didn't want to tell you because the school would throw a fit if they knew.'
'Was your grandmother alive when you left Cedar House at five o'clock?'
She looked put out by the sudden switch of direction. 'She must have been, mustn't she, as I didn't kill her.'
'So you spoke to her?'
Ruth eyed him warily. 'Yes,' she muttered. 'I left my key at school and had to ring the doorbell.'
'Then she'll have asked you how you got there. If you had to hitch, she won't have been expecting you.'
'I said I had a lift from a friend.'
'But that wasn't true, was it, and, as you knew you were going to have to hitch back to school again on a dark November evening, why didn't you ask your grandmother to drive you? She had a car and, according to you, she was fond of you. She'd have done it without a murmur, wouldn't she? Why would you do something so dangerous as hitching in the dark?'
'I didn't think about it.'
He sighed. 'Where did you hitch from, Miss Lascelles? Fontwell itself, or did you walk the three miles along Gazing Lane to the main road? If it was Fontwell, then we'll be able to find the person who picked you up.'
'I walked along Gazing Lane,' she said obligingly.
'And what sort of shoes were you wearing?'
'Trainers.'
'Then they'll have mud from the lane squeezed into every seam and crevice. It was raining most of that afternoon. The boys at forensic will have a field day. Your shoes will vindicate you if you're telling the truth. And if you're not...' he smiled grimly, 'I will make your life a misery, Miss Lascelles. I will interview every girl in the school, if necessary, to ask them who you consort with, who's had to cover for you when you've gone AWOL, what you steal and why you're stealing it. And if at the end of it you have an ounce of credibility left, then I'll start all over again. Is that clear? Now, who drove you to your grandmother's?'
There were tears in her eyes. 'It's got nothing to do with Granny's death.'
'Then what can you lose by telling me?'
'I'll be expelled.'
'You'll be expelled far quicker if I have to explain why I'm carting your clothing off for forensic examination.'
She buried her face in her hands. 'My boyfriend,' she muttered.
'Name?' her demanded relentlessly.
'Dave-Dave Hughes.'
'Address?'
She shook her head. 'I can't tell you. He'd kill me.'
Cooper frowned at the bent head. 'How did you meet him?'
She raised her tear-stained face. 'He did the tarmac on the school drive.' She read censure in his eyes and leapt to defend herself. 'It's not like that.'
'Like what?'
'I'm not a slut. We love each other.'
Her sexual morality had been the last thing on his mind but it was clearly at the forefront of hers. He felt sorry for her. She was accusing herself, he thought, when she called her mother a whore. 'Does he own the house?'
She shook her head. 'It's a squat.'
'But he must have a telephone or you wouldn't be able to contact him.'
'It's a mobile.'
'May I have the number?'
She looked alarmed. 'He'd be furious.'
You bet your life he would, thought Cooper. He wondered what Hughes was involved in. Drugs? Under-age sex? Pornography? Expulsion was the least of Ruth's problems if any of these were true. He showed no impatience for the address or phone number. 'Tell me about him,' he invited instead. 'How long have you known him? How old is he?'
He had to prise the information from her with patient cajoling and, as she spoke and listened to herself, he saw the dawning confirmation of her worst fears: that this was not a story of Montagues and Capulets thwarting innocent love but, rather, a seedy log of sweaty half-hours in the back of a white Ford transit. Told baldly, of course, it lacked even the saving attraction of eroticism and Cooper, like Ruth, found the telling uncomfortable. He did his best to make it easy for her but her embarrassment was contagious and they looked away from each other more often than their eyes met.
It had been going on for six months since the tarmac crew had relaid the drive, and the details of how it began were commonplace. A school full of girls; Dave with an eye for the most likely; she flattered by his obvious admiration, more so when the other girls noticed he only had eyes for her; a wistful regret when the tarmac was done and the crew departed; followed by an apparently chance meeting when she was walking alone; he, streetwise and twenty-eight; she, a lonely seventeen-year-old with dreams of romance. He respected her, he loved her, he'd wait forever for her, but (how big a word 'but' was in people's lives, thought Cooper) he had her in the back of his transit within a week. If she could forget the squalor of a blanket on a tarpaulin, then she could
