The Judgement Book (10 page)

‘Sorry, Claire, yes?’

‘It’s the labs. They’ve got some news about St Agnes head.’

Adam turned to them. ‘Come on then,’ he said wearily. ‘We’re getting nowhere here. I reckon Linda sanitised the place before she … well, you know. It’s a silent house. It’s not telling us anything. Let’s get back to Charles Cross.’

Arthur Lamont, the technician, was waiting for them in the labs in the basement of the station. He had reached 65 and been forced to retire despite his protests, but still worked part-time and loved being called out in emergencies. He often covered weekends to give the other forensics officers some time off.

‘Hello, Mr Breen. Good to see you again.’ They shook hands. ‘And the lovely Claire too.’ He pecked her on the cheek. ‘And this is the man on the telly.’

Dan tried to hide his irritation at the detested words. ‘Dan Groves,’ he said, keeping his voice level and holding out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

The technician straightened his battered white coat and led them to a bench top. A line of test tubes stood in a rack, clear liquids inside them. Some sheets of paper were scattered around the bench. Arthur shuffled through them.

‘It’s so good to be back, Mr Breen,’ he prattled. ‘I’ve tidied the place up and sorted out some of the sloppy paperwork of the younger technicians. The labs need experience, you see, and they just haven’t got it …’

‘Arthur,’ interrupted Adam, his voice a warning.

‘Almost there, Mr Breen. Almost there. I just still can’t believe they made me retire. A travesty it was. An absolute scandal. You can’t replace experience, you know. And I work just as hard as …’

‘Arthur!’ Adam snapped.

The technician sniffed hard, produced a handkerchief and blew his noise. Adam took a step backwards.

‘Sorry about that,’ Arthur wheezed. ‘It’s unhealthy, being forced to retire. Not good for a man.’ He caught Adam’s look. ‘Yes, now, the Scenes of Crime boys found some blood at St Agnes Head, Mr Breen. It was on a rock just below where Linda was seen jumping. They reckon she probably hit her head as she fell. We’ve tested it against some hairs I took from her desk upstairs. It’s bad news I’m afraid.’

Arthur looked at them expectantly. No one spoke. ‘It’s a match,’ he went on gravely. ‘The jumper was definitely Linda.’ He raised a hand to his chest and placed it over his heart. ‘May she rest in peace.’

Arthur closed his eyes and there was an odd silence. Dan wasn’t sure whether it was a poignant or comical moment.

‘OK,’ said Adam heavily. ‘Let’s keep going. Claire said you had some other things for us.’

The technician fumbled for another piece of paper. He held it up and peered at it. ‘Sorry, the old eyesight’s not what it was.’

‘That’s OK, Arthur, just take your time,’ said Adam in a strained voice.

Arthur traced his finger down the paper. ‘Here it is. Her car. We found it in a car park half a mile along the cliffs. The boys in the workshop took it apart, Mr Breen. They knew you were looking for something as small as a piece of paper. But I’m afraid they didn’t find a single thing.’

Adam breathed out hard. His shoulders sagged. Arthur looked crestfallen, as though he was personally responsible for the failure. Adam thanked the man, they left the lab and walked slowly back up the stairs.

The police station was quiet, the classic calm before the weekly storm. Soon the night shift would clock on, resigned and ready for the wrestling matches with belligerent drunks that might have been the job description for a Saturday night beat in any English city.

Their footfall echoed around the stairwell. To Dan, it sounded heavy and disheartened.

‘I’m tired out,’ came Adam’s voice over his shoulder. ‘And I’m starving. I need to think, but I’m too tired and hungry. Is there anywhere close we can get a bite to eat?’

‘It’s well past nine,’ Dan replied. ‘Most decent places will have stopped serving by now. We could get a kebab or a burger.’

Claire quietly groaned. His eating habits had always caused friction.

‘I need something better than that,’ said Adam, stopping on the stairs. ‘Burgers aren’t thinking food. How about that Ginger Judge place?’

‘Stops serving at nine, I think,’ replied Dan. ‘But I could give Sarah a call to see if she’d mind keeping the kitchen open a little later for us.’

‘Go for it. Pull the TV fame card. Yesterday she was all over you. She looked like she couldn’t wait to have you back in there.’

Beside him, Dan heard Claire catch her breath. Thanks Adam, he thought.

‘Roll up, roll up, hurry on in,’ said Sarah in a mock showman’s voice. She’d been standing at the door waiting. ‘I promised the chef he’d only have to be here another half hour. He’s a young lad, and it’s Saturday night. I’ve saved your table.’

They sat down gratefully. ‘It’s all on,’ Sarah said, handing them each a menu. ‘And the specials are still on too. If you wouldn’t mind being quick, that’d help.’

‘Mixed grill please,’ said Adam instantly, leaning back on his chair.

‘Lasagne for me please,’ added Claire. ‘With salad, not chips.’

Dan stood up and checked the Specials board. There were only three dishes left, some salad concoction which he hardly registered, chicken in black bean sauce and fresh local ham.

‘Don’t think me unadventurous,’ he said. ‘But I really fancy the ham. Is it good?’

Sarah folded her arms and gave him a look. ‘It’s all good, Dan. The ham has been newly hacked, and off a local pig too if you’re interested. With the egg and chips I take it?’ Dan nodded eagerly. ‘You all looked tired,’ said Sarah. ‘Busy day?’

No one needed to answer. ‘OK then, let’s see if we can nourish a bit of life back into you. I’ll get your food sorted and as it’s you I’ll even bring your drinks over. Beer again for you boys?’

‘Yes please,’ chorused Dan and Adam.

‘Let me guess. A glass of wine for the lady?’

‘Sorry,’ said Dan. ‘You haven’t been introduced. Sarah, this is Claire. Or Detective Sergeant Claire.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Claire, a little frostily. ‘White wine would be lovely. Just a small glass though please.’

Adam took a deep draw on his pint and rolled his neck. Dan sipped at his beer and looked around. All the tables were taken and there was a line of people standing at the bar. The room bubbled with conversation and laughter. It wasn’t quite the Saturday night he had had in mind, but it felt better now he had a drink and dinner was on the way.

Adam excused himself and went outside to call home. He hated people talking on their mobiles in pubs and restaurants. It was one of his little themes, how etiquette hadn’t yet evolved in line with new technology. He’d once had an argument with a businessman making a call in a bar, asked him to keep his voice down.

‘It’s not against the law,’ the man had countered. ‘No,’ said Adam. ‘But I bet if I send our accountants round to your office, and our vehicle examiners to your car park, they’ll soon find something that is.’ The businessman had quickly cut the call.

Adam walked up and down as he spoke and Dan could see from his gesturing that he was firmly on the defensive. Annie was a patient woman, quite used to losing her husband for days when a big case came up, but she wasn’t shy in pointing out how little he could be at home. Her lodger, she’d joked, on one occasion Dan had been invited round for dinner. Adam hadn’t laughed.

Annie’s most potent weapon was mentioning how Tom, Adam’s teenage son, missed him.

The detective walked back in, looking sheepish, and Dan could see it had been strategically deployed.

The detective took another long drink of his beer. ‘So, where are we then in the hunt for the Worm?’

‘Not very far, sir,’ replied Claire. ‘We’ve got two victims, now both dead, and the prospect of three more still to come.’

‘Right,’ interjected Adam. ‘And one of our corpses is a fellow cop. I don’t want any more deaths and I want this person caught. We’ve got an idea about how the Worm works and some vague thoughts about what kind of a person he is, but that’s it. What we don’t have yet are suspects. So – where do we find them?’

There was a pause, then Claire spoke. ‘We’re looking for someone who’d know intimate details about people. What Dan said about the contents of the letter to Freedman sounding like a conversation chimed with me. The idea about priests and lawyers and doctors sounded like a good one.’

‘Agreed,’ replied Adam. ‘So that’s where we go next. We’ve started work on who Freedman used as a lawyer, or whether the family had a priest or a counsellor. Now let’s do the same for Linda and see if we come up with any matches. Anyone who might know both their secrets. Any other thoughts?’

Dan sipped hard at his beer. It didn’t bring any inspiration. Unusual that. He must be tired.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘The media coverage might bring people forward with information. If we need more, we can release the details of Linda’s death.’

‘Not yet with that,’ said Adam. ‘We’ve got enough on at the moment. I don’t need another session with the press. First let’s just do some quiet work on the case in the boring old traditional way.’

‘OK,’ agreed Dan, not even bothering to acknowledge the nudge of his conscience that said he was a journalist and Linda’s death was a great story. ‘I’d like to have another look at the first code too. It might help now we know the answer to the second one.’

The numbers returned to his mind. 61, 43, 21, 51.

Dan imagined them spun around, turned them back to front, tried to see a hidden meaning, but nothing came to his lethargic brain. The ones, he was sure the number ones were important. Otherwise, why so many?

Adam was speaking and he focused back on the detective’s weary face. ‘Fine. It’s worth a try. When we go back to Charles Cross we’ll have a chat with our codebreakers to see what they’ve come up with.’

Dan stood and headed to the gents. ‘Excuse me. Back in a minute.’

Sarah intercepted him as he returned to the table. ‘Are you working on this blackmail case?’ she asked, pointing to the rack of newspapers by the bar. They were full of Freedman’s face. ‘It sounds awful.’

‘It is,’ replied Dan. ‘Really nasty. Excuse me if I can’t talk about it. It’s quite a sensitive one.’

She gave him that tired smile. ‘I understand.’

‘Thanks for squeezing us in and keeping the chef on though. It’s really kind of you and much appreciated.’

‘It’s no trouble at all. I like to keep my customers happy. They’ve always looked after me, unlike others I could mention. The government for example, with their endless taxes and regulations.’

Dan sensed Sarah wanted to talk again, and wondered how to escape without being rude. There was a dam of resentment and anger she needed to release. But all he wanted was some food and drink.

He saw Claire watching. She wasn’t usually the jealous kind, but she had been a little odd lately. He wondered what was bothering her. It couldn’t be second thoughts about living together, surely?

Dan blinked hard and pushed the thought away. He couldn’t face it. He knew exactly what effect it would have on him if it all went wrong with Claire. The swamp of his depression would return, and with all the putrid fury it had fermented in its banishment.

A buzzer sounded. ‘That’s your meals,’ said Sarah. ‘I’ll get them.’ Dan tried not to look relieved. ‘We can talk some more next time you’re in. It’s about time you did a story on how tough it is for the little person, with the government and everyone else on their case.’

Dan walked back to the table, reflecting that when so many people said talk to, what they actually meant was talk at. He’d known plenty who mistook a monologue for a conversation. He often thought that was one of the foundations for his success as a journalist. Interested or not, he could listen.

The food tasted fantastic and they tore into it. Even Claire, usually a gentle diner, ate quickly. Dan squeezed her knee under the table and she looked up from her plate and smiled. All was well.

Adam was wiping up the remnants of his tomatoes with a piece of bread when his mobile rang. He answered it, listened for a few seconds, then spoke.

‘We’ll be right there.’

He put the phone back into his jacket pocket. Dan and Claire looked on expectantly.

‘The codebreakers,’ Adam said, swallowing the last of the bread. ‘They’ve cracked Freedman’s riddle. Let’s go.’

Chapter Nine

T
HEY MARCHED BACK TO
Charles Cross, fighting the ballast of the dinners they’d only just finished. The city was rowdy with weekend revellers and they picked their way through the current of excitement as it flowed around them.

A party of policewomen in unfeasibly short skirts waved blow up truncheons at the passing traffic, attracting a cacophony of wolf whistles. Dan felt Claire’s eyes on him and made a point of not admiring the parade.

Adam got a cheer and round of applause from a group of young lads for wearing a suit, but he ignored it. Dan wondered if he’d even noticed. He was walking mechanically, his eyes unfocused with his thoughts. If they now had two of the five parts of the code, it could be an important breakthrough. They might even have enough information to find the Judgement Book.

He found himself wondering what it looked like and what secrets it held. So far they only knew about one, Freedman’s. What was Linda Cott’s? Her house had offered no hints, deliberately so he suspected. If she wouldn’t leave them the Worm’s note, she’d make certain there were no clues in her home as to what it was she’d done.

Just how many people were in this Judgement Book? Dan’s imagination threaded together a picture of a leather-bound, A4-sized address book. There was an index at the side with each letter of the alphabet. He saw himself open it at G. There was his own entry, lines and lines of neat black handwriting.

There was plenty of material to fill the page, and that in the last few days alone. Pushing a businessman to spend thousands of pounds on a painting because of some inside information Dan had overheard. Conniving with Adam to force the blackmailer case into the headlines. Lots more too, if he went back over the history of the cases he had worked on. Not exactly major crimes, but enough to destroy his career.

Adam could be in the Book too, the innocent lines of tidy writing describing the rape of his sister, Sarah, and how it had driven him to become a detective. A kind of legitimate vigilantism he called it. Some of the things he’d done to catch criminals were well short of being lawful and scrupulous. If they became known, his future as a police officer would be in doubt, to say the least.

The Book struck at an innate fear. Just as Adam had said, everyone had their guilty secrets. Dan vaguely recalled an experiment he’d once read about. A hundred men received anonymous phone calls, the unknown voice saying simply, “All is discovered. Flee! Flee!” Around 80 per cent had shown signs of preparing to run.

Cabs filled the roads, their amber taxi lamps speeding like rushing fireflies. Music pumped from a couple of pubs, mixed with shouts and laughter. The weather had remained kind, a duvet of low cloud keeping the city warm. The men who passed wore their best peacock shirts, the women tight dresses and cropped tops. Their newly bared flesh shone in the orange glow of the sodium streetlights.

Dan glanced at Claire, walking beside him. She was beautiful, her dark hair bobbing with the rhythm of her stride. She didn’t return the look, but winked at him from the corner of her eye. Dan couldn’t suppress a smile. She was a detective all right, and a good one. He couldn’t even sneak an admiring look without her spotting it.

Adam jogged up the steps into the police station and disappeared through the automatic doors. Dan exchanged looks with Claire and they hurried after him. They were both out of breath and glowing with sweat.

Michael Hunter and Eleanor Yabsley were sitting at a table in the MIR. She wore another of her flowing floral skirts, stretching yellow tulips curving up from the floor to her hips. Her lined face was as kindly as Dan recalled from when they’d met in the Evil Valley case. She was in her mid to late 50s, silvered hair, but with a soft and fine look and strikingly brown eyes. She floated up from the table and shook hands with them, her skirt slowly straightening itself in lapping waves. Michael hopped from the edge of the desk and did the same.

Dan still couldn’t help being surprised by how young he was. Not yet thirty, and already on the books of the National Crime Faculty as an expert codebreaker. He wore his uniform of white trainers, black jeans and a black T-shirt with AC/DC printed on the front. A Celtic tattoo snaked around his bicep, an intertwined grey-green band. His spiked hair looked a different shade of black from last year, a hint of purple tinting its peaks. He smiled continually, with a hint of nerves.

The pair always worked together. Dan knew the detectives thought of them as a classic mother and son relationship, but never said so. She, with her more advanced years and academic background, still an emeritus professor of mathematics, he with his extraordinary puzzle-solving talent, knowledge of computers and modern life. Their skills complemented each other perfectly.

‘Well, Eleanor,’ said Adam when the introductions were over. ‘What have you got for us?’

‘Michael found it,’ she said, smiling gently. ‘Although he cheated a little.’

The codebreaker coloured under their looks. ‘I did not cheat. I just enlisted some help. Using the best tools available is not cheating.’ He patted the keyboard of the laptop computer in front of him, as if it were an old dog who had been his companion for long years.

‘Enlighten us then, Michael,’ said Adam, rather impatiently.

The young man took the hint. ‘It was a fairly straightforward puzzle. Once you saw the key to it, that is.’

‘Which is?’ asked Adam.

‘It’s in the Worm’s letter.’ Michael pointed to a section he’d highlighted on his copy. The words were, “It’s a classic game.”

He looked at them and smiled knowingly. The blank stares he got in return prompted him to continue.

‘I missed it to start with,’ he said. ‘I tried to make it too complex. I was busy looking for acrostics, or anagrams or algorithms. It was much simpler than that. “It’s a classic game,” gives you the key. I thought initially those words referred to the blackmailer playing with their victim. That is a classic game, after all. But in fact that’s the way into the puzzle.’

Adam folded his arms. ‘Explain please,’ he said sharply.

‘OK. Look at the numbers.’

61, 43, 21, 51

‘And?’ said Adam, heavily.

‘There are a lot of ones. So I started to think about what classic games used numbers and contained plenty of ones.’ He looked at Dan, Claire, Adam in turn, clearly finding it difficult to believe they hadn’t got it. ‘Any thoughts?’

‘Battleships?’ asked Adam with a heavy slice of sarcasm.

‘No.’

‘I thought something to do with grid references,’ said Dan.

‘Nope,’ replied Michael. Dan noticed himself starting to feel annoyed too.

‘Scrabble,’ said Claire.

Michael looked at her and smiled, sounding relieved. ‘Correct. Scrabble.’

Adam frowned hard. ‘I’m sorry. You’re trying to tell us this blackmailer has set us a code in scrabble?’

‘That’s exactly what he’s done. It all adds up.’

The detective couldn’t keep the disbelief from his voice. ‘Sounds daft to me, but if you say so. OK then how do you read it?’

Michael picked up a pen. ‘In Scrabble, each letter has a score. The most common, like “a” and “e” only score one. The rarest, like “z” score 10. There are only a couple of letters that score 10. But there are quite a few which score one. So, to differentiate them, perhaps you’d label the first letter that scores one – a – as 11. The second – e – would be 21. The sixth to score one is “o”. So under this system, “o” would be coded as 61.

They stared at what Michael had written.

‘61,’ said Dan finally. ‘The first number in the sequence of the code.’

‘Yes,’ said Michael.

‘Spare us the rest of the lecture, please,’ grunted Adam, tetchily. ‘What’s the answer?’

‘61 is o, 43 is p, 21 is e and 51 is n.’

‘Open,’ said Claire. ‘The answer to the riddle is “open.”’

‘Yes,’ replied Michael, sitting back down on the edge of the desk.

There was a silence. ‘So,’ said Adam slowly. ‘We’ve got open and original. What does that mean? Open original? Original open? What does that mean? It doesn’t tell us anything. Not a bloody thing.’

No one replied. Adam stalked over to the window and stared out at the city. It was still alive with darting cabs and staggering revellers. Chinks and blocks of colour glowed from the shop windows. White floodlights illuminated Charles Church. The stark wash of cold white light made the ruin seem more hollow and lonely.

‘Not a bloody thing,’ said Adam again, slapping his palm on the window ledge in time with each word. ‘And here was I hoping for a breakthrough.’

Adam sent them home for the night. They had a short discussion about the code and what the answers they had could mean, but no one had any realistic ideas. Dan noticed they were becoming irritated with each other. It was getting on for midnight, and he could feel the weight of tiredness numbing his mind and body.

‘There’s nothing much else we can do tonight,’ Adam said. ‘We’ll need to start talking to Linda’s friends and going through all her personal stuff. We’ll have to put together a statement for the press as well. But the best thing we can do for now is get some rest. The first two blackmails have been close together. I don’t think we’ll have long to wait until the next one.’

In the car park, Dan and Claire had a quick chat. They slipped into a narrow gap between two police vans and she reached out to him for a cuddle.

‘I don’t want to sleep alone tonight,’ she said, her head pressed against his shoulder. ‘Not after what happened today with Linda. I know it’s late, but I wouldn’t mind sitting for an hour before we go to bed and having a chat, just to clear my mind.’

‘Sure. I’d like that that. Your place or mine?’

‘I’d prefer mine. I have to get some things ready for the morning.’

‘OK. I’ll have to go home first, see to Rutherford and get myself some clothes for the morning too. I’ll be at your place in half an hour.’

Rutherford was asleep when he got back to the flat. The dog looked dazed and his fur was sticking up on the side where he’d been lying. He managed a half-hearted bark.

‘Sorry to neglect you after our day out was cut short earlier, old friend,’ said Dan, cuddling him. ‘And I’ve got to go out again. Claire needs me tonight. I know you’ll understand. I’ll make it up to you next weekend, I promise. We’ll go for a good long walk on Dartmoor.’

Dan found some clean trousers and a shirt while Rutherford was in the garden. He sat on his bed to get some socks and pants out of a drawer, and felt a longing to lie back and close his eyes. They ached with tiredness. He forced himself to get up and splash some cold water on his face.

He drove back into the city and let himself into Claire’s flat. It was just after one o’clock. She was asleep on the sofa in the lounge, a blanket over her legs, her hands folded across her stomach. Her breathing was almost imperceptible, just butterflies of whispered air.

Dan quietly slipped into the bathroom and washed, then came back to check on her. Claire was still asleep. He put a hand on her shoulder and rocked her gently. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at him, recognition gathering in her waking mind.

She smiled. ‘Sorry. I must have fallen asleep. I was so tired.’

He helped her up and said, ‘Come on then, proper sleep time for you. I’ve set the alarm for just before eight.’ They got into bed and she lay back on the pillow.

‘Guess you don’t need that chat to clear your mind then,’ Dan said, cuddling in to her and stroking the hair behind her ears. ‘Was it anything specific you wanted to talk about, or just more Agas and toast?’

‘Something like that,’ she replied. ‘It can wait until tomorrow.’