The Hidden

by Sally Spencer

Oppenheimer had not changed much since their days at university. He still had a roundish face, framed by unruly curly black hair; still had a body shaped like a pear, which he habitually kept encased in a series of tweed suits which had probably been made years before either he – or Crane – had been born.

  He was a strange feller, Crane thought (though back in his Oxford days, he’d probably have called him a strange chap).

  George Halston Oppenheimer III came from an old New York family which had so much money that, as a traditional Whitebridge saying had it, he could have paid some other feller to scratch his arse for him, if he’d been so inclined.

  Yet he didn’t desire luxury – or even basic comforts. His room in college was spartan, and he lived off a diet which consisted mainly of donuts, Oreo cookies and Coca-Cola (all purchased in bulk from a contact at the nearby American Air Force Base).

  Apart from visits to the Bodleian Library, he rarely left his rooms, and if Crane hadn’t happened to live on the same staircase, they would probably never have met.

  Crane stepped into the centre of the platform, confident that if he hadn’t, Oppenheimer would have walked past him. It wasn’t that Oppenheimer wouldn’t have recognized him if he’d been looking, he thought – it was more the case that Oppenheimer wouldn’t have bothered to look.

  The New Yorker cared about one thing and one thing only – the study of cults – and though he was not, strictly speaking, an acknowledged world expert, Crane suspected that a world expert was exactly what he was.

  ‘Ah, Crane,’ Oppenheimer said, finding his way blocked. ‘I believe you have an interesting case study for me.’

  ‘I believe I do,’ Crane agreed.

  Higgins stood with Andrew Selby, Hodges’ solicitor, watching Barry Hodges lining up against a wall with several other men of a similar description.

  ‘You’ll have your work cut out on this one,’ he said jovially, ‘especially now we’ve found the bike.’

  ‘Let me make one thing clear to you, sergeant,’ Selby said. ‘I consider my client to be a repulsive human being, and if it were the law that repulsive human beings should be vaporized, I’d have absolutely no difficulty in condemning him myself. But at the same time, I do not believe – even for a second – that he killed Mary Green.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, Mr Selby,’ Higgins said, ‘you’re going to end up so disappointed.’

  The first witness – Austen Chambers, the ex-rough camper – was brought into the room.

  ‘Now they can’t see you, so you’ve no need to worry,’ Higgins said. ‘Just take your time, and don’t speak until you’re sure.’

  ‘I don’t need to take my time,’ Chambers said. ‘The man I saw throwing the motorbike into the quarry was number four.’

  The second witness was the bus driver who’d been operating the Monday morning moorland bus service.

  ‘It’s number four,’ he said.

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Positive. See, I hardly ever pick up passengers there – I’m not even sure why there’s a stop there at all – and if he hadn’t been running, he’d have missed the bus, so it stuck in my mind.’

  Higgins beamed at Selby. ‘This is going to be a good day for the forces of law and order,’ he said.

  John Green – pale but calm – looked across the interview table at Meadows and said, ‘Why am I here?’

  ‘Your sister has been murdered, and your mother and father have both died in dramatic circumstances,’ Meadows said, in a kindly voice which, under different circumstances, Beresford would have found almost comical. ‘You must surely have been expecting to be questioned by the police, John.’

  ‘I suppose I must,’ Green conceded, ‘but isn’t it a legal requirement that an adult who has nothing to do with the investigation should be present to monitor the interview?’

  ‘We only have to do that if we’re questioning a child – but you’re not a child, are you?’

  ‘I’m under eighteen. Doesn’t that make me a child?’

  ‘Are you sure you’re under eighteen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Meadows reached into the folder lying in front of her, and extracted a small brown document. She opened it, and laid it out before him.

  ‘Do you know what this is, John?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a birth certificate. Where did you get it?’

  ‘It was in the drawer at your house.’

  ‘Are you allowed to do this kind of thing?’ Green asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Meadows assured him. ‘It’s all been done by the book. Is this your birth certificate, John?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then it seems you turned eighteen yesterday, so legally, you’re no longer a child.’

  ‘The lab says the birth certificate is probably a forgery,’ Crane told Oppenheimer, in the room on the other side of the two-way mirror. ‘It’s a very good forgery, but a forgery nonetheless.’

  ‘We’ve got him over a barrel,’ Beresford added. ‘If he believes the birth certificate is genuine, then he also believes that he’s eighteen. If, in fact, he’s under eighteen and knows it, he daren’t admit it, because that would also be admitting the forgery.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ George Oppenheimer said. ‘Why would anyone watch television when they can see a show like this?’

  ‘Maybe because most people can’t actually see a show like this,’ Crane suggested.

  ‘Ah yes, that would explain it,’ Oppenheimer said.

  ‘I’d forgotten all about the birthday,’ John Green told Meadows.

  ‘The birthday?’ Meadows repeated. ‘Why did you say that, and not my birthday?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s perfectly understandable, given what you’ve been through, that you would forget your birthday,’ Meadows said.

  ‘I probably wouldn’t have remembered under any other circumstances, either,’ John Green said. ‘We don’t really set much store by birthdays in my family.’

  ‘In much the same way as you don’t set much store by Christmas and Easter?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Even though, despite what you told me the last time we talked, you’re Christians.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Green demanded. And then his face relaxed. ‘Of course, it was Louisa.’

  ‘Before we go any further, I want to make sure you’re thoroughly aware of your rights,’ Meadows said. ‘Even though you’ve not been charged with anything, you’re entitled to have a lawyer present. If you want one, and if you can’t afford to pay, one will be provided free of charge.’

  ‘I don’t want a lawyer,’ Green said.

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Absolutely sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If he is a cult member, as you suspect, then the last thing he will want is a lawyer getting involved,’ Oppenheimer said.

  ‘But surely, if he wants to stop us probing into the cult, having a lawyer with him would be a great help,’ Beresford said.

  ‘It would be a bit like a goat that was afraid of being eaten by a lion calling in a tiger to help it out,’ Oppenheimer said. ‘The integrity of the cult is of paramount importance. A lawyer – asking questions, poking around – is a cure which is as bad as the disease.’ He unwrapped an Oreo and raised it to his mouth. ‘Of course,’ he said, before enveloping the cookie in his fat lips, ‘it may just be the case that he doesn’t like lawyers. I don’t care for them myself – but perhaps that’s because three of my uncles are lawyers.’

  ‘Do you have any idea why your parents might have committed suicide?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘Perhaps they found the thought of living on without Mary unbearable,’ John Green suggested. ‘Perhaps her death was no more than the straw that finally broke the poor camel’s back – the final proof that the world is an intolerable place in which to exist.’

  ‘Was it because they found it such an intolerable place that your
father didn’t have a job?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘He did have a job.’

  ‘Oh! What job would that be?’

  ‘I don’t know, exactly.’

  ‘Come on, now,’ Meadows said, ‘you’re an intelligent, curious, young man. You must, at some point, have asked your father what he did for a living. That would be only natural.’

  ‘It may seem natural to you, but it simply didn’t occur to me.’

  ‘We both know he didn’t have a job,’ Meadows said. ‘Certainly, he left home every morning wearing a boiler suit, but we can find no record of him working anywhere.’

  ‘Maybe he was just part of the black economy that I keep reading about in the broadsheet newspapers,’ John Green suggested.

  ‘He’s a cocky young bastard, isn’t he?’ Beresford said. ‘I’ve never seen a kid of his age act so confidently under interrogation – and I’m including in that the ones who already have a criminal record, know the drill, and really don’t give a shit about what happens to them next.’

  ‘He reminds me of Martin Luther,’ Crane said reflectively.

  ‘Black vicar, led a lot of marches, got himself shot,’ Beresford said. ‘Is that who you’re talking about?’

  ‘No, not Martin Luther King, just Martin Luther, the man he was named after.’

  ‘Was he American, too?’

  ‘No, he was German – a professor at Wittenberg University.’

  ‘And when would this have been?’

  ‘Roughly four hundred years ago.’

  ‘That would be a bit before my time, then,’ Beresford said.

  Crane smiled. ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘So what was so special about him?’

  ‘Luther was one of the first men to challenge the Catholic Church, and he was called before the parliament in Worms – which was presided over by the big man of Europe, the Holy Roman Emperor – to explain himself. Of course, what everybody else meant by the term “explaining himself” was issuing a grovelling apology and begging for forgiveness. But it didn’t happen that way. Luther was terrified of appearing before the emperor – his stomach was so upset he was almost permanently on the bog – but he was sure he was right in what he thought, and he knew there was an invisible army of supporters standing behind him, who thought just like he did. And that’s what this lad’s got, if you ask me – an invisible army of supporters standing behind him.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Beresford conceded, slightly dubiously, ‘but maybe it’s nothing to do with belonging to a cult – maybe he’s just a cocky little shit.’

  ‘Come to think of it, John, your family isn’t really that unusual,’ Meadows said musingly. ‘Several of the pupils who attended your school seem to have had fathers who pretended to work, but didn’t.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘And all those families have mysteriously disappeared.’

  ‘I don’t know about that, either.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about Mrs Brown?’ Meadows suggested.

  ‘I never met Mrs Brown.’

  ‘You never met her – even though your sister Mary spent every weekend with her?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How did Mary meet her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Didn’t she tell you?’

  ‘I was very fond of my sister, but we didn’t spend a great deal of time talking about what each of us was doing.’

  George Oppenheimer had been getting more and more interested as the interrogation progressed, but now the look which came to his face was like that of a child who – unexpectedly and against all odds – had been told that it’s Christmas Day, and will be all week!

  ‘This is truly fascinating,’ he told Crane and Beresford. ‘I wasn’t ever sure that they even existed any more, and I certainly never suspected – not for a moment – that there were any of them over here in England.’

  ‘Any of who?’ Crane asked.

  Oppenheimer looked at him blankly, as if unable to understand why one of the smartest people he had met at university should even need to ask so obvious a question.

  ‘Who?’ he said. ‘Why, the Hidden, of course.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of them,’ Crane confessed. ‘What do they do? What do they believe?’

  But Oppenheimer wasn’t really listening.

  ‘Do you want to give Sergeant Meadows a question that I think will break through his protective shell?’ he asked Beresford.

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘And can I talk to Sergeant Meadows directly, through that microphone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Oppenheimer leant over the microphone, and pressed the button.

  ‘Tell John Green that though you’re sure he’ll never admit to it, you know with absolute certainty that he’s a Trusted One,’ he said.

  ‘How long have you been a Trusted One?’ Meadows asked John Green.

  Green had been slouching forward – elbows on the table – but now he was suddenly sitting bolt upright.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea what it is you’re talking about,’ he said, unconvincingly.

  ‘I know you are a Trusted One, so there’s no point in denying it,’ Meadows said harshly.

  ‘As I’ve just said, I really have no idea—’

  ‘Are you ashamed of it?’

  ‘—what you’re referring to.’

  ‘Well, from looking at you, I’d guess you don’t need many qualifications to be offered the job, or it would have gone to someone else. It’s probably one of those jobs that nobody wants anyway, and only the poor in spirit, or the stupid, can be persuaded to take it on.’

  ‘It’s not like …’

  ‘What was that you started to say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘How long have you held this position that only a fool would occupy? A year? Two years?’

  ‘You have no idea – no idea at all – what you must endure once you’ve been chosen to be a Trusted One!’ John Green said angrily.

  On the other side of the plate glass, his cheeks bulging and the light flashing off his thick glasses, George Oppenheimer punched the air with delight.

  ‘As it is written in the Dead Sea Scrolls and many other sacred texts – bingo!’ he said.

  SIXTEEN

  Sergeant Higgins lent back in his chair like a man who, if he was wearing a hat, would have tipped it at a jaunty angle.

  ‘Well, well, Barry boy, I told you we’d get the evidence we needed – and we have,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ Barry Hodges replied sullenly.

  ‘Your bike, lad,’ Higgins said, sliding a glossy picture of the recovered Honda across the table.

  ‘It’s not my bike,’ Hodges said.

  ‘It matches the description half a dozen people have given of your bike. And even more telling, it has your fingerprints all over it,’ Higgins said. ‘If that doesn’t make it your bike, then I don’t know what does.’

  ‘You’re just bluffing,’ Hodges said. ‘It can’t have my fingerprints on it, because …’

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Because it’s been at the bottom of a quarry pit for the last three days? Is that what you were going to say?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hodges said instinctively, then a look of horrified realization came to his face, and he shook his head violently. ‘I mean no.’

  ‘No, that wasn’t what you were going to say? Or no, you didn’t throw your bike into the quarry.’

  ‘I meant it wasn’t what I was going to say, because I didn’t know where the bike was.’

  ‘Your bike?’

  ‘The bike in the picture.’

  ‘I’ve got two reliable eye witnesses who’ll swear that you did throw it in,’ Higgins said, ‘but that’s beside the point, isn’t it, because what we should really be talking about is the fingerprints. You seem to think that after three days underwater, all the fingerprints will have been de
stroyed, don’t you? Well, you’re quite wrong about that, my old son. Fingerprints can survive under water for at least five days, and if you don’t believe me – if you think I’m trying to trick you – why don’t you ask your solicitor?’

  Hodges turned to Selby, and Selby nodded that yes, that was true.

  ‘And guess who else’s fingerprints we found on that bike of yours, Barry,’ Higgins said. ‘We found Mary Green’s.’

  After a short, whispered conversation with his solicitor, Hodges said, ‘All right, I did know her.’

  ‘How well?’

  ‘We went out together a few times.’

  ‘Where did you meet her?’

  ‘At the supermarket where I work. Most of the time, I’m stuck in the warehouse, but now and again, when they’re very busy, they bring me out to stack shelves. That’s what I was doing when I met Mary – stacking shelves.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘I asked her out for a coffee, and she said yes.’

  ‘What attracted you to her?’

  ‘Well, she was a good-looking girl, wasn’t she, and she seemed the sort of girl who, if you treated her right would … you know …’

  ‘No,’ Higgins said. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must.’

  ‘Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t,’ Higgins said, ‘but I’d appreciate it if you’d spell it out for me.’

  ‘She looked like the kind of girl who, if you treated her right, would be very nice to you in return. Is that clear enough for you?’

  ‘It’ll do for the present,’ Higgins conceded. ‘So you started seeing each other regularly, did you?’

  ‘Nearly every Sunday.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Mostly into the country.’

  ‘Did you introduce her to any of your friends?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘She didn’t want me to.’

  ‘You seem to have let her push you around a lot,’ Higgins said. ‘Just what kind of man are you?’

  Despite the situation he found himself in, Hodges smirked. ‘I always let them have their own way – until they give me what I want.’

  ‘Fancy yourself as a bit of a Casanova, do you?’ Higgins asked.

  ‘You what? I don’t know what you’re talking about?’