Power and Control

by Robert H Wilde

  Wick was sat calmly, his legs together and his fingers interlaced. He was thinking, not about the case for a change but about nature. The sun he’d seen that day, the way clouds moved through the sky, the cats he’d seen prowling around his street. Sometimes he wished he’d retired already and moved to a place where plants grew all around him in deep soils rather than weeds splitting apart asphalt. But that was all so far away from what he must do right now…

  “Hello?” said a voice behind him, coming closer. “Oh, hello Detective Inspector, nice to see you again.” Caroline Short held out a hand for him to shake once she’d got close enough, and he did. “To what do I owe this meeting?”

  “Oh…”

  “Do you need my help or can I…”

  “To be honest, I was just coming for a break. Somewhere to think, relax for a bit, pray.”

  “Well you are in the right place here! That’s definitely what we’re about, and look, I don’t want to pry, but what’s your name?”

  “Wi… oh I see what you mean. I’m Gregory, Gregory Wick.”

  “Do your friends call you Greg?”

  “My wife did. My kids do, when they ring. Friends… they tend to call me DCI.”

  “Oh, right, well, what can I call you?”

  Wick smiled, “call me Greg please.”

  “So, Greg, you just want a little reflection?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “In that case… sit, enjoy and I’ll make you a coffee.”

  She disappeared off into the Chapter House and he sat and looked at the cross. Wooden of course, but the image of a crucified Jesus which hung off it had been painted. It didn’t look like skin and bone, but it didn’t look like wood either.

  “Here you go,” Short said handing over a mug.

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you have any ex-parishioners for me?”

  “Sorry?”

  “People rejected by New Hope. Or hurt by them. Do you have any? Send them my way, I’ll help.”

  Wick didn’t want to say the police couldn’t do that, they’d send people to government derived deprogramming groups or allied charities, but then he realised all those had lost their funding and this church was pretty much it for the area; had taken over that pastoral work from the government in the same way New Hope had, although the latter exploited and the former… plodded on sweetly in a small, antiquated way.

  “I will,” he said, not knowing if he was telling the truth or not. “This is very nice coffee,” he followed up to try and move on the chat in a manner he knew he’d find suspicious in an interview, and Short probably would too.

  “Glad you like it. Can’t go wrong with good old instant,” she said. Wick decided not to mention his personal investment in the Bunker’s coffee machine. Instead he asked, “do you have any biscuits we could eat?”

  “Yes, I think there’s a pack of custard creams.”

  Pierre stood on the bridge, but it was not like last time. Then he had come to jump, to end his life and throw himself off, to smash into the water and die, because he believed water wasn’t some wonderful runny substance when you landed on it from a height, but something which knocked the breath and consciousness out of you. He’d stood there, thinking all the pain in his life would be over if he just threw himself off. But then they’d found him, his rescuer, taken him from that place and given him a home and a drink and spiritual support.

  His rescuer…did such a word really fit? Were they not now his tormenter? Was that not a massive abuse or was it a debt well paid? They had taken him to their home, wrapped him in warmth, given him life and then… and then… sent him on a mission. Was it an abuse of power or was it the only thanks he could give?

  He closed his eyes and gripped the railing, feeling the rusty metal biting his skin. He’d never done anything like that before, so why did it happen to him? Why was he the one asked to kill Elder Cribb, why was he the one who carefully researched a path through, wrapped that cord round his neck and choked the life out of him, why had he become a killer of another man when he’d only wanted to kill himself?

  It was curious, this guilt he felt. The sense of such utter wrongness, failure, corruption, that his veins were filled with black fluid. The desire to jump off this bridge was gone but had been replaced with such a sense of decay and wrongdoing he wished a car would mow him down right away and save the world from him.

  What did he do now? Would his rescuer send him on more missions? Were there more lives to take, more debts to pay, was he locked into a struggle at the highest reaches of the church? Was he himself a demon, a devil, a servant of the enemy or was he an avenging angel ready to smite? He did not know, he just heard the sweet words of his rescuer, then the cajoling words, the way they moved him and positioned him, played him like an instrument. It wasn’t like they had sat down and said, ‘I saved you, so kill this man’, oh no, the devil did not grab you by the lapels. Instead he chatted, bought you a drink, made you happy, put a hand on your shoulder and slid it down, and then you find yourself feeling in debt and ready to go kill someone. Hearing the sound that a man makes as he struggles for air, noises that Pierre heard in his sleep as well as during the day, noises that would just not go away and made his life hell.

  Maybe he should jump, he thought, maybe it would always have been best if he’d jumped.

  Karen put the bible down. Not because she was moving on from it, but because she was trying to learn it and wanted to test herself. So, having re-read the passage, she tried to recite it from memory. First, she closed her eyes to better focus, and said “1 Corinthians 13:4-5, Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." At which point she opened her eyes, snatched up the book and checked what she thought she’d just said. Result! A perfect bible verse learnt, or the start of doing so. She was determined to gain as much knowledge as she could about the bible, because people at the church could repeat huge chunks from memory and she wanted to do that too. She wanted to be holy, so she’d need to know the bible inside out, and she would. Memorising, thinking, immersing herself in the bible was helping block out the voices in her head, calm the demons. She had begun to think of the elders of the church as Matthew in chapter 11 verse 29, and she was able to repeat it “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” As if being able to recite a text was any substitute for honour.

  It was time to go in now, so she put the book in her bag and went into the Sunday entrance to New Hope, which was open today as they were serving coffee all morning to tempt people in. Karen had volunteered to help serve and if her sister took her head out of her accusing arse she’d have seen the change in Karen; from a scared, paranoid woman consumed by anxiety to one happy to serve God and the church and at peace, actual true peace, a calm in her heart, a still water in her head, a lightness of her soul. She did not mind, truly she did not, about the scar on her wrist, and she wore it as a battle wound that she had now moved on from, a sign of how far she had come in the service of the church.

  “Hey Karen!” the other volunteers called out, and they came over and all shared hugs. Bodily contact, with other people, and she felt good about it, how far had she come since her days of darkness and madness.

  She smiled, happy, willing to give all of herself to this church. She would serve it any way she could, she would give her all to them if they would only let her and tell her how.

  She suspected they would, soon enough, her new family, her true family.

  The less she saw of Susan the better.

  Quince peered out of his office and the coast was clear. He thus walked to a side door that was now a fire exit, opened it and found Stuart stood there. “Come in,” Quince said, and the pair skulked back to Quince’s office. Only when the door was shut did either man relax.

  Edward had discovered that it wasn�
�t just misery who loved company. When you spend your days plotting you feel a need to share it, else your achievements go unrecorded, overlooked, not praised. If there was one thing Quince was used to as church leader it was adulation, so for this next bit of the plan he had brought in his portable audience, aka Stuart. It wasn’t a big one, but it was the best he could do.

  “Alright Eddy,” Stuart said, looking at the two cups of coffee on the table, “one of these for me?”

  “Yes, one on the right has four sugars in, as you like it.”

  “My right or your right?”

  “Don’t over complicate things Stuart.”

  “Sorry boss. What’s on the list today?”

  “That,” Quince pointed to the laptop. “That is Cribb’s…”

  “I know, I did nick it.”

  The elder wanted to reply, ‘don’t interrupt me when I’m in full flow’, but instead he carried on with “we could do with having that accessible so I can read it. Thing is, there’s a password protecting it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now I’ve tried his pets, his wife, his kids, all that stuff, but nothing. So, I have been going through the records of our parishioners. I have to say it’s handy having a load of ex-cons coming to us for rehabilitation.”

  “You save us Eddy,” Stuart confirmed.

  “Yes, and I have found someone. A lad, twenty-one now, had a bit of trouble in his teenage years as a hacker, but supposedly straight now. I’ve arranged a meeting with him, he’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  “Ooh!”

  A few minutes later, a secretary knocked on the office door, and when a booming “come in” could be heard, the young man entered. He was trying to grow a beard which merely looked scruffy, but his eyes almost glowed as he looked around him.

  “Hello there, I’m Edward Quince, Elder of the Church.”

  “I know, we all know,” the hacker replied in awe.

  “Good. I want you to help me, as I am sure you can.”

  “Yes, anything?”

  “As you know, our Elder Cribb passed on. Sadly, he took the password to his laptop with him and there is important church information locked in it. Will you hack your way into it for me please?”

  The glowing eyes managed to light up even more. “You want me to hack something? Legally? With permission?”

  Quince smiled and lied “yes, all of that, here it is.” It was funny, the more you misled people and played them, the easier the lies got. It was like walking down a steep slope and starting to fall. You just could not stop.

  “Oh well that’s a choice,” Maruma said as he looked down the list.

  “What? You spend all your life solving puzzles, you regard people as puzzles, and policework as puzzles, and the thing you’re stuck on is the cake menu?” Grayling was in full on teasing mode.

  “Yes. It all looks so nice and realistically I’ve only got room for two.”

  “Two!”

  “What’s wrong with two?”

  “You’ll get fat, and you can’t get fat because sometimes we have to run after people and if you’re slower than me I’ll get there on my own.”

  Maruma smiled, “you do really well on your own, you smacked that guy’s knife right out of his hands.”

  Grayling nodded proudly, “oh I’m good all right, but you know the odds. One day I’ll come up against something better handled by two people. So, you can have one cake and one cake only.”

  “That’s an even harder choice.”

  “You make it, or I’ll make it.”

  “Okay, chocolate shimmer cake.”

  “Yes, yes, shimmer sounds so edible.”

  Behind the detectives Susan was laughing. Then they got to the counter. “Hello,” Grayling began, “I’d like a triple chocolate milkshake with flake and marshmallows please.”

  “What!?” Maruma exploded. “I can only have one cake and you get an entire daily output from a sugar factory?”

  “I need to keep my energy levels up.”

  “That would be irony wouldn’t it.”

  “Sugar is multi-tasking, now order, the nice young man needs to get a move on.”

  They all settled at a table and started to eat.

  “So, what does shimmer taste like?” Susan asked.

  “Unicorn,” he replied.

  “You imagine.”

  “I do.”

  “Are we going to do any work now or are we going to just enjoy?” Grayling asked.

  “Well Susan and I will enjoy,” Maruma began, “but your only work is getting diabetes.”

  “Oh, very funny. Can you believe I only got three marshmallows! What good is that?”

  “How strange,” Maruma said leaning in, “that there is also three of us.”

  “Hands off my food!” Grayling protested and moved it all closer to her.

  “So, what are your current feelings about the case?” Susan asked, pen poised over her notes.

  “Obviously we have open minds and are pursuing all aspects of the case,” Maruma began, “but gut feeling is somebody has had somebody else do the murders, so we’re looking at a double layer to unpeel and not just one. In short, someone is leading their flock astray.”

  “I see.”

  “Sorry,” Grayling started, “but I have to follow up something you said.”

  “Go on.”

  “Your sister has started attending New Hope.”

  The detectives saw Susan slump down. “Yes, and I can’t stop her. Nothing I do puts her off, she says I’m just one of the ‘enemy’. I can really see, I do see, how someone could sign up, be totally fucking brainwashed and end up doing some crazy shit for them, I really do.”

  Grayling nodded “This does feel like we’re going to be saving a lot of people ourselves, not just catching the guilty.”

  “Is this the place?” Lindleman asked as he parked the car.

  “Are you trying to argue with the sat nav?” Sharma said as they both looked at the screen. “You know I remember when cars were little metal boxes that juddered around everywhere. Now it’s deep seats, big screens and talking to you.”

  “Just think,” Lindleman began, “soon the cars will drive themselves.”

  “I don’t think I’d like that.”

  “It’ll be amazing, you’ll get in, half asleep or drunk, and it’ll just drive you to wherever you need to go.”

  “Yeah, again I don’t think I’d like that.”

  “You’d rather drive?”

  “Well for the price I could hire a chauffeur I’m sure, and even if I couldn’t, no. And when I get so old that I can’t walk I’ll get a mobility vehicle and make people jump out of my way.”

  “So about three years then.”

  “Fuck and off. Anyway, this is it.”

  Rob, now safely parked, looked out and saw… an old street, with fading buildings, and a shop devoted to selling knives, lighters, bespoke engraving and a number of other metal products you didn’t find in your average Lidl.

  “Is that even legal?” he asked, looking at the window display, which featured iron bars guarding an assortment of knives.

  “Yeah, officially this is some sort of hunting shop, so they do all the kit you need except guns, it’s perfectly legal until someone steps outside waving one.”

  Sharma led the way, through a door which set off a small buzzer, making a man best described as a gnome appear.

  “How can I help you?” said a bearded ginger face, hands in a smart waistcoat.

  “Hello, I’m DI Sharma and we’re trying to track down the owner of an unusual knife. We have a description of what we’re looking for, and to be quite frank you’re the only shop in Morthern it could have come from, beyond that we’re looking at the internet and we’ll never pin that down. So, can you help?”

  The gnome nodded, “of course, but when you say unusual, do you think it’s come from our novelty section?”

  “Explain?”

  “Okay. This is it. We sell a good deal of expert
ly created knives, with many different metals and grinds, all for legitimate purposes, and to supplement that sensible income we sell quite frankly oddly shaped rubbish to people who want to pose. I suspect you’re looking at a poser, so do you have the picture?”

  Sharma held it out.

  “Yes, I sold something that could match, let me show you in the catalogue.” When it was produced Sharma and Lindleman looked at it.

  “In an ideal world you’d have sold one of those recently and have the CCTV of it to show us.”

  “Actually, yes I did sell one recently, and another of your officers has already looked at the video.”

  “What?” Sharma said.

  “The knife was purchased on a credit card later reported as stolen, and an officer came to see if I had a record of whose face was using it, presumed to have stolen it.”

  “Well shit! And?”

  “I’m afraid my coverage was inadequate. I have the cameras trained on the high-end products. This knife escaped. But I believe the officer knew where the card was stolen from and was going there next to investigate that?”

  “In Morthern?”

  “No, he came from the neighbouring county. I have all his details if you’d like me to pass them on to you?”

  “That would be great, thanks very much.” Sharma turned to Lindleman. “Knife bought with stolen credit card and then used specifically for murder?”

  “Sounds like every chance.”

  Pierre walked into reception. The church had claimed to offer so much over the years, so why wouldn’t he turn to it for help. The parts of it that might still be pure.

  “Hello?” said the robotic receptionist.

  “Hi, hi,” he said coming right up and putting his hands onto the wooden edge, “I need to speak to someone.”

  “Yes, sure, what’s it about?”

  “Spiritual, I need to speak with someone about a spiritual issue.”

  “About a class?”

  “I need to confess. Do we have anyone I can confess to?”

  A pause and then “I’ll get someone in from the outreach team.”