Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(153)

“Mrs. Shaw, I'm not,” Mary said, and her voice was higher and sounded scared. “Mrs. Shaw, I don't have my hand anywheres on you. Please, won't you stop? I c'n fetch a chair. And I'll get a brolly to keep the sun off you.”

“Nonsense …” Weakly, Agatha waved her off. But she became aware that she'd ceased moving altogether. The landscape itself seemed to be moving instead. The tennis court receded into the distance and appeared to meld with the faraway Wade that lay in the shape of a green bucking horse beyond the Balford Channel.

Something told her that Mary Ellis was speaking, but she couldn't make out the words. She found that her head had begun to pound, that the dizziness she'd earlier felt upon rising in the library now swept against her like a current. And although she wanted to ask for help—or at least to say her companion's name—nothing emerged from her mouth but a groan. One arm and one leg became a drag upon her, numb anchors too heavy to heave along the ground.

She heard a shouting coming from somewhere.

The sun beat down fiercely.

The sky became white.

Lewis cried, “Aggie!”

Lawrence said, “Mum?”

Her vision tunneled to a pinprick before she fell.


TREVOR RUDDOCK HAD managed to fill the interview room with enough cigarette smoke to make Barbara's lighting up nearly unnecessary. When she joined him, it was through a grey pall that she saw him seated at the black metal table, and an array of extinguished cigarette ends speckled the floor by his chair. She'd given him an ashtray to use, but apparently he'd needed to make a statement that only floor-stubbed cigarettes and flakes of ash could assist him in making.

“Had enough time for a think?” Barbara asked him.

“I get to make a phone call,” he said.

“Looking to have a solicitor sit with you? That's a curious request from someone who claims he had nothing to do with Querashi's murder.”

He said, “I want my phone call.”

“Fine. You'll make it in my presence, of course.”

“I don't have to—”

“Wrong. You do.” There was no bloody way that she intended to give Trevor the slightest chance to cook up an alibi. And since he'd doubtless already attempted that with Rachel Winfield, his track record of heartfelt honesty left something to be desired.

Trevor scowled. “I admitted that I nicked stuff from the factory, didn't I? I told you Querashi gave me the sack. I told you everything I knew about the bloke. Why'd I do that if I also chopped him?”

“I've been considering that,” Barbara said agreeably. She joined him at the table. The room had no ventilation, so the air was close, saunalike in its weight as she took it into her lungs. The residual smoke from Trevor's habit didn't help much, and she realised there was little point in not joining him. So she took one of his remaining cigarettes and lit up. “I had a chat with Rachel this morning.”

“I know that, don't I” was his reply. “If you came for me, it's ‘cause you talked to her. She must've told you we split round ten. Okay. We did. We split round ten. Now you know it.”

“Right. I know it. But she told me something else that I really didn't put into proper perspective till you refused to tell me what you were up to on Friday night once you left her. And when I put together what she told me with what you've related about Querashi, and I blend those two facts with your secret activity on Friday night, I come up with only one possibility. And that's what we need to talk about, you and I.”

“What's this, then?” He sounded wary. He chewed on his index finger and spat away a flake of skin.

“Have you ever had sexual intercourse with Rachel?”

He lifted his chin, part defiance, part embarrassment. “What if I have? She saying she didn't want it or something? Cause if she is, my memory tells me something different.”

“Just answer the question, Trevor. Have you ever had sexual intercourse with Rachel?”

“Lots of times.” He smirked. “When I give her the call and tell her what day and what time, she comes round straightaway. ‘N’ if she has something else to do that night, she changes her plans. She's got a real itch for me.” Where his eyebrows would have been had he not shaved them off, the skin drew together. “Is she telling you different?”

“Clothes-off sexual intercourse is what I'm talking about,” Barbara clarified, skimming past his other remarks. “Or perhaps better stated, underclothes-off sexual intercourse.”

He chewed on his finger again and examined her. “What're you on about, then?”

“I think you know. Have you ever had vaginal intercourse with Rachel?”

“There's lot of ways to shag. I don't need to give her a length like the pensioners do it.”

“Right. But you're not exactly answering me, are you? What I want to know is whether you've ever been inside Rachel Winfield's vagina. Standing, sitting, kneeling, or mounted on a pogo stick. I don't particularly care about specifics. Just the act itself.”

“We did it. Yeah. Just like you said. We did the act. She got hers and I got mine.”

“With your penis inside her.”

He grabbed the packet of cigarettes. “Shit. What is this? I told you we did it. Is she saying I raped her?”