The Shivering Turn, page 23
It’s a good recovery – I have to give him credit for that.
‘Yes, they booked into the Randolph, so it’s likely that they got their ends away – and without having to resort to tranquillizers,’ I continue.
‘I think I’d like you to leave now,’ Crispin Hetherington said.
‘Fair enough,’ I agree, turning and walking towards the door. ‘I certainly wouldn’t want to distress a man in your condition.’
‘You’re not distressing me,’ he says.
‘Of course not,’ I agree. ‘You’re not in the least distressed. The only reason that you’re telling me to go is that you have so many better things to do with your time than listen to me.’
‘Come back here,’ he says – and it’s an order, rather than a request.
I turn, and go back to the bedside.
‘Do you want me to carry on?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Say whatever it is you’ve got to say.’
‘Where was I?’ I muse. ‘Ah yes, it’s more than likely John Teale and Gideon Duffy ran into Richard Tennyson and Hugo Johnson at the Randolph, because Tennyson and Johnson were in the restaurant – treating Rupert Congreave to a slap-up meal.’
‘Rupert Congreave!’
‘They’re probably looking to recruit him as their new cox, don’t you think?’ I ask. ‘Some people might feel that they could have waited a little longer, if only out of respect for you, but hey, life’s a race, and you have to keep running – if you can run, that is.’
‘Is that the best you can do?’ Crispin Hetherington asks.
‘It’s ironic, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘Everyone else got to screw Linda Corbet, but only you get to pay the price. Still, I expect you’ll draw some comfort, in the endless tedious years that stretch ahead of you, from the odd snippets of news about how well your old friends are getting on.’
‘It won’t work,’ he says, and now there’s a smile of triumph on his face. ‘You’re simply not good enough to manipulate me in the way that—’
‘In the way that you manipulated the Shivering Turn?’
‘Exactly.’
He’s left me little choice. I want to spare him, but Linda Corbet – poor, defiled Linda Corbet – is still missing, and she has to be my priority.
‘Yes, you certainly did manipulate the Shivering Turn,’ I say. ‘By the way, I ran into your parents outside.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ he moans.
‘How did you pull it off?’ I wonder. ‘How did you persuade these public schoolboys – who share so much common background – that you were one of them? My guess is that you came up with a convincing story to explain away why you hadn’t been to Harrow or Eton. You probably said something like … I don’t know … that you attended a very expensive and very exclusive American boarding school, because your father’s extensive business interests meant that he had to spend most of his time in the States. Am I right?’
He doesn’t say anything, but from the expression on his face, I can tell that I am close enough.
‘You really admired them – those poncy public schoolboys with their stately homes,’ I press on. ‘You wanted to be exactly like them. And then you realized that you never could be – that there’d eventually come a point at which you were unmasked and, when that happened, they would despise you. So you needed a reason to despise them – and it couldn’t be because of what they were, because, despite everything, you still envied and admired them for that. No, to be able to despise them, you had to bring them down to a level at which you could despise them. And that’s when you came up with the idea of the Shivering Turn. It wasn’t about sex. It wasn’t even really about exercising power for power’s sake. It was about dragging them down – putting them in a position where they would willingly degrade themselves.’
‘You should have seen the way they fell on the girl,’ he says. ‘They were like animals. They were worse than animals.’
‘Why don’t you tell the police exactly what happened that night in the Blind Beggar?’ I suggest.
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you – because it would mean that you’d won,’ he says.
‘It’s not about me winning,’ I tell him. ‘It’s about seeing that the right thing is done.’
‘I may not have been born a gentleman, but now I have the opportunity of proving, if only to myself, that that is what I really am,’ he says.
‘And how do you propose to do that?’
‘By protecting the members of the Shivering Turn – even though I know they’re not worthy of my protection.’
I have one shot left in my arsenal, and if that fails to hit the target, then I’m lost.
‘I might go down to the college tonight,’ I say. ‘Yes, I think I’ll do that. I expect I’ll find the rest of the Shivering Turn in the bar, celebrating their lucky escape. Can you imagine what a good laugh they’ll have when I tell them that haughty Crispin Hetherington – whose disapproval they lived in trepidation of – is really called Chris, and is the son of a window cleaner?’
‘Please don’t,’ he gasps, his face a picture of perfect agony, ‘please, not that.’
‘It’s up to you, Chris,’ I tell him. ‘I will definitely be in the bar, but if the members of the Shivering Turn are not there, I won’t be able to talk to them, will I? I wonder if you can think of a reason why they might not be there.’
If he could bang his head against a wall at this moment, I’m sure he’d do so. I’m sure he’d keep on banging until the wall was stained with his blood.
But he can’t do that.
He can’t move a muscle from the neck down.
He closes his eyes, so that he can no longer see me.
‘When you get back into town, you can tell DCI Macintosh that I want to make a fresh statement,’ he says.
TWENTY
It is three-thirty in the afternoon, and beyond the confines of St Aldate’s police station shopkeepers are minding their shops, students are slaving desperately over essays they know they should have started weeks ago, alcoholics from the Salvation Army hostel are falling over, and young men in newly purchased striped blazers are punting their girlfriends up and down the River Cherwell (and praying they don’t make a mess of it). It is, in other words, an Oxford day like any other Oxford day.
It is not a normal Oxford day inside the police station. Here, there is an electric tension – a teeth-grinding, nail-biting nervousness. Unexpectedly, and against all the odds, the police are getting a second bite at the cherry – and they know there will be no third bite.
I am sitting next to DCI Macintosh in front of the two-way mirror, and studying the occupants of the interview room. There are four of them. On one side of the table sit DC Bassett and his partner, on the other side Hugo Johnson and his solicitor.
Johnson is so nervous that sweat is trickling down his normally self-satisfied cheeks, yet at the same time there is a certain arrogant set to his jaw which suggests that he is still finding it hard to believe that he should be in this situation, and that surely – surely! – he must come out of it relatively unscathed.
It is the attitude adopted by his solicitor – Bartlett Townshend – from which I draw the most hope. Townshend is known to be a Rottweiler of a legal representative, yet today he does not look as if he expects to pull his client clear of the morass he has landed himself in, but rather is prepared to settle for whatever concessions he can squeeze out of Bassett.
DC Bassett switches on the tape recorder, and, in a precise and emotionless tone, lists those present in the room and issues the required caution.
‘Tell me about the Shivering Turn,’ he says to Johnson, when the routine has been completed.
‘What do you want to know about it?’
‘Well, we could start with whose idea the whole thing was, and exactly how it came about.’
‘Why isn’t he asking about Linda Corbet?’ I ask Macintosh.
Because Linda is what matters to me – it is only thoughts of her which have kept me going when the situation seemed hopeless.
‘Patience, Jennie, patience,’ Macintosh replies. ‘We have a saying where I was brought up – “If you want to keep the winkle in one piece, then you have to coax it out of the shell”.’
Great – Scottish homespun philosophy! Just what we needed!
But he is right – I know from my own experience that it is the interviews which are carefully structured which produce the best results.
‘How did it start?’ Hugo Johnson asks, on the other side of the glass. ‘I suppose it started with Crispin. He’s our coxswain, and a bloody good one he is, too. When he’s in charge of the boat, you completely forget you’re an individual – you become just a part of a powerful, unstoppable machine. He’s been the main reason we’re so successful, and—’
‘I think the officer would like you to stick to the point of his question, Hugo,’ Townshend says.
‘Oh, sorry,’ Johnson said. ‘Crispin got this video from America – he went to school there, you know. It was called Behind the Green Door, and what happens, you see, is that this woman is abducted and ravaged. It seemed like bloody good fun. And Crispin suggested we could do the same thing.’
‘Did you ever think that perhaps Crispin wasn’t quite – how should I say it – “one of you”?’ Bassett asks.
‘Well, once in a while, he did say something that none of the rest of us would ever have said, but I just put that down to him having been brought up in America. And now I come to think of it, Gideon Duffy did once say that he thought Crispin wasn’t “quite right” – but that’s Gideon for you. He gets all kinds of strange ideas in his head.’
‘And was it shortly after Duffy said he wasn’t “quite right” that Hetherington suggested forming the Shivering Turn?’ Bassett asks.
‘Do you know, I rather think it was,’ Johnson says, sounding slightly surprised.
‘Was Linda Corbet the first girl you abused?’ Bassett asks.
‘Yes … no,’ Johnson replies.
‘Which one is it – yes or no?’
‘We had girls before, but they were prostitutes, who were paid to pretend that they were virgins.’
I bloody knew it! When Jeff Meade told me that taking a virgin to one of the Shivering Turn meetings was part of the initiation ceremony, I knew it was a load of bollocks – because if that’s what they normally did, they wouldn’t have had any need to recruit Jeff.
‘Did you always dress up as schoolmasters when you hired the prostitutes?’ Bassett asks.
‘No, there was a different theme every time. Once we dressed up as eighteenth-century lords, and the whore had to pretend to be a peasant girl. And then there was the time we blacked up as Negro slaves, and dressed the girl as a southern lady.’
‘But you got bored with using professionals, did you?’ Bassett asks.
‘No, not really.’
‘So why didn’t you just keep on hiring them?’
‘Crispin said the real thing would be much better.’
‘And was it?’
‘Of course not!’ Hugo Johnson says. ‘It was disgusting and wrong, and I’m most terribly ashamed of it.’
That’s his official line – the line he’s been schooled to adopt by his solicitor. But the look of pure lasciviousness which flashes briefly across his face as he recalls that night tells quite a different story.
I wish I could have charge of him for just ten minutes. I’d whip him down to the vet’s office and have his balls cut off before he knew what had hit him.
‘How did you go about selecting Linda Corbet as your victim?’ DC Bassett asks Hugo Johnson.
‘Crispin was the one who chose her. He went to that tea shop near the school, and listened in on what the girls were saying to each other. He thought this one would be perfect because—’
‘Linda!’ Bassett says harshly. ‘She’s not a “this one”. Her name is Linda, you filthy deviant!’
‘Sorry,’ Johnson mumbles, and though he’s heard what Bassett has just called him, he doesn’t dare to object – and nor, apparently, does his solicitor consider that it would be wise to.
Hugo Johnson takes a deep breath. ‘Crispin thought Linda would be perfect because she seemed so interested in literature, and we were already known as the Shivering Turn Society …’
‘Which you’d created because you thought it would be fun to dangle a clue to what you were doing before the eyes of the dean and the bursar?’
‘That’s right. Crispin called the game “Hoodwinking the Hog and the Homo”.’
‘Was it after you’d targeted Linda that you recruited Jeff Meade into your jolly little society?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did you recruit him?’
Johnson shrugs his powerful shoulders helplessly. ‘Well, you know …’
‘No, I don’t know,’ Bassett counters. ‘So you’re going to have to bloody tell me, aren’t you?’
‘We … we thought he’d find it much easier to talk to her than we would have done.’
‘And why was that? Was it because they’re both so common – both such peasants?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘Then what would you say?’
‘I’d prefer to say that they probably shared certain cultural and societal attitudes that differed from ours, and—’
‘Oh Jesus, what crap you can come up with,’ Bassett moans, burying his head in his hands. Then he slowly opens in his hands, and in his normal voice, he says, ‘And, of course, another advantage to recruiting Jeff Meade was that, in his rough working-class way, he was quite handsome. Isn’t that right?’
‘Yes, that was part of the calculation.’
‘He’ll be very popular in prison – a pretty boy like Jeff. And you’re not so bad-looking yourself.’
‘Oh, please, no!’ Hugo Johnson says. ‘Not that.’
‘We are cooperating fully,’ Bartlett Townshend says, ‘and our expectation is that this cooperation will be taken fully into account.’
‘You’re quite right to point that out, sir,’ Bassett agrees. ‘Some members of the Shivering Turn will soon be finding out what it feels like to be Linda Corbet, but if Hugo here keeps on being such a good boy, I’ll do my best to see that he isn’t one of them.’
‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know,’ Hugo Johnson promises, in a voice which is close to a sob. ‘I really do want to help.’
‘Fair enough, son,’ Bassett agrees. ‘Was Linda drugged when she arrived at the Blind Beggar?’
‘No, she—’
‘Remember what I said about everything depending on your being a good boy?’ Bassett asks. And then he repeats the question. ‘Was Linda drugged when she arrived at the Blind Beggar?’
‘Yes, she was a little bit drugged.’
‘You can’t be a little bit drugged, any more than you can be a little bit virginal. She either was or she wasn’t. Which is it?’
‘She was drugged. Before she got there, Jeff Meade had slipped a few mild tranquillizers into her drink.’
‘And how did he get hold of them?’
‘Crispin bought them, from one of the technicians in the chemistry labs.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That’s not the answer I was hoping for – nor is it an answer that’s likely to do you much good.’
‘I don’t know his name,’ Johnson says, in a voice which is almost a shriek. ‘I swear I don’t know.’
‘All right, son, calm down,’ Bassett says. ‘Let’s go back to what happened that night. You’re all waiting in the room. You’re wearing academic gowns, because this time it’s going to be a schoolmaster-schoolgirl fantasy. But it’s not that much of a fantasy, is it – because Linda really is a schoolgirl!’
Hugo Johnson says nothing.
‘So Jeff brings her into the room,’ Bassett continues, ‘and you all rape her. Is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let me be clear on this – did every single one of you rape her?’
‘Yes – apart from Crispin.’
‘Now think very carefully before you answer the next question, Hugo,’ DC Bassett says, ‘because what you tell me could determine whether you spend your prison time in a nice open prison, with bent accountants as your neighbours, or whether you go through the next ten years with a very sore bottom. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘Yes,’ Johnson says, in a voice that is little more than a whisper.
‘It’s a very simple question, Hugo, and it’s this – where is Linda Corbet now?’
‘I don’t know,’ Johnson says.
Bassett slams his hand down on the table with some force.
‘Stop pissing me about!’ he shouts. ‘We already know that you and Gideon Duffy took her to London on the mail train, so what did you do with her once you got there?’
‘We didn’t take her to London.’
‘Then what were you doing on the platform at Oxford station?’
‘We were there to make sure she didn’t get on the train – but she never went anywhere near the station.’
‘Then where was she?’
‘I don’t know. She escaped.’
‘But you were planning to take her to London – or, at least, get her away from Oxford?’
‘No.’
‘Then how in God’s name did you imagine you were going to get away with what you’d done to her?’
‘The women in the Behind the Green Door video liked it by the end of the evening.’
‘Jesus, are you seriously trying to tell me that you thought real life would turn out to be just like a pornographic film?’
‘It could have done – but if it didn’t, we had contingency plans.’
‘And I can’t wait to hear them,’ Bassett says.
‘Crispin said that once it was over, we’d all be very nice to her, and tell her how good she’d been, and how much we’d enjoyed it. And if that didn’t seem to be working, we’d tell her that she’d be well advised to keep her mouth shut about what had gone on, because nobody would ever take her word against ours. But whichever way it went, we were going to give her the money.’
