Charlie leaned forward aggressively, his eyes like flints. 'Oh, yes, you do, you filthy little nonce. You're a pervert, Hughes, and when you go down and the rest of the prisoners find out what you've been banged up for, you'll learn what it's like to be on the receiving end of aggressive behaviour. They'll beat the shit out of you, urinate on your food and use a razor on you if they can get you in the shower alone. It's one of the oddities of prison life. Ordinary prisoners hate sex offenders, particularly sex offenders who can only get a hard-on with children. Whatever they've done themselves pales into insignificance beside what you and people like you do to defenceless kids.'
'Jesus! I don't do kids. I hate bloody kids.'
'Julia Sefton had just turned sixteen when you did her. She could almost have been your daughter.'
'That's not a crime. I'm not the first man who's slept with someone young enough to be his daughter. Get real, Inspector.'
'But you always pick young girls. What is it about young girls that gets you so excited?'
'I don't pick them. They pick me.'
'Do older women frighten you? That's the usual pattern with nonces. They have to make out with children because mature women terrify them.'
'How many times do I have to tell you? I don't make out with children.'
Abruptly Jones switched tack. 'Ruth stole some diamond earrings from her grandmother on Saturday, November the sixth, the same day that Mrs. Gillespie killed herself. Did you take Ruth there that day?'
Hughes looked as if he was about to deny it, then shrugged. 'She asked me to.'
'Why?'
'Why what?'
'Why did she ask you to take her? What did she want to do there?'
Hughes looked vague. 'She never said. But I never went in the frigging place and I didn't know she planned to steal any frigging earrings.'
'So she rang you at your squat, asked you to drive all the way out to Southcliffe to pick her up, take her from there to Fontwell and then back to Southcliffe, without ever explaining why.'
'Yeah.'
'And that's all you did? Acted as her chauffeur to and fro and waited outside Cedar House while she went in?'
'Yeah.'
'But you've admitted you didn't like her. In fact you despised her. Why go to so much trouble for someone you didn't like?'
'It was worth it for a screw.'
'With blancmange?'
Hughes grinned. 'I felt horny that day.'
'She told my Sergeant she was absent from school for upwards of six hours. It's thirty miles from Southcliffe to Fontwell, so let's say it took you forty minutes each way. That leaves some four and a half hours unaccounted for. Are you telling me you sat in your van in Fontwell village for four and a half hours twiddling your thumbs while Ruth was inside with her grandmother?'
'It wasn't that long. We stopped on the way back for the screw.'
'Where exactly did you park in Fontwell?'
'Can't remember now. I was always waiting for her some place or another.'
Charlie placed his finger on the crumpled page of paper. 'According to the publican at the Three Pigeons your van was parked on his forecourt that afternoon. After ten minutes you drove away, but he saw you stop beside the church to pick someone up. We must presume this was Ruth unless you are now going to tell me you took a third party to Fontwell the day Mrs. Gillespie 'killed herself'.'
The wary look was back in Hughes's eyes. 'It was Ruth.'
'Okay, then what were you and Ruth doing for four and a half hours, Mr. Hughes? You certainly weren't screwing her. It doesn't take four and a half hours to screw blancmange. Or perhaps it does for someone who suffers from a psychopathic personality disorder. Perhaps it takes you that long to get it up.'
Hughes refused to be needled. 'I guess there's no reason for me to protect the silly bitch. Okay, she asked me to drive her to this backstreet jeweller somewhere in Southampton. I didn't ask why, I just did it. But you can't do me for that. All I did was act as a taxi. If she stole some earrings and then sold them, I knew nothing about it. I was just the patsy with the wheels.'
'According to Miss Lascelles she gave the money to you as soon as she sold the earrings. She said it was six hundred and fifty pounds in cash and that you then, drove her straight back to school in time for her physics lecture.'
Hughes didn't say anything.
'You profited from a crime, Mr. Hughes. That's illegal.'
'Ruth's lying. She never gave me any money and, even if she did, you'd have to prove I knew she'd thieved something in the first place. She'll tell you it was all her idea. Look, I don't deny she funded me from time to time, but she said the money was hers and I believed her. Why shouldn't I? The old granny was rolling in it. Stood to reason Ruth would be as well.' He grinned again. 'So what if she did give me cash from time to time? How was I to know the silly bitch was stealing it? She owed me something for the petrol I wasted acting as her frigging chauffeur in the holidays.'
'But she didn't fund you that day?'
