Resident Fear

by Hylton Smith

  Vivienne Banks broke down in tears and excused herself. Renton said he may need to see all legal documentation which would corroborate Banks’ intention to relocate his business to Germany.

  Chapter 3

  Tuesday November 6th 2018

  Amongst the complications facing the world, in its second year of depression, was the consequent rise in international tension. National governments withdrew further and further from global business and foreign policy, supplanting this outward-looking horizon by uncluttered survival strategy. One such pledge which the UK ruling class had often promised came into legislation over a year ago. Immigration was halted completely. The rationale was simple, the country could not support or feed seventy million people; the consequences however, were highly convoluted. The Islamic population felt more threatened, especially those who had already been database classified as extremists. Their EU shelter had evaporated. The Muslim Shield had been born. It was an organisation which now concentrated its energy on actual survival as well as financial survival. This mission did include getting government-targeted individuals safely out of the country.

  The Chinese population had always managed to blend into the Christian society while building their own enclaves within it. Mutual respect was still strong. However, certain grievances now came to light about the way Muslim extremists had taken advantage of the ‘Shelter of Brussels’ during the last two decades. The Chinese communities had silently suffered in several city centres more than anyone realised. It was payback time, and typically they would take care of it themselves.

  The reversal in the trend of Polish immigration during this same period had stabilised, and pockets of those who had acquired and practiced British citizenship within the spirit of its culture, began to contribute to the retribution. If nothing else was to be learned from the mistakes of the past twenty years, there was at least more acute awareness that no immigrant community had ever had it easy, and it was about to get much worse. The source of ignition for an interracial firestorm was the currently debated next step in the Immigration bill. Having effectively blocked all further migration to British shores, other than exceptional cases deemed essential to the reviving technology initiative, the thorny problem of extradition was being outlined.

  The fear was that people’s fate would be determined by statistics, and not how they had contributed in the time they had lived in the country. The Prime Minister was undeterred. Patrick Carlyle was riding on the strength of the landslide majority which brought him into power in 2016. His cabinet believed the opportunity may never come again, even though many of their own back-bench members of parliament urged caution. It was estimated that over ninety percent of moderate Muslims were in favour of deporting convicted extremists, but they feared the spectre of stereotyping. The Chinese and Polish communities had concerns about precisely the opposite; they wanted assurances that willingness to learn the language, respecting the culture, and lack of protest activity would count in their favour. They repeatedly made the point that they had not campaigned for importation of sectarian law such as Sharia, or preached hatred against the Infidel. In a nutshell, they would have been happy to be judged as communities, because they suspected there may be orchestrated levelling of the playing field. The Muslim Shield majored on getting vulnerable members out of the country on their terms rather than those of the government. The issue of where and how extradition by either method would be viewed by the receiving nation had not figured prominently so far in the government blueprint.

  *

  Jack Renton hated the drive from Newcastle to Durham, not the journey itself, rather the reason for it. County Hall conveniently housed regional government officers and police, but only the big hitters, and their considerable administration staff. Renton’s day could have started better. He could see Monica Armstrong already seated in Bernard Cousin’s office. He would normally have proceeded straight to business but on this occasion he decided to linger over coffee and allow the small talk to take its course. He wanted to know why she was there without actually asking. Cousins eventually guided the chat away from weekend TV to the demise of Alistair Banks.

  “Right Jack, we are eager to hear what you have so far. Monica has been asked to attend the briefing because it is such a high profile case and she may be able to assist if certain circumstances arise. We don’t know what these may be, we just need to have all bases covered by having response capability primed - law enforcement, civil or even military, if that proves necessary.”

  “Jesus, do you know something I don’t? This sounds like we’re preparing for war.”

  Monica Armstrong replied while refilling her coffee mug.

  “Not really, but Alistair Banks’ business sector does sit close to the membrane of national security. There are government projects which are on-going and covered by non-disclosure documents, and we have to be sure they are not prejudiced. The best way to keep H.M. Intelligence out of our hair is to be as thorough as possible. If we have to, we may call for their involvement. They have obviously asked questions already or I wouldn’t have been asked to attend your briefing. I won’t elaborate D.C.I. Renton, but it was not Bernard who invited me to attend. Now please, can we get to the update?”

  Renton was trying to digest all of this while he summarised the situation to date. He decided to take Richard Doyle’s advice and skip any speculation about Banks’ German intentions. When he finished speaking he noted different reactions from Armstrong and Cousins.

  “Ok Jack, when do you expect to find the crane and the blue car?” Before he answered Monica Armstrong distracted him by asking if Vivienne Banks was a cooperative or difficult person to interview. He responded cautiously.

  “She seems to be genuinely shocked by his death and my experience is that coming to terms with such trauma is often accompanied by frequent mood swings. She has lied once, and I think she now realises that her celebrity and wealth carry no privilege in a murder enquiry.” Monica Armstrong smiled, nodded, and left without hearing the answer to Cousin’s much more pertinent question.

  “We haven’t pinned down either the car or the crane yet, but that won’t take long. I’m more concerned at present with finding out whether Banks was killed in London or the North. If it’s the former, we may have jurisdiction issues with the Capital. That’s why I want to speak with the pilot. He’s freelance, and is only contracted to Banks for individual flights. Apparently he was airborne on another job when the news broke, but so far we’ve had no contact from him. He’s due back in Newcastle this morning and I’d like to join Ben Adams in the interview, so if you don’t mind I should be heading off. Also the post-mortem details and initial forensics report should give us more.” Cousins let him depart without asking to be constantly kept up to date, and this was at odds with his appetite for information the previous day. It struck him that Monica Armstrong seemed relaxed, and Cousins reflected her body language.

  *

  The pilot was waiting in his office with Adams when he returned. He seemed to be more shocked about losing a lucrative client than a fellow member of the species. When pressed for accuracy regarding the timing and detail of his flight to London, he provided exemplary documentation to confirm everything except the return flight.

  “Mr Banks called me after the game and said there would only be three passengers to take back to Newcastle. He and Mr Bowman were going to stay over. He apologised for the last minute change and said the two of them would return by train on Sunday. I was astonished to hear he had been killed and even more surprised that it happened back home.”

  Adams took the lead. “Why are you so surprised that his body was discovered in Newcastle?”

  “Because he said he had an unscheduled business meeting in London and would be glad of the chance to catch up on his sleep deficit on the Sunday evening sleeper train. If that’s what he did, it doesn’t leave much time for him to get himself killed outside of town.”

  “His wife says she had a call from him to say
all of the party was staying over in London and she expected him to fly back on Sunday. They wanted to celebrate the team’s good performance against Arsenal.” The pilot tried to resist a smile.

  “They played well and managed a draw. I suppose that’s a good performance compared with their previous results down there, they normally get battered. Then there are the three who came back with me, and they said it was a shame that Alistair, I mean Mr Banks, had to stay over. I think Mrs Banks was right about their intention to go out on the town, the three of them could hardly wait.”

  “Did they all arrive at the airport together?”

  “No, they had done some shopping and took taxis.”

  Renton said to Adams that he would take over and whispered, “Check out this Bowman character and I’ll press him about the others.”

  All the pilot could offer was confirmation that the police already had the correct names, and that they had all flown with him before. Renton showed him out and said that he may be in contact again. The pilot asked why they had not enquired about the briefcase.

  “What briefcase, why would he need a briefcase to go to the match if he was intending to return the same day?”

  “That’s what I mean. It was his business companion, and he was never separated from it. He used to joke that it was his portable Fort Knox – impregnable. I thought it was a bit of a James Bond delusion, but he insisted that it could only be accessed by the wrong people by destroying it. Anyway he had it with him on the flight, so if you don’t have it he must have taken it on the train. Maybe Mr Bowman knows of its whereabouts. Surely he would not leave it on the train. If he had a business meeting he would have it with him”

  “Thank you again Carl. We will need you to identify it if we find it.” When Adams came back into the office he invited Stephanie to explain. She cleared her throat nervously and stuttered uncharacteristically.

  “He h-has er disappeared Sir.”

  Renton waited and eventually said, “And?”

  Adams came to her assistance. “He wasn’t reported missing by his wife. We had been wondering why none of the party of three who flew back from the match responded to our calls, even if they had nothing to help us account for Banks’ movements after they split up. But you would think they would have asked about Bowman. Renton held up his hand.

  “This is not going to make me happy is it?” Stephanie Baker shook her head.

  “It is my fault Sir. Last night when we went to Richard Doyle’s apartment I tidied my desk before we left and failed to see a scribbled message from uniform that the Bowman’s house had a ‘To Let’ sign in the garden. I just found it this morning and checked with the estate agent, who said the Bowman family had moved out on Friday. They had no forwarding address.”

  Renton was philosophical and admitted that he had asked her to go with him, even though she should have been off-duty by then.

  “It gets worse Sir. I know the pilot said the two of them were supposed to be returning by sleeper train but I couldn’t get confirmation of reservations for either of them. When I thought about Mrs Banks’ strenuous assertion that her husband said he was staying over in London on Saturday night, I decided to check other possibilities. I struck lucky at Heathrow. Banks was booked on a flight to Cologne on Saturday night, but was a no-show.”

  Renton’s eyes widened and he tried to say something but Adams indicated there was more, and Stephanie continued.

  “There was no reservation on that flight for Harry Bowman, but there was for a Mrs Gertrude Bowman. Coincidences like that bother me, so I asked the lady at Heathrow to read out the entire list of names on the flight. She took some persuading but eventually complied, and it just so happens that a minor by the name of Marianne Bowman was sat next to her. And on the other side of the young girl was a Heinrich Baumann. They all made the flight.”

  Renton looked hard at Stephanie Baker and knew she would have retained Richard Doyle’s disclosure about Banks’ intention to relocate his business to Germany. He was sure she would also remember his advice about this information potentially being dangerous.

  “Well if he flew out on Saturday, we couldn’t have known we needed to speak with him then. We must now speak to the other three, wherever the hell they are. They must be deliberately avoiding us as they know Banks has been murdered and probably knew before we did that Bowman has done a runner. Good work Steph. Ben, can you get along to Banks’ company and check the personnel records, especially the name Bowman? They can’t simply be friends.”

  Reflecting on the German situation Renton decided to visit Doyle again, but on his own. He called D.C. Baker back into the office.

  “We haven’t made much progress with the crane or the blue car. Get some photos of different plant hire company logos and see if any of them jerk the memory of the Akita dog walker. The registration of the car seems to tie up with one reported stolen in Consett last week. If that is the case it has probably gone through a crusher already. Ask the locals to check out dismantlers and scrapyards, tell Fred I need another favour – he’ll moan but he’ll still get on with it.”

  *

  Despite his yacht being moored in St. Tropez, Peter Beresford was up to date. He rang one of the ‘Midwest’ barons from a public phone. The Colony hub had acquired this name because the tight-knit control emanated exclusively from the Birmingham-Manchester-Liverpool executive axis. Seth Graham was one such executive, and Eddie Finley was another, but the strings always led back to Beresford.

  “Seth, I’ll be brief. The recent loss was inevitable, enough said. I am more interested in what is happening in London today. Are we prepared for any public reaction to all possible outcomes of the meeting?”

  He was assured in code words that they were. Beresford continued, “Sounds good. Whose turn is it this time?” The reply was equally obscure but understood by the caller.

  “It is mine I guess. Don’t you ever get tired of Chinese?” This was met with enthusiasm, and Beresford ended the call.

  Chapter 4

  The Cabinet meeting was to be mainly focused on the Extradition blueprint, and despite efforts to keep this under wraps, it had leaked out. This provided perfect cover for Seth Graham’s contracted protestors. The Prime Minister expressed his dismay at the presence of newshounds and people parading placards. Patrick Carlyle opened the meeting and immediately handed the floor to the Home Secretary, Lawrence Morton, who distributed copies marked ‘confidential’, and he then proceeded to inform all attendees that he would collect the documents again after the subject had been discussed.

  “You will note the reminder that we agreed to have the final outline for discussion in the Commons a month from now. I have had some further input from back-benchers that we may wish to take into account, because of the as yet unexplained demise of Alistair Banks. They feel this may ultimately be portrayed as a reaction to another unexplained event – namely the disappearance of the Genetic Profile Directory. It was this, after all, which set in motion a chain of events beginning with the threat of expulsion from the EU, the actual prosecution of that threat despite a pledge of abandonment, then the escalation of protest by the Muslim Shield, the said discovery and subsequent utter despair at having to declare the database had gone missing, and finally the localised civil unrest amongst minority ethnic communities. We must also consider that this civil backlash is somewhat different to the riots attended by cross-sections of the population as a whole, even though they were also triggered by scaremongering, related not so much to the actual data released at the time, but more centred on the potential for its commercial value and exploitation if it fell into the wrong hands.

  “The thrust of the back-bench concern is that we are unable to rule out the ‘wrong hands’ now that it has fallen from our own. Looking at the numbers, we are not far away from facing defeat on a Commons vote, if more of our own abstain or go with the ‘NO’ campaign. This is a delicate balance because the opposition is totally united against the bill. Ther
e is then the question of whether we employ a three-line whip to try and force a majority. Many believe this is a matter of constitutional significance and not one of constituency preference or simple party solidarity. We must then evaluate the effect of denying a free vote of conscience, and how that may influence our own members in voting against us. It is very tricky.”

  The Justice Secretary asked why they were bound to a deadline.

  “We can shelve the expediency until we know more about what has happened to the damn database.” This met with some endorsement, particularly from the Defence Secretary.

  “I agree. I know we all want this to go through but I can also see that if tensions continue to rise, people may even believe we conveniently and deliberately lost the database, fuelling concerns that it does contain sinister proposals. The gathering crowd today makes me think that the situation could easily ratchet up to a need for intervention of military personnel. That is something we must avoid.”

  Opinion was divided more evenly than the P.M. wanted to hear, but he was determined not to let this meeting descend into a preliminary ‘vote’ on whether to proceed.

  “Unless we are worried as to whether we can find some means of reassurance, for those who are fearful of innuendo that any new proposal brings, I can’t see what is gained by simply delaying the brinkmanship. Perhaps we should revert to what the hell we are doing about finding the database. If I was out there I would be worried too. Correct me if I am wrong, but unless anyone who has seen the content can remember it word for word, we don’t have a proposal to put before this Cabinet, never mind the Commons.” He turned once more to the Home Secretary.

  “Lawrence, you passed over this quickly in your introduction, and although we understand the valid back-bench knee trembles, they have to be put into context with the other concerns. Please back up a little and bring us up to date with the ‘Hunt for Red November’ - beginning with a more in-depth explanation on how it could have happened in the first place.”