The Punishment She Deserves

by Elizabeth George

  She asked Ruddock how much time had elapsed between the alteration of the camera’s position and the anonymous phone call. He examined the images connected to both and he told her six days. She said, “So our boy—or girl, for that matter—knew that the camera swivelled and did the job days in advance. That way anyone—like me—looking at the images from the phone call night would think the camera had always been looking out towards the street and not at the door where the intercom is.” She pointed to the image frozen on the screen. “Shimmy along the station’s wall once the camera’s been moved to take in the steps up from the pavement and you’re not on camera at all.”

  “But you would be filmed moving the camera’s position whenever you moved it,” he pointed out. “Unless . . .”

  Obviously, the bloke was no dummy. He’d twigged that whoever had moved the camera had to have done it when it was completely nonfunctional. The only way to make it so was from inside the station. And it had to have been done quickly because the lapse during which the image was black had to be virtually unnoticeable were someone skimming back through the images to see if someone had been caught on camera making the anonymous call. Anyone doing the skimming would have seen that on the night of the phone call the camera was documenting the approach to the station from the pavement. It was only by going back six days in the images that one could see the camera’s original position in addition to the moment of no image at all, during which that position had been altered.

  Ruddock’s consternation was playing out on his face. Barbara said, “This call to 999 about Druitt? It could’ve been made from anywhere, you know, and still have been anonymous. Someone wouldn’t want to use their home phone or their mobile, ’course, but a call box somewhere? Providing there was no CCTV nearby? That would be no problemo.”

  “So why use the intercom?” he asked. “The whole bit with moving the camera. Why go to the trouble?”

  She examined him. He examined her. It took him only a moment. “’Cause it needed to be made from the station,” he murmured. “That was the only sure way to make me look guilty.”

  “Just that, yeah. So what’s your enemy list look like, Gary?”

  “Jesus. I didn’t think I had one.”

  She thought about what she’d seen of his use of the car park at night, and she also considered asking him about the lady he was with back there. But she decided to hold that on another burner of the cooktop and instead she said, “In my experience, everyone has at least one.”

  He turned back to the image and studied it. Then he glanced at her. “But why not make the phone call straightaway once the camera was moved? Or why not move it back into position at some point?”

  “Could be the mover got interrupted and didn’t have time then. Could be after moving it, he wanted to make sure that a few days passed so that someone checking the film would think—without looking back far enough—that the camera had always been in the position it was in the night the phone call was made. Could also be the usual one, though.”

  “What’s that, then?” he asked her.

  She shrugged. “No one thinks of everything when it comes to a crime.”

  LUDLOW

  SHROPSHIRE

  When Isabelle first saw Finnegan Freeman, she hoped that he didn’t represent what she had to look forward to as a mother of two boys, regardless of who had custody of them. He wore his hair in a style that featured dreadlocks on the right and a shaved skull on the left. This latter allowed the display of a disturbing tattoo showing a wild-looking woman screaming, complete with uvula displayed as well as overlong canines, one of which dripped blood.

  The rest of Finnegan wasn’t a picture, either. His clothes weren’t entirely objectionable although they favoured excessively tattered jeans and an extremely threadbare flannel shirt. He wore sandals—perhaps in a bow to the spring weather—but his black-painted toenails did not delight. On his right ankle was a piece of braided leather, and a bulbous knot of the same material formed an earring that looked like an excrescence on his left lobe. He actually might not have been a bad-looking young man, but taken as a whole, he was something that might have been created by Munch.

  She’d found him in what went for the sitting room of a house in Temeside. It sat at the end of a terrace of Edwardian vintage, if the tiles decorating the front porch were anything to go by. They featured sunflowers backed by dark green, a colour repeated on the front door of the establishment. The tiles had somehow remained in good condition. The same could not have been said of the door, which had been bashed repeatedly, possibly by careless removal men, and to which various transfers had been applied over time, most having apparently been placed by a fan of The Wizard of Oz in general and the flying monkeys in particular.

  Isabelle had gained entrance to the house by helping herself to the doorknob upon a shout from within of, “It’s unlocked, whoever you are.” She found the owner of the shout in the sitting room. He was entertaining himself with a graphic novel while dining on what seemed to be a burrito, and he was doing so hunched over a coffee table of uncertain vintage and seated on a long chintz-covered sofa that looked to have come from someone’s great-grandmother’s attic. The rest of the room’s furniture consisted of three overlarge beanbags, one ladder-back chair, a floor lamp, a television, and a three-bar electric fire, the flex of which suggested real fire was imminent should it ever be used. It hadn’t been, if the fireplace tools and the blackened condition of the small fireplace itself and its surrounding wall were anything to go by. A large sign on the mantel forbade the fireplace’s use, but that had obviously been a small matter easily ignored by the house’s inhabitants.

  Finnegan Freeman had made it clear that indeed he was Finnegan Freeman when Isabelle enquired as to that person’s whereabouts. He’d said, “Who wants to know and why?” and when she’d told him that the who of it was New Scotland Yard and the why of it was Ian Druitt, he was more than happy to say, “It’s me, then,” and he added, “My mum rang you, di’n’t she?”

  Isabelle said, “Why would your mother be ringing New Scotland Yard?”

  “She’s waiting for me to be enough out of order so she c’n drag me back home.”

  “Are you frequently out of order, then?”

  He grinned and took in an enormous mouthful of burrito. He said while masticating, “She hates me having fun. It’s just how she is.”

  Isabelle reassured him that his mother hadn’t rung New Scotland Yard and that even had she done so, it wasn’t within the purview of the Metropolitan Police to chase down misbehaving young people at the request of their parents.

  He said, “Not misbehaving. Just having a bit of fun. She calls it me being defiant. Ha. I could show her defiance, I could, but she’d prob’ly have a stroke.”

  “I see.” Isabelle told him then that Ian Druitt’s death in the police station was what had brought her and another detective from the Met to fair Ludlow to engage in a look-see at the conclusions that had been arrived at by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

  At this, the young man set his burrito on the kitchen towel he’d been using as a plate. He eyed her as if measuring the level of her sincerity. Isabelle had the odd sensation of being evaluated by someone who was quite a bit more than his appearance and manner of speech indicated.

  He said, “What’ve I got to do with that, then?”

  “We found your name amongst his belongings. It heads the list of members of a children’s club here in town. As yours was the only name without what appeared to be the accompanying names of parents, we assumed you were the young man who assisted Mr. Druitt.”

  “Quite a gumshoe, eh?” he said.

  “So you did assist him. What did that consist of?”

  Finnegan seemed, at that moment, to remember something vaguely resembling manners, for he slid along the sofa, patted one of its numerous lumps, and said, “Park it, ’f you want,” by w
hich she assumed he was extending an invitation for her to sit. She did so although the proximity to him brought with it an attendant odour of dirty socks, which was rather odd as he wasn’t wearing any. She waited for illumination on the topic of what he did for Druitt’s club.

  He said, “I helped ’em with their school prep. I helped out with equipment for sport. I showed ’em how to use the Internet for school projects and the like. We did country walks sometimes. ’N I gave demonstrations.”

  “Demonstrations?” Isabelle hoped his demonstrations did not touch upon personal grooming or the world of fashion.

  He held up his hands. They were, she saw, oddly small for someone his size. He said, “Karate. Kids always love that stuff.”

  “That makes you quite strong, I assume,” Isabelle noted.

  He shot her a look that said he knew where she was heading. “No crime being strong, far ’s I know.”

  “Of course,” Isabelle agreed. She shifted to Druitt, asking Finnegan’s assessment of him. What was he like? she wanted to know.

  “That’s easy enough,” Finnegan replied. “What he wasn’t like was a bloke who killed himself, which’s what I been saying to anyone who’ll listen, only no one’s been in’erested in my opinion.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Finnegan.”

  “Finn,” he told her.

  “Sorry. Finn. I’ve come to hear your opinion.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you worked with him at the children’s club.”

  “You want to know did he mess about the young ones, that’s what this is. You want to know did he plaster himself ’cause he was gonna get grilled ’bout that.”

  “I want to know whatever you care to tell me. Your opinion would be welcome on any matter related to Mr. Druitt.”

  “You sound like my mum.”

  “I have children of my own. Motherspeak gets into the blood. Do you have an opinion about Mr. Druitt?”

  “I do,” he said. “This is it: He was a good bloke. He cared ’bout every one of those kids in the club. Most of that lot? They got sent there for what he could do for them, which was, let me tell you, buckets more ’n their parents were doing. I never saw him—not once, mind—do a single thing to any little kid except maybe, ’n I’m only saying maybe since I never saw anything and it’s not like I remember even this, ’cept maybe giving a little one a pat on the shoulder or the head or the like. Other ’n that, he didn’t do a single thing. He was just nice to ’em. He was great.”

  She said, “I understand.”

  He huffed. “Good.”

  She went on with, “But child molestation is a process of seduction that generally unfolds over time. A child is groomed by his molester, positioning him to accept the molestation as part of the relationship.”

  Finnegan had reached for his burrito during his recitation, but now he threw it onto the kitchen towel with enough force that the towel slid across the coffee table and dumped the burrito onto the fitted carpet. This looked like something that hadn’t been hoovered in a generation or two, so the resulting splat of beans, cheese, and whatever was of little matter. He said, “Did you even hear me?”

  “I did. Of course. But, Finnegan, a man—”

  “Finn!” he cried. “It’s Finn Finn Finn!”

  “Yes. Sorry. Finn. A man gets away with acts of abuse or molestation because he seems exactly as Mr. Druitt has been described: gentle, caring, committed, and all the rest. If he doesn’t seem like that to prospective victims and their families—even to his mates—then he would never get on as an active paedophile in the first place. But I expect you know all this.”

  “What I know,” he said, “is that he never stepped out of order wiff any ’f those little kids. They would’ve come to me if he did.”

  “And what about you?” she asked him.

  He went instantly red. “I was never out of order wiff those kids! Are you accusing me of—”

  “Sorry, no,” Isabelle said, although she did wonder what Sergeant Havers might have dragged out of her Lynley-inspired Shakespearean knowledge to address the young man’s reaction, not to mention his occasional lapse into some interesting form of guess-my-social-class lingo, as if he couldn’t quite decide from which stratum of society he had sprung. “I was asking if Mr. Druitt was ever out of order with you.”

  If anything, Finnegan became redder still. “You listen if you can. He went out of his way to be nice to everyone. ’Specially to kids who were bullied. He knew what it was like, and he taught kids that bullies’re people who need to feel big and the only way to stop their bullying is to take them on. Wiff words or wiff fists. Whatever it takes.”

  “Is that why you learned karate?”

  “My dad put me onto it. I was bullied, yeah. But first time I showed what I could do? That put an end to that. And doing stuff to a kid like you’re accusing Ian of doing . . . ? It’s just another way to bully and Ian di’n’t bully. He knew what it was like.”

  “So he was bullied,” Isabelle said. “Or do you mean that he was sexually abused as a child? Did he reveal that to you?”

  “No way!” Finnegan fairly shrieked the words.

  “Which?” she said. “The revelation to you or the sexual abuse?”

  “Both! And if you think he was and if you think he passed it on to the little ones, just ask ’em. You ask every one of ’em. You’ll see that there’s nuffink in it that he s’posedly messed wiff little kids.”

  When he paused for breath, the noise of someone clomping down the stairs sounded. A girl appeared in the doorway to the sitting room. She said, “Hey, Finn, I’m off to—” and then stopped at the sight of Isabelle. She switched to, “Sorry. I didn’t know anyone else was here.”

  Isabelle found that difficult to believe since Finnegan’s voice had been raised to a volume that couldn’t have gone unnoticed. The rooms of the house were hardly soundproof.

  The girl stepped into the room, as if courteously waiting for an introduction. She was college girl in appearance, with long hair that looked professionally streaked with blonde, petite but possessing a womanly body. She said, “I’m Dena Donaldson, but everyone calls me Ding.”

  Finnegan said, “Mind you be careful who you’re introducing yourself to. This is a copper. All the way from Scotland Yard to wring the truth out of me.”

  Ding took in Isabelle much the way that Isabelle had taken her in. She said, “But you don’t wear a uniform?” as if this were a critical detail.

  “She’s a detective,” Finnegan told her. “You watch telly, right? They don’t wear uniforms on telly. She’s here about Ian.”

  “Mr. Druitt?”

  “Any other Ian a copper might want to talk to me about? You’ve gone a bit thick. Drink too much last night?”

  The girl didn’t reply to this. Instead, she shrugged out of her rucksack and she placed it on the floor. She was wearing a bright fuchsia skirt that she smoothed in a gesture that might have been nervous or might have been intended to be read as nervous, and she adjusted the scarf that she’d fashioned as a cummerbund. Its tight print of clouds and flowers picked up the colour of the skirt along with the grey of her T-shirt.

  Isabelle said, “Did you know Mr. Druitt?”

  The girl looked startled. Her gaze darted from Finnegan to the fireplace to Isabelle. “How?” she asked.

  “How would you have known him?” Isabelle clarified. “Or in what manner did you know him?”

  “I’m not . . . I don’t exactly . . . If you mean—”

  “For Christ sake, Ding. Spit it out.” Finnegan sounded like someone who knew the girl was buying time.

  “I only heard about him,” she told Isabelle. “From Finn mostly.”

  “Who else?”

  “D’you mean who else did I know?”

  “No.” Isabelle found that, once again, her head had be
gun to pound. She was going to have to do something about it, soon. “You said ‘Finn mostly’ in reference to hearing about Mr. Druitt. From whom else did you hear about him?”

  “Oh!” Ding crossed her arms beneath her breasts, a movement that made them more prominent. It had always left Isabelle incredulous when women did this sort of thing, suggesting that they’d made no progress at all as a sex. Flash some grapefruit, and one ruled the world. “I expect it was all from Finn. I don’t think Brutus knew him.”

  “Brutus?” Isabelle said. “Is he someone who lives here as well?”

  “Bruce Castle,” Ding said. “Everyone calls him Brutus. It’s . . . well . . . sort of a joke.”

  “’Cos he’s a half pint,” Finnegan said shortly.

  “Like a boy?” Isabelle asked. “I mean, in size. Is he more like a boy?”

  Finnegan took clear exception to this. “Ian didn’t do nothing to anyone here or anywhere!” he declared hotly at the same moment as Ding said, “Brutus wouldn’t’ve done . . . I mean, he wouldn’t’ve let anyone mess him about, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “You know about the accusation of paedophilia, do you?”

  “Yes. Well, yes.” Ding sent a nervous glance in Finnegan’s direction. “Everyone knows. I think Finn told me. Or maybe I heard Finn going at it on the phone with his mum. Maybe that was it. Is that it, Finn? Would that be how I found out? Or did I read it somewhere?”

  “Hell if I know.” Of a sudden, Finn sounded bored, perhaps determinedly so.

  “D’you overhear a great deal in this house?” Isabelle asked the girl.

  “It’s smallish,” Ding pointed out. “So one hears. . . . You don’t even have to try, really. Which is why, you see . . . I mean it’s not like Mr. Druitt visited here. We didn’t really ever know him. By that, I mean Brutus and me. We didn’t. It wasn’t the same for Finn, of course.”

  “I’m not entirely sure what you’d like me to infer,” Isabelle said.

  “Infer? Nothing! Only that we don’t have much to add anywhere. Me and Brutus, that is. I can’t say about Finn.”