Gilded Hate Machine Read online

  “No.”

  “No?” Got him.

  “Will, I want you to take your phone out and show me what you’ve videoed on it today.”

  “Nah mate, you need a warrant.”

  “Actually, I can arrest you and seize it.”

  “No, fuck off.”

  Will’s dad leapt in verbally. “Just play him the videos and he can go.”

  “I can’t Dad.”

  “What do you mean you…” the dad looked at Atkins and back at Will. “You better play me those videos right now.”

  Begrudgingly, the boy took the phone out, held it in front of him, and triggered a video. It was shaky and showed a group of girls walking. One was clearly Lucy Rawal, and the snide comments of the group could be heard, before the footage showed them shouting abuse, and then indeed throwing stones, right until the girls ran and the boys fell into hysterics.

  “I think we’ve seen enough video,” and before Will could do anything Atkins took the phone off him. “Will Lebb, I am arresting you for assault and harassment. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?”

  “Fuck you, and fuck them, they can all fuck off back home and leave it to us. I want a job, they can give me their fucking jobs and houses, right? The Patriot Party know the score.”

  Maybe, Atkins thought, you could try some graft if you wanted work. He didn’t say it out loud, defence lawyers tended to focus on stuff like that. It was a simple procedure to cuff Will and have him taken to the station, and Atkins was soon in contact with the officers he’d sent to speak to the other boys, until they were all in custody and the phone footage could be properly recorded.

  That was why, a few hours later, Atkins was sat in his car trying to kill time. The CPS would ring any moment and tell him the charges would be brought, as they surely would, but time was dragging on and he needed distracting. So, he was in his motor, with a nice mug of coffee and some football on his phone, a bet on whether the ref would award enough corners.

  When his phone did ring Atkins slammed his finger on receive and listened. A hello. A reviewed evidence. A decision. Such was his elation he cheered loud enough he could be heard outside the car, because all the youths were going to be charged with racial harassment and most with assault. Glorious success. He leaped out of the vehicle and walked into the building like a fighter going to his press conference. Grinning wide enough to show off teeth owing more to dentists than nature, he made sure to go to the Bunker, give a thumbs up at the window and mouth ‘got them’ as if anyone cared.

  He hoped they did. His ambition in life was to be part of the MCU, to work from their office aka the Bunker, to be involved in the serious stuff. Not that the MCU themselves would downgrade Lucy’s trauma, which was perhaps why they were already in it and Atkins was outside wanting to climb the ladder.

  Computer systems weren’t all good, of course. You would be amazed by how a company could invest in completely the wrong piece of software for a job, or get the right piece and then leave it in place for far longer than anyone had ever designed, and how much the public sector could act as a magnifying glass on the costs of these. But when they worked, they worked brilliantly, so Grayling and Maruma were able to cross reference the licence plate of the car they had spotted speeding on CCTV with the owner’s address and drive out to see them straight away.

  At first the pair thought they’d be pulling up in a new estate, but the sat nav took them past this and into fields, and then to the gates of a very large and very new house. Grayling pulled up, wound a window down and pressed a silver button beneath a grill.

  “I assume this calls the owner and doesn’t activate a self defence mechanism,” she said.

  “Rockets incoming,” Maruma replied.

  “Yes?” came a metallic voice.

  “I’m DC Grayling and I’d like to ask you a few questions please.”

  “Okay.” A pause. “Go on?”

  “I was hoping we could come in and do this actual face to face; we have driven out here.”

  “Oh yeah sorry,” and the gate hummed and opened. Grayling pulled up again, on a herringbone driveway, along which there was a long garage, doors all open, sports cars inside. The pair of detectives got out to greet a middle-aged man who’d come to meet them.

  “What’s this about?”

  “Are you Steven Hughes?”

  “Yes,” and he noticed Grayling looking him up and down. He wore a tracksuit and multiple gold chains.

  “Mr. Hughes, we have a red hatchback registered to this address. Can you confirm you are the owner?” she asked after reading out the registration number.

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s my sons, starter car.”

  “Right, and can we see it?” Grayling asked.

  “Why?”

  “We believe it was involved in an accident.”

  “Oh, that must have been after it was stolen.”

  Steven looked at the floor, then up at Grayling and Maruma.

  “Stolen?” she asked.

  “Yes. Last week.”

  “It’s not been called into the police as stolen.”

  “Yeah he’s not got around to it. Got a lot of work on; it didn’t cost much.”

  “I see,” Grayling gestured at the gated driveway. “It was stolen from here?”

  “Nah. Parked up elsewhere. Stolen a few days ago. Yeah. Anything else?” Grayling looked at the empty spot in the open garages. “It’s been nicked luv, I’m hardly gonna hide it on my own property am I.”

  “No, no that’s all, thanks,” and Grayling and Maruma got back into their car.

  “So, he’s lying,” Grayling noted.

  “Out of his arse. It’s the car we’re after all right. But it’s not here. He’s not that daft. But where is it?”

  Grayling started up the car and drove them out, but as she did Maruma pulled out his phone and dialled.

  “DC Green,” came the reply.

  “Hi Google,” Maruma replied, “we’re after the Hughes family. Rings a bell but I dunno why. Where would the Hughes family hide a car?”

  “Hughes? Like one ‘e’?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They own a farm.”

  A wooden door opened, and a young woman blinked in the light. She smelt of smoke and had just come from a dark room where she’d been gaming.

  “Hello there, I’m DC Grayling and I’d like to speak to the owner.”

  “Wha? Cops?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fucking hang on, I’ll get me uncle.”

  A short while later a heavy-set man of five-foot tall appeared and filled the doorway. In front of him he found four people.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “We’re detectives Grayling, Maruma, Lindleman and Sharma, and we would like to search your farm please.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. You need a warrant, right?”

  “If you refuse, we will go and fetch a warrant and return yes; well some of us will, two of us will stay and watch the only exit road for what happens.”

  “What you after anyway?”

  “We’re looking for a car.”

  “Loads of them. I don’t know what one you mean.”

  “Well, let us have a look then.”

  “No.”

  “Fair enough. DI Sharma, please go and get a warrant, this man is clearly guilty.”

  “How the fuck you think that?” the farmer asked.

  “Well the only reason you can have for not letting us look, is you know we’ll find it. Whereas, if you didn’t know…”

  “How long does a warrant take?”

  “Not long.”

  “Fuck it, go on, go around and look. Knock yerself out.”

  “Right, shall we split up?” Rob asked.

  “Never split up,” Sharma replied, “the killer will pick
you off one by one.”

  “Did someone watch the Horror Channel’s Halloween special?”

  “Yes Lindleman, they did. I was hooked.”

  “I don’t think there’s an axe murderer on the loose,” Grayling informed them.

  “Yeah, I mean, not to rain on anyone’s paranoia, but we could just go down that track with the freshly churned mud and light car tyre tracks to that barn?” Everyone looked at Maruma, to the barn, and then back again.

  “Who needs DNA when you’ve got rain.”

  They tramped off, got to the ramshackle wooden structure, ducked in through a door and found something under a large green tarpaulin. Lindleman pulled the tarpaulin away to reveal a red car with a matching number plate and a human sized dent in the bonnet.

  “Well,” Sharma said clapping her hands together. “You two arrest everyone at this farm and we’ll go and arrest everyone at the Hughes house. One thing left to do.”

  The room was small. It had a single wooden table flush against a wall, and two chairs on opposing sides of it. A teenage boy in the same sort of expensive tracksuit as his father sat next to a lawyer who’d chosen the more traditional suit, and opposite them sat Grayling and Maruma.

  “Everything you say will be recorded via audio and video,” Grayling explained as she cracked her knuckles.

  “Before we begin my client would like to make a statement,” the lawyer said.

  “Please go on.”

  “I discovered my car had been stolen the morning after staying at a friend’s house. I came out of his property, the car was gone, so he drove me home, where I slept. Having told my father that the car had been stolen, I had several errands to run in town. I have no knowledge of any accident that the car was later involved in. On my return home I discovered the vehicle on the road. My keys still worked, so I drove it and parked it at my uncle’s farm. I neglected to tell him it was there.”

  “That’s the statement?” Grayling asked.

  “Yes,” the boy said.

  “Okay, so, where were you at one pm on the day of the accident?”

  “On a bus into town. Or in town. On the way to town.”

  “And your car was stolen from…”

  “The address is on the statement,” the lawyer said.

  “And the car must have been stolen while you slept at that address?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, when did you find the car?”

  “About… six in the evening. On the way home.”

  “And can you tell us where?”

  “No, sorry, no, didn’t realise anyone had been hit, just pleased to have it back.”

  “Okay. So, we have CCTV footage of this car speeding away from the site of a failure-to-stop road traffic accident. The car was found in your uncle’s garage and we have had it examined, and the damage is what we would expect from what happened to the deceased.”

  Grayling looked at Maruma, and they both smiled as she pulled a sheet out of a folder. “So, here’s a thing. There is a CCTV camera positioned on a road that’s the shortest route between the site of the accident and your uncle’s farm. Shortly after the accident happened, but considerably earlier than the six o’clock you said you found the car, it was captured on CCTV, on that route. What’s interesting is that this isn’t some random person’s camera, but a fully operational police camera, and we have a clear image of the driver. Which, I think you’ll agree when you take a look at this photo, is you.”

  “Fuck.”

  “So, would you maybe, like to revise your statement?”

  “You know, I feel like the Smoking Monkey is like my second home,” Lindleman noted as he turned a corner and saw the restaurant.

  Grayling laughed, “what’s first, your married home or the one you grew up in?”

  “Obviously the one with my honey bear, never the family homes” Rob replied.

  Sharma raised an eyebrow, “what utter shitshow did your parents live in?”

  “The best thing about divorced parents is twice as many presents every year, and the worst is the years of self-hate and therapy,” Rob shot back, tongue firmly in cheek.

  “Self-hate and therapy, I feel that sums up a night in the Smoking Money,” Grayling finished by pushing the door open allowing the group of four to step inside.

  Maruma, at the back, had time to follow and step inside before the owner noticed them.

  “Oh no, not you,” he said. All four detectives grinned and waved at him. “I suppose you want your usual table?”

  “Yes please.”

  “It might be free,” he said begrudgingly.

  “There’s no one else in here chief.”

  “Okay sit down and I will get you a menu.”

  Rob laughed, “I think we know the menu off by heart now.”

  Grayling took the handful of tattered menus they were given and began to pass them out but noticed something. “F, f’ing F, there’s a sticker on the menu, there’s a new thing.”

  Everyone grabbed a menu and looked.

  Sharma read it out loud. “The meal for two, a two-person sharing platter drawn from our existing menu with new additions.”

  “Well rodger me, we’re gonna have to try this,” Lindleman said, turning to the owner. “Three meals for two please, and our usual drinks.”

  The owner looked back with disgust, “it is for two. There are four of you.”

  Rob just grinned and didn’t break his gaze. “I know.”

  “You want food for six people.”

  “Yes. Yes, we do.”

  “You fat pig pigs.”

  “It’s kind of marvellous that capitalism hasn’t got this far,” Maruma pondered, and “we’re in some strange nether world of just feudal annoyance.”

  “Why are you all not fat pigs?” the owner asked.

  “We run around a lot chasing criminals?” Sharma wondered.

  “We have all kept our childhood metabolisms?” Grayling added.

  “I haven’t eaten food all day and am about ready to pass out, but not in a kinky way,” Lindleman finished.

  “Well that’s lowered the tone.”

  “We have a new dessert too,” the owner informed them.

  “Oooh, what is it?” Grayling asked.

  “It is not dessert time,” the owner turned and walked away.

  Grayling giggled, “I should have been expecting that. I really should.”

  “Shall we see what the internet ratings are saying?” Sharma asked, getting her phone out.

  “Yes.”

  “Right, this was posted yesterday. It says ‘the rudest staff I have ever encountered, the Smoking Monkey were reluctant to serve us food and attempted to shame me for asking where the ingredients were sourced from. Called us cheap and ignorant. Five stars.”

  “A reviewer after our own heart.”

  “When you said you were taking me to a party, this wasn’t what I had in mind,” Karen sighed.

  “You hate parties,” Susan said, “the last time you went to a party you went into the host’s bathroom and stole all their medication, then came home and took them all.”

  “The tent fort and I had fun. Also, I am cured, mostly, and I was expecting something different to a load of middle-aged people, mostly men, standing in a cheap room.”

  “Hi” Susan said to the security guard, “I’m a reporter from the Morthern Star, and this is my photographer.”

  Security looked over to see a pale woman holding up a camera.

  “Good, come in, press to the right please.”

  They found themselves in a large, high-ceilinged room in the Morthern town hall.

  “What do you mean cheap?” Susan asked.

  “Oh, come on, this is a pale imitation of the real architecture, the whole thing screams ‘money saving’. Look at the mouldings, they’re so fuzzy edged.”

  “When did fuzzy become an architectural term?”

  “Language evolves,” Karen told her.

  “Well take your eyes off the ceiling
s, walls, lights…”

  “Cheap oil paintings of past mayors,”

  “And focus on getting some good shots, err, photos of the mayor.”

  “Can we not say shots?”

  “Probably best avoid it,” Susan noted.

  They walked to the centre of the room, surrounded by the great and the good of Morthern, or at least the part who supported the mayor.

  “Excuse me,” Susan said to a waiter who came up to them with a tray full of wine, “do you know who’s paying for this?”

  Dressed in a black suit and with dreadlocks tied out of the way, the waiter replied, “I’m a business studies student doing this for beer money, I can tell you the mayor’s office is funding this, which I thought odd.”

  “You are good,” Susan said to him as she took a glass.

  “We’re allowed to drink?” Karen asked.

  “Yes. When we know who’s paying for it, and this should be coming out of the mayor’s own campaign funds but isn’t. Not a massive problem, but this mayor is a little dodge. Camera up, camera up, man approaching!”

  One end of the hall had a little raised area built from barely covered wood, with a lectern that had clearly been bought at auction from a defunct church. Now a man emerged and stood behind it. Average height but he looked smaller due to his heavy frame and large beard, the mayor thought it made him look older and serious whereas it was actually more out of work children’s entertainer.

  “Hello everyone, thank you so much for coming,” he began in a reedy voice that ensured all his speeches were deliberately kept short.

  “I am here today to announce I will be running once more for Mayor of Morthern town. I have been privileged to serve two terms, and I wish to return for a third and ensure the completion of everything we have set in motion. I hope I have the votes of everyone in this room, and I endeavour to bring my message of social progress and financial caution to everyone in the town.”

  Karen leaned into Susan. “He’s a slimy fucker.”

  “Isn’t he just. Have more wine, turns out we’ve paid for it.”

  Grayling stepped into the Bunker and came to a hard stop. DC Green was writing on the Oxford Police Dictionary section of the office board.

  “What the F is Schrodinger’s Ice Cube?” she asked. Green started laughing. “Yes, very good, share the joke.”