Coming out into darkness, he noticed the faces of the policemen: hatred. It was the only way to describe it. Julius searched his heart. He could not blame them. Before the master had persuaded him otherwise, he looked upon the British and Americans with that same loathing.
Outside the police station, a small convoy waited. Land Rovers front and rear, a covered truck between them.
Julius was bundled into the truck, with the corporal and two armed soldiers to guard him. Soon, the engine started and they began to move. Looking out the rear of the truck’s canvass, Julius watched Berwick police station dwindle slowly into the background until they turned a corner and it was lost to view.
His heart lifted a little. He had come through the first stage of his ordeal.
18
Croft folded away The Independent as the police car pulled into the grounds of Warrington General Hospital.
“The prison officers who were murdered in Nottingham,” he said as their driver wove the car through the complex system of roads.
“What about them?” Millie asked.
“Vincent Alton. He was one of Burke’s attendants during the trial, and according to the press, he specifically asked to be transferred to Hattersley after Burke was moved there.”
The driver pulled into a parking space outside the mortuary and switched off the engine. Millie, her hand on the door, ready to get out, asked, “So?”
“So, isn’t that a little unusual?”
“Possibly. I’m not sure. Does it matter?”
Croft considered Millie’s response. “It might. There’s a possibility that we’re looking at a failure in the system. When I first spoke to the prosecution counsel at Burke’s trial, I made it clear that Burke was very dangerous. He understands the power of suggestion. Anyone who got close to him would come under that influence, no matter how slight, and over a period of time, Burke could have gained some control over the man.”
Millie threw open the door and made to climb out. “And I think you’re talking out of your backside. You, yourself, said that when he was playing The Handshaker, he used drugs to get the women, not hypnosis.”
“He did,” Croft agreed, following her out of the car. “But he reinforced the drugs with hypnosis. Look, Millie, I don’t believe in this Deep Secret stuff, but I do know about covert hypnotism. It’s used all the time, even in simple things like advertising.”
She shrugged. “So what do you want to do?”
“Go to Ringley prison after we’re through here.” Croft insisted. “Your authority should get us in.”
She nodded and led the way into the redbrick building, where she presented her warrant card, and then followed the receptionist’s directions to the waiting area.
Ambling along the cool, antiseptic corridor, its lighting a poor substitute for the exterior sunlight, Croft felt a tightening in his gut, which he diagnosed as the onset of dread.
Millie must have noticed it, too. She took his hand. “I’m with you.”
He nodded. “I have to do this, Millie, like it or not.”
They turned left onto a broader, this time windowless, corridor. An absence of people was the thing that struck Croft. Other areas of the hospital would be busy with people: doctors, nurses, porters, cleaners, even newspaper sellers making their way from ward to ward, but this cul-de-sac led only to the mortuary, and the dead did not need newspapers.
A blue and white overhead sign read, Waiting Room, and pointed down to a door on the left. As they neared, so it opened and a man and woman stepped out. The man was sobbing, and the woman, sharp-featured, dark-haired, had her arm around his shoulders in an effort to comfort him.
Croft could not see the man’s face, but he would have recognised him even without his wife there.
“Hello, Andrew, Phillipa.”
Phillipa Sinclair returned a thin, sad smile.
On hearing Croft’s voice, Andrew looked up, his faced streaked with tears. His distress dissipated quickly. The pale cheeks suffused with bitterness, and the bile flowed in his voice. “What the fuck are you doing here, you arsehole?”
“Careful—” Millie began.
Andrew talked over her attempted interjection, firing his words at Croft. “This is your doing. All of it. Trish, Ted, Belinda. All in there.” He waved a flailing arm back towards the waiting room. “And it’s all your fault.”
For a moment, it looked as if Andrew would hurl himself at Croft. Millie moved to prevent it, but Phillipa guided her husband to a seat, and stood protectively over him, her hand on his shoulders, while he broke down again.
“I’m sorry, Felix, but he’s just seen all three of them. He had to formally identify them.”
“It’s all right, Phillipa. I don’t blame him.” Croft felt uncomfortable and was not sure what he was supposed to say. “What’s happening with Ted and Belinda’s sons?”
“They’re still at school right now, but they’ve been informed. They’ll be coming to live with us once everything is settled.”
“I’ll, er, I’ll be at Trish’s funeral, of course, and I’ll pick up the bill for it. You can invest her insurances for the boys. I’m sure that’s what she would have wanted. If you’d like to make the arrangements, I’d be grateful. I would assume Andrew will want her somewhere in Warrington; somewhere nearby, rather than in Scarbeck.”
Phillipa nodded. “Probably. I have your mobile number. I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you,” Croft said. “We’ll, er, we’ll leave you to get on.” He pressed on and into the waiting room.
With a sour glance at Andrew, Millie followed. “You took that well,” she said, closing the door behind her.
Announcing himself to the woman behind the window, Croft took a seat in the barren room.
“What do you expect? I lost my life partner. Andrew lost his brother, sister, and sister-in-law. And if the boys hadn’t been away at boarding school, they would probably have been murdered too. My world may be crumbling, but his is already in pieces. Besides, as I’ve said before, neither he nor Ted particularly liked me, and if it helps him cope with his grief to blame me, I can handle it.”
Millie sat alongside him. “Why didn’t the Sinclairs like you?”
“It wasn’t personal,” Croft said. “It’s what I represented. The Establishment, capital E. Back in the seventies, their father went to prison for a few months under Ted Heath’s Industrial Relations Act. Trish was only a child and she had problems dealing with it for years after. Right up until her father’s death, if truth be told. It was part of the reason she trained in law. To them, my father was a symbol of the right wing intolerance which sent their father to prison, and by extension, as a successful businessman, I became one too.”
“But according to what you’ve told me, you don’t even like your father.”
“I disagree with almost everything my father stands for, but that has nothing to do with it as far as the Sinclairs are concerned. I am who I am and I can’t help that, but they hate me for it.”
The window across the room slid open. “Number three, Mr Croft. Just rap on the glass when you’re ready.”
He stood and moved to window number three, where he tapped on the glass.
He had seen bodies before, and yet he had struggled to steel himself for the view of Trish, imagining her to be twisted and mangled with a bullet hole in her head.
She lay serene on the slab, covered from toe to chin, her eyes and mouth closed, and he could imagine her sleeping, ready to wake at any moment and greet him with her warm smile. The memories flooded his mind and with them came the lump in his throat and the tears welling in his eyes. He felt Millie slide her hand into his, grip it tightly, an anchor in reality. He did not want to remember. He wanted to forget; forget he had ever met Trish, forget he had ever kissed her, made love to her, enjoyed being with her. But even as he felt it, he knew he did not truly want to forget. Deep inside, he wanted to relive every moment they had spent together.
The confusion of emoti
ons got the better of him, and he wept for her while Millie stood helplessly by.
Soon, in better control of himself, he left the window, and sat down again. He locked the vivid imagery of Trish, at rest, beyond any pain, firmly in his mind, tagging it with unspoken mnemonics so that he would never forget it. And then he searched for the anger. It did not take long to find, but when he grasped it, he brought it instantly under control, allowing its fire to simmer deep within. There would be a time and place to unleash it.
“How do you mean, your attitude to your father has nothing to do with Andrew Sinclair’s attitude to you?” Millie asked as they finally stepped out into the hot, heavy day.
Climbing into the rear of the car, Croft hooked on his seatbelt. “Politicians, large corporations, even smaller companies operate on certain principles, Millie. Which is better? An uncomfortable truth or believable half truths? The uncomfortable truth was that old man Sinclair broke the law. You can debate the right or wrong of that law forever, but it was the law. The palatable half-truth is that the Establishment was out to get the workers, and I am a symbol of that Establishment. Andrew’s attitude may not be justifiable, but like my vision of Trish alive, well, as vibrant as she always was, it gives him an anchor, something he can cling on to.”
***
To Croft it appeared that Oliver Wendell was a man with too many worries, and even though he had agreed to see them, it was obvious from his frowns, and sighs, that the agreement was grudging, and probably granted only because of Millie’s insistence.
Stood in open moorland, fifteen miles north of Scarbeck, Ringley’s role was that of a remand and assessment centre, where those awaiting trial were housed and those who had been sentenced were assessed to decide their eventual destination. Viewed from the air, the place could have been a small army base, or even a laboratory, but from ground level, the twenty-foot-high walls of grey concrete spelled prison.
Notwithstanding Millie’s authority, Croft found the warders arrogant and ignorant, the governor less so, but still reluctant to talk too openly.
“He had the necessary qualifications,” Wendell confirmed. “He had completed his NVQ level 3 in custodial care, and before a move to an SSU like Hattersley, all officers are subject to extensive interview and evaluation. Alton came through it and he got the job. It’s as simple as that.”
“It is unusual, though, isn’t it, Mr Wendell?” Millie asked. “Burke was Category A, considered highly dangerous, and he was known to be manipulative. It would be extremely unusual for someone like Vince Alton to ask for a transfer so he could follow Burke.”
Adjusting thick lenses, Wendell peered at Alton’s file again. Croft noted how his hands shook as he turned the pages.
At length, he looked up at them. “Alton had been with us since he came out of the army. He had some trauma in Afghanistan, but it was physical, not psychological, and he met our fitness requirements every year.”
“Trauma?” Croft asked.
Wendell checked again. “Hmm. Yes. Back injury. Nothing serious. Extensive bruising. No more.” His owlish stare settled on Croft. “In all the years he was with us, he never took a day off sick. He wanted to progress, Mr Croft, get ahead in the service, and if I had one bone to pick with him, it was that he found working here, in a remand centre, too restrictive, too, er, easy, for want of a better word. He always wanted the tougher life of handling Category A prisoners. That was noted when he first joined us and later, when he asked for a transfer.” He tapped the file. “I also note that he did not specifically ask to follow Burke. He simply asked for a move to a Category A establishment, and when the vacancy arose, he applied.”
“He knew there was a vacancy at Hattersley?” Croft asked.
“Not at the time of asking for a move, but of course, when the vacancy came up, he would have known it was Hattersley. Job vacancies are routinely displayed on the notice board in the staff rest room.” Wendell leaned back in his chair, took off his glasses, and ran a handkerchief over his chubby, sweating face. “Are you trying to insinuate that Alton deliberately moved to Hattersley in order to assist Burke in his escape? Because, if so, may I remind you that Alton was one of the murdered officers?”
Before answering, Croft forcibly reminded himself that as far as Wendell was concerned, Burke was still alive and should be spoken of in the present tense. “No. I’m not suggesting anything of the kind. However, as Inspector Matthews has pointed out, Burke is known to be manipulative. He is an expert hypnotist, and equally expert in what I would describe as covert hypnotism. He’s also highly intelligent and a more than capable planner. I’ll tell you what I think, Mr Wendell. I think Gerry Burke learned about Vince Alton’s back problem, and offered to teach him some very simple, hypnotic tricks to beat the pain. Analgesia is one of the easiest of outcomes to achieve under hypnosis. But if Burke managed to hypnotise Alton, whether with Alton’s co-operation or otherwise, it would have been child’s play for him to implant a post-hypnotic suggestion that Alton should follow him to whatever prison he was moved to.”
The governor shrugged. “You’re the expert, not me. Our psychologists would probably disagree with you, and so do I. What possible advantage could Burke gain from having a prison officer he had hypnotised working close by?”
Croft smiled. “You’re right. I am the expert.” He nodded to Millie. “I think we’ve learned all we can here.”
Millie waited until they had been escorted back to the public exit and out into the sweating morning air. “So what exactly did we learn? And why didn’t you tell him what it is?”
They climbed into the car, where Croft secured his seatbelt and waited for their driver to move off before answering.
“Wendell has enough problems without me adding to them, so it was better not to tell him, but we both know that Burke was an opportunist.” Croft felt happier now that he could talk about the man in the past tense. “He was in Ringley for nine months before being brought to trial. Now, take any establishment like this, and amongst the staff there will always be those who suffer minor ailments such as a bad back. Burke would seize upon that, and I believe it’s exactly what he did with Alton. He wanted a warder at Hattersley he had already worked upon because he knew nothing of the mindset of the usual hard men who work in Category A prisons. He didn’t know whether he would be able to get at them. In all likelihood, he hypnotised Alton to cure his bad back, but while he was at it, he implanted a posthypnotic suggestion to the effect that the moment a vacancy arose at Hattersley, or whichever prison Burke was sent to, Alton would feel the urge to apply for it.”
“You still haven’t said what good that would do him?” Millie reminded him as their driver picked up the main road to Scarbeck.
“At the very minimum, it would give him an easier life in prison. But it really came into its own when he planned his escape. The fake heart attack: Alton would have fallen for it far easier because Burke probably programmed him to do so. And with hindsight, we can see that Burke needed to be away from Hattersley, at the hospital, to carry out his escape. Can you see a man of his age getting over the walls? Of course not. He needed to be out of prison, and the only way he could get out was through hospitalisation. To carry that out, he would have been aware of Alton’s shift patterns, and the escape would have been arranged for a night when he knew Alton would be on duty. Getting that kind of information from Alton would be child’s play to Burke.”
Millie shrugged. “All right. But they killed Alton, as well as the other prison officer, and by all accounts, Jack Carter was no pushover.”
“They had to die. The nurse, we know, they killed because Burke needed her uniform. But all three died in order to prevent them raising the alarm too quickly. By the time the local police were on the scene, Burke and his chum had already killed the taxi driver and stolen his car.”
“So we’re simply dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s?” Millie suggested.
“What else are we supposed to do while we’re waiting for our f
riend’s next move?” Croft sighed. “At some point, we need to speak to the governor of Hattersley, if only so the prison service can be prepared for such eventualities in the future.” He leaned forward. “Driver, take us to Scarbeck General, will you? The psychiatric ward.”
19
(As recounted by Captain John Stokes to Corporal Graham Burke.)
Captain Stokes knocked and on the command ‘enter’ stepped into Colonel Freddie Quarmby’s office.
Quarmby had a distinguished service record. As a young officer, he had seen action in the second Boer War, and displayed courage above and beyond the call of duty on the battlefields of Flanders during the Great War. Now in his sixties, he was too close to his pension to consider a field appointment, so he had been posted to Folshingham Hall, hidden in the Shropshire wilderness close to the Long Mynd. The grapevine insisted that once Adolf was beaten, Quarmby would collect his pension and retire to the south coast to write his memoirs.
And Stokes could understand the rumour. Quarmby was exactly the kind of man who would pass his time in a Bournemouth bungalow recounting his memories of a military life. Tall, impeccably dressed, affable to the point of cocktail party conviviality, he enjoyed nothing more than a chat with his subordinates in the mess, where he would recall his younger days in South Africa and war-torn Europe.
But behind the geniality lay a well-educated, sharp mind and a man who ran a tight ship; the kind of commander absolutely necessary for a facility like Folshingham.
A specialist interrogation and subversion unit, the place held few prisoners, most of them German. Some had already admitted they worked for the Abwehr, others maintained their innocence hiding behind perfectly cultured British accents, only giving themselves away by the most trivial of errors. Those who could be of use to the Allies were kept alive, those who were of no use were thoroughly ‘debriefed’ of their information and then executed.
And then there was Julius Reiniger.
Five weeks had passed since Stokes (assigned to Folshingham because he spoke fluent German) had travelled to Berwick to bring Reiniger back. With the bite of a vicious winter burying much of Shropshire under a blanket of snow, Reiniger had given them a great deal of information, but he needed more specialised interrogation, and much of Stokes’s time since their return from Berwick had been taken up with finding a suitable candidate.
The Deep Secret Page 14
