The Punishment She Deserves

by Elizabeth George

  They were going to hold post-work practice sessions, Dorothea informed her in very short order. No messing about with excuses, Detective Sergeant. There was a list of women eager to enroll in Kaz’s class, and if Barbara Havers did not soon cut the metaphorical mustard with her tap shoes, she was as good as sacked.

  It was only by swearing on the life of her mother that Barbara was able to convince Dorothea to relent. The secretary’s plan had been to hold their practice sessions in the stairwell at work, close to the vending machines where there was room enough to shim sham, scuffle, riffle, and riff. That, Barbara had decided, was all she needed to complete the picture of who she was in the eyes of her colleagues. She promised she would practise nightly, and she did so. For at least a month.

  She improved enough to earn Kaz’s nod and Dorothea’s dimpled smile. All the time she kept her dancing a secret from everyone else who touched upon her life.

  She’d lost an entire stone, she found, quite effortlessly. She had to move to a smaller skirt size and the bows she tied on her drawstring trousers were getting larger by the week. Soon she would have to move to a smaller size there as well. Perhaps eventually she’d also become the picture of lithesome beauty, she decided. Stranger things had happened.

  On the other hand, that lost stone was the open door to tucking into curry two nights a week. Plus, it allowed for absolute piles of naan. Not the plain sort, mind you, but naan dripping with garlic butter, naan with butter and spices and honey and almonds, naan any way that she could find it.

  She’d been on her way to a massive weight regain when Kaz brought up the Tap Jam. This was seven months into her lessons, and she was thinking about dahl heaped upon naan alongside a lovely plate of salmon tagliatelle (she was not averse to mixing ethnicities when it came to dinner) when Dorothea said to her, “We must go, Detective Sergeant Havers. You’re free on Thursday night, aren’t you?”

  Barbara was roused from her vision of carbohydrates gone wild. Thursday night? Free? Could there ever be a different adjective applied to any night in her life? Dumbly, she nodded. When Dorothea cried, “Excellent!” and called out to Kaz, “You can count on us!” she should have known something was up. It was only after the lesson as they were walking to the Tube that she discovered what it was she’d committed herself to.

  “It will be such fun!” Dorothea exclaimed. “And Kaz is going to be there. He’ll stay with us on the renegade stage.”

  Stage was what informed Barbara that come Thursday night, she would have to invent a sudden debilitating illness directly related to her feet. She had, apparently, just committed herself to some kind of tap-dancing extravaganza, which was among the very last things she wanted to give a place on her bucket list.

  So she made a decent attempt at excuses, touching upon fallen arches and bunions gone quite mad. Dorothea’s response was a pretty, “Don’t even attempt to get out of this, Detective Sergeant Havers,” and to make things worse, she let Barbara know that she was to bring her tap shoes to work on the day in question, and if she did not, Dorothea was utterly certain that Detective Sergeant Winston Nkata would be pleased to fetch Barbara home to get them. Or Detective Inspector Lynley. He loved going out and about in his fancy car, didn’t he? A drive up to Chalk Farm would be the very thing.

  “All right, all right,” had been Barbara’s surrender. “But if you even think I’m planning to dance, you’re dead wrong on a dish.”

  Thus she found herself in Soho on a Thursday night.

  The streets were packed, not only because tourist season had officially begun, but also because the weather was pleasant and because Soho had long attracted clubbers, theatre-goers, diners, gawkers, dancers, and drinkers. So it was a case of muscling through the hordes to get to Old Compton Street. There, a club called Ella D’s was situated.

  On an upper floor of the nightclub, twice each month, a Tap Jam occurred. This, Barbara quickly discovered, comprised a Jam Mash, a Renegade Jam, and a Solo Tap, all of which she vowed to eschew the moment she learned what each one demanded.

  The Jam Mash was already in progress when they arrived. They waited outside for a quarter hour to see if Kaz was going to show up and introduce them to the promised delights of Ella D’s. After that, however, Dorothea announced impatiently that “he’s had his chance,” and she led the way into the club where, from above their heads, they could hear music coming, along with what sounded like a herd of newly shoed ponies on the run.

  The noise intensified as they climbed. Along with the sound of “Big Bad Voodoo Daddy,” they could hear a woman shouting over a microphone: “Scuffle, scuffle! Now try a flap! Good! Now watch this.”

  They hadn’t, after all, been abandoned by Kaz. They discovered this as they entered a large room with a raised platform at one end, some two dozen chairs pushed to the walls, and a smaller crowd than Barbara would have hoped. It was clear she wasn’t going to be able to escape notice if she mingled among them.

  Kaz was on the platform with a stout-looking woman in swirly 1950s gear. No high heels, naturally, but gleaming tap shoes that she was employing to serious effect. She was calling out the steps and doing them with Kaz. Before the platform three lines of tappers were attempting to duplicate the movements.

  “Oh, isn’t this brilliant!” Dorothea exclaimed.

  For reasons obscure, she had costumed herself for this event. Whereas she had so far always gone to their lessons garbed in a leotard and tights—the leotard covered over by trousers till she reached the dance floor—tonight she’d decided on a period kit. It featured a poodle skirt, a blouse tied up beneath her breasts, and a perky ribbon round her head à la Betty Boop. Barbara had decided it was an effort at incognito, and she wished she’d thought along those lines herself.

  Dorothea wasn’t, however, incognito to Kaz. He clocked them within about thirty seconds, and he leapt off the platform and Cincinnatied in their direction. With the sixth sense of a seasoned dancer, he spun round just as he reached their immediate vicinity. Another two steps and he would have knocked both of them to the floor.

  “What a vision!” he exclaimed. He was, of course, speaking of Dorothea. Barbara had gone for simplicity: trainers, leggings, and a T-shirt printed with I’M NOT LAUGHING AT YOU. I JUST FORGOT TO TAKE MY MEDS.

  Dorothea dimpled and brought forth a quick curtsy. She said, “You looked brilliant!” in clear reference to his dancing. “Who’s she?” she asked.

  “That,” he said with some pride, “is KJ Fowler, the number one tapper in the UK.”

  KJ Fowler was still calling out the steps. When the music ended, another piece began. “Johnny Got a Boom Boom,” came over the speakers. Kaz said to them, “Put your shoes on, ladies. It’s time to buck.”

  He bucked his way back to the platform, where KJ Fowler was executing a series of steps that made the efforts of those attempting to follow her look like the Underground in rush hour. Dorothea’s eyes were alight. “Shoes,” she told Barbara.

  At the side of the room, they put on their tap shoes. While Barbara desperately sought a believable reason for sudden paralysis, Dorothea pulled her onto the floor. A cramp roll was being executed on stage by KJ Fowler, and Kaz followed this—upon her instruction—with a dizzying combination of steps that only a fool would have attempted to emulate. Nonetheless there were takers, Dorothea among them. Barbara stepped to one side to observe. She had to admit it: Dorothea was good. She was, in fact, on her way to a solo. And with Barbara and the Muslim women as her main competitors, she was going to be there before she knew it.

  They managed close to twenty minutes in the Jam Mash. Barbara was dripping sweat and thinking about the possibility of making an escape without Dorothea noticing when the music stopped—for which she fervently thanked God—and KJ Fowler informed them that time was up. At first Barbara thought this meant a blessed escape. But then KJ announced a real treat for them all. It seemed that Tap Jazz Fury were p
aying a visit to Ella D’s.

  Shouts and applause greeted this news as a small jazz band appeared out of nowhere. The assembled crowd got to it when the band did its stuff. Some of the dancers, Barbara had to admit, were so fleet of foot that she gave half a thought to continuing with tap, just to see if she could become one tenth as skilled.

  It was, however, only half a thought, and it was interrupted by a vibration emanating from the area of her waistband. There she’d tucked her mobile phone, for although she’d committed to this Thursday evening extravaganza of tap dancing, she was still on rota. A vibrating phone meant only one thing. The job was ringing her.

  She excavated for the phone and glanced at it. Detective Chief Superintendent Isabelle Ardery. She generally rang Barbara only when Barbara had committed some malefaction or another, so before answering, Barbara did a quick look-see at her conscience. It seemed clear.

  Considering the level of noise, she knew she’d have to take the call elsewhere, so she tapped Dorothea on the shoulder, held up the mobile, and mouthed Ardery. Dorothea wailed, “Oh no,” but of course she knew there was nothing for it. Barbara had to answer.

  Still, she wasn’t able to get to it before the call went to message. She shouldered her way out of the room and made for the ladies’, down the corridor. Once inside, she listened, and the DCS’s message was brief. “You’re being called off rota, ring me at once, and why the devil aren’t you answering in the first place, Sergeant?”

  Barbara returned the call, and before Ardery could cook up an accusation about why she hadn’t answered, Barbara said, “Sorry, guv. Noisy where I am. Couldn’t get to you fast enough. What’s up?”

  “You’re going up to West Mercia Headquarters,” Ardery told her without preamble.

  “I’m . . . But what’ve I done? I’ve not once been out of order since—”

  “Ratchet down the paranoia,” Ardery cut in. “I said you’re going, not being reassigned. Bring a packed bag tomorrow and get to work early.”

  WANDSWORTH

  LONDON

  Isabelle Ardery had quickly concluded that the investigation she’d been told to conduct was going to be awkward. An enquiry by the police into the police was always touchy. An investigation by one police body into another owing to a death of a suspect in custody was much worse. Worst of all, however, was the intrusion of anyone from the government into the mechanics of a police enquiry. Yet within minutes of reaching the office of Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hillier, Isabelle understood she’d be dealing with all of this.

  Behind her secretarial desk, Judi-with-an-i MacIntosh gave a modest indication of what was afoot, telling Isabelle to go in directly as Sir David was awaiting her arrival, with a member of Parliament. “No one I’ve heard of,” she admitted, which told Isabelle that the MP in question was an obscure back-bencher.

  “Do you know the name?” she asked Judi before she turned the knob on the door.

  “Quentin Walker,” the secretary replied. She added, “Not the least idea why he’s here, but they’ve been talking for sixty-five minutes.”

  Quentin Walker turned out to be an MP representing Birmingham. As Isabelle opened the door, he and Hillier rose from chairs drawn round a small conference table on which a carafe of coffee stood, two cups of which were already in use. A third awaited. Once introductions had been made, Hillier indicated that she was to help herself, and she did so.

  The AC made short work of telling her that on the twenty-fifth of March in the jurisdiction of the West Mercia police, someone had died while in police custody. The incident had been investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission as per usual, and although the IPCC had concluded that things had gone badly amiss, the investigators had also concluded that there was no reason to pass their report along to the Crown Prosecution Service, as there was no criminal charge that could be laid at anyone’s feet. It was a straightforward suicide.

  Isabelle glanced at Quentin Walker. There seemed to be no reason for him to be there unless this death took place while someone was in custody in Birmingham, the MP’s bailiwick. But the location of the death—in the jurisdiction of the West Mercia police force—indicated that this could not be the case.

  She said, “Who was the victim?”

  “Bloke called Ian Druitt.”

  “And where was he in custody?”

  “Ludlow.”

  Curious. Ludlow was not even near Birmingham. Isabelle glanced at Quentin Walker another time.

  The MP’s face was impassive, but she took in that he was a nice-looking man with a head of well-groomed chestnut hair and hands that appeared as if he’d never ventured anywhere in the vicinity of manual labour. He also had extraordinarily gorgeous skin. Isabelle wondered if someone appeared in his parliamentary office daily to shave him and administer the hot towels afterwards.

  “Why was Druitt in custody? Do we know?” Isabelle asked.

  Again, Hillier was the one to answer. “Child molestation.” His voice was dry.

  “Ah.” Isabelle set her coffee cup on its saucer. “What’s the brief, exactly?” She was still waiting to hear from Quentin Walker. He can’t have come to the Met on a social call. He was also at least a decade younger than Hillier, so that eliminated the old school tie.

  “Hanged himself while waiting to be fetched from Ludlow to the Shrewsbury custody suite,” Hillier told her. “He’d been taken to the Ludlow station pending the arrival of patrol officers.” He lifted his shoulders, but his look was regretful. “It was quite a cock-up.”

  “But why was he taken to the Ludlow nick in the first place? Why not directly to Shrewsbury?”

  “Someone seems to have felt that the allegations called for immediate action. As there’s a police station in Ludlow—”

  “Was no one watching him?”

  “The station’s unmanned.”

  Isabelle looked from Hillier to the MP and back to Hillier. A suicide in an unmanned police station wasn’t a cock-up. It was a disaster that heralded a serious lawsuit.

  It was very odd, then, that the complaints commission had taken a decision not to hand their report over to the Crown Prosecutors. The affair was irregular and Isabelle had a feeling that the answer Hillier gave to her next question was going to make it more irregular still.

  “Who made the arrest?”

  “Ludlow’s PCSO. He did exactly what he was told to do: pick the bloke up, take him into the Ludlow station, and wait for patrol officers to come from Shrewsbury to fetch him.”

  “I know I don’t need to mention how strange this is, sir. Ludlow’s community support officer making the arrest? The newspapers must have had a field day with that once this bloke . . . what was his name again . . . Druitt, was it? Once he killed himself. Why on earth didn’t the complaints commission kick this along to the Crown Prosecutors?”

  “As I’ve said, they investigated—the IPCC—but there was simply nothing to prosecute. It was a disciplinary matter, not a criminal act. Still, the fact that Druitt had been taken to wait at an unmanned station, the fact that a police community support officer had made the arrest, the fact that the suicide was about to be questioned on the topic of child molestation . . . You see the problem.”

  Isabelle did. Cops hated paedophiles. That did not bode well if a paedophile died in custody. But for there to be anything additional required—once the IPCC had concluded its investigation with the decision of no criminality—indicated that something more was going on.

  She said to the MP, “I don’t understand why you’re here, Mr. Walker. Are you somehow involved?”

  “The death appears suspicious.” Quentin Walker took a white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and pressed it delicately to his lips.

  Isabelle said, “But it obviously wasn’t suspicious to the IPCC if they concluded suicide. It’s unfortunate. It sounds like dereliction of duty on
the part of the PCSO. But why is it suspicious?”

  Walker told her that Ian Druitt had established an after-school club for boys and girls, associated with the parish church of St. Laurence in Ludlow. It was a successful organisation and much admired. Not the slightest breath of scandal had ever touched it, and none of the children involved with the club had ever come forward with a single concern about Druitt. These facts alone had raised questions in certain quarters. Those quarters had turned to their member of Parliament in order to produce some answers.

  “But Ludlow isn’t part of the area you represent,” Isabelle said. “Which seems to suggest that the ‘certain quarters’ you refer to have a personal connection to you or to the dead man. Is that right?”

  Walker glanced at Hillier. The look suggested to Isabelle that her questions had somehow reassured the man. She prickled at this outward sign of the doubts he apparently had about her. It was infuriating that women were still considered so bloody secondary in the world, even here.

  “Is there a personal connection, Mr. Walker?”

  “One of my constituents is Clive Druitt,” he told her. “Are you familiar with the name?”

  It sounded only vaguely familiar. She couldn’t place it, so she shook her head.

  “Druitt Craft Breweries,” the MP said. “Combination brewery and gastropub. He started his first one in Birmingham. Now there are eight.”

  Which meant he probably had money, Isabelle thought. Which meant he had the MP’s attention when he wanted it. She said, “His relationship to the dead man?”

  “Ian Druitt was his son. Understandably Clive doesn’t believe his son might have been a paedophile. Nor does he believe he was a suicide.”

  What parent ever wanted to believe his child was engaged in criminal behavior? Isabelle thought. But surely a thorough investigation into the suicide in custody had told the dead man’s father that, as regrettable and terrible as it was, Ian Druitt had died at his own hand. The MP must have explained this to Mr. Druitt. As far as Isabelle could see, there was no reason to involve the Met.