by J G Alva
Pat paused. It was not a pleasant memory to reflect on, and even harder to relate it to an absolute stranger over the telephone.
“And?”
“There were three men inside. And one woman. They had beaten the woman savagely – it was her screams that had alerted a neighbour. One of the men was hiding behind a cupboard just inside the door. He had a sledgehammer. He hit me with it, in the middle of my back.”
“You were injured?”
“Yes. I spent eight months in hospital.”
“Possible paralysis, it says here.”
“Yes. I’ve had two operations on my spine: one immediately after the incident, and one three years later. They weren’t sure I would walk again.”
“What went wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“With the incursion.”
“Nothing went wrong. It was a bad situation. That’s all.”
“If nothing went wrong, why did your commanding officer lose his job immediately afterward?”
How did he know all this?
“Detective Harris?”
“It was thought – by some – that Detective Bentley had acted in poor judgement.”
“How so?”
“He…” Pat licked his lips. He could feel the sweat on his brow. “We had someone on the inside, a criminal informant, who could potentially have averted the whole thing. But Detective Bentley didn’t want to wait for him.”
“So you paid the price for his impatience.”
Pat didn’t answer. He’d already said more than he wanted to.
“Why didn’t you sue?” Mills asked.
“I…I didn’t see any need.”
“You were almost paralysed.”
“It was the job.”
“And the job almost took away your ability to walk. Most people would have gone for compensation.”
“I’m not most people.”
“Well, that’s true. But that still doesn’t answer my question.”
The man waited.
Pat cleared his throat and said, “I love being a police officer. Since I was a small boy it was all I ever wanted to be. I didn’t sue because I didn’t want to hurt the thing I loved. I couldn’t. My commanding officer was at fault, not the institution.”
The man was silent for a moment.
But he sounded satisfied when he said, “and that’s why Kent trusted you.”
“What?”
“I was at Alfred Alger’s home this morning.”
Pat was stunned.
“You were there?”
“It was already over by the time I arrived. But Kent lasted for another couple of minutes. He told me you were the only man I could trust. I see now that he was right. You cherish the things you love, you respect them…even if they cause you pain. That sounds like a good man to me.”
This was the strangest conversation Pat had ever had…and by association this was the strangest man he had ever spoken to.
“Will you come in?” He asked. “With the boy?”
“No.”
“What?”
All of that…and he was still not convinced?
“But I’ll meet you at the Observatory,” Mills continued. “On the side closest to the suspension bridge. In two hours. Can you be there?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will see you then, Detective Harris.”
◆◆◆
CHAPTER 19
On the drive back to Bristol, Pat felt unnaturally exposed.
The silence was pregnant with questions…and it was only a matter of time before Bob gave voice to them.
“Thirteen years,” he said eventually.
“What?”
Bob turned to him then. Behind his head, the occasional farmhouse or cottage with an exterior light popped into sight, and then swiftly disappeared once more, claimed by the greedy hands of darkness.
“I’ve known you thirteen years and you’ve never told me that story.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s very…private.”
“Aren’t we friends?”
“Yes.”
“Then why wouldn’t you tell me?”
Pat shook his head.
“I mean, I knew about it,” Bob said quickly. “There were rumours. People talk. But still…”
Pat said, “growing up…we didn’t talk about things like that.”
“It’s the 21st century, Pat.”
“I know…but I didn’t grow up in the 21st century. It’s…a different world now.”
“Not that different.”
But Bob seemed to reconsider his statement, in light of the current investigation.
“Well,” he relented. “Maybe a little different.”
◆◆◆
“Sutton, the dust hasn’t even settled-“
“Billy, just tell me how soon you can get someone out there to check?”
Billy North was a short, bald, fussy little insurance agent, pedantic to the point of frustration…and as a consequence, his firm was incredibly successful.
After speaking to Detective Harris, Sutton had hung up, but he hadn’t immediately returned to Dot’s. Instead, he had picked up the payphone’s handset once more and dialled Billy’s number, which he had confirmed in Dot’s local directory beforehand.
“I don’t know,” Billy said eventually. And then: “I suppose I can get Nigel to go over tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Billy.”
“A safe, right?”
“Yes.”
“Sure it survived?”
“No. But it’s meant to be everything-proof. Save a nuclear war. So says the manufacturer. End quote.”
“If the stuff in it is that important, you should have put it in a bank.”
“I’ll remember that for next time, Billy. Call me when you know.”
“Yes, yes. I’ll call.”
◆◆◆
The New Place – the Bristol Central Police Station, as it was officially called – was situated on the docks, in a large office building of glass and concrete.
CID occupied one half of the second floor, behind a glass door next to the lifts.
Detective Sergeant Phillips was a bull of a man, with a ferocious stare, a ferocious moustache and, curiously, a ferocious obsession with aftershaves. His office smelled like the perfume counter at Boots.
He spread an ordinance survey map on the large oval table and Pat indicated the current location of the Cult.
“How long until you’re ready?” Pat asked.
Phillips wrinkled his nose while he thought about it.
“Two hours, I reckon.”
“Two hours?”
“A lot of men are on assignment elsewhere. I’ll have to call them in. It’ll take two hours to get everyone together. And we’re going to need them all, if there’s eighty of these nutbags to deal with.”
“Okay. Bob will be your intelligence. He’s seen the site; he can direct you.”
Phillips gave him a blast of his ferocious stare.
“Where you are you going to be?”
“I have an appointment which, hopefully, will tie up the other end of this investigation. If all goes well, we can sit around with a cup of tea in three hours and congratulate ourselves on another flawless operation.”
“I hate tea,” Phillips remarked, returning to the map. “But it will be nice to see this done and dusted. These religious fuckers give me the heebie-jeebies.”
◆◆◆
“Just to be clear, you each know what you have to do?”
Sutton observed an array of uneasy faces. But it was Aimee that spoke.
“It can’t possibly work,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Well…” She thought. “What if he’s the one?”
“You mean, Harris? Then we’ll know that too, by the end of it. And change the plan accordingly. We have to flush him out, Aimee. One way or the other. Depending on how he operates, he’ll either be tracking Har
ris remotely, or following him. Either way, he’ll end up here.”
“And then what?”
“Then we do what we agreed. We’ve been doing nothing but running. That fucking stops. Right now.”
“You sound angry,” Aimee said.
“I am.”
“You might be reacting,” Fin said. “Instead of acting.”
Sutton’s dead stare made him uneasy.
“All we’ve been doing is moving from one defensive position to the next. Now it’s time to reach across the board and scatter their pieces. And this is how we do it.”
“Okay,” Aimee said, nodding. “Alright.”
He looked at the others, stopping when he caught Toby’s eye.
“Make sure you sit where he can see you,” Sutton said. “You’re the lure to get him to throw caution to the wind, and rush inside.”
Toby nodded but said, “what if it’s not like you say it is. What if he just calls them and then they come here in force.” He smiled, but it was twisted. “My name is Legion, for we are many.”
“It won’t be,” Sutton assured him. “He wants the accolade of returning you to the Cult himself, and he can’t do that if he calls them to do it for him. But if it does turn out like you say, then I’ll be out there. I’ll step in.”
He looked them over again.
“Dot?”
She nodded resolutely.
“I’m ready,” she responded. The perfect soldier.
“Fin? You know what you’re doing?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively.
“In the hall,” he said, pointing. “In case things are a bit much for Aimee.”
“I won’t need you,” Aimee assured him.
“Christ, I hope not,” Fin exploded. “I’m shit at this physical stuff.”
◆◆◆
Detective Patrick Harris was surprisingly tall.
Even though Fin’s researches had found some rather pertinent information on Harris – including his height – the whispering voice on the phone had seemed to come from a smaller man. Harris was well over six feet tall, and seemed taller because of a long neck, and a similarly long head…like a deodorant cap. He was completely bald. But he wasn’t skinny, and despite his back injury and long sloping shoulders, he gave off the flavour of a workhorse. All that rowing, Sutton thought.
He appeared to be alone.
Sutton stood apart from the Observatory, but close enough that he could run to it if he needed the cover. The Clifton Observatory used to be a windmill for grinding corn and then snuff; after fire damage, the sails were taken down, and it was bought and sold, and bought and sold again, before it became home to a camera obscura. A camera obscura – for those less knowledgeable – was used by artists as a means of projecting a larger image of whatever was captured by the lens on to a wall or mirror. In the case of the Clifton Observatory, there was a five foot mirror that actually showed the Avon Gorge and Leigh Woods the right way up. He believed the Bristol School had used it, when they were doing their landscape paintings in the early nineteenth century.
The Observatory didn’t actually offer much in the way of cover, should he need it. It was a solitary building, stuck on a hill by itself. He didn’t think there would be trouble however. The telephone call had revealed Detective Harris to be a trustworthy man…or it had convinced Sutton of it anyway.
Harris stopped ten feet from Sutton. He looked around, presumably for Toby.
“Mr Mills?”
The voice was the same: gentle; almost a whisper; the voice of an older man.
“Please. Call me Sutton. It’s just you?”
“Yes. Where’s the boy?”
“Not here.”
“You said you’d bring the boy-“
“I didn’t say I’d bring the boy. I said I’d meet you. I’m still not sure I can trust you, and until I am sure, then the boy stays with me.”
Harris stared at him. It was dark, and what streetlights there were in this part of Clifton didn’t reach the Observatory, so Harris’s face resided in shadow.
“Then I can’t understand why I’m here?” Harris countered.
Sutton nodded; an acknowledgement of the situation.
“I’m old fashioned, Detective Harris. I like to meet people face to face. I don’t think you can know someone – really know someone, I mean – unless you meet them face to face. I’m of the opinion that it’s probably something to do with pheromones, or some other bodily secretion; the one thing that technology can’t duplicate. Well. At least not yet.”
“You are a strange man, Sutton Mills,” Harris said. “How did you become involved in this in the first place? If I can ask.”
“The boy’s father asked me to find a way to rescue his son. I did.”
Harris paused.
“So you were the one?”
“The one?”
“I had the impression Mr Matheson had put together a team to extricate his son.”
“That was plan B.”
“I see. So…this is something you do?”
“I’ve done things like this, from time to time. But in all honesty, with hindsight, I would have turned this down, I think. It was the challenge…could I do it? The price of my arrogance, Detective Harris, is the situation we all find ourselves in…and the debt hasn’t fully been cleared yet.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means everyone has underestimated the Cult, myself included. And that has got to stop.”
Harris stared some more. Trying to figure him out, Sutton thought.
“Have you found out which one of your men has been speaking to the Cult?” Sutton asked.
Harris nodded.
“I think I know who it is.”
“Good.”
“So I can guarantee the boy’s safety.”
“I don’t-“
“We’re taking the Cult tonight,” Harris said. “In a matter of hours. We know where they are. The taskforce is being assembled as we speak. In another couple of hours, all the members of the Cult will be in police custody.”
“They won’t be taken easily,” Sutton said.
“They won’t have a choice.”
“Be careful, Detective Harris. You’re on dangerous ground here. Remember what I said: don’t underestimate them.”
“I won’t. You’re right. They’ve been exceptionally…resourceful. I didn’t anticipate that. But now there’s nowhere for them to go. So…will you come in?”
Sutton thought about it…or rather, he pretended to think about it. He stared off toward the suspension bridge, the illuminated structure almost indistinct behind a screen of trees.
“Alright. But let’s wait until this is all over…just in case you’re wrong about your mole.”
“I’m not wrong-“
“Pride cometh before a fall, Detective Harris. I wouldn’t try and insist on anything right now. I have little tolerance for bullshit, and even less for the lies people tell themselves so they can function. The best way is never the easiest, but that doesn’t stop people trying.”
Harris was silent for a moment.
“Very well,” he agreed.
“Good. Let’s agree to meet tomorrow. Say, at nine. In Millennium Square.”
“Why there?”
“Why not?”
Harris tilted his head.
“Alright,” he relented. And then: “the boy is alright?”
Sutton sighed.
“After all this,” he said, and indicated the surrounding area…but he really meant all that had happened in the past twenty four hours. “I think ‘alright’ is a bit of a tall order for the boy. But he’s alive, and that’s what counts. There’s not much chance for redemption when you’re dead.”
“No,” Harris confirmed grimly.
There was something in his tone, and it made Sutton wonder who the detective might be thinking about.
Alger?
Kent?
Greg?
Or someone closer?
“I’ll see you tomorrow at nine,” Sutton said, moving away.
◆◆◆
Meeting at the Observatory wasn’t just handy because it was close by.
Dot’s house had a small iron balcony that looked out toward the Observatory. On it, with the aid of a pair of binoculars, Aimee had been keeping watch.
Standing by the edge of the gorge, Sutton called her.
“Hello?”
“Anyone?” He asked.
“Yes.”
Sutton felt his heart beat faster.
“You’re sure?”
“He’s just been sitting in his car.”
“Alright. I’m coming back.”
“Don’t make it too easy for him.”
“I won’t.”
“But make it easy enough.”
◆◆◆
“You could just stay,” Fin said.
Sutton shook his head.
“I’m going to have to go out,” he said, looking for his jacket. Then it hit him: Lisa had it.
The pain flared up once again, the loss of Freddie. He couldn’t think about it. Not until this was over.
At the moment, he’d have to contain it behind a cast iron cage of his anger.
“It’s possible he didn’t see me,” Sutton said, checking his pockets. “But it’s more likely that he’s worried he can’t take you if I’m here. So if I leave…”
“Fuck, what if he has a gun?” Fin said.
“If he gets Toby, it’s over,” Aimee said.
Sutton nodded.
“Are you alright with this?” He asked her.
Aimee debated.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ve never attacked anyone before. Well. Not before today, I should say.”
“You’ll be okay. It’s all about how you swing it…and you have a good swing.”
“Thanks.”
“What have you got to hit him with?”
She held up the fireplace poker.
“This.”
“Good. Hit him hard. Around the head if you can. You want him down on the floor at the first hit. Try not to lobotomise him.”
“I’ll try not to,” she said, with a bit of attitude.
He checked her, but then nodded.
“I won’t be far away. Call me as soon as it’s done.”
