“Wick, Wick are you in there?”
The door opened and Wick greeted the superintendent. “Sure thing sir, come in. You sound distressed.”
“Let me get this clear. You have arrested Rupert Hume and are charging him in relation to a murder?”
“That is correct sir.”
“You have arrested the writer behind Morthern.Info?”
“Also, correct sir.”
“And now you propose to arrest Dan Dobbs?”
“Yes.”
“The mayor.”
“Err… yes sir.”
“Wick, there is a three-way electoral race happening right now. People vote imminently, and Morthern Police are about to arrest two of the runners! We are basically going to choose Stremp as mayor because this whole thing is going to descend into chaos.”
“Sir, all these men committed crimes, and thank god we got to them in time.”
“No, no that is not what is going to happen.”
“Sir?”
“Hume can stay in prison, there’s been a murder, clear evidence, etc. But Howard Welb will be released without charges and Dan Dobbs will not be questioned let alone arrested.”
Wick clenched a hand to stay calm. “Why not?”
“We will leave financial irregularities to the relevant electoral bodies. Hand them a file. We are not going to remove two of the candidates. Hume, murder, ok, but Morthern Police aren’t playing politics any further.”
“Surely you’re the one doing that sir. My officers have clear evidence…”
“I am ordering you Wick. Get on that phone. Recall your officers. Put the murderer in prison and go get drunk or something.”
“And what do I tell my officers?”
“I don’t care.”
Susan slumped onto her sofa. She felt frustrated and confused, a situation that hadn’t changed much these last few weeks. On the one hand, there was the classic journalistic annoyance that she had been unable to pin down the rumours she’d heard about Dobbs and Hume into something she could print and maintain a career with after. Dobbs was financially dodgy, but she couldn’t prove it, and it appeared Hume had dug his own grave without any assistance from her. But there was the second grinding pain, the fact she felt a complete pawn in this election campaign and had strayed into the realms of the problem rather than the hero.
She put her head in her hands and wondered if she should have a lot to drink and pass out somewhere nice. It was at that point she heard something fall through the letter box, and she couldn’t be arsed to go and find what curry house or pizza chain it was advertising. In fact, it was ten minutes later when she’d decided to get drunk that she realised it was a white envelope.
She picked it up and felt almost no weight. Opening it revealed a USB memory stick, and suddenly her senses were up, the self-loathing was gone, the hunger was back. She ran upstairs because she wasn’t going to stick this into anything that could be corrupted. She dug out an ancient laptop that was at least eight Wi-Fi passwords ago, let alone Windows versions, and then slammed a power lead into it. Only with this machine did she plug the stick in.
There was a single folder on it. A folder called “two people can’t play a game with different rules.” She opened it and tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
Her jaw dropped.
Her hands got sweaty.
After a while she started to shake slightly with excitement. Someone had sent her the complete bank records of two people. One was Morthern.Info man Howard Welb, and the other was Mayor Dan Dobbs. Not just regular bank records, but secret accounts they weren’t supposed to have. Recorded, highlighted, was the money the latter sent the former. Also, in the folder, were copies of emails, arranging a cash payment for services rendered in support of the election.
Well fuck me! Susan thought. Dobbs is bent and here’s the evidence.
She knew who’d sent it. She could only guess why. The question was, what did she do about it? If this was published tomorrow morning it would ruin the mayor and would hand Stremp the election. But Hume had someone killed and Dobbs was bribing his way to good press. That was exactly what she, as a journalist, would need to print.
When Stremp came through the door, he discovered his office was being used. The light was on, the door in was propped open, and someone sat in his chair. He walked over curiously and did indeed find Susan using his stuff. He walked in wordlessly and sat down. He and Susan looked at each other, before he began. “Never in my career has a junior writer ordered me to attend a meeting in half an hour, in my own office. Never before have I been likely to come. But here I am Susan. What do you have for me?”
“Hume’s in prison. That’s certain, cops all over it. There’s just you and Dobbs. Not long left, probably fifty / fifty. Except I have an article here based on Dobbs’ full bank details which were leaked to me, and how he was bribing Morthern.Info. Not only are you the only credible election candidate, but the website is about to be abandoned. At least, you will be the only credible candidate when this story runs. Thanks to the internet, we don’t even have to wait for the printers.”
Stremp nodded. “And this leak is genuine?”
Susan grinned, “I won’t reveal my source, but I am led to believe so. But you and I both know even if Dobbs sued us and somehow won, all he’d win is money. He’d have been voted out by then. Classic political trick.”
“If I was fifty years younger and a bad boss, I’d kiss you.”
“I appreciate the fact you aren’t.”
“I sense a slight hesitation though?”
“I’m handing you this election. All I’m going to say is, don’t fuck us over.”
“If I do… you can bring me down. That’s the presses job. Keep people honest. We don’t really do it anymore. But you do Susan.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“Is the story written?” Stremp checked.
“Of course, we can go immediately.” She decided not to add a cocky wink.
“Of course, I’m not the official editor at this point…” Stremp said laughing.
“The stand in was contacted and told to arrive ten minutes after you. I assume he’ll approve?”
“He’ll bite your hand off. Or I’ll bite his head off.”
“Good.”
“And there’s no chance you’ll tell me who this source is?”
“Zero. I mean, if I have to come after you, I’ll need them!”
Stremp and Susan nodded and smiled at each other.
“Right then, let’s bring down the mayor.”
The door to Wick’s office burst open and the superintendent flew through it before closing it firmly behind him.
“Have you seen the Star’s website?” the new arrival asked.
“No, sorry, I’ve been…”
“Look at it. Now. Bring it up.”
“The Morthern Star?”
The Super walked over and dumped his hands on the desk like a gorilla. “See it?”
“Oh. They’ve also found out about the mayor’s payments.”
“Also. Yes, yes, also. Because despite me ordering you not to arrest the mayor, the sheer weight of phone calls we are getting from the public asking what we’re going to do means you have to send your MCU to arrest the mayor.” He sounded like someone who’s dog had been run over.
“How… terrible,” Wick replied calmly.
The Super leaned down. “If I find out anyone in this building leaked that information to the press, I will have them charged and fired from this once proud organisation.”
“I suspect, given the pressure we are all under these days, that isn’t much of a threat.”
The Super now smacked the table, turned and stormed off.
Wick rubbed his eyes, stood up, and went to give his team the good news.
Two unmarked police cars came to a halt at the end of the road. They couldn’t go any further because it was filled with vehicles and journalists milling around. Sharma, Grayling, Maruma and Lindle
man got out and looked around them.
“I would ask which one is the mayor’s house,” Lindleman began, “but there’s a handy human arrow pointing at it.”
Sharma headed off and the team followed. As she approached the packed crowd, who wielded tv cameras, old style cameras and phone cameras, she held up her card. “Police here, back the fuck up and get ready for your money shot.” The crowd parted as if a junior Moses were testing the water, and the four shoved their way to the front door.
Sharma knocked on it, “this is the police. I suggest you speak to us.”
A pause, and then a voice literally came from the letterbox. “My house is surrounded,” Dobbs hissed.
“Right, look, we are here to arrest you. But we will quite happily escort you safely through this mess and to the police station, where, when you are released, you can negotiate safe transport. That’s why there’s four of us.” Lindleman opened his mouth to say ‘and because we want to gloat at the end of this thing’ but shut it when she glared at him.
“You’re gonna arrest me?”
“We’re also going to form a square around you and bully you through the crowd, I think coming along willingly is a small price to pay.”
“It’s not true,” Dobbs whined.
“To be honest, you should have paid him in wedges of cash like a football manager,” Grayling noted.
“That would have been a good idea,” Dobbs said sadly.
“Right, stop pretending to be innocent, open the door and let’s get you to somewhere calm.”
“Like a cell,” Lindleman added.
Maruma was sat on a bench. He was wrapped up warm because it was a chilly day, but he didn’t let the cold affect him. The ducks weren’t bothered either, they were swimming about the pond and wandering on the footpath. It turned out ducks could be very interesting to watch, and they had their own little characters which Maruma began to try and puzzle out. Maybe this was why people had pets, he wondered, that fun little bundle of quirks. The detective had been there for about twenty minutes when an Indian man appeared and walked up to the pond, and as he began throwing bread into it a choir of ducks formed ahead of him.
Maruma rose and stood alongside Mr Rawal.
“I thought I said I didn’t want to see you again?” Rawal said softly. In truth he was intrigued.
“We’ve arrested St. George, several members of the Patriot Party and the man behind Morthern.Info. We’ve arrested multiple people for hate crimes over the previous weeks, and all are going forward to prosecution.”
“Very good. What does that mean for me and my family?”
“You should renew your daughter’s complaint against those boys.” It was a calmly spoken, carefully measured suggestion.
“Won’t do any good.”
“Actually, it would.”
“Nothing’s changed. They’d still threaten us.”
“Actually, a lot has changed,” Maruma informed him. “The current furore is over hate crimes. It shouldn’t make a difference, in court, in the station, but what happens is a type of crime will bubble to the surface of consciousness and it will be hammered more than the others. Judges, media, they now see hate crime as the major threat and will be handing out stiffer sentences, taking it seriously for a while. The people who harassed your daughter will be dealt with more severely and definitely now than before. The people making threats won’t act on them. The storm will scare them.”
They stood in silence for a short while before Rawal said “you can promise me this?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I had any doubts.”
“Let me think about it please.”
“Of course, ring us. You’ll still have the number of the officer working on it. Call them, it’ll get through to me.”
Rawal held out a piece of bread. “Would you like to feed this to my ducks?”
“Thanks, that’s very kind of you.” He broke the bread into chunks, and the birds lapped it up. Maruma then nodded at Rawal and went back to his car. He drove to the station, sat down at his computer, and received a call.
“Hello there, I’ve just had a message from Mr Rawal regarding a complaint that was made and withdrawn. He wishes to make it again, saying they were harassed.”
“Yes, I remember the one.”
“Does this come under the hate crimes initiative?”
“Yes, we’ll take this on and we’ll include the harassment into the proposed charges.”
“Going to be a busy few weeks in court.”
“Yes,” Maruma said, smiling, “it really is.”
It was DCI Wick’s turn to go to the Super’s office, but he didn’t barge through the door, instead he knocked on it lightly. It was rare for Wick to knock like Grayling or Sharma would have done with the manner of a bailiff with a ten-minute deadline, or a gangster who wanted his money.
“Come in!” shouted the Super. Wick opened the door and found the Super sat with a radio in his hand, the position he took when he was following events.
“There’s a lot of activity among uniform,” Wick said, “I thought I’d ask what’s going on?”
“It’s election day, and I am not taking any chances of a Patriot Party protest or any residual hate violence. We have a large police presence to nip anything in the bud. It is my belief that once the election finishes everything will start to calm down, so we are going hard today.”
“Is that dangerous?”
“We do risk looking like we’re interfering, I know, but I’d rather take the lead on this one and warn off protests.”
“Yes, that’s fair enough,” Wick agreed, “we are dealing with people who’d torch a police car.”
“As if we don’t have anything else that needs money spent on it. Still, maybe the new mayor can think of a way to supply extra funds.”
“We can but hope Morthern values us.”
Wick left the office, and the Super sat listening. His officers were walking round the streets of the main urban areas, near polling stations and gathering points. In theory they didn’t have to do anything but be there, showing not so much faces but uniforms, and people would think twice. The power of officers on the beat, just the sort of activity they’d had to cut as their finances were slashed by the government.
The day moved slowly for the Super, as he waited for something bad to flare up, but as time went on, he began to relax. No one was fighting, or rioting. The press conference he’d given had been reported by journalists in a way that sensationalised Hume’s alleged crimes, not brought it into doubt, and most Patriot Party members were backpedalling rather than claiming a stitch up. All that happened was the occasional gobby voter shouting at the police, no one was being thumped. The murder charge had changed everyone’s outlook.
Finally, the Super realised he hadn’t voted himself. Maybe he should, civic duty and all that, but he wondered what the point was. There was one leading candidate and a lot of minor ones suddenly propelled forward. The Super had no idea what any of them stood for and certainly wasn’t going to Google everyone’s individual manifestos.
He decided in the end to give it a miss. Instead he’d go and get a coffee and keep following his officers. He’d tried to avoid kingmaking, but at least he had brought peace to Morthern.
The room was packed. It was a large hall which had been taken over to count the votes of the mayoral election, and it had been chosen based on the historical data when it came to how many people needed to be in it. While that calculation had stood up in terms of how many people were needed to count – turnout was lower than previous years, mostly due to people suddenly not knowing who to vote for – it hadn’t dealt with the huge amount of press gathered for the announcement. It wasn’t just local media, but BBC national news, Channel 4, Sky and more.
Also, in attendance were Susan and Karen. They’d taken up residence at the middle right of the room. The official Star photographer and reporter for the event were right at the front, but Susan wasn’t going to miss this.
&nbs
p; Suddenly a hush fell over the room, as a door opened, and a line of people began to climb onto the stage which had been set up. Seeing this stage was the first time Susan realised Morthern had an official flag, and the candidates filed out and stood in front of it. Among them was Stremp.
The returning officer walked out now, holding paper in a hand, and she went to the front of the stage where she tapped a mic. There was no noise, so she waved her other hand until an audible click rang around and she said “hello?” It boomed out.
She didn’t need to ask for silence, everyone paused and waited. “Greetings ladies and gentlemen, I am about to announce the results of the election for Mayor of Morthern. This return will be read out in alphabetical order.” Susan pulled out a notebook to try and work out what that order would be.
“Where’s Stremp?” Karen asked.
“Amazingly he’s last.”
They listened as the votes began to be given, numbers in the high three digits or low four digits. It had been too late to take Dobbs and Hume off the ballots, but they had been forced to drop out due to their arrests and charges, so while the votes cast didn’t count and were anyway very low in response, it still amused the press to hear they’d got a few thousand votes between them. Finally, they came to the main event.
“Mr Trevor Stremp, Independent, fifteen thousand, five hundred and sixty-four. I hereby announce that Trevor Stremp is elected as Mayor of Morthern. If you’d now like to make a speech…”
Stremp stepped forward, and Susan had never seen a more genuine, happier smile on his face. “I’d like to begin by thanking the returning officer, her staff, everyone who volunteered for the election booths, you ran a great system.” He paused, and a twinkle appeared in his eye, “I’d also like to thank the police!” The media in the room roared with pure laughter.
“Hello, hello, yes, where are you from?”
The journalist turned away from the piece they were about to give to camera and replied to the woman who’d interrupted him. “BBC, if you could just move over…”
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