Power and Control

by Robert H Wilde

  Wick held a piece of paper up. “Jobs has come through, he found DNA in Pierre’s flat from one of the members of New Hope staff we swabbed previously. A woman, Jessica Cook, who fits everything the diary says, including age and job position, and who had been in Pierre’s rooms. Recently. A total match, nails her down completely.”

  “Mexican wave,” Lindleman exclaimed with a little arm movement that no one joined in on. They never did.

  “Oh yes, we have our original killer, and we have the motive behind it. Sharma, Lindleman, Atkins, you go and find Mrs Cook and bring her in for questioning. Grayling and Maruma, we still have a copycat killer to find, please pursue that with all your usual verve. Susan, you can go with either group, but if you want to see the arrest you’re welcome to. I realise a woman who triggered a crime because of harassment is not your average crazy murder case, and I want you to see how we treat this with the upmost care and responsibility to everyone.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Well,” Wick said, “it looks like we’re finally making progress with this one!”

  “Oh god,” Lindleman said putting his head in his hands.”

  “What?” Wick asked.

  “You’ve jinxed it. You’ve jinxed us. She’ll probably have alibis now or be on a plane to France.”

  “What have we told you about jinxing!” Sharma added.

  “I am just keeping a positive attitude, and you should all continue with the mood boost.”

  “Well let’s get her first and nail it down. Celebration cake when CPS go in.”

  Maruma put a hand up “and we find the other killer.”

  “See, now you’re spoiling the mood,” Wick said.

  Jessica Cook pulled up the top of her coffee machine and popped a pod in, selecting a type of coffee she’d had to mail order in. One of her few luxuries in life was coffee, and this machine was the heart of it. Pushing the lid down with that satisfactory click, she nudged her mug under and let the buzzing, churning sound start until the marvellous black liquid started to pour out. Soon, her mouth sang, soon we will be nourished. She didn’t need biscuits, although she had them, a wide selection, and yes maybe a biscuit would go well, after all her days were passing more peacefully and her job was far more secure. Things were going well, and she ought to chase Pierre up and see how he was, because they had a connection now that they had saved each other’s lives. But how to do that? She wasn’t sure, and when you couldn’t find an answer to something it was time to distract yourself with your twenty-four-seven window on the world.

  She picked her phone up, went to Facebook and nearly dropped the device in shock. It took her several reads through to absorb what it said, to really get used to the concept, and that was a report: Pierre Walker, member of New Hope Church, had died. The story was vague about what had happened, just that he was found dead by officers at his flat.

  Jessica’s stomach dropped through the floor. Pierre was dead, dead! But how…

  In their effort to do good, the press had agreed to follow guidelines which did not explicitly report the details of a suicide, so nowhere in this news post did it say he’d stabbed himself in the throat with his own knife. Instead it was unclear, and in that uncertainty Jessica’s mind ran; and of course, it ran to the dark places. She had sent Pierre to kill, he had taken care of Cribb, and now of course, she thought, of course the church had struck back. Quince had tolerated her harassment and now he had ordered Pierre dead. That bastard had murdered her own angel, and he was still out there getting away and pulling everyone’s strings, a puppet-master and a devil, not a holy man.

  She wrenched the coffee mug from the machine and gulped down the hot liquid. It burned, but she didn’t care, because she saw only one course of action. She had to strike back. A war had started, and where she hadn’t felt able to kill before, where she’d had to get Pierre to go, now she felt emboldened, now the bridge had been crossed and all that, now she was ready to avenge Pierre and get these bastards off her own back.

  She slammed the mug down, went over to where she stored her knives, and pulled the largest, sharpest one out. She would kill Edward Quince.

  A car came to a screeching halt, followed by one of a very different hue. The front vehicle was silver and looked like any car, the second was in the gaudy but effective colours of Morthern police. Out of both, people jumped; uniformed officers and plain-clothed detectives, moving up the path to where Jessica Cook lived. The uniformed members of the party went round to the back door, to prevent anyone doing a runner, while Lindleman and Sharma went to the front, shadowed by Susan, who had debated filming this on her phone and decided the legal issues weren’t worth it when the paper wanted only text.

  But as the detectives came to the front door, as they saw it beyond a large hedge, they found it stood open. Sharma nodded instructions at the others and they went in, very carefully, finding no one in the toilet, hallway and…

  In the lounge they found someone, but it took a while to establish who. A knife lay on the floor, a kitchen knife which had been dropped, unused. Deeper into the room lay the body of Jessica Cook, and around her was blood. Sharma and Lindleman quickly looked the body up and down to establish what might have happened, and it seemed clear someone had attacked her with a different knife, causing deep cuts to her arms and hands, then broken through and stabbed her several times in the chest, ending with a cut across her face. Her blood was on every surface, and only now, looking back, did they realise whoever had done this had left two blue plastic shoe covers in the hallway.

  “That is a very weird combination of brutality and planning,” Sharma noted, “but that might be useful.” The DI then realised Susan had gone pale. “Go outside if you want, sit down. I think we can conclude someone has had Cook executed, and now they’re not even bothering to pretend anymore.”

  “The knife…” was all Susan could say.

  “Yes, these wounds look the same. Need forensics to agree of course, but I feel safe saying this is the same killer as Webb. Someone is clearing house and getting rid of people, and they’ve come for her.”

  “Someone,” Lindleman pointed out, “is also ahead of us in working all this out. So, is there anyone we need to protect before they come for them?”

  “I have a feeling we don’t need to protect Quince… but we do need to deal with our ever more confident psychopath and his toy knife collection. I get the feeling that if we had guns in this country, he wouldn’t even want to use them.”

  “It’s certainly escalating,” Sharma agreed. Shame we can’t do a full Blade Runner with that CCTV you found and see exactly who it is. ‘Hoodie with miserable face’ is bloody thousands of people. Hmm, but ‘hoodie with conviction for hurting people’…”

  “…is still quite a lot. Let’s hope they slipped up here. Any chance Cook had CCTV?”

  Karen was moving and carrying. If you’d told her growing up, she would find a love of menial work, she’d have told you nope. Actually, she’d have told you, fuck off, but now she discovered a pure sense of pleasure in doing stuff to advance the work of the church, and currently that consisted of volunteering for whatever she could. So, she’d come with her new flatmate (having moved into a very nice but tiny spare room) and was currently collecting all the mugs and plates from all the offices and conference rooms to be washed. It didn’t matter how much you asked people, or how insistent you were, or how much basic manners said, ‘bring your dirty stuff to a kitchen’, they didn’t. So, Karen was walking about collecting, and she just had a few big offices to go when…

  She heard two voices up ahead. One was definitely Elder Quince, and the second one sounded well rough. Karen couldn’t help but listen as certain key words grabbed her heart.

  “Stabbed her mate, just like ya asked.”

  “I don’t care how you did it, as long as it’s done.”

  “Stabbed her, cut her right up.”

  “She is definitely dead? The threat to me and the other elders is definitely gone?”r />
  “Fucking cold as on her floor mate. Claret all up the walls.”

  “Excellent, a job well done. You have saved this church.”

  “Yas, yas, thing…. to say to ya.”

  “What?”

  “We said five hundred notes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Seems a bit fuckin cheap yunno.”

  “I am not going to lie, I thought that as well. I suppose you want more money?”

  “Yeah, reckon I do.”

  “Then you can have more money. How much do you want?”

  “I… a grand?”

  “Fuck it,” Quince said, “I’ll give five thousand, how about that?”

  “Fuckin a mate, fuckin a.”

  Karen stepped back, and a bit more, her hands now shaking. It was all she could do not to drop the collection of mugs, turn herself around, and walk off quickly down the corridor until she’d turned a corner and slammed herself flat against the wall. For the first time since the ward, she felt the tides of a panic attack rising as her mind raced. They couldn’t… they couldn’t… there was no way they were discussing a murder… she’d gone mad again, she had to have gone mad, Edward Quince would not have ordered someone dead, there was not a killer, the church was good, Quince was good, this was a holy place. She turned and ran until she got to the kitchen, dumped all the mugs into the sink and sank to her knees in front of it gasping for air, her heart hammering speedily away.

  She knew, in a way, she was safe, because a girl with a history of mental illness having a panic attack in a distant kitchen was not an unusual occurrence. And yet she felt more vulnerable than she ever had, her heart and soul exposed.

  Five

  “I thought you said detectives didn’t go to mortuaries and see bodies being examined?” Susan asked, as they were on the way to do exactly that.

  “Well we don’t normally,” Grayling explained, “but the pace of this is accelerating and every aspect of forensics is being pushed to the top. So, rather than wait for information to be sent we’re going to get it in real time, which means we have to get here at the same time as the body.” They all subconsciously looked at the vehicle they were following which didn’t have flashing lights but did carry corpses.

  “Do you think they’ll strike again?”

  “Can’t rule it out, but we do have a probable two murders by the same person. Thing is, if it’s two different people and you focus on one you can slip up. DCI, DI, all of us want this confirmed. Best way to do that is to get the body examined.”

  The cars turned in and pulled up, and Grayling and Maruma went in to introduce themselves with Susan behind. Soon they were ushered into a small viewing area, while the body was laid out before them. Susan was once again pale but determined to see this through. After all, none of the uniform and none of the detectives had balked at the bloodshed, so she had better not either. Strength through not wanting to look weak; a powerful human trait.

  “Right then chaps and chapesses,” the expert said as they walked in, snapping their gloves on.

  “You can say women, women are a thing,” Grayling told him.

  “I thought you wanted to be more than a thing?”

  Grayling sighed. “Can somebody, for once, do what their job is without bantering.”

  “Okay, sorry, so, we have a female,” and the work began. Maruma took all the notes the case needed, Susan took all the notes she needed, and Grayling just watched with a sense of confusion. On the one hand she should be angry because a woman had been killed, and she had seen too much of that violence. On the other hand, Jessica Cook had almost certainly arranged someone else’s death, and been killed herself in an explosion of church warfare. It was hard to feel so righteously angry then.

  “Obviously I’m coming at this as a neutral,” the expert said, “but I have to say I’d bet my house that the wounds on this body were caused by the same blade which killed, I think Webb, was it?”

  “So, we’re right then? Same killer?”

  “Yes, yes it must be. A more advanced violence, but the same strength, just frenzied this time, and with no pretence. Which I needn’t tell you means this killer is getting worse.”

  “Understood, anything else?”

  “He’s tall, six foot, judging by the damage. Strong. But frenzied means careless. Keep pushing that crime scene, you’ll find something.”

  “I’ll go radio this in,” Maruma said, disappearing off.

  “Do we warn Quince?” Susan asked.

  “Oh, trust me, we’re going to do more than that. We are currently the closest unit between ourselves and New Hope Church.”

  “You mean?”

  “We’re going ourselves.”

  Susan nodded, and the women marched outside to the car, where they caught up with Maruma. They all got in and began the drive, which was conducted in an unusual silence. The tension was high, and while none were wilting, they were operating at a high state of readiness, adrenaline flowing. That was why they soon parked up at the church building and walked right up to the desk.

  “We’ve come to see Elder Quince,” Grayling said, surprising Susan with the calmness. The latter had been expecting an order, but of course this was merely a talk not an arrest.

  “I shall see if he’s free,” the receptionist said before disappearing round the back, returning shortly after with “yes, please come through.” That was why they walked into Quince’s room and found him sat behind his desk like the victor of a war. His smile was just the right side of smug, his charisma back and his smile bulletproof. It reminded Grayling of the look she’d seen Ted Bundy give in old documentary footage. Of course, he’d killed people himself. The question was, what was Quince doing…

  “Hello detectives, how may I help you?” he asked. He didn’t stand, because he didn’t respect them at all.

  “We’ve come to warn you,” Grayling informed him, with absolutely no actual intention of warning. “I regret to tell you Jessica Cook was murdered earlier.”

  “How terrible.” Brushed off like a splash on a duck. “But warn me? Of what?”

  “Elder Cribb is dead. Jessica Cook, we believe, worked for you at New Hope?”

  “That is true, very true, she did just that.”

  “Then you should be careful, there is a killer on the loose targeting your church.” A deliberate way of taking the man’s temperature. A thermometer he didn’t realise was being shoved up his ass.

  “I’d be foolish to ignore such warnings. I would. Perhaps I should acquire a bodyguard, a guard dog, some sort of guard.”

  “Might be sensible,” Grayling said, “how well did you know Jessica?”

  “Very well. She was at the top of our organisation, and I make it my business to know their business. A truly tragic loss, I hope you catch the killer soon.”

  “Thanks, be careful.” Grayling led her team out into the car park and turned to Maruma.

  “Well?”

  “He ordered it. Absolutely zero concern his colleagues are being killed. Grandiose praise for the victim but spoken with contempt. The look saying, he knew why we were there before we spoke and didn’t care. The fact he has already hired whatever this bodyguard is and was sliding it before us. He doesn’t just know, he ordered it.”

  “Alright then, looks like we just have to prove this. A killer would lead us back, and a lead from Quince would lead us to the killer. What do we have the best chance with?”

  Night was falling, as were the bottle tops. Edward Quince was in a party mood, he had won. The conversion therapy had ended, and he had ordered the cause killed. The threat to the elders was gone, he’d had that killed too. His accountant assured him the financial details could be massaged out of the news, and every threat Quince had felt above him these last days had gone. He was a Damocles who had moved to the right and had someone cut the sword down.

  That was why he’d got music on in his office and was dancing around with a glass full of booze. He wasn’t really into dancing, but the momen
t called for it. There had been the thought of organising a full party, getting the elders together or a bunch of younger church goers, and ‘raging’ with them, but people did have a habit of asking questions, always difficult questions like ‘why’, also ‘why’ and particularly ‘why.’ How he hated ‘why people’, but there were none of those as Quince gyrated around like a drunk dad at his daughters ill-advised wedding.

  There was another aspect to his happiness, the sort of thing that never normally gets discussed. The thing was, now he’d had someone killed. He’d waved a hand, and someone had gone out, done the bidding, and taken a life. A problem hadn’t just been prevented by paperwork, nice chats or a bribe, it had been erased by murder. Deletion, and that produced first a high, a transgressive, energy releasing high, and then the knowledge you had gone beyond society, that you were in forbidden territory, that you could have anyone who opposed you negated. Once you kill people, Quince discovered, it was very easy to keep going; nakedly addictive.

  Not that Quince was expecting to encounter any major enemies, he had this church sewn up now. But if he did, if in the future anyone stood against him then oh boy, he would send his minions out to kill. His avenging angels. His watch dogs.

  So, what was he drinking? He’d started on the wine, then felt the occasion called for something more special and he’d purchased an expensive selection of spirits which he was mixing. Calling them cocktails would be an insult to the mixologists, this was just a man drunk on alcohol and death throwing liquid together and sinking it, only to advance deeper into the dual world of fug and death. It crossed Quince’s mind that he could have been doing this years ago, that the challenges he faced when starting the church would have been far more easily ended if he’d just had people fucking murdered. It’s glorious, he thought, this feeling. No wonder dictators go off the rails, no wonder power corrupts, people realise what they can do, reach out and do it.