The Punishment She Deserves

by Elizabeth George

  In the kitchen, Rabiah found Yasmina with Sati’s Hello Kitty lunch box gaping. She was in the midst of cutting the crusts off a sandwich she’d apparently made for the girl. She appeared to be accompanying this with an apple, a snack packet of fig bars, and another packet of crisps along with a carton of juice with straw attached.

  Yasmina swung round when Rabiah said, “You don’t expect her to eat all that after yesterday, do you?”

  Yasmina recovered quickly from the surprise of her mother-in-law’s sudden appearance in her kitchen at six in the morning. She turned back to what she’d been doing and said, “Timothy told you, I see. I’m taking this to Sati’s school. I want to apologise to her.”

  “Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?”

  Yasmina looked over her shoulder without reply.

  Rabiah went on with, “You’re presupposing. First, that she’s even going to show up at school today with evidence on her face of having been punched by her mother. Second that she will want to have a conversation with you if she is there.”

  “Be that as it may,” Yasmina said with curious dignity, all things considered, “I must do this, Mum.”

  Rabiah stepped forward. She reached round the other woman and snapped the lunch box closed. “What you must do if we’ve arrived at the point of musts is this: You must sit the hell down, either here or elsewhere. The three of us are having a conversation.”

  “You must know that Sati has left.”

  “I’m not talking about Sati.” Rabiah called out, “Timothy? You’re wanted.”

  He came round from the entry. In doing so, Rabiah was reminded of him as a boy and saw how little things had actually changed. He had that hangdog expression about him, caught out for doing whatever he’d done that he knew he wasn’t supposed to do but had done anyway, and now hoping for some kind of reprieve if he managed to look pathetic enough. This had worked at one time and Rabiah was outraged at herself that she’d allowed it.

  When he joined them in the kitchen, she said, “I’m not here to sort out your marriage. You’re going to do that if you want to do that. But I am here to tell you that you’re not to leave this house until you next hear from me, because my concern is Missa and Sati, not the two of you. I’m leaving here now to speak to them. If I have any luck at all, I might be able to bring one of them or, God willing, both of them, home. And we three know bloody well at this point that that’s not about to happen if either of you tag along.”

  “Mum,” Timothy said. “Let me come. I’ve done nothing—”

  “For God’s sake, do not try to tell me you’ve done nothing to cause this. I’m not here to look for causes of anything and neither should you be. I’m here because at this moment we are still a family and I intend us to remain a family. Anything else is unthinkable, and if you two are not on board with that, I suggest you get on board. A hell of a lot is going to have to go on in this house besides apologising. Apologies mean sod all if they aren’t accompanied by change. Do either of you come anywhere close to understanding what I’m talking about? Don’t bother to answer. Just give me the Goodayles’ goddamn address and remain in this house till you hear from me.”

  Neither of them argued. Yasmina produced the address and handed it over. Rabiah left them.

  The Goodayles’ home did not prove difficult to find. They lived high enough above the town to be almost part of Woodside. To reach it, Rabiah drove through the area where the magnates had lived during the industrial revolution, owners of the local factories that had fashioned everything from decorative iron doorstops to delicate china teapots. They’d occupied large Georgian homes of brick, which had fallen into disrepair during the last century and were slowly being restored to their classical beauties now. The Goodayles did not live in one of these but rather beyond them and higher still. It was yet another area that had fallen upon hard times, but again some of these homes were in the process of restoration. The home of the Goodayles was not one of them.

  Their house, like so many others nearby, was constructed of Broseley brick. It featured a garden in the front, unlike the houses lower down on the hillside that nosed directly onto the street. When Rabiah parked and clambered out of the car to head towards the front door, she saw that the garden had been set up as a battle site. Plaster gnomes wearing handmade Highland kilts had apparently been facing off against their British enemies, also plaster gnomes, but these in their regulation gnome kit although accentuated by smallish Union Jacks set up behind them and both plastic muskets and rubber swords at their feet. Several of the soldiers had, alas, suffered at the hands of Highland warriors. Two were headless, and one was missing an arm.

  In spite of herself, Rabiah smiled. The Goodayles, as she recalled, had five children, and the eldest was at least a decade older than Justin. There had obviously been grandchildren at play here. Actively imaginative grandchildren, it seemed.

  When she gave the door a good pounding, it was Sati who opened it. She carried a bowl of cereal and a spoon, and she had a splash of milk on her chin. At the sight of Rabiah, her eyes became the size of penny coins. She apparently didn’t know what to say because her mouth opened, then closed, and she sucked in on her lip before looking over her shoulder into the body of the house.

  Rabiah said, “Ask your gran inside first. Give her a hug second. That’ll do for now.”

  Sati stepped back, eyes still huge. There was no place to put the cereal bowl save on the floor, which she did so that she could obey the direct order. The fact that she would do this made Rabiah’s regret stir inside of her. The Lomax daughters had needed to fight to be individuals, and mostly they’d failed. Why had she not seen it before this moment?

  She hugged the little girl and kissed the top of her head. She tilted her face up and looked at the bruising. She said, “Your mum’s very upset about this. She wants you to come home long enough for her to say sorry.”

  Sati’s great dark eyes grew bright, but she didn’t let any tears escape. “Missa says—”

  “No need, Sati. I’m not here to talk you into going home. It’s Missa I’ve come to have a word with. When and if you go home? That’s up to you. Understood?”

  Sati picked up her cereal bowl. Her answer was a whispered, “All right.”

  “Maths still giving you difficulty?”

  She nodded again.

  “We’ll need to sort that. Meantime, fetch Missa for me, there’s my lovely girl. Tell her I want a word and it’s not about either of you going home to your mum.”

  “’Kay,” was her reply, along with a shy smile that made Rabiah’s heart give a twist. Then she was gone up the stairs and Rabiah found her way to the sitting room.

  It was—like the garden outside—kitted out for the grandkids’ enjoyment. There were dozens of toys, but all of them were neatly stored in boxes with labels bearing each child’s name. There was also a shelf of board games and, from a doorway leading into a dining room, a bouncy baby swing was hanging. There were pictures everywhere: grandchildren, marriages, christenings, university graduations. There was also a display case designed for collectibles, into which a number of infant handprints and footprints had been rendered in clay and several bronzed baby shoes were interspersed among them.

  “Missus Lomax, is it?”

  Rabiah swung round. The woman who greeted her was late middle-aged and dressed neatly in a tartan skirt, tailored blouse, and waistcoat. This would be Linda Goodayle. She didn’t bear an expression of welcome, but Rabiah reckoned Justin’s mum assumed that Missa’s gran had shown up on her doorstep as an emissary of the family.

  “It’s Rabiah,” she said. “Sorry to barge in like this. I’ve come to speak with Missa. Her mum didn’t send me, by the way. It’s nothing to do with . . .” She wasn’t sure how to put it, so she gestured round the room and said, “. . . anything, actually, aside from Ludlow.”

  “She’s not going back, if that’s
why you’ve come. She’s tried to make that clear to her parents. But it’s done no good.”

  “Completely understandable,” Rabiah said. “What I mean is that Missa’s old enough to know her own mind. I might not agree with what her mind’s telling her, but I’m fully on board with the idea of the girl having a mind in the first place.”

  She heard, then, the clatter of footsteps on the stairs, and Justin appeared in the doorway. She was struck by the size of him, which was less noticeable when he was in his milieu at the Victorian blacksmith’s shop. Like his mother, he was dressed for his workday and his hair was tied back in traditional fashion.

  He said, “If you’re here to talk her out of it, it’s no go, Missus Lomax.”

  Rabiah drew a blank at that. “Out of what?” she asked him. “D’you mean living here? That’s not why I’ve come.”

  “I mean the wedding,” he said. “Me and Missa. Next month.”

  Rabiah was moderately horrified at the idea that Missa would marry anyone in just a month’s time considering the chaos in her family. She wondered if that had been what she’d been discussing with Druitt. She found the voice to say, “Congratulations then. I’d not yet been told when. Just that it was intended.”

  “Mum doesn’t want it,” Missa said. She’d come in perfect silence down the stairs, and she stood behind Justin. Unlike the young man and his mother, she’d apparently been roused from bed by her sister, since she was in a dressing gown and slippers and her hair was still tousled from sleep. “So if you’ve come to have a go at that, you can turn round and leave, Gran.”

  Rabiah waved her off, a pooh-pooh motion that she hoped would disarm not only the girl but also Justin and his mother. “Give us a hug, for God’s sake,” she said. “You can marry who you want, when you want, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll be cross if I’m not invited, though.”

  Missa didn’t look convinced, but she did come into the sitting room and she did allow herself to be hugged and she did hug Rabiah in return. That was step one, in Rabiah’s mind. Step two was being rid of Justin and his mother so that she and Missa could speak privately. She cared not one whit about being presumptuous. She said, “Might I have a cup of coffee, Justin?”

  He and his mother exchanged a look. Something meaningful passed between them. Linda Goodayle said, with an attempt at sounding welcoming at this hour of the morning, “Of course. I’ll see to it. Do make yourself comfortable.”

  That handled Linda, but Justin looked immobile, so Rabiah went at him directly, saying, “Justin, I need to speak with Missa alone. I’m not here to discuss the two of you, however, so you’ve no need to worry about that.”

  Missa looked towards the young man, and he waited for her decision. She said after a moment, “Gran’s not going to talk me out of anything, Justie. She’s also not going to talk me into anything. It’s fine. No worries. Tell Sati for me, okay?”

  He left them, but Rabiah could tell he was reluctant to do so. She waited till she heard his footsteps on the stairs before she quickly said to Missa, “This isn’t about Sati. This isn’t about your mother. Or your father. Who they are, what they’ve done, the whole bit of it. This is about me, and this is about you.”

  Missa appeared confused by this, as well she might. Rabiah and the girl had always been close, so that there was a me and you that needed talking about would be a perplexing issue.

  Rabiah went on. “I’ve had the London police at my home three times now, Missa, and three times I’ve lied to them. As far as I can tell, there isn’t a person in this family who doesn’t lie—save Sati, perhaps, as she might be too young to have mastered the art—but that’s about to stop. No, don’t speak a word. I’ve been willing to believe that your seven encounters with Ian Druitt were about gathering some kind of support for leaving West Mercia College. I understand that you would need someone’s support to do this, as you certainly weren’t getting it from anyone else. But what I do not understand is why you apparently believed that your own grandmother would be unwilling to support your wishes. Moreover, what I do not understand is why you suddenly took the decision to leave at all. Please don’t respond, dear. I see you would like to but I’m not finished. You lived with me in my own house and we were not exactly strangers to each other, were we? So what I knew then and what I know now is that you loved the college, you were doing brilliantly, you liked your tutor, and you enjoyed your courses. And then suddenly . . . you didn’t.”

  “It became too difficult, Gran,” Missa said. “But no one—”

  “Cease, please. Someone like you does not go from performing brilliantly to finding oneself unable to perform at all. Therefore . . . there’s something gone on between those two points in your life. Now, from all her dancing round with the truth when I spoke to her, I reckon Ding Donaldson knows what’s going on. But she’s loyal to you so . . . What is it?”

  Missa had laughed shortly, a bitter sound. She looked away from her grandmother. Rabiah said, “What? You must tell me what. The London police have your details. They know where to find you.”

  “Not these details,” Missa said. “They don’t have these details. You can tell them where I am, of course, but—”

  “That’s exactly what I intend to do if you don’t speak to me honestly. I mean it, Missa. They’re dealing with a suicide that they apparently believe is not a suicide, and if you think they’re not intent on putting everyone through it to get to the bottom of what happened, you’re being very naïve. Your innocence has always been appealing but . . . Missa, what?”

  The girl had begun to weep soundlessly. She covered her mouth as if this would stop up the tears, and when this didn’t work, she dug her fingernails into her skin deeply. Rabiah got up and went to her. She embraced the girl and said into the side of her head. “Missa, what? Please. You must tell me.”

  “It was the cider,” she said.

  “Cider? What on earth . . . ? Cider?”

  “I drank it and drank it. I didn’t think cider did anything, but then I was drunk. It was all of a sudden and I couldn’t go home. You’d see me just like Dad and Uncle David and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t, Gran.”

  LUDLOW

  SHROPSHIRE

  The sharp knock on her door was followed by Inspector Lynley’s mellifluous baritone saying, “Barbara? I’m sorry but I must get you up. Isabelle’s phoned and—”

  Isabelle, Isabelle, Barbara thought with an inward scoff. She said, “Right. Coming,” and rolled out of bed. She was approaching the door when she realised she was wearing one of her slogan-bearing T-shirts, which she’d purchased in the largest size possible so that she could don it for sleeping. It was guaranteed not to amuse one’s superior officer: And yet, despite the look on my face, you’re still speaking. She called out, “Let me get decent.”

  He responded with, “Of course. But I have seen the Buddy Holly pyjamas before now, if you recall. Cornwall? Casvelyn? I wore blue and you wore Buddy Holly? Is this sounding familiar?”

  “I think you were wearing a white towel, sir. Having just performed your morning whatevers.” She was rapidly pulling on a pair of drawstring trousers.

  He spoke again. “Was I? What a horrifying thought. I mean myself in a towel in a shared-bathroom situation. It hardly bears thinking about. Listen, Barbara, the guv is waiting for me to ring her back. She’s not happy that we both ignored her calls yesterday. I only need the SOCO photographs, if that’s of help. You can slide them under the door if you like.”

  Barbara wasn’t about to do that. She wanted to be in on whatever the DCS had in her head. She decided not to worry about the T-shirt as a search through the pile of her clothing had produced only two more of a similar ilk. So she went to the door and opened it.

  Lynley was, of course, fully and nattily dressed. She saw him read the slogan on the T-shirt. He said, “Ah. You’ve eschewed Buddy Holly.”

  “Sorry,” she said.
“I didn’t expect you turning up like this.”

  “I wouldn’t have, had she not been in a state. The guv, that is. And don’t concern yourself about the T-shirt. I’ve seen far worse on your chest since you and I began keeping company.” He frowned, then and went on with, “Sorry. That didn’t come out quite as I intended. May I . . . ?” He was referring to entering. She would have barged right into his room if their positions were reversed, but Lynley was not a man for barging.

  She held the door open. She’d left the files on the coffee table, so he went to the sofa. For her part, she scurried to her clothes pile and dug through it more deeply to find an appropriate top. She took this into the bathroom, where she divested herself of the T-shirt, found her bra where she’d left it dangling on a hook meant for a dressing gown, and once she had it on, she pulled a jersey over her head. When she left the bathroom more suitably attired, she found that Lynley had donned his spectacles and was on his mobile. She also found that he’d put it onto its speaker capability so that she could hear whatever Isabelle Ardery had to say.

  She was in the midst of “. . . only of the body and what’s nearby.” The DCS waited on her end while Lynley sorted through the SOCO pictures and pulled from them every one that depicted Ian Druitt’s body in situ. These he lay out on the coffee table. “I have them,” he said.

  “Is there one with the ligature in it?”

  He said, “It wasn’t a ligature, guv. It was—”

  “I know what it was, Tommy. Call it whatever you like but find a picture that shows it and tell me what you see.”

  Barbara joined Lynley on the sofa. They exchanged a look. But Lynley did as he was asked and found a photo that showed both Druitt’s body and the stole he had used to hang himself. It lay like a sprawled snake soaking up the sun.

  He said, “Got it, guv.”

  She said, “Tell me what colour it is.”

  “The stole? It’s red.”