Lynley seemed relieved at this change in direction. He matched her briskness when he said, “Truth to tell, I think anything’s possible. We’re relying on descriptions supplied by a man who’s drawn seven-foot-tall angels on the walls of his bed-sitting room.”
“Bloody hell,” Barbara murmured.
“Quite.”
She brought him up to date on Gordon Jossie, his crooks, and whether they matched up with the sort of crook that was used by the killer, his reaction to the photo of Gina Dickens, and the phone call she’d had from that same woman. She told him she was heading to Burley for another conversation with Rob Hastings as well. Crooks and blacksmithing would be among her topics, she said. What, she asked Lynley, was on for him?
Frazer Chaplin, he told her, and an earnest attempt at alibi breaking.
Didn’t he think that was akin to spitting in the wind? she enquired.
When in doubt, go back to the beginning, he replied. He said something about ending up in the beginning at the end of a journey and knowing the place for the first time, but she reckoned this was some sort of mad quote come into his mind so she said, “Yes. Well. Right. Whatever,” and rang off to go about her business. Going about her business, she decided, was the best balm for the disturbance she was feeling towards whatever business was going on with Lynley.
She found Rob Hastings at home. He was doing some kind of major cleaning of his Land Rover, for he seemed to have it stripped of everything it could be stripped of without removing its engine, tyres, steering wheel, and seats. What had been inside it now lay on the ground round the vehicle and he was sorting through it. He didn’t exactly keep a pin-neat Land Rover. From the amount of clobber, it looked to Barbara as if the bloke used it as a mobile home.
“Late spring cleaning?” she asked him.
“Something like.” His Weimaraner had come loping round the side of the house at the sound of Barbara’s Mini, and he told the dog to sit, which it did at once, although it panted and looked pleased to have a visitor on the property.
Barbara asked Hastings if he would show her his blacksmithing equipment, and logically Hastings asked her why. She thought about deflecting his question, but she decided his reaction to the truth might be more revealing. She said that the weapon used upon his sister had likely been handmade by a blacksmith, although she didn’t tell him what the weapon was.
At this, he didn’t move. His gaze fixed on her. He said, “D’you think I killed my own sister now?”
“We’re looking for someone with access to blacksmith’s equipment or to tools made by blacksmith’s equipment,” Barbara told him. “Everyone who fits the bill and knew Jemima is going to be examined. I can’t think you’d want it any other way.”
Hastings dropped his gaze. He admitted that he wouldn’t.
She could see, however, when he showed her the equipment, that it hadn’t been used in years. She knew little enough about the workings of a smithy, but everything he owned that was related to his training and time as a blacksmith suggested that neither he nor anyone else had interfered with so much as its placement since it had first been deposited in the outbuilding where he kept it now. Everything was shoved and piled together with no room to move among it. A heavy bench held most of the equipment: tongs, preens, chisels, forks, and punches. Wrought-iron bars lay disused to one side of this in a hotchpotch pile, and two anvils were upended against the front of the bench as well. There were several old tubs, three vices, and what looked like a grinder. There was, tellingly however, no forge. Even had this last not been the case, the unmolested dust upon everything bore not a mark of having been disturbed in ages. Barbara saw all this at once but still took her time with an examination of everything there. She finally nodded and thanked the agister. She said, “I’m sorry. It had to be done.”
“What was used to kill her, then?” Hastings sounded numb.
Barbara said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Hastings, but I can’t—”
“It was a thatching tool, wasn’t it?” he said. “It has to be. It was a thatching tool.”
“Why?”
“Because of him.” Hastings looked towards the broad doorway through which they’d entered the old building in which his equipment was stored. His face hardened.
Barbara said, “Mr. Hastings, Gordon Jossie’s not the only thatcher we’ve spoken to in the investigation. He has thatching equipment, indeed. No doubt. But so does a bloke called Ringo Heath.”
Hastings thought about this. “Heath trained Jossie.”
“Yes. We’ve spoken to him. My point is that every connection we make has to be tracked down and ticked off the list. Jossie’s not the only—”
“What about Whiting?” he asked. “What about that connection?”
“Between him and Jossie? We know there’s something, but that’s all at this point. We’re still working on it.”
“As well you might. It’s taken Whiting to Jossie’s holding to have more than one heart-to-heart with the bloke.” Hastings told Barbara about Jemima’s old friend and schoolmate Meredith Powell, about what Meredith Powell had revealed to him about Whiting’s trips to see Jossie. She had the information from Gina Dickens, he said, and he ended with, “And Jossie was in London on the day Jemima died. Or isn’t that one of the connections you’ve made? Gina Dickens found the rail tickets. She got her hands on the hotel receipt.”
Barbara felt her eyes widen, and her breath hissed in. “How long have you known this? You had my card. Why didn’t you ring me in London, Mr. Hastings? Or DS Nkata. You had his card as well. Either one of us—”
“Because Whiting said it was all in hand. He told Meredith the information had been sent up to London. To you lot. To New Scotland Yard.”
A DIRTY COP. She wasn’t surprised. Barbara had known from the first that something was off with Zachary Whiting, right from the moment he’d looked at those forged letters in praise of Gordon Jossie’s performance as a student at Winchester Technical College II. He’d slipped up there, with his remark about the apprenticeship, and now she and the good chief superintendent were going to have a little chat about it.
Praise God, she saw as she looked feverishly at her map of the New Forest. She had only to retrace her route from Honey Lane back through Burley village. From there it was a straight route to Lyndhurst. Possibly, she thought, the only bloody straight route in all of Hampshire.
She set off. Her mind was spinning. Gordon Jossie in London on the day of Jemima’s death. Zachary Whiting paying calls upon him. Ringo Heath in possession of thatching tools. Gina Dickens giving information to the chief superintendent. And now Meredith Powell, whom they’d have tracked down earlier had that bloody stupid Isabelle Ardery not ordered them precipitately back to London. Isabelle Ardery. Isabelle told me. Which took Barbara back to considering Lynley—that last place she wanted to be—so she forced herself again to Whiting.
Disguise. That was it. She’d been thinking that the baseball cap and sunglasses comprised the disguise because it seemed so obviously one. But what about the other? Dark clothes, dark hair. God, Whiting was bald as a newborn, but putting his mitts on a wig would have been child’s play for him, wouldn’t it?
Her mind tumbling from point to point, she paid scant attention to the road. There was a Y she hadn’t taken note of on the map, and she veered left when she came to it, at the Queen’s Head pub, on the edge of Burley village. She saw her error at once as the road began to narrow—she’d been meant to veer right—and she zipped into the broad car park behind the pub to turn round. She began to negotiate her way past the tour coaches, and that was when her mobile rang.
She excavated it and barked, “Havers,” when she finally got it open.
“Drinks tonight, luv?” a man’s voice asked her.
“What the bloody hell?”
“Drinks tonight, luv?” He sounded extremely intense.
“Drinks? Who the hell … ? This is DS Barbara Havers. Who is this?”
“I realise that. Drinks toni
ght, luv?” He spoke as if through gritted teeth. “Drinks, drinks, drinks?”
At this, Barbara twigged. It was Norman Whatsisname from the Home Office, her own official snout, brought to her courtesy of Dorothea Harriman and her friend Stephanie Thompson-Smythe. He was giving her the code words and they were meant to meet at the Barclay’s cash-point machine in Victoria Street and he had something for her and—
“Bloody hell,” she said. “Norman. I’m in Hampshire. Tell me on the phone.”
“Can’t do, darling,” he said breezily. “Absolutely crushed with work at the moment. But drinks tonight would be the ticket. How about our regular watering hole? C’n I talk you into a gin and tonic? At the regular place?”
She thought frantically. She said, “Norman, listen. I c’n get someone there in …let’s say an hour? It’ll be a bloke. He’ll say gin and tonic, all right? That’s how you’ll know him. In an hour, Norman. At the cash-point machine in Victoria Street. Gin and tonic, Norman. Someone’ll be there.”
In the U.K. “detention at the pleasure of the reigning monarch”—a euphemism for imprisonment for life—is the only sentence that can be given to someone who is convicted of murder. But that is the law as it is applied to murderers over twenty-one years old. In the case of John Dresser, the killers were children. This, as well as the sensational nature of the crime, could not but have had an impact on Mr. Justice Anthony Cameron as he considered what recommendations he would make upon intoning the required sentence.
The climate that surrounded the trial was hostile, with an undercurrent of hysteria that could be seen most often in the reaction of those gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice. Whereas within the courtroom, there was tension but no overt display of aggression towards the three boys, outside the courtroom, this was not the case. Initial displays of rage towards the three defendants—characterised first by the moblike gatherings at their homes and then by repeated attempts to attack the armed vans in which they daily traveled to and from their trial—segued into organised demonstrations and culminated in what became known as the Silent March for Justice, a noiseless gathering of an astonishing twenty thousand people who walked the distance from the Barriers to the Dawkins building site, where they were led in candlelit prayer and where they listened to Alan Dresser’s broken eulogy for his little boy. “John’s passing cannot go unmarked”—Alan Dresser’s words of conclusion—became the watchword for public sentiment.
One can only imagine how Justice Cameron wrestled with his decision regarding the recommendation he would make. It was not for nothing that he’d long been known as “Maximum Tony” for his propensity to let stand the maximum sentence at the conclusion of trials in his courtroom. But he’d never been faced with ten-and eleven-year-old criminals before, and he could not have been blind to all the ways in which the perpetrators of this horrible deed were themselves only children. His brief, however, demanded he consider only what would be appropriate for both retribution and deterrence. His recommendation was a custodial sentence of eight years, a punishment that, in the eyes of the public and the tabloid press, was deemed akin to walking away scot-free. Thus a series of heretofore unheard-of legal maneuvers were made. Within a week, the Lord Chief Justice reviewed the case and increased the sentence to ten years, but within six months the Dressers had amassed a petition of 500,000 signatures demanding that the killers be jailed for life.
This was a story that refused to die. The tabloids had seized hold of John Dresser’s parents and of John himself and had made his death a cause célèbre. Once the verdicts were handed down in the trial of his killers, their identities and photographs could be revealed to the public, as could salient details of his murder. The monstrous nature of his killing became a rallying point for those who deemed punishment the only appropriate response to such a crime. Thus the Home Secretary became involved, increasing the sentence once again to an incredible twenty years in order, he said, “To assure the public that their confidence in the judicial system is not misplaced, to allow them to see that crime will be punished, no matter the age of the perpetrator.” There the sentence remained until it went before the European Court in Luxembourg where it was successfully argued by the boys’ lawyers that their rights were being infringed by the fact that a politician—who would perforce be influenced by public opinion—was allowed to set the terms of their imprisonment.
When the boys’ prison term was reduced back to ten years, the tabloids flung themselves once again into the fray. Those who loathed the entire idea of European unification, seeing it as the root of all evils in the country, used the Luxembourg decision as an example of outside intrusion into the internal affairs of British society. What would come next? they pondered. Would it be Luxembourg forcing the euro upon us? What about a declaration that the Monarchy would have to be abolished? Those who supported unification saw the wisdom in making no comment at all. For any agreement with Luxembourg’s decision was a dangerous position to take, somehow implying that a mere decade was suitable punishment for the torture and death of an innocent baby.
No one could possibly envy the officials—elected or not—who had to make the decisions about the fate of Michael Spargo, Reggie Arnold, and Ian Barker. The nature of the crime has always suggested that the three boys were deeply disturbed, social victims themselves. There can be no doubt that their family circumstances were wretched, but there can also be no doubt that other children grow up in circumstances just as wretched or worse and they do not kill small children in reaction.
Perhaps the truth is that on their own as individuals the boys would not have committed an act of violence such as this one. Perhaps the truth is that it was a confluence of events that day that led to the abduction and the death of John Dresser.
As an enlightened society, surely we must admit that something at some level was wrong with Michael Spargo, Reggie Arnold, and Ian Barker, and equally as an enlightened society, surely we owed those three boys relief in the form of direct intervention long before the crime ever occurred or at the very least therapeutic assistance once they were taken from their homes and held for trial. Can we not say that in failing to provide either intervention or assistance we as a society failed Michael Spargo, Reggie Arnold, and Ian Barker just as surely as we failed to protect young John Dresser from their attack upon him?
It’s a simple matter to declare the boys evil, but even as we do so, we must keep in mind that at the time of the crime’s commission, they were children. And we must ask what purpose is served by putting children on public display for a criminal trial rather than by immediately providing them with the help they need.
Chapter Thirty-One
SHE’D SAID AFTERWARDS, “I’M NOT IN LOVE WITH YOU. IT’S just something that happened.”
He’d replied, “Of course. I understand completely.”
She’d gone on with, “No one can know about this.”
He’d said, “I think that might be the most obvious point.”
She’d said, “Why? Are there others?”
“What?”
“Obvious points. Other than I’m a woman, and you’re a man, and these things sometimes happen.”
Of course there were other points, he’d thought. Aside from raw animal instinct, there was his motivation to consider. There was hers as well. There was also what now, what next, and what do we do when the ground has shifted beneath our feet.
“Regret, I suppose,” he’d told her.
“And do you? Because I don’t. As I said, these things happen. You can’t say they haven’t happened to you, of all people. I won’t believe that.”
He wasn’t quite as she seemed to think him, but he didn’t disagree with her. He swung himself out of her bed, sat on the edge, and considered her question. The answer was yes and it was also no, but he didn’t speak either.
He’d felt her hand on his back. It was cool, and her voice had altered when she said his name. No longer clipped and professional, her voice was …Was it maternal? God, no.
She was not in the least a maternal sort of woman.
She’d said, “Thomas, if we’re to be lovers—”
“I can’t just now,” had been his reply. Not that he couldn’t conceive of himself as the lover of Isabelle Ardery, but that he could conceive of it only too well, and that frightened him for all it implied. “I ought to leave,” he said.
“We’ll speak later,” she had responded.
He’d arrived home quite late. He’d slept very little. In the morning he spoke by mobile to Barbara Havers, a conversation he’d have preferred to avoid. As soon as he was able afterwards, he set upon the work of Frazer Chaplin and his alibi.
DragonFly Tonics had its offices in a mews behind Brompton Oratory and Holy Trinity Church. It faced the churchyard, although a wall, a hedge, and a path separated the two. Across the alley from the establishment, he saw that two Vespas were parked. One bright orange and the other fuchsia, each bore transfers with DragonFly Tonics printed upon them, much like those he’d seen on Frazer Chaplin’s motor scooter outside Duke’s Hotel.
Lynley parked the Healey Elliott directly in front of the building. He paused to look at the array of goods that were displayed in its front window. These consisted of bottles of substances with names like Wake-up Peach, Detox Lemon, and Sharpen-up Orange. He inspected these and thought wryly of the one he’d choose had they only manufactured it: Show Some Sense Strawberry came to mind. So did Get a Grip Grapefruit. He could have used two of those, he reckoned.
He went inside. The office was quite spare. Aside from some cardboard boxes with the DragonFly Tonics logo printed on the side, there was only a reception desk with a middle-aged woman sitting behind it. She wore a man’s seersucker suit. At least it looked like a man’s since its jacket hung loosely round her. It was a size that would have fitted Churchill.
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