Verdict Unsafe (28 page)

“Ginny—will you tell me the truth about something if I promise I won’t tell anyone else unless you say I can?”

It took Ginny a while to sort that out. She wasn’t fond of compound sentences, and that one had been a bit of a facer, Judy realized.

“Depends,” was the answer she finally came up with.

“OK. Did Colin Drummond really assault you in Hosier’s Alley?”

The silence made her turn her head to see Ginny’s one-eyed baleful stare.

“I thought you believed me!” she shouted.

“I do,” said Judy, quickly.

“No, you don’t! You’re like all the rest. You’re like that jury and the fucking judge! You’re like Matt Burbidge and Rob
Jarvis! I’m a whore, so I never got raped! I’m a whore so you can’t take my word for anything! You’re all the fucking same!”

Judy saw a lay-by, glanced in her mirror, and took the car into it. Ginny would do her damaged face a mischief, shouting like that.

“Ginny,” she said, taking the little girl’s hands. “I do believe you. I’ve always believed you.”

“You’re a fucking liar,” she said huffily.

“It’s the truth,” said Judy. “I’ve never doubted you.”

“Why’d you ask me, then?”

Judy sighed, shrugged. Because she couldn’t honestly believe that her one-time colleagues could have used her like that; but they had, and she wasn’t supposed to know, so she couldn’t say that. “I can’t tell you,” she said.

“Why not?” asked Ginny.

The little girl’s whole being was suspicious. But she hadn’t taken her hands away from Judy’s, so she hadn’t entirely written her off as being just like all the rest. Judy decided that the truth was all that could be told in this situation. “I’d be grassing someone up,” she said, with a smile.

Ginny’s open eye grew less suspicious, more interested. “Yeah?” she said. “A cop?”

“A friend,” said Judy. “And a cop. But I’m really sorry I asked you,” she said. “Because I do believe you, and I’m very, very sorry about what happened to you that night.”

Ginny shrugged. “Wasn’t your fault,” she said.

“No,” said Judy. “It wasn’t.” She clasped the girl’s hands more tightly. “Ginny, did Drummond do this to you, too? I saw him go into the underpass. Did I scare him off? Was he assaulting you?”

“I never saw him,” she said. “I heard feet, though. I hid.”

Judy had heard feet, too; right at the other end of the underpass as she had entered. She had been going to go back up, see if she could see where he was going from ground level, but she had heard a whimper, had thought an animal had been hurt by a firework. And found poor little Ginny.

“You mustn’t be scared of him, Ginny. If he did that to you, we can deal with him.”

“It wasn’t Drummond,” Ginny said. “It was a punter.”

“All right,” Judy said, admitting defeat, and took the car back out onto the road. Then she replayed in her head what Ginny had said to her when she was angry. She had said that she was like all the rest. She was just like Matt Burbidge, and just like Rob Jarvis. Rob Jarvis had a taxi.

“Is it Rob Jarvis that Lennie’s working with, Ginny?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“How come?”

Silence.

“Come on, Ginny! I’m only being nosy.”

Ginny, she found, had not been refusing to answer, but merely grappling with the concept of hypothesis, though she didn’t know that was what she had been doing.

“Say you’ve got a deal with someone,” she said. “Like—I’d give them something if Lennie could drive their cab, and get to keep some of what he takes on it—is that all right? I mean, is it against the law?”

Judy smiled. “It’s quite legal,” she said. “But if the something’s what I think it is, then you should have made the deal, of course. Not Lennie.”

“Yeah,” she said.

Yeah, thought Judy. And listened as Ginny told her about the deal, more intrigued than ever by the strange liaison. The familiar injunction not to tell Lennie that she’d told her was appended.

Lennie was at the Transit in the alley when Judy drove up with Ginny, quickly sliding the door shut when he saw her. The side door to the house stood open, and light flooded out.

“What the fuck’s she doing here?” was Lennie’s greeting to his wife.

Ginny’s sweater was covered in blood, she had stitches, her face was swollen like a balloon, she had a cut lip and two black eyes, one of which was shut fast, and Lennie hadn’t been in the least shocked to see her. Judy stared at him.

“She took me up the casualty,” said Ginny.

Lennie? Surely not. He’d given Ginny hidings in his time,
God knew, but this was vicious. And yet her insistence against all the evidence that it had been a punter meant she was covering up for someone, and who else would she ever cover up for but Lennie?

“I found her in the underpass,” she said.

Lennie said nothing.

“Did you do that to her?”

“Mind your own business.”

“Did he, Ginny?”

Ginny didn’t speak.

If he had, it had to have been because of the search warrant. She must have got very close to something, and Lennie blamed Ginny for letting her in the day before, maybe, letting her see how they lived. Or maybe they’d even missed something. Something important enough to make him lose control of his temper. She looked at the Transit, at the doors that had been shut so quickly. “What have you got in there that you don’t want me to see?” she asked.

“Get a search warrant, if you want to know,” said Lennie.

Lennie knew his rights. You had to have further evidence to search the same place twice, and she hadn’t actually had any in the first place. She saw Ginny wilt a little, and put her arm around her. “She should be inside,” she said, and helped her down the alley and into the kitchen.

There were smears of what looked like blood on the stairs, and on the sparklingly clean work surface. A kitchen chair was overturned.

“What happened here?” Judy asked, when Lennie followed them in.

Lennie touched the tip of his nose. “Keep that out, copper,” he said. “This is between her and me. You’ve brought her home, so you can piss off now, can’t you?”

Ginny was already taking a damp cloth to work surfaces.

“Will you be all right?” she asked her.

“Yeah.” She didn’t seem scared.

Judy gave Lennie the card from the doctor. “It says on there what to watch for,” she said. “There were several blows to the
side of her head, which could have caused serious injury. The doctor doesn’t think they did. If you’re interested.”

Lennie blinked a little, took the card.

Judy left, and realized that it was almost midnight; Lloyd probably wasn’t expecting her for dinner anymore. She would ring him when she got home.

Lennie took the cloth out of Ginny’s hand. “Don’t do that,” he said, and put his arms around her, rocking her like a baby. “I’m sorry, Ginny,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He could feel tears in his eyes. “What did you tell her?” he asked.

“I said it was a punier. I said I was in the underpass with him. She didn’t believe me, though.”

“Good girl.” He kissed the only bit of her poor face that looked as though it might not hurt. “You stick to that if anyone asks you again. Whatever they ask you, whatever they say— even if they don’t believe you. You—stick to what you told her.”

She nodded.

He looked at her, at the state she was in, and the tears fell. “I’m sorry,” he said, again, and let her go, wiping the dampness from his face. “You should be in bed,” he said. “Put your arm around me.”

He lifted her up, carried her upstairs for the second time that day, laid her on the bed. He pulled off the jogging pants, and looked at the sweater. There was no way he could get it over her head without hurting her. “I’ll have to cut this off,” he said.

“No!” She looked up at him. “You like me in it,” she said. “It’ll wash, won’t it?”

He nodded. He didn’t want to upset her. “Well,” he said. “Keep it on for now. Do you want a cup of tea?”

She tried to smile, God help her. “No,” she said. “I’m fine.”

He tucked her up, and waited with her until she slept, then went down and cleaned up the blood and straightened the kitchen, and made a pot of tea. He did take one up to her in case she was awake, but she was still asleep. He listened to her breathing, and felt her forehead, and decided that she really
was just asleep. Then he came back down, lit a cigarette, and picked up his mug.

Tea spilled on the table as his body began to shake with sobs. Oh, God, what had he done?

ROB HOOTED AGAIN, BUT STILL NOBODY CAME out. Frowning, he switched off the engine and got out, knocking on the door. “Didn’t you hear me hoot?” he asked, when Lennie finally opened it.

“I heard you. I was busy. And I’m not working today.”

Lennie looked terrible. Bags under his eyes, his face pale. “What’s wrong—some sort of bug?” asked Rob.

“Something like that,” said Lennie. “Anyway, I’m not working, so—”

Rob wasn’t listening to him. He was looking over his shoulder at Ginny, coming down the stair. “Jesus Christ,” he said, under his breath, and looked at Lennie. “You didn’t—” he began, and looked at Ginny again, who had only now made it to the foot of the stair. “That’s not because of what I—”He shook his head. “Did you do that to her?” he asked, appalled.

“None of your business,” said Lennie.

“It’s my business if—” Rob lowered his voice. “It’s my business if it’s because of what I said. Jesus, Lennie—look at her!”

“You tried to strangle her,” said Lennie.

“I was—” Rob began, then realized that he couldn’t explain that to himself, never mind Lennie. He hadn’t even thought about it until now. It had been because of seeing Drummond, he supposed. He hated having to go with a whore, and sometimes he hated her for having aroused him in the first place,
hated her for knowing what Drummond had done to him. He was only with her because of Drummond, because Drummond had made him have to prove himself over and over again. With a cheap whore. And Drummond had just been in his cab. And … the two things had just overwhelmed him when she had brought out that gun. Guns are for killing, he’d thought, and he had wanted to kill, or possibly to die. He hadn’t been sure which. He didn’t know if he would have stopped, could have stopped. He had relied on Ginny’s instinct for self-preservation kicking in long before it mattered, and it had. She was right: he hadn’t known whether the safety catch was on or off, or if it even worked. He had played a game of Russian roulette. And maybe he had lost.

“I—I wasn’t going to strangle her,” he said. “I just wanted her to know that guns don’t protect you all by themselves.”

Ginny was sitting at the table, sipping tea with difficulty. Her face was bruised and battered and swollen—she had
stitches
. What kind of man could do that to a little girl that you could blow down with a puff of cigarette smoke?

“I think maybe our arrangement should end here,” Rob said.

“Suits me,” said Lennie, and he closed the door.

Rob drove home hardly aware of what he was doing, the busy Saturday traffic in Malworth hooting at him now and then as he lost concentration. It didn’t matter; they expected taxi drivers to behave badly, to stray into their paths as they caught sight of a fare. He pulled up outside the house, and sat for a while in the cab before going in to face the inevitable discussion of what had been all over the news all morning. But Carole didn’t say much; asked him if he’d heard that someone had killed Drummond, that was all. She was glad he was dead.

He didn’t want the meal that Carole had made for him, but he ate it somehow. He wanted to be left alone. But she sat there, and he could feel that more discussion was about to be unleashed as soon as he had finished. And before he had time to get up, go upstairs, escape, she spoke.

“I wanted to go out last night,” she said. “I wanted to drive the car.”

He looked at her, his breath caught in his throat. She wouldn’t
even let him leave the car where she could see it, never mind drive it; she hadn’t set foot in the garage for over two years. Surely she hadn’t—

“I did it, Rob,” she said. “I thought I couldn’t, but I did. I went into the garage.”

He looked away from her.

“Don’t you think I’m owed an explanation?” she asked.

Judy had just finished breakfast when the eight o’clock news had come on. What she had heard had filled her with a mixture of shock, disbelief, apprehension, and frustration.

He was dead. He couldn’t do that to any more women because he was dead. But he shouldn’t be dead. Someone had bought themselves a whole load of trouble, and cheated her out of being able to lock the little bastard up again. Then she had heard the next bit. The “police would like to interview” bit. She had sat, her hand at her mouth, scarcely able to take it in.

Which was why she had had to get Lloyd out of the briefing, and why he was sitting opposite her, looking, as Tom Finch would say, gobsmacked. Just as she had stared at the radio.

“You?”

She nodded. “I’m afraid so,” she said.

“What were you doing there?”

“Well,” she said.

He closed his eyes. “Am I going to want to hear this?” he asked.

“It might be of some use,” she said. “I went to see Ginny last night.”

“‘Back at nine’ is that?”

“Yes, well, that was always a bit optimistic. But I had a rather eventful evening. I did try to ring you when I got in.”

She told him about her eventful evening, and realized as she did so that she was being interviewed. She knew his technique. He listened without comment to the witness’s entire story, then went back over it, asking questions. It was odd, being on the receiving end of it. “I didn’t think there was much point in trying to get an ambulance on Bonfire Night,” she said. “I thought it would be quicker to take her myself. I took the car around the
back of the high-rise and drove it right up to the underpass— she couldn’t have walked any further than that. You should have seen the state she was in, Lloyd. They took her straight in when we got to casualty. But when I finally got her home …”

She told him about Lennie’s reaction, about the van, and finished, feeling a little as though she had been giving a lecture. “She seemed to think she’d be all right with him,” she said. “So I left her there. There wasn’t much else I could do.”