“Robinson, will that be a problem?”
“No sir.”
“Good. Daniel, I know you know DS Cliff. I wondered, given I’m reducing your resources, whether he might be able to support.”
“What sort of support do you envisage?” asked Daniel, knowing that Edwards’s move was just a way to keep Jerry busy.
“I’m sure there’s plenty of witness statements to review and an extra perspective on the case wouldn’t go amiss.”
“I couldn’t agree more, as long as Aitken remains with us.”
“Ah, well, I know I originally promised a further two weeks, but I may have to cut that short by a day or two.”
“You might want to wait ’til I’ve updated you before you make that call,” said Daniel.
“Go on.”
Daniel laid out the evidence to date: Fallon and Nixon’s abuse of the Dalgliesh kid; the St Christopher found buried in Hewitt’s face; the pattern of murder-suicides (the Chester cluster, emphasising the need for this to be explored). He also mentioned the drugs theory though decided not to talk about the audit at the pharmacy; keen not to get drawn into a conversation about Charlotte. Once he’d laid it all out, Edwards said, “Chase through the toxicology results. If that’s a dead end, I still believe this can be wrapped up quickly. Why not get Jerry to focus on the pattern of incidents around Chester. You can make a few calls, can’t you Jerry?”
Daniel thought, for Christ sakes, the guy’s not mentally impaired. Jerry didn’t seem to mind, simply replying, “Sure boss. No problem.”
“Then we’re settled,” said Edwards.
Daniel was getting up to leave when Robinson, to his left, pulled out a folded copy of The Independent, handed it to Daniel and said, “Thought you might want to take a look at this. Hope it’s not just another wild goose chase for you.”
Robinson headed out and down the corridor, whilst Aitken, Daniel and Jerry Cliff hung about outside Edwards’s office door. Aitken asked, “What is it?” as Daniel looked, slack-jawed at the paper.
Edwards shouted from his office, “Could someone shut the door please?”
“Sure thing boss,” said Jerry and did the honours.
Daniel turned the paper to face them. It had been folded out to page four, and a single column article was titled, ‘Morgan Stanley’s reckless hedge fund controller found murdered.’
“According to this,” Daniel said, slapping the article, “Our Mr Hewitt was an inadvertent whistle blower, on sharp practices at his firm.”
After a lull, Aitken said, “Well, at least we might finally have a motive.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Having secured a lively three litre petrol Mondeo, Daniel drove Jerry Cliff back towards Blaine, to regroup with Aitken. Daniel laid out what they had so far, elaborating on what he’d spelled out in Edwards’s office. He even spoke of the missing drugs.
When he’d finished, Daniel said “What do you think?”
“Well, I’m not really sure. It’s a bit early to be forming an opinion.”
“Jerry … nobody’s going to judge your view. You may think that Edwards doesn’t rate you, but I do. And just because you’ve been a little side-lined of late, doesn’t mean you’re any less of a detective. Just tell me what your initial reaction is, regardless of how valid you think it is.”
Daniel took his eyes off the road briefly to engage eye contact. Fortunately, Daniel was on the right side to catch Jerry’s good eye.
“Well, it feels like you’re placing a great deal of faith in those statistics. What’s that saying? There’s lies, damn lies and then there’s statistics. Numbers can be used to support whichever position you decide to take. That’s my honest view.”
“Fair enough.”
“No … the weirdness doesn’t bother me. But Jackson’s motivation for killing Hewitt is the missing piece for me. Did Jackson work at this firm, this Morgan Stanley?”
“Don’t think so. Certainly not recently, he was an architect.”
“Oh yeah, sorry you said. Let’s just say this notion of a business partnership going wrong has some legs … have you ever known a business partnership go so wrong as to warrant caving in someone’s face and shoving a pendant into their mutilated flesh?”
“No. That’s what bugs me the most.”
“So, what else could have driven it? This article,” Jerry pulled the newspaper from the door’s pocket and placed it on his right knee, tipping his good eye towards it. “This says that what Hewitt did at Morgan Stanley contributed massively to the two thousand and eight financial crash. Sounds like Hewitt smugly admitted as much, unaware that a hidden camera was on him. According to this transcript, they were making huge short term bonuses selling bundles of derivatives to pension firms. Then, when a bunch of mortgages defaulted - mortgages buried in those bundles - the investments went sour for home owners and pension firms, not for Morgan Stanley; they never carried the can. This transcript is about as smug as you can get about Hewitt and his colleagues being ‘untouchable’, almost to the point where he’s insinuating they’re above the law. Now, clearly the paper’s got a slant on it. But let’s just suppose Jackson had reason to believe that, not only had his investments turned sour, but Hewitt was also culpable, as this article makes out, for throwing the whole world into turmoil, into a decade-long recession. He was in the building trade, right? It was the first trade to feel it, and probably the hardest. Maybe Jackson felt he was striking a blow for the world. There’s likely to be some moral angle, given the St Christopher, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps,” Daniel spotted the pheasant that Aitken had hit earlier, on the opposite side of the road, now all but flat to the tarmac. The snaking line of single file traffic in front was becoming infuriatingly slow. Daniel wanted to get to Mrs Jackson, to probe a bit further. He also wanted to meet up with Charlotte; the state of mind she’d been in the day before was troubling him. He felt partially responsible.
“So … I get your thinking. Let’s interview Mrs Jackson together,” said Daniel.
“Are you sure?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because of how I look.”
“It doesn’t bother me in the least.”
“Perhaps I could wear my eyepatch. I don’t usually like to, it makes me look like a pirate. But the false eye is off-putting to some.”
“Ever thought that your appearance could be a help rather than a hindrance?”
“How so?”
“You feel like it unnerves people, right?”
“Of course.”
“Well - notwithstanding her recent bereavement - I think unnerving Mrs Jackson might not be such a bad tactic.”
At Daniel’s all three paced the floor in separate directions, walking the L-shaped hall, living room and kitchen as they made separate calls and tried not to bump into one another. It occurred to Daniel that from above their movements might resemble those randomly roaming ghosts in Pacman. Each had a phone to their ear, Aitken trying to get hold of someone in Cheshire CID, Cliff trying to contact Mrs Jackson, and Daniel reaching Charlotte’s voicemail for the third time in fifteen minutes.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
It was half memory, half dream. The forty foot projection screen was for this afternoon. For Billy Graham’s satellite link. The warm up act was next, the audience was four hundred strong perhaps more.
It felt safe at first; a room filled with believers and those wanting to believe. The leaders of the church youth group were by his side. Friday evenings were usually spent playing snooker, the evening starting and finishing with a prayer of hope or of salvation. But this was a special Friday, arranged by the leaders of the club. He'd sensed, the moment they'd started running the club, that the new group leaders weren't catholic. They were too smiley, too friendly, too accessible. All smiles.
There should have been others from the club here. For some reason they'd ducked out. So he was the special one, sat between the club leaders, a man and a woman. The woma
n was called Jane, she squeezed his knee as the preacher, the warm-up act, started talking.
The preacher looked like the sort of man who could eat endlessly and never put on weight. He was a bit scruffy too, for a man on stage. His white creased shirt was two sizes to big for him and it flapped against his pigeon chest as he paced, using the full breadth of the stage. "Why are we here today brothers and sisters, why are we here? I know why I'm here, I'm here to save your souls. For we're all sinners aren't we?" Murmurs of agreement hummed like bees under chairs. "Jesus himself was tempted by the devil, Jesus himself gave in to anger when he upturned the merchants’ tables, so if even Jesus Christ our saviour can sin, who are any of you to sit there and think they are without sin. Either you know you're a sinner or you're lying to yourselves. Either way, you need salvation and salvation is what's on offer today." Someone from near the front shouted, "Hallelujah!" The pacing orator stopped, pointed into the crowd and said, "There's one person who's honest with themselves, who's brave enough to seek salvation. I applaud you brother. Now others of you are unsure, you're mulling this over, and that's okay. It sometimes takes a while to process it. I get it. Sometimes it's hard to be brave. I do get it. It's brave to walk through that door …" he pointed to his left to a door next to the stage. "… but perhaps braver was Jesus Christ himself.
Imagine it, ladies and gentlemen. You’re mocked for being the king of the jews. They make a crown of thorns for you. And when you think of this, you'll have this image of a rose bush's thorns. Think again, Jesus’s thorns were thick and long. Look down at your thumb. Find the knuckle, look to the tip of your nail. They were that length. Now imagine these, piercing your forehead, a crown of these tightening around your head. The physical pain, the humiliation. Then you're tied down, wearing nothing but the smallest cloth to cover your genitals, and it's mid-afternoon, it's cold. And the edge of the wood presses into your flesh, the rough wood slipping you a dozen splinters. But that level of pain is bearable. What's not bearable are the nails, and these nails have to be thick enough so that they don't just tear through the skin, or there's a risk you’ll fall away from the cross. The diameter is the thickness of your thumb, look down, get a sense of it." All around him people were looking at their thumbs, lifting them up to examine them as though they'd never seen a thumb before. “And these nails, long enough to grasp with your hand are hammered,” he bent to the floor on one knee, acting out raising a hammer and slamming it down, “into your hand, between the bones, crunching them and tearing flesh. Again…” he mimed the strike “… and again …” another strike “… and again. The same with your feet. But they swing harder this time, as one nail has to get through both your feet.” He stood. “And then they lift you. Imagine it brothers and sisters, the weight, dragging down on your arms.” He stood, arms out to the side as though his own had been nailed. Dropping his head to one side. “And if that wasn’t enough pain, the soldier, drawing his sword, pierces your side, and blood flows from your wound. And for hours nothing but pain and torment.
That’s what he went through so that one day you can be brave enough to walk fifty feet, through that door. We’re not asking for blood or for you to sacrifice your life. Just to walk in honesty, in faith, in want of salvation. So when Billy has spoken, we’ll invite you forward. Can you feel it, can you feel that buzz, that energy of brotherhood in the room.” Whoops rippled across the audience and Jane’s hand came back to his knee, this time with a harder squeeze. “Whose ready to praise the Lord?!”
“We’re ready,” a section of the crowd shouted.
“I said ‘who’s ready?’,”
“We’re ready,” coming from across the audience.
“Then stand, brothers and sisters and sing with me.”
Everyone stood around him, including Jane, who beamed down at him, motioning for him to rise. So he did and as the music built, and the crowd sang, “Lord I need you,” following the words on the projection screen which had sprung to life, they swayed their arms. And so he swayed his arms too.
Then he woke. Crying and aroused.
He wiped his face, stood up from his chair and retrieved a VHS tape from the bottom of the bureau. He stroked the cover. The title, ‘The word of Jesus Christ our Saviour.’ Beneath the writing was the forehead of Jesus, a crown of thorns piercing his skin and blood dripping down in long streaks. This brought back the dream which was disappearing like mid morning fog.
The video was a montage of fire and brimstone preachers, mostly American, some Europeans. The old VHS player happily sucked in the tape, clicked, fizzed and autoplayed.
Since he was alone, he turned up the volume on the TV until the speakers began distorting, crackling with the rapturous applause which greeted the first preacher. He would usually sit, but he didn’t feel like sitting today, he wanted to be energised for the task ahead. And so he paced, quoting the words almost perfectly - chanting - as the preacher spoke.
“I see hell down every street in America. It isn’t an abstract concept. It’s everywhere. Drugs. Sex. Money. We advocate these things like they’re what God intended of us, like that’s why we’re on the earth, and I tell you my friends that is not why we’re here. Why do you think our fellow Americans are dying everyday, by the snipers gun or the roadside bomb? It’s for the sins we promote, because we sacrifice ourselves to defend our sinful ways. Well I say to those people risking their lives to defend this sin, that you will pay for your sins in hell.
Luke Chapter 16 talks about a rich man who died and went to hell. And he lifted up his eyes and said, ‘Father Abraham, sin lasts,’ as he dipped the tip of his finger in the water ‘touch my tongue for I am in torment in these flames.’ First thing I know about hell is that hell is a place of desire.
I had a man come to one of my meetings in West Consin. Seventy per cent of his body was burned. He looked like he’d walked through hell and fallen out the other side. When he held his hand out to shake mine, I have to tell you there was a moment I didn’t want to touch it, afraid his skin would secrete somethin’ on my hand, but touch it I did and I said, ‘What happened to you my child?” He said to me, pastor, ‘I was driving with my girl in the car, and I was touching her, so help me God I was groping her crotch, when I didn’t see a lorry parked on our side of the road. I hit it, the car went up in flames and my girlfriend was killed.
I was in so much pain. I lay in the hospital thinking if this is what hell’s going to be like I never want to go to that place. That night I asked Jesus Christ to come into my heart and I’m never going to have to burn again.’ What happened to that man was a fabulous, fabulous thing ladies and gentlemen, a fabulous thing. His body was burned for his soul to be saved.
There’s some of you out there, watching this right now thinking, ‘maybe there is a hell, maybe not, but I’ll take that chance.’ But understand this, hell burns forever, and you’ll get no second chance.” The preacher’s voice lifted into a crescendo, “Once you get there it’s for eternity!”
He went to fetch his sword from the mount on the wall. As he did so, - supporting the preacher’s crowd of the converted - with gusto he let out a guttural cry of, “Hallelujah, praise the lord!”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Daniel and Cliff found plenty of people at Mrs Jackson’s elevated, detached Victorian home, but not Mrs Jackson herself. Half a dozen people clustered around the front door. Their overlapping voices explained that Mrs Jackson had stormed out after a disagreement about funeral arrangements. A younger voice, from someone out of sight, shouted, “I’d try The Crown if I were you. That’s where she spends most of her time at the minute.”
“Shush Denise, that’s not helpful,” said the woman closest to Daniel, over her shoulder. Daniel thanked them and they left, “Where to now boss?” asked Cliff as they clambered down railed steps.
“May as well check The Crown,” said Daniel absently as he examined his phone.
“Something wrong boss?”
“Just trying to get in touch with
a friend, that’s all.”
The Crown’s frosted windows added to the opaqueness of the place. Cliff looked ill at ease as they approached the door and Daniel felt the need to say, “It’s friendly enough and the landlord’s a great guy.” They headed in.
This afternoon’s clientele was a desultory subsection of the Saturday night crowd which Daniel had played to. The tables in front of the bar, close to where Daniel had played guitar, were empty except for a scattering of bent Heineken beermats. Bar staff were conspicuous by their absence.
To their left, a wood-bodied glass-topped partition cordoned a seating area. Burgundy padded seats ran the perimeter. Sat on these, in the far corner, were two men in cloth caps, playing dominoes. Daniel knew them by sight, but not by name. Tucked away in the other corner, against the partition, was a woman whom Daniel guessed was Mrs Jackson.
Quite unlike the domino players, this woman didn’t belong. Her floral dress with frilled collar was the attire for a quiche-baking ladies club, not a less than salubrious village pub. She finished what looked like a Scotch Whiskey, and stood up, as they regarded her from the end of the partition.
She looked them up and down as she passed and headed towards the bar. She stood with one leg raised upon the brass pole at the foot of the bar and reached for a bell, which looked like it belonged next to a boxing ring. No staff appeared. Daniel had found his moment for introductions.
“Mrs Jackson isn't it?” asked Daniel. She twisted to face them, checking out Daniel momentarily before her eyes ran the length of Cliff’s uniform, resting briefly on his eye-patch. She turned back to Daniel who - in his dark jeans and charcoal jumper - looked far less intriguing.
“Yes, I’m Mrs Jackson. Who, may I ask, are you?”
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