He released her. He nodded as if she’d somehow proved something he’d been wanting to know. He moved to the bed and there he pulled his shirt over his head in that way she’d seen men do on the telly when unbuttoning the shirt was just too much trouble for the hurry they were in. He tossed it onto the bed, and then he kicked off his shoes and lowered his trousers and she saw he wore nothing else beneath them.
She knew she was meant to be doing something: either helping him out of his clothing or removing hers. But she was arrested by the sight of his muscled back, his buttocks with deep creases defining the muscles there as well, his legs and his arms and as he turned back to her—
Which was when she saw the mat of hair on his chest how the grey mixed with the dark and how it narrowed at his waist till it spread thickly like a nest for his erect penis and how it climbed to just below his neck where the rope, the rope, or was it a tie or was it the belt of a dressing gown—
“Like what you see, eh? Most girls do.”
—and she hadn’t known what to do or what it meant so she’d not said a word how could she say a single word about the rope the tie the dressing gown’s belt—
“What’re you about, then? Get your kit off, girl. I’m not intending to stand here forever.” And his hand closed over his penis to give it a boost because she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to be doing, which was undressing and crossing to him and straddling him and rubbing herself up and down him so that he could feel how excited she was by the sight and the feel of him only she wasn’t not now not ever not like this.
She headed for the door, but she had to pass him and he grabbed her, saying, “Hey! What’s this, then? Not what you thought? Not hearts and flowers and music and some bloke kissing your neck or whatever instead of this?” He clutched her crotch, saying as he pulled her against him, “Believe me, girl, you’ll like it rough. Why d’you think they keep coming back, those mates of yours, those college girls?” He turned her to the bed. He lifted her skirt. His hands were on the waistband of her tights. She started to scream.
“What the . . . What’re you on about? Shut the fuck . . . Jesus!” He released her.
She went for the door, thinking he might try to stop her, but he didn’t, of course, because he wasn’t a rapist, he was a bloke who had women every which way he wanted them whenever he wanted them and if it wasn’t going to be her—which it clearly wasn’t—he wasn’t about to force it to be her.
She was down the stairs in a flash. In another flash she was stumbling across the old pub’s floor and pushing out into the night.
6 MAY
LUDLOW
SHROPSHIRE
Barbara rang DI Lynley in the morning. Despite her walkabout on the previous night, she was so hung over that she found that she was actually still pissed. She had barely slept. The reason for this was not only the room heaving to and fro like a ferry on a very bad crossing to France, but also that, upon returning from her walk, she’d roused Peace on Earth from wherever he’d taken himself off to and she’d asked him to brew for her an entire pot of coffee. Her room being far too small to do any real work in, she’d occupied a table in the residents’ lounge where she’d had her first—and it would be her last—martini earlier in the evening. During this time of swilling down coffee, she went through every one of the filing folders of information they’d been given. She also made notes dealing with her evening’s stroll.
She waited till quarter past six to ring Lynley from her room. She decided the castle, which she could see from her window, was as good an excuse as any. It was early yet, but he was an early riser.
A woman answered his mobile, however. She said, “Barbara, hullo. We’re at a critical moment. He’s not quite available,” so Barbara knew she hadn’t misdialled. She understood she was speaking to Daidre Trahair, whose employment at London Zoo resulted in hours as early as the inspector’s.
Barbara searched for words. She knew the inspector was involved with the zoo’s large animal vet, but he played his cards very close when it came to his love life post the terrible death of his wife, and he’d never directly told her that some of his nights were spent with Daidre Trahair. She said, “Not sure I want to know what the critical moment is. Can you have him ring me when it’s passed?” and realised as the remark left her lips that she might have been wiser to head in a direction different to double entendre.
But Daidre laughed. “He’s scrambling eggs. I’m spellbound by his method. I’ve never seen them scrambled quite this way.”
“Word of warning,” Barbara told her. “I wouldn’t eat ’em. Far as I know, he can’t even make toast.”
“That’s very good to know. Your phone call is a brilliant excuse, then. I’ll hand you over to him and finish the eggs myself.”
In a moment, Lynley’s voice said, “Barbara. Has something gone wrong?”
She replied with, “I passed every test until dinner, and believe me, sir, she was tossing them in front of me like hay for the horses right from the start.”
“Tell me,” Lynley said.
She gave him the A to Z of it: from the journey to Ludlow with its one stop for petrol and one for the loo to the shared drinks and dinner. She didn’t spare herself. What she needed from him was a way to proceed at this point, as she would see the DCS in some thirty minutes. Her insides were telling her that confessing her sins to Lynley might prevent her from committing more of them.
“A martini and wine?” Lynley said at the conclusion of her confession. “That’s rather heavy going for you, Barbara. Did you not think—”
“That’s just it. I didn’t think. She said we could have something since we were off duty and there was this bloke standing there—his name is Peace on Earth if you can credit that—and so we could have . . . whatever. There was this drinks menu with all sorts of names—what the bloody hell is a Sunset in New Mexico anyway?—and I reckoned . . . I don’t know what I reckoned, so I said I’d have what she was having. Some kind of vodka in a glass the size of my mum’s Easter bonnet. Then wine. I had coffee after, but the damage was done and she knew I was pissed. I mean, how could she not know? I’m lucky I didn’t throw up on the stairs. Meantime, she’s not even the tiniest . . . I mean, she stumbled a bit when she was leaving the room to take a phone call but that was it. She wasn’t even slurring her words.”
Lynley took this on board for a moment before saying, “I shouldn’t worry.”
“But do I say sorry? Do I tell her I generally only have ale or lager and one at that and mostly once a week anyway?”
“Don’t do that.” Lynley’s answer was swift. He went on to say, “Aside from testing you—and you had to be expecting that, Barbara—how is she otherwise?”
“Herself. The Queen Bee, the legend, the goddess, whatever. Only, like I said, she had a phone call last night from someone. She took it but all I heard was that she was employing someone to handle something and she didn’t sound chuffed about the call.”
He was silent a moment. She wondered if he was asking himself whether he should hand over some information to her. She wished he would. It might serve to make her time with Ardery easier. But she decided not to put him in the position of having to make a choice. He was first and foremost a gent. If Ardery had confided in him, he wasn’t going to break that confidence for love, money, or loyalty to Barbara Havers.
He said, “If you think the drinking last night was a test—”
“If?” she said.
“—just be warier. No need to accept when something’s offered. A polite refusal is all that’s necessary. How are you feeling this morning?”
“I don’t have a word for it.”
“Ah. Do your best not to let her know how badly it’s sitting with you, and I expect you’ll be fine.”
“I just . . .” Barbara saw how badly she wanted to blurt out the real reason for her call: She wished he were there in Ludlow, eith
er acting the part of Isabelle Ardery’s second or acting the part of her—Barbara’s—guv. She understood quickly enough that the latter was the case. So it was best not to conclude the sentence.
“You just . . . ?” he prompted her.
“I just hope I can swallow some breakfast.”
“Yes. Well. We’ve all been there at least once, Sergeant. Soldier on.”
He rang off then. Barbara wasn’t sure she felt any better than she’d felt before making the call. There was no help for it, however: she had to go down to breakfast.
She found the DCS just ending a call on her mobile. Peace on Earth was arriving at the table with a coffee press. Ardery asked him to do the honours and added, “We’re going to need more than one, I dare say,” after a glance at Barbara.
That alone put Barbara into the position of having to say something, so she chose a hearty “I’ll be drinking tap water from now on. I might go out on a limb and add one piece of ice and a slice of lime, though.”
Ardery’s lips moved in a smile so faint it could have been a tic. She said, “You might get two pieces of ice, I’ve found. Have some coffee.” She reached for her own and had it black. There was a tremor in her hand.
Barbara said, “I went walkabout last night.”
“That’s admirable.” Considering your condition was something that Ardery didn’t add. “How did you find fair Ludlow?”
“Not as well lit as it might’ve been. A few back lanes waiting for the next mugging to happen. But I located the police station, which’s what I set out to see.”
“And?”
Peace on Earth showed up with the second coffee press and his waiter’s pad. Ardery went—astoundingly—for the full English breakfast. Barbara chose porridge, reckoning she might be able to gag that down. Peace looked as if he expected more of her. Certainly one couldn’t cope with the day ahead without piling on the grub. She said, “That’s it, then,” and refrained from mentioning that her usual fare was a Pop-Tart or two and a cup of tea.
When he’d taken himself off to see to the meal, Barbara told Ardery what she’d discovered at the unmanned police station. She included the information about the CCTV camera, the location of the intercom phone, the notice informing users what to do in the event their report concerned sexual offenders, the open window at the police station indicating its occasional use just as the chief constable had explained it, and finally the panda car in the car park with the police officer lounging within it.
“I had a think about that,” she said to Ardery. “The bloke inside the car last night? I figured him for one of the area’s patrol officers having a kip while the other does part of the nighttime drive about in the district. He gives this bloke an hour—p’rhaps two—and then they switch it up and its naptime all over again, this time for the other patrol officer.”
“How does that relate to the matter in hand?” Ardery spoke over the top of her cup. She’d downed her first coffee and had gone for a second.
“Could be the PCSO was snoozing that night when Druitt died, this Gary Ruddock bloke. Could be he was outside in a car—”
“But why would he do that? There was no one in the building aside from himself and Ian Druitt, was there?”
“—or he was having a kip in one of the offices inside the station. Point is that it’s the kip part that got me thinking. It doesn’t make sense that Druitt was able to off himself while the PSCO was in the building and fully functioning on duty and all that. Something had to be different about that night. I’m just suggesting that the PCSO asleep might be it.”
Ardery nodded. “That would certainly put him into it, wouldn’t it? All right, then. Have at the PCSO this morning. See what you can get beyond what we already have. Compare what he says to you with what he said to DI Pajer and the IPCC. He’ll be in the picture about our being here, though, so there’s no point to thinking there might be a surprise involved when you turn up. Also, have him show you where the suicide occurred.”
“Right. Can do. But I’m also thinking we ought to—”
“Yes?” Ardery sounded interested, but her eyes narrowed in that way she had.
“The PCSO,” Barbara said quickly, changing course. “Can do, will do.”
Ardery gave that tic of a smile. “Very good. Meantime, I’ve been in touch with Clive Druitt. One of his breweries is just in Kidderminster. I’ll be meeting up with him there and smoothing the way opposite the direction of a lawsuit. Evidently, he wishes to give me an earful on why the boy—as he calls him—would never have hanged himself since ‘suicide is an abomination before God,’ as he put it. We shall see about all that, I dare say.”
LUDLOW
SHROPSHIRE
When she made a phone call to PCSO Gary Ruddock to arrange an interview, Barbara discovered that his availability was dependent upon someone called old Rob, who turned out to be an elderly pensioner in whose home Ruddock had a room. He needed to see his doctor this morning, did old Rob, and as this visit to his doctor had to do with the old bloke’s bladder, his prostate, and his worsening incontinence, it wasn’t something that could wait. But Ruddock would meet DS Havers at the police station after the appointment. Round half past eleven?
He sounded a nice enough bloke. Having an elderly parent herself, Barbara was sympathetic to his situation, although she did not live with her mum and hadn’t done in quite some time. But seeing to old Rob’s needs appeared to be part of Gary Ruddock’s remit as his living companion, so she agreed to the plan.
This left her at loose ends. She wondered if she should ring DCS Ardery and ask what the other officer would have her do while Ardery herself was attempting to make nice with Ian Druitt’s dad. But she dismissed this plan as completely lacking in initiative. Lynley wouldn’t have expected it of her.
She had the time to walk over to St. Laurence Church—if she could find it in the rat’s nest of Ludlow’s ancient lanes—and nearby would probably be the vicarage. Questioning the vicar about his deacon, along the lines of what did he know and when did he know it, seemed a viable alternative to lounging round the hotel waiting for Gary Ruddock to be free.
Outside, she found that the morning was due to unfold into a glorious day. Across the street, the lawns in front of the castle glittered with the previous night’s rain, and in the flower beds spiky blue flowers mixed with cheerful white and yellow blooms.
Her plan of the town told her that a route diagonally through Castle Square would put her roughly in the vicinity of St. Laurence Church, buried amidst mediaeval buildings that had sprung up round it through the centuries. The square itself was peopled by merchants who were setting up for the day’s open-air market, one that was going to feature mostly foodstuffs heavily given to baked goods if the aromas were anything to go by.
At the north end of the square, Barbara found Church Street, one of two exceedingly narrow lanes that led east, along which a variety of tiny shops offered everything from cheese to chess sets. St. Laurence was tucked just beyond this area, with its west side facing a horseshoe of curiously high-end-looking almshouses. There were two entrances to the building: on the south and the west, with the southern entrance seeming the main one. Since the church itself suggested someone’s presence within it and since someone’s presence suggested information as to the location of the vicarage, Barbara decided she would have a look round.
The church was certainly unexpected, not only in location—hidden away as it was save for its crenellated central tower—but also in its size. The place was huge, which suggested the wealth of the town in the distant past from the wool trade, as was usually the case. It was constructed of sandstone, ruddy in colour, with distinguished buttresses, Perpendicular windows, and spires surmounting each corner of its tower. At its north end, a small churchyard took shade from ancient yews, and above, jackdaws wheeled noisily in an azure sky.
The place was open. Barbara ducked inside, wh
ere she found herself not in contemplative silence as she thought she might be, but rather in the position of eavesdropper upon an argument between an older and a younger woman about how many floral displays were going “to be truly necessary, Vanessa,” to decorate the place for an upcoming wedding. “We’re not exactly paupers, Mum,” Vanessa was petulantly pointing out. “And I don’t intend to become one,” Mum said. “You’ve two sisters and they’re going to want weddings as well.” They drifted towards the end of the chancel, where a Perpendicular window dazzled with ancient glass that had somehow escaped Thomas Cromwell’s notice.
Barbara left them to it because she’d seen a man heading in the direction of a chapel that featured yet another enormous window—again stained glass—and a small altar beneath this. The man wore garments suggesting priesthood, so she decided to give him a try. She fished for her identification, said, “’Scuse me,” and approached him.
He swung round. He looked to be in his late sixties, with an impressive mound of iron-grey hair that swept back from his forehead and was sculpted to his head. His face was unlined, but his eyebrows were thick and heavy, and his ears on their way to enlargement. He cocked his head, saying nothing, although he did cast an anxious look in the direction from which the voices of Vanessa and her mother were emanating. Probably worried that he’d be asked to intervene in the flower dispute, Barbara reckoned.
She introduced herself and explained why she was there, taking time with how it had all come about and ending with a request to have a few words with the vicar about Ian Druitt, if he was the vicar. Indeed, he was. His name was Christopher Spencer, and he was only too happy to accommodate her. He seemed happier still to get out of the church, since the argument over wedding flowers was becoming ever more intense. Vanessa sounded like a girl who knew that raising the volume always led to getting her way.
The vicarage was just nearby, the Reverend Spencer told her, across from the churchyard. If she didn’t mind having a chat there instead of here . . . ? It was just that he had his wife’s to-do list to see to, and he’d been derailed by a meeting with “the ladies,” as he put it, inclining his head in the direction of mother and daughter. Barbara told him she didn’t mind at all.