The Punishment She Deserves

by Elizabeth George

  “It costs us little enough to cooperate. I’ll ring her later.”

  “Look at you,” Havers said with a scowl as she shoved her mobile back into her bag. “D’you ever get tired of being the gent?”

  “It’s beat into one from childbirth, Sergeant. Ah. We appear to have arrived just in time.” He gestured towards the house, where the girl Ding had opened the front door. She wore a rucksack, and she headed straight for a bicycle. She fiddled with its lock, which appeared to be stiff. When they got closer to her, they could hear her muttering, “Oh, come on, come on.”

  “Would you like help?” Lynley enquired.

  The girl swung round. She did a back step at the sight of them. She said, “Finn’s not here.”

  “Which is fine,” Havers told her, “as you’re the person we want to have a word with.”

  The girl was instantly suspicious. Her gaze darted between them like a bird hopping between two branches.

  “I know Francie Adamucci put me into it, if that’s why you want to talk to me,” she said. “It might help you to know Francie’ll bonk anyone.”

  “This actually won’t take long,” Lynley told the girl. “And you’re right, by the way. Francie Adamucci did mention you. The PCSO confirmed her words, but we’d be interested in hearing your side of things.”

  “They’re both liars and I don’t have—”

  “Time. Right. Who does?” Havers asked.

  “I was going to say I don’t have to talk to you. Anyway, I’m expected at home.”

  “This would be the home where your parents are?” Havers went on. “This would be the place you don’t want Gary Ruddock carting you to?”

  “Who said that?” she demanded.

  “The man himself. He says it has to do with your problem.”

  “What problem?”

  “If you’ll allow us a few minutes, we’ll explain,” Lynley said.

  She stalked back to the door and shoved it open with some emphasis. She walked into the house but made certain they knew from her posture that she wasn’t intending to move an inch from the entry, although they could drag her into the sitting room should they choose to demonstrate the degree of police brutality she no doubt expected from the likes of them. She put her weight on one hip and her hand on the other. The stance said, “What?” better than she could have done.

  “We’ve more than one person who’s seen you with PCSO Ruddock,” Lynley began.

  She cut in at once with, “You’ve got more’n one person lying, then.”

  “We’re not here to ask you for particulars,” Lynley said.

  “Between you ’n’ me?” Havers put in, “we’d rather not know ’em. Top, bottom, whatever. Your secrets are safe.”

  “I never—”

  “Wrong. You did.”

  The girl looked close to tears, which seemed at odds with her defiance. There was something more going on here, Lynley thought. He said, “Ding, you’re not in trouble. But we have several people so far who’ve seen you with PCSO Ruddock, and Sergeant Havers here is one of them. What we want to know is whether you were with him in the patrol car on the night that the deacon—Ian Druitt—died at the police station. Whatever your relationship is with Gary Ruddock isn’t our concern, but—”

  Ding burst into tears. She covered her face with her hands. Within moments, she was weeping as if no power on earth could contain her grief. Havers murmured, “Bloody hell,” as Lynley went to the girl.

  “What’s happened, Ding?” he said to her quietly. “You must see that it’s time to tell us.”

  Havers decamped at once to the kitchen. The water ran. The kettle was filled. It was the English answer to everything, Lynley thought.

  Ding began to slide down the wall, but Lynley caught her. As her weeping turned to sobbing, he gently removed the rucksack from her back and put his arm around her shoulder. “You’re quite fine,” he said. “Is anyone else here?” And when she shook her head wordlessly, he said, “Were you with him?”

  “No . . .” She wailed the word.

  He led her in the direction of the kitchen, saying, “Ding, it’s down to you to help us understand—”

  “Yes, but no,” she cried. “No.”

  Havers had a chair out from the table. She’d found tea mugs and tea from their earlier visit and she had them ready. She seemed to understand where Lynley did not. She said, “You mean yes you’ve been with him, but no, not on the night that the deacon died?”

  The girl nodded. Havers handed her a kitchen towel at the same moment as Lynley was bringing out one of his pristine handkerchiefs. Ding took the kitchen towel and crushed it against her face.

  “I . . . don’t . . . want . . . ,” she said, and then she drew in a breath and went on with, “He knows. I don’t want . . . to go home.”

  “He told us you don’t want to go home to your parents,” Lynley said. “He said it’s to do with your drinking, that you don’t want your parents to know about it. He’s picked you up more than once amongst the bingers. Is that not the truth?”

  She wasn’t pretty when she wept. Hardly anyone was. Her skin became blotchy, her nose turned red, and her lips moved spasmodically. She managed to say, “It’s more than that. The rest of them don’t care what he says and they don’t need to, but I do, and it’s why it happens. It started with the bingeing and I said okay because if my mum knew how bad it was she would make me live at home not here and I couldn’t I couldn’t only I didn’t know why only now I do. He figured that. The first part. That I couldn’t. So he said we can have a deal you and me and here’s what it will take, at the police station in the car park, and I said I would do whatever because you don’t know how much I didn’t want to be at home so I did whatever and then he would take me home not to my parents but here to Temeside.”

  The water had boiled. Havers brought mugs to the table. Lynley was sorting through Ding’s declarations, one item at a time, but the sergeant made a leap that, perhaps, only a woman could make, considering what they’d heard. She said, “You performed sex favours for him when he caught you bingeing. If you hadn’t done, he would’ve carted you home to your parents drunk.”

  She nodded, weeping anew.

  “And the other girls?” Lynley asked.

  “Some. I don’t know. Not Francie, see, because she wouldn’t care pins what her parents said because she lives at home anyway and they don’t . . . Well, they travel lots and she does what she wants and they let her and they know they can’t . . . I don’t know . . . tie her up or something?”

  Lynley nodded. The girl had eye makeup down her cheeks and she’d even got some on her forehead as well and he had a sudden urge to clean off her skin, a desire that he knew had more to do with protection than anything else. He said, “But you’ve kept bingeing?”

  She shook her head. “Hardly ever but it’s not . . . It stopped mattering. To him, I mean. It ended up not having to do with bingeing at all. He . . . he picks me up when he’s decided I’ve been bingeing. Sometimes I’m walking back to Temeside from the library and he . . . There he is and I don’t want to go home and he knows it. I was afraid all the time when it started because it was like I’d finally escaped only I didn’t know what I’d escaped from anyway and I thought what’s it really matter when I’m doing these other blokes and I can’t live there I can’t.”

  “Can you be certain you weren’t with him the night Ian Druitt died?” Lynley asked. For if her claims about Ruddock were true, how could the girl actually know when she’d been with him and when she’d not, unless she’d kept some sort of record? Lynley gave her the exact date.

  “I wasn’t,” she said. “If someone was, it wasn’t me.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Havers asked.

  “That’s my mum’s birthday,” she said. “I was at home. In Much Wenlock. You c’n ask Francie or Chelsea ’cause that was b
efore Francie . . . We were friends then. They went home with me.”

  IRONBRIDGE

  SHROPSHIRE

  Yasmina didn’t bother with a shopping trolley because she didn’t need one. Inside the market, she picked up a basket instead. There would be three of them having dinner, but she couldn’t face preparing an actual meal so she planned to search for ready-made items that she could remove from containers and present to Tim and to Sati as if she’d made them herself.

  She looked at what was on offer. The difficulty was that she wasn’t hungry and that, for her, eating was now something she was doing for medicinal purposes only. Other than that, it was to set an example for Sati. See, Mummy is eating and you must also do so, darling.

  Quiche, she thought. Perhaps lasagna. Haddock and peas. Plaice and chips. It was just so difficult when one didn’t feel hunger.

  “It’s Dr. Lomax, isn’t it?”

  Yasmina looked up. An attractive woman with cornflower eyes and a tartan jacket over slim trousers was smiling tentatively at her. Yasmina frowned as she failed to place her.

  “It’s Selina Osborne,” she said. “Missa was my pupil in fourth form.”

  “Oh my goodness, yes. Of course,” Yasmina said, although the truth was she couldn’t remember the woman’s face at all. “I didn’t recognise you at first.”

  “It’s my hair,” she said. “New colour, new style. How are you? I imagine you’re quite pleased and excited about Missa and Justin.”

  Yasmina couldn’t track this. Excited would be the last descriptive term she’d use when it came to her frame of mind. “I’m not quite certain . . . ?”

  Selina gave a light laugh. “Oh. Sorry. I saw the announcement in the registry office when Toby and I went to post our own engagement.” She showed her ring, blushing as she did so. “It’s second time round for us both so I really didn’t want a ring, but he insisted. We’re planning on just the registry office, but I expect you’ve got something else in mind for Missa and Justin, haven’t you. I remember them both so well, especially Justin with that lovely face of his always so serious and all that hair falling into his eyes. One could tell from the first that it was only Missa he would ever care for. And now here they are posting the banns for their marriage.” She laughed again and placed her hand on her chest, adding, “I can’t tell you how old that makes me feel.”

  Yasmina nodded. She said faintly, “Oh yes. I expect it does.”

  “Do give them my best, won’t you? Tell her Mrs. Osborne—soon to be Mrs. Joyce—sends her very good wishes.”

  “I will indeed,” Yasmina said.

  When Selina Osborne walked off, happily pushing her trolley, Yasmina turned to the foodstuff and blindly picked up packages, not caring what they were. She wanted to believe there was some mistake. She couldn’t accept that things had come to this when all along she had recognised the likelihood of things coming exactly to this. Timothy had predicted it, Rabiah had tried in her way to warn against it, but Yasmina had not wanted to hear.

  There was nothing for it but to turn to the one person who truly might be able to see the ludicrousness of an early marriage between Justin and Missa, the one person who surely would have a concern equal to her own. So she carried her selections to the till and after she’d made the purchase, she drove to the Museum of the Gorge.

  The museum stood on the bank of the River Severn. It was a former foundry whose original architect had disguised the massive building’s use by including in its brick construction a series of gables, a crenellated roofline at the east and west ends, and smokestacks disguised with additional crenellation to suggest a castle rather than an ironworks. Additionally, facing in the direction of Ironbridge proper, a large bay with Perpendicular diamond-paned windows gave the building a churchlike appearance, as if the architect hadn’t quite been able to decide what would work best to assure the townspeople that neither the air they breathed nor the water they drank was of questionable nature as a result of having a foundry in their immediate vicinity. The railway tracks leading directly into the building defeated its disguise, however, as did its position just above the river and near enough to it to have been flooded so many times that its continued existence was something of a miracle.

  It was minutes from the closing hour, and there were only three vehicles in the car park. Yasmina went inside and asked the ticket seller for Linda Goodayle, since Justin’s mum, as Yasmina well knew, was the director of the museum. She also knew that it was a source of pride to the Goodayle clan that Linda had begun as a ticket seller years earlier, when the museum was a mere shadow of the impressive educational facility it was today. She’d risen through the ranks exactly as her husband had done at Blists Hill Victorian Town. Despite their lack of university degrees or even any form of college, they were doers, movers, and shakers, the Goodayles.

  After a moment on the phone, the ticket seller told her that the museum’s director was finishing a few things up and would be with her presently. She could have a look round if she wished. There was a new diorama that might be of interest. Yasmina said that she would wait outside enjoying the afternoon sun. The ticket seller gave an indifferent shrug and went back to whatever she’d been doing on her computer.

  Outside, Yasmina walked to the wall at the edge of the car park. The river was at a healthy level, she saw, its lower banks knotted with bluebells that tangled with golden saxifrage. As the bank climbed upwards, wild grasses grew thickly, among which wolfsbane raised its hooded heads. Opposite where she stood, willows and alders offered their fresh spring leaves to the sunlight. May had always been her favourite month of the year. But this particular May was one she wished she had experienced in a coma.

  “Dr. Lomax . . . ?”

  Yasmina turned. She recognised Linda Goodayle, of course, as they’d known each other for years. She also recognised what it meant that Linda had not used her given name. She said, “Please. Yasmina. May I speak with you, Linda? It’s urgent.”

  Linda observed her with an expression that seemed devoid of all sentiment. She said, “Yeah. I expect it is. Your lot don’t much like su’prises.”

  Yasmina wasn’t fool enough to think there was nothing behind Linda’s choice of distinct accent. She was using it as an implication from which Yasmina was meant to infer, Our backgrounds are different and don’t I know how you feel about mine.

  Yasmina felt her teeth dig into her lips. This wasn’t how they were meant to begin. Somehow, Linda Goodayle had quickly managed to get the upper hand.

  “But there’s always su’prises in life, innit?” Linda dug round in her bag and brought out a packet of chewing gum. It was, Yasmina saw, a nicotine gum of the sort people used when they were trying to give up smoking. She realised that she hadn’t known Linda smoked in the first place, and she wondered if this lack of knowledge on her part marked her as a social snob.

  “So this speaking you want to do, Yasmina. It’s ’bout my Justin, innit?” Linda popped a piece of the gum into her mouth and shoved its wrapper into the pocket of the hip-length cardigan she was wearing. “What I mean, ’course, is my Justin and your Missa. Tha’s why you’ve stopped to have a little word with me.”

  Please oh please stop speaking like that, was what Yasmina wanted to say, because of the disadvantage Linda was causing her. But she knew that going in that direction would result in a conversation about class and any social differences that existed between their respective children and to whatever Linda believed that Yasmina thought about those differences. But the matter between them had nothing to do with class, although the Goodayles would probably never think that was the case.

  “You must know they’ve registered to marry,” Yasmina said. “The banns are posted.”

  Linda’s face hardened at this direct approach. “Not living under a rock like some people, happens I do know,” she said. “Got to say that I did wonder how long it would take you to get the information,
as I don’t see you running to the registry office every day to keep tabs on the goings-on round here. But you managed it quick enough.”

  “One of their former teachers told me just now. She wanted to congratulate me.”

  “I bet that one su’prised you, eh? You must’ve thought condolences were more the order of things.”

  “Linda, please. I know it’s what they want. I know it’s . . . It seems to me it’s what everyone wants.” Linda opened her mouth to answer this, but Yasmina went quickly on, saying, “And I’m not opposed to it.”

  “Tha’s not what I’ve heard.”

  “It’s only that I don’t wish them to marry so young. When people are too young and they marry—”

  “You must think I’m thick.” Linda popped her gum loudly. That had to be deliberate, like her accent, like her choice of words. When she went on, however, she had utterly dropped the working-class game she was playing. She said, “I expect you think dimness runs in our family. This bit . . . whatever it is that you claim to feel or believe . . . It has nothing to do with their ages. It would be the same for you if Justin was twenty-eight and Missa was twenty-six. It’s really to do with what you think of Justin.”

  “That’s not true. He’s a wonderful boy. He’s always been important to our family and to Missa. My objections—”

  “That’s what this is, isn’t it? Your objections. We’re down to it now. Here comes the list.”

  “I’ve never denied wanting Missa to attend university,” Yasmina said. “She has a very good brain—”

  “Which Justin does not, according to you?”

  “—and I would be remiss if I didn’t encourage her to use it. Just as you would have been remiss not to encourage Justin as you did. He told me about that when he showed me what he’s been doing with building those little . . . those little houses of his.”