She needed to go through the reports again to see if the position of the station’s cameras was mentioned. If it wasn’t—and she was fairly certain it wasn’t—she then had to convince the DCS to have a go with what the CCTV had recorded not only when the anonymous call had been made, but also what it had recorded prior to and after that call. That was definitely a step that needed to be taken.
7 MAY
LUDLOW
SHROPSHIRE
Isabelle had been a witness to Barbara Havers leaving the hotel on the previous night. She’d seen her from the doorway to the residents’ lounge, where she’d just finished her second port, and she’d frowned because she knew what it could mean as soon as Havers disappeared with a broomstick balanced against her shoulder. Despite the hour, the detective sergeant was about to go her own way in the investigation.
As the door closed behind her, Isabelle’s mobile had rung. It was the identity of the caller that pushed her into her next move. Sherlock Wainwright doubtless wished to guide her into what he would see as a more reasonable course of action against her former husband. She didn’t want to talk to the solicitor, so she let the call go to message, and she followed Havers.
Outside at night for the first time in Ludlow, Isabelle caught the scents of the town: the subtle fragrance of flowers in the window boxes along the way, abruptly cut into by the stronger odour of marijuana. This came from an open window above her, along with rap music and loud conversation between two males.
Ahead of her, Havers turned into Castle Square. When Isabelle reached the corner, she saw the sergeant proceeding along the pavement on the square’s south side. Shops here were long closed for the night, but streetlamps shone upon their interiors of books and tourist offerings and clothing in one of the town’s charity shops. It was late enough that just a few people were out, although chatter and laughter from a hidden location across the square suggested there were still pubgoers looking in on their nightly establishments. Havers didn’t head in their direction, though. Instead she continued from the square into King Street and along it to the Bull Ring, where she crossed over and disappeared into a pedestrian precinct that was badly lit.
It was here that Isabelle had considered that Havers might well have been out for a stroll, with the broomstick being carried for protection just in case. She thought of turning back then, but she could see that the end of the pedestrian precinct opened onto a more travelled route, and just as she recognised this, a police car passed and was lit by a streetlamp. The station, she decided, had to be nearby. And that had to be where Havers was going.
This suggested that, in reality, the sergeant was showing some initiative. The fact was that Isabelle had given Havers no orders about how to spend the rest of her evening. If she was on her way to the police station with a broomstick over her shoulder, she would be checking on the CCTV cameras. While it was true that this activity—depending upon the results of it—could elongate their time in Ludlow, it was also true that they’d come up with nothing to show that Ian Druitt’s death was anything but a suicide. She reckoned the CCTV cameras would emphasise that. So she walked in Havers’s wake long enough to verify that the police station was her destination. Then she turned back to make her way to the hotel.
Now, the next morning, she prepared herself to listen to Sherlock Wainwright’s message, which she hadn’t done on the previous night. Her preparation for this consisted of three capfuls of vodka, which she measured carefully into a tooth glass. She didn’t need a drop more than three capfuls. They represented mental preparation.
Wainwright’s message was merely a request for her to phone him because, he asserted, he had some very good news: Robert Ardery had offered a compromise and Wainwright believed it was going to please Isabelle very much.
When she rang him, she immediately asked what the compromise was. Wainright said, “I’m delighted you’ve phoned. Let me read it to you. I had it from your husband’s solicitor late yester—”
“Former husband.”
“Yes. Of course. Sorry. I had it from your former husband’s solicitor last evening and I rang you at once.”
“I’m afraid I’d gone to bed.”
“Not a problem. There’s no date indicated by which I was to respond. Shall I get on with it?”
She told him to do so. She wanted only the facts, however, not a reading of a document filled with legalese. He was succinct, then. Robert Ardery, he told her, had generously proposed that Isabelle be allowed to spend unsupervised personal time with the boys when she came to Auckland to visit them. He would allow them to stay weekends with her at any house, cottage, or flat she might rent. He would also allow them to stay weekends with her at her hotel. He was, Wainwright announced, thus broadening her options in New Zealand. He would even allow her to take them away from Auckland for three-night stays at various holiday locations of her choosing. These would, of course, need to be approved in advance by him, but as there were dozens, he didn’t think this would be a problem. Naturally, these jaunts would have to take place during the boys’ school holidays. He would want them at home with him at Christmas, but if Isabelle chose to visit New Zealand at that time, she would be welcome at family lunch.
Wainwright finished with, “Apparently the boys are quite excited at the prospect. Now, I’ve had a look at what New Zealand has to offer for holidays. The Coromandel Peninsula isn’t far from Auckland, and the Bay of Islands—”
“No,” Isabelle said.
There was a pause. During it, Isabelle heard a television go on suddenly in a nearby room, offering Sky News at a shattering volume before it was hastily lowered. Wainwright said, “But surely you see that coming up with a compromise like this paints Mr. Ardery in a very positive light. A court is going to see it that way.”
She said, “I’m sure it does, especially to people who’ve never met him. But as I’ve more than met him, the answer remains the same. No.”
“Please do think about this, Isabelle. Should your visits to New Zealand work well for you and for the boys, there’s every possibility of revisiting the arrangement in two or three years.”
Isabelle locked her jaw on what she wanted to say. Two or three years? After a pause in which she gathered what few resources of patience she possessed, she said, “We’re finished with this conversation now, Mr. Wainwright. I leave you to carry on as before.”
She cut off his “But his own solicitor has—” by ending the call because she had only one interest in this entire affair and that was to keep her sons in the same country in which she herself lived. If she had to drag her former husband through every court in the land to effect this, she intended to do so. And if Sherlock Wainwright could not bring himself round to seeing her determination, then Sherlock Wainwright was going to find himself kicked to the kerb.
In a fury, she punched Bob’s number into her mobile. His wife answered. Isabelle didn’t bother to identify herself. Sandra would know very well who was ringing at this hour in the morning. She said, “Let me speak to James and Laurence.”
Sandra said, “Isabelle. Lovely to hear from you. I’m afraid they’ve already left for school.”
“Don’t you lie to me,” Isabelle said. “It’s seven in the morning! Put them on the phone at once or I swear to God, Sandra—”
“Why would I lie to you?” Sandra’s voice was the virtual embodiment of reason. “You’ve every right to speak to them. I’m fully aware of that. Are you aware of what all this legal drama is doing to them, by the way?”
“This legal drama—as you call it—exists only because you and Bob are determined to separate me from them.”
“Yes, I’m sure you see it that way. It’s always about you, isn’t it?”
“You fucking—”
“That’s the just point, Isabelle.” It was Bob’s voice. The cow had handed the phone to him after her last remark, having provoked Isabelle into a rage that could
then be demonstrated for her former husband. “There,” he went on. “Just there. And it’s something I don’t want the boys exposed to.”
“So what you’ve decided is that it will be quite a treat for the boys to be separated from their mother for most of their lives, eh? And to see her where? In an Auckland hotel? That’s the compromise I’ve been offered?”
“You need to be reasonable,” he said in his most unctuous tone. “I’m not allowing them to fly from Auckland to London to see you, if that’s what you have in mind.”
“What I have in mind is an injunction preventing you from taking them anywhere at all.”
“That’s not going to be remotely possible. I’m certain your solicitor has explained it to you. Now we can continue to pour money into the coffers of the legal system or you can face reality. It’s up to you.”
“I’m their mother. I gave birth to them. I raised them till they were—”
“We’re not about to call what you did ‘raising’ James and Laurence,” he broke in sharply. “If you stop just a moment to get beyond your rage at not having things your way, you’ll see that what I’m offering you is far more than you’ve had in the past. All that’s required of you is to purchase a ticket to Auckland as many times in a year as you’d like to come and to arrange a safe venue for them to stay with you at weekends when you’re here. And I’ve given ground on allowing you to take them on holiday here as well. Not during their school term, but that’s hardly unreasonable. Additionally, Sandra and I are happy to give over half of their summer holiday to you, again in Auckland and not, naturally, on Christmas Day. But if you’re here in Auckland on Christmas Day, we’re happy to have you for lunch, and should you wish to be with the boys on their birthday or at Easter, there won’t be a problem with that. We’ll have to pound out how much time each visit would comprise, but this does not have to be the problem you’re making it.”
“Oh, you’re the bloody voice of reason, aren’t you?” she said bitterly.
“I’m trying to do what’s best for everyone.”
“Why do you hate me so much?”
He fell silent for a moment and then in an altered voice he said, “I don’t hate you. You merely see it as hate. But your thinking has been distorted by drink for so many years. . . . Isabelle, do you want me to recount how many times I asked you to get help?”
Her lips felt frozen. She could barely get the words out to say, “I deserve a relationship with my sons. They deserve a relationship with their mother. There’s a bond between a mother and her children that can’t be broken.”
“They have a mother. I don’t want to hurt you, Isabelle, but—”
“Don’t you? What else is this supposed to be?”
“—you know it’s the truth. Sandra has been a mother to them since they were less than two years old. You share a blood tie with them, but nothing more. That was the choice you made: to let everything save the blood tie go. If that’s painful for you now, then all I can say is that this is something you might have considered when we divorced. I’m not to blame that you didn’t.”
“You bastard.” She found it so difficult to speak that she wanted to rip the words from her own throat. “You’ll never have done with punishing me, will you?”
“You’re punishing yourself. But only you know why. I haven’t a clue.”
“Is that Mummy? Is it Mummy?”
Isabelle heard the words from the background and cried out, “She lied to me! Let me talk to them!”
“You’re not in any condition to talk to either of the boys. When you are, you can ring again, and if they’re here I’ll let you speak to them both. I’m ringing off now, Isabelle. We’ve the school run to do.”
She was left with her mobile in her hand and black silence coming out of it. Her nerves were screaming at her to do something. Her mind was doing much the same. Her heart was pounding and her palms itched so badly that she wanted to claw the flesh till all that was left was bones.
She picked up the bottle of vodka. She saw how badly her hand was shaking. Her fury was demanding that she act. She knew that while her options for acting were limited in this moment, a drink could at least stop the shaking and stop the terrible itching of her palms. But she put the bottle back on the bedside table. Staring at it, she counted the reasons: want, need, desire, hunger, safety, stillness, peace, oblivion. She quaked for it. She yearned for it as if it were a lover whose touch could lift her away from herself. After the two phone calls she’d just endured, she deserved this as well as needed it. She didn’t measure from the cap this time. She drank straight from the bottle.
LUDLOW
SHROPSHIRE
Isabelle encountered Peace on Earth enroute to breakfast. She was about to ask him to bring her a very large pot of coffee and one slice of toast when Barbara Havers popped out of the residents’ lounge, where she had apparently been lying in wait. She wore on her face an expression that Isabelle could have well done without. Clearly, she was champing at the bit.
She said, “Guv, a minute?” and did not wait for a reply. She headed towards the hotel’s front door and darted outside, casting a look over her shoulder that suggested she had something valuable to impart.
Isabelle saw nothing for it but to follow. Once outside, Havers led her towards the pavement. Across the street, a lone gardener was mowing the lawn that bordered the castle walls with a petrol-powered machine that sounded like a jet taking off. Isabelle longed for her coffee.
She noticed that clutched to her chest, Havers had the folders from the IPCC and DI Pajer. She launched into conversation in a tone of undue excitement, beginning with the announcement that she had a report to make and, she declared, one that suggested there was much more in Ludlow that wanted looking into.
“Indeed,” was Isabelle’s noncommittal response. She hoped Havers’s recitation would not take long.
It was, apparently, a case of yes indeedy-o. For Havers went on to talk about what she deemed as “crucial points of interest” that she had uncovered during the night. Only one of the two CCTV cameras on the police station’s exterior swivelled, she announced, while the other was in a fixed position. From reading the IPCC report another time, Havers had discovered that the complaints commission had taken note of this. She added that the IPCC had also reported that the nonswivelling camera—which was on the rear of the building—was not functional. This apparently was a monumental detail because while the sergeant was on her way to play with the camera at the front of the station, a police car driven by PCSO Gary Ruddock had pulled into the car park at the rear.
“And this is important for some reason?” Isabelle asked her. The jet engine lawn mower was working on her head. It had begun to pound. She needed coffee.
Apparently, this was important because of what the sergeant had witnessed: the PCSO and a young woman getting out of the car, having something of a stare-down, and then getting back into the car, which, by the way, Ruddock had parked in the deepest shadows of the police station’s car park. Havers added, “Far as I know, there’s only one reason why a bloke and a bird park in the dark and don’t get out of the car, guv.”
“But they did get out.”
“For ten seconds. But then they were back in and in is where they stayed. You ask me, on the night in question, that’s what Gary Ruddock got up to once he fetched Ian Druitt to the station. A little feel me-poke me-whatever in the car park with his girlfriend. Only it wasn’t filmed because the camera back there doesn’t work.”
“Are you truly suggesting that Ruddock fetched Druitt to the station, left the station, went off for a young woman whom he also fetched to the station, had some sort of encounter with her in the patrol car, drove her back to wherever, and then returned to the station? How could anyone possibly be that stupid?”
This seemed to be what the sergeant was waiting for. She said, “No. Not quite. I don’t think it happene
d that way.” With something of a flourish, she removed from one of the folders a detailed tourist map of the town. She beckoned Isabelle to follow her over to a wall that separated the hotel car park from its garden and, handing over the folders, she unfolded the map and said, “Look at this, guv,” a rather useless imperative since what else did she expect Isabelle to do? She pointed to a spot and said that here, in this location, was the police station, hardly startling news. Then she said, “And look here next. There’s a route anyone can take to get from the river up to the police station, guv. It’s more or less direct.”
She showed it to Isabelle: a curving thoroughfare called Weeping Cross Lane that took one north from Temeside to Lower Galdeford Street, where the police station sat at the corner of Townsend Close. Now, Havers pointed out, if there were CCTV cameras anywhere along that route—
Isabelle stopped her with, “This is getting wildly out of hand, Sergeant.” And when Havers merely looked at her blankly, Isabelle went on. “I have a feeling your next recommendation is going to be to have an actual search for those CCTV cameras. And if there are any, your next suggestion is going to be to have a look at all the recordings made on the night in question, should any be available all these months later. Why?”
“Because a young woman could have—”
“Sergeant, if a young woman is seen on film somewhere in Weeping Cross Lane, it can only suggest she was heading up from the river to meet Ruddock the night Druitt died. Surely you know as well as I that there’s absolutely nothing to prove it.”
The Punishment She Deserves Page 17