The Punishment She Deserves

by Elizabeth George

  “That’s not under discussion.”

  “Sir?”

  Hillier leaned across the desk, a move that Barbara found distinctly unnerving. It was an indication that this was going to be a just-us-boys moment between them and what she knew beyond anything in her universe was that she and Hillier were not just-us anything. He said, “I’m going to ask you something directly, and I want you to answer me directly. Is that clear?”

  Christ, was it ever. Barbara nodded.

  “Good. It’s my belief that the DCS was drinking to excess in Ludlow. It’s my belief that she was altogether drunk on occasion. Considering everything that’s gone on since her return from Shropshire, I want you to confirm her Ludlow behaviour before I decide what’s to be done.”

  Barbara hadn’t expected to be presented with such a moment of praise God and sing hallelujah. The opportunity before her would do more than merely benefit herself. It would benefit the entire department. She’d be able to drink and dine on it for years. But . . .

  She frowned. She nodded. She hoped her expression telegraphed very deep thinking. And then she said, “As far as I know, the DCS didn’t drink at all, sir.”

  Hillier favoured her another hawklike examination before he said, “Are you certain of that?”

  She knew his question had more than one meaning, but she also knew there was only one answer. “As I ever could be,” she said.

  VICTORIA STREET

  LONDON

  Back at her desk, Barbara had little enough time before her phone rang. She was loath to answer it, but had no choice. It turned out to be Dorothea Harriman placing the call. As Barbara heard Dee’s voice, she realised she should have expected to hear from her. Tonight was, after all, their regular tap-dancing lesson and Dee would want to lay their plans.

  So after their hellos, Barbara sought to head her elsewhere. “I’m begging off tonight, Dee. I need a rest.”

  “Tonight?” was Dee’s unexpected reply. “Oh! You mean Southall. No matter. I’ll catch you up tomorrow. In fact, I’ll come to you. If we move your kitchen table outside, we’ll have room enough. Umaymah’s off the team, by the way. She’s dropped the class entirely. Pregnant. There you have it. I’ve already adjusted the choreography.”

  “Dee—”

  “Anyway, that’s not why I’m ringing. You’re wanted.”

  “I’ve just been in Tower Block.”

  “It’s the DCS asking for you.” And in a lower voice, “Word to the wise. You might want to come at once. She looks feather-ruffled and Detective Inspector Lynley just had one of those closed-door meetings with her that never go well.”

  So Barbara went as ordered. She’d not been alone with Isabelle Ardery since just after Ludlow and she would have preferred not to be alone with her now. But she saw no recourse.

  Ardery was seated when Barbara walked into her office. Her only instructions were to close the door and to sit, neither of which sounded like particularly happy activities. But Barbara did as requested and found herself across an expanse of Ardery’s desk. What she noted first was that it was beyond its normal orderly condition. It looked almost polished. What she noted second was Ardery’s stillness. She sat with her hands clasped, unsmiling as Barbara joined her.

  “DI Lynley tells me that you had a good result in Shropshire,” she said. “Everything sewn up nicely, packaged, and delivered to Mr. Druitt.”

  Barbara sensed the DCS’s hostility. She wasn’t at all sure how to go at this, so she said, “Once we understood about the stole, guv . . . ? Its colour and all the rest . . . ? I mean, once you rang the inspector to tell him—”

  “Don’t patronise me, Sergeant. I fully understand how much of an impediment I was to the investigation. I’ve been told you’ve spoken to the assistant commissioner privately, by the way.”

  Barbara said quickly, “Right. I did, guv. He wanted me to stay behind in order to ask me—”

  “Stop right there. At once.”

  Barbara gulped at Ardery’s tone. Her sweat glands began working overtime.

  Ardery opened one of the side drawers in her desk. From it, she took out what Barbara recognised immediately: the folder containing her transfer paperwork.

  Barbara said, “But guv, guv. Please, can I just say—”

  “Did I not tell you to stop?” Ardery snapped. She opened the folder. She pushed the paperwork across the desk.

  “But I . . . I did every single . . . I don’t . . . Please.”

  “Take it,” Ardery said.

  “But—”

  “Take it. I’m not asking you to sign the forms, Sergeant Havers. I’m telling you to take the forms. I’m giving them to you. Do you understand me? Do with them what you will.”

  “What? Do you mean . . . ?”

  “I mean take them.”

  Barbara looked at paperwork. She looked at Ardery. “I don’t . . . Guv, don’t you want to know what Hillier wanted to—”

  “I do not.”

  “But if I take the paperwork, d’you mean then I can . . . what?”

  “Barbara. I meant what I said. I always mean what I say. Take the paperwork and do what you will with it.”

  Barbara reached for it. She kept her movements slow. It seemed to her that at any moment Ardery would fall over laughing at how she’d duped the ignoramus sitting opposite her. But that didn’t happen. Barbara eased the documents onto her lap. She waited for more. There was nothing. She got to her feet.

  She said, “Ta, guv.” And when Ardery nodded, she headed for the door. But there she paused and said, “Can I ask . . . Did the inspector—”

  “This has nothing to do with Inspector Lynley,” Ardery said. “This—just now—is between the two of us alone.”

  VICTORIA STREET

  LONDON

  When the call from the assistant commissioner came, Isabelle was ready for it. She’d made the necessary arrangements, and she’d spoken to Bob. Her former husband had given her an informal reassurance and a formal blessing, both of which she was going to have to depend upon since there was nothing put into writing. Having finished up what needed to be finished up, then, what had remained was waiting for the phone to ring with Judi MacIntosh on the line, telling her that Hillier was ready to see her.

  She gathered her belongings, chagrined by the paucity of them. They consisted of a photo of the twins, a photo of herself with the twins, a coffee cup, and ten airline bottles of vodka. Everything fit easily into her briefcase, which in other circumstances would have held reports on activities from the various investigators under her command. She took up her shoulder bag as well, and headed for the doorway. There she paused for a final look.

  Odd, she thought. It was only a room in a building, wasn’t it? She’d given it—and rooms exactly like it—too much significance over too many years.

  She switched off the overhead lights, and she closed the door. She was lucky in that the hour was late and consequently there was no one nearby to see her. She could do without questions at the moment.

  In Tower Block she went to Hillier’s office, where the door stood open in anticipation of her arrival. Judi MacIntosh had left for the day, and Isabelle could see Hillier sitting at his desk, waiting for her. She was struck by the similarity: between his position behind the desk and what had been her position behind the desk when she had her brief meeting with Sergeant Havers. Like her, Hillier sat with hands folded. Unlike her, he played a pencil between his fingers.

  When she entered, he told her to sit. She told him that she preferred to stand. He nodded. He did not rise to join her.

  She said to him, “I wish I could tell you that meetings alone would be enough, sir. If I believed that, I would go to them daily. Twice daily if necessary. I’ve never been to one—although I’ve thought about it now and again—but what I know from where I am just now and what it’s done to me physically, I�
�m going to need a supervised withdrawal. I mean a medically supervised withdrawal. I’ve found a programme. They say six weeks. They can take me at once.”

  “Where?” he asked her.

  “Isle of Wight. It’s a clinic and a recovery centre. First is detox and then . . . well, then there’s recovery. They expect detox will take a week.”

  “And recovery?”

  “A lifetime. What I mean is that no one actually recovers. One just learns the skills to cope.”

  “With . . . ?”

  “The need first and what drives the need second. So after detox—which deals with the physical part of it—there’re five weeks of meetings and analyses and whatnot. After that, then, there are daily meetings. Morning, afternoon, night. It doesn’t matter. They’re everywhere in London and one can go to as many as one wishes.”

  Hillier nodded. He set the pencil to one side, but he kept his fingers on it and with one hand he rolled it against the top of his desk.

  She said, “I’d like to swear to you that I can do this, sir. I’d like to tell you there will never be another occurrence. But the truth is, I don’t know that.”

  “And is that meant to set my mind at rest?”

  “It’s only to tell you what I understand just at this moment.” She did sit, then. She put her briefcase on the floor, but she kept her shoulder bag on her lap. “I’ve told myself before now that I can stop. I’ve done it, too. A month here, two months there, just to prove to myself that it doesn’t own me. But the reality is that it’s owned me for years.”

  He nodded again. She hadn’t expected praise from the man, especially as she wasn’t owed any. But she wanted something from him, and wasn’t it a howling good joke that what she wanted from David Hillier was a form of humanity that she herself had been incapable of showing anyone for more years than she wanted to think about. It would be a humanity that demonstrated understanding or compassion or forgiveness or anything save the silence that now stretched between them.

  She said, “I’m hoping for a leave of absence, sir. If I knew my job was waiting for me at the end of all this . . . It’s that I’d have a light at the end of the tunnel. That wouldn’t make it easier. Nothing about this is going to be easy. But it would give me . . . perhaps . . . a goal.”

  He rose. He walked to his bank of windows. June was coming fast upon them with its notoriously unpredictable weather, and the rain had begun to fall. Just now it speckled the windows. Another few minutes and it would streak them.

  Without turning, Hillier said, “I wouldn’t have given you the position of DCS had Lynley been willing to take it on. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “I also wouldn’t have given you the position had I not believed you can do the job. I still believe that, by the way. Not as you are now, but as you might be.”

  Isabelle said nothing. She was gratified to hear what he’d said, but he hadn’t said it all, and so she waited.

  He turned from the window and took his time about observing her, about returning to his desk, about sitting and folding his hands again.

  “Granted,” he finally said. “Conquer your demons first, and then you and I will talk about what comes next for you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “Now.”

  “Then God’s speed.”

  She offered him the only kind of smile she could manage, which was faltering at best. She picked up her briefcase, bid him farewell, and walked to the doorway, where his words stopped her.

  “Sergeant Havers said nothing, by the way. You ought to know that. I did ask her, but she wouldn’t do it. Throw you to the wolves, I mean. She didn’t even venture near it.”

  “Tommy said she wouldn’t,” she replied. And then because it was the truth and she owed the truth to everyone, “She’s a good officer, sir. Bloody infuriating most of the time, admittedly, but very good all the same.”

  Hillier sighed. “Would that political life were not so difficult, eh?”

  “Sir?”

  “How I wish she were completely inept, but that will never be the case. Nor will it be the case for Lynley, and even on his best days he’s only marginally less infuriating than Havers.”

  She smiled then, and she found it easy. As did she find her final words to Hillier: “I’d never disagree with that, sir, but it has to be said: They get the job done.”

  6 JULY

  SOUTHALL

  LONDON

  You aren’t actually expecting Barbara to forgive you for this, are you?” Daidre asked him. “I know very well she told you and everyone else that this event was not to be attended by anyone who knows her.”

  “Barbara Havers will thank me in the long run. In the short term, she’ll be furious, of course. But given time, all that will change.”

  “You’re mad,” Daidre noted.

  “The wind, hawks, handsaws, and all the rest,” was his reply. He cast a look at her in the passenger seat of the Healey Elliott. “I’m quite glad you’re back in London, Daidre.”

  She hadn’t been gone as long this time round, but during the last six weeks she’d been in and out of town, down to Cornwall and back again in a series of journeys that had eaten up virtually all of her free time. He’d protested when she would hear nothing of his accompanying her. This was her family, not his, she explained. So this was her problem as well.

  Her birth mother had died, the miracle cure the woman hoped for denied her as it was denied so many others in her condition. The death had been a long one, made excruciating not only by her beliefs but also by the conditions in which she, her husband, and their two other adult children lived. Towards the end, she had still refused to be taken to hospital or, for that matter, to hospice. God would serve the purpose of handing her the cure she was intent upon.

  Once the poor woman had passed, the issue had become Daidre’s siblings and her father and the question of what to do with them, for them, and about them. Here, too, Daidre declined Lynley’s assistance in any form it might take. To his protest of “What are we to each other then, you and I?” she replied, “What I must do bears no relationship to you and me, to us, to the whatever-it-is we share. As I don’t intrude upon your family, Tommy, I ask you not to intrude upon mine.”

  But of course, he wanted her to intrude upon his family. Indeed, he’d been quite forthright in the matter of the two of them showing their faces at Howenstow so that she might be introduced to his brother, sister, mother, and niece. Daidre had dodged that bullet for quite long enough.

  He’d assumed that at some point she would actually want to come to his family’s home because she had lost her own small cottage in Polcare Cove once she made the decision that Goron and Gwynder Udy—the adult twins who were her siblings—would leave the caravan that their father refused to abandon, believing against years of evidence to the contrary that he could achieve riches through the expedient of tin streaming. They would take up permanent residence in their elder sister’s isolated retreat, a small cottage that had been Daidre’s off-duty refuge during her employment at Bristol’s zoo. As he knew, the cottage was large enough, she’d told Lynley. A bedroom for each of the twins and they could share the bathroom.

  To Lynley’s, “But what about you, Daidre . . . ? I know what the cottage means to you,” she had replied with, “I can sleep on the sofa when I want to go down.”

  “That won’t do for a peaceful retreat.”

  “Perhaps not. We’ll see. But I can’t leave them in that wretched caravan. And this is the only solution I’ve been able to come up with. It’s not likely they’d want to come to town.”

  “But do they actually want to move from the caravan?”

  “They’re frightened, of course. What else would they be just now? There they’ve been in that horrible place since they were eighteen years old after
a placement even worse than living with our parents. They deserve better. The cottage offers them that. I’m happy to provide it.”

  “I hate to see you—”

  “Tommy, our lives—yours and mine—have been too different for you ever to be able to understand.”

  “That’s not altogether fair.”

  “Isn’t it? Consider being taken from your parents. Consider ending up in Falmouth with a wonderful home and wonderful family and privileges you never expected to have. Consider discovering that what you were given is exactly what your siblings were not given in the homes where they were sent. And then consider how you would feel upon learning that.”

  “I understand.”

  “How can you? You haven’t lived it so you can’t know it. They—Goron and Gwynder—were robbed of every possibility in life, and I want that to be over for them. Call it guilt or whatever you’d like but I won’t leave them in a situation that means the rest of their lives will be as horrible as the first part of their lives has been.”

  He hated how her words affected him, with their intimation of impossibility. This was a discussion between them that could go round and round for hours. He knew it was a moment when it was best to let the subject die. But although he was adept doing that much, he was without a single talent when it came to burying the corpse.

  Eventually, he told himself that it could all be a good thing since, despite sleeping on the floor of her London flat for months on end while she renovated it, it wasn’t likely that Daidre would be happy sleeping on the sofa in her own cottage when she went to Cornwall for a break from London. This meant, at the end of the day, that there was every chance she would at last consent to a Cornish retreat somewhat larger than the one she was used to: his family home near Lamorna Cove.

  Havers would, of course, say, “I wouldn’t wager any money on that, Inspector,” but then that was Havers in a nutshell. No one would ever accuse the woman of oversanguinity.

  As if reading his mind regarding Havers, Daidre said, “This could all work out very badly, you know.”