Cult Following: No Faith To Lose (The Capgras Conspiracy Book 0)

by Simon J. Townley

  “We understand,” Franklin said, “that you’ve been under considerable stress.”

  Capgras had refused to bring a lawyer with him, even though the newspaper had insisted. “I’ll be fine,” he told them. “I’ve nothing to hide.” Now, he wished he had listened to Jon Fitzgerald.

  “It’s not uncommon for people who have had, shall we say, a run-in with the police to become fixated, try to seek attention, to make amends in some way.” Ashton steepled his hands, his fingers writhing around each other. “Perhaps you should consider taking a break. Or stress counselling.”

  They wanted him to see a shrink. They believed he was crazy. But why were they being so nice to him? “I don’t need my head examined. I know what happened, and what I heard in that van.”

  “But we stopped them as they approached the target,” Franklin said. “How do you explain the lack of any sarin gas or explosives? Or any other terrorist related paraphernalia? You’ve told us you were there at the incident in Farringdon. Is it possible that you’ve become…” He paused, waving his hand as if fishing for words. “Uhhhhh…. Confused?”

  “I’ve told you everything.”

  The detective at the back coughed. It was an ‘everyone shut up because I’m about to talk’ kind of a cough. “Are you sure about that?”

  What did they know? He hadn’t once mentioned Gina or Charlie Marlo. It left a gaping hole in his story around how and why he had been so keen to investigate, how he ever connected the cult to the Farringdon attack. He had tried to cover that over with the usual flim-flam about protecting sources. But it was lame. He knew it. They knew it.

  “There’s nothing else I can tell you,” Tom said.

  Franklin leaned forward. “We deployed considerable resources that day, at significant expense. That area of the city was brought to a standstill for many hours at an especially busy time. Tube stations were closed. Commuters were inconvenienced, businesses lost money. We put hundreds of officers onto the streets….”

  Consider it a training exercise, Capgras thought, though he lacked the nerve to say it out loud. Don’t antagonise them. It sounded like they were letting him off.

  “So, please remember that, next time you think you’ve seen or heard something suspicious. While we thank you for your attempt to alert us to a problem if there’s the possibility you are confused…”

  Tom scowled at the man. It happened just the way he’d told it, but where was the gas? Where were the bombs? Did they never exist?

  “And so…” Franklin paused and sighed deeply, as if he regretted what he must now say, “it is my duty to remind you that wasting police time is a very serious offence.”

  “Not reporting a suspicious incident would be worse though? Right?” Capgras looked the man in the eye.

  “It’s all in the balance of things,” Franklin said.

  The detective got up from his chair, stood behind Tom’s right shoulder. “What he’s saying, Mr Capgras, is thanks, but next time keep your hero fantasies to yourself. Or write them up in the newspaper if you prefer. But leave us to get on with protecting the public.”

  They all rose. Time to go. Cassells escorted Tom from the premises. “Sorry about that. Bit harsh back there, but this has been a major embarrassment.”

  He didn’t have to be told. He’d not live it down in a hurry.

  Cassells slunk into the depths of the police station, leaving Capgras to walk home in the rain, ruminating on how and why and where all this had gone so badly wrong.

  Chapter 23

  The Shipping Container

  Tom Capgras needed somewhere to live. He had packed in his job, gone freelance, so it had to be cheap, but not a room in a shared house: that would be too much like a cell in a prison block. He needed space to breathe, to create mess and do his own thing. A place where he was the boss, the only boss, and nothing but the boss. No one to tell him when lights should go out, or the washing up should be done, or the rent should be paid.

  He had no money and being out of work, fresh of prison, no one would give him a loan.

  No money, no way to borrow money and a strong aversion to asking friends and family for bailouts – there was nothing else for it: he would have to call in favours.

  Tall Johnnie owed him big-time for covering up that business with the cannabis farm and the tax-exemptions, not to mention his role as the Hooded Hunt Saboteur superhero who had terrorised the posher parts of the home counties for a period of eighteen months. Johnnie managed a self-build site in one of the less fashionable parts of east London, not far from where Tom’s sister lived. After a short negotiation, Tom secured an unfavourable looking patch of mud at a token rent.

  Now for a home: a shed might do the job, or a battered old caravan. He asked around, talked to contacts, phoned friends, made calls, rummaged through the Internet and scoured the local newspapers. Finally, a breakthrough. Developers were clearing land by the Thames ready for swanky new flats, all steel and bare concrete, white paint, no colours. To get the work started, they needed to get rid of twenty shipping containers, abandoned years before. Enrico from Shoreditch had been entrusted with the task of removing and disposing of them and agreed to sell one to Tom for the princely sum of two hundred pounds. Money up front, no refunds, sold as seen. He even offered to drop it off on site.

  “You have a crane?” Tom asked.

  “We’ll slide it off the back of the lorry,” Enrico said.

  “Seems appropriate, somehow.”

  Enrico scowled and scratched his head as if trying to work out if that was a joke or an insult, but the deal went through and the shipping container arrived in one piece.

  “It smells,” Emma Capgras announced as she inspected the metal box with her brother. “Like the seashore at low tide. Or a fish market, at the end of a hot day.”

  “It’ll wear off,” Tom said. “I’ll pressure wash it, it’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

  After four hours of spraying and scrubbing and hosing down, Tom had to admit that the smell still lingered. But there was no going back now. So he invested what little money he had left in connecting drainage, water and electricity, and fitting her out with a shower, toilet and rudimentary lighting. He sourced an old bed base from a skip, and a mattress from one of Emma’s friends. His brother Ollie arrived with possessions from the garage, loaded into his Range Rover. A table was installed, a chair, a chest of drawers, a bedside light, a laptop. A prehistoric television.

  “There’s only one thing missing,” Emma said.

  “A kitchen?” Ollie asked.

  “No, a cat, to make it feel like home.”

  “I’ll adopt a stray,” Tom said. “One will turn up. They usually do.”

  “They recognise kindred spirits,” Ollie said darkly, and shuffled off to resume his life as a successful solicitor.

  Tom called in mates, and mates of mates, and their cousins who did carpentry, and soon there were walls of plasterboard, dividing it into three rooms: a bedroom at the back, a cramped bathroom and toilet in the middle, and a living space complete with kitchen cubicle in the front. He installed a camping stove and dragged in a sofa that had been discarded at the local tip. There were no windows, but there was a cat flap, and a bench outside, and a set of plastic patio table and chairs.

  “Looking like home,” he told Emma.

  She gave him one of those sidelong glances, the kind a women uses to pull the rug from under a man’s delusions, leaving him flat on his face, with his dignity in tatters.

  “It’ll be all right,” he assured her. “It’s early days. There are more improvements to come.” And it’s cheap, he told himself. It’s all mine. And I can come and go whenever I please.

  “If it leaks, or the smell gets unbearable, you can sleep on my sofa,” Emma said. “Door’s always open.”

  “Because you need the free babysitting.”

  Ruby arrived with a bottle of whisky which she could ill afford, and which was the one thing, above all others, that he craved the most.
How did she always know?

  He kissed her on the cheek and offered her a glass. “Too early,” she said. Which deflated his hopes of pouring himself one.

  “You’re a free man,” Ruby said. “Help yourself.” She unpacked his kitchenware, such as it was, and she and Emma reorganised the furniture in his living room. “I’ll be round for a whisky sometime,” Ruby said.

  “Make sure you do.”

  Emma gave him a look as they were leaving though what it meant he couldn’t say. Something to do with the whisky. Or the shipping container. He’d find out, soon enough.

  Once the world and its friends had left him in peace, he settled down for the night and was just pouring himself a snifter when the cat-flap flipped open, and his new best friend stalked into the premises, tail held high in greeting, determined, clearly, to take possession of the home, the human, and whatever edible resources he had at his command.

  Chapter 24

  A Kidnapping

  Tom Capgras staggered out of the Lamb and Flag public house in Shoreditch in the company of his sister Emma and her friend Ruby. He walked them home, dropped them off, and set out for his own place, his own bed, and maybe a nightcap of that excellent whisky.

  He picked up speed, ducking down alleyways as shortcuts, running across the dual carriageway and leaping the barriers to steer a direct line over a roundabout.

  It was there he first noticed the Transit van trailing him at a snail’s pace. He scanned the area. A minibus loitered on the roadside and quarter of a mile ahead. He’d seen it before, ten minutes ago, on Tredegar Road. Don’t be stupid, he told himself. There are thousands of minibuses just like it all over London.

  And yet…

  The van edged closer to him. He glanced over his shoulder. It was matching his speed; the engine chugging heavily in low gear. He was caught between the two. They must have planned it like this.

  The whisky would have to wait.

  Ahead was an alleyway. He drew level, spun into the darkness and set off at a sprint. Behind he heard van doors slide open, the sound of heavy feet slapping on the paving slabs. He kept running. There was no way to fight them at the best of times, but especially not after a night in the pub.

  Were they armed? Why come for him now, why here? Because there were no witnesses, and he had little chance of calling for help. But they must have hoped to snatch him before he got to his phone.

  He dialled nine nine nine and barked a demand for help at the police control room. The pursuers were gaining on him. The alleyway emerged onto a side-road. He turned right, then left. He could head for the park. But that was dark and deserted. They would follow him in there and track him, with no fear of being disturbed. Better to head for bright lights and plenty of people. “Are you sending anyone to help me or not?” he yelled into his phone.

  The duty sergeant told him to calm down and advised him to go the station on Bow Road.

  “Too far.”

  “How can you be sure they’re following you, sir? Is it possible you’re overreacting?”

  He had no time for this. He sprinted down a residential street. But before he reached the end of the road, the minibus appeared ahead of him.

  Damn. He ran down a tight alley between houses. It ended in a garden gate which he vaulted and then ran across a lawn, trampled plants and knocked over ornaments before clambering over a wall and dropping into the next street. He listened intently. He’d lost them. Now run for it.

  He was breathing hard, his legs unsteady, wishing he had stayed sober, or stayed home, or taken a taxi, or moved to Venezuela when he had the chance. He paused. No sign of them. He turned left, intending to double back towards Tredegar Square and the relative sanctuary of Bow Road, but as he passed a closed pub, they sprang at him from behind parked cars. Two of them seized his arms. A man punched him in the stomach. Another kneed him in the thigh and his leg howled with pain. They tied his hands and bundled him into the Transit, with a man either side of him. One of them pressed a gun barrel to his cheek. “Keep quiet, lay still. Or we’ll shoot you where you lie. We have permission.”

  And that was the truth, he thought. They’d never do anything without a direct order from above, sanctified by their guru. But if they got that go-ahead, there was no stopping them, not with reason or threats or pleas for mercy. Nothing for it but to endure the ride and the discomfort, and hope they didn’t kill him before he had a chance to sober up. It would be a crying shame, he told himself, to die only half drunk.

  Chapter 25

  Mister Marlo, He Dead

  Capgras sat in a wooden chair, his hands cuffed behind his back and a blindfold over his eyes. The musty smell and the way the damp air clung to his clothes, suggested a cellar. As for its location, he had no clue other than the two hours spent driving. He might be in the city. More likely outside it but still in the south-east of England.

  A door opened, and he counted three pairs of feet enter the room. One of them advanced on him, stood behind the chair and untied the blindfold.

  Tom was expecting Gina, or maybe a cult leader from Dartmoor. Instead, a ghost sat opposite him, smiling that familiar smile, his eyes glinting with cruelty and delight. “Surprise,” yelled Charlie Marlo, “bet you didn’t think you’d see me again!”

  Act cool, Tom told himself. Just because you’re at their mercy and they might kill you any moment, doesn’t mean you have to compromise your sangfroid exterior. “Actually, I spotted you at Farringdon. So not such a shock.”

  “You did? Oh, we worried about that, but Gina insisted you hadn’t noticed.”

  “She’s been wrong before.”

  Marlo peered at him with gimlet eyes. “You should go easy on the girl. She’s having a hard time of it.”

  “Why, what’s amiss?”

  “Not for me to say.” Charlie frowned, shook his head theatrically. She’ll tell you herself, when the time’s right.”

  “We’re not on speaking terms.”

  “She says you’re working for her father.”

  “Does that sound likely to you?”

  Marlo wrunkled his mouth as if thinking hard. “Now you mention it, no, but she’s pretty sure.”

  Charlie had aged in the seven years since Tom last met him: his skin had seen too much sun, or too many late nights, or both, and there was a haggard appearance to his eyes that lent a threatening undertone to his trademark manic energy. He still possessed a boyish enthusiasm together with a thick mop of unruly, curly black hair and the combined effect was to make him seem even more deranged than ever. “Surprised to find you mixed up with this mob.” Capgras used his head to indicate the heavies who loitered either side of his chair. “You were never the religious type.”

  Marlo fixed him with a stare and held it, a fraction too long. “Leave us. I can handle him.”

  The two goons made for the door. “We’ll be up top,” one said.

  “Much better,” Marlo said as they left. “Now we can talk freely.”

  Capgras shuffled on the chair though his arms were tied so tight he had no room for manoeuvre. “Don’t suppose you could…”

  “Not a chance.” Charlie grinned. “Don’t take me for a fool, Tom. I’m familiar with your games. Where were we? Ahhhh, religion. Well, it’s not all it appears.”

  “You were a fanatical atheist when we last met, still reciting Trotsky and Lenin, Engels and Nietzsche, denouncing anyone who indulged in bourgeois fairy tales.”

  “Well, I was so much older then.” Marlo beamed like a Cheshire cat. “I’m younger than that now.”

  “So now you’re quoting Dylan at me. Shouldn’t it be the Bible?”

  “We’re a broad church.”

  “The folks I met on Dartmoor didn’t strike me as open-minded.”

  “Oh, they’re neophytes.” Charlie gave a dismissive wave of the arm. “You can’t judge a religion from what they tell the newcomers. You have to move higher up the organisation to learn what’s going on.”

  “And is that what you�
�re doing? Research, so you can expose them? Denounce them and all their works?”

  “Maybe not.” Marlo held his hands up by his face in a gesture of mock shock and outrage. “They might be useful. Their methods are effective. Tell me, Tom, how would you go about building an army?”

  Capgras stared long and hard at his former friend. “Haven’ t given it much thought. Never felt the need for one, myself. Were you planning on starting a war?”

  “Too early to say. Now, what about you? We should focus on that. You’ve been a bad boy. We took you in and trusted you. We broke bread with you and offered our teachings, told you our truth and wisdom.”

  “You implied that stuff is a cover story.”

  “All the same, it’s very ungrateful of you. And then you go telling all these horrible lies about us, getting our people arrested and questioned. We have suffered all kinds of calumnies.”

  “What were you doing at Farringdon? You’re claiming that was a coincidence, that you had nothing to do with the sarin gas?”

  “Journalism, Tom? It’s a bit mainstream isn’t it?”

  “Seemed like a good option. A chance to speak truth to power.”

  “How is that going? Do they listen much? Or do they ignore you? Block you? Deflect you with lies? Besides, no one reads your paper.”

  “At least I’m trying to change the world.”

  “Not hard enough though, Tom. And you can’t change a corrupt system from the inside. We agreed that years ago, remember? You don’t change it; it changes you. So we spoke a vow. A solemn promise. The five of us. We stood in a circle and spilt blood and made a pact that we would never weaken, or go soft, settle or work for ‘The Man’, or do his bidding. You joined us, willingly. You named us: ‘The Extremophiles’. We live extreme lives, in extreme environments. And we made a Ulysses Pact, to make sure no one relents. We watch each other, and if anyone strays, we move to stop them, to set them right.”

  “We were kids…”