The Punishment She Deserves

by Elizabeth George

  The sergeant looked confused. Then she cast a glance in the direction of the dining room. She went for apologetic as she said, “Sorry to bring this up, but . . . I mean, as we didn’t have lunch . . . ?”

  It was clear she’d never been to a hotel, fine or otherwise. A B & B probably, a pub with rooms maybe, but a full-service hotel with a bar and restaurant in addition to a breakfast room . . . ? Not at all. The poor woman didn’t know what to do with herself.

  “This is how we begin, Sergeant,” Isabelle told her. “Do sit. They’ll bring us menus. I’m ordering a drink. Have one yourself. It’s after hours, and we’re officially off duty.”

  Havers hesitated. She’d brought several of the investigation’s filing folders with her, and she clutched them defensively to her chest.

  Isabelle said, “Surely Inspector Lynley hasn’t always forced you to have your meals in . . . I don’t know . . . Little Chefs? I can’t think that would quite be his cup of tea. Do sit down. Someone will be along. Hotels have a sixth sense about these things.”

  Havers relented, but she perched on the edge of the sofa. She kept the filing folders hugging her body, clearly expecting this to be a working dinner, and she managed to look as if Isabelle would leap to her feet at any second and announce that the joke was on her.

  Within moments, Isabelle’s promised someone arrived, menus in hand. As she’d suspected, it was Mr. Eyelashes Et Cetera. She asked him his name.

  “Peace,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon? Your name is Peace?”

  “Peace on Earth,” he told her. “Mum liked to make statements.”

  “Did she indeed? Have you siblings, Peace on Earth?”

  “End of Hunger,” he told her. “After that, she couldn’t get pregnant again. Just as well, you ask me.” He handed them the menus, saying, “Drinks?” as he did so.

  Isabelle was more than ready for her second of the evening. She said, “Vodka martini, straight up, with olives. Stirred, not shaken, if you will. Sergeant, what will you have to drink?”

  Havers, she saw, was studying what appeared to be the fancy cocktail list. Her brow was furrowed, and her lips were moving as she read the names and their accompanying descriptions. She finally said airily, “I think I’ll have the same. The vodka thing.”

  “You’re certain?” Isabelle doubted Havers had ever even had a martini.

  “Certain as there’s snow in the Alps.”

  Isabelle nodded at Peace on Earth. “Two vodka martinis, then.”

  He said, “Will do,” and took himself off to the bar to do the mixing there.

  Isabelle wondered if he was also the chef. So far there appeared to be no one else working in the place.

  “Wonder if he’s got his mum’s skeleton kitted out in the attic,” Havers murmured, glancing round the lounge in which they sat. They were its only occupants.

  Isabelle frowned. “His mum?”

  “You know. Beware of the portrait with moving eyeballs and taking a shower if there’s a curtain and not a glass door? Anthony Perkins? Janet Leigh? The Bates Motel?” When Isabelle made no reply, Havers went on. “Good God, guv, have you never seen Psycho?” She made stabbing motions along with a wee, wee, wee sound. “All that blood swirling down the drain?”

  “I seem to have missed it.”

  Havers looked astonished. “Missed it?” Her expression suggested that she wanted to ask if Isabelle had been in a coma for several decades.

  “Yes. Missed it, Sergeant. Is it required viewing for anyone considering a holiday and looking for accommodation?”

  “No, but . . . well, some things are cultural touchstones. Aren’t they?”

  “I wouldn’t disagree, although I’m not sure violent death through shower curtain is one of them.”

  Peace on Earth brought them a bowl of mixed nuts and another of cheese straws. Havers looked at them longingly, but she didn’t help herself. Isabelle reached for a cheese straw and offered the bowl to her. The sergeant took one and held it, cigarlike, between two fingers, as if waiting permission to put her teeth upon it. When Isabelle crunched down upon hers, Havers did the same. Her unnerving accuracy in duplicating Isabelle’s movements made the DCS wonder whether she’d been practising the art of mirroring in her spare time.

  “What have you gathered so far?” Isabelle asked her, with a gesture at the files they’d been given.

  Havers referenced the anonymous call that had come into the 999 control centre. It had been a man’s voice, no name given, and as all calls were, it had been recorded. The IPCC files had contained a transcript of the call, and it was the transcript that had caught the sergeant’s attention. After making the claim of child molestation against Ian Druitt, the voice had said, “I can’t abide the hypocrisy. That sod goes after children—boys and girls. He has done for years, and no one wants to see it. It’s like the goddamn Catholic Church.”

  Havers said, “First I wondered why anyone took the call seriously, guv. It was like an anonymous letter when you think about it. Someone decides to cause this bloke Druitt aggro, so he rings 999 and makes a claim about him. He doesn’t offer proof, but the coppers rush out and make an arrest.”

  “Paedophilia being something the police are going to take on board at once, Sergeant . . . ,” Isabelle pointed out, leaving the rest hanging there because Havers would know it. The phone call was not unlike someone anonymously ringing the coppers to indicate a neighbour had been seen shoving a body under the patio. Wheels were going to be set in motion.

  “Oh, I understand that. But it was the last part. The Catholic Church bit.”

  Isabelle had taken another cheese straw, but she held it midway to her mouth. “The Catholic Church bit?”

  “Child abuse and the Catholic Church. Doesn’t that suggest anything to you?”

  “Should it? I mean aside from the fact that it’s come out that Catholic priests were diddling children, and their superiors knew it and did nothing about it.”

  “Exactly, guv. This bloke Ian Druitt? Turns out he was a deacon, not a full-on priest. So he had a superior right here in Ludlow, a superior who could have known all along what he was up to but did nothing to stop him.”

  “You’re suggesting that that’s the reason behind the anonymous phone call: that the Anglican Church did exactly as the Catholic Church has done. Well and good, but where does that take us?”

  “To the fact that an Anglican deacon offed himself in the Ludlow police station without ever being told why he was there. Because ’cording to the IPCC report, the PCSO brought him in but said nothing to the bloke because he didn’t even know why he’d been told to fetch him. And then the bloke offed himself? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It makes sense if you consider that, being a deacon of the church, Ian Druitt could have read the handwriting on the wall the moment the PCSO showed up to collect him. What was his name again?”

  Havers consulted her paperwork. Peace on Earth came to their table with their martinis. She said, “Gary Ruddock. And what I’m saying—”

  “Thank you, Peace. May I call you Peace, by the way?” Isabelle said all of this with meaning. Her discussion with Havers wasn’t one that she wanted anyone—let alone a hotel factotum—to overhear.

  “Fine by me,” Peace on Earth said as he placed the drinks in front of them.

  Hastily, then, Havers closed the file. She took up her martini and before Isabelle could mention that it was something she might want to savour, she swigged a mouthful as if it were mineral water. Thankfully, the top of her head did not burst into flames, although her comment, “Strong,” barely made it from between her lips afterwards.

  Peace had, in the meantime, transformed himself into their waiter. He produced a pad and pen and asked them about their menu choices. Isabelle went for the soup followed by the lamb medium rare, and Havers, who hadn’t looked at the menu and poss
ibly hadn’t even seen the menu, said in something of a post-vodka murmur that she’d have the same, although her expression suggested that she didn’t know lamb could be cooked in any way other than to a crisp.

  When the young man had taken himself off—possibly to do the cooking as well—Isabelle pointed out to Havers that the fact that Ian Druitt was an Anglican deacon explained two elements of the case. The first was why the phone call to 999 had been made anonymously. “Most fathers wouldn’t want their sons or daughters to be questioned by the police about molestation. They’d want it even less if the molester was a deacon as it would easily come down to the child’s word against a churchman’s.” The second was that the deacon had been collected sooner rather than later after the phone call. “The MP who came to see Hillier—Quentin Walker—told me that Druitt had a boys’ and girls’ club here in town. If that’s the case, he was in a position of such trust that he needed to be stopped at once if he was messing about with any children in that club.”

  Havers didn’t look convinced, though. Instead she looked thoughtful before she said, “Or there’s always this, guv: Someone was trying to get Druitt stitched up for something he didn’t do.”

  LUDLOW

  SHROPSHIRE

  It was half past eleven, but Barbara knew she had to get out of the hotel and into the air. She also knew that she’d buggered things. The predinner martini had been followed by two bottles of red wine. One cup of coffee—black, strong, and sugarless—had done nothing to slap her into sobriety. If the drinking had been designed by Ardery to see what she would do when offered it, Barbara reckoned she’d failed the test.

  As for the DCS, she’d not shown the least sign of being even tipsy. Instead of coffee, she’d also had two port wines after dinner. Her capacity for drink was astonishing. The only indication she’d given that the drinks were getting to her was when she’d taken a phone call during their dinner. She’d given it a glance and then said to Barbara, “I must take this,” and rose to leave the dining room. She headed for the doorway, and she’d veered off course a bit. But even that could have been due merely to a ruck in the carpet.

  Barbara had heard her say, “But I’ve hired you to deal with this, haven’t I,” before the DCS went out of earshot. Upon her return, Ardery had looked stony in the face, but whatever the phone call had been about, she’d left the matter wherever she’d rung off on the caller. She seemed expert at compartmentalising things.

  After the meal as they climbed the stairs, Isabelle laid out their plans for the following day, which would begin at half past seven when they met for breakfast. The day would include speaking to the PCSO who’d been in charge of carting Ian Druitt to the Ludlow station. It would also include a drive to pay a call on the dead man’s father, and a conversation with the vicar of St. Laurence Church, which, according to their paperwork, turned out to be where Ian Druitt had his position as deacon.

  “Goodnight to you, Sergeant,” were Ardery’s final words, along with, “I hope you sleep well.”

  Barbara surveyed her room on unsteady legs and knew how unlikely was the probability that she would sleep at all. First of all, the room swam round her in such a way that she thought she might not make it across the carpet to the bed. Second, the bed was so narrow and looked so uncomfortable that even if she managed to fall upon it, she reckoned she’d spend the night feeling like a prisoner stretched out on the rack.

  Not born anywhere near yesterday, Barbara had understood what Ardery was up to on the journey to Herefordshire and then to Shropshire. As soon as the DCS had announced there would be no stopping for lunch, she’d reckoned that Ardery was going to use this excursion as an opportunity to push her not only to the edge but over it. Ardery’s dislike of her had been established early into her tenure at New Scotland Yard, and while Barbara had done nothing to garner anything other than dislike from the DCS, she’d managed to stay clear of absolute malfeasance until she’d taken herself off to Italy in defiance of Ardery’s orders. Providing information to a reporter working for the nation’s worst tabloid hadn’t helped matters. Doing it more than once had done the job to seal her fate. So now in Ludlow, Barbara found herself quite adept at reading the tea leaves. DI Lynley might have seen this as an opportunity for redemption, but Barbara knew what it actually was: a design to sink her permanently and to guarantee her transfer to Berwick-upon-Tweed.

  This room in the hotel was part of it. She didn’t need to see Ardery’s own digs to know that they wouldn’t resemble this, which had to be the quarters of a former scullery maid shared, undoubtedly, with a laundress and the dairy maid had Griffith Hall had a dairy in its glory years. But Isabelle Ardery was not going to hear a complaint from DS Havers. So if Barbara had to sleep on the floor to achieve any comfort at all, she would do so.

  The drinking, though, had blotted her copybook after an entire day of keeping it pristine. She was pissed all the way to the stars, and this did not bode well for the morrow. She needed to sober up. She also needed a fag. The hotel was a nonsmoking establishment—wasn’t everything these days, she asked herself bitterly—so she decided that a walk in the night air might suffice to meet those two needs. After splashing water on her face in a bathroom the size of a church confessional, she grabbed up her shoulder bag, made sure she had her fags, and staggered down to reception.

  No one was there, but she found a neat pile of tourist maps on the counter, along with postcards of the castle and dozens of brochures for various “Days Out” in Shropshire. She took up one of the tourist maps and unfolded it. Her vision was doing the polka, but she could still see that the map was heavily given to advertisements for shops, cafés, restaurants, and galleries. In the middle of all this was a fairly usable plan of the mediaeval centre of the town. The presence of the castle made it simple for her to see where she was in Ludlow—across the street from it—and despite the swirling sensation in her head, she was able to plot out a route that would take her through the narrow streets and ultimately deposit her in front of the police station, from which she could then find her way back.

  Town plan in one hand and fags in the other, she went outside to find that it had rained while she and Ardery had been at dinner. The cool night air promised sobriety. On it hung the sweet, sharp smell of woodsmoke from a fire nearby, something utterly foreign to London, where wood fires were no longer permitted. People cheated on the law and burned them anyway, but it was rare enough that the scent of them in Ludlow was like being thrust back in time.

  The buildings had the same effect on her. Griffith Hall was part of a line of dwellings that lay claim to the passage of centuries. A plaque on one of the houses indicated that a mediaeval range of buildings here had been transformed into a Regency terrace by means of altering what faced onto the street, while at the corner where the lane opened onto Castle Square, a twentieth-century café shared a plot of land with a half-timbered Tudor town mansion.

  Barbara felt like a traveller caught between several time periods, although the sounds of nearby music and happy conversation fixed her in the present. She recognised the chatter of drinkers whose habit with fags did not allow them to do both—drink and smoke simultaneously—inside a pub that was not in view. She reckoned the drinkers and smokers were mostly students, for across the square she could see a wrought-iron archway that spanned two buildings and made an entrance that was identified by glittering stainless steel letters that indicated the route to West Mercia College.

  The last thing Barbara wanted to do was seek out a pub. So she lit her first fag and continued on her way. Her head was muzzy. A weekly pint of ale or lager was her usual limit, and she cursed herself for feeling she needed to acquiesce when offered another kind of drink. As for downing a sodding martini? She had to ask herself where congenial cooperation ended and utter mindlessness began.

  On the High Street, she encountered only one individual: a man carrying a sleeping bag under his arm and a carrier bag in his fingers
. He wore a rucksack and was accompanied by an Alsatian. He looked to be getting ready to doss in the doorway of a distinguished stone building identified on her town plan as the Buttercross. He was opposite the pavement on which she was walking, so she couldn’t get a clear look at him, but she made note of the idea of someone sleeping rough in Ludlow. It seemed unusual.

  There was no traffic in town just then. Ludlow’s nightlife appeared to be restricted to a few pubs, and its restaurants seemed to cater to those who ate early and retired to bed soon afterwards.

  Following her designated route, Barbara found herself ultimately in a pedestrian passage where the now-gated Renaissance Flea Market promised her a variety of goods that she had no use for. This passage was dimly lit, and she paced along it quickly to emerge onto a curve that her map defined as the point where Upper Galdeford Street met Lower Galdeford Street.

  Here everything was much different, for emerging from the vicinity of the flea market she found that she’d left the mediaeval precinct entirely. The roadway was wider, indicating its purpose as a route bypassing the old part of the town. Along it, a terrace of houses stood, faced either in dismal grey stucco or in brick with single steps to serve as their porches. The breeze was brisker here, and brisker still when she reached her destination.

  The town’s police station had its position at the corner of Lower Galdeford Street and Townsend Close, not far from Weeping Cross Lane, which, according to her map, dropped down to the River Teme. It seemed to Barbara that it was from the river that the breeze took some of its chill.

  She was surprised by the size of the station. A two-storey structure faced with red brick, it was larger than she thought it would be, its traditional blue and white-lettered police light extending from the southeast corner of the building. Wide stone steps led to a substantial oak door hung with a simple overdoor that was less decoration than shelter from the rain.