Enter The Dark

by Chris Thomas

  ‘Anything to go with it? I could murder a fairy cake or a French fancy,’ said Stan.

  ‘Sorry, no, we’re all out of girls’ cakes, Stan,’ replied Gilbert.

  ‘OK, thank you, gentlemen,’ interjected Alistair. ‘We need to make plans as to how we move from here. We’ll carry out the disposal of last night’s volunteers after dinner tonight. We need to think about our next volunteer and we also need to think about how we are going to deal with our new friend JoltinJoe. Jarvis, can you give us the run down on last night, please.’

  ‘Certainly. We had a peak audience of five hundred and twelve paid up subscribers. This dropped to four-eight-one after the Guess the Injury round. I think perhaps a few people had seen enough but the majority of those left stayed until the end. Probably because we didn’t switch exit nodes before the final round and make people pay another couple of coins for the privilege of seeing the money shot. So when you add that up at three coins each, plus the bids that were made of around two hundred and thirty coins, we made just over seventeen hundred bitcoins. At current exchange rates, that equates to just over one point one million. Take out Stan and Eric’s hundred and fifty grand each, although god only knows what they did to earn it …’

  ‘Ha, shut your face, Poindexter,’ laughed Eric. ‘We’re the backbone of this entire bloody operation. If you ask me, you’re getting an absolute bargain.’

  ‘OK, fine,’ continued Jarvis. ‘For driving the vans a bit and doing some dodgy wiring, we take out a hundred and fifty thousand each for Stan and Eric. Plus the goons’ pay, that leaves us with around about six hundred thousand.’

  ‘Not bad. Make a donation to the children’s hospice in town and tell them I’ll come down for a meet and greet soon.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘All of it. So, this Joe guy that stiffed us, what do we know about him?’ asked Alistair, sipping from his coffee as he sat back in his chair.

  ‘Quite a lot, actually, the guy was clearly an amateur,’ replied Jarvis, leafing through some papers. ‘Joe Henderson, thirty-four, a director in his family’s metal supply business. The business is doing very well despite the recession. A girlfriend called Ellie, whose backside we all had the pleasure of seeing. And if you will excuse the excruciatingly bad pun, he’s just your ‘Average Joe’.’

  ‘That was shit even by your standards,’ said Gilbert. ‘How did you get all this from just his webcam being on?’

  ‘Put simply, we were able to put a trace through the incoming nodes and track them all back to find anything that looked vaguely similar to the outgoing payment of the bitcoin transaction, which had failed because the bitcoin miners picked up an anomaly in the source wallet. It’s all hidden there, deep in the source coding for the transactions, if you know where to look. After that, it was simply a case of looking for anyone who’d left a window open; in this joker’s case, his webcam. Once we’d hacked into his PC we could look on his desktop, where we found the browser window still open, showing the failed transaction. Somehow, the gormless buffoon hadn’t spotted it. Like I said, an amateur. After that, it was a piece of cake. We now know where he lives, where he works, his friends, his family.’

  ‘The marvels of Facebook I suppose,’ said Alistair.

  ‘Indeed. A whole life online for anyone to find.’

  ‘Not just anyone. Us. Now, the only reason that this project works is because of the integrity of our viewers. We cannot have imbeciles like Mister Henderson jeopardising it all because he doesn’t know how to bloody well send a few bitcoins. And I think we should waste no time in letting young Joe see that we mean business.’

  ‘Talking of business,’ added Eric, ‘we ran a little close to the mark during the last one in terms of time. I think it would be wise to do the next episode from somewhere with zero connections to your organisation. It sounds like this little jackass not only has a lot to lose but also somewhere that might be of use to us.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Alistair, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. ‘Let’s start slowly, see if he caves early. If not, then we ramp up the hints until he gets it. Clearly, he didn’t have the slightest clue what he was signing up for or what a dark place the deep web can be. But we need to lean on him. In fact, put a note in the disclaimer for the next episode explaining what has happened as far as Mister Henderson is concerned and how we dealt with it. Keep out the specifics, but just enough to make anyone else think twice about pulling the same stunt.’

  ‘OK, we’ll get to work on it,’ said Eric.

  ‘And the final point on our agenda,’ said Gilbert. ‘Who’s going to be our next volunteer?’

  ‘I think it’s between the two we spoke about last time. Darren Blundell, really nasty piece of work, just been released from Belmarsh on a technicality. And Cramer McAllister, gangland enforcer and general all round shit,’ replied Jarvis.

  ‘Who’s the easiest?’ asked Alistair.

  ‘McAllister probably. Turns out that along with being partial to removing his victims’ manual digits with bolt cutters, he also has something of a secret penchant for rent boys. Should be fairly easy to set up a sting,’ replied Eric. ‘But saying that, I’ve always liked the idea of going after Blundell. His drugs operation was responsible for turning so many areas of the finer cities in the country into misery-ridden warzones. He didn’t care whose lives he ruined; women, children, pensioners. Like Jarvis said, a real nasty piece of work.’

  ‘McAllister,’ said Alistair. ‘Leave Blundell for the next time.’

  ‘We’re on it,’ said Eric. ‘Jarvis, we’ll need your help with McAllister and young Mister Joe.’

  ‘Eric, I am forever at your service,’ replied Jarvis.

  ‘Good. So if there’s nothing else, I’m going for a swim,’ said Alistair, planting his hands on the table as he stood up. ‘Gilbert, if you can make the arrangements for the disposal later, and I’ll see you all at dinner.’

  JUST AS THE last vestiges of sunlight disappeared over the hill behind Clifton Manor and a quiet stillness fell over the vast estate, the silence was broken as the large metal door to the maintenance area clanked open.

  ‘We really should put some oil on that,’ remarked Eric. ‘One of these days it’ll seize up.’

  Eric was driving a small electric utility vehicle, used to travel between the various extremities of the estate. On this occasion, it was carrying a more gruesome cargo than its usual buckets, shovels, or new fence panels.

  ‘Well, at least they’ll know that we’re coming,’ replied Stan. ‘Although I never understood why we have to do all this bloody hooded cloak bollocks each time. It’s not as if we’re New Age mental cases.’

  ‘As long as we get our hundred-odd grand each time, I’d happily wear a Brownie uniform.’

  Turning the headlights on, they started along the gravel track that led away from the house, past the formal gardens, before finally entering the woodland. In the distance they could see the twinkling glow of fire. As they approached, the woodland opened out and the fire torches illuminated the form of the large stone folly. Alistair had had it specially constructed from the same Welsh spotted dolerite bluestone that was used to build Stonehenge. Each of its five pillars cleared twenty foot high and were adorned with pagan and Masonic symbols and icons. Not that he believed in any of that, he just put them on as more of a joke, to start all the conspiracy theorists speculating when he was gone.

  Around the outside stood Alistair, Jarvis, and the other members of the Brotherhood, who parted as the vehicle approached. Two of the goons entered the centre of the folly and hooked two large chains to metal rings protruding from the ground. Taking the strain as they braced their feet against the stone steps, they pulled hard. A large round stone began to slide across the ground, revealing a deep, dark hole a metre across. The vehicle turned and reversed in between two of the pillars until a bang on the back from one of the goons signalled it to stop. Reaching into the back, he pulled out a large drum and promptly poured its white
gloopy contents down into the hole. Another goon emptied a second container.

  The bystanders all gathered around the hole as Alistair, dressed in a long black cloak with red velvet lining, stepped forward and lowered his hood. Behind him, Gilbert, Jarvis, and the rest of the goons did the same and were then joined by Eric and Stan. Stan pressed a button on the back of the vehicle and the flatbed started to rise. As the incline became steeper, the limp naked body of Mark Rankin slid down into the abyss. Alistair stared intently as the bruised, battered face turned in his direction. The eyes were shut but the sinister slashed smile still etched into its cheeks grinned back at him. It almost looked happy as it fell into the darkness, before finally landing with a splash in its final resting place some seconds later.

  The flatbed continued to rise and the body of Karen Parker clung to the base like a beached whale on a rock. As the flatbed thudded to a stop, the men looked up at it. Alistair in turn looked at Eric and, with a slightly angry face, gestured with his head in the direction of the flatbed.

  ‘Er, that’s as far as it goes,’ said Eric.

  ‘Then do something about it,’ replied Alistair.

  ‘She’s too bloody fat, the moisture and the friction. She won’t budge,’ he said, trying to lever her away from the base with a long crowbar. Eventually, with the sound of a vacuum releasing, the body slid down the flatbed and disappeared into the hole.

  ‘I bet that poor sod is glad he’s dead, having that enormous beast belly-flop on top of him,’ said Stan.

  ‘That’s enough,’ snapped Alistair, over the sniggering. ‘Let’s at least try and maintain a modicum of decorum, they were our guests, after all.’

  All the men gathered around and put their hoods up. Two of the goons emptied another drum down the hole before pushing a large pile of rocks in to cover it.

  Alistair reached into his cloak and pulled out a small red leather bible, which he threw into the hole.

  ‘I’m not sure if this will do you any good, but it may be your best chance of avoiding the remainder of eternity in Hell. But still, with you two gone, the world is rid of two of the most evil abominations of human creation. Your lives were significant for nothing but bad things and the pathetic justice system entirely failed in ensuring that you paid the appropriate price for your deeds. But we made sure.

  ‘There are lots of people out there who have lost faith in justice and maybe some of them were witness to these two’s judgement day. Perhaps we have restored some faith in humanity. As our reputation grows we must become ever more careful. But soon people will realise that there is someone who makes a stand, who rights wrongs and who makes the truly evil face up to their deeds. We are the Brotherhood. We are the Righteous. Gentlemen, the Brotherhood!’

  ‘The Brotherhood!’ they all replied, in unison. The men all turned to leave as the stone cover was replaced.

  ‘Eric, you lead the way. When we get back to the house, Jarvis, you rack them up.’

  22

  Monday morning again. The first week at work since the leave of absence had seemed to fly by for Harris, and he felt comfortable being back in the thick of it all. A cup of coffee sat steaming on his desk, next to the picture of his daughter, while the partition to his desk was adorned with a rainbow of coloured sticky notes. The vast majority were yellow, containing mundane telephone messages. Ring such and such at, Send reports to such and such, Check database for such and such at … In amongst the organised chaos of notes sat the most important colour, the blue ones, reminders to pick up his daughter, pay for this lesson or that, or to print off something for a school project.

  ‘Busy working, I see?’ asked D.C.I. Smith, jabbing him in the rib with a forefinger as he walked past.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ replied Harris. ‘Olivia’s got a school project to complete on ancient Greeks, which basically means that I’ve got a school project to complete on ancient Greeks. It’s got to be in on Wednesday and luckily she only told me about it this morning. So, with Grandma being a complete technology imbecile, I thought I’d better print off some material for them to work with tonight.’

  ‘The joys of single parenthood. Glad those days are behind me now,’ said Smith. ‘Getting back to the slightly less important matter of police work, there’s been a bloody enormous development in this particular post-it note.’ He took a pink note off of the partition and slapped it down on the desk in front of Harris. The note read KAREN PARKER – REVIEW MISPER

  ‘What kind of development? Have they found her?’ asked Harris, holding the note in front of his face with one finger.

  ‘Look on the log. The Missing Persons Bureau running the case have come up against one brick wall after another. It seems to be one massive mystery how this person can just, all of a sudden, disappear into “fat air”, shall we say.’

  Smith continued as Harris scanned down the log to find the case. ‘What the new system enables us to do is automatically link cases that might be connected. So when a case is flagged up for our attention any other case that links to it will be flagged up to us as well. In this instance—’

  ‘Mark Rankin,’ said Harris, cutting him off.

  ‘Yes, indeed. You couldn’t write it, could you?’ he said. ‘Like I said, a fairly enormous development. I’m still not sure how this relates to us, but I want you to investigate this a little further, liaise with the team looking into the Karen Parker case. The file on Mark Rankin is very new so there may not be much information on it. But I can’t believe this is pure coincidence. Grace has been doing a little digging with regards to the protocols for missing persons. Grace!’ he shouted over to Brooks, who picked up some files and pulled a chair up to Harris’ desk.

  ‘I imagine this is anything but a routine missing person procedure,’ said Harris, as he continued scanning down the case log.

  ‘Quite right,’ said Brooks. ‘Apart from the obvious dead ends the investigation team have hit, there is also the rather tricky conundrum of how much of this to make public. Both of them were given new identities and new homes about as far away from each other as it’s possible to be and still remain in England. Usually there would be enormous press coverage, TV interviews with family, pictures plastered over the newspapers, social media, and so on. But with these two, it’s slightly more challenging. We can’t go public since then every one of their neighbours would realise that they’d been living next door to child killers. Neither had any family in particular, but even if they did, their relatives either don’t want to know or, in the case of the remaining children, are living in secure locations under new identities for their own protection anyway.’

  ‘Presumably, their families or the kids’ guardians have been contacted though?’ asked Harris.

  ‘Yes, of course. But only along the lines of enquiring whether either had been in contact with them, as is checked periodically anyway.’

  ‘Did Rankin have an electronic tag?’

  ‘No. Technically, he received the lesser charge and was deemed unlikely to try and contact her other kids.’

  ‘Those other children really dodged a bullet there, didn’t they?’ said Smith.

  ‘Thankfully they were too young to understand,’ replied Brooks. ‘But getting back to Rankin, or Barry as his name was changed to. He was well known in his new local area as something of a nutter. A loner; not someone that you’d want to be friends with anyway. In fact, it was the landlord of his local pub who called it in. He thought it was strange that a week had gone by without Rankin visiting his establishment, such was the frequency with which he drank there.

  ‘Last time he saw him, Rankin had left the pub at closing time, steaming pissed as usual, having just started a fight with a couple of lads over a game of pool. That was over a week ago. So the landlord rang the local police station, who then did a check of his home address and found him missing. No obvious signs of anything, really. The place was a tip of course, the remnants of his dinner were still sitting on the kitchen table, the calendar on the wall had stuff writte
n in it. At first sight, he had every intention of returning home at some point. But that, for whatever reason, never happened.’

  ‘Anything on his last movements?’ asked Harris.

  ‘CCTV catches him leaving the pub, staggering around for quite a while fighting with the beer fairies, and then disappearing down a side alley.’

  ‘Anything on the alley?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s a CCTV dead spot. From either entrance.’

  ‘So a fairly good choice for someone who, maybe, wanted to remove him without being seen?’ said Harris, suspiciously.

  ‘Indeed. But they would have to be a bit crazy; apart from being over six foot, the guy was a fucking nut-job.’

  ‘Crazy, or professionals.’

  ‘Look, you two work together on this. I realise it’s a little outside our remit. But it seems like whatever happened to these two shits is somehow linked, and if there is anyone else involved they seem to know what they’re doing. The lack of CCTV coverage, the electronic tag. Something smells, and I’m pretty certain it isn’t Grace’s BO. I’m going for a fag.’ Smith was removing a cigarette from the box in his shirt pocket before he’d left the office.

  ‘He really is charming,’ said Grace, sniffing her armpit. ‘I think I smell nice today.’

  ‘You smell fine,’ replied Harris, not really paying any attention. ‘I’m going to request the tracking logs from Karen Parker’s tag. There must be something on there that provides a clue. Can you find out anything that’s available on these two? Anything from their case workers: email addresses, mobile phone details, any internet history that might throw something up?’

  Brooks nodded in agreement and headed back to her desk. Harris turned around and pulled the pile of pictures off of the printer.

  ‘Come on, Archimedes,’ he said to himself as he placed the pages into a clear folder and into his draw. ‘Give me my eureka moment.’

  ‘IS THIS SEAT TAKEN?’ Brooks said, as she planted a tray full of salad and fruit down on the table next to Harris.