The Punishment She Deserves

  Lynley was being too meditative by half. He appeared to be inspecting the work of the gardeners as if comparing it to whatever maintenance went on at the massive property in the Lord Asherton side of his life. She wanted him to swing into action, although she herself couldn’t have said what that action was going to be. She said, “Sir . . . ? Earth to Inspector Lynley? Ludlow on the line.”

  He stirred. “I don’t disagree in the least with the list of curiosities to which—”

  “Curiosities?”

  “—you’re referring. But the fact remains that despite everything we’ve seen and heard—some of which is admittedly questionable—”

  “Questionable?”

  “—I think you’ll agree that absolutely nothing amounts to a motive for anyone doing anything, and”—he raised his hand to keep her from interrupting again—“while I agree that motiveless suicide is on the list as well as motiveless murder and motiveless anything else, you must admit that that’s damned strange, despite the nature of what’s occurred.”

  “Those nineteen days, you mean.”

  “Among other things, but yes.”

  “So . . . ?” she tried to sound encouraging.

  “We know there’s more here than meets the eye, which is another reason to see what Nkata can dig up. But the problem remains what it was from the first, Barbara. We have no witness to anything save Officer Ruddock fetching binge drinkers somewhere, probably to their respective homes. And I don’t need to mention that we have no conclusive evidence of anything else.”

  “And isn’t that curious? Not Ruddock and the bingers. I mean having no witness to those other things, such as having a witness via film to whoever made the phone call that got Ian Druitt carted to the nick in the first place. Isn’t it just too bloody convenient that the camera’s position was switched so it wouldn’t record the anonymous caller? And isn’t it even more convenient that the camera itself was turned off for twenty seconds, which happens to be quite enough time for someone to get outside and move the camera’s position and get back inside to turn it back on? Who the hell would you say is the likeliest suspect here?”

  “Again, you won’t find me disagreeing, although we have to take on board the fact that dozens of people have access to that station and those dozens include virtually every individual serving on the West Mercia police force. What time was that phone call made?”

  “Round midnight.”

  “So do you actually see Officer Ruddock—who could have done the camera switching and the phone call at any time—getting up in the dead of night to trek over to the station to do it when all he really had to do was make sure he was alone in the station, which he apparently is most of the time, and then to do what needed to be done with the camera and the anonymous call?”

  “Unless,” she said, “he wants to make it look like he’s being framed.”

  “There’s that, admittedly,” he noted. “But my point is that, there again, we’ve nothing at all that leads us to that conclusion.”

  “So we’ve come on a fool’s errand? Is that it?”

  Out on the lawn, one of the gardeners had started a mower and was now heading towards them. The other had begun spraying something on a climbing rose that was spilling blooms over the farthest corner of the garden wall. Lynley directed her off the terrace and towards Ludlow Castle, but they paused on the pavement across the street from the ruins to continue their discussion.

  He said, “I’m not positing that. But you know what the problem is as well as I do: it’s impossible to commit the perfect murder. There’s always going to be evidence at some point unless somehow the murder manages to pose convincingly as a death so natural that there’s no question about it. That being the case—I’m talking about the possibility of carrying out the perfect murder—if there is no evidence that this was murder, then the conclusion is the one originally reached. As regrettable as it seems, it was suicide.”

  “You actually believe that?”

  “Barbara, I agree that the PCSO looks questionable. But the operative word—as you well know—is looks. And unless we come up with something beyond how things look, we’re left with a great deal of finger-pointing and nothing else. And we’re also left with being recalled to London, which I daresay is going to happen sooner rather than later.”

  She kicked at a small clump of weeds that was growing from a crack between the pavement stones. She muttered “Whatever” as she did so, but then she was struck by a sudden thought, so she looked up and said, “We’re also left with manoeuvring, sir.”

  “Believe me, I haven’t discounted that. But I’m not convinced we’re at that point yet.”

  Over at the castle, someone was on the closest battlement arranging a flag that unfurled to advertise the coming Shakespeare Festival on the castle grounds. Titus Andronicus was on the menu. Lynley glanced at this and said, “Good Lord.”

  Barbara said, “What?”

  “Rape, chopping off hands, cutting a tongue from a mouth, baking dead men into pies. You’ve not got there yet?”

  “I’m only doing tragedies. Is that one of them?”

  “That it’s being produced at all, yes.”

  Barbara laughed in spite of herself. She said, “What about Francie Adamucci, then? She made it clear she wants Ruddock looked at. Could be that’s at the bottom of what’s been going on round here. Ruddock, drunken college students, trips to the nick for some of them . . . or at least trips to the nick’s car park. Could be our Gaz doesn’t have any special bird he’s bonking and is ‘too noble’ to name. Could be he’s collecting the bingers, taking them home, but each time saving one at the end to take to the car park instead.”

  “Why would she—I assume you mean that the one he takes to the car park is female—go with him?”

  “Could be she doesn’t want to be carted home for some reason. Trouble with Mummy and Dad comes to mind straight off, although I suppose it could be trouble with a tutor at the college, trouble with a housemate, trouble with anyone about anything. And could be that the trouble’s avoided with a little bit of whatever our Gaz happens to fancy inside the patrol car.”

  “Where does that take us, Barbara?”

  “To the first explanation of what’s questionable about him. Everything else has been iffy but straightforward: meeting some woman he doesn’t want to name for the sake of ‘honour’—and didn’t that have a nice ring to it—having it on with her the night Druitt died, dereliction of duty, and Gaz falling on his sword like Sir Lancelot and whatever.”

  “Lancelot didn’t—”

  “Oh, I bloody know that. Point is, he paints himself as nobility made flesh when all along could be he’s forcing college girls to have sex with him when they’re drunk. And that’s not so straightforward. True that we need one of those girls to go on record. But in the meantime, back to manoeuvring, I say we let him think one of them has.”

  “And if we do that, where does it get us?”

  Barbara considered it: where the possibility of Ruddock, drunken college girls, and the nick’s car park could lead. Then she had it. She said, “Holy hell in a bun, sir! It gets us to a college girl spilling the beans to a man of God! It gets us to that man of God deciding that ‘having a word’ with Ruddock about what he’s been up to is in order. It gets us to Ruddock deciding to do something about it before Druitt takes his ‘word having’ to another level, such as to Ruddock’s superiors. We’ve got that Lomax girl meeting with Druitt, sir.”

  “You can’t be suggesting it would take her seven sessions with Druitt to get round to telling him that Ruddock is having his way with young women in his patrol car.”

  “But if she’s one of the girls—”

  “Just think about it, Barbara. Isn’t the solution to being ‘one of the girls’ merely to stop binge drinking? Or to binge indoors if bingeing’s on the agenda?”

  “If that??
?s how and why he’s collecting them, sir.”

  “And if he’s ‘collecting’ them in the first place, because no one’s being forthright about that.”

  “Harry Rochester is.”

  “Harry Rochester merely saw the PCSO with young people—some of them young women—who seemed to be drunk, full stop. You do see the problem, don’t you?”

  She looked to the castle again. On the battlements another banner was being unfurled. The Importance of Being Earnest. Lynley saw this as well, and murmured, “Hardly an antidote to the other, but at least it’s a start.” And then to her, “Well?”

  She knew he wasn’t referring to Oscar Wilde. She said, “We’re dead in the water without proof.”

  “Even if we like the scenario of Ruddock and a college girl, we’re overlooking any number of salient details to get there.”

  “I see that,” she admitted. “Like where do the Freemans fit in, like why the phone calls between Druitt and Ruddock, like why’s Ruddock been asked to keep an eye on Finnegan and is that even relevant, like why the gap in time to bring Druitt in for questioning once the anonymous paedophilia message happened. Like . . . What, sir?” Lynley had snapped his fingers.

  He answered her with, “We’ve been absolute fools, Barbara.”

  “About what? Why?”

  “About the nineteen days and what they’ve been telling us.”

  “Which is what?”

  “That Ruddock had to be the one to make the arrest of Druitt. And that could only happen if the Shrewsbury patrol officers—whose job it otherwise would have been—were involved elsewhere. And that took nineteen days to occur.”

  “So Ruddock was waiting for those blokes to be involved somewhere else . . . like dealing with a string of burglaries?”

  Lynley shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. “Follow the breadcrumbs, Barbara. It’s never been Ruddock who was doing the waiting.”

  LUDLOW

  SHROPSHIRE

  On the previous night, Trevor had done something that he’d not done in years. He’d gone down the pub and had too much to drink. Clo hadn’t been at home for dinner, ringing to tell him she had a late meeting, so he’d decided the hell with making himself a meal, and at the pub he ordered fried scampi and peas with a hearty pile of chips. He swilled a pint of lager to wash the meal down, and when he’d finished it, he ordered another. Ultimately, he’d had four. He topped off his evening with two fingers of Jameson, after which he went home to find Clover in the kitchen, opening several days’ post.

  When he walked in, she gave him a look and said, “I hope someone drove you home.”

  He went to the table and stood before her. He gave her a mock salute. “Good little soldier checking in,” he told her. “Scotland Yard showed up and I told them the tale. All’s right in the world.”

  “I don’t much like you when you’re drunk, Trev. If you want to talk about this—”

  “Didn’t say that, did I?” And he took himself off to bed. He went to Finn’s bedroom. There on the single bed he’d spent the night.

  In the morning she was already gone when he rose, which he’d reckoned was just as well. He had things to see to and he didn’t want one of them to be another attempt at wrenching information from his wife.

  He drove straight to Ludlow. His conversation with Gaz Ruddock didn’t need to be a long one, he decided, but it needed to happen. So once he arrived in town, he rang the PCSO’s mobile to locate him. He’d appreciate a word, was how Trevor put it. He added the information that he was in Ludlow so he could easily meet up with the PCSO where and when Gaz could.

  Gaz sounded surprised that Trevor was there in town, but he didn’t ask for an explanation. Instead, he said that he was doing his usual walkabout, having a stroll from the superstore on Station Drive. He’d be taking in the railway station, and heading on past the library to the Bull Ring. Did Trevor want to meet him along the way?

  That would be fine, Trevor told him. He was just at the police station and the Bull Ring wasn’t far from there. He would see Gaz soon.

  Their conversation could have been handled over the phone, but Trevor wanted to see Gaz in person. So once their plan to meet was laid, he set off up Lower Galdeford in the direction of Tower Street. This would take him to the Bull Ring, where just beyond it stood Ludlow’s pictorial claim to fame, the fanciful multigabled, multilevel, multiwindowed structure called the Feathers Inn.

  As usual, the inn was doing its bit as the subject of photographs, for its balcony displayed containers trailing vines and flowers and its leaded diamond panes caught the sunlight. Here was where Trevor saw Gaz Ruddock, posing cooperatively with a group of tourists. It was likely—although he wasn’t clothed and helmeted as such—they assumed he was a traditional and now nonexistent English bobby on the beat.

  Gaz saw him and grinned, giving a shrug that asked: What can one do? Trevor waited till the picture taking was completed, at which juncture the tourists moved off to follow their flag-bearing leader, fixing earphones on their heads. He joined Gaz and said, “Where next?” to which the PCSO said, “Mill Street by way of Brand Lane and Bell Lane, but that can wait if you fancy something. Coffee or whatever. But at the Bull”—he gestured across to that hostlery with its inn yard into which coaches once had set down their passengers—“not here.”

  Trevor didn’t want anything to eat or to drink, but he also wanted to be able to see Gaz’s face as he spoke to him. That couldn’t be accomplished if they were walking side by side, so he agreed. The Bull was fine.

  The hour was such that the only people in the bar area were a college-professor type—at least by his garb—and three younger people whom Trevor took for students. They were huddled in a far corner, engaged in an avid conversation. They didn’t even take note of anyone else entering the place.

  Trevor demurred on the coffee, but Ruddock fetched himself one. While he was doing so, Trevor decided upon a table where the light was best. There were stools, not chairs, so it wasn’t going to be a comfortable spot to perch, but he didn’t intend to be there long.

  “Finn’s well?” Gaz set his coffee on the table and dumped milk into it. He stirred it carefully, as if with concern that he might slosh the brew out of the cup should he apply the spoon too energetically.

  “Not as well as I’d like. Scotland Yard burst in on him yesterday morning.”

  Gaz frowned. “They’ve got bees in their knickers, that lot. You want me to have a word with Finn? I can let him know he’s not the only person they’re paying calls on so he’s not to worry.”

  Trevor studied Gaz. He had such an innocent face. It was either his natural expression, not to mention his very nature, or he’d become quite good at projecting it. He would need the earnestness, naturally. That had served him well at the training school and would be even more necessary to his future after the death at the Ludlow station. But it could also serve interests other than professional. Trevor didn’t want to forget that for a moment.

  He said, “You won’t need to do that. Finn’s handling it. He was a bit cut up when they showed up in his bedroom—”

  “What the hell?”

  “Right. It was a definite shocker and designed to be that way. But Finn’s past it now. I told him I’d have a word, and I intend to do.”

  “Does Clo know about this?”

  “Why d’you ask?”

  Gaz drew his eyebrows together. He seemed surprised at the question, as if the answer should be obvious. “She outranks the two who came. Seems like she could do something about it if they show up in her son’s bedroom. Like give a bell to London or whatever.”

  “Ah,” Trevor said. “Yes. She does have that power. I’m surprised you were never put off by that. Most blokes in your position would take quite some patch of time to get to know a superior officer, but that wasn’t a problem for you.”

  “I got to know t
hem all, is what it is, Trev. I mean all the higher-ups who gave courses at the training centre.”

  “You definitely got to know Clover,” Trevor remarked. “Least that’s what all the phone calls from my mobile suggest. You went back and forth a lot, you two.”

  “Like I told you, it was Finn.”

  “Yes. Like you told me.” Trevor gave him what he intended to be an avuncular look. He wasn’t sure it was coming off as such because he didn’t feel the least avuncular at the moment. But it was time to put the full stop in place, so he said, “We can call that off now, Gaz.”

  “What?”

  “Your watching over Finn and reporting back to his mum.”

  “Does Clo not want me to do it any longer?”

  “I’m sure she does. If she could, she’d have someone watching over Finn into his dotage. I’m the one putting an end to things. Finn’s doing fine, so you can let him sort out his life on his own.”

  Gaz looked at his coffee. A muscle moved slightly, at the back of his jaw. He finally said, “If that’s how you want it, Trev.”

  “It’s definitely how I want it,” Trevor told him. “Finn wants it as well. And I’m sure once I tell Clover, she’ll agree it’s for the best. No lad—well, I should actually say no young man, shouldn’t I?—wants his mum assigning him a guardian angel. Or a guardian. Or a guard. As for the rest, let’s keep things as they are. You’re something of a friend of the family at this point, after all.”

  Gaz looked up. “I hope I am. You’re that important to me, Trev. All of you.”

  Trevor smiled. “Beyond everything else, Gaz . . . ? I know that we are.”

  LUDLOW

  SHROPSHIRE