The Punishment She Deserves

by Elizabeth George

  There were other pilots who were having meals in the cafeteria, a loud group of them talking and guffawing about “Number One’s bollocks of a briefing this morning” at a window that served as one entire wall and overlooked a sweeping countryside. Dr. Scannell wanted their conversation to be a private one, apparently, as she led them to another room. This had the looks of a briefing room since it was hung with charts and it possessed a whiteboard. Scannell didn’t stop there, however. Instead, she went on to a final room, which turned out to be the gliding club’s bar, and no one was in it at the moment.

  Barbara glanced uneasily at Ardery. Ardery’s gaze was fixed steadily forward, placed upon a table at the far side of the room. As if reading her gaze, Dr. Scannell took them there.

  She looked at her watch—it was very official, Barbara thought, with lots of dials and gizmos to give her endless bits of information—and said, “Nine minutes. What do you want to know?”

  Barbara had Scannell’s report. Ardery took it from her, slid it to the pathologist, and said, “My sergeant has some concerns about your conclusion of suicide.”

  “Has she indeed?” Scannell gave Barbara an indifferent look. She removed her baseball cap. Her hair bounced out like a litter of puppies being freed from a pen.

  “It’s only because of the doorknob bit,” Barbara said, and the pathologist’s fierce expression made her rather more tentative than she’d thought she would be. “Plus this bloke doesn’t seem the suicide type from what I’ve come up with about him.”

  “Disabuse yourself of that notion.” Scannell brought forth a pair of half-moon spectacles that she dug out of the breast pocket of her shirt and perched on her nose. “There is no type. There is only whether the death was suicide, accident, or murder, and in this case it was suicide.”

  She opened the folder and set out its contents, which consisted of postmortem photographs, a transcript of what she’d recited into the recorder documenting the examination of the body as she’d conducted it, the report she’d compiled when her examination had been completed, and the toxicology information that had been supplied. She referred to her report and to the photographs. These latter she set out for Barbara to look at. Because of the paucity of time they had, she spoke quickly, without a pause, to ask if there was anything unclear in what she had to say.

  Venous congestion was where she began. It, combined with asphyxia, was the cause of death. The venous congestion had been effected through use of a priestly garment as ligature, a stole, which was not dissimilar to a rather narrow scarf. The stole was broader than the normal sort of ligature that suicides used, and it was soft, so it was unable to sink into the tissue of the neck at any depth. Did the sergeant know what this meant? No wait for an answer. It meant that instead of cerebral anaemia caused by pressure on the arteries, what they had was jugular veins being blocked through compression. This resulted in loss of cerebral circulation—“blood flowing into, out of, and around the brain in layman’s terms,” the doctor said—which caused venous pressure in the head to rise. Death would have come in three to five minutes, since only two kilos of pressure on the jugular veins were needed to close them.

  She began to indicate each of the photographs as she went, taking a second to give her wristwatch another look. The body, if the sergeant would care to look at the photos of it in situ, bore all the signs of suicide as well. Note the distortions of the face. Examine the degree to which the eyes have become prominent. Observe the minor bleeding sites—“These are called petechiae”—that one can see on the inside of the lips. But most important, note the bruising on the neck.

  Barbara said, “I see all that. Only . . . what I don’t see is how using a doorknob can possibly work if someone wants to hang himself.”

  “It has everything to do with intention,” Dr. Scannell said. “The individual leans forward and allows his body weight to do the work: to render him unconscious quickly. This causes the venous congestion I spoke of, which triggers the loss of cerebral circulation. While accidents are known to occur this way—autoeroticism is a good example—to murder someone like this . . . ? The ligature would show it.”

  It all had to do with the neck and the marks that the ligature left on the neck. These marks had to match with any number of points of interest: the weight of the body suspended and the degree of suspension, whether the ligature was wrapped round the neck once or twice, the type of knot used, the length of time the body was suspended from the door knob, a single versus a double impression of the ligature, whether there was an impression of the ligature at all.

  “There was nothing to indicate that this incident was anything other than suicide,” Scannell concluded.

  “Even his wrists?”

  “What about his wrists?” She looked at the photos and compared them to her notes. “You mean the abrasions? Consistent with what the arresting officer reported. The handcuffs—these were of the plastic variety—were put on too tight, according to what the victim said to the officer. He was, naturally, foolish to remove them—”

  “But what if he didn’t?” Barbara cut in. “He could’ve staged the suicide then, couldn’t he? Or someone else could’ve come into the station, done the job on this bloke Druitt, and then the PCSO found him, panicked, and tried to make it look like a suicide. Couldn’t that be what happened?”

  Dr. Scannell’s expression indicated she was considering or at least had considered this premise at some point. She said, “It could have happened in one of those two ways,” and when Barbara was about to give Ardery a pointed look, the pathologist continued, “And the angel Gabriel could have put in an appearance and done the job as well, but I rather doubt it. Now—” and here she stood—“I’m wanted on the launching field. Have you seen a glider being winch launched? No? Come along, then. You might want to watch.”

  Barbara wasn’t the least bit interested in watching a glider get itself launched. But if it gave her another few minutes to question Dr. Scannell, she was going to take them. So before the DCS could demur, Barbara jumped to her feet and indicated that she was wild about winches. She was gratified when Ardery didn’t follow her, remaining instead in the bar where they’d been sitting.

  Outside, the wind was gusting more fiercely than when they’d arrived. Smoke from a fire at a caravan park to one side of the gliding club made the air acrid, and additional odours mingled with the smoke: chemicals, petrol, and a vague scent of manure.

  Nancy Scannell strode in the direction of a distant grassy moor, and Barbara scurried to keep up with her. Across from the building from which they’d emerged, she saw that someone was driving a tractor round what appeared to be the single runway of the airfield. This activity served to move the grazing sheep out of the way, and it seemed to be the case that the launch of the glider waiting at the end of the runway had to occur fairly quickly once the sheep scattered since, given enough time, they would merely place themselves in the line of fire once again.

  Two four-wheeled vehicular contraptions stood at either end of the runway, which looked to be at least a mile long. They each accommodated a driver and contained an enormous spool at the front. Barbara assumed that these were the winches. Between them ran a thick steel cord, and from this another steel cord extended perpendicular to it, presumably waiting for a glider to be attached.

  Dr. Scannell didn’t appear to be inclined for more conversation, but Barbara decided that couldn’t matter because there was something more she wanted to know. So she said rather breathlessly, “What about strangulation?”

  The pathologist was cramming her wildly blowing hair beneath her baseball cap, and she said, “What about strangulation?” as she waved at the pilot who stood next to the open cockpit of the glider, studying some distant clouds for whatever they were apt to tell her. “Coming!” Nancy Scannell yelled. “Woohoo! Coming!”

  The pilot turned; another woman. Barbara wondered if the whole group who owned the glider cons
isted of women as well.

  “Why couldn’t someone have strangled him?” she asked. “Why not strangle him with that priest thing he was wearing and then string him up to the doorknob to make it look like suicide?”

  “Because the marks on the neck would be different.” Scannell made no effort to hide her impatience. Barbara couldn’t blame her, really. They were, after all, questioning her competence.

  “How?” Barbara asked her.

  “Turn around, then.” The pathologist dug a handkerchief out of her jeans.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it. You have a question. Here’s the answer.”

  When Barbara turned obediently, the pathologist slipped the handkerchief—folded into a very short ligature—round her neck. She tightened it slightly, saying, “If I strangle you, Sergeant, the mark of the ligature is straight round your neck. I could hang you then, of course, but the primary mark straight round your neck would be there for everyone to see. If you hang yourself, the ligature mark is at an angle, like this.” She demonstrated. “That’s the short and sweet of it. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  That said, she walked off, balling the handkerchief into her pocket again. Barbara watched while she joined the other pilot at the glider. They engaged in what appeared to be an inspection of the craft, and they were joined by a man who walked from the winch to look over the wings and several thingummies here and there. When he was finished, the glider was hooked onto the perpendicular steel cord extended from the cord that ran between the two winches. The man walked back to his winch, and as Dr. Scannell steadied the wing of the glider and held it parallel to the ground, the pilot climbed into the cockpit and sealed herself inside.

  It was all a matter of less than a minute: Dr. Scannell thumbs-upped the winch man. The winch man flashed his lights at whoever was at the other winch one mile away. All systems were go, the steel cord began to be drawn from the closer to the farther winch, the glider was pulled, and in what seemed like less than fifty yards, it was in the air. It soared to about eight hundred feet, where the secondary steel cord that had held it to the moving line was released. The rest was gliding.

  Pretty bloody incredible, Barbara thought as she watched the glider soar in silence into the air. What sort of fool would even try it?

  THE LONG MYND

  SHROPSHIRE

  Left alone in the bar, Isabelle told herself she would not. Still, across the semilit room, the line of bottles glittered on the two shelves that held them, suggesting to her that, really, it would be a matter of two minutes at most to duck behind the shoplike Formica counter serving as the bar itself and there merely peruse for curiosity’s sake the various brands and types of spirits the glider pilots went for when they were finished with their soaring for the day. Presumably, they kept an eye on each other so that no one imbibed before said soaring.

  Isabelle assured herself that she had an academic interest in what the glider club’s bar served its members: Did the club go for price over quality? What about quantity over quality? Were their vodkas flavoured? Were their gins infused? Was that the Macallan she spied and, if so, how old was it? Merely an interest, a casual curiosity, a momentary desire to breathe in the scent once the bottle was opened and to let that scent do what scents could, which was to prompt memories to flood the mind in place of what was in the mind now. Only what was in the mind now was, as she knew, identical to what had been in the mind then. Just one, just one and that would be all because no one would know and the twins were, thank God, down for a nap after a morning an entire morning and then this segueing into an afternoon of first one then the other refusing to settle becoming the full manifestation of fuss until—

  Isabelle stood. She grabbed her bag and got out of the bar. She strode through the meeting room and into the cafeteria, where the previously guffawing pilots had been sitting at the huge picture window. There were only two of them left now, and they were huddled together in earnest discussion over something of consequence to them, if their hushed voices were anything to go by. They took no notice of her, which was just as well considering the state of her screaming nerve endings.

  For a moment, she tried to distract herself with the view of the Welsh Marches which, she could absolutely understand, anyone would find astounding as the panorama went on for miles and miles. In the distance she could see the cumulus clouds and spiralling up beneath them a glider and then another and was it soundless up there or did one hear the wind?

  She felt her fingernails digging into her palms, and she wondered at what point during her mental maundering her fingers had tightened to the extent that she knew she’d see four deep crescents in each hand if she looked down to examine her own flesh which she didn’t want to do at the moment because of what it would tell her about herself so now this very instant she needed and indeed wanted to get out of this place as quickly as possible because she did recognise that the edge was just there in front of her and it would take little enough for her to step over because it would indeed be similar to soaring like those distant gliders wouldn’t it?

  “Guv?”

  Isabelle swung from the window to see Barbara Havers. She had no idea how long the DS had been in the cafeteria. She told herself that Havers didn’t sound concerned, that she merely was letting Isabelle know she’d returned from wherever she’d gone with the forensic pathologist. “Have you seen what you need to see?” Isabelle asked her. “Heard what you need to hear?”

  Havers nodded, although her words, “More or less, I s’pose,” weren’t exactly reassuring.

  Isabelle said to her, “Then let’s be off,” and she directed the sergeant back the way she’d come, which took both of them past the toilets. A stop there prior to their journey was reasonable, so Isabelle told Havers that she would meet her at the car and indicated with her thumb that a visit to the necessary was next on her agenda. As she’d reckoned, the sergeant said she’d use the time to have a fag if the guv didn’t mind and at that point the guv didn’t mind at all.

  The airline bottle wasn’t nearly enough but it was something, and Isabelle hastily downed it when she’d locked the door behind her. Then she buried the empty deep within the rubbish and examined herself in the mirror. She used her lipstick. She also put two spots of it on her cheekbones and blended the circles of colour into her skin. That done, she popped a breath mint into her mouth, left the building, and went to rejoin Havers, who was doing her usual sucking down of nicotine as quickly as possible as she studied the airfield and gnawed unattractively on her lower lip.

  There was an attitude about her that could have been interpreted in several different ways. It also could have been ignored, which Isabelle was inclined to do. But as a cop who was supposed to be at least moderately competent, she knew that it had to be mentioned. So she said, “Something’s on your mind, Sergeant.”

  Havers turned from her perusal of the airfield. She said with a shrug and a half smile, “Everything looks dotted and crossed from where I’m standing.” She tossed the dog-end of her cigarette onto the hard-packed ground and made sure it was dead. “Ready when you are,” she said and then added, “Want me to drive, guv? You’ve been doing the honours so far and—”

  “No.” Isabelle spoke more sharply than she intended because there was something in the offer that she didn’t like. Hearing herself, however, she added with a smile that she hoped looked genuine, “I promise not to endanger the mallards along the way. Come along.”

  Havers used the drive back to Ludlow to bury herself in the filing folders she’d brought. Studiously she compared the information in them to whatever she’d written in her notebook. The degree to which she concentrated on this activity seemed unnatural to Isabelle. Like her earlier scrutiny of the airfield, it suggested more than one thing, so after a quarter hour of a silence that became—at least to Isabelle—more and more tense, she said to the sergeant, “You’re unconvinced. What point do you wish to
argue, Sergeant?”

  Havers looked up then. A deer-in-the-headlights expression was on her face, and she attempted to alter it quickly. She said, “It’s just . . . Have you noticed how convenient it all is, guv? There’s a string of burglaries happening round Shrewsbury, so the Ludlow PCSO is the one gets told to bring in the deacon. Then a situation of binge drinking starts up in town and he’s meant to deal with that so the deacon has to remain at the Ludlow station. Burglaries, an arrest, binge drinking, suicide. All on one night?”

  Isabelle took care with the lane. Two sheep had taken up residence in the middle of it. She blasted the horn at them. They glanced in her direction indifferently. “Oh damn and blast,” Isabelle said. She shoved her car door open, leaned out, and shouted, “Off with you! Go on! Get off!” They took their time about lumbering to their feet. She pulled her door closed with a slam and said to Havers, “Are you suggesting that all of this was orchestrated? A string of burglaries, an arrest, a bout of binge drinking that had to be dealt with? D’you have any idea the size of the collusion that would have had to occur?”

  “I’m on board with that. But all of the coincidences . . . They tell me this whole thing should’ve been handed over to the CPS. And since it wasn’t . . . I mean, don’t you think . . .”

  Her hesitation was maddening this time. Isabelle said, “Spit it out, Barbara.”

  “It’s just that . . . There’s a difference between massive collusions and massive cover-ups. And looking for one sometimes gets in the way of seeing the other.”

  They’d reached the call box where a left turn would take them down the rest of the hill and put them on the route back to Ludlow. Isabelle jammed on the brakes more heavily than she’d intended. She said, “Meaning what?” and she didn’t hide the exasperation in her voice.