Blood At The Root

by Peter Robinson

  “What service?”

  “RAF. Tail gunner.”

  Banks whistled between his teeth. His father had been a radio operator in the RAF, so he had heard what a dangerous task tail gunner was, and how many had died doing it.

  “Aye,” said Frank. “Anyroad, like I said, I don’t want to make a fuss about it. I said something terribly wrong about someone I consider a friend, and it shames me, but it shames me even more when my grandson thinks I’d have the time of day for this sort of rubbish. I fought the bloody Nazis, for crying out loud. And for what? So my own grandson could become one of them?”

  There were tears in his eyes and Banks feared for his heart. “Calm down, Mr. Hepplethwaite,” he said, putting his hand on Frank’s skinny wrist.

  Frank looked at him through the film of tears, then gave a small nod and took a sip of Bell ’s. He coughed, patted his chest and forced a smile. “Don’t worry, lad,” he said, “It’s not quite time, gentlemen, please, for this old codger yet.”

  VI

  An emergency meeting of the Albion League had been called for that Monday evening. Not everyone was invited, of course, just the cell leaders and one or two of Neville Motcombe’s current favorites, like Craig. About fifteen in all, they came from Leeds and Bradford, from Halifax, Keighley, Cleckheaton, Heckmondwike, Batley, Dewsbury, Brighouse and Elland. Skinheads, for the most part, aged between sixteen and twenty-four, racists all.

  And these fifteen were the pick of the crop, Craig knew. Each cell had between five and twelve members. These were the drones – football hooligans and otherwise violent skins – and Motcombe hardly ever came into contact with them except at rallies and at other large gatherings, when he addressed them from a distance. Mostly, he relied on his cell leaders to make sure his orders were communicated and carried out and, maybe more important still, to make sure the cash kept trickling in. After all, the league was an expensive operation to run.

  They met in the upstairs room of a pub in Bingley, and as he sat sipping his lager, Craig wondered if the landlord knew exactly what was going on up there. If he did, he might not have been so quick to let them use it. On the other hand, the prospect of selling a few extra pints on a slow Monday night might tempt even the best of us to leave our ethics and politics at the door. Nothing much surprised Craig anymore. Not after what Motcombe had drawn him into.

  Even though the window was half open, the place was still full of smoke. Craig could hear rain falling in the street outside. A pale streetlight halo glowed through the gauze of moisture. Occasionally, a car sloshed through the gathering puddles.

  Meanwhile, Nev himself, erstwhile leader of the league, clad in his usual shiny leather jacket, was on his feet whipping his members into a frenzy. He didn’t need to shout and wave his arms around like Hitler; there was enough power and conviction in his regular speaking voice. Mostly it was the eyes; they were the kind that trapped you and wouldn’t let you go unless they were certain of your loyalty. They’d even made Craig tremble once or twice in the early days, but he was too good at his job to let it get to him.

  “Murdered,” Motcombe repeated, disgust and disbelief in his tone. He slapped the table. “One of us. Three of them. Three to one. They say one of his eyes was hanging out of its socket by the time the Paki bastards had finished with him.”

  Stirrings and mumblings came from the crowd. One skin started rattling his glass on the table. Motcombe shushed him with an economic hand gesture, then pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and started to read.

  “George Mahmood,” he began, with the accent on mood. “Asim Nazur.” This time, the name sounded like a sneer. People began to snicker. “And Kobir Mukhtar. Sounds about right, that one, doesn’t it? Mucky-tar?”

  Sycophantic laughter came from the cell leaders.

  “And do you know what happened?”

  Several of them, Craig included, shook their heads.

  “The police let them go. That’s what.”

  Howls of outrage.

  “Oh yes, they did. This very afternoon. Our glorious warrior Jason is probably lying on some mortuary table, cut open from th’nave to th’chops as we speak, and the three bastards who put him there, the three brown bastards who put him there, are out walking the streets.” He slammed the table again. “What do you think about that?”

  “Ain’t fair,” one of the cell leaders chimed in.

  “Typical,” claimed another. “Get away with bloody murder they do these days.”

  “What we gonna do?” asked another.

  Craig lit a cigarette and leaned forward. This promised to be interesting. As far as he was concerned, Jason Fox was an evil little pillock who deserved all he got.

  “First off,” said Motcombe, “I want a special edition of the newsletter out pronto. Black border, the lot. And I want to see some oomph in it. Ray?”

  One of the Leeds cell leaders looked up from his pint and nodded.

  “You see to that,” Motcombe went on. “Now Jason’s no longer with us, I’m afraid we’re left to rely on your rather more pedestrian prose style. But you can do it, Ray, I’m sure you can. You know the kind of thing I want. Outrage, yes, but make sure you emphasize the reason this all happened, the underlying causes, what we’re all about. And make sure you mention the Pakis’ names. We’ll send each of them a copy. If they know that the entire National Socialist Alliance knows who they are, that should give them a fucking sleepless night or two. Okay?”

  Ray smiled and nodded.

  “And print extra copies. Next, I’d like Geoff and Keith to start working on a memorial concert for Jason. A big bash. You’ve got the contacts, so pick some appropriate bands, four or five of them, rent a large space and make arrangements. Soon as you can, okay?”

  Geoff and Keith nodded and scribbled some notes.

  “Now, as soon as I find out the details about the funeral,” Motcombe went on, “I’ll be contacting several members to accompany me in a tribute of honor for our fallen hero. For make no mistake about it, Jason Fox is a martyr, and his murder should provide us with a rallying point. We’ve got a chance to turn adversity into fortune here, if we choose to seize it. By all means let us grieve and mourn our lost comrade – indeed, grieve we must – but let us also, as he would have wished, use his death to spur us on to greater things, to faster growth. You all knew Jason. You know what he stood for. Let’s do credit to his memory.”

  A few of them nodded and muttered their agreement, then the Brighouse cell leader asked, “Are we gonna crack some heads open, then?”

  A number of “ayes” went up, but Motcombe shushed them again. “Don’t worry,” he said. “That’ll be taken care of. In time. But for the moment, we’ll just publish their names and leave it at that. Let’s think of the long-term mission, and let’s use our golden opportunity to gain a bit of public sympathy. Think of the hundreds of blokes at home just sitting on the fence right now. They know we’re right, but they don’t want to make that final move and admit it. Something like this could increase our membership tenfold. Nice, pure Aryan lad, with his whole future ahead of him, murdered by Paki immigrant scum. That’ll turn a few fence-sitters in our direction.”

  Several members murmured in agreement. “But we can’t leave Jason’s murder unavenged, can we?” one of them said. “They’ll think we’re weak.”

  “Sometimes you have to postpone your vengeance for the greater good, Mick. That’s all I am saying. And there’s strength in that, not weakness. Believe me. There’ll be plenty of time for revenge down the road. Remember, the bastards who killed Jason got away with it because our corrupt legal system is on their side. But what would happen if one of us got picked up for clobbering a Paki right now? Eh? Answer me that one.” No one did. They all looked as if they knew the answer already. Motcombe looked at his watch. “Now, I’ll have to be on my way soon, I’ve got a lot to attend to, but there’s no reason why you lot can’t stay and enjoy a wake for Jason if you like. You’ve all got your orders. Meeting ad
journed.”

  Then Motcombe tossed back the rest of his orange juice. Unlike the others, Craig had noticed, he never drank alcohol or smoked. People got up and moved around the room, some of them heading down to the bar to buy more pints. The last Craig saw of Motcombe, he was walking out of the room with two Bradford cell leaders, an arm draped over each one’s shoulders, deep in quiet conversation.

  Liked his private meetings, did Nev, keeping the left hand and the right hand separate. Whatever he was talking to them about or asking them to do, you could bet it would have nothing to do with what he and Craig had been talking about over the past few weeks.

  Craig tossed his cigarette out of the window into the rainy night, took a deep breath and went over to mourn Jason’s death with Ray from Leeds and Dogface Russell from Hors-forth.

  VII

  It was late when Banks got home that evening, after stopping off at the station on his way from Lyndgarth, and he was tired.

  Sandra was sitting at a table at the back of the living room sorting through some transparencies, holding them up to the desk light, scrutinizing each one in turn, her long blond hair tucked behind her ears.

  “Drink?” Banks asked.

  She didn’t look up. “No, thanks.”

  Fine. Banks went to the cocktail cabinet and poured himself a finger of Laphroaig, thought about it for a moment, then added another finger. He picked up the evening paper from the coffee table and sat on the settee.

  “Hard day?” he asked.

  “Not bad,” Sandra said, without looking away from the transparency she was holding. “Busy.”

  Banks looked at the paper for a few minutes without taking anything in, then went over to the stereo. He chose a CD of arias by Angela Gheorghiu. A few seconds into the first one, Sandra looked over and raised a dark eyebrow. “Must you?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Do we really have to listen to this?”

  “What harm is it doing?”

  Sandra sighed and turned back to her transparency.

  “Really,” Banks pressed on. “I want to know. What harm is it doing? Is it too loud?”

  “No, it’s not too loud.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  Sandra dropped the transparency on the table a little harder than necessary. “It’s bloody opera, is the problem. You know it gets on my nerves sometimes.”

  It was true that Sandra had once taken a magnet to one of his Götterdämmerung tapes. But that was Wagner, an acquired taste at the best of times. Who could possibly object to Angela Gheorghiu singing Verdi? Sandra had even been with him to see La Traviata last month, and she said she enjoyed it.

  “I didn’t think you found it that offensive,” Banks said, walking back to the stereo.

  “No, leave it,” Sandra said. “You’ve put it on. You’ve made your point. Just leave it.”

  “What point?”

  “What point? You know what point.”

  “No, I don’t. Enlighten me.”

  Sandra snorted. “Opera. Bloody opera. The most important thing on your agenda. In your life, for all I know.”

  Banks sat down and reached for his Scotch. “Oh, we’re back to that again, are we?”

  “Yes, we’re back to that again.”

  “Well, go on, then.”

  “Go on, what?”

  “Get it off your chest.”

  “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’d like me to get it off my chest. Let the little lady yell at you for a couple of minutes so you can tell your mates what a bloody fishwife she is. Pretend to listen, be all contrite, then just carry on as if nothing had happened.”

  “It’s not like that,” Banks protested. “If you’ve got a problem, tell me. Let’s talk about it.”

  Sandra picked up another transparency and pushed a few loose strands of hair back behind her ears. “I don’t want to talk about it. There’s nothing to talk about.”

  Angela Gheorghiu had moved onto the “Aubade” from Chérubin now, but its beauty was lost on Banks.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was that important to you.”

  Sandra glanced sideways at him. “That’s just it, isn’t it?” she said.

  “What is?”

  “You never do. You never do consider how important something might be to me. It’s always your needs that come first. Like bloody opera. You never bother asking me what I might want to listen to, do you? You just go straight to your bloody opera without even thinking.”

  Banks stood up again. “Look, I said I’m sorry. Okay? I’ll take it off if it bothers you so much.”

  “I told you to leave it. It doesn’t matter now. It’s too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  “Oh, Alan, give it a rest. Can’t you see I’ve got work to do?” She gestured at the transparencies spread out across the table.

  “Fine,” said Banks. “Fine. You’re pissed off, but you don’t want to talk about it. You hate opera, but you want me to leave it on. I’m the one who never considers your needs or feelings, but right now you’ve got work to do. Well, just bloody fine.”

  Banks tossed back the rest of his Laphroaig, grabbed his coat from the hall stand and slammed the front door behind him.

  FOUR

  I

  Banks was first to arrive at Tuesday morning’s CID meeting in the “Boardroom” of Eastvale Divisional Police HQ, shortly followed by DC Susan Gay, Superintendent Gristhorpe and, finally, Sergeant Hatchley.

  Having been warned by Susan, Banks was dreading that Jimmy Riddle himself would show up. Riddle was a notorious early riser, and the thirty miles or so of country roads from Regional HQ to Eastvale at such an hour would mean nothing to him. Especially if it gave him an opportunity to cause Banks grief.

  Banks knew he would have to face the CC before long – Gristhorpe said he had already received his bollocking for letting his DCI too far off the leash – but he just didn’t want it first thing in the morning, never his favorite time of day. Especially after he’d gone down to the Queen’s Arms after his argument with Sandra the previous evening and had a jar too many. He hadn’t handled that situation well, he knew. He hadn’t been at all reasonable. He had lived with Sandra long enough to know that when she lashed out like that – which was rare – it meant she had something important on her mind. And he hadn’t bothered to find out what it was. Instead, he had stormed out like a petulant teenager.

  As it happened, Jimmy Riddle hadn’t turned up by the time coffee and biscuits were served. That probably meant he wouldn’t come, Banks thought with relief; usually Riddle liked to be first there, sparkling and spotless, to get a jump on everyone.

  “Right,” said Gristhorpe. “What have we got so far? Alan, have you talked to the lab?”

  Banks nodded. “Nothing yet. They’re still trying, but they haven’t found anything on the shoes or clothes we sent over for analysis. There’s a lot of mud on George Mahmood’s shoes, consistent with walking over the rec in the rain, and some sort of substance that looks a bit suspicious. But the lad was wearing trainers, for Christ’s sake. Hardly what you’d choose if you were intending to kick someone’s head in.”

  “But we don’t know that he was intending to do anything, do we?” Gristhorpe pointed out.

  “True. Still, it’d be difficult to kick someone to death wearing trainers. Dr. Glendenning specified heavy boots. Or Doc Martens, something like that.”

  “Wouldn’t the rain have washed any traces of blood away?” Susan asked.

  “Lab says not. If there’s enough of it, which there was, and if it gets in the stitching and seeps between the sole and upper, they say it’s damn near impossible to get rid of.”

  Susan nodded.

  “Vic Manson’s working on fingerprints, too,” Banks said to Gristhorpe, “but he doesn’t hold out a lot of hope.”

  “Fingerprints from where?”

  “Th
e broken bottle. According to the postmortem, there were fragments of broken glass embedded in the back of Jason Fox’s skull, and they match the fragments we found near the body. It looks as if he was hit with a bottle and then kicked. Anyway, Vic says the rain has probably buggered up his chances, but he’s busy spraying SuperGlue into aquariums and Lord knows what else.”

  “What did you find out yesterday?” Gristhorpe asked.

  “Quite a lot.” Banks told them in detail about Jason Fox’s losing his job, his false address in Leeds, and the Albion League. “I also checked out this Milly and her boyfriend,” he went on. “The West Indian woman Jason insulted at work. Seems she’s gone back to live with her family in Barbados.”

  “Chalk up one victory to Jason Fox, then,” said Gristhorpe. “Any idea where Jason lived when he wasn’t at his parents’ house?”

  Banks smiled and produced an address in Rawdon.

  “How did you find out?”

  “Telephone directory. It doesn’t seem as if Jason was making any particular secret out of where he lived. He just neglected to let his parents know he’d moved.”

  “For eighteen months?”

  Banks shrugged. “Jason’s relationship with his parents obviously wasn’t close. There’s a lot they don’t know about him. I’m not entirely sure whether they didn’t want to know, or whether he didn’t want them to. From what I’ve seen so far, the Foxes aren’t a particularly close family.”

  “How did he make his living these past two years?” Gristhorpe asked. “Do we know that?”

  Banks shook his head. “No. But according to the DSS he wasn’t on the dole. His grandfather mentioned something about him studying computers, too, so that might be something he’s got into. I’ve asked Ken Blackstone to give us a hand down there, checking the local college courses. And we can check tax records, see if he got another job somewhere.”