The Punishment She Deserves

by Elizabeth George

“Mum rang here. I don’t know . . . three or four times? It didn’t wake me. So when I didn’t answer and you didn’t answer, she rang the clinic. I expect at that point she panicked . . . as much as Mum ever panics. So she rang old Reg Douglas from the end of the street, and he came to see if . . . well. At any rate, he got me up. I was to phone her, he said.”

  “Has something happened to Missa?” Yasmina asked quickly.

  “Reg couldn’t say anything about anything since he didn’t know. But seeing as Mum had been ringing the neighbours”—Timothy waved the knife he’d been using to spread the pickle—“he got me up.” He glanced at her then. “I couldn’t work out where you were. Once I rang the clinic, I mean. You didn’t go to work.”

  “Timothy, what did Rabiah want? Why did she phone the neighbours?”

  “Police liaison came by to tell her there’s been an arrest.”

  Yasmina was almost afraid to ask, but she knew she had to so she said, “Of whom? For what?”

  “For what happened to Missa.”

  “Did one of those boys—”

  “It was someone else. Rabiah told me she asked who it was but the liaison officer wouldn’t say. His remit was to tell her that an arrest had been made and the bloke was being taken to Shrewsbury. No worries that he might show up to do Missa any more harm.”

  The kettle clicked off. Yasmina went through the tea-making by rote as Timothy cut the sandwiches in halves and then in quarters. He carried them to the table on a single plate, fetching two smaller sandwich plates as if he and Yasmina were engaging in a ritualised afternoon tea. She went along with this: removing teacups and their saucers from a cupboard, fetching napkins, milk, and sugar. They sat at the table and said nothing for a moment until Yasmina told him where she had been.

  “The sari,” he noted.

  “I thought it would help.”

  “It didn’t, I assume.” He poured her some tea, then did the same for himself. He took a quarter of a sandwich. She did the same.

  She said, “I thought it might soften them towards me. But Mummy was only confused by it, and I don’t think my father even noticed. All of them are gone now. It was the same for them.”

  “Your sisters?”

  “All of them.”

  “Not pregnant, though. I can’t think any of them would have made that mistake after what happened to you.”

  “That I don’t know,” she said. “Just that he’s cut them off and there he and Mummy are, completely alone. Their house . . . It’s like something one sees in a film, Timothy. They’re . . . It seems like they’ve become hoarders.”

  He stared at his sandwich for what seemed like two minutes but was probably less than thirty seconds. He raised his head and looked at her just as long before he said, “I’m very sorry. That must have a blow to you, Yas. Where are your sisters? What became of them?”

  “I don’t know. I must begin a search.” She picked up her own sandwich. But her throat was too dry because of what she knew she needed to say. She placed the sandwich onto her small plate and took a sip of her tea and then another. She said, “You were right about everything.”

  “I haven’t been right about anything in years.”

  “That’s not true. Regarding the girls, you were right from the first.” She tried to find the words to explain what it had meant to see her parents, to learn how life had unfolded for them and for her sisters. She said, “Timothy . . . Seeing them . . . understanding for the first time . . . I don’t know if I could possibly describe it to you.”

  “No need. I’ve still got enough imagination left to work it out.”

  “What I want to say . . .” At her hesitation, he looked at her and his expression altered and she wondered what it was that she was meant to read on his face: compassion, hope, worry, or merely resignation that all was lost. She forged ahead with, “I want you to know that this—who I would like to be instead of who I’ve been?—this will be a struggle for the rest of my life.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I intend to do whatever it is I need to do to become someone I can live with and someone you and the girls can live with. That’s what I mean. I also mean that I am so profoundly sorry for where I’ve taken us as a family.”

  “It’s not all down to you.”

  “Part of it is, and that’s the part I can barely stand to think about, let alone to see.”

  She waited although she wasn’t sure for what. Indeed, she wasn’t sure she ought to be waiting at all. Wasn’t the truth that she could only own the actions she herself had taken, the decisions she herself had made, and the blinkers she herself had worn? Timothy would have to do whatever he needed or wanted to do on his own.

  He said, “Rabiah’s bringing her home. That was part of why she rang. Missa’s asked her to bring her here.”

  “To Ironbridge, you mean?”

  “I mean here. Home. Here.”

  Yasmina took this in and turned it round in her mind, finally saying, “I don’t exactly know how I feel about that. Frightened, I think. What does it mean that I’m frightened to see my own daughter?” When Timothy didn’t reply, Yasmina said, “She’ll want something from me, and I don’t know if I have inside of me what she needs.”

  “I expect you’ll need to ask her first if she wants anything at all,” he said. “I expect both of us must ask her that.”

  THE LONG MYND

  SHROPSHIRE

  Havers kept ringing the gliding club once she had its phone number in hand. She kept saying that it was “a bloody recording” and then “doesn’t anyone actually work in the sodding place? There’s meant to be a receptionist. There was an office. The guv and I saw it. So where is this person?”

  “Keep ringing,” Lynley told her.

  They were making decent time in their rush to the Long Mynd, but Clover Freeman had a very good start on them. Brief as her conversation with Gary Ruddock would have been, she would have known at its conclusion that she stood in every kind of danger. She’d orchestrated the deacon’s death, she’d withheld evidence, she’d obstructed not only an IPCC investigation but also two additional investigations made by the Metropolitan Police. She was going to be occupying a cell at the monarch’s pleasure for a very long time unless she could manage to rid herself of the evidence she was holding, which—she believed—marked her son as sexual predator. Aside from phone calls to and from Gary Ruddock made to her husband’s mobile, they really had nothing on the woman save an argument that a nineteen-day wait to arrest the deacon existed in the first place because Ruddock and not a regular patrol officer had to be the one putting the handcuffs on Ian Druitt. But if she had in her possession the garments that Missa Lomax had handed over to Druitt, she would find it very difficult to explain them away in a court of law. And she had to have those garments with her. She was astute enough to understand that the walls were closing in. Doubtless, she’d kept the clothing nearby from the moment Ruddock had handed it over. The under things were not only a crucial element in the investigation. They also served a greater purpose in her malignant relationship with her son.

  They swept south on the A49, passing neatly planted fields of summer wheat. They had better luck with the traffic this time, and with a distance that was shorter than their earlier drive from Ludlow, they were swerving into a right turn on one of Shropshire’s lesser roads in quarter of an hour. The village of All Stretton passed as a blur, and they were fast coming upon the larger town—Church Stretton—when Havers cried, “Here, sir. Here.”

  Lynley nearly missed the turn, so thick were the trees and so narrow was the lane onto which Havers directed him. It quickly became a single car’s width, and when the sergeant said, “Ouch. Sorry, sir,” Lynley knew she was referring to the Healey Elliott. He wasn’t reassured when she said, “It’s going to get worse in a second or two.”

  Which it did. She said, “Here.
Other side of that call box,” when they reached a few farm buildings that went for the hamlet of Asterton. He saw that just beyond the red BT booth to their right, a track began to climb a hillside so steep that he wasn’t certain his lowest gear could actually manage it.

  He changed down gears. A plump ewe toddled onto the road, a lamb behind her. He hit the brakes with a curse. Havers said, “There’ll be ducks as well. I’ll see to it,” and she got out of the car. She shooed the ewe and its offspring to the far edge of the road, giving Lynley what looked like six inches of leeway to pass the animals.

  In the car again, Havers continued ringing the glider club. She finally managed to get through to someone. She identified herself. She said she was on her way. She asked about Clover Freeman.

  She listened for a moment before she said into her mobile, “Can’t you bloody well look for her? . . . What do you mean? You obviously haven’t been sitting there in reception because I’ve been ringing and ringing and there’s been no one—”

  Lynley glanced at her. She was becoming quite red in the face as she listened to whatever she was being told. She finally said, “You listen to me, you sodding fool, this is—”

  “Sergeant,” Lynley murmured.

  “—a murder investigation and that woman’s in the middle of it, and what you’re doing at this precise moment comes down to . . . All right. Do it now.” She punched her mobile to disconnect and said to Lynley, “He’s told someone to do a search for her.”

  “How large is the place?”

  “Various wartime huts used as hangars, as well as outbuildings, barns, and a whole bloody caravan site.” She cursed and then said quickly, “Turn here, sir. This is the last bit.”

  Lynley was glad of that as the last part of the route was down to mere tracks for vehicles’ tyres. They were high on the open moor now, a vast and treeless expanse of land coloured at this time of year by the gorse, whose yellow blooms were interrupted by lacy bursts of bracken green in the spring and large swaths of heather that would turn the moor purple later in the summer. It was clear why the Long Mynd was a desired site for launching gliders. To the west Shropshire gave way to rolling hills, some comprising quartzite and some consisting of volcanic debris. The landscape rose once to form the mass of rock that was the Stiperstones, but other than that it merely undulated. One could sail in the sky straight into Wales if the air currents allowed it.

  Havers cried out, “Here, sir, on the right!” at the same moment as Lynley saw the sign and then the gate of the airfield. He had barely braked the Healey Elliott before Havers was out of the car, shoving the gate open, and hopping back in to point the way to the main building, set back from a gravel-strewn area that served as car park.

  Opposite this at a distance of some three hundred yards Havers pointed out the launching site for the gliders. Two were queued up, ready to take to the air. A third forward one was balanced with someone holding its wingtip while an individual with a clipboard walked round it, engaging in what appeared to be a preflight inspection.

  Havers said, “Should I . . . ?” and waved towards the launching area.

  Lynley said, “Go ahead. I’ll check inside,” and he set off towards the main building while Havers headed in the direction of the queue of gliders.

  Once inside, he found the reception office. He learned to his chagrin that Clover Freeman had not been located at the airfield. No glider had been taken out in her name; no cursory search of the club’s buildings had produced her; no response to announcements made on the internal and external public address systems had turned up either her or anyone who had seen her.

  Lynley cursed quietly. It had seemed so probable. They knew she was a glider pilot. They knew she belonged to a consortium of other pilots. They knew this location was the only one in Shropshire from which the consortium members might—

  Members, he realised. He asked if Nancy Scannell was at the airfield, if Nancy Scannell had checked out one of the gliders they had for hire.

  The receptionist—a swarthy gentleman whose badge identified him as Kingsley and who looked as if he’d spent his formative years walking the Shropshire hills in the blazing sun—had a look both on the sign-in sheet and then through the forms apparently filled out for taking a glider out for a flight. He shook his head. No Nancy Scannell. Sorry, he said. Fact was, the only glider hired out at the moment had been hired by someone called Lomax. He couldn’t quite read the scrawl but it looked like . . . Rachel, possibly?

  “Rabiah Lomax?” Lynley asked. And before the man could reply, he went on with, “Has she launched? Can you stop her?”

  Kingsley said the best he could do was radio the winch operator. He said, “So you’re not wanting the Clover Freeman?”

  “That is Clover Freeman,” Lynley replied. “Radio the operator. Tell him I’m on my way.”

  Lynley set off at a jog. In the distance he could see Havers hurrying towards the two remaining gliders. The earlier one had already been launched. It soared in the distance, circling now to head in the direction of Wales. The next was being checked over, its pilot already in the cockpit. Havers was steaming towards it.

  But the glider was not important now. They had to stop the winch. He rang Havers’s mobile then saw his error when Havers paused to dig for it. He cursed and cut off the call. She stopped her search but looked in the direction from which he was now running. That made things worse, as she hesitated. He waved her on. He shouted. If Clover Freeman was ready to launch, she still could not do it without the aid of the winch operator. Havers would know that. Surely she would know that. She was meant to stop the operator from whatever mechanism he employed to assist in a launch. She was not meant to stop Clover Freeman herself.

  She misread his intent and kept on her path to the gliders. It was down to Kingsley in the reception office: his ability not only to radio the winch operator but to radio the correct winch operator, as there were two of them, one at each end of the grassy runway.

  Havers ran to the glider still in the queue. She banged on the cockpit’s Plexiglas cover. It lifted. She spoke. She turned to dash to the forward glider. At that moment, the closer winch flashed its lights at the distant winch. The glider began to move. Havers reached it. A horn of some kind began to shriek. She flung herself at the cockpit as if to open it. She managed to grab on to the edge of the Plexiglas in some way, but she was not in time to do anything else. The glider rolled forward, and then it was too late. Havers fell. The glider lifted off the ground as the distant winch drew it forward at speed. Aerodynamics did the rest. It launched within seconds. It climbed steeply. It would, Lynley knew, disengage from the winch as soon as—

  It disengaged. But it did so at what looked like only five hundred feet. Not enough lift. Not enough altitude. It plunged to the ground.

  Lynley heard the cries coming from all directions. Those in the car park watching the launch began running towards the crash. Havers had scrambled to her feet. She tore towards the glider as the winch operator leapt from his vehicle shouting, “She released! She released!” The pilot in the waiting glider climbed out and ran forward, hand over mouth. Others nearby dashed to the downed plane while a horn blared from the distant winch, perhaps alerting those inside the main building to the unfolding disaster outside.

  Lynley made it to the glider at the same moment as Havers. Someone from the car park had reached it first. What remained of the cockpit cover had been removed, and the pilot had fallen half out of the straps that had restrained her. Voices came from every direction as more people arrived at a run.

  “Who did the fucking rig check?” someone demanded as someone else declared, “I checked every fucking inch. There was nothing—”

  “Is she all right?”

  “Jesus, Franklin, what do you think?”

  “It’s got to be the cable release.”

  “I checked. I checked. That woman ran out of nowhere and all o
f a sudden—”

  “Get her out of there.”

  “Don’t touch her! She could be—”

  “Oh too fucking bloody right, Steve.”

  “What woman? Where is she?”

  “Don’t you understand? She released it herself. There was nothing wrong—”

  “Why the hell would she release at that altitude?”

  “She might not’ve known what would—”

  “Who is she?”

  “Is this her first solo—”

  “Didn’t he stop the launch? I radioed! Oh God. He was told . . . the police are here somewhere. There they are. They wanted—”

  “The police?”

  Which brought about a stuttering into silence as every gaze sought out someone to name as the party responsible for what had occurred, and the police were going to be as good as any.

  “She released the glider from the cable too soon, sir,” Havers said. “I’m so bloody sorry. I thought I could stop her. But when she saw me . . .”

  “She knew it was over,” Lynley said. “She knew what came next, Barbara.”

  IRONBRIDGE

  SHROPSHIRE

  Rabiah thought at first that she would stop and fetch Sati. But when she reflected upon everything, she decided that bringing the little girl back sooner rather than later, while undoubtedly reassuring to her, would be an impediment to what needed to pass between Missa and her parents. So she went directly to Timothy’s home, telling Missa that Justin would bring Sati down from the Goodayles’ residence once she gave him the word to do so. He knew, she told Missa, that she was bringing Missa back to Ironbridge. He wanted Missa to know he was that worried, she continued. He wanted her to know he’d already been to speak to Yasmina. He wanted to learn what was happening because he was meant to tell Sati something. And had they not agreed that whatever else went on, they would never lie to themselves, to each other, or to Missa’s little sister?

  Missa took this all in but made no reply other than, “Thank you, Gran. For not telling him.”