by Adam Croft
16
One of the perks of being the Senior Investigating Officer in CID was that overtime requests tended to get accepted more often than not. The county’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Martin Cummings, had made serious and violent crime his main priority since being elected to his position. As far as Jack Culverhouse was concerned, that was the one good thing the PCC had done. He knew the time would come when overtime would be denied, as it had in the past. But that didn’t bother him — he did it for the distraction rather than the money.
Besides which, he had work to do. Not work in the conventional sense, but work of his own.
He loaded up the familiar interface of the Police National Computer and went into the nominals database. He moved his mouse cursor over the text box and clicked, watching the cursor blink every second or so. He knew exactly what he wanted to type, but he also knew the potential ramifications of doing so. He wasn’t worried about being caught — that could always be explained away, and in any case it was unlikely. His main worry was deeper than that. He was worried about breaking a bond of trust, a bond that was already pretty weak and which he’d already broken more than once.
But the possible outcomes of not doing anything could be far worse. Jack Culverhouse knew what went on in this town, and he knew the sorts of people who lived here. If there wasn’t major crime, there was petty crime. It was one of those sorts of towns, and it didn’t seem to be getting any better.
Jack knew that most people had a secret they wanted to hide. And in Mildenheath, that secret more often than not concerned the law. He wasn’t only worried for Emily — he was worried for himself. A thirteen-year-old girl getting involved with a dodgy local family wouldn’t look great for him. And it could potentially be more than dangerous for his daughter. The possibilities didn’t bear thinking about.
So he didn’t think about them. Instead, he looked down at his keyboard and tapped out Ethan Turner’s name, before hitting the Enter key.
He didn’t know what he’d been expecting to find. No match? A long list of convictions and charges? The first thing he noticed was Ethan’s date of birth. He had turned eighteen four weeks previously. There was nothing major at first glance. There was a caution for shoplifting at the age of twelve, which on the face of it might not have looked like much but Jack knew was quite significant. Twelve-year-olds weren’t just arrested, cautioned and added to the Police National Computer on a whim. That meant there was no way this had been his first run-in with the police. But since then, it seemed, he’d managed to keep his name away from the prying eyes of the police. Did that mean he’d gone on the straight and narrow? Culverhouse knew from experience that the answer was more than likely no. In this part of the world, very few people ever gave up a life of criminality. More often than not, it was a case of them getting wiser and ensuring that they didn’t get caught any more.
He noted Ethan’s home address — the Loriton estate in Heverstone. It was a familiar name — one that anyone on the local police force would know. In Jack’s eyes, there was no way in hell Ethan Turner had decided to devote his life to cross-stitch and listening to The Archers. No, by now it would be soft drugs and pick-pocketing at the very least. Perhaps a bit of car theft or house burglary. Maybe some involvement in fraud somewhere along the line. Jack knew the patterns.
He made a mental note of Ethan’s address and filed it away in his memory bank. He had a feeling he might be needing it.
17
Wendy knew a case was right for her when she got home from work and took a good couple of hours to wind down. Any other person might think their job was too pedestrian if they got home after a full day and wanted to spend an hour or two doing the housework and ironing. But Wendy was different. She knew herself well enough to know that this was a good sign. It meant the case was motivating her and keeping her energised — something all police officers lived for.
She knew damn well she was onto something with Father Joseph Kümmel, and she knew he knew it too. The only problem was that she had to convince Culverhouse. She had to find something that would save him from marking it down as a hoax call. She’d had all sorts of ideas flying into her head, most of them completely dreadful. She’d even thought for a moment about suggesting they send someone in undercover to pose as someone wanting to join the church. But she quickly realised just how bad an idea that was. Even if they got the clearance to pull an operation like that, it’d take an enormous amount of planning and would have a pretty low chance of success.
As far as Wendy could see it, they were stuck between a rock and a hard place. There was no hard evidence whatsoever of anything untoward going on at Hilltop Farm, but there was no way they could gather any evidence either. They had the power to go in and search the farm, but the place was huge and most of it was farmland. If it were a house, she reckoned they could piece together a search team and do the whole building inside a day. Hilltop Farm would take far, far longer. And that wasn’t even taking into account the possibility that bodies could easily have been buried in the fields and crop patches. Loose, freshly dug earth wouldn’t exactly be a rarity on a working farm. And there was no way they’d get the budget clearance to bring in the advanced gadgetry that could detect dead bodies underground. Not just based on one anonymous phone call.
Usually, that lack of evidence would be enough to satisfy Wendy that their response had been measured and appropriate. But something about Hilltop Farm concerned her.
Her eyes glazed over as the colours and shapes on the television mingled and merged. She wasn’t even sure what she was watching — it was just background noise and something to have on while she zoned out. Her hand reflexively and rhythmically stroked her cat, Cookie, who purred in response.
The ringing of her phone jolted her back into reality. She looked down at the display and saw a withheld number. That meant it could well be work. She swiped her finger across the bottom of the screen to answer it.
The voice on the other end of the phone was polite, professional and matter-of-fact. It was a call she didn’t think she’d ever expected to receive. The news itself wasn’t a huge surprise, but it was something she’d shoved to the back of her mind, tried not to focus on. Now, though, she had no choice. She thanked the woman and ended the call.
She sat for a moment, gazing at the wall. She knew exactly what her response should be. It should be to ignore it, forget it and move on. But she had no choice. Her instinct overruled her. She had to be there.
She picked up her phone again and dialled Jack Culverhouse’s number.
‘Yeah?’ he said, eventually, once he’d answered the call.
‘Hi. It’s me,’ Wendy said, unsure what to say, the previous call still replaying in her mind.
‘I know it’s bloody you. The number came up on my screen,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘What do you want?’
Wendy swallowed and tried to think of the words. ‘It’s Michael,’ she said. ‘I had a call from the prison. He’s been attacked.’
‘Attacked?’ Culverhouse replied. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean he’s been bloody attacked!’ Wendy shrieked, surprising herself at her reaction.
‘Right,’ came the response from the DCI, following by a long silence.
‘I need to go and see him,’ Wendy said.
‘See him? When?’
‘Now.’
Wendy could hear Culverhouse sighing at the other end of the phone. ‘Knight, he’s in fucking Frankland. That’s in Durham. It’s a four hour drive from here.’
She could feel her patience running thin. ‘I know where it is, guv. And yes, I’m going to need tomorrow off. Call it compassionate leave, call it what you like. He’s my brother and I need to see him.’
There was a moment of silence before Culverhouse spoke. ‘No.’
‘No? What do you mean “no”?’ Wendy asked, her voice rising.
‘I mean no. You’re needed at work. Unless it’s life threatening, you’re not entitled to compassionate le
ave. And anyway, let’s face it. He’s a scumbag murderer. He killed five women. And your bloody boyfriend. What the hell do you want to rush up there to see him for? So he’s been given a slapping by another inmate. Boo fucking hoo.’
Wendy tried to keep a lid on her anger, but she could feel herself failing. ‘You know what?’ she said, finally. ‘I don’t give a shit what you say. I’m going up to see him and that’s that. Put me down as absent without leave if you like. I couldn’t care less.’
She ended the call, switched off her phone and grabbed her car keys from the hall table. She stopped only to look up at the clock. Four hours would get her to HMP Frankland well after midnight, but right now she really didn’t care.
18
Ben Gallagher laid flat on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. There wasn’t much light coming in through the curtains — just the glow of the moon — but it was enough to highlight the crawling damp that was creeping its way across the plasterwork. This whole place was going to shit. The sooner the better.
He’d long suspected what was happening to detractors, but he’d never seen it with his own eyes. Not until he saw someone snatch Amy Kemp.
He knew there was no way he was going to get to sleep. Not after what had happened over the past couple of days. From now on, he’d be sleeping with one eye open.
They had laid the plan long in advance, and it had been really quite simple. Simple, yet brazen. Ever since his brother Harry had escaped, he’d wondered where he’d got to, wondered what life was like for him on the outside — if he ever got to the outside. Six months or so later, one morning, things had started to become far clearer.
That morning, he’d got up as usual and gone up onto the herb garden to give the plants their morning water. The rooftop garden was the ideal place for growing herbs — it was high up and drenched in sunshine. Situated on top of the outbuilding which stored his gardening tools, it was where he grew herbs for the whole community. The rooftop garden was only accessible by way of a rickety wooden ladder at the side of the building, which Ben locked inside the outbuilding each evening. He didn’t need to, but he did. As the person responsible for the herb garden — as well as other areas — he was the only person who went up there. The whole farm was single-storey — Father Kümmel was rumoured to be deathly afraid of heights — and Ben considered the rooftop garden to be his own private solitude.
He’d climbed the ladder, crawled onto the flat white roof and started to inspect the plants when he noticed something that hadn’t been there the day before. On closer inspection, he could see it was a matchbox.
It took him a moment to process it. No-one came up here except him. He stored the ladder away each night, and only he had the key to the outbuilding. It was possible, he supposed, that someone could have thrown it up here from ground level if they were a good enough thrower. But that still didn’t explain where they’d come from.
He picked up the matchbox and opened it. There was a folded sheet of paper inside, which Ben opened and read. The message was in small print, scrawled in black pen on thin A4 notepaper.
* * *
Can’t fit much on 1 sheet of paper. Restricted by weight. Have means of getting info in and out of farm. Write messages in chalk on roof garden. Will send camera drone over every Thursday during mass. Start this week. H
* * *
As he laid on his bed, he could still remember the feeling he had when he first read that. He knew immediately who it was from. Harry was out, and he was safe. The idea of sending information in and out of the farm petrified him, though. He knew he could trust his brother, but the thought of going against Father Kümmel and the church still frightened him half to death.
He’d read the note ten times over. He still wasn’t sure what a camera drone was, but he’d got the gist of it. What messages did Harry want him to write? Thursday had been two days away, and he’d spent those two days thinking of what he’d write.
Finding the chalk hadn’t been difficult. Hilltop Farm, like most of the Mildenheath area, was built on some of the chalkiest earth in Britain. It was everywhere. On the Thursday morning, he’d gone up onto the rooftop garden as he did every morning, and cleared a space in the centre. In that space, he’d written his message:
* * *
Got your note. Thanks.
* * *
He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He had no information, no messages. At least, not at that stage.
Harry would sometimes drop notes of his own, always in matchboxes, and always scribbled on one sheet of thin paper. They’d always be concise, just as Ben’s scrawled chalk messages had to be. Over time, they’d developed their own form of shorthand without even realising it. Over time, Ben had grown comfortable enough to express his dissatisfaction with life on the farm, especially when Harry had told him about life on the outside.
There was no way Ben would be able to escape. They both knew that. Harry had told Father Kümmel that he wanted to be a missionary, wanted to bring people to the church in the same way his father had been brought there more than two decades earlier. That had given Harry his chance to get on the outside and to escape. Ben would have no chance of being able to pull the same stunt. But, together, they would keep their finger on the pulse of Hilltop Farm and try and find some way of blowing the whole place open from the inside.
When Ben had seen, completely by chance, the body of Isabella Martin being carried towards the grain store, he knew they had something that could end the whole thing very quickly. He’d scrawled a message in chalk on the roof of the building and waited for Harry’s camera drone to pass again. Then he’d sat back and watched as it all started to unfold.
His heart had sunk when he watched the police leave that day, with one lone officer returning the next day to tie up the loose ends. His hopes of bringing the whole church crashing to its knees had been dashed. How had they not managed to find Isabella’s body? They were fucking police officers!
He closed his eyes for a few moments, feeling the back of his head rest on the rock-hard bed. When he opened them again, he looked back up at the mouldy ceiling and wished the whole thing would come crashing down.
But he knew he had another way out. He knew there was another way to smash this place open from the inside.
It was time for plan B.
19
Jack Culverhouse nursed a glass of whisky and stared hazy-eyed at the TV. The evening news was on — something about a banking scandal — but he wasn’t paying much attention. He had more than enough on his mind.
When there was a big case at work he found himself being able to think quite clearly, methodically, working his way through it. It was only once the problems on his mind came from his personal life that he found himself unable to work out the best course of action.
One such problem was Wendy Knight. He’d had his concerns about her lately anyway, particularly considering her behaviour over the Hilltop Farm incident. What the hell was she thinking, trying to undermine him? And now, ringing him after work, telling him she was disappearing off to the North East in the middle of the night to visit her drug-addicted, serial-killing brother in prison. That was the final straw. He’d be having some serious words with her when she got back.
The whole incident had upset him far more than he’d realised. As far as he was concerned, he and Wendy hadn’t had the best start to their working relationship. It’d be fair to say they rubbed each other up the wrong way more often than not. But he couldn’t deny that she was a bloody good detective. Indeed, he’d considered recommending her for her Inspector’s exams recently. Now, though, he was starting to reconsider.
To top all that, he couldn’t shake Ethan Turner from his mind. What the hell was Emily doing running around with a kid like that? She should’ve been brought up to know better. After all, she was a policeman’s daughter. The irony wasn’t lost on him, though: It was the job that had caused him to lose Emily in the first place. If he hadn’t been a police officer, he might not h
ave lost her. But then she wouldn’t have had the policeman father that she never had anyway. Whichever way he looked at it, he was always destined to lose.
He knew he needed to find out more about Ethan Turner, but he’d have to be very careful. It was a huge no-no to let your private concerns creep over into policing, and he knew he’d already overstepped the mark by looking Ethan up on the Police National Computer. But, at the same time, he knew a few officers in different divisions who’d be quite happy to spill the beans over a pint or a cup of coffee.
Half the problem, he knew, was that he still saw Emily as this sweet young girl. She was a teenager now, and would be living a life of her own, making her own choices. But that didn’t stop him from having this overwhelming protective urge. He wondered if he’d ever lose that feeling. Would it have been different if he’d been there to watch her grow up, be able to observe her maturing, develop some trust in her? He didn’t know. There was no way he could ever know.
The sound of the front door opening jolted him back to reality. Emily walked through into the living room, looking like she’d just run a marathon.
‘You alright?’ Jack said, trying to hide the concern from his voice.
‘Yeah, fine.’
‘You don’t look it,’ he said, gesturing to her lank hair and wet clothes.
‘It’s raining. No biggie.’
‘Where’ve you been? I would’ve happily given you a lift if you’d asked.’
‘It’s cool. Honestly. I like walking in the rain,’ Emily said, heading for the kitchen.
He sensed that although Emily clearly had things on her mind, she also seemed a lot brighter. He considered that now might be a good time to broach the subject of Ethan Turner. He knew he’d have to be careful, though. One false move and he’d potentially lose the lot. He couldn’t risk that. But at the same time he couldn’t risk Emily getting involved with a juvenile criminal. Sure, she might never forgive him, might even disappear back to her grandparents again, but it would be worth it in the long run if it kept her safe.
