The Punishment She Deserves

by Elizabeth George

  “What’s going on, Tim?” Rabiah asked. “You’re frightening me.”

  “Could I have a glass of water, Mum? Tap water’s fine but if you have fizzy . . . Oh, fuck me. Why am I even thinking of what I prefer?”

  Because you’re a user was what she could have told him, and that’s fairly close to the number one indication: me, me, me, more me. But she said, “Of course,” and she fetched him what she had, which was an open bottle of Pellegrino. He drank from that.

  She said, “What’s happened?”

  “Missa left us yesterday morning. Sati left us round dinnertime today.”

  “What do you mean, left?”

  “I reckoned she’d gone to a mate’s house at first, so that’s where I started. I ended up at Justin’s, which of course made sense since Missa’s there. For now this is, according to what I’ve been able to sort out. Just till after the wedding, when Sati intends to live with them. Missa and Justin, this is.” He spoke dully and when he was finished Rabiah could see why his eyes were bloodshot, as they filled with tears. She wanted to feel whatever pain he was going through, in order to take it from him. Only she found unexpectedly that she herself was feeling no pain at all. Rather, what she felt was fury. Not only at him, but at the whole boiling lot of them.

  “I can’t cope with her any longer,” he said. “I managed through . . . through Janna, but I can’t . . . It’s like she’s started to believe . . . Only it’s not, is it? It’s not that she’s started to believe anything. It’s that she always believed and I didn’t want to see it. I tried to talk to her at first. I tried to tell her that everything she did would make life go wrong. But she wouldn’t ever see that. It was her duty, she would say. Just like her parents said to her. Mould, shape, chisel, pound. Whatever it takes to fit them into the hole you’ve prepared for them. You would think her own experience would’ve been enough to tell her that she’d got being a mother the wrong way round. But it turned out that her own experience made her that much more determined that the girls would profit by her mistakes. That’s how she sees it. A mistake. Herself, me, how we got together, all of it. Fine and all right, then. I’ve tried. I’m finished.”

  Rabiah knew that the only possible way she was going to be able to stop herself from flying off the ottoman and shaking Timothy by his shoulders till his teeth rattled was to make him tell the story from start to finish, although she had worked out much of it during his rambling. She said, “I’m trying to follow what’s happened. Yasmina’s done something. It’s ended up with the lot of you leaving.”

  That was enough to get him talking: Yasmina’s plan for Justin to cajole Missa about college and uni, Missa’s very quick discovery of the plan, Missa leaving, the two of them deciding then—or really, perhaps they’d already done it but who knew at this point—to post banns for their marriage, Yasmina’s discovery of this, her conversation with Linda Goodayle, the outcome of that conversation, and Yasmina’s next manoeuvre to involve Sati in the whole miserable mess.

  “She was in a state when I went downstairs,” Tim said. “Missa getting married quickly and her father doing nothing to stop it so that she—Yasmina—would find herself in a position of having to beg Linda Goodayle to help and then that didn’t work because for God’s sake why should it, she was onto Sati. What else was there left to do but blame me? Janna’s death, Missa’s decisions about her life, Sati running off because her mother punched her in the face.”

  “Punched?”

  “That’s what she told me, but she was hysterical by then.”

  “Sati? You were able to talk to her?”

  “Yasmina, not Sati. And then it was go out there and find her, damn you, instead of drugging yourself like a useless addict under a bridge. Go. Go! And I did, Mum. God, how I did. I grabbed some clothes and my shaving kit and I went, just like she wanted.”

  “Are you saying that you didn’t look for Sati? You’ve already told me that—”

  “I did. Like I said. I meant to bring her here with me, but she wouldn’t leave Missa and Missa wouldn’t leave Justin and Justin wasn’t about to agree to anyone going anywhere once he had a look at Sati’s face. Do you know what it looks like when a twelve-year-old girl is punched in the face, Mum?” He raised his gaze to take in the ceiling. Then he dropped it to her again. “God, I am so sick and tired of not being able to do anything to protect them from her.”

  That, Rabiah decided, was that. She rose so quickly she was like a runner who’d just heard the pistol. “That,” she said. “is the bloody goddamn limit to what’s gone on in this family.”

  He clasped his hands together as if in prayer and said, “Oh Mum, thank God you see, because there’s no possible way—”

  “I am not talking about Yasmina,” she snapped. She approached the sofa and stood above him. “I am not talking about Missa or Sati or our poor Janna. I’m talking about you. What in the name of God is wrong with you? Oh, never mind. Never mind! It’s exactly what’s wrong with your brother, and it killed your grandfather, so why the hell not you, eh? From the moment you reckoned just one little time without protection and how could she possibly come up pregnant in only one time and anyway I’ll pull out, won’t I, that’s what I’ll do . . . From that very moment of gross stupidity, you’ve taken the easiest route every single time, and I’ve gone along and been there to help make things easier and neither of us is doing that now. Do you hear me? Do you begin to understand me? You may have reached your limit with Yasmina, but I have reached my limit with you. You’re no more moving in with me, Timothy—and do not dare tell me that’s not the master plan here—than you’re moving to Tahiti. You’re growing up, and you’re doing it directly, because I have no intention of taking the responsibilities of your life and putting them on my shoulders. If Yasmina went wrong with the girls—and I’m not saying she didn’t—then where the dickens did you go right? She’s had to bring those girls up by herself. This doesn’t make what she’d done sensible or even excusable. But it does make what she’s done reasonable, given the hand she dealt herself when she was foolish enough to take up with you.”

  That she’d astonished him was beyond doubt. But as far as she was concerned, he stood six inches from the edge of a precipice and a fall was going to mean he’d failed in the very same way his brother had done, losing everything for the simple reason that he could not man up—God, she was thinking like a telly psychologist at this bloody point!—and take charge of himself. Easier just to talk oneself into believing that one was owed: the drink, the drug, the food, the sex, the bloody sodding whatever. If one didn’t do that, one might actually have do something else. And by God that would take effort, wouldn’t it. Because life took effort and it was time he learnt that.

  “Stop gawping at me,” she snapped. “Close your mouth, sit up straight, and stop blaming anyone but yourself. You may stay with me one night, Timothy, and only because it’s late. Tomorrow morning you will deal with this like a husband and a father and a man, and just in case you’re thinking you won’t do that because what’s the point and you’ve tried and tried and you haven’t been able to get through to Yasmina and boo hoo hoo, I shall be with you. Not to take your part, by the way. But to make certain there is a part in the first place. Now get into the spare room and I do not wish to see your face till morning.”

  For a moment, she thought she might have gone too far with him. But then he said the most unexpected: “Thank you, Mum,” after which he took himself to the spare room with his carrier bag of clothing and he closed the door.

  23 MAY

  LUDLOW

  SHROPSHIRE

  In Lynley’s experience dirty in one way generally meant dirty in another, and after their conversation with Dena Donaldson, he’d come on board with Barbara Havers’s conclusion that the PCSO was dirty, at least with regard to the college-age girls in Ludlow. The difficulty was that they had no substantial proof of this. While it was true that Harry
Rochester had more than once witnessed Ruddock loading bingers into his patrol car and while it was equally true that the dosser claimed he had seen Francie Adamucci alone with him, that was the limit of what they had on the PCSO, which no prosecutor on earth was going to take to the bank and make a deposit with.

  They also had Barbara’s sighting of Ruddock and Dena in the car park of the police station at night, but there again it was something that took them no great distance. What Barbara had seen, just like what Harry had seen, was not evidentiary. While the two girls might claim that the PCSO was forcing them into sex acts, Ruddock could claim with equal credibility that those were false accusations based on a girl’s desire for vengeance as he did his job and cleared the streets. Going back through the various times when he’d had to do exactly that was going to support his claim while doing nothing at all to support what the girls might say about him. So while Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers had a clearer picture of Gary Ruddock and how he was using his position as Ludlow’s PCSO, they had nothing irrefutable.

  He rang Nkata as his first action of the day once he was up, showered, shaved, dressed and had a cup of hotel-room morning tea in hand, hotel-room morning coffee being something that he could not face. He sat on the bed, punched in the numbers of the DS’s mobile, and said when he heard his voice, “What do we have, because God knows we need something.”

  “That kind of day already?” Nkata enquired.

  “Merely girding myself,” he replied.

  Nkata started with West Mercia Police Headquarters, where Ruddock had received his training as a PCSO. He’d tracked down several of Ruddock’s instructors and their reports about him declared that “the bloke was earnest and dedicated,” Nkata told him. Apparently, he’d been eager to work his way into the regular force—despite the ongoing cutbacks—and he saw this as a route that would take him there. He was cleverer than most—

  “Hang on,” Lynley said. “We’ve been told he’s got some learning troubles. Is that not the case?”

  Nkata replied with, “I mean clever in a different way, ’nspector.”

  It turned out that at the training centre, Ruddock had learned to compensate for his difficulties by rubbing any elbow that belonged to a higher-up in the organisation. This got his name recognised and his mug known, Nkata told Lynley. “From what I c’n tell, guv, he was practic’ly guaranteed a placement at the end of the day. As PCSO, I mean, because the cutbacks were coming fast when he was in training.”

  This was interesting but it spoke of little save a young man who’d wisely learned how to compensate for his difficulties. “Anything else?” Lynley asked.

  “His background tells an in’erestin story.”

  “The cult in Donegal, I presume.” Lynley had made his tea in one of the ubiquitous hotel tin pots, and he poured himself a refill.

  “Right,” Nkata said. “Tha’s where it gets in’erestin. Did he mention to Barb the place got broke up by the Garda? This was ’bout ten years ago.”

  “What was going on?”

  “Massive sex abuse. Cult leaders claimed it was God’s dictate written in the holy book. Increase and multiply and fill the earth and they were only following God’s instructions, see. Only nobody had a choice in the matter and that included boys as well as girls. If a boy looked like he was a grand candidate in the increasing and multiplying department, he got taken to this place called the Palace of God’s Will which, from what I’ve read, wasn’t ’xactly palatial.”

  “I wouldn’t wager against that,” Lynley said.

  “There he’d be told to do the business on whichever female’d been selected for him. Didn’t matter ages either. For boys, this gen’rally started when they were round twelve years old. For girls, it was soon as they were old enough to have a kid without dying in the process. The lucky girls were the ones slow to develop. The others . . . ? Youngest gave birth when she was eleven.”

  “Christ. I don’t remember any of this, Winston. Was it in the papers at the time?”

  “Prob’ly, but as it was in the Republic and not the north, it wouldn’t’ve been as big a story here. And anyway, where were you and what were you doing ten years ago? I was trying to extricate myself from the Warriors, so what was happenin in other countries didn’t matter that much to me.”

  “What happened to all the children involved?”

  “Went into care if they were underage. How old would your boy’ve been?”

  “Sixteen, I think. He told Barbara he ran off when he was fifteen.”

  “Prob’ly did. I come up with a blank on him for a bit of time. When he shows up out of the ether, he’s in Belfast in the building trade. Eighteen then. He goes from there to England by way of Wales, where he did carpentry. But he’s not ever got into trouble, ’nspector. He might not’ve told Barb all the details ’bout the cult—like the Palace of God’s Will and all that—but from what you gave me, he checks out.”

  Which, Lynley thought as he rang off, did not make the man not complicit in other ways. But with Winston’s search, they’d got no further and they’d certainly not got close to being able to back Ruddock into a corner with regard to the claims being made about his behaviour with young women.

  When the room phone rang, he picked it up absently, assuming Winston was ringing with something he’d forgotten. He said, “There’s more?” and was instantly jarred by Isabelle Ardery’s sharp voice.

  “Are you avoiding my calls, Tommy?” she demanded. “Why the hell haven’t you rung me back?”

  She sounded completely normal, which was something of a relief. She sounded completely normal, which was also something of a worry. He replied with, “Sorry, guv. We’ve been on the run up here.”

  “When I ring you, Inspector, you’re to ring me back. I remain your senior officer. And if you have just added ‘for now’ to what I said, I caution you not to do that.”

  “I hadn’t at all, guv,” he said.

  “I’m very glad to hear that. Get out the suicide photos, please.”

  “At the moment, I don’t actually have them. They’re in Sergeant Hav—”

  “Well, bloody well get them. When you have them in hand—which I will give you exactly ten minutes to accomplish—ring me at once. And put yourself in a place where your side of our next conversation will not be overheard. Am I being clear?”

  “Do you mean by Sergeant Havers as well?” he asked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not so stupid as to believe you wouldn’t report every word we speak directly back to her anyway. Now get those photos and ring me back.”

  IRONBRIDGE

  SHROPSHIRE

  Rabiah had forced her son to get up at dawn. She could have done with an extra two hours’ lie-in, but that was one of the many things that were not going to be an option today. So was the idea of either of them—Yasmina or Timothy—going to work. They were going to remain at home if she had to tie both of them to kitchen chairs. This would not be a problem for Timothy as, doubtless, he’d failed to show up at the pharmacy on any fixed schedule in months. Yasmina was another matter, as she would have to cancel patients. But she was going to do that. This was, Rabiah reckoned, a last-ditch effort.

  She’d readied herself as if to do battle when she went to awaken her younger son. The information he’d brought her last night had been so gobsmacking that she’d not checked either his pockets or the carrier bag when he’d shown up on her doorstep. For all she knew he’d drugged himself, which meant he would not be easy to awaken. No matter, as she took a jug of water with her as the only weapon she could devise. But he was sitting up in bed. True, his eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping, as he opened them the moment he heard the door’s movement.

  He saw the jug and said, “I left without them. I was in a rush or I would have brought them, believe me. I didn’t sleep.”

  “Nor did I. Get up. We’re going to Ironbridge.�
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  “Mum—”

  “Do you think I want to get into the middle of this? Do you actually think I believe I have even one answer regarding the massive mess you’ve made of your life?”

  “If you don’t have answers, what’s the point?”

  “The point is that you have the answers, you ninny. You and Yasmina have the answers and you’re taking a look at them today.”

  “She isn’t going to want to do that.”

  “Do you also think that I care in the least what Yasmina wants? Get up, get dressed, and get in the car. You’re driving to Ironbridge and I’m following you there.”

  She gave him a quarter hour, since he requested a shower. While he was taking it, she gathered up the clothing he’d tossed on the floor, and she put it into the carrier bag. This she took to the front door. It would make the only statement necessary to explain how willing she was not to have Timothy run off from his troubles and ask to take up lodging with her.

  He didn’t mention the bag when he was dressed. Lucky for him, she thought, that he’d carried clothing into the bathroom or he’d be driving to Ironbridge in his pyjamas, which was also just absolutely fine with her.

  At that hour, there was no traffic aside from one articulated lorry outside of Bridgnorth attempting to negotiate a way into the heart of the upper town. Before and after that, it was only a matter of not hitting some confused animal that might wander into the road as they sped along chasing the growing daylight.

  Rabiah went into the house alone when they reached Ironbridge, after informing Timothy that he was to wait just outside the front door. She heard sounds from the kitchen suggesting that Yasmina, too, was up and about. As her daughter-in-law was not in sight, Rabiah then roughly motioned Timothy inside and murmured that he would remain in the entry until his presence was required.