by Ian Mayfield
Sophia nodded. Believable, if Kim’s impressions of Andrew Clarke were anything to go by. She said, ‘So you think they might have found out?’
‘Eh?’ He looked puzzled. Then he shook his head. ‘No, I’m just telling you how it started. Anyway, she knew I was involved with this pressure group, Justice for Mark Watkins.’
Sophia stiffened. Kim had mentioned a possible link. She’d have to talk to her when they got back.
‘D’you remember it?’ Luke asked, noticing her reaction.
Sandra, who’d been uncharacteristically taciturn so far, said, ‘I was on the investigation.’
Luke and Nick turned piercing stares on her. Luke said, ‘D’you reckon it was Carruth?’
Sandra hesitated, conscious of Sophia beside her. ‘We were pretty certain he was involved,’ she said. ‘And we knew he didn’t act alone. But because he never talked…’ She tailed off, knowing as she had known then that it wasn’t enough.
Nick made a loud, dismissive noise with his tongue. The tension in the room had risen.
Sandra said, ‘A person can’t be tried twice for the same crime. That’s the law.’
Nick wasn’t impressed. He chewed his lip and then said, ‘You reckon he had something to do with - ?’
‘I checked him out.’ Sandra shook her head. ‘He’s got the perfect alibi. Emigrated to America two years ago and he’s in jail in Florida. How he got a green card with his record is anybody’s guess, but there you go.’
‘He’s been spoken to,’ Sophia added, ‘but he denies knowing anything. I think,’ she ventured, ‘we’ve drifted from the point.’
‘Yeah, sorry.’ Luke scratched his head. ‘Debbie started asking me about it. Kept on about how unfair it was. Eventually she talked me into taking her along to a meeting.’ He glanced at Nick and then frowned at Sandra. ‘I went to the same gym as Mark Watkins, and I’m telling you he was no wimp. I know Carruth’s in the clear legally, but like you said, no way he did it on his own. We knew it as well as you lot did. So we formed the group to try and push the police, or the CPS or the Home Office, into reviewing the case properly. But Debbie,’ he wiped a hand across his mouth, ‘seemed to get the impression we were some sort of vigilante brigade.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Sophia asked.
‘She told me. She was all fired up, wanting to do something. You know how it is: she’s sixteen, thinks she can change the world. She was standing up and mouthing off and getting clapped; of course that only encouraged her. Trouble is,’ his expression clouded, ‘it got her involved with some people.’
‘Some people?’
‘Far left militants,’ Luke said with sudden venom. ‘You know the ones: they always turn up in a group like ours and they’re always white. We knew they’d be trouble but we can’t turn them away because they never actually do anything to justify expelling them.’ His anger, fuelled by worry, boiled over and he slammed his fist down on the arm of the settee. ‘They used her and I couldn’t fucking stop them.’
Sophia waited for him to calm down. ‘How did they involve Debbie?’
Luke shook his head, almost out of his reason now with anxiety. ‘These guys were after this neo-Nazi outfit they thought was behind Mark’s death.’
‘Thrall,’ Sandra said, her voice pregnant with excitement. ‘I remember the name coming up, but we never got close.’
‘Explain about Debbie,’ Sophia stepped in. ‘Are you saying they used her to get at Thrall?’
‘The way she went on about it, you’d think she insisted,’ Luke said bitterly. ‘She was just too scared to say no. She’s still so scared,’ he raised his voice, ‘she won’t even tell me what she’s doing. She stopped going out with me. If I see her in the house when she’s babysitting she won’t even look at me. I don’t know how deep she’s in. I fucking don’t know.’
He put his face in his hands, then looked up, stared appealingly at Sophia. There was a long silence while the DCI pursed her lips and thought. At last she nodded. He had a right to know.
‘The devices that started the fire,’ she told him, as gently as possible, ‘were set inside the house. They were placed without whoever brought them there having to break in. Besides you and your mother, the only other key we’ve been able to trace belongs to Debbie.’
Emotions flashed across Luke Benton’s face like sunlight and shadow on a time-lapse film. Surprise, betrayal, horror, grief, worry. But finally anger. Impotent anger.
‘Oh, God,’ he said, and crumpled, head in his lap, shoulders heaving, as for the first time since they’d met him at the airport he cried. The entire weight of what had befallen his family, befallen him, had finally descended, and Nick, stunned, put his hands on Luke’s shoulders and his face close to Luke’s and tried to comfort him.
‘You don’t need telling,’ Sophia said at the office meeting she’d called that afternoon, ‘that this makes it even more crucial for us to find Debbie Clarke. She alone outside the family had keys, and there are no fingerprints at the scene that haven’t been accounted for. Having said that, it does tend to confirm what we already know: it’s inconceivable she acted alone. Firstly, the sixteen year old daughter of a building society executive does not have knowledge of incendiary devices and how to place them. Secondly, that cross did not appear out of thin air, however much the house-to-house made it seem so.’ She paused for the inevitable wry laughter. ‘What Luke’s account does throw into question is motive. If he’s to be believed, she’s passionately anti-racist to the point where she was prepared to try and infiltrate an extreme right wing group. But I think we might be on our way to some answers. Shortly after we fed the name Thrall through the computer, I got a call from DCI Macmillan from the Flying Squad. He’s agreed to tell us a bit about who we might be up against.’
There was a stir in the room as the man who’d been sitting behind Sophia’s desk got to his feet. He was tall, thin and bloodless, with Brylcreemed grey hair and dark, deep-set eyes. His lean face bore a trace of beard shadow. He moved with a feline fluidity which seemed to have come with his expensive grey suit. He commanded attention effortlessly, startling some of the team who hadn’t even realised he was in the room until he’d stood up. The whole effect was almost sinister, like a vampire in an old Hammer movie. They would more readily have marked him down as a spook than a member of the legendary Sweeney.
His speech betrayed his origins at once as the western Scottish Highlands, familiar to many of those present who’d watched Monarch of the Glen on TV. But any association the accent might have had with whimsical good humour dissipated swiftly: Macmillan’s dark, reedy purr was as unsettling as the rest of him.
He glided over to the board, on which had been written, in large red capitals, THRALL. He looked at it and said, ‘If you ask NCIS nicely, they’ll tell you that name belongs to an ultra-right wing, white supremacy group. It’s an acronym: it stands for Terror Hate Race Alliance. As you may gather from that, they’re not overly concerned about respectability.’ No-one laughed, for the simple reason that it was very probably not a joke. ‘The first indication of them as an autonomous entity is three years back, although it seems they started out some time before that as a faction within the main far right parties. What, you wonder, has this got to do with me?’
He turned and drifted over to the projector he’d set in the middle of the office, signalling as he went to a wretched-looking Jeff Wetherby, who was standing by the blind. As the room darkened, a slide of a slim, balding, fortyish man lit up part of the board. Obviously a surveillance photo, it showed the man turning away from a front door with the number 90 on it.
‘This,’ the wintry Highland voice floated out of the gloom, ‘is Edward Alan Porter, age forty-five. Last known address, 90 Highbury Road, SW12, where this was taken last August. Regarded in the underworld as one of the best blaggers around, largely because he’s never been caught.’ Macmillan broke off and paced a short way across the floor. ‘Word on the street says one secret of his success is that
he’s found witnesses tend to describe black men, even when the robbers wear masks. Why wouldn’t this lead us to look for him? Because Edward Porter is a fully paid-up member of the BNP and the EDL, and generally has a hand in any marches, rallies or concerts of an extreme right or nationalist bent that go on in the London area. Outspoken and an organiser. Not the sort of man to be using black talent on bank jobs. Definitely the sort canny enough to exploit the subconscious racism of the great British public.’
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the faint click of a mouse as Macmillan brought the next slide up. A broad-shouldered, powerful-looking man with a ruddy face and a red crew cut stared out at them, prison slate held defiantly in front of his chest.
‘More and more,’ Macmillan said, ‘we’re finding these extremist groups are starting to use some of the same fundraising methods as the Northern Ireland paramilitaries: armed robbery, fraud, extortion et cetera. That may be where this guy comes in. Michael Philip Quaife.’ He pointed. ‘Age thirty-four. Released from Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight in February from a three-year stretch for armed robbery. He’s an ex-para and did four tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, where he seems to have picked up some handy tips regarding the practical use of explosives.’
‘Is that the link between him and Porter?’ someone asked. ‘He brought the tactics back from the military?’
The soft whirr of the projector stopped. Uncertainly, Jeff drew the blind back up. Macmillan prowled back to the centre of the room. ‘Not that smart,’ he answered, ‘although certainly he could have rigged the devices that caused your fire. More likely he’s the enforcer. The one who actually goes and does the ethnic cleansing while Porter plans.’
‘So what you’re saying,’ Sophia put in, ‘is these two are Thrall?’
‘Porter’s the brains. Without him it wouldnae exist. Too subtle. Thrall aren’t in the business of claiming credit. They prefer to make the hit and let the rumour mill do the talking.’
Abruptly, he turned away and went and sat down beside Sophia. She stepped forward, the familiar rustle of her tights drawing the team back as if from a trance. It was as if Macmillan had never stirred.
‘The point being,’ she said, ‘Porter’s the one we want to be measuring up. His and Quaife’s current whereabouts are now a priority. Any questions?’
There were few takers. No-one fancied digging too deeply into Sweeney territory, even if their knowledge was on offer. But Kim stuck her hand up and called out, ‘Do we know how big Thrall actually is?’
‘Big?’ Only Macmillan’s lips moved.
‘How many are there? Besides Porter and Quaife.’
‘They don’t publish a membership list.’
This produced a smattering of nervous laughter. Undaunted, Kim persisted, ‘You’ve more or less said Mark Watkins was down to them. I mean there’s people in this room who were on that case and know there was way more to it than got to court. He was kicked unconscious, stabbed to death and then bloody tarred and feathered. That wasn’t two slags with a baseball bat. Nor was a six foot high flaming cross. Somebody knows their Klan history. Sir,’ she added, as Macmillan rose.
He nodded to her. ‘What I should have said is that it’s hard to quantify. Thrall is less an organisation than a rallying cry. They’ve adherents throughout the far right, on whom they call when necessary. Simon Carruth, the man acquitted of the Watkins murder, was one. Makes infiltration difficult, particularly when we’re used to impersonating armed robbers, not political extremists.’
There were icicles in Kim’s stomach. If the Sweeney couldn’t get on the inside of Thrall, what chance did Debbie Clarke have? A thought occurred to her, so momentous it shocked her into standing.
She didn’t realise at first. Sophia said, ‘Kim?’
The whole room was staring in her direction.
‘This is gonna sound daft.’
‘Say it,’ Sophia ordered, her blue gaze leaving no doubt that she was the one to decide what was daft.
‘What if we’re looking at this the wrong way?’ It seemed to Kim that she was standing to one side, watching herself speak. ‘What if Porter found Debbie out? Maybe she was the target, not the Bentons.’
‘Seems a bit drastic,’ Sandra Jones said. ‘What’s wrong with a spanner and a rubbish skip on a dark night?’
‘Then there’s the cross,’ Helen Wallace chipped in.
‘And the no forced entry.’
‘I mean, why would she put herself in the frame?’
Kim sat down.
‘All valid objections,’ Sophia said, looking in turn at their contributors. ‘Nevertheless, it’s worth bearing in mind. At the moment we can’t confirm one way or the other, because there are no witnesses and no evidence. In the meantime, we know we’re looking for dangerous people. Armed people. Hold that thought.’ She clapped her hands together to signal the end of the meeting.
The low chatter, the bustle of backsides transferring from desktops to chairs, occupied the next few moments. When next anyone looked, the seat behind Sophia’s desk was empty. No-one had seen Macmillan leave.
Following Kim’s contribution there’d been one or two remarks about the grinding of axes, whose perpetrators hadn’t taken a great deal of care to voice out of her hearing. Such things she’d long grown used to handling, but not from colleagues she’d come to trust. She felt she was in danger of being marginalised because of her colour, and she didn’t like it.
Of course the attacks on Mark Watkins and the Bentons made her angry. They were, in many ways, personal. But it was righteous anger that honed, rather than clouded, her judgement, and it was nothing like the exasperation she now felt. Either you involved black officers and accepted their attitudes, or you didn’t, and went on fielding the old accusations about the police being out of touch. There seemed to be an assumption that white coppers didn’t feel the same outrage at violence against a black person, and could work more effectively because of the impartiality this gave them. Bollocks, she thought. White or black, the police service would not be doing its duty to minorities until every officer in it looked on racism as an evil to be ground into the dirt, destroyed.
As she pulled up in Ballards Way that evening, she was surprised to see her guv’nor emerge from the Clarkes’ house and drive off in her green Saab. Of course, she remembered, Sophia was calling on them daily, keeping them up to date; probably, knowing her, timing the visits to just before Kim or Nina were scheduled to show up, so as to render them less likely to expect additional police attention. Nothing to worry about. She switched off the engine and settled down to wait.
At a quarter to nine Andrew Clarke emerged from the house and climbed into his wife’s VW Golf. He reversed into the street and headed off towards Addington. Kim pulled out and followed him at a distance.
He led her to the Keeper and Wicket in Addington village, where he parked and went into the saloon bar. While she was still debating whether to go in after him he reappeared, got into the car and started back the way he’d come. With a growing suspicion this was all there was to the excursion, Kim followed. If he’d gone to the pub for a drink there was no way he could have finished it that quickly. Maybe he’d bought some cigarettes or bottled beer to take home, but she’d seen nothing in his hands, and there were two off licences in Selsdon, much closer to his house. The only conclusion Kim could come to was that he’d gone there to meet someone. Someone he had reason for not wanting his wife - or the police - to know about.
As expected, he drove straight back to Ballards Way. Kim noted his movements in the log. She saw no further activity that evening.
The duty barman of the Keeper and Wicket wouldn’t swear to having seen Andrew Clarke talking to anyone or, indeed, to having seen Andrew Clarke. He couldn’t be expected to take notice of every stingy sod who came in and didn’t even buy a bloody drink. Bloody rushed off his feet, he’d been.
The fact that it was the quietest night of the week did not shake him from this standpoint. He h
overed while Kim finished her half and then ushered her out past empty tables. He hadn’t even had to call time.
Detective Inspector Zoltan Schneider remained, six months into the team’s operational life, a man of mystery. As such he was the subject of much speculation among his colleagues, generally in pubs after work, when a few adult beverages had enhanced the tendency to gossip. Under such influences most of them had decided that the sarcastic, quietly intimidating exterior hid a lonely, friendless man, with an indefinable something on his shoulder that was not so much a chip as a large log.
One of them knew this to be untrue. Anne White had been going out with him for more than two years. They’d met when Zoltan had been a DS at Richmond, and she a PC on prisoner transport duty. Zoltan had said nothing of this to Sophia Beadle during the setting up of the team. Relationships between coppers who worked together were frowned on. But Zoltan and Anne’s personal intimacy seemed to prejudice their work not at all, and they saw no reason, especially now, why it should be anyone’s concern but their own.
Zoltan cast a pleasant, relaxed gaze over her as she sat up in bed reading. He sometimes wondered what a girl like Anne saw in him. She was thirty-three, with skin and hair that were fair almost to the point of albino. Too tall for her weight, she maintained by squirrelish eating an enviable, waspish slimness that sat well with her refined, angular face. She looked up and smiled, took off her glasses - all she’d been wearing - and met his kiss with ardent interest. He wasn’t fooled.
‘Penny for your thoughts.’
‘Damn. You guessed.’
‘You can tell me, I’m a policeman.’ He shrugged, half turning on the way to the bathroom. ‘Be with you in a minute.’
For a time there were assorted clatterings through the half-closed doorway, and then Zoltan reappeared, his clothes slung over one arm. He tossed them across the back of Anne’s dressing table chair. Still wearing his glasses - he couldn’t see three feet ahead without them - he climbed into bed, where he removed them and set them on the night table.
