Philian Gregory

by Simon J. Stephens

  The photos were only a part though. The stronger evidence was in the form of several handwritten notes that seemed to have been passed between Baxter and Dexter in the weeks prior to his trial. In them, Baxter made veiled references to the evidence that he possessed, whilst Falstaff replied with the details of the deal that they might like to strike. Baxter wasn’t threatening to expose Falstaff for any other reason than to save his own skin. The judge seemed to respect that and his assurances were offered in a very gentlemanly fashion.

  “One feels,”, he’d written as a conclusion to the exchange of correspondence, “that, as kindred spirits, we almost have something of a responsibility to assist each other. If, in the course of that assistance, there must be an incentive to comply, then so be it. Your request will be granted and I trust that this will be a satisfactory conclusion to the affair for us both. I shall inform my colleagues in TC. Rest assured that this matter remains only between you and I and your lack of connection to them will be confirmed. Yours, William Falstaff.”

  The flourishing signature at the end was enough for Dexter. With that and the photographs, the judge’s career was over. And yet, that reference to TC was an interesting bonus. It explained why Baxter had not been targeted and attacked by the prolific serial killer. He simply wasn’t a part of The Circle, and therefore was no threat to them. It made sense when you considered the photographs again. Every other image that Dexter had been forced to look at had shown more than one offender. The Circle clearly had its own particular way of doing things and, perhaps, they acted in this way both to feed their perverse desires, but also to ensure camaraderie between members. Falstaff seems to have played away on occasion and Baxter must have picked up the images he had from some unknown source who was less careful than The Circle about protecting the individuals concerned.

  Locking the documents away in the safe in his office, Dexter left the building and took himself into the fresh air for a walk. He needed the break. The weather was bitterly cold but the skies were clear and a hint of the morning’s frost remained. It all helped to clear his mind of the filth he’d been wallowing in and it helped him to focus on the best course of action.

  The logical thing would have been to involve the police or the press and let Falstaff pay the price for his transgressions. The evidence was conclusive. But it wasn’t that simple. For one thing, the evidence was second-hand. Any defence lawyer could pull the grainy reproductions apart and, with no originals left, they were not strong enough to secure a conviction. Then there was his newfound experience of the forces that acted behind the scenes. Could he be confident that the police would prosecute, or that the press would print? The Circle had a presence that was as invisible as it was extensively wide.

  And finally, there was the question of the means by which the material had been obtained. Baxter had all but been kidnapped. His guilt was only comparable to that that Dexter had bought on himself by leading the man astray and spying on him.

  No, the official channels had to remain closed this time. Dexter would need to act independently. If indeed, he acted at all. It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d made the decision to step away. Now, here he was again, thinking about his own course of action to exact revenge on Falstaff. If it was revenge, it was wrong. But it wasn’t. This was about protecting others. This was a case where the system had failed and two people who should be rotting behind bars were out and about in the wide world, enjoying lives that were far removed from those that their victims endured every day.

  By the time that he’d returned to his office, his mind had been made up. One last action on his part was being called for, but he would act alone. The twins had done more than enough for him. They could still help him out in other ways. Indeed, he would have to rely on them to tidy up the Baxter situation promptly. But Baxter would only be getting his just desserts. Falstaff would have to die. And only he could take responsibility for that murder.

  Calling Saunders to an impromptu meeting, Dexter released himself from his daily responsibilities.

  “You’re doing a great job.”, he told his newest recruit, “So good, in fact, that I’d like you to take the reins of the business for a few weeks. Something has come up that I need to focus on. Zoe and Sam will remain de facto in charge, but you’ll have complete authority out there in the field. Is that something you’re comfortable with.”

  “Not a problem.”, Saunders replied, “And I hope the issue that you have to deal with isn’t too distressing for you.”

  “No, it’s just something personal that I need to tackle.”

  “Good. And yes, I’d be honoured to help. When are you thinking?”

  “Next week?”, Dexter replied, “You okay with that?”

  “Fine, leave it with me.”

  “Great.”, they shook hands and Dexter returned to his desk, “Can you send the twins in on your way out please?”

  Saunders left and the twins entered the office.

  “It’s a go with Baxter.”, he told them as he invited them to sit, “As discussed, terminate him and destroy all the files. And I mean, everything.”

  “Consider it done.”, Zoe replied.

  “Thank you.”, Dexter opened the safe and removed the files he’d stored there, “As for me, I’m going to have to disappear for a while. Saunders will look after the outside operation. You guys, well, you know what to do.”

  “Can we help at all?”, Sam asked.

  “Not this time. You’ve done enough. I won’t make this a long farewell and, trust me, I hope to be back with you very soon, but, in case I’m away a bit longer, run the place as though it were yours.”

  “Are you sure about this?”, the twins spoke simultaneously in the way that had always freaked Dexter out.

  “This time, yes. Make sure you destroy everything. You know Dave’s number if anything comes up, but otherwise, this is my own course of action. I hope to see you soon but, if I don’t, thanks for everything.”

  Tucking the folders into his briefcase, he left them where they sat and headed out of the building. They would keep the business running just fine and it would be in good shape when he returned. If he returned. He had every intention of doing so, but it wasn’t always that easy. Sometimes, you just had to do what you felt was right and not worry too much about where it would lead you.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Baxter was arrested two days later. Acting on a tip-off, and highly sensitive to the public mood against the man, the police chose to move swiftly. They visited his new home, presented him with a search warrant and asked him to sit quietly whilst they conducted that search. Already primed for what to look for, it took them only a short time to boot up his computer, search through his internet history, open up the newly downloaded files and come to the necessary conclusions.

  “Mr Baxter.”, the senior police officer spoke calmly to the now handcuffed suspect, “As my colleague has informed you, we have arrested you for possessing and downloading indecent images of children. To make all of our lives easier, is there anything else that we need to be looking at while we’re here.”

  “I don’t understand.”, Baxter wept as he replied, “That computer isn’t even mine. I know how it looks, but this time, I’m not guilty. I’m a changed man. You need to speak to The Justice Foundation. They set me up here and it’s their computer.”

  “Oh, yes.”, the officer sighed, “The elusive Justice Foundation. Your knights in shining armour. But sadly, what seems to be a construct of your imagination. We’ve done as much checking as we can and there isn’t a Justice Foundation. You rented this place yourself. You installed your own computer and you went back to your old ways. If it wasn’t so vile, it might be sad.”

  “But I saw their website, met their representative.”, he pleaded, “Surely you can see that?”

  “All we can see is your move, the evidence before us and your odd excuse. You had a second-chance wh
en you were released last time. This time, you won’t be so lucky. All I wonder about is how you thought you’d get away with it. Very sad. Now, let’s go and get you processed at the station.”

  They half-dragged the mystified Baxter to their car and let him settle himself on the back seat. Reporters had already arrived and the flash of cameras startled the prisoner and caused him to duck down low in the seat. Those photographs would be front-page news tomorrow. The tabloid hacks were already working on the headlines to accompany them.

  Dexter smiled as he read the newspapers. The twins had delivered the result they’d been charged with delivering and Baxter would very likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. He was a victim of his own arrogance and of the perversions that truly were a part of his past. But he was also a victim of the misplaced trust that he’d been so keen to lay on the stranger who had entered his life. All through his transition to the new home, a trail had been laid that made the move solely one that he was responsible for. The images and search histories had been loaded whilst the police were being tipped off and the press had been given a hint of what was happening, just in case the whole thing was threatened by a cover-up. All told, a good result. Having destroyed his own compromising evidence, he would face the sentence he deserved and have no bargaining chip to grant him lenience.

  The encouragement that he got from reading of Baxter’s arrest lifted him a little as he watched the sun battling to break through the clouds that seemed permanently settled over the holiday lodge that he’d taken in the Yorkshire Dales. He was holidaying under another pseudonym, choosing to place himself near to the estate where William Falstaff QC enjoyed all the privileges of an inherited family fortune. He’d checked over the place before arriving at the lodge, noting the extensive security measures and the numerous cameras that monitored the surrounding area. A police guard had been stationed there until last week when it was deemed that the public outcry over Baxter had faded sufficiently. That was a bonus, but the place remained buttoned up tightly.

  There were numerous approaches that Dexter had considered. The only constant to all of those multiple and diverse actions was the end. Falstaff would die. That part of the planning had been easy. Getting there was the challenge. He could spend the Christmas period working on the most elaborate schemes that he had considered, or he could use the distraction of Christmas to help bring other plans to fruition. Then again, he could return to London and act from there. That was the problem, there were simply too many options.

  Falstaff was a creature of habit, which helped. He returned to Yorkshire every Friday, staying there for a long weekend before returning to London on Tuesday mornings. Court schedules were adjusted to accommodate this pattern of movement with the delivery of justice yielding to Falstaff’s personal preferences. Since London was simply too heavily policed, Yorkshire remained the logical option. But that then presented Dexter with the need to infiltrate the estate, find Falstaff on his own and then escape without anybody knowing he had been there. The tools he had come prepared with would help him achieve this, but there were too many variables for Dexter to be comfortable and he simply couldn’t see the thing panning out as smoothly as it always did in blockbuster movies.

  Which left him with the simplest approach. It was one that he kept returning too and one that seemed almost too simple to be effective. It involved the ugly practice of blackmail. Not something that Dexter was comfortable with but certainly something that he knew Falstaff to be open to. The copies of the files that Baxter had destroyed were powerful enough to shake the judge, of that he was certain. But, how to make the man aware of their existence without others being tipped off? Overshadowing all of these plans was Falstaff’s connection to The Circle. They hadn’t been aware of Baxter’s influence, or, if they had, they’d chosen not to act. This time, Falstaff would likely want to put an end to the affair once and for all, which meant that his former colleagues might well be called on to assist. Blackmail only ever worked for a short period, after which, the threat of exposure became less distressing than the daily fear that accompanied it.

  It remained the best option though. Dexter came to that conclusion at the end of his first week in the lodge. All other approaches had too many flaws. Blackmail was crude but timelessly effective. It was the one he would have to go with. And he was fairly certain that he had a safe way of starting the ball rolling.

  Republican in his own country but apolitical since taking on British citizenship, Dexter found it easy enough to put together the credentials needed for him to approach the local Conservative association. They met in a small club, open to the public and very popular with the locals, due to its cheap beer, and it was to that club that Dexter found himself taxiing on the Friday night after settling on his plan. He went armed. Not with wise words or any other such vague concept, but actually armed with a pistol that Dave had supplied to him recently. There would always remain a very simple and effective third way as he pursued Falstaff and he wanted to make sure that he was in a position to exploit the opportunity simply to kill him, were that opportunity to present itself.

  Having no detectors at the entrance to the Conservative Club, he presented the forged documents that had been easy to procure and was welcomed into the building as a fellow member and long-lost friend. He was there as an obscure Tory activist who carried the banner for the party in the highlands of Scotland. They wouldn’t check that one up too much, he reckoned. Besides, it was only for a short time. He’d loaded enough onto the web to cover his story and, using the techniques that he’d seen the twins work with, he was able to generate a backstory that would support him.

  Drinking late into the night with some of the local party bigwigs, he returned to his lodge in the early hours and fell asleep immediately. He did the same again the next day and the next but at no point did Falstaff show his face. Not surprising really. The club was open to the public after all and it wasn’t the sort of haunt that Falstaff would feel comfortable in. With nothing useful coming out of it, he’d determined not to return again when his mind was changed by a half-conversation he managed to overhear late in Sunday night. Apparently, Falstaff did visit the club. He lunched there in the private function suite every Monday. And the people talking were looking forward to speaking to him about Baxter, ready to take the mickey out of him in true Old Etonian style.

  “James.”, a familiar voice called over to the man at the bar, “James, so good to see you here again. Allow me to introduce a friend of mine, Bill Falstaff.”

  “Delighted.”, Dexter, in the guise of James McCloud, offered a firm and friendly handshake and felt an electric tingle of excitement as he touched his prey, “I’ve heard a lot about you. Some good things happening in your courts. And very impressive results with the yobs and the hoodies. We could do with more like you.”

  He’d researched Falstaff enough to know which buttons to press. Their jobs might offer them a certain degree of protection from a public understanding of their personalities, but those same jobs also gave a deep insight when you considered the results they achieved. Dexter had studied all of Falstaff’s most recent rulings. He was soft on the privileged and tough on the disadvantaged. He was a product of a long-past era but he echoed its values well and, thankfully, they were values that were easy to imitate given their simplicity.

  “Nice to meet you.”, Falstaff replied, “And thank you. Good to hear the opinion of somebody who knows the reality of it. I get too much of the lefty new generation having a pop. Firm and fair, that’s what it’s all about. Strike them hard while you can and they won’t do it again.”

  “I agree. I agree.”, Dexter lied, conscious of the weakness in Falstaff’s ludicrous assertions, “Too many people being too willing to let circumstances be blamed. Personal responsibility, I say. The buck stops with the individual.”

  Needless to say, they hit it off and Dexter was invited to dine with them. That meal being as successful as the introductio
n, it was followed by an invitation to Falstaff’s home on the following weekend. It was a longer wait than he had hoped for, but it could be adapted to suit. In fact, it was a direct invite into the home that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to enter, and an invite that gave him the perfect opportunity to confront Falstaff with the evidence he carried.

  Hiring a car using the assumed name that he was living under, thanks to the documents and credit cards that Dave seemed to be able to procure so easily, he resolved to make the most of his time and explore a part of England that he had only ever passed through before. There was a strong likelihood that his latest project might end in his own death, although he was less concerned about that now that he had something of a relationship with the judge. Nevertheless, you never knew. Hence the logic of enjoying a week of drinking in the pleasures of the countryside and enjoying what might be his last week on earth. The walking was enjoyable, although he chose not to go on lengthy hikes. It was so much more enjoyable to simply park up in a pub car park, walk the shorter distance of the beginner’s routes, and then return to that same pub for a hearty lunch and a few pints.

  The week flew by and Dexter was amazed to have discovered that there was so much more than a beautiful landscape in this part of the world. Once you headed off the beaten track, you found yourself in places that time seemed to have forgotten. They were the towns and villages that had boomed during the industrial revolution, but which had returned back their roots once they were no longer needed. Then there were the canal towns.