The Punishment She Deserves

by Elizabeth George

“Bloody hell,” Havers concluded at the end of her recitation. “When did this bloke have time to do his deaconly duty?”

  Isabelle knew as little about the job of church deacon as, apparently, did Havers. “Perhaps this was what constituted that duty.”

  “I s’pose.” But Havers sounded doubtful.

  Isabelle looked at her. The sergeant’s eyes were narrowed speculatively, but when she saw that Isabelle’s attention was on her, she managed to construct a perfectly blank expression. That, Isabelle thought, was not only irritating, it was also unhelpful. She said, “Stop that, Sergeant,” although she immediately realised that she sounded like a mother speaking to her newly adolescent daughter who’d just discovered attitude.

  Havers started. “What?”

  “If you’re thinking something, I’d appreciate knowing what it is.”

  “Sorry, guv. I was—”

  “And stop apologising!”

  “Sorry.” She clapped her hand over her mouth.

  Isabelle shot her an exasperated look. She said, “Let’s get ourselves on the same page. We’re here to sort this matter out. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can return to London. Now. What was it that you wanted to say?”

  “Just that it all seems a bit much.” Havers indicated the newspaper article, which included a series of interviews with individuals who had benefitted in one way or another from Ian Druitt’s various activities and with individuals who’d worked alongside the deacon in those various activities. As one would expect, they constituted glowing reports of his profound influence upon the youth of the town, of his generosity of spirit, of his warmth and kindness. “It’s like he’s . . . you know that bit: ‘protesting too much’?”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Oh. Sor—whoops. It’s that Shakespeare thing. The lady protesting too much and all that.”

  Isabelle sat back on her heels where she’d been kneeling next to one of the boxes. She scrutinised Havers closely. “Why is it that I think you’ve learned a fascinating skill set from DI Lynley? Do you two regularly apply Shakespeare to your enquiries?”

  Havers chuckled. “He’s just been trying to build my enthusiasm for the finer points of literature, guv. I expect he’ll head into Dickens next. But only after I master Shakespeare. He deals just in the bloody bits, by the way. I mean plays where someone gets the chop. So far I’ve got Hamlet down. I keep blotting things when it comes to Macbeth, though.”

  Isabelle took a moment. There was something about Havers’s eyes that suggested . . . “You’re joking, aren’t you?” Isabelle said.

  “Well . . . yeah. I s’pose. A little.”

  “Why do I suspect that it has to do with not quite mastering Macbeth? Why do I think you can probably quote Macbeth in your sleep?”

  “Can’t do that!” Havers said hastily. “I mean, not beyond the bloody dagger bit. Well, maybe I c’n get into murdering sleep and the damn’d spot, but that’s about it.”

  “Ah.” Isabelle turned back to the matter at hand and said, “Regarding the lady protesting?”

  Havers indicated the article. “Just that it seems to me if someone’s got to do all this volunteering, there’s a reason for it, and could be the reason is all about appearances. That phone call to 999? The hypocrisy bit? All this public hoopla about Druitt being so . . . I don’t know what to call it exactly.”

  “Unimpeachably good? Equally admirable?”

  “Like he was doing every single thing that the Lord said a good Christian is meant to do. Like he kept a list and was ticking off his acts of goodness. It’s too much, you ask me. It’s like he had something to hide. So some bloke out there reads this article and thinks, ‘Wait a bloody minute, mate. I’m not having this,’ and makes the phone call ’cause the last thing he can cope with is seeing some monster get glory when what he ought to get is—”

  “Arrested,” Isabelle finished.

  “Word gets out and he’s not looking so Man of the Yearly.”

  “Agreed,” Isabelle noted. “But we also can’t discount the possibility that the phone call had nothing to do with hypocrisy but rather with revenge.”

  “But wouldn’t revenge also key in to the paedophilia? ‘You did this to my kid—or better yet, to me when I was ten years old—and I’m having you for dinner, mate.’ That sort of thing.”

  “I see that, yes. And I tend to agree with you, Sergeant. Man of the Year, the newspaper article, and the phone call? They could be intimate friends, couldn’t they?”

  Havers looked quite pleased at this, but the last thing Isabelle wanted was the detective sergeant thinking that she could begin to have her own way in things. So she said, “But I hope you agree that revenge in this case wouldn’t necessarily lead to murder. The ruin of a reputation would have been sufficient, and that could have been managed by an arrest, an investigation, a trial, and the attendant publicity, no matter the outcome.”

  “Oh, I see that,” Havers said, although she didn’t look the least abashed. “But there’s still this to look into.” She held up the diary that they’d had off Flora Bevans. “Column A,” here she wiggled her hand with the diary in it, “wants matching up with Column B,” here a gesture to indicate the newspaper article.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning there could be something in the diary that no one ever considered because no one ever saw it. And if we want Mr. Druitt to stay away from his solicitors, we probably ought to see if that’s the case.”

  LUDLOW

  SHROPSHIRE

  Barbara Havers parted with Ardery, feeling that she’d actually managed to win a round. Between their mutual perusal of Druitt’s belongings and their meeting up for drinks in the lounge before dinner, then, she leafed through the deacon’s diary. She discovered that there was indeed something that wanted closer examination.

  When she descended to the residents’ lounge, however, she found that new guests had checked into Griffith Hall that day, and the presence of these newcomers swilling down champagne prevented any serious police conversation between herself and the DCS both during their preprandial nibbles and drinks—vodka martini for the guv and a half pint of ale for Barbara, which she would make last throughout the meal—and their dinner that would follow.

  Although Ardery’s mobile rang three times during nibbles, drinks, and dinner, she only glanced at it to ascertain the caller—twice with an expression of supreme distaste—and then let it go to message. During coffee back in the lounge, however, her mobile rang a fourth time and this call the DCS took, saying to Barbara, “Hillier,” as she rose from the sofa and left the room.

  Rather you than me was what Barbara thought. When it came to what they were doing in Shropshire, if the assistant commissioner was being true to character, he doubtless wanted them to smarm all over the locals and then make tracks.

  Barbara had brought the IPCC file with her, so while Ardery was taking her call, she opened it. She searched for the part dealing with what she reckoned was the core element of the investigation into Ian Druitt’s suicide: what PCSO Gary Ruddock had been doing during the time that the deacon hanged himself and what he had done upon finding Druitt motionless and strung up to a doorknob.

  She saw that Ruddock’s explanation of what had occurred that night had been confirmed by all parties: the owner of the Hart and Hind in Quality Square had agreed that some binge drinking had gone on that night; the owners of the other pubs in town indicated that they’d indeed received phone calls from the PCSO, asking them not to serve any inebriated youths as he wouldn’t be available to help out if there was trouble; the PCSO’s superior officer—a sergeant from the Neighbourhood Policing Team—had substantiated the details about the burglaries that made it necessary for Ruddock to make the arrest of Druitt. And the paramedics who had been sent once Gary Ruddock made his frantic call to 999 described the state of affairs when they’d reached the stati
on: the body of Druitt supine on the floor—ligature removed from round his neck—and Ruddock performing CPR and shouting, “Come on, come on, you bastard!” as if the dead man could hear him. For it had been obvious to the paramedics on the scene that the man was dead, although they did everything they could to revive him. At the end of the day, all efforts were futile, and the death of the deacon sat firmly upon the PCSO’s shoulders.

  The death could have been prevented if Ian Druitt had been taken to Shrewsbury, where a duty sergeant manning the custody suite would have made sure that proper procedures had been followed: everything with the potential for self-harm removed from Druitt’s person, a pair of custody visitors called in to ascertain that his detainment in the cells was on the up-and-up, a duty solicitor arranged for should the deacon not have a solicitor of his own. But none of that had occurred, which was why she—Barbara Havers of the Metropolitan Police—still had an itch that wanted scratching. So when Ardery returned to the lounge from her phone call and asked Peace on Earth to bring her a very large port wine, Barbara made the excuse of an early night in order, she said, to dip more deeply into Ian Druitt’s diary. She was relieved when the DCS required nothing more of her.

  Upstairs, she dropped her collection of folders onto her nunlike bed and ignored the diary altogether. She had an odd request that she needed to make, and she rang the reception desk in order to make it. Yes, she discovered after a pause on the part of reception, a broom could be left for her next to the front door of the hotel. It would take at least thirty minutes, as hotel guests were still being served their various after-dinner liquid substances, but if Ms. Havers could wait . . . ? Ms. Havers could, so she rang off and used the time to reconfirm her route on the town plan.

  She needed to get out of the hotel without the DCS seeing her. While she reckoned that what she was doing was perfectly reasonable, she preferred that Ardery not know about it. She didn’t want her to interpret anything as DS Barbara Havers going merrily her own way as she’d done in the past. To make everything look kosher, when Barbara proceeded down the stairs and towards the front door, she took with her a packet of Players and nothing else save her room key and a book of matches: just another resident of the nonsmoking hotel slipping outside to have a fag. A shoulder bag would make her look suspicious should the DCS see her. The broom was going to be bad enough.

  Luck was with her, as she made it to the door without incident. There was no one about, and the broom was where it had been promised, leaning against the wall behind a coat tree. Barbara grabbed it and within seconds was out into the darkness. With the broom over her shoulder, she set off towards Castle Square.

  Albeit late, it was a pleasant evening, so she wasn’t the only one out and about. A few chatting students carrying books and wearing rucksacks appeared to be heading home after sessions of studying. A few individuals strolled along the path that followed the route of the castle walls. A coach had pulled up in front of the Ludlow Assembly Rooms in Mill Street and pensioners were being assisted up the coach steps to get inside it at the end of whatever performance they’d attended. As before, there was virtually no traffic, just a lone taxi parked at the top of Church Street.

  In her earlier conversation with Gary Ruddock, his suggestion that they attempt to swivel the CCTV cameras by means of a broom had slipped her mind. But now she had the broom in hand and it was her intention to test both cameras: the one in the front of the police station that had been pointed in the direction of the steps up from the pavement and the one behind the station that had been pointed at the car park.

  When she reached the station, she did a quick recce. As before when she’d been there after dark, there was a light on somewhere inside. As before, at the back of the building there was a panda car parked. This time, however, no one was having a kip inside of it. She got close just to make sure, and she tested the car’s door handles, all of which were locked.

  Since she was already at the back of the building, she used the broom to check the CCTV camera hanging above and to one side of the door. It was fixed firmly in its position, with no possibility of being swivelled. Because of this, she reckoned it would have a lens with an angle wide enough to take in the two steps to the door as well as the car park.

  Onward to the front of the place, she thought. She was heading in that direction—along the side of the building and behind the shrubbery in cat burglar mode—when a patrol car glided by on the street, rounded the corner, and cruised into the car park behind the station. It disappeared from Barbara’s view. In a moment, its engine was cut.

  Barbara carefully retraced her steps, and with some caution she peered round the side of the building to see that the car was reversed into a parking bay across the car park and against its brick wall. It was at an angle that put it into the deepest shadow cast by a leafy tree in a nearby garden. She watched. She counted off a minute. No one got out of it. Nothing happened.

  She was about to turn back to the front of the building, then, when the passenger door of the car swung open, shining a light briefly upon the occupants. PCSO Gary Ruddock was the driver. The passenger was a youngish woman, perhaps twenty or so, light-haired and not overly tall. She began to get out and her words, “. . . don’t actually care about that,” came to Barbara clearly. Whatever Gary Ruddock said in reply was unintelligible. However, it gave the young woman cause to hesitate, and during her hesitation the PCSO got out of the car and faced her over its roof. They engaged in something of a stare-down, in which he looked quite patient and in which she looked however she looked, because at that point Barbara couldn’t see her face. Nothing more was said. But after some fifteen seconds, the young woman got back into the car, as did Gary Ruddock. Then, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Or absolutely something, but whatever it was, Barbara couldn’t see. She had an imagination and the ability to count, though. In her book one plus one plus two made four: with the first one being the car, the second one being the darkness, and the last two being Ruddock and his companion. That equaled four, which equaled either a conversation in the dark about the state of the economy, a confession of malfeasance requiring deep shadow, or a round of tricky business of the sort that sometimes occurred when you put a car, the darkness, a man, and a woman together.

  This, Barbara understood, could well have been what Gary Ruddock had been up to when the deacon was offing himself inside the station. If so, he certainly wouldn’t want anyone to know it. At his own admission, Ruddock lived with an old bloke. The young woman probably lived with flatmates or with her parents. Assuming that she and Ruddock were eager to put the sausage into the roll—and not just engaging in earnest nighttime conversation—they would need privacy to carry it off. Despite its lack of comfortable furniture, inside the station would be perfect under some circumstances, but with the deacon there waiting for transport to Shrewsbury, it would have made things dicey. Why not have it off in a car as had been done since the invention of the automobile? Desperate times called for desperate measures, and truly, this particular setup wasn’t desperate at all. Climb into the back seat, divest oneself of the appropriate bits of clothing, squirm thrust groan for five minutes or less, and the deed was done. Three minutes for foreplay on one side of the action, two minutes for a post-coital cuddle, thirty seconds to rearrange one’s clothing, a quick trip in the car to drop the bird back to her cage, and that would be that.

  Ruddock would return afterwards, discover what had happened while he and the girlfriend had been in the car park, see that the deacon was a goner, hurriedly make his phone calls to the pubs to cover his absence, ring 999, and act the part of a man desperately attempting to resuscitate a suicide—which wouldn’t have been that much of an act considering the wretched mess he’d made of things—and all the time knowing that his career was finished if anyone discovered what a complete cock-up he’d made out of a simple arrest.

  It could have happened that way. Ruddock was dependent upon the pub owners being able to confir
m he’d rung them about shutting down, but after the fact, how would they be able to tell investigators the precise time he rang them? And if whatever they told investigators was within the range of Druitt’s possible time of death as established by the forensic pathologist, he’d be cleared of responsibility. It would just have to stay a secret that he’d been in the car park doing whatever.

  Barbara faded back against the building. She wondered exactly how long she was going to have to remain out of sight. She didn’t fancy squatting in the darkness behind a shrub for an extended length of time, but she was going to have to as she also didn’t fancy being seen in front of the station messing about with the CCTV camera when Ruddock and his passenger drove by in the car on their way home.

  It was about a quarter hour before she heard the car start. She maintained her cat burglar position until she heard the car pass on the street below her. Then she made her way to the front of the building, where a motion detector light caught her in its beam as she approached both the door and the CCTV camera.

  Standing below the camera, she gently placed the broom handle against its side. A bit of pressure from her end of the broom was enough to alter the camera’s position. From taking in the steps up from the pavement, the camera’s new position allowed it to encompass the front door and the intercom fixed to the left of it. Barbara was gratified. It meant that someone wishing to make an anonymous call would merely have had to do what she had just done: to come from the direction of the car park and to slide along the wall, hidden by the thriving shrubbery. As long as the wall sliding could continue out of sight of the CCTV camera that would have been directed at the front door, it would have been a simple matter to swivel it without being seen, so that it was altered to take in the steps. Once that was accomplished, the phone call could be made without the caller being photographed.

  Of course, Barbara thought, that begged the question why the caller had not then moved the camera back to its original position, but the answer to that could go in several directions. Perhaps at that moment the PCSO or a patrol officer had arrived and the anonymous caller had been forced to scarper. Perhaps its position had been altered days in advance with no one being the wiser, and the plan was to put it back into the original position a few days after the call, only that had been forgotten in the aftermath of Druitt’s suicide. Perhaps its position had never been on the front door at all but merely focused on part of the street and the steps. There was certainly more than one explanation here, and Barbara knew that the answer lay in having a look at what the CCTV camera had recorded over a period of time.