Having said all that could be said, Yasmina waited. Good-hearted as she was, Sati did not leave her long in suspense.
She said, “Mummy!” and ran to her. Yasmina crushed the child to her and murmured, “Thank you.”
When Missa returned, Yasmina was upstairs with Sati and Rabiah. They were lined up on the bed that Timothy would not be sleeping in for a very long time. They were doing absolutely nothing. Everything felt beyond their capacity.
Missa stood in the doorway for a moment, observing them from the light shed dimly from a table lamp near to the bed. It came to Yasmina that her daughter looked uncertain, so she said to her in a murmur, “You find us at the end of our resources.”
Missa said anxiously, “Mummy, is Gran . . .”
Rabiah stirred. She’d had her arm over her eyes but at Missa’s voice, she’d lowered it. “Gran,” Rabiah announced, “has managed to survive worse than this.” And then after a moment, “Well, all right. Perhaps not worse, but I intend to muddle onward. What about you?” She moved over on the bed and patted the spot she’d vacated.
There seemed to be a long bout of breath holding before Missa moved across the room and joined the rest of them. Rabiah took her hand and pressed it to her cheek. Then she took Sati’s hand and did the same. Sati, after a quick look to be certain it was acceptable, took Yasmina’s.
They simply sat and breathed. They were as one organism, really. At this moment, together they had the strength to be one person. Later, perhaps, they could be more.
It must have been ten minutes, Yasmina reckoned, before Missa spoke again. She said, “He wants to wait. He says he can see what it’s all been about. He says he’d like things to go his way eventually, but they can’t go his way now. He says he’s meant to build his business and I’m meant to . . . whatever.”
“What did you tell him?” Yasmina asked.
“I said I would—”
“No,” Yasmina stopped her at once. “I don’t mean what did you tell him in reply to what he said to you. I mean what did you tell him about what happened in December in Ludlow.”
“The truth,” she said.
Rabiah said, “He wants to wait because of that, does he?”
“No. He says he wants to wait because it’s the right thing for both of us just now.”
“Is that what you think?” Rabiah asked her.
“I don’t much know what I think any longer, Gran.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” Rabiah told her.
“Three,” Yasmina added.
And Sati made it four.
26 MAY
VICTORIA
LONDON
It had taken the entire day following Clover Freeman’s suicide and Gary Ruddock’s confession to complete everything, even with a division of labour. Havers took on the job of sharing relevant fragments of information with the various parties who required them, if only for their peace of mind. So she paid a call upon the vicar of St. Laurence Church to reassure him of Ian Druitt’s innocence in all matters, and she arranged to meet Flora Bevans not at her home but at the site of an installation of an impressive array of newly planted urns to give her the relief of knowing she had not been housing a paedophile beneath her roof. She found Brutus Castle and Ding Donaldson at home in Temeside; she took herself out to Much Wenlock to put Sergeant Gerry Gunderson into the picture of Ruddock’s guilt. In the meantime, Lynley journeyed to Birmingham, where he returned all of his son’s possessions to Clive Druitt with the acknowledgement of that man’s true assessment of his son’s character, and from there he went to West Mercia Police Headquarters to meet with the chief constable and to put into his possession all the material he and Havers had been given to use during their investigation.
CC Wyatt was understandably shell-shocked. The nature of the political and professional disaster he had on his hands was not going to fade from public memory any time soon. The public relations nightmare was only just beginning, and the judicial nightmare was on the horizon, ready to slouch in the direction of Hindlip as soon as the appropriate forces could be gathered.
They had only a brief encounter with the Lomax family, and this was when Lynley informed Rabiah by mobile phone that her son Timothy had given his statement to the Shrewsbury team handling the events that had occurred in Temeside. She was gracious about everything, blaming no one, least of all the police, who were “only doing what had to be done, Inspector.” To his question about how the family were coping, she replied, “Just.”
On the following morning, then, they left Ludlow. Clive Druitt would come for his son’s car, Lynley informed the hotel. That being arranged, he and Havers set off for London.
They went directly to Victoria Street. They had not been in the building for five minutes when the unwanted but nonetheless expected call came through from Judi MacIntosh. They were wanted in the office of the assistant commissioner.
“You’re to go straight in,” Judi MacIntosh told them when they arrived in the assistant commissioner’s office. She added, “No worries,” as they passed by her desk. “Evidently the Home Office is pleased.”
Lynley couldn’t see how that could be the case, considering what they were looking at was everything from a police cover-up to murder. But it turned out that Clive Druitt had wanted his son proved to be just who his father claimed him to be: a decent man of God. That this had been proved, that an arrest of his killer had been made, that Ian’s name had been cleared in every respect, that a prosecution would follow: These things were what his father had sought. As to what the news media made of everything, as to how the Met, the Home Office, and the West Mercia police intended to handle what the news media made of everything . . . that was out of his hands, he’d told his MP.
“The first head to roll will be Wyatt’s,” Hillier told them. “He made Freeman his DCC. He should have known, apparently, where that would lead. You did well, the two of you. You’ve Quentin Walker’s thanks. I’m meant to pass them on.”
That, evidently, was what they’d been summoned to hear, after which they were dismissed. Or at least, Lynley was dismissed. As he and Havers got to their feet to depart the AC’s office, Hillier told Havers to remain where she was.
She looked alarmed and cast a glance of appeal in Lynley’s direction. But there was a limit to what he could do and being told to leave Hillier’s office defined it.
He headed for the door, hearing only “We need to have a different sort of conversation, Sergeant,” from Hillier as he opened it.
Lynley left them together. He didn’t like the direction their conversation might take. Still, there was nothing for it but to return to Victoria Block and there to wait for developments.
He got only as far as the DCS’s office when he arrived there, though. Dorothea Harriman called out, “You’re wanted, Detective Inspector Lynley,” before he had the chance to pass by. She added, “Judi-with-an-i just rang. She wanted Herself to have a heads-up that you’d been to see Himself.” She lowered her voice to just above a whisper in order to say, “Did he really ask Detective Sergeant Havers to stay at the end of your meeting?”
“He was telling her he wanted to have a different sort of conversation when I left them,” Lynley replied.
“That can’t be good,” Dorothea said. “Is that all you heard?”
“Lacking your talent . . . Alas,” Lynley noted. “Shall I go in?” He indicated Isabelle Ardery’s office.
“Oh do, do,” Dorothea said. “Word to the wise, though? She’s not exactly chuffed you spoke with Hillier before seeing her.”
VICTORIA
LONDON
Isabelle had expected some form of chain of command would be followed. Lynley and Havers would report to her, she would report to Hillier, and Hillier would report to Clive Druitt’s MP. What she had not expected was the short-circuiting that had occurred.
That this had happened was irr
itating. But that Barbara Havers had been asked to remain with Hillier once Lynley had been dismissed by the assistant commissioner was completely unnerving.
“Guv?” Lynley was courtesy itself, as usual.
“Why have you reported to Hillier without speaking to me first?” She heard the level of annoyance in her demand and wished she’d schooled it. Too late now, she reckoned.
Lynley said in that maddeningly urbane way of his, “We’d had less than five minutes in the building before we were called to his office, guv.”
“And, as I understand it, the detective sergeant is still there.”
“Hillier asked her to remain.”
“And his reaction to how everything’s been handled?”
“No one’s breaking out the champagne. A lawsuit filed by Clive Druitt’s solicitors has been averted, but that’s the extent of it. The amount of bollocksing up that’s gone on since March has given journalists rather more political fodder than anyone’s happy with.”
“You’re referring to me, I expect.”
“I hadn’t intended to. There’s enough culpability to spread round. The chief constable—Patrick Wyatt—will have it worst, I daresay. Everything went on in his jurisdiction, so—”
Isabelle cut in with, “He’s talking to her about my drinking, isn’t he. We both know why he asked her to remain. He rang me one night when I wasn’t in proper form to speak with him. I thought it was Bob or I wouldn’t have answered.”
Lynley said nothing in reply to this. He did move to the door of her office and closed it quietly, however, so Isabelle knew something was coming. She simply couldn’t deal with more preaching from him, however. Nor could she deal with anyone—let alone Thomas Lynley—pointing out that if anyone was being hoisted on a petard, she was that person and the petard was hers.
She said, “I’m finished, then. That’s it, as you warned me, Tommy. As Bob warned me time and again. As I’ve tried and failed, actually, to warn myself.”
Lynley did that gentlemanly bit of examining his shoes to allow her to pull herself together, which she found rather maddening in that she was together, of a single piece, of a single mind, fully aware, and all the rest. He said, “May I sit?”
She said, “This doesn’t need to be an extended conversation. I wanted to verify that Barbara Havers remained behind at Hillier’s request. I’ve done that. We both know what it means. There’s nothing more to be said.”
“Isabelle, if you’ll listen to me . . . ? You’ve failed from the first to—”
“I know. All right? There is no need for you to lord it over me, if you’ll forgive the outrageous pun. I’ve driven myself to this destination, and that’s that. I knew it the instant I opened the door to Dee Harriman’s face and her bloody soup and sandwiches. She saw it all and I’ve no doubt she returned with the tale and passed it round.”
“Dee Harriman,” Lynley said, “is the embodiment of loyalty to this department, Isabelle, and she’s—”
“She’s governed by self-interest as the rest of us are.”
“That’s entirely untrue. She’s completely loyal. And to be frank, she’s—”
“Oh please. Stop trying to protect her.”
“—not the only one. If you’ve not worked out by now that—”
“Stop bloody preaching at me!”
“Stop bloody interrupting me.”
They were face-to-face and too close for her liking, so Isabelle strode to her desk. She sat. She gestured rudely for him to do likewise. She said, “May I say that you’re as insufferable as you’ve been from the first. I know I’ve made a cock-up of my life, my career, my future, my relationship with my boys. Do you really think I need you to spell that out to me? I don’t need that. Do you understand?”
“I do,” he said, “but that doesn’t prevent me from wanting you to see that—”
“When I said stop preaching, I meant stop preaching!”
“As I meant stop interrupting.”
His voice had grown louder. He was a man who so rarely lost his temper that it was almost a pleasure to push him in that direction. But her hands had now begun to shake. She had other concerns that were meant to be dealt with.
He said, drawing in what Isabelle reckoned was a steadying breath, “What I’ve been attempting to say to you is that you’ve failed from the first to understand anything about Barbara Havers. Have that as you will because I’ve given up attempting to make it clear to you that Barbara’s a valuable member of the department. But I will have you know one thing, Isabelle—”
“I’ll have you bloody stop calling me—”
“Isabelle,” he said again and with far more emphasis than was strictly necessary. “The very last identity that Barbara Havers would take on is that of a common grass. That’s neither who she is nor who she’s ever been. As to you and your drinking? All of that is in your hands and no one else’s. I suggest you leave Dee and Barbara out of whatever nonsense you’ve got running round inside your head.” He rose and headed for the door.
She said, “I did not give you leave—” but he waved her off. He left her. The door gaped open in his wake.
Her hands were worse. She clenched them on the top of her desk. She clenched her jaw as well. She needed, she needed . . . After their conversation she bloody needed.
She swung her chair round and removed herself from the immediate vicinity of her desk, from the proximity to what she kept stowed in its bottom right drawer. She walked to the window. Blue sky rapidly clouding over, birds, the pavement, the street. She would not, she told herself, because she was the mistress of her life as she always had been, only now it would be entirely different, wouldn’t it? She was finished with more than one element of her existence, wasn’t she. She would, she told herself. And she bloody well could. All this time it had merely been a function of her brain. Her brain had been where the first falsehoods had come from, indicating to her that she needed something to help her relax, to help her sleep, to remove difficulties, to lighten the load. It was all about what she’d taught herself to believe that she needed when she didn’t need it at all and never had done.
Only. It had gone beyond that now. She saw that in her shaking hands, which would not stop shaking till the vodka entered her system. She wasn’t at all shaking because of a fiction she’d learned to believe, whether that fiction dealt with relaxing, sleeping, removing difficulties, or anything else. She was at this point shaking because the physical need had finally taken over. What had been desire was now necessity.
She couldn’t bear it.
She would have to.
She approached her desk.
VICTORIA STREET
LONDON
Barbara didn’t know what to make of it when Hillier began their conversation with a comment upon the improvement in her appearance. She would have liked to think that, in blatant disregard of the possibility of being accused of sexual harassment, he was taking note of her svelte body, courtesy of more tap dancing than she’d ever wanted to do in her life. Problem was that she wore nothing svelte-inducing at the moment if, indeed, one could induce svelte at all. Instead she wore baggy trousers, a blouse in need of professional help in the ironing department, and brogues. Since these were, however so humble, an improvement over her past garments, she thanked Hillier carefully. She waited for more. It was short in coming.
“I understand your overall comportment has undergone something of a transformation as well,” Hillier went on.
Barbara tried to look earnest. She hoped for the best. She did wish Lynley were there, however. He was the only person she knew whose manners and breeding might run interference for her if it came down to Hillier’s requesting an explanation for anything untoward she might have done.
“I’m additionally pleased that your second involvement in Ludlow produced a better result than your first,” he said. “What do you think w
ent wrong on that initial visit?”
Barbara’s skin made an aha! jump. She said, after a moment to think about the various directions she could take and what each might cost her, “The situation up there was dead complicated, sir. Elements of the investigation that looked absolutely one way turned out to be absolutely the other.” She hoped that his would suffice.
It didn’t. “Can you be more specific? Since you were the only officer attending both Met investigations . . .”
“Oh. That. Well, the DCS and I didn’t always see eye to eye, which happens, ’course. And it could be that I wasn’t . . . Or that I didn’t . . .”
His hawklike eyes didn’t move from her face. He said, “Do spit it out, Sergeant Havers.”
“It’s only that I wanted to do everything right, sir. I mean, I wanted to be certain I coloured inside the lines, if you know what I mean. That probably kept me quieter ’n usual.”
“What about the DCS?”
“Sir?”
“Colouring inside the lines? Outside the lines? What about DCS Ardery?”
Barbara didn’t like the thinness of this ice at all. She said, “I’m not sure what you mean, sir. Far as I know and far as I’ve ever seen, the DCS does things straight by the book.”
“Does she indeed?”
“Yes, sir. Absolutely. No doubt.” Barbara swallowed. Perhaps three affirmations were two too many?
Hillier watched her steadily. It was like a game of stare-down. He said, “I know there’s no love lost between you and Detective Chief Inspector Ardery, Sergeant Havers. And I don’t want that to be an issue here.”
“Oh, it’s not, sir. I don’t know what you might’ve heard and I’m not asking but aside from . . . well . . . an audio that the PCSO in Ludlow sent me after the DCS had already told me the transcript was good enough and then in my report—”
The Punishment She Deserves Page 77
