the other bare-arsed on top of her, were frozen into shocked immobility. The violence of the onslaught was so extreme, the noise of Jack’s continuous roaring so disorientating, that he was on top of them before they could register what was happening. He used the hand holding the belt to grip the hair of the bastard raping the girl, wrenched his head up and swung the torch in a mighty forehand smash into the wide-eyed, frightened face. Blood erupted from the broken nose in a stream, and the youth slithered sideways with a whimper of pain.

  ‘GET OUT!’ Jack shouted at the girl who was scrambling to her knees in terror. ‘GET IN THE CAR!’ He whipped the belt back and sliced it through the air into the eyes of a boy who was struggling to his feet in the corner. ‘YOU BLOODY LITTLE SHITS!’ he roared. ‘I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.’ He brought his boot down on the unprotected groin of the rapist and turned like a madman on the only youth he hadn’t touched. With a cry of terror, the boy cowered away, his arms held protectively above his head.

  Perhaps, after all, reason hadn’t entirely deserted Blakeney. He abandoned the torch and the belt, flung himself precipitately out of the van, bundled into the car after the girl, and roared it into motion, tugging the door closed as he did so. He saw Hughes too late to avoid him as he careered across the tarmac, and caught him a glancing blow with the offside wing, bouncing him into the air like a rag-doll. Jack’s anger was out of control, a red frenzy that pounded in his head like cannon-fire. Spinning the wheel, he turned the vehicle in a tight circle and headed back towards the crouching figure, switching on the headlights with a lazy flick of his fingers to catch Hughes’s terrified face in the glare as he prepared to mow him down.

  He had no idea what stopped him doing it. Perhaps it was the girl’s screams. Perhaps his anger abated as rapidly as it had surged into life. Perhaps, quite simply, his humanity triumphed. Instead, he slewed the car to a screaming halt, slammed the door into the man’s body and leapt out to wind his fist around the long hair and drag Hughes to his feet. ‘Into the back, sweetheart,’ he said to the girl, ‘as fast as you can.’ She was too terrified not to obey and slid in hysterics between the seats. ‘Now, you, in,’ he said, yanking down on the hair and shoving his knee into the small of Hughes’s back, ‘or, so help me, I’ll break your filthy neck now.’

  Hughes believed him. As the lesser of two evils, he allowed himself to be thrust face-down across the seat and sighed as Jack’s heavy weight descended across his legs. The car raced into life again, screaming across the tarmac as Jack forced it into gear, the door slamming shut when it impacted against another flying figure. ‘PUT YOUR SEAT BELT ON!’ he yelled at the screaming girl. ‘IF THIS BASTARD MOVES A MUSCLE I’M GOING TO PILE THE SIDE WHERE HIS HEAD IS INTO THE BIGGEST BRICK WALL I CAN FIND.’ He changed up, swung out on to the road and set off at a blistering pace through Southbourne with his hand clamped over the horn. If there was any justice in this cess-pit of a world, someone would get the police out before the Ford transit caught up with him.

  There was some justice left in the England Rupert Brooke died for. The local police received seventeen 999 calls in three minutes, twelve from elderly widows living alone, four from outraged men, and one from a child. They all reported the same thing. Joy-riders were turning the quiet tree-lined streets of their suburb into a death-trap.

  Jack’s car and the pursuing white transit were ambushed as they tore on to the main road leading into Bournemouth city centre.

  *

  The phone rang in Mill House at eleven thirty that night. ‘Sarah?’ Jack barked down the wire.

  ‘Hi,’ she countered with relief. ‘You’re not dead then.’

  ‘No. I’m under sodding arrest,’ he shouted. ‘This is the one telephone call I’m allowed to make. I need help PDQ.’

  ‘I’ll come straight away. Where are you?’

  ‘The bastards are going to charge me with joy-riding and rape,’ he said furiously, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘They’re fucking cretins here, won’t listen to a word I say. Goddammit, they’ve banged me up along with Hughes and his animals. The poor kid they were having a go at in the back of the van’s completely hysterical and thinks I’m one of them. I keep telling them to contact Cooper but they’re such bloody morons they won’t listen to me.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said calmly, trying to make what she could of this alarming speech, ‘I’ll get Cooper. Now tell me where you are.’

  ‘Some shit-hole in the middle of Bournemouth,’
he roared. ‘They’re about to take swabs off my fucking penis.’

  ‘The address, Jack. I need the address.’

  ‘WHERE THE HELL AM I?’ he bellowed at someone in the room with him. ‘Freemont Road Police Station,’ he told Sarah. ‘You’ll have to bring Ruth, too,’ he said with regret. ‘God knows, I never meant to involve her but she’s the only one who knows what happened. And get Keith as well. I need a solicitor I can trust. They’re all bloody fascists in this place. They’re talking about frigging paedophile rings and conspiracies and Christ knows what else.’

  ‘Calm down,’ she said sternly. ‘Keep your mouth shut till I get there and, for God’s sake, Jack, don’t lose your temper and hit a policeman.’

  ‘I already have, dammit. The bastard called me a pervert.’

  It was well after two o’clock when Sarah, Cooper and Ruth finally arrived bleary-eyed at Freemont Road. The night Sergeant at Learmouth had been adamant in his refusal either to contact Cooper or to give Sarah his home phone number when she put through an urgent call requesting to speak to him. ‘DS Cooper is not on duty, madam,’ was his measured response. ‘If you have a problem, you deal with me or wait until tomorrow morning when he will be on duty.’ It was only when he was faced with her angry presence in front of his desk, threatening him with questions in Parliament and court action for negligence, that he was moved to contact the Detective Sergeant. The counter-blast from Cooper’s end, not in the best of moods, anyway, after being woken up from a deep sleep, left him shaken. He grumbled away to himself for the rest of his shift. Sod’s law said that it didn’t matter how considerate a chap tried to be, he was always in the wrong.