by Neil White
‘Tell me all about it.’
‘Why should I?’ he said, his voice becoming hostile. ‘You come to my house at nearly midnight and start demanding answers about my family. Give me one good reason.’
Charlie pointed towards Ted. ‘Because he lost a daughter,’ he said, his voice raised. ‘If that isn’t a good enough reason to inconvenience you, I’m sorry, but it’s the best I can do.’
Ray looked at Ted for a few moments, before saying, ‘All right, I’m sorry. But Marie had nothing to do with Alice’s murder.’
‘Is that why you think we’re here, to accuse her of it?’
Ray licked his lips and paused before he spoke. ‘No, I mean, of course not, but it must be something to do with Alice, because Ted is here, and the only thing that links us is Alice’s death.’
‘Why is that?’
‘What do you mean? I don’t know Ted Kenyon, except for when I’ve seen him in the press, but Marie and Alice were friends.’
‘But you said that it was Alice’s death that links you, not Alice’s life.’
Tension crept into Ray’s voice. ‘You’re playing with words.’
‘With your words, Mr Cuffy, not mine.’
Ray looked over to his wife again, but she was still looking down, her knees together, sitting forward, her arms folded across her legs. Ted was keener now, leaning into the discussion, but Charlie held up his hand to stall him.
‘Tell me about Marie,’ Charlie said, his voice lower now, softer, more cajoling.
‘We don’t believe in her politics,’ Ray said. ‘She is her own person.’
‘And who is that person?’
‘A kid, someone who believes in a simpler world. I thought similar things, back in the seventies, but then as you get older, you start to see things differently, less black and white.’
‘Easily influenced?’
‘Like most young people, she’ll follow the good times. She’ll grow out of it.’
‘Perhaps she is just kicking back against this,’ Charlie said, and he waved his hand around at the house.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s always the same with little revolutionaries,’ Charlie said. ‘Most are just suburban kids looking for a bit of shock value. They flock to groups with names that get your attention and start wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. It’s as much a cliché now as it always has been.’
Ray started to get angry. ‘What do you want me to do? Change her politics? Because I can’t. She found a bunch of oddballs and squatters and left.’
Charlie leaned in. ‘Who was in the group?’
Ray sighed and then rubbed his eyes. ‘It was the biggest fuck you she could give,’ he said quietly. ‘I tried to be tolerant at first, thinking that she might grow out of it, but she started asking for money, saying that the group needed it.’
‘And you said no?’
‘It was the money they were interested in, that was my guess, and so I wouldn’t give her anything.’
‘How did she react?’
‘She left and stopped coming back.’
‘Is she still with them?’
Janet Cuffy started to sob softly, her face in her hands.
‘We don’t know,’ Ray said, and Charlie saw a tremble to his chin.
‘I don’t understand,’ Charlie said.
‘We haven’t heard from Marie in over a year,’ Ray said, his voice cracking. ‘The last time she was here, she was asking for money for insurance and the release fees, because the police had seized their vehicles for being uninsured. I wouldn’t give it to her. She stormed out and we haven’t seen her since.’
No one spoke for a few seconds, until Charlie said, ‘You were nervous when you saw Ted.’
‘What do you mean?’ Ray said, looking at his wife.
‘You think Marie might have had something to do with Alice’s death, don’t you?’ Charlie said.
Ray swallowed. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘I’ve been a lawyer for quite a while now, and people who answer questions with a question are usually trying to work out what to say.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘I think you know what Marie was getting up to, and where they used to go for their parties,’ Charlie said. ‘Billy Privett’s house. You knew that, right?’
Ray shook his head and looked at Janet, but she was looking at the floor, rubbing her hands together.
‘I think you ought to be going now,’ Ray said.
‘Where is she?’ Charlie demanded. ‘They need to be caught. More people will die.’
Janet looked up. Her cheeks were streaked with tears. ‘We don’t know where she is,’ she said. ‘We went looking for her, and we can’t find her.’
‘What did you tell the police?’
‘We didn’t tell the police,’ she said.
‘What? Why not?’ Charlie said, surprised.
‘She’s just a young woman. That group she was with? They go travelling. We went to where they stay, and someone told us that she had moved on, had found a different group to mix with.’
Ted stepped closer. ‘Where are they, this group?’
‘Some farmhouse on Jackson Heights,’ Janet said. ‘She’s not there now though.’
‘Is that the real reason you didn’t tell the police?’ Charlie said. ‘Or was it because you are worried she was involved in Alice’s death, and you want to keep the police away from her?’
Ray pointed at the door. ‘Go.’ There were tears in his eyes now.
Charlie got to his feet but walked up to Ray. ‘Nice house, ugly conscience. You’ve got the balance wrong,’ and then walked towards the door.
Chapter Fifty
Sheldon followed the two men towards the empty house where John Abbott had lived. They were police officers, but were being cagey about where they worked. Horne and Murch were the names they gave. Sheldon knew he hadn’t seen them before. When they opened the door and clicked on the light switch, Sheldon saw a house as empty as it seemed from the outside. He went to the living room and perched on the windowsill. It was low and gave a view over the front garden, the curtains open now.
‘So you want to talk?’ Sheldon said. ‘You first. How did you know I was here?’
The taller one, Horne, pointed at the alarm sensor. ‘We had that installed a few weeks ago and you tripped it.’
‘So why are you monitoring it?’
The two officers exchanged nervous glances, and then Horne said to Sheldon, ‘Tell us what you know.’
‘Why do I go first?’
‘Because you do. That’s just the way it has to be, sir.’
Sheldon noted the sir. As he considered them, he saw nervousness, not disrespect. Sheldon reached into his pocket and pulled out the bill that had been in John Abbott’s file.
‘Why were the police paying the legal bills for a petty criminal?’ he said, and he passed Horne the bill. ‘Abbott lived here, except that he didn’t really, not for long.’
Horne looked at the bill, but Sheldon could tell he knew what was on it, that he didn’t need it shoving under his nose. Horne handed it back. ‘Can’t you guess?’ he said.
‘I’m starting to get an idea,’ Sheldon said.
‘Well, you tell us what you think, and I’ll tell you if you get close.’
Sheldon stood up and started to pace, tugging at his lip. He looked at the men in suits. ‘Okay, this is how I see it,’ he said. ‘John Abbott wanted to get noticed. He adopted a strategy that would put him in a courtroom. He sprayed some graffiti and was caught by an anonymous call. He kept his mouth shut, to make sure he was taken to court, and then told a story that was untrue, but interesting enough to get in the local paper. Then we, the police, paid for his legal bills.’ Sheldon smiled. ‘There is only one answer.’
Horne held out his hands. ‘Tell me then.’
‘John Abbott is undercover.’
The two officers exchanged glances. Murch exhaled heavily and shook his head. Horne nodded and s
aid, ‘Carry on.’
‘There is a group near here who are into the protest thing. You put John Abbott in there. You spun some yarn that he had ideas of rejecting society but had an inheritance to spend that he didn’t know what to do with. Quite clever. So they went to him, because they wanted his money, and so they didn’t suspect him. And he fed you information on their protests, and perhaps links with other groups.’
Horne held out his hands. ‘Nearly right, sir.’
‘How near?’
‘Near enough so that I might as well tell you,’ Horne said, and then he sighed. ‘We’re from the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. We monitor environmental and protest groups, anarchists, people like that.’
‘And you use undercover officers.’
Horne nodded. ‘We’ve got operatives in a few of the groups. They feed information back, just so that we can cut down on the disruption.’
‘So what’s the thing with this group near here?’
‘The leader of this group is Henry Mason,’ Horne said. ‘When he first started to pop up in intelligence briefings, we thought he was just some petty crook and occasional pervert with an ego problem.’
‘Pervert?’
‘Always had a thing for children, boys and girls, and became a bit of a Pied Piper figure, with a lot of young teenagers following him around. It was the usual story; he would get them drunk and things would get seedy. He didn’t always take part, but sometimes he did, until someone broke ranks and reported him. He went to prison for three years, and when he came out, he started drifting around. He’s an attention seeker, thinks that he is some kind of undiscovered genius and that people need to hear what he’s got to say. That was the attraction with the young teenagers I think, because they would listen to him. Most people older would just see him for what he is, some small town crook with delusions of grandeur.’
‘So what changed?’
‘Because an undiscovered genius who stays undiscovered becomes bitter, and sometimes can become dangerous.’ Horne glanced at Murch, as if to query whether he should continue, who just nodded.
‘We got diverted for a while by the Islamic groups,’ Horne continued, ‘and so a lot of other groups grew without us knowing what they were doing. Before we knew it, there was a whole protest scene, and so the student marches and the riots took us by surprise. We didn’t know who any of them were. So we’ve turned our attention back to them, and as we started looking, Henry Mason’s name started to come up.’
‘In what way?’
‘Just whispers, but it was enough to make us listen. The thing with a lot of these protest groups is that they are well-meaning, decent people whose emotions sometimes get the better of them. On the whole, they want to make their point and have some fun, and that’s it. They like the excitement, the kicking against things, but don’t want to hurt anyone. Direct action is one thing, like cutting down fences or breaking into power stations, but the operatives were all reporting the same thing: that Mason was planning something bigger.’
‘What like?’
‘We don’t know, and that was the problem. We can follow mobile phones, get into voicemails, spy on social networking sites. The point for most of them is that protest has to be seen and heard, or else what’s the point? And most of the protest groups can’t keep off internet forums, and so we used to just tune in. It was harder with Henry, because although people were talking about him, we never heard from Mason himself, or any of his followers. His group went off the grid. No computers, no phones, and you have to be more worried about what you don’t know.’
‘So what’s his thing?’
‘It’s hard to pin down,’ Horne said. ‘As far as we can work out, he pinches the interesting bits from other groups. There’s some who have wild ideas that if they refuse to obey the laws, they somehow don’t apply, and it’s all to do with the Magna Carta or something. They might even be right, what the hell do I know, but even they were getting worried that Mason was going to wreck everything by doing things in their name.’
‘And that’s why you put John Abbott in there?’
Horne nodded. ‘We had to move quickly. Normally, an operative may take months to integrate and build up trust. They have to take part, be seen at the right places. Most importantly, the operative has to be trusted. We didn’t have that time with Henry, because the hints we were getting were that he was planning something soon.’
‘So you had to make Henry come to you,’ Sheldon said, nodding.
‘That’s right,’ Horne said. ‘We had tried it once before. The operative had an old bus, a coach with the seats ripped out, but he was too obvious. He was older than Henry’s usual crowd and he just imposed himself on the group. Henry spotted him straight away and so they burnt out his bus and told him to leave. We tried to get cuter this time. We set up the story, made Abbott sound like someone gullible and with money, and receptive to all that conspiracy rubbish that Henry liked. It worked great at first. We paid Amelia to represent him and make it look legitimate. The group started to follow Abbott around, and eventually took him in.’
‘So what went wrong?’
Horne sighed. ‘We chose the wrong officer.’
‘Don’t these people have thorough training?’
‘Oh, it’s thorough all right, except that the life of an operative can be attractive for all the wrong reasons.’
‘How do you mean?’ Sheldon was pacing now.
‘You know how it is for undercover cops. They have to live the life. They can’t have nights off, clock off at five on Friday and go back at nine on Monday. They have to leave everything behind. Wife, children, family. They have to make do with occasional visits, and the more they do the work, the more they become the person they are pretending to be – but that doesn’t mean that they leave their home life behind completely. The undercover life becomes all about getting home, because he doesn’t know what is going on there. Who’s keeping his wife company, or tucking his kids in.’
‘So why was John Abbott the wrong officer?’
Horne let out a long breath. ‘We needed the right sort of person, someone who could project that vulnerability that would make Henry see him as a victim, as a follower, not a threat. We found the officer, and he projected vulnerability perfectly, except for the wrong reason; he was vulnerable.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We didn’t know it, but during his previous undercover posting his wife changed the locks, said that she’d had enough. John was doing test purchases, living the life of some junkie on an estate, wired up with button cameras. He went home one day and there was another man in there. So he had no home anymore, and the only life he had was his undercover post. That’s why we think he volunteered for this one, because it gave him a different life again, where he didn’t have to think about the man fucking his wife every night, or making breakfast for his kids. It was a refuge, not an assignment.’
‘So what happened when he got invited into Henry’s gang?’ Sheldon said.
‘He went native, we think, pretty much straight away. He was supposed to seek us out three times a week to fill us in. It seemed a pretty loose set-up at Henry’s farm, and so we didn’t think it would be a problem for him to get away, but he didn’t even turn up for the first meet. One minute he was here, in this house, waiting to be invited into Henry’s circle, and then he was gone.’
Sheldon thought about that. He knew it made some sense. Undercover officers lived lives of deprivation, but it was exciting too, being at the heart of it all, like some kind of adventure story, except that it took a toll on those you were close to. And it was too easy to be sucked into the scene you infiltrate, because you end up making friends, build up new loyalties, create some kind of fake world that you start to like. What happens if you fall in love with someone when undercover? It has happened, and not everyone realises the risks and pulls out.
‘So why are you here now?’ Sheldon said.
Horne grimaced. ‘This is the part wher
e it gets difficult.’
Sheldon tilted his head. ‘I’m listening.’
Chapter Fifty-One
Charlie and Ted headed towards Jackson Heights, an area of fields and valleys a few miles from Oulton. The route took them on a steep drive, towards the dark shadows of the hills, brooding shoulders that blotted out the stars, just the occasional dim light from hillside farmhouses and barn conversions. They lost the streetlights as they climbed out of Oulton, and then turned onto a road that narrowed and rose and curved, the way ahead never visible for more than fifty yards, the car echoing between drystone walls.
Charlie was quiet, just trying to get his thoughts in the right order, but they only ever went back to Donia. He remembered how she had looked at him, part-disappointment, part-wonder. He was the father she’d never known, and all he had been was drunk, complaining, throwing up outside the court.
He had to find her, had to make it right. Perhaps it was for selfish reasons; if he could rescue Donia, then maybe he could make his own life better. The reason didn’t matter, provided that he found her.
Ted spoke up.
‘I thought you were a bit harsh in there,’ he said. When Charlie glanced over, he added, ‘That thing you said about dirty conscience.’
‘They knew about Alice but didn’t say anything.’
‘And perhaps they have lost their daughter too.’
Charlie gripped the wheel a bit tighter but didn’t respond. There were too many thoughts swirling around in his head to give a proper answer.
They drove in silence for a bit longer, until Ted said, ‘What do we do when we get there?’
‘We see what’s going on.’
‘Shouldn’t we call the police when we find them?’
‘Yes, we should, but I’m not going to wait around for them. At least we can relay what’s happening.’
‘Pull over,’ Ted said.
Charlie looked at him. ‘Why?’
‘You are breaking all the rules and taking gambles. It doesn’t seem right. You’re a lawyer. You fight with paper and words, not this.’
Charlie took a deep breath and put his head back. He thought of all he’d found out that day, and of how things would never be the same again. Because of Billy Privett. Because of Donia.
