Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(87)

Barbara said that a Coke would be fine, and when he left his office in search of one, she took the opportunity to have a look round. She wasn't sure what she was looking for, although she wouldn't have said no to the sight of a nice coil of incriminating wire—suitable for tripping someone in the darkness—lying squarely in the middle of his desk.

But there wasn't much to take note of. A set of book shelves held one row of green plastic binders and a second row of account books with successive years stamped on the spine of each in flaking gold numerals. A metal in-and-out tray on the top of a filing cabinet contained a batch of invoices that appeared to be for foodstuffs, for electrical work, for plumbing, and for business supplies. A bulletin board on one of the walls had posted upon it four architectural blue prints: two for a structure identified as the Pier End Hotel and two for a leisure centre called Agatha Shaw Recreational Village. Barbara took note of this latter name. Mother of Theo? she wondered. Aunt? Sister? Wife?

Idly she picked up a large paperweight that was holding down a pile of correspondence, all of which appeared devoted to a plan to redevelop the town. When she heard Theo's approaching footsteps in the corridor, she removed her attention from the letters to the paperweight, which appeared to be a large blob of pocked stone.

“Rapbidonema” Theo Shaw said. He carried two Coke cans with a paper cup fitted over one of them. He handed this one over to Barbara.

“Raphi-who?” she said.

“Raphidonema. Porifera calcarea pharetronida lelapiidae raphidonema to be more exact.” He smiled. He had a most appealing smile, Barbara thought, and she hardened automatically at the sight of it. She knew well enough what degree of complicity an appealing smile was able to hide. “I'm showing off,” he said ingenuously. “It's a fossil sponge. Lower Cretaceous period. I found it.”

Barbara turned the rock in her hands. “Really? It looks like … hell, I don't know … sandstone? How'd you know what it was?”

“Experience. I've been playing palaeontologist for years.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Along the coast, just north of town.”

“At the Nez?” Barbara asked.

Theo's eyes narrowed, but so fractionally that Barbara would have missed the movement had she not been watching for some indication that he knew, at heart, what she was doing in his office. “Right,” he said. “The red crag traps them and the London clay releases them. All you have to do is wait for the sea to erode the cliffs.”

“That's your primary spot for fossil-hunting, then? Out on the Nez?”

“Not on the Nez,” he corrected her. “On the beach below it, at the base of the cliffs. But yes, that's the best spot for fossils along this stretch of coastline.”

She nodded and placed the fossilised sponge back on top of the papers it had been weighing down. She popped open her Coke and drank straight from the can. The paper cup she crumpled slowly into her hand. A tiny elevation of Theo Shaw's eyebrows told her that he didn't misunderstand the gesture.

First things first, she thought. The Nez and the bracelet made Theo himself a subject that she wished to pursue, but there were other fish to fry before she got to him. She said, “What can you tell me about a bloke called Trevor Ruddock?”

“Trevor Ruddock?”

Did he sound relieved? Barbara wondered. “He works somewhere on the pier. D'you know him?”

“I do. He's been here for three weeks.”

“He came to you via Malik's Mustards, I understand.”

“He did.”

“Where he was given the sack for pilfering goods.”

“I know,” Theo said. “Akram wrote me about it. Phoned as well. He asked me to give the chap a chance because he believed there were extenuating circumstances behind the pilfering. The family's poor. Six kids. And Trevor's dad has been out of work with a bad back for the last eighteen months. Akram said he couldn't in conscience keep Ruddock on, but he wanted to give him a second chance somewhere else. So I took him on. It's not much of a job, and it doesn't pay nearly what he was making with Akram, but it's something to tide him over.”

“What's he do?”

“Pier clean-up right now. After hours.”

“So he's not here at the moment?”

“He starts work at half past eleven at night. There'd be no point to coming to the pier before that, unless he was doing it for his own amusement.”

Mentally, Barbara added another tick to Trevor Ruddock's name in the list of suspects. The motive was there and now the opportunity. He could easily have done away with Haytham Querashi on the Nez and still clocked in at the pier on time.

But that begged the question of what Theo Shaw was doing with the Aloysius Kennedy bracelet. If indeed it was the Kennedy bracelet. And there was only one way to find out.

Enter Thespian Havers, Barbara thought. She said, “I'll need a current address for him if you've got it.”

“Not a problem at all.” Theo went to his desk and sat in the wheeled oak chair behind it. He turned the spool of an old Rolodex and flipped through its cards until he came to the one he wanted. He wrote the address on a Post-it and handed this over. Which gave Thespian Havers the opportunity she wanted.

“Whoa,” she said. “Is that an Aloysius Kennedy you've got on? It's gorgeous.”