"Not long now, eh, old girl?" he said, before righting himself and coming back to his seat. He also seemed to be suffering in the same way as his pet, coming back to his seat with the pipe in one hand and an ashtray in the other. "So, what do you want?"
He didn't offer either Tom or Eric a seat. With the questionable hygiene on display, Tom thought that was probably for the best.
"We're investigating a murder," Tom said.
Rutland glanced up at him and then continued packing tobacco into his pipe. "That body found out at Blakeney?"
"You heard about it?"
"Of course I have. Just because I can't abide being around people it doesn't mean I'm deaf," he said. "What's that got to do with me?"
"You've had issues with the victim in the past."
That got his attention. Rutland stopped what he was doing, gently placed the pipe on the table and inclined his head to one side, fixing Tom with an inquisitive look.
"Who?"
"You fall out with a lot of people?"
"One or two," Rutland said, his face splitting a grin that revealed yellow teeth along with a few blackened stumps and receding gums.
"Mary Beckett."
Rutland sank back in his chair, placing both hands, palms down, on the surface of the table. The grin faded and he slowly bobbed his head forwards.
"Old Mary was done for, was she? Can't say I'll miss the old cow."
"Not nice to speak ill of the dead," Eric said softly, moving about the room.
Rutland's eyes flicked briefly towards Eric, but he didn't comment directly, looking back at Tom.
"Fair's fair. She would be pretty pleased to see the back of me too," he said, sneering. "I'll go to my grave happy knowing I outlasted the old witch."
"We gathered the two of you didn't see eye to eye," Tom said.
Rutland's eyes were trained on Eric, who was now leaning closer to one of the glass domes, raising a pointed finger to trace the detail of the contents. "Don't you be touching my collection, boy!" he said. Eric looked over his shoulder, raised an eyebrow, and then diplomatically retreated from the display case. "It's all legal."
"That's not always been the case though, has it?" Tom said.
"That was all a long time ago. Given that type of thing up for good." He waved his arms around, a gesture to encompass the room's contents. "Everything here was assembled prior to the law changes. I'm allowed to keep them. Anything that came after was taken away from me. Incinerated, too, I expect. Damn waste of fine specimens."
"Perhaps if you'd left them in the wild, there would be more there to see," Tom countered. "Then incineration wouldn't have been necessary."
Rutland shrugged, a gesture accompanied by a monosyllabic grunt.
"Mary Beckett had you prosecuted, didn't she?"
"Don't mean I killed her though, does it," Rutland said. "As if I'd kill her over a few eggs and a fine. You must be short of ideas if you're bothering me!" He chuckled as he said the last. His confidence was obvious. He'd had dealings with the law before, and he felt he was on solid ground here.
“What was the cause of the crossed words you had with her last year?"
Rutland sat forward, gathering up his pipe and setting about stuffing it once again. His brow furrowed as he continued and Tom waited for a reply. Once he was satisfied with it, he sat back and struck a match. Puffing on the end of his pipe, he sent a cloud of sweet, grey smoke into the air which filled the room. Eric scrunched up his face, clearly uncomfortable.
"Allegations," Rutland said, pipe in his mouth. "Always making allegations, that one. Like I said, I'm clean. Have been for ages. But that doesn't stop an old busy body like Mary Beckett. Always got to have a cause. Always got to be nipping at somebody's heels. If it wasn't me, it would be another." He took his pipe from his mouth and wagged it towards Tom suggestively. "No safe space for any of us. That's what you call it these days, isn't it, a safe space?"
Tom was pretty sure the context was different, but he smiled politely.
"Besides, you're barking up the wrong tree. If anything, I should be raising a complaint against her."
"Is that so?"
Rutland got up, placing his pipe in the ashtray and moving to a cabinet to his left. He moved aside a stack of magazines, old copies of an ornithology publication by the look of it. They were precariously placed and fell over, spilling to the floor, but Rutland ignored them. Eric moved to help pick them up but was waved away. Opening one of the drawers, Rutland took out a clutch of papers. They were little more than handwritten notes on pages torn from a spiral-bound book. He forced them into Tom's hands before returning to his seat, sighing at the effort required to have done so.
Tom placed the papers down on the table. They were in a disorganised pile, unsurprisingly. They looked as if they'd been written by the same hand. Some of them were damaged by water, the ink having run. They were all short, abusive and aggressive. Tom flicked through them. One stated I'll tell everyone you're a paedophile which was a recurring theme along with demands for him to stop. Another implied Rutland was a secret homosexual. Tom indicated for Eric to have a look and the DC came closer. Tom turned to Rutland.
"These were all meant for you?"
Rutland nodded.
"And you think it was Mary Beckett who left them?"
"Everywhere I would go. Sometimes pushed through my letterbox… other times left pinned to my gate post or on my Landy, tucked under the windscreen wiper in the supermarket car park."
"How can you be sure it was her?"
Rutland laughed, but it was a sound without genuine humour.
"She'd say exactly the same thing to my face. The woman wasn't shy, you know."
"And what was it she wanted you to stop doing?"
He splayed his hands wide, shaking his head.
