The Punishment She Deserves

by Elizabeth George

  She could easily tell which of the family members was the son Ian. He stood in the middle of the adult children, and he was the only person not wearing jeans and a white shirt. Instead, he wore clerical garb. She assumed the photo memorialised his ordination, or whatever it was that officially proclaimed someone a deacon.

  Aside from DI Pajer’s photos of his body, this was Isabelle’s first look at Ian Druitt. Like his siblings, his parents, and several of the grandkids, he was ginger-haired. He was also bespectacled and pudgy, with a rounding of the shoulders that suggested a wish to hide his height or, what was more likely, to make himself into someone who might go unnoticed. For those three characteristics—the ginger hair, the specs, and the pudginess—had long served as a mating call to bullies. She wondered if he’d suffered at the hands of more aggressive children when he was young. She also wondered how that might have affected him.

  “He would not self-harm,” Clive Druitt said as if he’d read her thoughts.

  Isabelle glanced at the man. She could see what grief had done to Druitt since his son’s death. The weight he’d lost made his face look drawn and creased, and while he was already slender in the photograph of his family, now he had an emaciated look. Cheekbones had become predominant as had the crevasses beneath them. His eyes were sunken and his wrists were bony. His hair had faded. From ginger, it was heading towards the colour of straw.

  She hadn’t been sent to Shropshire to prove or disprove anything about the dead man, but she didn’t tell his father as much. She was there to look into the conduct of the two investigations that had occurred, which was an entirely different matter having to do with how the police had behaved and not how Ian Druitt’s life may have led up to his suicide. Done properly and with any putative irregularities duly accounted for, her investigation’s results would be identical to those that had already been reached.

  Still, she needed to be careful here, since the fact that there had not also been an investigation by the Crown Prosecutors did indicate there might be cause for concern on Mr. Druitt’s part. So she said, “I met your MP—Mr. Walker—in London, along with the assistant commissioner of the Met. Mr. Walker’s expressed your concerns as well as his own, Mr. Druitt. I’m fully on board.” This was something of a lie, but she was here to reassure the man that his disquiet was being taken seriously. “My sergeant and I will be looking at the previous investigations that resulted in the verdict of suicide at the coroner’s inquest.”

  Druitt was no one’s fool. He quickly surmised that her presence did not constitute a reopening of the case. He said, “Ian had no cause. You ask anyone and they’ll tell you as much.” He moved to one of the sealed boxes and opened it. He riffled through its contents—Isabelle could see it was mostly clothing—and when he didn’t find what he was seeking, he opened another. This time, he found what he wanted after removing a stack of neatly folded woolen sweaters. He handed over to her a wooden plaque and he instructed her to “give it a look.”

  She saw it was fashioned of fine cherry and it had a large engraved brass plate fixed upon it. Across this were the words Ludlow Man of the Year and beneath them Ian Druitt followed by the date, which was in early March. Above this was etched Ludlow Castle on its hill with a flag waving above its central tower. The award, Isabelle thought, was quite nice, not just a second-rate nod of obligatory gratitude from the town.

  “They gave him this,” Druitt said. “The mayor and the town council. Had a ceremony in the council chamber: speeches, refreshments, musicians from the college. I’m telling you, he had no reason to kill himself. He had friends. He had people who loved him. He had everything he could have wanted.”

  He also, Isabelle thought, had an allegation of paedophilia hanging over him. She didn’t say this, however. She knew that a plaque actually meant nothing in the greater scheme of things; while lovely, it was only a gesture. Additionally, in the case of Ian Druitt, a plaque and a ceremony and a band and all the trimmings could have served as a means of pushing someone already angry into anonymously setting the ball in motion.

  Clive Druitt went on. “Our Ian? Never depressed a day in his life. Never one to be sad, to be looking for more than what he had. Does that sound like a suicide to you?”

  At this, she wondered if Druitt even knew about the allegation of paedophilia. She assumed that he must. How could he not? He wouldn’t want to face that, though. No father would want to hear that about his son.

  “And this,” he said. “You look at this.” Now he’d removed from the same box a folder newspaper. She saw it was local: the Ludlow Echo. It carried a front-page story about the ceremony at which Ian Druitt had been named the town’s Man of the Year. It listed his activities in Ludlow as well as his accomplishments past, present, and coming in the future. They were, admittedly, very impressive. But none of them went any distance to proving he wasn’t a suicide. And if he wasn’t a suicide, then someone murdered him or he’d died accidentally. The first was improbable considering where he’d been when he died, and the second was impossible for the same reason.

  She said, “Mr. Druitt, I assure you my colleague and I intend to look into every aspect of what happened that night at Ludlow police station. We’ll examine the reports that were written about it and we’ll look at the procedures that the responding officer and the IPCC followed. If there’s something untoward in what was reported, we will find it.”

  He turned to face her and she could see him trying to read exactly what was meant in her words. A few moments passed in which she saw that they weren’t alone as she’d previously thought because a young woman wearing a boiler suit was dealing with the tanks beyond the glass wall and making notes on a clipboard she was holding.

  Druitt finally said shrewdly, “This isn’t to be reopened, is it? You’ve come to sweep things beneath the carpet. You listen to me, Detective Chief Superintendent Whatever Your Name Is. I’m not having that. I want this whole matter reopened, and that’s what Walker assured me was going to happen once he talked to the Met.”

  “This is how it begins.” Isabelle aimed for reasonable in her voice. “Once my colleague and I conduct our investigation into the enquiries that went on in Ludlow, we fashion a report for our superiors. A recommendation is made based on our report. But we don’t have the power to make that recommendation ourselves. That’s done by our higher-ups.” A borderline lie, but it was close enough to the truth to serve. They could investigate as much as they wanted to investigate, fine-tooth combing their way by speaking to every person who had already been spoken to. But as far as Isabelle could see at the moment, that would be a largely unnecessary expenditure of their time and the Met’s resources.

  Druitt said, “I want everyone talked to, and I mean everyone who knew my boy. I particularly want someone to grill that police whatever-he-was who left Ian alone for however long he left him alone and for whatever reason. If I don’t get that, you’re going to hear from my solicitors. All of them.”

  Well, this wasn’t going quite as planned, Isabelle thought. Another call to his MP was doubtless going to be his next move if he didn’t like how things were arranged. Before they reached that pass with each other, she needed to placate him. Hillier would not be pleased to hear from either the man’s solicitors or his MP. Nor, she expected, would Chief Constable Wyatt or anyone else be pleased. She ran her hand over the most recently opened box. She said, “Completely understood, Mr. Druitt. May I take these with me, please?”

  “These belongings of Ian’s? What do you want with them? I expect you mean to toss them, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely not! There could be, amongst your son’s belongings, something to aid us.”

  “I’ll get them back, won’t I?”

  “Of course you will. And you’ll have a receipt for them.”

  “I ask because I don’t trust you lot, not when you say Ian did himself in. Men of God don’t do themselves in. And Ian was a man of God.
”

  LUDLOW

  SHROPSHIRE

  In daylight the L-shaped police station wasn’t much different from what it had been at night, although now there were no lights on inside, no windows open, and no panda cars in the car park. Indeed, there were no cars at all, which told Barbara that the community support officer had not yet arrived. This gave her a chance for a daylight recce of the place, which she started to make at once.

  The building was fronted by a slope where trimmed shrubs edged the top of a lawn. Barbara discovered that one could, without trouble, walk behind these shrubs and along the side of the station. This she herself did, in order to reach the car park behind it. There she saw a CCTV camera hanging above the door that led from the car park into the back of the building. Other than the additional camera above the front door, though, there didn’t appear to be any more visual security.

  Returning to the front, she looked up at the CCTV camera, which she’d noted on the previous night appeared to be directed towards the street, taking in at least part of it, the concrete steps that climbed up from the pavement, and the pavement itself. She wondered how wide the lens on it was. In addition to documenting whoever came up the stairs and walked towards the station, was the lens wide enough to allow the camera to take in the door and the intercom hanging to one side of it? Was the camera’s position fixed or did it swivel if a different angle was wanted?

  She was pondering this when a patrol car drove by. She returned to the car park, where a young man was just climbing out of the car. He called out, “Sergeant Havers, is it? Sorry for the wait. Old Rob took his time about settling when I got him home,” all of which announced him as the PCSO.

  Gary Ruddock was, she saw, a good-size bloke. He stood just over six feet tall, and although there was a roundness to his physique, this suggested muscle rather than fat. His dark hair was cut short, but not in the fashion of a football hooligan. His face was oval. He was squeaky-clean looking and perfectly shaved.

  His handshake was firm. “Gary Ruddock,” he said. “Gaz, actually. Have you been here long?”

  “It’s Barbara,” she replied. “Just a few minutes. Is Rob your granddad?”

  “My landlord, more or less. He won’t go into a home. He’s too feisty by half for that. And he won’t live with his daughter. That’s Abby. So I’m the compromise. I see to him nights and mornings, and there’s a neighbour who looks in on him when I’m at work. Let’s go inside.”

  “Does that swivel?” she asked him.

  He turned from the door into which he’d inserted a key. He followed the direction of her gaze. “The camera?” he asked. “I haven’t a clue. I don’t even know if it’s still functioning now the station’s not manned. We can try to swivel it later, though. There’s going to be a broom somewhere inside.”

  He led the way into the station, saying, “Coffee? Water? Tea? It’s filtered. The water, I mean. What I mean is there’s a Brita jug in the fridge.”

  She said water would be good and he told her he would have a coffee, if she didn’t mind. He took her to what had probably been a lunchroom for the officers in the days when the station was being fully used. Now it was part storeroom, and there were cardboard boxes with various dates upon them, which were stacked in one corner of the room along with paper for printers and boxes of ink cartridges for the same.

  She said, “What a shame.”

  He looked over his shoulder and clocked her looking about. He said, “Cutbacks’ve gone deep. It’s one of the reasons I couldn’t ever get onto the regular force. And now, ’course . . . after what happened . . . I’m lucky to have a job at all. ’Course, I reckon that was rather the case from the first as I’m not much for reading.”

  “Reading?” Barbara wasn’t at all sure where he was heading with this.

  He went on with his coffee making, pulling some Nescafé and an electric kettle from a cupboard along with a large mug celebrating the work of the RSPCA. “I turn words and letters round,” he told her. “For a long time I thought it had to do with how I was schooled. But when I ran off to Belfast and tried special classes, it was just the same.”

  He let the water run in the sink and kindly washed out a glass for her. He handed it over then, let her pour for herself from the Brita jug.

  “What d’you mean: ‘ran off’?” she asked him.

  He filled the kettle and set it to boil. “Oh. Sorry. I lived in a cult till I was fifteen. Donegal this was.”

  “That’s quite something.”

  “Oh aye, it was. They were very big into increasing and multiplying, but not equally big on educating the kids. I reckoned at the time I might be able to catch up on my schooling once I got away from them, but like I said, it was no go. Something’s wrong with the way I see words. I’m crap at spelling as well. That’s why PCSO was the best I could manage, as there’s not a lot of forms wanting to be filled out like if one’s a regular. But I expect you know all that.”

  Barbara waited while he made his coffee once the kettle clicked off. He nodded at the long table beneath the room’s only window, where two plastic chairs were tucked. They sat, and when Ruddock circled his hands round his RSPCA mug, Barbara saw he bore a tattoo across the top of his left wrist. It was very thick, very dark, and all uppercase: CAT. She nodded at it, saying, “You’re an animal person, eh?”

  He gave a laugh. “Cat’s my mum. We all had ’em. All the kids. To identify the mums.”

  “You all had tattoos?” Barbara said and when he nodded, “Bit odd, that. Usually it’s the dads needing identifying.”

  “That wouldn’t’ve ever been possible without DNA tests being done. It was all part of spreading the seeds. The cult was big on increasing and multiplying, like I said, but small on who did the increasing and multiplying when and with who.”

  “But you’d know who your mum was, wouldn’t you?”

  “Only ’cause of the tattoos is how we’d know. We never lived with our mums once we were off the breast. We got taken to a sort of nursery, and after that, our mums didn’t see us much because of . . . well the increasing and multiplying thing, which was sort of their job, if you see. So the tattoos made sure a lad didn’t seed his own mum or his sister when he got old enough for sex.”

  Barbara took this in for a moment before saying, “Sorry, but that sounds . . . can I say . . . over the top?”

  “Oh, massively,” he agreed, unoffended. “You can prob’ly work out why I left soon as I could. Once I ran off, I never went back.” He took a sip of his coffee. He wasn’t a slurper. Lynley, Barbara thought, would have approved. Where Lynley came from, learning never to slurp was a skill mastered at one’s nanny’s knee and doubtless from the silver christening cup. Ruddock put his mug back on the table and said, “How did the Met get involved in all this?”

  “Weren’t you told?”

  He shook his head. “I only talked to the IPCC and to the detective who first came round. That’s it.”

  “The House of Commons has taken an interest. Sorry about it, but we have to start from the beginning.” She took out her notebook and mechanical pencil. She saw Ruddock blow out a breath. She said, “Sorry.”

  He said, “It’s only like this’ll never end. I know you’re doing your job, but still . . .”

  Job was where she began, with the enquiry about how he’d managed to keep his after a potential suspect in an alleged crime had killed himself while at the Ludlow police station waiting for transport to Shrewsbury.

  “It came from West Mercia Headquarters,” he said frankly. “What I got told by my guv is someone over there argued to keep me on, someone ranking.”

  Barbara made note of that. It seemed odd that a higher-ranking officer would take this sort of stand, considering the commotion that Ian Druitt’s suicide had caused. Better to shuffle the offending community service officer under the carpet or, more likely, out of the door altogether. She said,
“Any idea why?”

  “Arguing to keep me on?” he clarified, and when she nodded, “Some of ’em did training sessions when I was in Hindlip, and I got to know three or four of ’em. Just to talk to, if you see what I mean. I reckoned that was a good idea, in case I ever was able to have an interview for something more than PCSO.” He shrugged but looked mildly embarrassed. “It was . . . well . . . I guess you’d call it a political thing.”

  “A clever thing as well,” she replied. Ruddock may have had trouble with his letters and such, but he was no dummy if he’d thought of that one. “So that’s where the training school is? At police headquarters?”

  “Yeah. So it’s easy enough for officers there to give some courses now and then.” He took another sip of his coffee and with his thumb traced the letter R. “Truth, though? After what happened, I reckoned I’d be sacked straightaway. I’m that grateful I wasn’t.”

  Barbara said nothing. At the training school for PCSOs, she thought, he must have learned to be quite a wily political animal.

  He went on. “I was so bloody stupid. When I fetched him, he was taking off his kit after a service. I waited for him to finish it all up but I didn’t think to watch his every move. Why would I? He was just some bloke taking off his kit. When he was ready, he grabbed up his anorak from a hook on the door and off we went.”

  “Did he ask what he was being questioned about?”

  “Over and over. But I hadn’t the first clue. I only knew what I was supposed to do, and I didn’t think about asking my sergeant why I was meant to do it. And then, about an hour after I got him here, a binge drinking situation developed that I was meant to handle.”

  “By leaving the station?”

  “Oh no. Not ever,” he said. “I couldn’t do that because of Mr. Druitt being here. But I had to make phone calls to all the pubs. Christ. I wish they’d stop serving kids when they’re pissed, but it’s all about money in the till, so they just keep on.”