The Punishment She Deserves

by Elizabeth George

  “We charged it up,” Barbara said, “and once we finally worked out the proper code to unlock the bloody thing—”

  “Thanks to Barbara’s efforts,” Lynley added.

  “Ta, sir,” she said. “I do my best.” And then to Ruddock, “Like I said, once we got the thing operational, we started looking through the calls. Into and out of the phone, I mean.”

  Lynley said, “Since it hadn’t been used since March, it had a record of the calls for the last two months of the deacon’s life.”

  Ruddock surprised them with, “My own number would’ve been there. He and I went back and forth a bit.”

  “I recognised your number,” Barbara told him. “We have him ringing you and you ringing him.”

  “We’re speaking to everyone attached to the phone calls, clarifying why they phoned him and vice versa,” Lynley said.

  “So you’d want to know about the calls between us, me and Druitt, I wager.” He looked from Barbara to Lynley back to Barbara.

  “That’d be the case,” she agreed.

  “Can I have a look at the phone?” he asked, and Barbara handed it over to him. He said, “Goes back a bit, this does.”

  “That’d be because it’s not been used since he died,” Barbara said.

  He nodded thoughtfully. He also seemed to consider what or how much he wanted to reveal. Finally he said, “Well . . . it’s nothing to do with what happened. See, he was ringing me about Finn Freeman.”

  “The deputy chief constable’s son,” Lynley said.

  “Druitt had some concerns about him. Truth to tell, there’s always the odd concern when it comes to Finn. He’s done something of a job with his looks, and he makes himself seem real rough round the edges. It’s mostly an act, but he puts people off. I think Druitt was more watchful with him than he might’ve been with another lad had another lad been his helper at the club.”

  “Was he waiting for him to be out of order in some way?”

  “Prob’ly. He rang wanting to know if Finn had ever been in any trouble in town. Aside from drinking too much, he hadn’t been, which was what I told him.”

  “He rang more than once, though. Can we assume he wasn’t reassured?”

  “Way I recall, it was like he had a feeling about Finn and he was looking for someone to support it or p’rhaps to explain it away. I didn’t have even a sprat to give him. The boy smokes weed now and again, but so do the rest of them. He drinks as well, but he’s never been in any trouble round here. That’s what I told Druitt. Eventually, though, he rang asking how to contact Finn’s parents. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about, just that he needed to speak with them and he didn’t want the boy to know, so he couldn’t ask him directly how to contact them. Somehow he knew Finn’s mum was a police officer—I reckon Finn told him or told the kids in the club—and he wanted to know from me did I know how he could contact her without it getting back to Finn.”

  “Ringing his parents suggests it was something fairly serious,” Lynley said. “Did he give you any idea at all what was going on?”

  “I asked,” Ruddock said. “But all he said was ‘I can’t be sure’ and something like how he didn’t want to judge the boy wrong. I got the impression he was worried about Finn’s . . . well, I guess you’d call it his impact on the club’s children and he was hoping to get some information about him from his parents.”

  “What sort of information?”

  “No clue, really,” Ruddock said. “It could’ve been about anything, I s’pose. Like did they ever see him pinch coins from the collection plate? Or had he been badly injured as a boy and in need of pain medications? Or had he ever had a behaviour change with no way to account for it? What I’m saying here is that those’re my speculations, because aside from saying he wanted to have a word with the parents and did I know how to contact his mum since she’s a copper, he didn’t tell me much of anything.”

  “Finn Freeman’s been something of a recurring theme, we’re finding,” Lynley said.

  “Along the lines of all-roads-leading-to him,” Barbara put in.

  “I wish I could tell you more,” Ruddock said. “But that’s the extent of it.”

  “Do you recognise any of the other numbers registered on Ian Druitt’s messages and phone calls?” Lynley asked. He nodded at the phone that was still in Ruddock’s hand.

  Ruddock cooperatively gave all this a look, but his expression was one of regret. He clarified this with, “I got to say: I’m dead rotten at this. Way I do things with my own phone? I just find the name on my list and tap it. I c’n barely remember my own number, let alone anyone else’s. I mix them up, see. I put them backwards and the like.”

  Barbara remembered that, from the first, Ruddock had been in the open about his learning difficulties. She gave Lynley a fractional nod. A silence grew. Lynley and she did their best presentation of being deep in thought: Barbara with her arms crossed and her lips pursed as she gazed upon the hideous grey lino, he with a bent index finger touching the scar on his upper lip and his brow furrowed as he looked out of the window above the table at which they were sitting.

  After a good thirty seconds of this, Lynley said, “There is one point we’ve come across. You might be able to help with it.”

  “I’m that happy to,” Ruddock said.

  “It has to do with the night Mr. Druitt died. You’ve told my sergeant that you spent some time away from him making phone calls to the town’s pubs once you learned about the bingeing going on. And during that period of making calls to the pubs, Mr. Druitt hanged himself.”

  “I’ve been that sorry from—”

  “Understood. But in looking at the number of pubs in Ludlow and considering the time required to ring them all about shutting down for the night—”

  “It was just about not serving college-age drinkers, sir,” Barbara put in.

  “Yes. Of course. Not serving young drinkers.” And to Ruddock, “My sergeant and I have begun to wonder why it took you the amount of time you’ve said it took to make those calls. Barbara?”

  She made much of going back over her notes. “Nearly ninety minutes, sir.”

  “So we’ve begun to ask ourselves what else might have happened during that time.”

  “Nothing.” But there was colour in Ruddock’s cheeks that had not been there before.

  Barbara did the leaning forward this time. She said, “Gary, when I was here first time round, I popped by the station one night. It was . . . I dunno . . . round half past ten? There were no lights on, but there was a patrol car in the back, in the car park.”

  “Generally, there is,” he said.

  “This patrol car was in the shadows. It was as far from the building as it could be. I know that doesn’t mean anything in the normal course of events but on this night—when I was here, I mean—a young woman got out of that patrol car. Then you did. Then you and she had something of a stare-down. Then the two of you got back in. And stayed there.”

  Ruddock said nothing. He was perfectly still.

  “So,” Barbara said, using the word as a full stop before she went on with, “males and females inside a car parked deep in the shadows at night. What does that suggest to you?”

  He began to reply but Barbara wasn’t finished so she said quickly, “Now, what I remember is you telling me that you didn’t have anyone in your life of a girlfriend nature. If that’s the case—”

  “I had to lie to you.” Colour was climbing up his neck, turning his skin into a burning bruise. “If I said the truth, you would’ve gone to her. I couldn’t have that. I’m sorry about it all. I know everything’s my fault. I know what happened with the deacon is down to me, but I couldn’t just announce . . . No one could in my position.”

  This bore some sorting through. Barbara glanced at Lynley to see what he was making of it. He said to the constable, “I’m assuming you mean t
hat on the night Druitt died, in addition to making the phone calls to the pubs, you also had—”

  “Sex,” Barbara put in, knowing Lynley’s inclination to use polite euphemisms, gent that he was. “A prong in the pudding, as it were. In the car park inside the patrol car.”

  Ruddock averted his gaze. “It’d already been arranged. Her and me. This was before I was told to fetch him. And even then, no one told me what was going on with Mr. Druitt. The paedophile thing. I was just told to bring him in and wait for the patrol officers. So I expected . . . What I didn’t expect was what happened.”

  “You left him unattended.” Lynley waited for Ruddock to nod, then he said, “Which gave him time to hang himself.”

  “Or gave someone else time to fake his suicide,” Barbara added, and when Ruddock quickly turned to her, she added, “You do see how that could’ve happened, eh? You and whoever she is, out in the shadows going at it like ferrets and someone gaining access to the station, someone who knew you and the nameless female would be doing just what you were doing . . . ?”

  “No!” Ruddock cried. “It couldn’t have! Not that way.”

  “You understand we’ll need her name,” Lynley told him.

  “We’re ticking boxes here, Gary,” Barbara added, “and whoever she is, she’s one of them.”

  “It’s nothing to do with her,” he said hotly. “She doesn’t know . . . she didn’t know Druitt.”

  “Perhaps that’s the case, but she’ll need to confirm that,” Lynley said.

  “She’ll also, when you come down to it, be providing you with an alibi, Gary.”

  That stopped him exactly where they wanted him, Barbara saw, directly on the edge of the precipice. He could plunge over or he could retreat. He was running out of options.

  He said hoarsely, “I can’t have her dragged into this. She’s married. What’s happened is down to me. I was derelict in duty. No one else was.”

  “Then we’re going to need your mobile, Gary,” Barbara told him. “We’re going to have to search for her. You do see that, don’t you? It’s easier for all of us if you hand it over. There’s less official involvement that way. It stays between us. If we have to go the route of a warrant, then, well, everyone knows, eh?”

  They were at it. It all came down to what the PCSO wanted and did not want others to know, particularly his superior officers. Barbara and Lynley were relying on the fact that Ruddock’s self-interest would supersede everything else.

  It did. Ruddock handed over his mobile.

  “You do know that if she’s on here, we’re going to find her,” Lynley told him. “So is there anything you want to tell us in advance before we begin checking on your calls?”

  Ruddock said, “She’s not on there.”

  “We’ll be determining that, of course,” Lynley said. “Is there anyone on here you want to tell us about before we work it out on our own?”

  Ruddock considered this, directing his gaze to the window. When he finally looked back at them, it was impossible to tell if he’d decided to lie or had been dwelling on the ramifications of what he was about to say. “There’s calls you’ll see to and from Trev Freeman.”

  “The DCC’s husband,” Barbara clarified.

  “He asked me to keep an eye on Finn. He’s been a handful at home. Trev thought if I was . . . well, sort of a big brother to him . . . because, see, Trev and Clo—”

  “You seem closer than normal to the DCC.” Barbara couldn’t imagine calling the guv Isabelle, and trying Dave on Hillier would doubtless get her booted down the nearest stairway.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t ever call her by her first name in company or the like. It’s just that . . . Look, she took me under her wing a bit. She introduced me to her family, particularly to Finn. I liked him and he liked me.”

  “Got it,” Barbara said. And then to Lynley, “Sir?”

  He nodded. “I think we have what we need.” He rose to leave and then added, “But it is surprising, nonetheless,” he said.

  “What’s that?” Ruddock asked him.

  “How so much that we’ve learned takes us to this boy Finnegan Freeman.”

  They left him then, his mobile phone in their possession. As they climbed back into the Healey Elliott, Barbara said, “I wager he’s racing to the landline as fast as he can, ringing every number he can remember. There’s going to be some he knows by heart.”

  “Perhaps,” Lynley said. “But I don’t actually doubt him when it comes to the phone, Barbara. Don’t you find that technology is eliminating brainpower in virtually every area of life? Why memorise a number, why even write it in an actual address book or diary when one can merely tap a name on a smartphone and—”

  “Bob’s your whatever,” Havers finished. “Right. I get it.”

  “Thus technology doth make numbskulls of us all.”

  Barbara offered him an instructive look. “Inspector, do you ever plan to advance into the current year? Or decade? Or even century?”

  “Something Helen asked me often enough,” he said, smiling. “Although since she never quite managed to work out how the microwave operated, I think she’d forgive me the sin of Luddism.”

  “Hmph,” was Barbara’s reply.

  “The real point is that we have his phone.” He lowered the Healey Elliott’s window but did not start its engine. He went on with, “Let me ask you, Sergeant. Did you believe the bit about the calls to and from Trevor Freeman?”

  “About the son, Finnegan? The entire watching-over of the son?” And when Lynley nodded, she went on with, “He could well want watching over, sir. The guv found him something of a piece of work, I can tell you that.”

  “Then you and I shall have a word and see how we find him.”

  WORCESTER

  HEREFORDSHIRE

  Trevor Freeman had to admit that he and his wife had begun their relationship as a veritable cliché. She’d been a young detective constable employed in the city, newly out of training, ambitious to climb upwards in the police hierarchy. She’d been equally ambitious to remain in top physical condition, and in this cause she’d taken on a personal trainer. He’d been that trainer.

  From the first, he’d found her compelling. So often he’d discovered that, given a few weeks of intense conditioning, both men and women began making excuses for their inattention and sloth. But not Clover. She showed up at the gym where he was employed, she did the work, she grunted, she sweated, and she didn’t worry how any of this affected her looks. This, of course, made her immediately intriguing to him.

  He had pursued her: inviting her for a cup of coffee after a training session, offering her a drink at the local, suggesting a meal together. But nothing worked. He was considering just moving on when his sister-in-law invited him to a small drinks party to which she said she’d also invited a woman who, she thought, would be a good match for him. Someone she’d met at a charity run, she said.

  He’d gone, and there she was. Clover. The woman his sister-in-law had met, the good match for him, the female whose interests were so similar to his own. They’d both been astonished to see the other, they both had laughed, the situation had to be explained. Then Clover had agreed to share a dinner with him after the drinks party.

  There, however, she’d put paid to the idea of the two of them acting on what was an obvious attraction between them. She said before they even took up their menus, “This isn’t going to lead to sex. I’ve gone that route before, but I’ve moved on from it. I thought it best to mention that at once so we know where we stand with each other.”

  She’d sounded so matter of fact about it that he’d been completely done in by what he’d seen as her breathtaking honesty, an honesty she’d held true to throughout their marriage. But now there was Gaz Ruddock to think about. Now there was the “we’ll speak later” that Trevor had overheard. And he damn well could have had “we’ll spea
k later” sorted a quarter hour after he’d heard those words had he managed to keep his bloody wits about him, but he kept getting sidelined by his dick.

  He was in his office in Freeman Athletics thinking of this when his desk phone rang. He’d just decided to descend to the weight machines. There one of his trainers was in the act of getting friendly with a woman far too vulnerable to him. She’d lost four stone and was enough out of condition to make a young stud’s advances welcome if he was subtle enough. Boyd was an expert at being subtle, and Trevor wasn’t about to have that.

  The phone stopped him before he could make his move, though. He turned from the window and saw that it was his private line. Clover or Finn, he thought.

  But it was Gaz. He said, “I’ve tried to get through to Clo, but she’s not answering her mobile, and she’s not in her office. Can you pass along a message to her, Trev?”

  Trevor instantly realised that an opportunity had fallen into his lap like a gift. He said, “Does the message concern what you and Clover planned to speak about later?” He didn’t stop to consider how to frame the question more carefully.

  There was something of a silence before Gaz said, “Sorry?”

  “Last night,” Trevor told him. “As you were leaving.”

  Another silence during which, Trevor reckoned, the wheels of Gaz’s mind were probably turning to come up with something that would suffice as a reasonable excuse for what had been said. “Oh that,” came finally. “It was Scotland Yard. That’s why I’m ringing. They’ve been here twice today, and I thought Clo would want to know.”

  “So this isn’t actually about what you planned to speak of later?” Trevor pressed him. He wanted to pin the young man down. Clover might be nearly impossible to converse with when she had something she wished to hide, but the one thing that Gaz Ruddock wasn’t was Clover Freeman.

  Gaz said, “Look. C’n I just say . . . Mostly it’s due to Finn. Clo asked me to . . . I s’pose I’d call it to engage Finn in some way now that Ian Druitt’s gone and there’s no after-school club for Finn to volunteer at. ’Course, there probably will be another club . . . I mean . . . Eventually there will be, eh? But for now, there’s not . . . I mean, not till someone from the community takes over . . . or another deacon gets assigned to St. Laurence Church or whatever. So she’s wondered how well Finn’s going to do without something extra to occupy him.”