by Adam Croft
Emily shook her head. Another look of disappointed disgust.
‘What’s his name?’ he asked as she started to turn back towards the fridge.
‘Who?’
‘Don’t start playing games, Em. Who gave you the love bite?’
‘Duh, my boyfriend?’ she replied, phrasing it more like a question than a statement and putting on a mock-dumb voice.
Jack could feel the tension rising up inside himself. Emily wasn’t old enough for boyfriends. She was thirteen years old. Who was he? How old was he? What did they get up to? In his mind, Emily was still barely out of nappies. This didn’t seem right, didn’t feel right.
‘What’s his name?’
Jack thought for a moment she wasn’t going to answer him. It took her a second or two to consider it, but finally she told him.
‘Ethan.’
‘Ethan what?’ he asked, almost immediately.
‘What, so you can go looking on your little police computer to see what you can find out about him you mean? You’re so transparent, Dad.’ She moved to leave the kitchen and walk back through to the living room, but Jack stepped to the side and stood in her way.
‘Oh, so he’ll be on it will he?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘I’m not being stupid, Emily, by wanting to know the name of my daughter’s boyfriend.’
She crossed her arms and shook her head again. ‘You’re unreal, you are. You don’t show up for nine years, and when you finally crawl out of the woodwork you suddenly want to interrogate me about my private life. What gives you the right?’
Jack clenched his teeth and tried not to explode. He chose to ignore the first part of her comment. ‘I’m not interrogating you. I’m just asking you what his name is.’
‘I told you,’ she replied. ‘Ethan.’
‘His surname, I mean.’
‘Why? You want to look him up, don’t you?’
Jack sighed. ‘No. I’m not going to look him up.’
Emily looked at him. He could see her eyes moving between each of his, trying to suss him out.
‘Turner. Ethan Turner. Happy?’
10
Jack had slept soundly for the first time in a long time. He and Emily had sat and watched TV all evening. They barely said a word to each other, but that didn’t bother him. He was just pleased to have her there, and she didn’t seem to mind too much either.
He’d asked her whether her grandparents knew where she was. She said they did. She added that they weren’t particularly happy about it, but they understood. He knew he was going to have to call them and explain the situation from his point of view. He’d have to make sure she had her belongings and her schooling sorted, especially if she was going to be staying with him during school time. But right now he was still struggling to come to terms with what was happening.
In his mind, he supposed it was probably fairly normal for her to just rock up somewhere and dump herself. After all, she’d been shoved from pillar to post already. Her mum had taken her from her family home and left her with the grandparents while she swanned off to God knows where.
When he’d got up that morning, he was surprised to see Emily was already up and about. She’d been downstairs, got herself a bowl of cereal (without milk) and was listening to the radio. She’d told him she was going back to her grandparents’. His face had dropped, but he tried not to show it. When she said she’d be back later, he smiled. There was still a hell of a lot to sort out, but the signs were all positive.
Once he’d got to work, though, things were feeling far less positive. There was a note on his voicemail asking him to report to the Chief Constable when he got in. Charles Hawes, the current Chief Constable, was technically based at county headquarters in Milton House, but chose to keep an office at Mildenheath for much the same reasons as Jack Culverhouse wanted to keep away from HQ. It was a handy thing to sell to the public, too. The head of the county’s police force had chosen not to sit in a plush office in the countryside, but was instead positioned right in the nerve centre of CID and community policing in one of the most police-dependent parts of the county. Then again, spin was half the game.
Hawes had been threatening to retire for years. He’d even announced it to Jack a few months back, but since then things had gone quiet on that front. Charles Hawes wasn’t the retiring type. They’d be dragging him out of here in a box.
Jack knew exactly what Hawes wanted. He’d have heard about the shenanigans at Hilltop Farm the previous day and would want answers. Hawes always wanted answers. Not for himself — he trusted Jack Culverhouse more or less implicitly — but for the Police and Crime Commissioner, Martin Cummings. Hawes was the last of the old guard. He wasn’t quite as old school as Jack, but he nonetheless respected the DCI’s ways and let him get away with far more than he deserved at times. Cummings had been keen for Hawes to retire for some time. Jack supposed that was why Hawes had never gone through with it, secretly hoping that he’d last longer than the PCC’s electoral term and be able to leave on his own terms, rather than being pushed out by some sleazy no-mark politician.
But all Cummings was worried about were the column inches. It wouldn’t look good for the force to either be too heavy handed — particularly where religion was involved — nor would it be ideal, to say the least, for them to have been seen to have neglected their duties if there were serious suspicions of a crime being reported at Hilltop Farm.
Regardless, Jack made his way to the Chief Constable’s office and prepared to waste half an hour on a lecture he could already reel off word for word before he even got there.
Hawes smiled as Culverhouse entered, as he always did, and beckoned for him to sit down. The office was as smart as it could be in this dreary old 1970s building, but Jack liked it. It had a certain style.
‘I suppose you can guess why I’ve asked you to come and see me, Jack,’ the Chief Constable said.
Culverhouse raised both eyebrows for a moment. He wasn’t going to need three guesses.
‘Hilltop Farm,’ he replied.
‘Indeed. Can you run me through what happened?’
Culverhouse took a deep breath. ‘We received a call yesterday morning from someone reporting a death on the farm. We—’
‘Who received the call?’ Hawes asked.
‘Who on our team, you mean? DS Wing, I think, sir.’
‘You think? Were you not there?’
Culverhouse tried to let no emotion show on his face. Did the Chief Constable already know Culverhouse wasn’t in the office at the time? Was this all some sort of ruse to make him admit that he’d been sitting at home when he should’ve been at work as the duty Senior Investigating Officer? He decided to try and keep his language as professional as possible.
‘Not at that time, sir. I was late yesterday morning. I’m afraid it couldn’t be avoided. Personal circumstances.’
Hawes looked at him and nodded. He knew better than to probe into Jack Culverhouse’s private life right now.
‘And you heard about the call how?’
‘By text message. I met DS Wing and DS Knight at the farm. Uniformed first response officers were already there. They hadn’t entered the property due to the reinforced gates and the fact that the residents on the farm would not grant access. They were waiting for backup units to arrive to force entry. I managed to negotiate entry with the residents of the farm.’
‘Negotiate?’ Hawes asked, raising his eyebrows. The unspoken words were that it wasn’t like Jack Culverhouse to negotiate.
‘Yes, sir. I told them backup units were on their way and we’d be on the property within minutes whether they liked it or not. Subsequently, they let us in.’
‘And what did you find?’ Hawes asked, sitting back in his chair and interlacing his fingers.
‘Not much, to be honest. The call said the body was in the old grain store, but when we got there we could find no sign of it.’
‘And what about forensics? Were swabs taken
?’
‘No, sir. To be perfectly honest, it was a musty, damp old grain store which probably had traces of all sorts of things. I decided that short of bringing in dozens of officers to search the entire farm, which is of considerable size, we had to treat the call as a false alarm. Especially considering the circumstances of the call.’
‘Which were?’
‘That the caller phoned in anonymously from a phone box in Mildenheath, that whoever called in presumably had little or no inside knowledge of the farm considering it’s a completely sealed religious community with no-one going in or out, and that no body could be found.’
The Chief Constable narrowed his eyes. ‘Are we sure that no-one goes in or out?’
‘I think so, sir. That’s what we were told.’
‘We’re told all sorts of things, Jack. We’re the police. It doesn’t make those things accurate. But listen. This isn’t going to be good for us either way. We’ve already received a complaint from the church leaders about what they called a raid, and we’ve also got the possibility that there’s been a murder on that farm and we’ve done nothing about it.’
Culverhouse clenched his teeth. Whatever he’d done, he would’ve been fucked. And things weren’t going to get any easier from here, either. He was simultaneously being roasted for both being too heavy handed and not heavy handed enough. He couldn’t win.
‘It’s a difficult situation, sir. One that needed handling delicately.’
‘Father Joseph Kümmel doesn’t think it’s been handled particularly delicately, Jack.’
‘No, he wouldn’t,’ Jack replied, quickly losing his sense of professionalism. ‘But between you and me he’s mental. But in my professional opinion the call was a hoax. I imagine the church has made enemies and that there are people who want to drag its name through the mud.’
‘Not like you to defend a religious institution, Jack,’ the Chief Constable said.
‘I’m not defending it. They’re a bunch of losers, crackpots and weirdos. But that doesn’t make them murderers.’
Hawes nodded, and took a sip from his glass of water.
‘I’m afraid not everyone agrees. There are officers who have graver concerns about Hilltop Farm and feel it needs investigating further. I’ll be honest: I agree with them.’
‘Which officers, sir?’ Culverhouse asked, knowing damn well who it’d be.
‘It’s not for me to name names. And anyway, like I said, I agree with them. You don’t have any major cases ongoing at the moment, do you? So I think it would be prudent to find out as much as we can about Hilltop Farm and the church that’s based there and to make sure our arses are covered. Put it this way — I’d far rather be hauled up for being too heavy handed and digging up the whole fucking farm and finding nothing than I would having to explain that we’d had a murder reported and not investigated it.’
Culverhouse didn’t reply.
‘Who’ve you got in at the moment, Jack?’ Hawes asked.
‘Myself, DS Wing and DS Knight, sir. Frank Vine, Debbie Weston and Ryan Mackenzie are off shift.’
It was yet another quirk of the local policing setup that the town’s CID office could run for days on end with just three officers. Then again, it was remarkable that Mildenheath still had a CID office at all. Fortunately, the amount of serious crime was just enough to keep them all in a job, but without being overloaded — except when a huge case threatened to swamp them, as had almost happened once or twice in the past.
‘Right. Well I want you to get them all back in,’ Hawes said. ‘As far as I’m concerned this is now an active investigation.’
11
One of the benefits of being a Detective Chief Inspector was that it was one of the only jobs in which you could phone members of your team on their days off and have them in the office within two hours. That’s not to say that any of them were particularly happy, but at least they were there.
Detective Sergeant Frank Vine had, predictably, whinged and whined about it. He was starting to approach the tail end of his career and had made a few noises to Culverhouse about retirement. Generally speaking, the DCI agreed this would probably be a good idea. But then life kept throwing them curveballs. Luke Baxter, a Constable, was killed in the line of duty. Ryan Mackenzie, considered to be his replacement, had joined the team very recently.
Ryan had certainly turned heads on joining Mildenheath CID. Culverhouse hadn’t been keen on hearing that a new officer was joining the team part-way through an investigation. He was even less impressed when he found out that Ryan was actually a woman. By the time he’d just about come to terms with that, Ryan had revealed that she was a vegan and was in a lesbian relationship. Neither of those facts would have even registered with most other people. To Jack Culverhouse, it was tantamount to telling him she had three legs.
The final member of the team, Detective Constable Debbie Weston, had long been the silent engine that kept Mildenheath CID running. She never complained, always got on with the job, and was the consummate professional. How she’d been passed over for promotion to Detective Sergeant was beyond Wendy, but she suspected it might have had something to do with the fact that she was a woman.
Culverhouse had briefed the team and recapped what had happened at Hilltop Farm the previous day. He’d also passed on the message that the Chief Constable was keen for the farm to be properly investigated, and that he wasn’t particularly supportive of the idea himself.
‘Right, let’s start from the bottom,’ he said, knowing full well that his comments would rile more than a couple of members in his team. ‘Ryan, can you get some more information on the original call. See if we can get the recording, get that analysed. See if it matches any other calls we’ve had recently. Then get onto the local shops and businesses and see who’s got CCTV. People even have them on the fronts of their houses nowadays, so I should imagine he’ll have been picked up somewhere. Take a look at cars on CCTV too. Even if we don’t have the exact area covered, there’s a chance you might see a car driving in the direction of the phone box a few minutes before the call and driving away from it a few minutes after. That’s a lead we can follow.’
Ryan was nodding and scribbling down notes. Wendy sensed that she’d picked up on Culverhouse’s derogatory comment about starting from the bottom, but that she had chosen to rise above it. Good on her, Wendy thought.
‘Debbie, I need you to find out what you can about Hilltop Farm. Find out when it came into the ownership of the church, who owned it before, who owns it now. Find out whatever you can about it through the official channels. And have a look on Google Earth, too. We should be able to get a decent idea of the layout of the place. Frank, delve into the finances and Father Joseph’s background. I presume the church is registered as some sort of charity or something. Even if it isn’t, it has to make or spend money somehow. They’ll have rates to pay, land to lease, council tax or something like that. Look it all up. There’ll be some sort of paper trail, and if we find out they’re even 5p short on their tax bill we’ll have something to grab onto.’
Wendy noted that Frank didn’t look particularly hopeful of finding anything.
‘Knight,’ Culverhouse said, choosing to use Wendy’s surname, as he always did, ‘I’m going to need you to put your diplomatic skills to the test. Get onto Father Joseph Kümmel and his cronies and see if you can get a list of the residents at the farm. He won’t tell you anything, and I’m sure he’d be well within his legal rights to do so, but it’s got to be worth a shot. And after all, I’m told you have a particularly keen nose for these sorts of things.’
Wendy averted her eyes. She knew exactly what he was getting at. He’d worked out that it was her who’d expressed her concerns to the Chief Constable about a lack of action at Hilltop Farm.
‘And Steve?’ Culverhouse said, addressing DS Wing. ‘You can... Just mop the fucking floor or something. I’m going for a coffee.’
12
Wendy wasn’t expecting to get much jo
y out of her request to see Father Joseph Kümmel. She had no way of phoning ahead or contacting them — they didn’t have any phone lines, and they certainly weren’t hooked up to email. The only option she had left was to drive over there and try and speak to someone.
They hadn’t had much luck last time, and Wendy didn’t expect to have any better luck this time. She’d requested that someone else come with her, but Culverhouse had said no. She wasn’t keen on entering Hilltop Farm single-crewed. She felt sure that there was something far darker and more sinister going on there than met the eye. But it was what it was, and she was going in alone.
When she got to the gate, she pulled up outside and walked over to the intercom buzzer on the wall. She pressed the button and waited for a response. After a few seconds, the buzzing stopped and it sounded as though someone had picked up the call. But no-one spoke.
‘Hello?’ Wendy said. ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Wendy Knight from Mildenheath Police. Would it be possible to speak to somebody from the church, please? I’d like to apologise for what happened yesterday.’ She hoped they weren’t recording this. She wasn’t here to apologise for anything, but thought that perhaps that might be a way to ensure that they let her in.
There was a couple of seconds of silence, until she heard a male voice over the intercom.
‘Someone will be with you shortly.’
Wendy noted that even their intercom responses sounded sinister. How could anyone want to live with these people under their own free will? She didn’t know much about religious cults and sects, but she knew they tended to prey on desperate, vulnerable people, giving them something they needed at that point in their life. Everything else was just incidental. So what if you weren’t allowed to leave? So what if you had to cut off all contact from your family? If you’d been homeless and had no friends and family, and this church came along and gave you a second chance — not to mention a home and protection from the outside world — who wouldn’t jump at the chance? Being walled in, they wouldn’t know the grass was greener on the other side, either. And with every new generation born at the farm, the knowledge of the outside world shrunk and fear of it grew ever greater.