Blood At The Root

by Peter Robinson

  “Is this Blake a Nazi, then, sir?” Sergeant Hatchley asked.

  “No, Sergeant,” Gristhorpe answered patiently. “William Blake was an English poet. He lived from 1757 to 1827. You’d probably know him best as the bloke who wrote ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Tyger, Tyger!’”

  “‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright’?” said Hatchley. “Aye, sir, I think we did that one at school.”

  “Most likely you did.”

  “And we sometimes used to sing the other one on the coach home after a rugby match. But isn’t Jerusalem in Israel, sir? Was this Blake Jewish, then?”

  “Again, Sergeant, no. I’ll admit it sounds an ironic sort of symbol for a neo-Nazi organization. But, as I said, Blake liked to mythologize things. To him, Jerusalem was a sort of image of the ideal city, a spiritual city, a perfect society, if you like – of which London was a pale, fallen shadow – and he wanted to establish a new Jerusalem ‘in England’s green and pleasant land.’”

  “Was he green, then, sir, one of them environmentalists?”

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  Banks could see Gristhorpe gritting his teeth in frustration. He felt like kicking Hatchley under the table, but he couldn’t reach. The sergeant was trying it on, of course, but Hatchley and Gristhorpe always seemed to misunderstand one another. You wouldn’t have thought they were both Yorkshiremen under the skin.

  “Blake’s Albion was a powerful figure, ruler of this ideal kingdom,” Gristhorpe went on. “A figure of which even the heroes of the Arthurian legends were mere shadows.”

  “How long have they been around?” Banks asked.

  Gristhorpe turned to him, clearly with some relief. “About a year,” he said. “They started as a splinter group of the British National Party, which turned out to be too soft for them. And they think they’re a cut above Combat 18, who they regard as nowt but a bunch of thugs.”

  “Well, they’re right on that count,” Banks said. “Who’s the grand Pooh-Bah?”

  “Bloke called Neville Motcombe. Aged thirty-five. You’d think he’d be old enough to know better, wouldn’t you?”

  “Any form?”

  “One arrest for assaulting a police officer during a BNP rally years back, and another for receiving stolen goods.”

  “Any connection with George Mahmood and his friends?” Banks asked.

  Gristhorpe shook his head. “Other than the obvious, none.”

  “Surely the Albion League isn’t based in Eastvale, sir?” Susan Gay asked.

  Gristhorpe laughed. “No. That’s just where Jason Fox’s parents happen to live. Luck of the draw, as far as we’re concerned. Their headquarters are in Leeds – an old greengrocer’s shop in Holbeck – but they’ve got cells all over West Yorkshire, especially in places where there’s a high percentage of immigrants. As I said before, they’re not above using the yobs, but there’s also that element of a more intellectual appeal to disaffected white middle-class kids with chips on their shoulders – lads like Jason Fox, with a few bobs’ worth of brains and nobbut an a’porth of common sense.”

  “How strong are they?” Banks asked.

  “Hard to say. According to Crawley, there’s about fifteen cells, give or take a couple. One each in smaller places like Batley and Liversedge, but two or three in a larger city like Leeds. We don’t really know how many members in each cell, but as a rough estimate let’s say maybe eighty to a hundred members in all.”

  “Not a lot, is it? Where does this Motcombe bloke live?”

  “Pudsey, down by Fulneck way. Apparently he’s got a nice detached house there.”

  Banks raised his eyebrows. “La-di-da. Any idea how they’re financed – apart from receiving stolen goods?”

  “Crawley says he doesn’t know.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  Gristhorpe sniffed and scratched his hooked nose. “I smell politics in this one, Alan,” he said. “And when I smell politics I don’t believe anything I see or hear.”

  “Do you want Jim and me to have a poke around in Leeds?” Banks asked.

  “Just what I was thinking. You could pay the shop a visit, for a start. See if there’s anyone around. Clear it with Ken Blackstone first, make sure you’re not treading on anyone’s toes.”

  Banks nodded. “What about Motcombe?”

  Gristhorpe paused before answering. “I got the impression that Crawley didn’t want us bothering Mr. Motcombe,” he said slowly. “In fact, I think Crawley was only detailed to answer our request for information because they knew down there that we’d simply blunder ahead and find out anyway. The bull-in-a-china-shop approach. He was very vague indeed. And he asked us to proceed with caution.”

  “So what do we do?”

  A wicked grin creased Gristhorpe’s face. “Well,” he said, tugging his plump earlobe, “I’d pay him a visit, if I were you. Rattle his chain a bit. I mean, it’s not as if we’ve been officially warned off.”

  Banks smiled. “Right.”

  “One more thing before you all go. These letters at the bottom of the Albion League’s flyer.” Gristhorpe lifted the pamphlet from the table and pointed. “Http://www.alblgue.com./index.html. Now you all know I’m a bloody Luddite when it comes to computers, but even I know that’s a Web page address. Don’t ask me what a Web page looks like, mind you. Question is, can we do anything with it? Is it likely to get us anywhere? Susan?”

  “It might do,” said Susan Gay. “Unfortunately, we don’t have access to the Internet over the station computers.”

  “Oh. Why not?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Just slow, I suppose. South Yorkshire’s even got their own Web page. And West Mercia.”

  Gristhorpe frowned. “What do they do with them?”

  Susan shrugged. “Put out information. Community relations. Crime stoppers. Chief constable’s opinion on the state of the county. That sort of thing. It’s an interface with the community.”

  “Is it, indeed?” Gristhorpe grunted. “Sounds like a complete bloody waste of time to me. Still, if this Albion League thing’s worth a try, is there some way you could have a peek? Or should I say surf?”

  Susan smiled. “Browse, actually, sir. You surf the Net, but you browse the Web.”

  “And is there any wonder I’ve no patience with the bloody machines?” Gristhorpe muttered. “Whatever you call it, can you get a look at it?”

  Susan nodded. “I’ve got a hook-up from home,” she said. “I can certainly give it a try.”

  “Then do it, and let us know what you find. Alan, did those lads from West Yorkshire find anything on Jason Fox’s computer?”

  Banks shook his head. “Clean as a whistle.”

  “Clean as in somebody washed it?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  Gristhorpe grimaced as he shifted his bad leg and shook it to improve the circulation before standing up. “Right, then,” he said. “That’s about it for now. Let’s get cracking.”

  II

  Susan enjoyed the unexpected surprise of being able to go home during working hours, even though she knew she was there to work.

  First, she kicked off her shoes and put on the kettle. Then she looked through her collection of different tea varieties and settled on Autumn, a black tea dotted with small pieces of apple, perfect for the drizzly, blustery day. On impulse, she put a pinch of cinnamon in the pot, too. While the tea was brewing, she put on her CD of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s greatest hits, smiling as she thought how much Banks would hate it, then she poured herself a cup of tea and got down to work.

  The computer was in her bedroom because her flat was so small. It was the one room where she never received visitors. At least not yet. But she wasn’t going to allow herself to think about DC Gavin Richards right now.

  Cup of apple-and-cinnamon-scented tea steaming beside her and “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” drifting in from the living room, Susan curled her feet under her on the office chair and logged in. Then she typed in the address from the flyer and cli
cked her mouse.

  The screen remained blank for a long time as the various bits and pieces of the document coming in over the telephone line added up, then suddenly it turned black.

  Next, a multicolored image began to appear, line by line from the top of the screen down, and soon the Albion League’s emblem, a swastika made out of burning golden arrows, appeared in full. Probably, Susan thought, remembering Superintendent Gristhorpe’s words and the Blake song, it was some sort of image of Blake’s “arrows of desire.”

  Around the top of the swastika, the words THE ALBION LEAGUE curled in a semicircle of bold Gothic script.

  It took a couple of minutes for the rest of the document to transfer. When it was complete, Susan started browsing through it. “Memory” floated in from the living room.

  Unlike pages in a book, Web pages have an extra dimension provided by hypertext links, highlighted words or icons you can click on to go to another, related site. At first, Susan ignored these links and concentrated on reading the text. It was much the same as the pamphlet she had seen, only there was more of it.

  The first paragraph welcomed the reader to the page and explained that the Albion League was a fast-growing group of concerned citizens dedicated to ethnic purity, freedom of speech, law and order, and the establishment of the true English “homeland.”

  After that came a number of links. Some were closely related sites, such as the British National Party’s home page or Combat 18, and some were American or Canadian, such as Stormfront, Aryan Nation and the Heritage Front. They varied from the fairly literate to the downright unreadable, but some of the graphics were imaginatively conceived. Susan had never thought members of white-power groups to be particularly creative or intelligent. She had to remind herself that, these days, you didn’t have to be an Einstein to work a computer. Almost any kid could do it.

  She opted for the league’s “News” icon and was soon treated to a number of recent stories from the unique perspective of the Albion League.

  The first item concerned the amount of public money being channeled toward the huge new mosque under construction between Leeds and Bradford, and contrasted it with the shocking state of disrepair of most of Britain’s churches.

  The second contended that a leading academic had “proved” humans were actually descended from paleskinned northern tribes rather than from “hairy Africans.”

  And so it went on: a Tory MP known for his stand on morality and family values had been surprised by a police raid on a homosexual brothel in Sheffield, wearing only a blond wig and a tutu; Leeds City Council had voted to rename one of the city’s streets after a black revolutionary “scum”…example after example of government hypocrisy, just deserts and cultural decay.

  One story concerned a white schoolboy who had been stabbed just outside the gates of a Bradford comprehensive school by three members of an Asian gang. It was a sad-enough tale – and Susan remembered reading about it in the Yorkshire Post only a couple of weeks ago – but according to the Albion League, the tragic stabbing had occurred because the local council was dominated by “ethnics” and by their brainwashed, politically correct white lackeys, who had all known about the school’s problems for years but had never done anything. The victim could, therefore, be seen as “a sacrifice to the multiracial society.” Susan wondered what they would make of Jason Fox’s death.

  She paused and took a sip of cold tea to soothe her stomach. The Lloyd Webber had finished ages ago and she had been too absorbed to go into the living room and put something else on. Though she hadn’t actually learned much more about the Albion League and its members from the Web page, she had learned enough to make her question how she felt about freedom of speech. These people would claim all attempts to silence them violated their basic democratic freedom. Yet given any power at all, they would silence everyone but straight white males.

  At the end of the league’s page, Susan found, as with many sites, a hypertext link to the page’s designers. In this case, the name was “Fox Wood Designs.”

  Curious, Susan clicked on the name. Again she was disappointed. She had expected names and addresses, but all she got was a stylized graphic image of a fox peering out from some dark trees, along with an E-mail address.

  Still, she thought, as she made a note of the address, there was a slight chance that if one half of the team was Mr. Fox, then the other half was Mr. Wood. And if she could track down Mr. Wood, then she might just find one person who knew something about Jason Fox’s life. And his death.

  As soon as Susan hung up her modem, the telephone rang.

  It was Gavin.

  “Susan? Where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to phone you all morning. I bumped into Jim Hatchley in the station and he told me you were working at home.”

  “That’s right,” Susan said. “What do you want?”

  “Charming. And I was going to invite you to lunch.”

  “Lunch?”

  “Yes. You know, that stuff you eat to keep you alive.”

  “I don’t know…” said Susan.

  “Oh, come on. Even a hardworking DC needs a spot of lunch now and then, surely?”

  Come to think of it, Susan was hungry. “Half an hour?”

  “If that’s all you can spare me.”

  “It is.”

  “Then I’ll take it.”

  “And you’re paying?”

  “I’m paying.”

  Susan grinned to herself. “Right. See you at the Hope and Anchor in ten minutes.”

  III

  The old greengrocer’s turned out to be a former corner shop at the end of a street of back-to-backs between Holbeck Moor and Elland Road. The windows were boarded with plywood, on which various obscenities, swastikas and racist slogans had been spray-painted. Drizzle suited the scene perfectly, streaking the soot-covered red brick and the faded sign over the door that read ARTHUR GELDERD: GREENGROCER.

  Banks wondered what Arthur Gelderd, Greengrocer, would have thought if he knew what had become of his shop. Like Frank Hepplethwaite, Arthur Gelderd had probably fought against Hitler in the war. And forty years or more ago, before the supermarkets, this place would have been one of the local neighborhood meeting places, and a center of gossip; it would also have provided Gelderd and his family with a modest living. Now it was the headquarters of the Albion League.

  Banks and Hatchley looked the building over in the slanting drizzle for a moment. Cars hissed by on Ingram Road, splashing up dirty rainwater from the gutters. The window in the shop door was protected by wire mesh, and the glass itself was covered with old adverts for Omo and Lucozade, so you couldn’t see inside. In the center was a cardboard clock face to show the time the shop would next be open. It was set at nine o’clock, and it would probably be set at that time forever.

  Sergeant Hatchley knocked with his hamlike fist; the door rattled in its frame, but no one answered. He tried the handle, but the place was locked. In the silence after the knocking, Banks thought he heard a sound inside.

  “What do we do?” Hatchley asked.

  “Knock again.”

  Hatchley did so. Harder this time.

  It did the trick. A voice from behind the door shouted, “What do you want?”

  “Police,” said Banks. “Open up.”

  They heard someone remove a chain and turn a key in a lock, then the door opened.

  For some reason, the new occupants hadn’t removed the bell that hung on its pliant arc of metal at the back of the door, and it jangled as Banks and Hatchley walked in. The sound reminded Banks of childhood errands to his local corner shop, the way he used to watch, hypnotized, as Mrs. Bray turned the handle on the machine and the bacon swung back and forth in the slicer, making a whooshing sound every time the whirling wheel blade carved off a slice; he remembered the smoky smell of the cured meat in the air, mingled with fresh bread and apples.

  What he smelled when he walked in now soon put such nostalgia out of his mind – burned carbon from the photoco
pier and laser printer, recent paint, smoke and fresh-cut paper.

  The place didn’t even resemble a shop anymore. What must have been the counter was covered with stacks of paper – more copies of the flyer, by the looks of it – and a computer hummed on a desk beside a telephone. On the walls were a framed poster of Adolf Hitler in full spate, addressing one of the Nuremberg rallies, by the look of it, and a large image of a swastika made out of burning arrows.

  A short young man with lank black hair, antique National Health glasses and a spotty face shut the door behind them. “Always happy to help the local police,” he said with a stupid grin. “We’re on the same side, we are.”

  “Fuck off, sonny,” said Banks. “What’s your name?”

  The young man blinked at the insult and stepped back a pace. “There’s no need-”

  “Name?” Banks repeated as he and Hatchley advanced, backing the young man up against the counter.

  The kid held his hands up. “All right, all right. Don’t hit me. It’s Des. Des Parker.”

  “We’re just going to have a little look around, Des, if that’s all right with you,” Banks said.

  Des frowned. “Don’t you need a search warrant? I mean, I know my rights.”

  Banks stopped and raised his eyebrows. He looked at Hatchley. “Hear that, Jim? Des here knows his rights.”

  “Aye,” said Hatchley, walking toward the telephone and picking up the receiver. “Shall I do the honors, sir?”

  Des looked puzzled. “What honors? What’s he doing?”

  “Getting a search warrant,” Banks explained. “In about half an hour we’ll have fifty flatfoots going over the place with a fine-tooth comb. Sergeant Hatchley and I will stay here with you until they arrive. Maybe you’d like to inform the building’s owner – if it’s not you – while we wait. He might want to be here to make sure his rights aren’t violated.”

  Des gulped. “Mr. Motcombe… He wouldn’t like that.”

  “So what?”

  “What’s going on, Des? Who the fuck is this? Is there a problem?”

  The new speaker came out of the back room, zipping up his fly, accompanied by the sound of a toilet flushing. This one looked a few years older than Des Parker and at least fifty brain cells brighter. Tall and skinny, he was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and red braces, and his dyed-blond hair was cut very close to his skull. He also wore a diamond stud in one ear and spoke with a strong Geordie accent. Definitely not the lad who’d been in the Jubilee with Jason Fox last Saturday.