Scold's Bridle

*15*

Half an hour later and well into the better side of town, the van drew to a halt in the shadows of an expensive-looking house to pick up the wide-eyed adolescent girl waiting there. The hairs began to crawl on the back of Jack's neck. He watched her climb with gawky eagerness into the passenger seat, and he knew that she was as unprepared as Ruth had been for the surprise that Hughes had waiting for her in the back.

The van took the coast road east towards Southbourne and Hengistbury Head and, as the traffic thinned, Jack allowed the distance between it and him to lengthen. He toyed with one possibility after another-should he stop to call the police and risk losing the van altogether?-should he ram the van and risk injuring himself and the girl?-should he try to deter them by drawing in beside them when they parked, at the risk of their driving off and giving him the slip? He discarded each idea in turn, seeing only their weaknesses, and suddenly felt a deep regret that he hadn't brought Sarah with him. He had never wanted the comfort of her friendship quite so desperately.

The van turned into a deserted car park on the sea front, and more by instinct than design Jack killed his lights, thrust the gears into neutral and freewheeled to a stop beside the kerb some fifty yards behind it. Every detail of what happened next was lit by a cold, clear moon, but he knew what to expect because Ruth had described Hughes's MO in all too graphic detail. The driver, Hughes for a certainty, flung open his door and jumped out on to the tarmac, dragging the girl after him. There was the briefest of scuffles before he pinioned her in his arms and carried her, kicking and struggling, to the back of the van. He was laughing as he wrenched the rear door open and flung her like a sack of potatoes into the lit interior. The square of light shone out briefly before he closed the doors and strolled away towards the sea shore, lighting a cigarette as he went.

Jack could never explain afterwards why he did what he did. In retrospect he could only really remember his fear. His actions were governed entirely by instinct. It was as if, faced with a crisis, normal reason deserted him and something primeval took over. He focused entirely on the child. The need to help her was paramount, and the only method that presented itself was to open the van doors and physically remove her from danger. He eased into first gear and motored gently towards the transit, watching Hughes as he did so to see if he picked up the throb of the engine above the wash of the waves against the shore. Apparently not. The man stooped lazily to gather stones from the beach and send them spinning out across the black water.

Jack coasted to a halt behind the van and left the engine purring while he unbuckled his belt, drawing it from around his waist and wrapping the end about his fist. He took the heavy rubber torch in his other hand, clicked open the door and slipped out on to the tarmac, sucking in great draughts of air to still the thudding of his heart.

In the distance, Hughes turned round, took in the situation at a glance, and started to pound up the beach.

Adrenaline plays tricks. It floods the body to galvanize it into colossal and spontaneous effort, but the mind observes what happens in slow motion. Thus time, that most relative of phenomena, ceases to exist in any meaningful way, and what Jack would forever insist took several minutes, in reality took seconds. He burst the van doors open and brought the torch down on the head of the man nearest him, bellowing like a bull. The startled white face of another youth turned towards him and Jack flicked the belt across it in a vicious backhand swipe, crooking his elbow round the first man's neck as he did so and pulling him backwards on to the tarmac. He released his hold and brought the torch round in a scything arc to smash under the chin of the face he'd whipped, toppling the youth off balance into thin air behind him.

The three men left in the van, two holding the girl down, the other bare-arsed on top of her, were frozen into shocked immobility. The violence of the onslaught was so extreme, the noise of Jack's continuous roaring so disorientating, that he was on top of them before they could register what was happening. He used the hand holding the belt to grip the hair of the bastard raping the girl, wrenched his head up and swung the torch in a mighty forehand smash into the wide-eyed, frightened face. Blood erupted from the broken nose in a stream, and the youth slithered sideways with a whimper of pain.

"GET OUT!" Jack shouted at the girl who was scrambling to her knees in terror. "GET IN THE CAR!" He whipped the belt back and sliced it through the air into the eyes of a boy who was struggling to his feet in the corner. "YOU BLOODY LITTLE SHITS!" he roared. "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU." He brought his boot down on the unprotected groin of the rapist and turned like a madman on the only youth he hadn't touched. With a cry of terror, the boy cowered away, his arms held protectively above his head.

Perhaps, after all, reason hadn't entirely deserted Blakeney. He abandoned the torch and the belt, flung himself precipitately out of the van, bundled into the car after the girl, and roared it into motion, tugging door closed as he did so. He saw Hughes too late to avoid him as he careered across the tarmac, and caught him a glancing blow with the offside wing, bouncing him into the air like a rag-doll. Jack's anger was out of control, a red frenzy that pounded in his head like cannon-fire. Spinning the wheel, he turned the vehicle in a tight circle and headed back towards the crouching figure, switching on the headlights with a lazy flick of his fingers to catch Hughes's terrified face in the glare as he prepared to mow him down.

He had no idea what stopped him doing it. Perhaps it was the girl's screams. Perhaps his anger abated as rapidly as it had surged into life. Perhaps, quite simply, his humanity triumphed. Instead, he slewed the car to a screaming halt, slammed the door into the man's body and leapt out to wind his fist around the long hair and drag Hughes to his feet. "Into the back, sweetheart," he said to the girl, "as fast as you can." She was too terrified not to obey and slid in hysterics between the seats. "Now, you, in," he said, yanking down on the hair and shoving his knee into the small of Hughes's back, "or, so help me, I'll break your filthy neck now."

Hughes believed him. As the lesser of two evils, he allowed himself to be thrust face-down across the seat and sighed as Jack's heavy weight descended across his legs. The car raced into life again, screaming across the tarmac as Jack forced it into gear, the door slamming shut when it impacted against another flying figure. "PUT YOUR SEAT BELT ON!" he yelled at the screaming girl. "IF THIS BASTARD MOVES A MUSCLE I'M GOING TO PILE THE SIDE WHERE HIS HEAD IS INTO THE BIGGEST BRICK WALL I CAN FIND." He changed up, swung out on to the road and set off at a blistering pace through Southbourne with his hand clamped over the horn. If there was any justice in this cess-pit of a world, someone would get the police out before the Ford transit caught up with him.

There was some justice left in the England Rupert Brooke died for. The local police received seventeen 999 calls in three minutes, twelve from elderly widows living alone, four from outraged men, and one from a child. They all reported the same thing. Joy-riders were turning the quiet tree-lined streets of their suburb into a death-trap.

Jack's car and the pursuing white transit were ambushed as they tore on to the main road leading into Bournemouth city centre.

The phone rang in Mill House at eleven-thirty that night. "Sarah?" Jack barked down the wire.

"Hi," she countered with relief. "You're not dead then."

"No. I'm under sodding arrest," he shouted. "This is the one telephone call I'm allowed to make. I need help PDQ."

"I'll come straight away. Where are you?"

"The bastards are going to charge me with joy-riding and rape," he said furiously, as if she hadn't spoken. "They're fucking cretins here, won't listen to a word I say. Goddammit, they've banged me up along with Hughes and his animals. The poor kid they were having a go at in the back of the van's completely hysterical and thinks I'm one of them. I keep telling them to contact Cooper but they're such bloody morons they won't listen to me."

"Okay," she said calmly, trying to make what she could of this alarming speech, "I'll get Cooper. Now tell me where you are."

"Some shit-hole in the middle of Bournemouth," he roared. "They're about to take swabs off my fucking penis."

"The address, Jack. I need the address."

"WHERE THE HELL AM I?" he bellowed at someone in the room with him. "Freemont Road Police Station," he told Sarah. "You'll have to bring Ruth, too," he sais with regret. "God knows, I never meant to involve her but she's the only one who knows what happened. And get Keith as well. I need a solicitor I can trust. They're all bloody fascists in this place. They're talking about frigging paedophile rings and conspiracies and Christ knows what else."

"Calm down," she said sternly. "Keep your mouth shut till I get there and, for God's sake, Jack, don't lose your temper and hit a policeman."

"I already have, dammit. The bastard called me a pervert."

It was well after two o'clock when Sarah, Cooper and Ruth finally arrived bleary-eyed at Freemont Road. The night Sergeant at Learmouth had been adamant in his refusal either to contact Cooper or to give Sarah his home phone number when she put through an urgent call requesting to speak to him. "DS Cooper is not on duty, madam," was his measured response. "If you have a problem, you deal with me or wait until tomorrow morning when he will be on duty." It was only when he was faced with her angry presence in front of his desk, threatening him with questions in Parliament and court action for negligence, that he was moved to contact the Detective Sergeant. The counter-blast from Cooper's end, not in the best of moods, anyway, after being woken up from a deep sleep, left him shaken. He grumbled away to himself for the rest of his shift. Sod's law said that it didn't matter how considerate a chap tried to be, he was always in the wrong.

Keith, even more irritable than Cooper to be dragged from the arms of Morpheus far away in London, perked up a little to hear that Jack was under arrest for joy-riding and rape. "Good God," he said with cynical amusement, "I had no idea he was so active. I thought he preferred spectator sports."

"It's not funny, Keith," said Sarah curtly. "He needs a solicitor. Can you come down to Bournemouth?"

"When?"

"Now, you oaf. They're taking swabs off him at this very minute."

"Did he do it?"

"What?"

"The rape," said Keith patiently.

"No, of course he didn't," she spluttered angrily. "Jack's not a rapist."

"Then there's nothing to worry about. The swabs will prove he hasn't been in contact with the victim."

"He says they think he's part of a paedophile ring. They may charge him with conspiracy to rape even if they can't charge him with the actual offence." She sighed. "At least I think that's what he said. He's very angry and it was all a bit garbled."

"What on earth's he been up to?"

"I don't know yet," she said through gritted teeth. "Just get your arse down here, will you, and earn some of the fortune we've paid you over the years."

"I'm not much of a criminal lawyer, you know. You might do better to get hold of a specialist from down there. I could give you some names out of the book."

"He asked for you, Keith. He said he wants a solicitor he can trust, so-" her voice rose "-for God's sake will you stop arguing and get in your car. We're wasting time. He's at Freemont Road Police Station in Bournemouth."

"I'll be there as soon as I can," he promised. "In the meantime, tell him to keep quiet and refuse to answer any questions."

Easier said than done, thought Sarah ruefully, as she and Ruth were given chairs to sit on while Cooper was taken into an interview room. When the door opened, they heard Jack in full spate. "Look, how many times do you have to be told? I was rescuing her from being raped, not bloody raping her myself. Jesus wept!" His fist pounded on the table. "I will not talk to morons. Doesn't anyone in this piss-pot have a measurable IQ?" He gave a whoop of relief. "Hallelujah! Cooper! Where the hell have you been, you bastard?" The door closed again.

Sarah leant her head against the wall with a sigh. "The trouble with Jack," she said to Ruth, "is he never does anything by halves."

"He wouldn't be here at all if it wasn't for me," the girl said wretchedly, washing her hands over and over in her lap. She was so nervous she could barely keep her breathing under control.

Sarah glanced at her. "I think you should be rather proud of yourself. Because of you he obviously stopped someone else getting the treatment you were given. That's good."

"Not if they think Jack was involved."

"Cooper will set them straight."

"Does that mean I won't have to say anything? I don't want to say anything." The words came out in a rush. "I'm so frightened," she said simply, tears welling tragically in the huge dark eyes. "I don't want anyone to know"-her voice shook-"I'm so ashamed."

Sarah, who had had to use a very heavy hand in the shape of emotional blackmail to get her this far, balked at using any more. The girl was in a highly emotional state already, desperately seeking to justify her mother's indifference because then she could justify her own indifference to the growing foetus inside her. But she couldn't justify it, of course, and that made her guilt about wanting an abortion all the stronger. There was no logic to human psychology, thought Sarah sadly. She had said nothing about her visit to Cedar House, merely offered to drive Ruth over to Fontwell. "In fairness," she had said, "all your mother knows is that you've been expelled for going out to meet your boyfriend. I'm sure she'll be sympathetic if you tell her the truth."

Ruth shook her head. "She wouldn't," she whispered, "she'd say I got what I deserved. She used to say it to Granny about her arthritis." Her face had pinched in pain. "I wish Granny hadn't died. I did love her, you know, but she died thinking I didn't." And what could Sarah say to that? She had never come across three people so intent on destroying each other, and themselves.

She put her arm now around the girl's thin shoulders and hugged her tight. "Sergeant Cooper will sort it out," She said firmly, "and he won't force you to say anything you don't want to." She gave her throaty chuckle. "He's far too nice and far too soft which is why he's never made Inspector."

But the law, like the mills of God, grinds slow but exceeding small, and Sarah knew that if any of them emerged unscathed at the end of their brush with it, it would be a miracle.

"You realize, Dr. Blakeney, we could charge you with being an accessory before the fact," said an irate Inspector. "You knew when you helped your husband get hold of Hughes's address that he planned to do something illegal, didn't you?"

"I wouldn't answer that," said Keith.

"No, I did not," said Sarah stoutly. "And what's illegal about preventing a brutal rape? Since when was rescuing somebody a chargeable offence?"

"You're in the wrong ballpark, Doctor. We're talking attempted murder, GBH, abduction, driving without due care and attention, assault on a police officer. You name it, it's down here. Your husband's an extremely dangerous man and you sent him off after Hughes, knowing full well that he was liable to lose control of his temper if confronted. That's a fair summary, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't answer that," said Keith automatically.

"Of course it isn't," she snapped. "Hughes is the extremely dangerous man, not Jack. What would you have done if you knew a young girl was about to be brutally attacked by five zombies who are so degenerate and uneducated they'll do anything their sadistic leader tells them to do?" Her eyes flashed. "Don't bother to answer. I know exactly what you'd have done. You'd have crept off with your tail between your legs to the nearest telephone to dial nine-nine-nine, and never mind the damage that was done to the child in the meantime."

"It's an offence to withhold information from the police. Why did you not inform us about Miss Lascelles's rape?"

"I really do advise you not to answer that question," said Keith wearily.

"Because we gave her our word we wouldn't. Why on earth do you think Jack went out tonight if we could have told the police everything?"

Keith held up his hand to forestall the Inspector. "Any objections to switching off the tape while I confer with my client?"

The other man eyed him for a moment then consulted his watch. "Interview with Dr. Blakeney suspended at 3:42 a.m." He spoke abruptly, then pressed the "stop" button.

"Thanks. Now, will you explain something to me, Sarah?" Keith murmured plaintively. "Why did you drag me all the way down here if neither you nor Jack will listen to a word I say?"

"Because I'm so bloody angry, that's why. They should be grateful to Jack; instead they're condemning him."

"The Inspector's paid to make you angry. That's how he gets his results, and you're making this very easy for him."

"I object to that remark, Mr. Smollett. I am paid, among other things, to try and get at the truth when a criminal offence has occurred."

"Then why don't you stop bull-shitting," suggested Keith amiably, "and deal in straightforward fact? I can't be the only one here who's bored stiff with all these idiotic threats of criminal prosecution. Of course you can charge Mr. Blakeney if you want to, but you'll be a laughingstock. How many people these days would have bothered to go in and do what he did with only a and a torch as protection?" He smiled faintly. "We're a non-involvement society these days, where heroism is confined to the television screens. There was a case the other day where a woman was sexually assaulted by two men in full view of several taxi-drivers at a taxi rank, and not a single one of them lifted a finger to help her. Worse, they wheeled up their windows to block out her screams for help. Should I infer from your attitude towards Mr. Blakeney that that is the sort of behaviour you approve of in our so-called civilized society?"

"Vigilante behaviour is just as dangerous, Mr. Smollett. For every case of non-involvement you cite, I can cite another where rough justice has been meted out on innocent people because a lynch mob decides arbitrarily who is or is not guilty. Should I infer from your attitude that you approve of the kangaroo-court approach to justice?"

Keith acknowledged the point with a nod. "Of course not," he said honestly, "and had Mr. Blakeney taken a private army with him I'd be on your side. But you're on very thin ice describing him as a lynch mob. He was one man, faced with an impossible decision-to act immediately to stop the rape or to abandon the girl to her fate while he drove off to summon assistance."

"He would never have been there at all had he and his wife not conspired together to withhold the information about Miss Lascelles. Nor for that matter would Hughes and his gang have been able to subject the young lady Mr. Blakeney rescued to the terror she was put through, for the simple reason that they would all have been under lock and key charged with the rape of Miss Lascelles."

"But Miss Lascelles has told you categorically that she would have been too frightened to say anything to the police, assuming the Blakeneys had reported what she told them. She lives in terror of Hughes carrying out his threat to rape her again the minute he's set free, and there's no guarantee, even now, that she-or tonight's victim-will find the courage to give the evidence in court that will convict him. Your best bet, quite frankly, is Jack Blakeney's testimony. If he remains strong. which he will, Ruth will gain courage from his example. and if the other girl and her parents are made aware of just what they owe him, then she, too, may find the courage to speak out. By the same token, if you insist on pursuing these charges against Blakeney, then you can kiss goodbye to any co-operation from two terrified young women. Quite reasonably they will conclude that justice is on Hughes's side and not on theirs."

The Inspector shook his head. "What none of you seems able to grasp," he said irritably, "is that if we fail to charge Mr. Blakeney we make the prosecution case against Hughes so much harder. His defence will have a field day in court pointing up the contrast between police leniency towards the admitted violence of a middle-class intellectual and police harshness towards the alleged violence of an unemployed navvy. Hughes was outside the van, remember, when the rape was taking place, and he's sitting there now claiming he had no idea what was going on. The lad who was raping the girl when your client burst into that van is only fifteen, a juvenile, in other words, who can be sentenced to detention but not to custody in an adult prison. The oldest boy there, if we exclude Hughes, is eighteen and his age will be taken into account at his trial. At the moment, they're all shell-shocked and fingering Hughes as the instigator and prime mover, but by the time they come to trial it will have become a bit of harmless fun that was the girl's idea and which Hughes knew nothing about because he had wandered off for a walk along the beach. The worst of it is, Mr. Blakeney will have to testify to that in court because he saw him doing it." He rubbed his tired eyes.

"It's a mess, frankly. God knows if we will ever succeed in bringing a conviction. Without clear evidence of intent I can see Hughes getting off scot-free. His MO is to manipulate youngsters into doing his dirty work while be stands aloof and collects the money, and once these boys realize how short their sentences are going to be because the law is relatively powerless against juveniles, they'll stop grassing him up. I'm so confident of that, I'd lay my last cent on it."

There was a long silence.

Sarah cleared her throat. "You're forgetting the girls," she said. "Won't their evidence carry weight?"

The Inspector's smile was twisted. "If they're not too frightened to testify, if they don't collapse under cross-examination, if their stealing isn't used by the defence to blacken their characters, if the speed with which they were prepared to spread their legs for Hughes doesn't lose them the sympathy of the jury." He shrugged. "Justice is as fickle as fate, Dr. Blakeney."

"Then release him now and be done with it," she said coldly. "I mean, let's face it, it's going to be a damn sight easier to fill your productivity quota by prosecuting Jack than by having to put the counselling effort into bringing thieving little tarts up to scratch. Perhaps you should ask yourself why none of these girls felt confident enough to come to the police in the first place?" Her eyes narrowed angrily as she answered her own question. "Because they believed everything Hughes told them, namely that he would always be acquitted, and they would always be left to fend for themselves. He was right, too, though I'd never have guessed it if I hadn't heard it from you."

"He'll be charged and hopefully he'll be held on remand, Dr. Blakeney, but what happens at trial is out of my hands. We can do our best to prepare the ground. We cannot, unfortunately, predict the outcome." He sighed. "For the moment, I have decided to release your husband without charge. I shall be taking advice, however, which means we may decide to proceed against him at a later date. In the meantime, he will be required to remain at Mill House in Long Upton and, should he wish to travel anywhere, he must advise Detective Sergeant Cooper of his intentions. Is that clear?"

She nodded.

"In addition, please note that if he ever involves himself again in similar activities to those he engaged in tonight, he will be charged immediately. Is that also clear?"

She nodded.

The Inspector's tired face cracked into a smile. "Off the record, I rather agree with Mr. Smollett here. You: husband's a brave man, Doctor, but I'm sure you knew that already."

"Oh, yes," said Sarah loyally, hoping that her expression was less sheepish than it felt. For as long as she'd known him Jack had always maintained the same thing. All men were cowards but it was only a few, like himself. who had the courage to admit it. She was beginning to wonder if there were other aspects of his character that she had misjudged so completely.