The Judgement Book

by Simon Hall

  ‘Associates of Sarah’s, sir?’ said Claire.

  ‘Working on that,’ replied Adam. ‘You can supervise it, along with the rest of the current inquiries. I’m going to talk to Sarah again. Then we’ll see Sinclair and Robinson. That won’t be easy. They’re both furious.’

  Adam took Claire through a list of what was being checked. Dan sat on the window ledge, tried not to run his tongue over the ulcer and thought about where he’d find some flowers. A baby crawled continually around the edge of his mind, screaming for attention.

  ‘Ready Dan?’ asked Adam when he’d finished talking to Claire. ‘Are you ready?’ he repeated, making Dan start and mumble an apology.

  ‘Get with it please,’ the detective added tetchily. ‘I need you sharp for this. Let’s go see Sarah.’

  Sarah was standing by the far wall of the interview room, staring up at the tiny window, just as she’d done before. She turned as they walked in.

  She spoke first. ‘Before you ask, Adam, no is the answer.’

  ‘No what?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t thinking about the years in prison when I wouldn’t see the outside world again. I was wondering if the plans had been carried out successfully this morning. And I see from your expressions they have.’

  Dan tried to keep his face impassive, but he couldn’t help being impressed. Yesterday she’d talked about his perceptiveness. But she had insight too.

  Adam sat down heavily at the table. The strip light above him buzzed.

  ‘Enough of your games,’ he grunted. ‘I want this sorted now.’

  Sarah closed her eyes and smiled. ‘It’s in your gift, Adam. You’ve got the codes. Crack them and you find the Judgement Book.’

  ‘We’re working on them. But it’d be in your favour if you gave us a short cut and told us where it is. Then we can stop all this.’

  She walked slowly over to the table and sat down opposite Adam, her face half in shadow in the dim light. ‘That would spoil the fun though, wouldn’t it?’

  The detective’s palm slapped down on the table. ‘What’s fun about wrecking people’s lives, woman?’

  ‘Justice,’ she said simply. ‘Would you have found out about Robinson’s men killing that young lad? Or Sinclair’s corruption?’

  ‘If you had an allegation to make about those men, the right way to do it was come to us.’

  ‘And be greeted by people like Osmond? What do you think he’d have done? It would have been covered up, quietly forgotten. The establishment looks after itself.’

  ‘We’re not all corrupt,’ said Adam wearily. ‘Most of us believe in what we do, and do it as well as we can.’

  ‘Then it’s a pity your good work is spoiled by the rest. Maybe you should join me and help to point it out.’

  Adam sat back on his chair and didn’t reply. Dan could see he was angry with himself for again letting her draw him into an argument. Sarah had a way of getting to him that very few managed. Perhaps, Dan thought, it was because of the detective’s strong views on justice and how it should be achieved, or what had happened to Linda Cott and Will Freedman. Maybe it was simply that it was his own future under threat.

  And Dan’s too. He ran his tongue over the ulcer, felt it sting anew.

  More calmly, Adam asked, ‘Who’s your accomplice, Sarah?’

  ‘You know I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Is it a man or a woman?’

  She smiled, easy and relaxed. ‘I can’t tell you anything else Adam. You know now how the clock’s running. You have all you need to find the Judgement Book and you’ve got until seven o’clock tomorrow evening. I suggest you stop wasting your time with me and get on with trying to crack the riddle. That’s the only way you’re going to stop this.’

  Adam stared at her. He stood up quickly from his chair.

  ‘OK, if that’s the way you want it. This is your last chance to change your mind and help us, Sarah. It could see you receive a substantially shorter sentence.’

  ‘Nice try, Adam, but I’m content with what I’ve done. I’ll see you in court, as they say. It should be an interesting trial, with all these well-known people being a part of it.’

  She looked over at Dan. ‘One of the trials of the century is probably how you media people will describe it. That’s assuming you’ve still got a job – or if you have, that you’re allowed to cover it. It could be a bit tricky, couldn’t it? If you were named in the Judgement Book, and it was full of scandalous details about how you and Adam worked together.’

  Dan felt his tongue start working at the ulcer, but he hardly noticed the pain. He tried to keep his face set, expressionless, stared fixedly at Sarah. There had to be a way to break through her calm.

  He walked over to Adam, stood by the table and put an arm on his shoulder. They were getting nowhere, succeeding only in entertaining Sarah. It was time to leave, before she drew them into another row.

  She looked up at them, amused and scornful. ‘You are good friends, aren’t you? That’s so very touching.’

  Dan felt the anger bite. ‘And what about your good friend, Sarah?’ he shot back. ‘What happened to him? Iraq wasn’t it?’

  Now her expression changed. There was a slight twitch in her face, only tiny, but it was there.

  ‘A peace protester, wasn’t he?’ Dan went on. ‘Killed in the fighting?’

  She said nothing, but she was colouring, a redness creeping across her cheeks.

  ‘A good friend, wasn’t he?’ continued Dan slowly. ‘A very good friend?’ He waited, studied her, saw the shine in her eyes.

  Still he waited, then added slowly, slyly, enjoying the hurt he was sure now that his words would inflict, ‘A lover perhaps?’

  ‘He was a better fucking man than you’ll ever be,’ Sarah shouted, jumping to her feet.

  Her chair crashed over. Adam reached out a warning arm to restrain her, but she didn’t move, just stood, staring into Dan’s eyes, her face screwed tight.

  ‘He was a better fucking man than any of you bastards will ever be,’ she hissed. ‘And to hear that despicable wanker Robinson talking about him as a peacenik who was just another casualty of war made me want to go and stick a fucking steak knife in his neck. But I stopped myself. I did it the right way. Everyone will know what Robinson did, and all those other bastards who’re just as bad in their own shitty sordid ways.’

  Sarah glared at them, then bent over, picked up the chair and sat down. She folded her arms.

  ‘This is our last conversation,’ she said with taut control. ‘I’d like it formally recorded that I do not intend to say anything else. But first, I must tell you this one thing. It’s been agreed and it is the final part of the game …’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, woman?’ Adam interrupted angrily.

  Sarah gave him a look of pure contempt. ‘I would advise you to shut up and listen. This is very important. It was agreed at the outset you would be given this last clue. It is the final thing I will say to you.’

  She paused, waited. Adam looked speechless. Dan sensed it was no time to argue, grabbed his notebook.

  ‘If you should find all the clues that lead you to the Judgement Book, bear this in mind,’ she continued. ‘Our initial thoughts are often wrong, but in this case they would be dead right. Remember that. Your initial thoughts will be dead right, and will take you to your goal.’

  Sarah leaned forwards, stretched, laid her arms on the table, lowered her head, closed her eyes and silently ignored every other question Adam and Dan put to her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ADAM JOGGED QUICKLY, DAN right behind him. Eleanor had called them from the library. She didn’t want to leave as she had more research to do and time was vital. But she’d already solved the first of the two new codes.

  Dan ran his tongue over his ulcer. It was hurting more now, swollen and sore. Another thought was dominating his mind. What did Sarah mean by those bizarre words, that their initial thoughts would be dead right, and would take t
hem to their goal? Was it a riddle within a riddle that they had to solve? The case was growing ever more extraordinary.

  They jogged past a sandwich shop, a queue of people winding back through the door. A smell of frying chicken drifted on the breeze. It was getting on for lunchtime, but he didn’t feel hungry. There was too much going on to think about food.

  A picture of Claire slid into his mind. She was pushing a pram, then stopping, bending over to tuck some blankets around a tiny, sleeping shape. Soothing nonsense noises bubbled from her lips and the baby opened his eyes and smiled up at her. It was summer, the warming sunshine bathing them both.

  A sudden cloud passed in front of the sun and a sharp wind picked up. A man came to stand beside Claire, proud and protective. It wasn’t Dan. The man was younger, more handsome, with a powerful, athletic physique and not a hint of receding hair. Dan clenched his fists, forced the image away.

  He glanced up at the sky, enjoying the coolness of the misty rain. The weather had finally turned. After the long spell of sunshine, a grey drizzle was drifting in from the west. It was as though a tired cloud had fallen from the sky and come to rest on the city. The cars on the streets took on a sibilant sound as they pushed their way through the enveloping dampness.

  A couple of people looked on, amused at the men in their suits, jogging and panting. Adam ignored them. He was focused on the library ahead. A line of pigeons stood watching from one of its grey, decaying ledges. They were still and silent, quietened by the change in the weather. Dan felt the moisture seeping through his jacket.

  Adam took the two flights of stone steps in his stride and turned into the Reference section. Eleanor sat at a desk in the middle of a row, Michael next to her. She looked up from a pile of magazines.

  ‘What news?’ panted Adam from the door.

  ‘Shhh,’ came a series of replies as heads raised from their desks in annoyance.

  Eleanor got up and ushered them outside into the stone stairwell. Michael followed.

  ‘What news?’ said Adam again.

  ‘I think I’ve got it,’ she replied, holding up a copy of Robinson’s blackmail note. ‘It’s simple. The reason there’s no riddle is that the answer is contained in that last sentence.’

  She pointed to it.

  “Here is your code. As a clue, I say this – it is very different from those which have gone before, but try a hunch, urchin. If you do, it may have the answer.”

  Eleanor looked expectantly at Adam. When he said nothing, she prompted, ‘The answer is in that paragraph. The blackmailer tells us so. That talk about try a hunch urchin, and it might include the answer.’

  Again she waited for some response. When still it didn’t come, with all a veteran teacher’s forbearance she said, ‘What’s the only word hidden inside “hunch urchin”?

  Dan peered at the sheet, then said, ‘Church.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Eleanor simply.

  ‘Church?’ Adam queried, with disbelief.

  ‘Yes, church.’

  ‘Which means, we now have “Open original memorial church.” So – we’re looking to open the original memorial in a church. But what church?’

  No one answered. No one could. There was no answer to give.

  The clock on the wall said it was just after eleven. They had less than 32 hours to the blackmailers’ deadline.

  ‘What bloody church?’ barked Adam. ‘There are scores of churches around Plymouth alone, hundreds if we have to go further afield. We can’t go looking for an original memorial to open in all of them. We don’t have anything like enough time. So what damned church?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ replied Eleanor finally. ‘As I suspected, that clue was made deliberately easy. They’re playing with us. It’s the last word, the one which gives us the location that’s the vital one.’

  Adam looked at her. ‘And it’s the one we don’t have,’ he said bitterly.

  They walked slowly back to Charles Cross and up the stairs to the MIR. Adam didn’t say a word the whole way. He’d lost the driven energy of earlier and was laboured in his movements. He didn’t even look around when a police car blazed past, its siren screaming. It was his usual way to speculate on what the emergency might be, and to wish his colleagues luck.

  The press pack was still clustered around the front of Charles Cross, drinking endless take-away coffees and shouting questions at any senior police officer who passed. No wonder the High Honchos were growing concerned. Dan and Adam had to use the rear entrance to slip back into the station.

  He steeled himself for the lie and phoned Lizzie to say there were no new developments worthy of reporting, but … there might be later. It sounded lame, even to him, and Dan got exactly the response he expected.

  ‘You can come back to the studios then, and work on something else.’

  ‘But I think there is something afoot.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not sure yet.’

  ‘So how do you know?’

  ‘Just a feeling.’

  ‘Feelings don’t fill programmes. Feelings don’t excite viewers. Feelings don’t win ratings.’

  Dan tried not to sound desperate. He couldn’t leave the investigation now. Adam needed him, Claire needed him. And he had to save his own career.

  ‘Just a hint then, from the detectives here, that something’s brewing,’ he managed.

  ‘Well, make it brew faster. Ferment it. I want news. I want stories. I want exclusives. I want slots in the programme filled, not vague hopes that one day they might be.’

  His ulcer throbbed throughout their conversation, as if to punish him for lying. Eventually, Lizzie agreed to let him stay, on the condition he would scramble if another story broke. Dan thought about Sarah, sitting in a police cell and wondered whether she might have a point. The world did sometimes seem full of deceit.

  Adam barked a series of orders to a group of six waiting detectives. They were to start checking whether any churches in the Plymouth area contained well-known memorials. Dan could see from the looks on their faces it was a morass of work for a long shot, but they moved fast, urged on by Adam. Within seconds they were all at desks and on their phones, like a line of old-fashioned switchboard operators.

  A forensics report on the two new blackmail notes had arrived. Both were written by the same person, but there were no clues as to who it was. There were no traces of any fibres, DNA or hair that could be used to check if the writer was a previous offender.

  ‘That’s no bloody use,’ Adam grumbled, dropping the papers back on to a desk.

  Another sheet detailed the attempts to penetrate the sexual underworld, talk to doggers and investigate whether Linda might have been involved. There was little written because there was little to say. The inquiries had got nowhere.

  ‘No use again,’ Adam grunted. ‘As expected. It’s not exactly a scene that welcomes the law.’

  He picked up another report, from the Square Eyes division about Sarah’s mobile. The call made just before she was arrested was to a pay as you go mobile, which had not been used since. Such phones were a criminal’s favourite. No records kept of the sale, no way of tracing who it belonged to. The report said analysis of where it had been when it received the call indicated the centre of Plymouth, but nothing more specific.

  ‘No bloody help there either,’ muttered Adam. ‘They were smart. They knew that if Sarah was caught we could trace any mobiles she’d rung. They were ready for us.’

  Dan caught his look. They were both thinking it. That call was about them, breaking the law to catch the serial rapist, hunting down Osmond. Sarah had been gleefully passing on the details, the faceless accomplice scrupulously writing them down, line by line in the Judgement Book.

  Adam walked over to the windows and stared out. The drizzle had stopped and the sky was brightening. He said nothing, just stared and tapped on the windowsill with his wedding ring. Dan could see he was thinking and wanted to be left alone, so he took out a piece of paper and tried t
o work on the final clue.

  “See have mind good land, Plymouth.”

  He started with the basics. They were looking for somewhere or something in Plymouth obviously, but what and where? How could it lead to a word, the last, most important part of the riddle? Have mind of a good land – see a good land – Dan searched his memory, but couldn’t think of anywhere called or known as a good land in Plymouth.

  Anyway, what did it mean, see it? Go to somewhere you could see this good land? How did that help? Would you find yourself in a place which gave you the last word of the puzzle? Some road, street or square, some landmark?

  And what did those words about predicting this clue would be the most trouble mean? It must be some kind of cryptic hint about the solution, surely. But if so, how? Dan stared at the words until they lost their focus and drifted across the page. He couldn’t see how they might be any help. Maybe it was just the blackmailers enjoying a gloat. He wouldn’t put it past them.

  He doodled a couple of notes about checking the library and on the internet for references to a good land in Plymouth, but didn’t come up with anything else. He wondered whether it would be so straightforward. It seemed too literal, given the answers to the riddles they’d already solved.

  ‘Sir? Sir!’

  One of the group of detectives walked up to Adam. He flinched, as if the young man had surprised him.

  ‘Yes, Ben?’

  ‘No good leads on the churches I’m afraid, sir. Just about every vicar we’ve spoken to claims famous original memorials. To check properly, we’d have to go out and see them all.’

  ‘No time, no time,’ Adam groaned.

  ‘One more thing, sir. The work on Sarah’s background, phone calls and associations – we’ve got nothing to indicate anyone was particularly close to her. She doesn’t seem to have any family or good friends. In short, no hint of who her accomplice could be. The only person she seemed to be close to was a man she met at university in Sussex. But he died last year in Iraq.’