The Punishment She Deserves

by Elizabeth George

  His mind had been on other things, then, Barbara reckoned. Thus far, from her nighttime reading of the reports she’d been given, his story was the same as it had been all along. She was impressed that Ruddock didn’t try to sugarcoat things. She said, “Would you show me where it happened?”

  He’d obviously known this would be part of their talk because he rose without hesitation, left his coffee on the table, and said, “It’s this way.”

  They headed deeper into the building. The walls—institutional yellow, and Barbara wondered if there was an unwritten law that corridors in government buildings had to be painted this unappealing cross between mustard and algae—still had bulletin boards hanging upon them with posters and notices now curling at the edges, and within several of the rooms that they passed, a few computers indicated that the building was still in use by patrol officers when they were in the immediate area. All of this caused her to understand why an officer wanting to have a bit of a kip at night would do so in the car park and not inside the station.

  She said, “How many officers actually use this place?”

  He was opening a door. It had an empty nameplate on the front of it, the sort that generally was used to identify the office of one of the station’s bigwigs. “Aside from the patrol officers assigned to this area?” He took a pause as if trying to visualise who else might need to use the building for something related to policing. “Detectives, I reckon, needing to log on to the system. Major crime team members for the same reason. Vice officers. Officers who patrol the district, like I said. Myself, as being assigned to Ludlow.”

  She followed him into the room where Ian Druitt had killed himself. According to both DI Pajer’s report and the report made by the IPCC, he’d managed the act using his stole and a doorknob on the coat cupboard, but there was a detail in the DI’s report that Barbara had underlined, and she brought it up now. She considered it a singular irregularity.

  When a suspect was arrested or brought into a station for questioning not of his own volition, handcuffs were used. And that had been the case here, since the postmortem report had noted that the handcuffs—these were the plastic variety that were ratcheted round the suspect’s wrists—had produced abrasions on Ian Druitt’s. This suggested that the plasticuffs had been put on Druitt too tightly in the beginning or that he had struggled when he had them on. Or both, she reckoned, since he would have wanted to get out of them if they were too tight.

  She said, “DI Pajer’s report says you took the plasticuffs off Mr. Druitt because he’d complained about his hands getting numb. Was he fighting the cuffs? Attempting to get out of them? And why plasticuffs and not ordinary handcuffs?”

  “They were what I had on me,” Ruddock told her. “And they weren’t too tight. I never do tight. Just secure is all.”

  “But you still cut them off him?”

  Ruddock rubbed his forehead. “He kept going on about ’em. Complaining how they were hurting his hands, how he couldn’t feel his fingers. He was insistent. He got louder ’n’ louder. So I went back to the room and cut ’em off.”

  “Why didn’t you stay with him?”

  “No one ever said I was supposed to stay with him. Like I said, I didn’t know the first thing about why he was even there. All I ever got told was pick this bloke up and keep him at the station till the patrol officers fetched him to Shrewsbury. I wish to God they’d told me why I was bringing him in, but all I knew was that he was wanted for questioning. Full stop. And I’m not meaning to excuse myself when I say that. I’m the one caused this whole mess.”

  “What were you doing, then? While he was alone.”

  This had been in DI Pajer’s report, but Barbara wanted to hear it from him directly. “Like I said, I got phoned about this situation going on in the centre of town with kids and their drinking. There wasn’t anything I could do about it from here except to ring the pub in question—it’s called the Hart and Hind—and tell them to stop serving young people. Then I had to ring the rest of the pubs round about, so if the kids moved on, they wouldn’t get served anywhere else.”

  “Where were you, then, making these calls?”

  “Just in one of the other offices. While I was doing that is when it happened. I didn’t leave the building. I wouldn’t’ve done that. I just wasn’t in the same room as him. If someone had told me he was a risk, I wouldn’t ever have left him on his own. But no one did. So what I thought was that it would be okay to ring the pubs.”

  That he’d left Druitt alone was a phenomenal blunder. But it wasn’t the only blunder that had occurred.

  Suicides had happened before in custody. Suspects being held for questioning had been known to use restraint belts to hang themselves, to bash their heads into walls in the hope of achieving a deadly haematoma, to slash their wrists on a small piece of protruding metal previously not noted on the bottom of a toilet or basin. Where there was a will, there was generally going to be a way, including a man who’d once used his socks as a garrotte. It was impossible to take into account every permutation of self-harm. The police did their best but on occasion they were outsmarted.

  What gave Barbara pause, though, was how convenient this particular place was for a suicide to occur. Druitt could have been murdered by Ruddock or by any officer who showed up and for whom Ruddock was now covering. Since the case in hand was about paedophilia, Druitt was going to be loathed on general principles. The only stumbling block in this line of thought, though, was Gary Ruddock’s contention that he had not known why he was meant to fetch Druitt, aside from the man’s being needed for questioning. Unless, of course, he’d been given the word and was now lying about it.

  She said, “I’ve seen the transcript of the 999 call that prompted Druitt’s arrest.”

  He looked wary, as if he were about to be blamed for a phone call on top of Ian Druitt’s death. He said, “Yeah?”

  “One of the things the caller said was that he couldn’t abide the hypocrisy of it. My guv thinks that refers to the paedophilia and Druitt’s being a churchman. What do you think?”

  He considered this. Barbara nodded that she was ready to leave the room. She’d seen nothing that might have given any kind of mute testimony regarding the death that had occurred. There were only the usual signs of wear and tear that an office shows once someone moves from it: smudges on the window, scuff marks on the lino, picture hooks where certificates once had hung, slut’s wool in the corners.

  Back in the corridor, Ruddock said, “Only thing I can think of was this honour he’d been given. Even old Rob saw it in the paper, and p’rhaps the caller saw it as well and his ire got lit by it.”

  “What honour?” Her paperwork hadn’t mentioned any honours.

  “Ludlow Man of the Year. Rob always reads the local paper and he’s fond of talking it over at dinner. There was a story.”

  “About Ian Druitt as Man of the Year? When was this?”

  He looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure. P’rhaps four or five months ago? He was receiving something from the town council. There was a picture of the mayor and him, Druitt. So . . . Man of the Year and paedophilia? That’d be hypocrisy, wouldn’t it?”

  It would, Barbara thought. But the first question was whether it was enough to prompt Ian Druitt to kill himself when the word got out about an investigation into his behaviour. And the second question was whether being named Man of the Year was enough to prompt someone to kill him before an investigation into his behaviour could take place.

  LUDLOW

  SHROPSHIRE

  “So he’s a nice enough bloke,” Sergeant Havers said to Isabelle in conclusion. “And dead grateful still to be in uniform. He knows he’s at fault for leaving Druitt on his own, but he also says he hadn’t the first clue why he was fetching the bloke to the station.”

  “Anything he said that wasn’t in Pajer’s report or the IPCC’s?”

  “He didn�
��t go into his own background with them, so that’s new information, for what it’s worth.”

  They were standing outside the Charlton Arms, at the far end of the Ludford Bridge. It was an attractive inn across the river from Ludlow, bordering on the ancient hamlet for which the bridge was named. The building was shaded by leafy beech trees from which birds were raising a ruckus of song when they weren’t rocketing into the sky, and Isabelle had directed the detective sergeant to it when Havers had rung on her mobile announcing that she’d finished her interview with PCSO Ruddock. She’d described him as a “bit of a slow learner, seems like. But that appears to relate to reading and spelling.”

  “Why in God’s name is he still employed? Have we any idea?”

  “He says he was told an officer at headquarters took his part, someone who gave courses at the training centre when he was there.”

  “He must have been one hell of an impressive student, then,” Isabelle said. “Which doesn’t quite square with the reading and spelling bit, does it.”

  “He says he sucked up to the officers. Reckoned it might help him advance.”

  “Well that’s been scuppered,” Isabelle noted.

  Havers nodded. She was dragging in on a cigarette, obviously taking the opportunity to toke up on the nicotine before Isabelle gave her another assignment. But Isabelle didn’t wish to assign her to anything at the moment. What she wished was to enter the Charlton Arms, to sit at one of the tables overlooking the river, and to do something to still the tingling that was going on in her nerve endings. But it was hardly an hour at which a drink would be excusable in any eyes but her own, so she said, “Our suicide’s dad wants another full investigation, with bells, whistles, and dancing girls.”

  Havers blew out a lungful of smoke and tossed the dog-end of her cigarette into the river. Isabelle gave her a what-the-hell look after watching the dog-end hit the water. Havers said, “Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”

  “Let’s hope a swan doesn’t take it for a nibble.”

  “Right. Won’t do it again. What did you tell him?”

  “Mr. Druitt? I’ve brought back nine boxes of our Ian’s belongings and I’ve told the dad we’ll be digging through them. Sifting for evidence. Looking for clues. Tossing out red herrings. Reading the entrails of slaughtered oxen. God knows what else. The point is to keep him away from the phone because he assured me that his next move is to ring his solicitors. In the plural. We need to forestall him.”

  “That’s next then? The boxes?”

  “God no. What else do you have?”

  “The vicar, I suppose.”

  Isabelle cast another glance at her. She turned away from the sight of the Charlton Arms because its presence was proving more of a temptation than she could abide. She said, “What about the vicar?” And when Havers looked tentative, Isabelle said impatiently, “Let’s have it, Sergeant.”

  Havers explained that when Gary Ruddock hadn’t been immediately available to see her, she’d decided to speak with the vicar of St. Laurence Church. She hoped that was all right, guv.

  Isabelle said, “For God’s sake, Sergeant. It was on the list. Why wouldn’t it be all right? Get on with it.”

  Havers did so. She’d taken notes of their conversation—just as she’d done for her colloquy with Ruddock—and she flipped to that part of her notebook. She listed for Isabelle what turned out to be all the various reasons that Ian Druitt had probably been named Man of the Year. There was no particular change from what Isabelle had read in the newspaper that Clive Druitt had shown her. The deacon had put a thumb into every pie of social responsibility that existed in Ludlow. Havers concluded by referencing the after-school children’s club that Druitt had established, saying, “There’s some college boy who assisted with this. I’m thinking we should speak with him.”

  “Why?”

  “Seems that if this whole bit of Druitt being a paedophile is true, we need to—”

  “Sergeant, we aren’t here about the truth or falsity of the paedophile bit. That’s not our brief. I expect you know that. In case you don’t, I’ll remind you that we’re here to see if DI Pajer and the IPCC did what they were supposed to do. We’re here to follow their reports to make certain they didn’t miss something connected to the suicide. If we talk to anyone else at this point, it’s going to be the forensic pathologist.”

  Havers didn’t reply to this. Isabelle could see that she was gnawing at something mentally, though.

  “So far is there anything that Bernadette Pajer or the IPCC missed?” Isabelle demanded. “If there is, I want to know it.”

  “It doesn’t seem like it,” Havers admitted. “But—”

  “There is no but. Either there’s something or there isn’t, Sergeant.”

  “Well, if the vicar and this bloke’s dad both say—”

  “What they say has nothing to do with what actually happened. When someone kills himself without there being an obvious, outward reason, people want to think it wasn’t a suicide. That’s human nature. Overdose of pills? Accident. Gunshot? Murder. Self-immolation? Either one.”

  “But you don’t accidentally kill yourself in a police station, guv,” Havers protested. “Which makes it—”

  “Suicide. Because have you any idea how difficult it is for someone to fake suicide by hanging? And in this case, according to what you’ve told me, suicide by hanging from a doorknob? Besides that, the point of our presence isn’t about trying to discover if the man had a reason to kill himself. For all we know, he’s Rebecca de Winter and he just had a diagnosis of cancer.”

  “Except . . .” Havers hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s only that she was murdered, guv.”

  “Who?”

  “Rebecca de Winter. Max killed her, remember? The cancer thing was how he got off. See, she really wanted him to kill her since she knew she was going to die anyway, and if he did the job for her and got caught, she’d be ruining his life, which is what she’d wanted all along.”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” Isabelle said. “We’re not living in a 1940s melodrama, Sergeant.”

  “Right. ’Course. But there’s this as well: Druitt didn’t live with the vicar and his wife though they had plenty of room. He wanted his own place, the vicar said. He said it was because of privacy. What I’m wondering is what he wanted that privacy for. Because if someone knew why he needed privacy, that same person—”

  “Enough.” Isabelle threw up her hands. “We’re going to talk to the forensic pathologist. I can see only that is going to convince you that the first two investigations were sound.”

  THE LONG MYND

  SHROPSHIRE

  Instead of at the hospital where the postmortem examination of Ian Druitt had been performed, Dr. Nancy Scannell informed them that they would have to meet instead in an area of Shropshire called the Long Mynd where, it turned out, the doctor was a member of a consortium of pilots who had pooled their money to purchase a glider. The Long Mynd was the location of the West Midlands Gliding Club, and it was here that Dr. Scannell was duty-bound to assist a member of the group in launching the consortium’s glider that afternoon.

  Reaching the Long Mynd involved a drive of some miles to the north of Ludlow. It was an area of vast hilltop moors of grass, accessed by coursing along roads and lanes that became progressively steeper and narrower, until barely a single vehicle could be accommodated. Here male and female pheasants darted in and out of the hedgerows, and sheep lay about the roadway as if in ownership of the asphalt. The fact that cars didn’t travel this route often was indicated when a flock of mallards—males, females, and ducklings—plopped down from a slope directly in the path of the DCS’s car, either oblivious to its presence or overly sanguine about their safety. Ardery swore and hit the brakes. Barbara was relieved that she didn’t flatten the lot of them.

  The DCS was on edge.
Barbara had seen that during their conversation on the Ludford Bridge and now she saw it more in Ardery’s driving. She’d thought about offering to take the wheel when they reached a weathered directional sign at a barely inhabited hamlet called Plowden. It indicated the route to the West Midlands Gliding Club, and she got a glimpse of the lane, which looked more like a cart track climbing upward at an alarming angle. She shot a glance at the DCS. Ardery was white-knuckling the steering wheel.

  They made the turn and climbed to a hamlet that proclaimed itself as Asterton, which looked less like a hamlet and more like someone’s farm. There, yet another indicator demanded that they squeeze by a BT call box and engage in a steeper climb on the roughest lane yet. Finally, they arrived at what appeared to be the gliding club, or so a very large sign indicated, printed complete with photos of smiling pilots and passengers who grinned and appeared to be attempting to look at ease while soaring, motorless, in the blue.

  The place was accessed through a gate that gaped open despite being hung with a sign reading KEEP CLOSED AT ALL TIMES. It was a collection of corrugated metal wartime huts sitting on a vast acreage nearly bare of all vegetation save grass upon which a good number of plump sheep grazed. Various other buildings constructed of various other materials partnered the huts, and in front of these a line of gliders waited for someone’s use while others were in the process of being removed from the low-slung trailers in which they were stored. Behind the gliders, cars were parked, and behind the cars a more formal-looking building announced itself as the clubhouse, which contained a reception area, offices, meeting rooms, and the cafeteria. It was in the cafeteria that they were set to meet Dr. Scannell.

  They were late. A wrong turn had taken them a number of miles off course, delivering them into one of the multitudinous hamlets that dotted this section of Shropshire. So while they found Dr. Scannell waiting for them, they did not find her in good humour. Barbara’s conclusion was that the forensic pathologist and Isabelle Ardery were well matched at this point.

  “I’ve ten minutes left,” Dr. Scannell told them. She’d risen from her place at a long table in the club’s cafeteria when they’d come into the room. She was casually dressed in blue jeans and a flannel shirt. Piles of her salt-and-pepper hair sprang from beneath a baseball cap. “I’m due on the runway,” she went on. “Sorry, but it can’t be helped.”