Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(144)

She swung to face him. “Did I say I was looking for something, Trevor?”

He stuttered, “Y-you said …”

“I said let's go upstairs. I have an itch to make this conversation more private.”

She continued to climb. The rap music came from behind one of the doors, but it wasn't the door to Trevor's room this time. Since it was accompanied by the sound of water roaring out of a large tap, Barbara assumed that one other member of the family was using the unintelligible chanting as an accompaniment to a bath.

She entered Trevor's room, holding the door open for him and shutting it behind them. Once inside, she sauntered to the table where his spider paraphernalia was spread out. She began to sift through it.

“What're you doing?” he demanded. “You said you wanted to talk in private.”

“I lied,” she replied. “What's this about anyway, all this junk? And how'd you get into spiders, such a nice lad like you?”

“Hang on!” he cried as she shifted a collection of half-assembled arachnids to see what was in the box beneath them. “Those'll fall apart.”

“I was wondering how you held them together, when I was here yesterday,” Barbara admitted.

She rooted through various sizes of sponges, through tubes of paint, through pipe cleaners, black plastic beads, straight pins, and glue. She moved aside reels of cotton in black, yellow, and red.

Trevor said angrily, “You got no bleeding business with that.”

But Barbara saw otherwise when she moved two old encyclopaedias to one side. Crammed between the volumes and the wall was another reel. But this one didn't have cotton wound round it. It was wound with wire.

“I think I have business with this, though.” She straightened and held the reel up for him to see. “Want to tell me about it?”

“About what? About that? It's just some old wire. You c'n see as much yourself.”

“That I can.” She slipped the reel into her shoulder bag.

“What d'you want with it? Why're you taking it? You can't take something from my room like that. And it's nothing anyway. It's just some old wire.”

“Used for what?”

“Used for anything. Used for fixing that net—” He jerked his head at the fishing net above his door, where the model spiders still cavorted. “Used for keeping the spider bodies together. Used for …” He struggled for another use. Words failed him, though, and he advanced on her. “You give me that bloody wire!” He said the six words through his teeth. “I didn't do nothing and you can't make it like I did. And you can't take nothing without my permission because—”

“Oh, but I can,” Barbara said pleasantly. “I can take you.”

He gawped at her. His eyes bulged and his mouth fell open and then snapped shut.

“D'you want to come quietly for a chat at the nick, or do I need to phone and have some assistance sent over?”

“But …no …why … I didn't do—”

“So you've said,” she told him. “So I expect you won't mind giving us your dabs, will you? Someone as innocent as you doesn't need to worry about where he's left his fingerprints.”

Aware of the difference in their sizes and strength, Barbara didn't give Trevor a chance to resist. She had him by the arm, out of the room, and on the stairs before he had the opportunity to protest. She wasn't so lucky, however, in the case of his mother.

Shirl was hoisting another box—this one to her shoulder—while Charlie made himself less than useful by playing with the television. She caught sight of Barbara and her eldest son as they were halfway down the stairs. She dropped the box.

“Now, you hang on!” She made a dash for the stairway and blocked their path.

“You don't want to interfere, Mrs. Ruddock,” Barbara told her.

“I bloody well mean to know what you're doing,” Shirl replied. “I know my rights. No one let you into this house, and no one agreed to talk to you. So if you think you can waltz in here and expect my Trevor—”

“Your Trevor's a suspect in a murder,” Barbara said, overheated and patience worn to gossamer. “So step to one side and do it nicely before more than one Ruddock gets run into the nick.”

She advanced anyway. Trevor said, “Mum! We don't need no trouble. Mum! D'you hear?”

Charlie had come to the sitting room door. Upstairs, Mr. Ruddock had begun to yell. At that moment the youngest boy ran towards them from the kitchen, a jar of honey in one hand, a bag of flour in the other.

“Mum?” Charlie said.

“Shirl!” Mr. Ruddock shouted.

“See!” Brucie cried, and poured the honey and the flour together onto the floor.

Barbara watched and listened and silently clarified Trevor's statement. The Ruddocks didn't need any more trouble. But what was often the case was that those not in need were blessed with more of what they already had.

“Take care of the kids,” Trevor said to his mother. He cast a sideways look towards the stairs. “Don't let him get at them while I'm gone.”


MUHANNAD SHOWED UP for mid-afternoon prayers. Sahlah hadn't expected him to do so. The argument with their father on the previous night had bled into the morning's breakfast. There had been no further exchange of words about Muhannad's activities with respect to the police investigation, but still the animosity that lingered between them had charged the air.