“Yes, that’s me, Caroline Short, pleased to meet you mister, no, inspector? How can I help you? I don’t think we’ve met before.”
“I’m investigating a church, and the people in it. Harm has come to some parishioners and… I wondered if you would give me your opinion of them.”
“I’m afraid I’m all about love and positivity and I don’t go around bad mouthing different…”
“I’m don’t mean bad mouthing, sorry if it came across that way. It just feels to me, looking at Morthern as a whole, that you might know things about New Hope Church that we don’t. Yet.”
He knew he was on the right track by the concern that spread over her face. “When you say, harm?”
“Two young men killed themselves.”
“Ah, yes, I had seen that in the press. I didn’t realise it was related to them.”
“And you can tell me about them?”
“I…this is in confidence, right?”
“Like a confession.”
“Okay,” Short began. “I clear up their mess. For every handful who sign up and join their, quite frankly over the top approach, there is someone who gets rejected. They don’t fit, they don’t find a clique, they find the brain washing and prejudice too much, and they don’t just leave, they are bounced out. People come to me for help because New Hope has broken them, and I have to put them, their soul, their relationship with God back together. New Hope damages people and they need healing, and I do my best. A menace, a money hungry, false idol menace.”
“Have you heard anything about gay conversion therapy?”
“I can’t give you a meeting to go and break up. But it’s happening, yes, it is. My church, my little spot here, we welcome anyone, everyone. We’re about love, acceptance, no matter who you love. But New Hope… they’re bigots pretending to be charity. They’re hypocrisy. Look, Chief Inspector…”
“Wick.”
“Okay, Wick. If you find people, in your investigation, who have been hurt, don’t just do your police thing. Be pastoral, send them to me. I am volunteering to help when you’ve gone. I take New Hope’s damage and I still will. Let me help, I don’t want any more dead boys, or girls for that matter.”
“That is very good of you, Caroline, and I assure you I will.”
“Are you a Christian yourself?”
“I don’t think so. I grew up as one, but life has dulled me.”
“That’s fair enough. I ask, in case the church affect you too. If they erode your faith, please, let me try and balance it. Although I suppose the fact you came here means you don’t distrust all churches.”
“Correct.”
“Are you okay Karen?” a concerned leader asked. The mental illness survivors’ group was in session, in their circle in a corner, but Karen hadn’t been speaking. In fact, she looked very sad. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m…” she paused, staring into space, unable to even vocalise it all. The leader knew there was an issue.
“You can tell the group anything, and if you don’t want to tell the group we can have a quiet minute? If that will help you re-join?”
“Yes, yes please.”
They moved to one side and stood in the semi dark. “What’s wrong Karen?”
“My sister. She doesn’t want me to come anymore.”
“Oh no, I’m sorry Karen, how negative. Is she a Christian?”
“No, no she isn’t.”
“Well they only try and drag us down. Our faith has been opposed from the start. Look at what Jesus faced. You must ignore your sister and follow your faith.”
“But I live with her.”
“Karen,” the leader, a man, took hold of Karen’s forearms, “if you need to leave her house, I am sure I can find somewhere for you to go. You could even stay with me if you need.”
“I don’t know if it’s come to that. But it’s hard, remembering what she said.”
“You know what you need to do Karen?”
“What?”
“Commit. To us and to Jesus. Put aside your affection for your sister and devote it only to the people here, who love you. Come to us Karen, come to God, see your sister just as another tool of the enemy. He’s in your head, he’s using her. Put her aside. Send your heart to New Hope.”
“Yes, yes.” It felt good to be convinced, it felt good to feel welcomed by that new family. She would ignore Susan, just treat her like anyone else she had to deal with outside this faith group. She would accept the ‘new hope’.
“Now do you feel you can come back to the group and talk?”
“Oh yes, yes I do.”
“Good. Come on, and you can go first.”
“Thank you, I have so much to get off my chest.”
“You in there, boss?” Eddy called out.
Quince’s head stuck out of a door that had only just closed. “What are you doing here?” came the reply.
“Needed to speak to you, boss.”
“Maybe don’t say boss in public, might give the wrong impression. Call me sir.”
“Okay sir, can we talk?”
“I’ve got the accountant in, he’s just arrived and… actually come in, we’re all involved. Sit in that corner till I’m ready.”
Eddy went and sat in the corner of Quince’s office, while a woman with a bright red pen was scribbling notes down in a leather notebook.
“This is the accountant,” Quince said by way of introduction.
“Hello,” they both said.
“So, you have a report for me?” Quince said sitting down and jiggling his leg. Neither of the people in the room had seen him do this before, nor if asked had his family. It was an entirely new stress-based quirk.
“Yes, I’ve been looking through the accounts. As you know, they took Cribb’s office computer and we can see what’s on that because it was cloud based until someone only realised ages later and severed the connection.”
“I don’t know what a fucking cloud is,” Quince moaned, “they’re things in the sky.”
“But there is good and bad news. The good news is because I am a very skilled accountant, and I work with a very skilled lawyer, and neither of us are concerned with morality, nothing in these accounts will get you into much legal trouble. The bad news is it’ll be an absolute PR nightmare, a massive one, but other than that, legally speaking, it’s slap on the wrist time.”
“How bad a PR nightmare?”
“Well, you remember how that comedian nearly lost his whole career over a tax loophole? Kind of like that with an added religious hypocrisy twist.”
“I am paying you to speak to me like that, am I?”
“You’re paying me and that’s why you’re not going to prison.”
“Well that’s good. I am sure I can handle some negative publicity.”
“That’s not all the bad stuff.”
“Oh.”
“That laptop you let me look at. If the emails on there were ever made public, you would indeed be facing prison. That’s naked corruption.”
“It’s a bloody good thing I’ve got the laptop then. Now, Stuart, what’s the best way to destroy it?”
“If it’s a hard drive with platters, open it up and take an angle grinder to each. If it’s a solid-state drive, drill and grind the fuck out of it.”
“Excellent, I have some hardware.”
“But it won’t do you no good.”
“What? Why ever the fuck not?”
“Cos it’s emails. Electronic. The company that runs it stores everything. All the feds need to see those emails is to work out the address and put a request in. You can fire that laptop into orbit, but if they know what email to look at, they’ll get the whole damn lot.”
“Jesus. And is that likely?”
“Did he email his work computer’s church account thingy ever?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Sir, sir,” Green said running down the corridor with his puppy like enthusiasm.
“Yes?” the DCI said, rising f
rom his desk and coming out of the office.
“Just got a data dump from the PC team, the emails have arrived.”
“In that case we’re going to need hot water and towels.”
“We’re shitting a baby out?” Green asked.
“That is in no way appropriate or accurate, and I of course do mean coffee and biscuits.”
A passing uniformed officer said, “tea drinking is a dying art,” and then carried on.
Soon Wick was sitting next to Green at his desk, trying to ignore the huge distraction that would be asking what action figure was blue tacked on top of the monitor, and instead focus on the emails.
“There are, it has to be said, a lot,” Wick noted. They were going to need to bring in the right officers for this job, but maybe a direction could be noted. They scrolled down looking at the subject lines.
“How about please help?” Wick wondered.
‘Oh sir, sir, you must help me, I’m feeling lost and far from God. It’s a woman you see…’
“Perhaps not. What’s daddy issues.”
“The engine of half the internet.”
“No, Green, the subject line.”
“Oh right.”
‘I am in torment sir, please help me, it’s about my father…”
“Another no and, oh. Oh my.” The scrolling down the list had revealed a subject line with the intriguing title ‘pay me, you bastard’s’.”
‘I’ve spoken to Quince, you fuck, and he won’t pay me for the work he owes, and you owe me too, I did both your homes, he won’t pay me. You better cough up cos my family is breaking up, my business is fucked, and I’m so fucking angry I could kill.’
Wick and Green looked at each other, and Wick made a literal note on some paper.
“That’s certainly one to follow up.”
“Err sir…”
“What Green?”
“Look.”
He had kept scrolling. More than a few emails appeared, all from people angry at how they’d been treated by the church. Then, one from Quince appeared in a reply.
‘We’re not paying any of them, obviously, this is silly Cribb, don’t ask. They’ve done their job, we don’t need them, stick to the script, we are invoking their contracts and using the loopholes we built in.’
“Very Christian,” Wick noted. “So, he was writing up contracts he had no intention of honouring and could get out of, and there’s a list of creditors. Both of them. That’s a long list of motives to kill and some definite criminality behind. You know Green, I feel rather relieved this is just good old-fashioned white-collar crime and not something for the child protection team.”
“There are two thousand emails so far this year sir.”
“Yes, quite. Can I leave you to process these? Bring Sharma and Lindleman back in when they return. Progress. Progress.”
Grayling and Maruma were sat at the start of a path. It began on a public road, wonky blocks and moss and then went straight down into the world of New Hope Church where it turned into a neat, ordered structure. Everyone going into the church had to walk down it or drive along it, which was why Grayling was looking in the on-foot direction and Sol was ninety degrees turned and looking to the cars. People swarmed past and cars queued allowing a look inside. Both detectives were looking for someone and they had the description lodged in their heads.
“How about them, two o’clock, maroon jacket?”
Maruma turned at Grayling’s sighting and saw a black man who dyed his closely cropped hair blonde. It was one thing to discover a lead, it was another to discover that lead liked to be conspicuous.
“Must be him, can’t be more than one.”
They moved. “Excuse me, excuse me.”
“Yes?” the man said.
“I’m DC Grayling, could I ask you a few questions?”
“I ain’t done nothing.”
“No, we think you might be able to help us. If we could move to a private area?”
They walked back up the street to an empty bus stop.
“What can I do?”
“We have a sighting of you together with Kofi Salmons and Jonathan Stewart.”
“Ah,” a look of anger, not fear.
“A barista in a coffee shop said she saw you with the two often, and we know they were a couple and hiding their meetings so…”
“Yeah, I knew them. That’s not illegal.”
Maruma was reading the man. “We’re chasing the people who drove them to suicide,” he said.
The anger on the man’s face grew and he started rubbing his stubbly beard. “Like, if I spoke, it would help stop them?”
“Yes.”
“Alright. Ask, ask me. I’ll answer.”
“Were Jonathan and Kofi attending conversion therapy?”
“Yes.”
“Was the church running it?”
“Yep.”
“Did you go too?”
“Yeah, I went. That’s how the three of us knew each other. They were a couple, a good couple, but church made us all think we were evil. I thought it too, I did, until they died, and I realised. I’m gay man, I’ll say it, I’m gay and I ain’t accepting no one telling me I’m evil. Or them, what it did to them. I came out too late. I let them break up. Jesus,” the anger had turned into tears.
“Why do you still come?” Grayling asked.
“It’s such a huge part of life, yunno, you want Jesus, you want his love, even if… you’re different.”
“Do you know who taught these classes?”
“Used to be a Gregson geezer, but now it’s Harry Webb.”
“And you’ll make an official statement about this?”
“You can shut him down, right? You can stop him doing this?”
“Aye,” Maruma confirmed, “aye we can. At the very least we’ll take the safeguarding laws and drop a fucking brick on him.”
“Alright, let’s go, let’s go now, I’ll give you all the dirt. Fuck who knows man.”
Wick’s mobile beeped. He looked up from the desk where he was talking with Sharma, wondering where the device actually was. The beep was distinctive, but it seemed to have come from… “Lindleman, is my mobile on your desk?”
“Yes, I’ve signed you up for Grindr. And Tinder. And the one that’s for people who love beards.”
“I don’t like beards.”
“I like the way you protested that and not the gay sex quest app. Anyway, yes here we go.”
Wick retrieved his phone, sans hook-up apps, and discovered there was a message for him from Caroline Short. It simply said, “I’ve found someone for you.”
Which was why Wick drove to the church and found himself entering the ancient building.
“Hello again” Short said, in black clothes and white dog collar. “After our chat I had a little word. I know someone who fled their conversion therapy classes and they are willing to give a statement. But they want me with them.”
“That is perfect.” Wick knew Grayling and Maruma had a strong statement, but there was a weight in numbers. Short led Wick into a back room, where a young woman sat cradling a chipped mug.
“Hi,” she said nervously.
“This is DCI Wick. He’s going to stop the conversion.”
Wick pointed to a chair, and when both women nodded, he sat down. “Now, I’m not accusing you of anything, you’re in no trouble, you are the one we call a victim. If you can tell us as much as you wish, it will help in our investigations.”
“I want it stopped,” she said. “I… I…” she held her arm out, and it was covered in scars.
“You did that?”
“Because of the way they said I was. Evil. An enemy. Because I couldn’t be straight.”
“Understood. What can you tell me?”
“My parents have attended the church for years. Since it began probably. I went as a kid, thought it was great. Sunday school classes with play mixed in. Then, as I grew, I got interested in girls. I knew the church didn’t like it, so I hi
d it. When my parents caught me, they weren’t angry, they just took me to church and we had a meeting with Elders Quince and Cribb, who directed me to the conversion therapy. Said it would change me. I’d be better and not go to hell. It didn’t of course, it made me hate myself. I’d see a girl I liked then cut myself to try and make the warmth go away. You’ve got to stop them.”
“So, Quince and Cribb knew.”
“Yes.”
“This is an officially sanctioned but hidden church class?”
“Yes.”
“And who runs it now?”
“Harry Webb. Medium height, medium build, moustache like some RAF pilot from a comedy sketch.”
“Thank you, this is very helpful indeed. Do you, are you happy to make an official statement?”
“Will it help?”
“We will have enough to move on him.”
“But this isn’t illegal?”
“No, but our murder investigation crosses firmly over into it. We believe they might be connected.” Well, Maruma does, and he’s very good at this.
Lindleman looked at the coffee cup. “Did you know these have a thin layer of plastic in them?” he said pointing to what seemed like cardboard.
“Have you been watching television again?” Sharma asked.
“No. Yes, the guilt trip plastics section of some magazine show,” he replied.
“I think it’s meant to be called the environmentally concerned section of a hugely successful magazine show, but however you want to frame it.”
“And there’s a thin plastic condom inside cans of cola.”
“Why did you have to say condom? Couldn’t you say sleeve, or pouch, or something which would have made that an interesting anecdote and not a reason for me to think of your penis every time I need a cold one.”
“Its reputation precedes it.”
“And it precedes you by about two inches.”
“I walked into that.”
“He’d have to.”
They sipped more coffee and looked at their watches. The subject of this meeting was late.
Power and Control Page 16