The Shivering Turn, page 19
But I think that maybe I asked the question because I was testing out a theory I’ve been developing on exactly what makes Crispin Hetherington’s sick little mind tick.
Bassett stretches his legs and yawns.
‘So just to be perfectly clear on the matter, you’re telling me that Linda Corbet was a willing participant in what went on at the Blind Beggar?’ he asks Johnson, almost lazily.
‘That’s right – she was gagging for it,’ Johnson replies.
‘That’s funny,’ Bassett reflects.
‘What is?’
‘Well, I’ve been in this business for a long time, and I’ve certainly met prostitutes who’ve been willing to have sex with nine men, one after the other. I’ve even met a few who were prepared to let all the men watch all the other men doing her, as long as they were willing to pay for the privilege.’
‘We didn’t pay her anything,’ Johnson says.
Bassett, suddenly no longer so laid back, slams his fist down hard on the table.
‘Did I say you could speak?’ he roars.
‘No, but—’
‘Then until I do, keep your bloody trap shut.’ Bassett turns to Hough. ‘Now, where was I?’
‘You were saying you’ve known prostitutes who’d let nine men screw them, one after the other.’
‘That’s right, I was. I’ve certainly known that – more than once. But I’ve never known a virgin agree to it.’ He pauses. ‘Have you ever heard of anything like that, Hugo?’
‘I’m allowed to speak now, am I?’ Johnson asks.
‘Yes, you’re allowed to speak.’
‘Are you saying that Linda Corbet was a virgin?’
‘You know she was.’
‘Do I?’
‘Please don’t piss me about, son,’ Bassett says. ‘It was only because she was a virgin that you and the rest of your filthy little Virgin Hunters Society were the least bit interested in her.’
‘My what?’
‘You heard!’
Bassett is about to make a mistake, I think from my side of the glass. Instead of pinning Johnson down through a narrow line of questioning, he’s going to let him take centre stage – give him the opportunity, in other words, to imitate his leader, become a mini-Crispin Hetherington – and that can only add to his confidence and make him much harder to break.
I can see it coming, but there is nothing I can do about it, because Bassett is their trained interrogator, and I am only a civilian.
‘Virgin Hunters Society!’ Hugo Johnson muses. ‘Now, I must admit, that does sound like rather an intriguing society to belong to, but I can assure you that I’m not a member.’
‘No, you belong to the Shivering Turn Society, and “shivering turn” is an anagram of “virgin hunters”.’
For maybe ten seconds, Johnson pretends he’s thinking it through – rearranging the letters in his head – then he smiles and says, ‘Do you know, I think you’re right. What a coincidence.’
‘It’s no coincidence,’ Bassett says. ‘Did you notice the way I phrased that? I said “shivering turn” is an anagram of “virgin hunters”, rather than the other way around?’
‘Yes, I did notice you doing it, but I don’t really see the significance of it.’
‘“Virgin hunters” is what you might call the foundation stone on which everything else rests. You looked for an anagram in which you could hide the name, and came up with “shivering turn” – and it was once you’d done that that you invented Robert Cudlip to give the phrase some context.’
‘Give the phrase some context,’ Johnson repeats. ‘That’s a rather subtle linguistic construct for a mere detective constable, don’t you think? And, of course, you are quite wrong.’
It is meant to make Bassett angry, but he doesn’t take the bait.
‘If that wasn’t the reason you invented Robert Cudlip, then why invent him at all?’ he asks evenly.
‘For a lark,’ Johnson says. ‘You do understand larks, don’t you?’ He frowns. ‘No, you probably don’t. When you were growing up, you were probably too poor to find the time to indulge in them.’
‘Let’s get back to Friday night,’ Bassett suggested. ‘What happened to Linda Corbet after you’d all finished raping her?’
‘After we’d all had consensual sex with her is what you mean, isn’t it?’ Hugo Johnson replies.
‘Sorry to have got that wrong,’ Bassett says. ‘I’ll try again. What happened to Linda Corbet, a virgin who was so keen to lose her virginity that she virtually threw herself on to the pricks of a bunch of upper-class wankers?’
Johnson shrugs. ‘I don’t know what happened to her. We’d all had her, so she was of no interest to us any more. She might, I suppose, have gone down to the bus station – to see if she could persuade any of the dossers and tramps who hang around there to slip her another few inches.’
‘It’s interesting you should mention the bus station, and not the railway station,’ Bassett says.
‘All right, then, if it will make you any happier, I’ll agree that she could have gone down to the railway station to see if she could persuade any of the dossers and tramps who hang around there to slip her another few inches.’
‘You were at the railway station yourself, weren’t you?’
‘Of course not! After I left the Blind Beggar, I want back to my room in college and played a rather exciting game of chess with Duffy. Ask him, if you don’t believe me.’
‘Where’s Linda Corbet now?’ Bassett snaps.
‘I have absolutely no idea.’
‘She’s in London, isn’t she? Come on, Hugo, you must know, because you took her there yourself.’
‘She may or may not be in London. I wouldn’t know. But I certainly didn’t take her there. As I told you, I was playing chess.’
‘You’re new at this game, and I’m an old hand, so I’ll explain how things are going to unfold,’ Bassett says, almost avuncular now. ‘For the first two or three hours, you’ll all hold back the truth. You might even be surprised about just how easy it is not to confess, and begin to wonder why anybody ever does. But, like I said, that’s for the first two or three hours. After that, it suddenly starts getting harder. It’s almost as if a weight’s pressing down on you, forcing the right words – the words I’m waiting for – out of your mouth.’
‘I won’t—’
‘I’m not just talking about you, here,’ Bassett says. ‘I’m speaking in general terms about everybody who finds themselves in your situation. Maybe you’re right, and however long the questions go on for, you’ll never crack. But one of your mates will – have absolutely no doubt about that. And now we come to the important bit for you personally. Are you listening, Hugo?’
Hugo Johnson says nothing.
‘Are you listening?’ Bassett growls at him.
‘Yes,’ Johnson mutters, reluctantly.
‘Every member of the Virgin Hunters will have to be punished for what you’ve done – I won’t lie to you about that. But the first one to confess will have a much easier time of it than the rest. And, unless I’m very much mistaken, you’d like to be that one.’
Johnson goes quiet for a second, as if attempting to recall a lesson.
Then he says, ‘Linda Corbet wanted to have sex with us, and I’ve no idea where she is now.’
I am in DCI Macintosh’s office, and Macintosh himself is on the phone, talking to the chief constable.
‘Yes sir …’ he says. ‘I know, sir … I can certainly appreciate the pressure you’re under, just as I’m sure you appreciate the pressure I’m under …’
Sitting in a chair on the other side of the desk, I try not to listen – or, at least, not interpret what I hear – but, whatever I do, I can’t help getting at least the gist of the conversation.
‘Yes sir … I can quite understand that, sir … you haven’t forgotten that Tom Corbet is one of our own, have you?… Yes, sir, I agree that was uncalled for, and you have my unreserved apology … No, I’m entitled to hold them for forty-eight hours without charge, and unless I receive a direct order – in writing – from you, that’s exactly what I intend to do.’
He puts down the phone and takes a deep breath.
‘That was the chief constable,’ he says – unnecessarily. ‘Apparently, he’s been bombarded with calls from members of the shadow cabinet demanding to know why we’re playing silly buggers with their nephews, and from captains of industry who swear that their godsons would never so much as even drop a piece of litter.’
‘What does the chief constable want you to do?’
‘Charge them or let them go, but we don’t have the evidence to charge them yet – and, frankly, I’m beginning to doubt we ever will have.’
The problem is, they’ve been well prepared for just such a situation as this one, so they’re showing no signs of panic, and even the words which come out of their mouths have been provided by Crispin Hetherington.
‘You need to find Linda Corbet, Ken,’ I say. ‘You really need to find her urgently.’
‘Every police authority in the country has been made aware of how eager we are to talk to her,’ Macintosh tells me, ‘but, even if we get her back, I’m not sure she’s going to be of much use to us.’
‘Not much use? How can you say that?’
‘It’s her word against theirs. If it goes to trial – and that’s a big “if” – the defendants’ daddies will hire the sharpest, most expensive lawyers in the country. And can you imagine what one of those sharp lawyers could do to Linda, once he’s got her in the witness box?’
I think about it – and shudder.
He’s right, of course, it would be like feeding her into a meat grinder.
The defence council, definitely a QC and probably a knight of the realm, rises from his seat in a stately manner, and ambles over to the witness box, where a trembling Linda Corbet is waiting.
‘Good morning, Miss Corbet,’ he says, in a deep rich voice – a voice that would inspire men to follow him to their deaths.
Linda says nothing.
‘Good morning, Miss Corbet,’ the barrister repeats.
‘Good morning,’ Linda mumbles.
‘Now you say you were raped by all the young men sitting in the dock. Have I got that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Prior to the rape, had you seen any of them before?’
‘Yes.’
‘One of them? Or more than one?’
‘More than one.’
‘How many exactly?’
‘All of them.’
‘All of them!’ The QC turns his back on Linda, and raises a quizzical eyebrow to the jury, then swings round to face the girl again. ‘Is it right that when you were arrested for public disorder a few weeks before the alleged incident, you were in the company of exactly the same group of young men?’
‘Yes.’
The QC cups his ear. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘you’ll have to speak up a little if you want me to hear you.’
‘Yes!’ Linda says, and it comes out almost as a yell.
‘So, on the night of the alleged incident, you arranged to meet these same young men – whom you already knew to be rather high-spirited – in the function room of a public house with a rather dubious reputation.’
‘I didn’t know the pub had a bad reputation.’
‘Were you expecting to find other girls of your age there?’
‘No, I knew I’d be the only one.’
‘So, to sum up, you went to a sleazy pub to meet a group of young men in whose company you had been drunk at least once, and possibly – for all we know – many more times before and since.’
‘I’ve never been—’
‘So tell me, Miss Corbet, just what were you expecting to do in the function room of the Blind Beggar?’
‘It … it was supposed to be a meeting of a poetry society.’
‘A poetry society! If, as you claim, you thought it was to be a meeting of a poetry society, didn’t you ask yourself why they weren’t holding it in St Luke’s College, where all these young men have rooms?’
‘No, I—’
‘And since it was only a harmless poetry society meeting, I assume you told your parents where you were going? Am I right?’
‘No, I—’
‘You didn’t tell them?’
‘No.’
‘So what did you tell them?’
‘You’ve got to understand, sir, that ever since that day I got arrested, my dad’s been—’
‘So what did you tell them?’
‘I told them I was studying at a friend’s house.’
‘So, even though you thought you were going to attend a perfectly innocent meeting, at which you knew there would be no other women present, you went to the trouble of setting yourself up with an alibi.’
‘It wasn’t as simple as—’
‘No further questions.’
The phone rings again, and Macintosh picks it up.
‘Yes, yes … I see … yes, as soon as possible. And thank you so much, Chief Superintendent.’
He puts the phone back on its cradle.
‘That was the Dover police,’ he tells me. ‘They’ve just arrested our friend Jeff Meade.’
‘On what charge?’
‘He tried to bribe one of the lorry drivers who was queuing up for the Channel ferry to smuggle him across to France, but the driver was a retired copper, and he went straight to the dockyard police.’ Macintosh gives the top of his head a thoughtful scratch. ‘Whatever made him do it that way?’ he asks. ‘There’d have been some risk in pretending to be an ordinary holidaymaker, but to try and smuggle yourself out is just loopy.’
‘He probably didn’t have any choice – because he probably doesn’t have a passport,’ I say.
Why would he even need a passport? Lads like him don’t spend their summers lolling on sunny Mediterranean beaches or jetting off to some Caribbean island. They have to work, because if they don’t, they’ll have only their government grants to live on – and that ain’t much.
‘Are the Kent police going to keep him in Dover?’ I ask.
‘No – they’re sending him back to us. He’s on the way to Oxford even as we speak.’
‘How long should it take him to get here?’
‘That will depend on the traffic. I’d guess anything between two and four hours.’
‘When he does arrive, can I talk to him before you hand him over to your lads?’ I ask.
‘I’ll think about it,’ Macintosh replies, noncommittally.
‘I understand him,’ I say, in a pleading voice. ‘I can get him to say things he’d never say to anybody else.’
‘That may be true, but—’
There’s a knock on the door. Shit – that’s really the last thing I needed right now!
‘Come in,’ Macintosh says.
It’s George Hobson.
‘Have you started having problems with Tom Corbet?’ Macintosh asks.
‘No, sir. In fact, we’ve had a bit of luck there,’ George says. Then, hearing his words the way that others might hear them, he hastily adds, ‘Well, not exactly luck – that is probably the wrong word – but Inspector Corbet’s not here because he’s had to take his wife into hospital. I believe it’s something to do with her nerves.’
It probably is, I think. She was teetering on the edge earlier in the week – God knows what she’s like now.
‘So if it’s not about Tom Corbet, why are you here?’ Macintosh asks.
‘If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to borrow Jennie for a few minutes,’ George says.
‘If you want to tell her something about the investigation, then I rather think I’d like to hear it too,’ Macintosh tells him.
‘It’s nothing at all to do with the investigation, but it is rather important,’ George says. ‘So would it be all right if I borrowed her?’
‘Yes, by all means take her,’ Macintosh says, in a tone which suggests he has suddenly given up caring about anything. ‘We weren’t achieving much in here anyway.’
As we step out into the corridor and close the door behind us, I say, ‘Is something the matter, George?’
‘Let’s go down to the canteen and have a cup of tea, shall we?’ Hobson asks evasively.
When we arrive at the canteen, there’s no sign of any other customers – which is hardly surprising, given that all hell has broken loose at the station that morning – so we have our choice of seats.
George doesn’t just suggest a table, he ushers me across to it as if I were a little old lady who’s just had a nasty fall, and only when he’s sat me down does he go up to the counter to order the tea.
Left alone, I watch one of the counter staff swabbing the floor, almost hypnotized by the swish-swish-swish of her mop, and the squelching sound it makes when she wrings it out in the bucket. I catch myself wondering if perhaps she might not have the right idea about life – if limiting yourself to mindless repetitive work might not, after all, be the true key to happiness.
And it is at this point that I realize that, though I do not know what I should be worrying about, I really am worried.
George returns with two heavy white mugs containing tea which, I remember from my own time here, is strong enough to stand your spoon up in.
He places my mug on the table in front of me, takes a sip of his own, and grimaces.
‘This tea doesn’t get any better,’ he says, ‘but you should have a drink of it anyway.’
‘I need to know what this is all about, George,’ I say.
‘Of course you do,’ he agrees. ‘Of course you do. It’s only right and proper that you should know.’
He takes another sip of his tea.
‘George!’ I say, exasperatedly.
‘There’s been a phone call from Whitebridge,’ Hobson says. ‘They’ve been trying to reach you for a couple of hours …’
‘Who is “they”?’
‘Some woman called Enid Redhead. She said she was your cousin or something.’
‘She is.’
‘Anyway, Enid was trying to reach you, but of course you weren’t in your office, and it was only when she thought to ring the cop shop to see if we might know where you were that—’
‘Get to the point,’ I say, almost screaming now.
