by Dan Laughey
If reality was only like this, Sant thought, but he left it at that. He was a firm believer in delaying his kids’ departure from their blissful state of ignorance. Regardless of what his liberal-progressive ex might wish, this dad was all for perpetuating the myths of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, not to mention the Bogeyman and Abominable Snowman when a dose of fear-induced discipline was required. And besides, who had the right to say these things were myths without concrete proof?
The ring-road traffic took an age to lighten. Thirty sluggish minutes later, the kids safely dropped off at their home, Sant inputted the Shipley address into his TomTom and took orders from Miss Australia (his voice preference).
‘What about reinforcements?’ That was Capstick, not Australia.
‘We’re after a suspect – not a war. And besides, I’ve got a feeling about this one.’
‘In what way?’
‘I don’t think he’ll offer up much resistance. So let’s practice what we policemen preach and go unarmed. I’d rather get there sooner than later.’
‘But you’re off duty, sir.’
‘I’m never really off-duty, Capstick, but if it eases your conscience I’ll have a word with the civvies – get them to fiddle with the roster.’
Capstick shook his head and took a rubbing cloth to his NHS specs. ‘I wonder why Dryden didn’t do the same.’
‘What?’
‘Change the roster to show him on duty when he wasn’t.’
Sant squirted water on the windscreen as he drove. ‘Maybe he was preoccupied. In the last few weeks of his life Dryden was obsessed with his work. His wife Claire said so. He was almost never home.’
‘What was he up to?’
‘We can only guess, but one thing’s of no doubt: he was obsessed with Chloe.’
‘Did he know her?’
‘Carnal knowledge would be my bet, Capstick.’
They turned sharp left at a T-junction over dulcet Aussie tones. Two minutes forty seconds later they’d reach their des-tin-aaation. Sant parked a few metres behind a white van with a number-plate he recognised – the same number Capstick had retrieved from Holdsworth.
‘Ready?’
‘You sure this is a good idea?’
Sant didn’t say anything, just nodded.
‘Hang on, this man’s dangerous. His van is probably covered in blood. That poor woman’s blood.’
‘Shall we take a peek?’
Capstick shivered. ‘I’d rather not, sir.’
Sant grinned. ‘There’s no need anyway. You see, this man with a van is a removal man, and that thing in front of us is a removal van. The likelihood he actually murdered Marie Jagger alias Sheila Morrison with his own hands, in the back of his own van, is very slim. Another thing. Consider what he did with the body.’
‘He dumped it by a canal.’
‘Exactly.’ Capstick stared at Sant in puzzlement. ‘Think carefully. Why dump a body by a canal when you can dump it in it?’
‘Maybe he was in a rush.’
‘That’s possible, but there were no witnesses to the dumping. Which suggests no-one distracted him, forcing him into a quick exit. No, I suspect he deliberately left the body where it could be found.’
‘I see what you mean. A body in a canal wouldn’t turn up for months.’
Sant shook his head. ‘Years I’d say.’
‘But why leave the body on show? Surely it was wiser to sink it six feet under.’
‘There’s only one possible reason,’ said Sant. ‘At the last moment our brave foot-soldier here developed a conscience – and disobeyed his ringleaders.’
‘But why?’
‘He cared for her.’
The constable burst into laughter. ‘A funny way of caring.’
Sant slapped the steering wheel, stopping the laughter dead. ‘Imagine the situation, Capstick. Our man with a van has no say in the matter of whether Sheila Morrison dies or lives – his job is to remove all trace of her – so the only thing he can control is the ending to this messy affair. He’s probably dumped corpses before. But never one he actually had feelings for. So Mr James Miller makes the one decent gesture left to him. He leaves the body in view, giving the poor cow a chance for a proper send-off.’
‘You make him sound almost human, sir.’
‘That’s because he is human, but whether he’s a human being is another matter.’
Capstick replaced his newly polished specs. ‘Meaning?’
‘It’s time for action – guns at the ready.’ Capstick’s mouth dropped open. ‘Merely a figure of speech, partner.’
The two men adopted the standard combat stance, crouching low, hurrying along the pavement towards the broken-off gate of number 29, all the time peering through an unkempt hedge.
A light was on inside the front room, TV chatter seeping through the filthy bay window. Sant racked his brain and realised it was Champions’ League night. Someone was watching the football.
The two detectives crouched even lower as they took the garden path, scuttling like crabs to the darker recesses of the porch.
‘Do we knock or ram the door?’ whispered Capstick.
‘Neither. It’s not shut.’
Sant gave it a firm push – and they were in.
A few moments later the inspector gently nudged aside the half-closed door of the living room, saw the bloody body sprawled across the cheap rug, then switched off the TV in one swift motion.
‘Just what I predicted, Capstick. A human, yes, but not a human being.’
6
You plug your earphones into your new iPod. You listen to the music.
Sweet-sounding music.
Someone’s compilation. That young lady’s compilation. Or were there two?
One girl or two?
Mrs Fleming will be jealous.
You read the tiny screen. Various Artists 84.
Wham! – Freedom.
Paul McCartney and the Frog Chorus – We All Stand Together.
Sade – Smooth Operator.
Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Want to Have Fun.
Ray Barker Junior – Ghostbusters.
Madonna – Like a Virgin.
Style Council – Shout to the Top.
Sister Sledge – Lost in Music.
Bronski Beat – Why?
Status Quo – The Wanderer.
Black Lace – Agadoo.
U2 – Pride (In the Name of Love).
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Relax.
Stevie Wonder – I Just Called to Say I Love You.
You listen in order. Then you shuffle.
The songs grow on you. Some feel familiar – surely they aren’t from so long ago.
They feel like today’s hits. Aren’t they always on the radio? On the hour? Every hour?
TICK TOCK TICK TOCK.
You listen to each song half a dozen times. Soon you’re listening to them constantly. No more news. No weather. No sport.
Just music. Sweet-sounding music.
These songs move you. You’ve heard them before. Way back when.
But one song really moves you; sticks in your mind, your heart, your gut. One song will stay with you forever.
A song that brings back memories. Glorious memories. Memories you’ll never forget.
A song for your long-lost lover.
A song for Sheila.
The last one on the list.
Sant woke late to the sound of his phone ringing. Not that he’d slept for long. By the time he’d done with explaining to Gilligan the round-about way in which he and Capstick – with the help of Holdsworth’s speed-camera discovery – had chanced upon the dead body of James Miller, it was almost sunrise.
He’d expected one of the Old Man’s hallmark fits of rage, demanding to know why Sant was still following leads on the canal murder while officially barred from sticking his nose into matters related to Marie Jagger/Susan Smith/Sheila Morrison, but Gilligan simply blew out his dog-shit breath and spent the early hours
masquerading for the small but growing throngs of media milling around Miller’s drab back-to-back.
Sant glimpsed the time on his phone – 10.46 – as he got up to answer the call. It was Holdsworth. What she knew about Miller could have been written on the back of a stamp. A removal van man specialising in house clearances. No previous offences. Thirty-four years old, white, single. That was it. But she had a gem up her sleeve on the other recently deceased.
‘Sheila Morrison, we’re closing in on you.’
‘Positive ID?’ Sant asked.
‘Not far off,’ said Holdsworth. ‘It seems our eyewitness was right when she recalled that the woman whose flat was raided in 1984 was some kind of writer. Sheila Morrison, it turns out, was the name of an investigative journalist who gained a rep for hard-hitting reports she wrote in an anti-fascist magazine called Red Lamp.’
‘Available at all good bookshops,’ Sant quipped.
‘Not any more. The magazine folded in the late eighties. Poor sales apparently.’
Sant paused for thought. ‘So it figures this writer or reporter or whatever she was could have been Dryden’s snitch – the woman now called Marie Jagger found dumped by the canal.’
‘We can’t be certain,’ Holdsworth replied, ‘but seen as we know that the exact age of the Sheila Morrison of Stanks Lane South arrested a couple of days after the Gray/Tanner shootings tallies with that of our late Marie Jagger, it’d be baffling if they weren’t one and the same.’
Sant rang off, deep in thought. Just as important as timelines and events, he mused, were the people that made them happen. And where people were concerned, the frame holding the mesh together was Chloe Lee. Could she be alive? His head preached caution. His heart pounded with hope.
The next obvious port of call was back to the university. Mia would have been his first choice for picking his brains, but Dr Tony Gordon took priority. If the political historian knew as much about anti-fascism in Britain as he claimed to know about fascism, he would have heard of Red Lamp and its exposés on racists of one strain or another.
He called Tony and arranged to meet him in the campus refectory for a light lunch. He’d have to skip breakfast – sinfully. Half an hour later they were digging into jacket potatoes, Tony opting for cheese while the inspector threw caution to the wind with an extra-spicy chilli filling.
‘What’s your take on anti-fascism?’ was the first question Sant could think up as the chilli took hold of his senses.
Tony put pencil to earlobe and went about mashing up his spud. ‘Basically, anti-fascists follow fascists like night follows day. They’re reactionaries. They operate with the sole intention of destroying organisations peddling hate.’
‘All good,’ Sant remarked, gulping water from a plastic cup to cool his mouth.
Tony laughed. ‘It sounds perfectly heroic, I agree. The reality is quite different. Take the Anti-Nazi League.’
‘I’ve crossed swords with the ANL before.’
‘And I bet they gave you flak, Inspector.’
Sant blinked away tears and desperately chewed on some potato skin. ‘Not me personally,’ he choked, ‘but they didn’t care for other people’s property, that’s for sure.’
Tony nodded. ‘I’ve read the stories. Setting fire to polling stations, smoke-bombing innocent people, using axes to smash up cars, hurling broken bottles at defenceless police. You name it, the ANL have done it. Believe it or not, the trouble caused by the ANL has always exceeded what the fascists can muster up. The ANL really began as an offshoot of the Socialist Workers’ Party. The SWP was renowned for violent activism.’
Sant refilled his plastic cup at the water cooler and made up a second as back up. ‘I take it the ANL are still the big boys when it comes to challenging the likes of Combat 18 and the English Defence League?’ he said on his return to the table.
‘Yes,’ Tony said thoughtfully, ‘though the ANL is often criticised by other anti-fascist groups. The glory days of the ANL were the late 1970s. You see, the National Front’s success in the seventies can be put down to public resentment about mainstream politicians and their over-liberal immigration policies. First there was the Ugandan Asian Crisis of ‘72 when Britain accepted over 25,000 Ugandan refugees (news reports at the time put the figure at 70,000). And then in ‘76 an influx of Malawi Asians stirred up further anger. That’s when the NF caught hold of the public mood. Its Stop the Asian Invasion marches gained thousands of followers, especially in areas most affected by immigration like East London, Birmingham and West Yorkshire.’
‘West Yorkshire was a battle ground in the seventies,’ Sant recalled.
‘No question. There were frequent clashes between police and protestors on both sides. In ’76 the NF put up 21 candidates in Bradford and captured 10,000 votes. A big slice of the electorate. Over 10 per cent.’
‘How do you know all this stuff?’
‘My job depends on it,’ said Tony, playing with the pencil behind his ear. ‘I wouldn’t be much of an expert in the field otherwise.’
Sant weighed up the figures. ‘That was hardly a spectacular victory for the NF in Bradford.’
‘True, but the result sent tremors through Westminster. Labour and the Conservatives were at a loss about what to do. Labour feared the NF had wooed their traditional working-class base, whereas the Conservatives were made to look weak on immigration. That’s why Thatcher moved her party to the right – to steal back some of that anti-immigration thunder.’
‘What you’re saying, then, is Thatcher brought down the fascists by being a respectable one herself.’
Tony nodded. ‘That’s my view, though the ANL deserves some credit. Plus the introduction of the Public Order Act made it easier to ban marches.’
‘I use it all the time,’ joked Sant as he spooned yet more of the burning chilli sensation.
‘The real problems for the ANL began after the demise of the NF. You see, the anti-fascists became victims of their own success. Previously the ANL enjoyed mass support, especially in ‘78 when it teamed up with Rock Against Racism.’
‘I remember it well. The Clash in London.’
‘Yes, and the legacy of the ANL/Rock Against Racism nexus was the way it energised the youth culture of the time to rise up and defeat racist voices like Eric Clapton, who’d come out in support of Enoch Powell. But then Clapton and others exited stage left, so without an arch enemy to focus their wrath upon, the anti-fascists split into factions. Actually, fascist and anti-fascist groups mirror each other in their evolution. So just as the NF split into the National Party, the British Democratic Party and the Yorkshire-based United National Front – not to mention those who’d switched sides to the British Movement and Combat 18 – so likewise the ANL divided into networks of anti-Nazi squads including the radical Anti-Fascist Action and their splinter group Red Action.’
‘Red Action were commies, weren’t they?’
Tony laughed. ‘They made the SWP look like a delegation of elderly bridge players. Heavens, Red Action was an army more than a political party. Modelled on the IRA no less. In contrast, some British fascists at the time – many of them Ulster Loyalists – went to Northern Ireland to fight against the republicans.’
‘Are these anti-Nazi factions still active?’
Tony discarded the rest of his spud. ‘Some of them, yes, though their organisation is pitiful. Plus the scale of fascist activism is not what it used to be. The English Defence League, National Action and Britain First have organised marches designed to antagonise Muslims, calling them terrorists and child rapists. But the British National Party has been in sharp decline ever since its rise during the white flight and its peak in the 2006 local elections when it returned over fifty councillors off the back of the 7/7 London bombings. Back then it had ambitions to cosy up with other right-wing parties like the Austrian Freedom Party and Front National in France, but the BNP never achieved their heights. They now have no elected councillors whatsoever. All of which means that without th
e fascist threat, anti-fascists are left redundant.’
‘So the ANL will mirror the BNP and fade into obscurity,’ said Sant, mopping up the chilli with his last chunk of spud.
‘Not necessarily,’ the historian replied. ‘The more hardened ANL activists will go searching for fascism far and wide rather than wait for it to raise its head. Some of them have jumped ship to new organisations like Unite Against Fascism, but these groups are only new in name.’
‘Heard of a magazine called Red Lamp?’
Tony thought for a moment, then shook his hairless head. ‘Can’t say I have. I presume it has anti-fascist leanings, given its title.’
‘It had,’ said Sant, ‘though I’ve never actually read it. From what I gather, Red Lamp folded years ago.’
‘Probably a reflection of the contemporary political mood. Half of all the votes in the 2015 General Election went to right-wing parties. The UK Independence Party – Nazis in suits – polled nearly four million votes. And many Conservative supporters shared UKIP’s Eurosceptic view on bureaucrats in Brussels pelting our welfare system and meddling with British laws, which explains why we had an EU referendum and what we have now: Brexit. Take the European Convention on Human Rights. Should prisoners have the right to vote? Opinion polls suggest most Brits don’t agree that a convicted criminal should be able to exercise his democratic rights.’
Sant nodded. ‘I’ve met some evil sods who shouldn’t be let anywhere near a ballot box.’
Tony lifted his pencil from his ear. ‘And most worrying of all is the rise of the Scottish National Party. The SNP returned fifty-six MPs in 2015 on the strength of its fervent belief that the Scottish people are better off alone than mixing with the English, the Welsh and the Irish. It lost momentum in the snap election, but it’s still a force to be reckoned with. So what we’re left with is division: political and racial. The English now want to be independent from the Scots. The Welsh want an exclusive say on all matters Welsh. That’s what devolution always leads to: referendums and more division. The Scots want out of the Union, the Union wants out of the EU.’
