The Promised Land

by Barry Maitland

  Something about the face on the driver’s licence bothered her. She thought she’d seen it before somewhere, but couldn’t place it.

  She made a check of social media sites, and found a number of photographs and postings of the older brother, Jarrod, seemingly not the least subdued by his prison experience but, on the contrary, quite jaunty and full of himself. On the website for the library where he worked there was an image of him running a workshop for a group of schoolchildren.

  16

  The weather was exactly as John had predicted, a crystal blue sky, sunlight glittering on the water. Kathy stood on the Embankment by Cleopatra’s Needle across the Thames from the Festival Hall. She turned towards Hungerford Bridge and spotted him emerging from the tube station, tall, purposeful, looking around for her. Kathy smiled and waved.

  ‘Hi.’ John put out his arms and kissed her cheek. ‘Wasn’t I right? It’s a beautiful day. Let’s get a ticket.’

  They walked to Embankment Pier, where they went down the ramp to the ticket office and took their seats on the open upper deck of the waiting boat. Kathy pointed out the tall spike of the Shard and described Brock’s night spent tracking down Elena Vasile a month earlier, back and forward across the river.

  John laughed and shook his head. ‘You’ve got to hand it to the old man. Once a cop always a cop. Does that apply to you, Kathy? You wouldn’t want to do anything else?’

  ‘Once or twice I’ve thought of doing something different, but not for long. How about you?’

  ‘Oh, when I was younger I did, but I do like academic work, my research and teaching. I have to admit, though, that my occasional forays with the SPVM—the Montreal police—and that time over here with you and Brock have been a lot more exciting.’

  ‘Hair-raising, I should think.’ Kathy laughed. ‘You nearly got yourself killed at Chelsea Mansions.’

  ‘True enough.’

  She’d worked out that he was eight years younger than her, and the difference was crucial, she thought. In his thirties, he had his future open in front of him, full of choices, whereas she, in her mid-forties, was feeling very set in her path.

  They moved off upriver, past the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament and under Westminster and Lambeth bridges. Beyond Vauxhall Bridge, John pointed to the apartment towers along the curve of the south bank. ‘Wouldn’t mind living somewhere like that, eh?’

  ‘Actually,’ Kathy said, ‘that’s where I do live. That one over there, twelfth floor.’

  ‘Wow, seriously? I thought you lived in Finchley.’

  ‘I used to. I moved here last August.’ She told him the story of her aunt and uncle’s legacy. ‘We could call in on our way back, if you like. There’s a great view.’

  ‘That would be wonderful. I should get you a housewarming present.’

  ‘A definite opinion about The Promised Land would be great.’

  ‘Well, I’ve made a start, and I have come across something interesting. You have to register and apply in advance for what you want to access in the Orwell Archive,’ he said. ‘And because I’d turned up at short notice, they said it might take a while to retrieve the stuff I was after. They were very helpful, and told me I was in luck—another researcher was investigating the material for 1949, so it hadn’t been returned to storage. They said that this other researcher had booked to return this afternoon at two, and they mentioned his name—Sir Mortimer Hartley. Well, Kimberly, my Orwell expert at McGill, had told me about Hartley. He’s reckoned to be the foremost Orwell specialist in the world—he’s written the definitive biography—and she told me it would be brilliant if we could get him to look at The Promised Land document. So, I’ve brought a photocopy of page one and thought I might try to catch him today and ask him to look at it. What do you reckon?’

  Kathy thought about it. The document would become public knowledge soon anyway when Pettigrew was brought to trial. ‘Yes, okay. It would be interesting to know why he was looking at 1949, specifically.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. It’d be good if we could ask him that.’

  They disembarked at Kew Pier, walked to the Greyhound pub and found a table by a window looking out over Kew Green. John went off to the bar, returning with their drinks and a lunch menu. ‘Here we are. One glass of semillon, one pint of best. Cheers.’

  After they’d ordered their lunch, Kathy watched John toying with a beer mat, a frown on his face, and sensed that he had something on his mind. She waited, and finally he said, ‘It’s been hard coming back to London. Harder than I expected.’

  ‘Of course, seeing your dad locked up in jail.’

  ‘Yes, that, certainly. But also … I’ve missed you both, you and Brock. You especially, Kathy. It really hit me, seeing you again. In a way, it felt like coming home.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘Tell me to shut up.’

  ‘No,’ she said, a little surprised by this. She reached across the table and took his hand. ‘Don’t shut up.’

  And at that moment she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. ‘Damn.’ She looked at the screen—Commander Torrens’s secretary. ‘Damn, damn. I’ll have to take this.’ She pressed buttons. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Kathy, sorry to disturb you, but Commander Torrens asks if you could attend an emergency meeting of the Falstaff Committee in an hour. He says it is very important.’

  ‘I see. All right.’

  ‘Shall I send a car for you?’

  ‘Please.’ She gave the address and rang off, turned back to John who was watching her. ‘I’m sorry, John. I’m going to have to go. Work emergency. What were you going to say?’

  ‘Oh … it can wait. Maybe we could catch up later? Dinner?’

  ‘Yes, let’s hope so. I’ve no idea how long this will take.’

  ‘They’re coming to pick you up, are they? What about your lunch?’

  ‘I’d better cancel it.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  He got to his feet and returned from the bar with a sandwich and a bottle of water for her. ‘You’ve got to eat.’

  A police patrol car drew to a halt in front of the pub, light flashing, and they went outside. She kissed him on the cheek and said, ‘I’ll call you.’

  She got in quickly and the car sped away. As they drove towards headquarters she stared out the window and wondered where their conversation might have led if it hadn’t been brought so abruptly to an end. She liked John very much, but wasn’t sure she wanted a closer relationship. In many respects, he was exactly what she might look for in a man, but her feelings were unsettled by the fact that he was Brock’s son and resembled him in so many subtle ways.

  When she reached headquarters, she learned the cause of the panic. The body of Selwyn Jarvis had been found lying in the heather in the grounds of a friend’s house in the Scottish Highlands where he had taken refuge. He had left a suicide note, denying all of the ‘vile and malicious rumours’ against Roger Walcott and himself.

  Feeling troubled, Kathy waited while the Falstaff Committee met with the Home Secretary and Cabinet Secretary. While she was waiting, she got a text message from Jarrod Causley’s probation officer to tell her that Jarrod had taken a day’s leave on January the eighth. So he hadn’t been at work at the library at the time that Elena Vasile was murdered and Brock arrested. The more she thought about it, the more unsettled Kathy felt. What if they’d been following the wrong trail all along?

  When the committee returned from Whitehall, Commander Torrens buzzed for her to come to his office. It had been decided that in the following week the Home Secretary would announce a parliamentary inquiry into the Walcott/Jarvis affair. Kathy’s priority would be to bring her team’s work to a rapid conclusion and to compile the results in a report for the inquiry.

  ‘So,’ Torrens said, ‘you’ve got forty-eight hours. They’re in a hurry.’

  Kathy tried to explain that the computer experts were still divided over whether the incriminating items on the two judges’ computers were genuine, or whether it was possible
that a third party had planted them there, either at the times recorded or perhaps later, using a backdate utility.

  Torrens shook his head impatiently. ‘Nonsense. What third party?’

  ‘It is possible, sir. Someone might have an interest in having their judgments overturned. Perhaps a paedophile ring, or … someone else.’

  ‘Well, put that in your report if you think it’s a remote possibility. Let them sort it out. The crucial thing is that you haven’t discovered anything to suggest that the original police investigation into Walcott’s suicide was in any way at fault.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Okay, well, get on with it then.’

  ‘There’s something that’s come up that I’d like to discuss with you, sir. It concerns both the Walcott and Jarvis cases, and Pettigrew and Brock as well. I think I’ve found a connection.’

  ‘A connection?’ Torrens checked his watch. ‘I have to go. If it’s urgent, talk to Jean and make a time to see me later. If it concerns the Brock case, you’d better get Alun Hughes too.’ He turned and paced away.

  Kathy spoke to Torrens’s secretary and found a time slot later in the afternoon, then returned to her office and set about planning her report to the committee. There were several loose ends that would have to be brought to some sort of conclusion and she would have to coordinate half a dozen specialists to write up technical sections. First she rang John to apologise again for leaving so suddenly at Kew, and for the fact that she’d be tied up all weekend.

  ‘Can’t be helped,’ he said.

  ‘Did you manage to find your Orwell expert in the archives?’

  ‘Mortimer Hartley, yes, I did track him down eventually. It was the strangest thing.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I showed him the photocopy of that first page of the manuscript, and I could have sworn he’d seen it before.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. His reaction was odd. There was an initial shock of recognition when he first looked at it, but then he said he’d never heard of The Promised Land or Amar Dasgupta and dismissed it as a crude forgery. But he was very interested to know how I’d got hold of it, and what my involvement with the police investigation was all about, and he asked to keep the photocopy.’

  Kathy’s desk phone began ringing and she said, ‘I’ll have to go, John. But we’ll catch up, I promise.’

  The call was from the IT expert in charge of the group investigating the two judges’ computers, wanting to see her to discuss their report. When he arrived, he showed her the draft summary. He explained that the two judges, Jarvis and Walcott, had regularly exchanged interesting or humorous items—jokes, YouTube clips, photographs—with each other as email attachments, which they in turn had received from a variety of online acquaintances. The offensive material—mostly stills and videos of naked children—had been planted as a hidden backdoor element within these innocent attachments and ended up on the download files of the host computer.

  ‘The thing is,’ the man explained, ‘Jarvis and Walcott passed their email clips on to other friends, who also received the hidden material, unknown to them, and who in turn passed it on to others. We’ve traced dozens of these innocent recipients.’

  ‘So, could Jarvis and Walcott be innocent too?’

  ‘Well, maybe not. It turns out that email clips they received from third parties were clean, and only became contaminated after they’d passed through the two judges’ computers, and from one to the other.’

  ‘And is there any evidence that the judges ever opened those hidden files?’

  ‘Apart from the ones that were open on Walcott’s file when he was found, no, we can’t say.’

  Kathy frowned, trying to get her head around this. ‘But if the stuff they received from third parties was clean, where did the illicit files come from? What was their source?’

  ‘We don’t know. Both of their computers contained a computer worm, a relatively recent one called Miwar which installed a back door in their computers through which we think the material arrived. But we can’t trace its source. It might be a paedophile ring, or it might just be a malicious hacker with a thing against judges. Miwar is receiving a lot of attention at present, and we may eventually learn more, but at the moment that’s all we can say.

  ‘Oh,’ he added, ‘one other thing: Miwar originated in Eastern Europe—Romania.’

  ‘Like Marku Constantin,’ Kathy said.

  ‘Yes, but we haven’t been able to find any evidence that he was computer-savvy. Nothing at all. Sorry, boss, it’s all pretty inconclusive.’

  Kathy considered this, then said, ‘Well, if that’s the case, that’s all we can report.’

  ‘Yep.’ The man began gathering up his papers.

  Kathy said, ‘This business of passing hidden stuff between the two judges—was it known to the people who looked into Walcott’s computer immediately after he died?’

  ‘Yes, they discovered that all right. That’s what first cast doubt on Jarvis.’

  ‘So it would have been known to the detectives working that case?’

  ‘Sure. Well, DI O’Hare, certainly. I hear we haven’t been able to contact him. You’re wondering if he leaked it to the press?’

  ‘They wouldn’t have published without some kind of convincing evidence, and he would have had access to it.’

  ‘Yes, that occurred to me too.’

  ‘Well, you might like to include a paragraph about who did have access to that material back in December. Just to protect yourself and your team.’

  Out in the exercise yard, enjoying the unseasonable sunshine, Brock spotted Pettigrew sitting on a bench, staring glumly at a group of older inmates doing Pilates. Since Kathy’s visit and her comments about the Causley trial he’d been wanting to speak to Pettigrew. Not that he really thought there could be anything in what Kathy had said, but still.

  He wiped the seat beside Pettigrew and sat down. ‘How are you doing, Charlie?’

  ‘Oh, hello, Brock. All right, I suppose.’

  ‘I’ve been wanting to ask you something. When we first met, you mentioned you’d seen me at the Old Bailey, the Causley brothers’ trial.’

  ‘That’s right. I was most impressed.’

  ‘You were there just out of interest?’

  ‘Oh, a bit more than that. I was on the jury. In fact, I was foreman of the jury.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes. In point of fact—’ Pettigrew leaned over to Brock, lowering his voice ‘—you could say that I was responsible for having those two locked up.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘You remember the fuss the defence made about that witness sighting, the possibility of mistaken identity? How the witness may have confused the Causley brothers with two other boys?’

  ‘Yes, I remember. It was their main line of defence.’

  ‘Exactly, and several members of the jury were taken in by it, thought there was a sufficient element of doubt. It took me a while to make them see sense.’

  ‘I remember, the jury was out for days.’

  ‘Three days—three long days. It was a gruelling experience, one I wouldn’t like to repeat, but I felt I had to put my foot down. Those two boys were guilty, no doubt about it. You made that perfectly plain, and it was your detective work on that case that made me suggest your name to Maggie Ferguson. Well, actually, it was Donna Priest who first suggested it to me, and I thought it was a brilliant idea and spoke to Maggie.’

  ‘Your author Donna Priest suggested it?’

  ‘That’s right, she’s a big fan of yours. She was there too, at the Causley trial, doing research. Up till then she’d been writing crime fiction, but she’d fallen into a mid-list trough with poor sales and was thinking of turning her hand to nonfiction crime. She recognised me at the trial and afterwards she approached me with her idea for a true-crime book called Psychopaths.’ Pettigrew smiled. ‘Donna doesn’t believe in subtle book titles. I checked the sales of her pr
evious crime novels and they were not encouraging, but I was flushed with my experience of the Causley trial and decided to give it a go. And it did reasonably well. She’s not a bad writer and she’s meticulous in her research. But look, you should talk to her yourself—I know she’d love to meet you.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so, Charlie.’

  ‘After the trial she dug up a lot of fresh stuff about the Causley story, much of which we couldn’t publish for legal reasons. For example, she believes that Chloe Honnery wasn’t their first victim.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘No. She discovered that the previous year a girl was drowned one night in a hotel swimming pool in Majorca. The Causley family were on holiday there at the same time, and Donna spoke to some of the staff who said they’d seen Jarrod Causley hassling her. The Spanish police never followed it up.’

  ‘That is interesting.’

  ‘Yes. And now, of course, she’s fascinated with our two cases. She’s convinced the same people have set us both up, and she’s trying to gather evidence to help us. It would really be worth your while talking to her, Brock.’

  He squinted up at the sky, a cloud had passed over the sun and Brock felt the first spots of rain. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said. ‘Now we’d better get back inside.’

  Brock strolled back to his cell to get changed for his next gym session. The door was unlocked but closed, and there were none of the usual sounds of daytime TV from inside the cell. Brock peered through the spy hole and saw Danny sitting on Brock’s bed, holding Brock’s notebook, a pencil in his hand. Brock stepped back, then slammed the door open hard and walked in. Danny leaped to his feet, dropping the notebook on the floor between them. They stared at one another, and for a moment it seemed that Danny would be defiant, but then he looked at the pencil in his hand and sagged, bowed his head and muttered, ‘Fuck.’