Gilded Hate Machine Read online

  “Let’s find the bar,” Sharma said, realised she was inaudible, and made the international sign of getting a drink. Rob nodded and they headed off, but not before they saw Grayling’s face light up, the relaxation in her muscles and the hope in her face as she walked involuntarily towards the dancefloor.

  Sharma pointed at her and Maruma, mimed drink, and the message was conveyed; get her dancing, we’ll get you some drinkies. Maruma nodded, placed a single finger on Grayling’s elbow to say I’m here, and the two went down and started dancing. Within seconds Rebecca was moving to a beat she recognised thanks to years of cultural absorption.

  Sharma and Rob reached the bar. “I was expecting bigger queues,” she said, and Rob realised he was going to have to lip read this and did.

  “The place is a well-oiled machine. After Grayling mentioned it, I did a check-up: solidly run place, really nice.”

  “Not a single stabbing,” Sharma said in the sort of bleak humour the emergency services were famous for.

  Rob laughed, “I didn’t say that did I!”

  Sharma got to the bar first and ordered their standard four sets of drinks, then ordered a pair of double vodkas. She pointed at them, then pointed at her and Lindleman.

  “On it, boss,” Rob replied, and they slammed them together and went in search of their colleagues.

  It was quiet. Not that either of the four could tell, because they all had a ringing in their ears. A loud, glorious ringing. The club had closed for the evening, but their night had not.

  “Has anyone been in this café before?” Sharma asked of the place they’d found which was still open and griddling food.

  “No, but I’m looking its hygiene certificate up,” Grayling said, typing on her phone.

  “Yes, yes of course you are,” Sharma replied.

  “Good news, it’s got four stars.”

  Rob wanted to reply ‘how’ but instead got in the queue and said “it is three am and we need sustenance. Us brave hunters have killed the mammoth and now we get to eat. So, what do we fancy on the menu?”

  Grayling laughed. “They have a sharing platter. Get two.”

  “Maybe three. So,” Rob said turning to the group, “did we all have fun? Did we all have lots of fun celebrating Inspector Sharma’s birthday, the number of which was inscribed on rocks and hidden in the pyramids until someone evil found them. You first birthday girl.”

  All eyes were on Sharma. “Actually, without you lot I’d have stayed in, drunk wine and watched shitty movies, but I did have a really good time, thank you. Even you, who came dressed as a fucking cartoon character.”

  “Now that’s a childhood memory I would pay to have,” Rob replied. “And you two?”

  “I loved it,” Grayling said, “I’ll be adding disco to my playlists, and we will be returning to this club. It was fantastic!”

  “And you?”

  “It was interesting,” Maruma replied. “Very interesting.”

  “Yeah, I’ll take that from you. In a good way. A job well done then?”

  “Thank you, Rob,” they all replied. He grinned, and his moustache twitched.

  “What are we doing here?” Karen asked as she and Susan approached a small village hall.

  “Well, do you want the long answer or the short answer?”

  “Long,” Karen sighed, looking at the dilapidated structure which can’t have looked good when it was built in the seventies. Now it was just a total bomb site. “We have nothing else to do today except follow that mayor.”

  “Well, a press release went out from someone called St. George Stevens, of the Patriot Party, calling the press to a, err, press conference, and someone from the Star was assigned to that, but when I was talking to Grayling she said I should go, so here we are.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen them on Facebook. All the time, people are always liking their shit.”

  “In a good way?”

  “No, but they’re popular. Not my sort of thing to be honest.”

  The two women entered the hall and found a large group of…

  “Lots of journos here,” Karen noted.

  “Nah, bet it’s an act,” Susan replied. “Some journos and a lot of paid bodies.”

  “Ah. That’s clever.”

  “And surprisingly common. What they then do is increase the numbers even further in reports by simply lying.”

  They took a seat and waited to be bored. They were going to be starkly disappointed.

  A few minutes later, two large hunks of male flesh walked onto the stage either side of a microphone, and then the sound of the national anthem could be heard from speakers, at which point a blonde man in a smart blue suit walked out onto the stage.

  “Hello England!” George Stevens called out. “I am here today in a suit. Why am I in a suit? Because that’s what politicians have to wear and today, I am announcing something. Today I am announcing my official candidature for the Mayor of Morthern.” Susan and Karen’s backs shot upright. “I’m not a suit person, but I will play their game to take over their game. I will stand as leader of the Patriot Party and I will campaign to be mayor. I stand on a platform of securing housing for our young, nurses for our hospitals, of clearing the streets of danger, of putting paedophiles in prison and making sure there are no parts of the county we cannot go without fearing for our safety. I, George Stevens, St. George Stevens, will be your next mayor!” He stopped, and half the room erupted in loud cheers, which soon turned into a chant of Saint Georgy, Saint Georgy! “I hope I can count on all your votes. I will not be afraid of engaging with people on the streets, I will be in the debates, at the hustings, I will be up there with the elites and taking them to task, pressing them on their faults, I will put their feet in the fire then I will take over. I will bring Morthern back to the working classes!”

  Karen and Susan turned and looked at each other and mouthed “what the fuck? What the shuddering fuck?”

  “This is going to go well,” Susan said.

  “He might not be upset,” Karen tried, “he might find it funny. I mean, some numpty on the web starts a mayoral campaign, lots of people try that shit all the time.”

  Susan slapped the steering wheel to get herself hyped up, and said “we roll,” before they went into the office. A power wave to reception, a dusting of the hand over the monitor, nods to her colleagues and then they were at Stremp’s office. They turned to look behind them and saw everyone ‘meerkatting’, the Oxford English Dictionaries definition of everyone peering up from above their monitors to see what happened. Or it would be in a few years surely.

  She knocked and waited. “On the phone,” came a shout so loud reception could hear it.

  “What’s the plan of action?” Karen asked.

  “Honesty. I think he respects honesty.”

  “I think he respects you,” Karen pointed out.

  “Nah, he doesn’t like anyone.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “Hmm.”

  “In!” Stremp shouted. “Now!” Karen and Susan went inside and stood opposite his desk.

  “You look like one of my kids!” the editor declared.

  Susan’s eyes widened, “what?”

  “Excited that they know something I don’t!” A pause. “But you have a look that says you’re surprised I have children.”

  “Well-adjusted ones!” Susan replied.

  Stremp looked at Susan with all of his ferocious analysis and then nodded. “They are all overachievers in their fields.” Susan wanted to know what fields, but he went on. “I will tell you what I tell them. I hate secrets from me. I love secrets from other people. Tell.”

  “Okay, so, it’s not a secret, it’s just news that hasn’t arrived yet. But… there’s a new candidate in the race for Mayor of Morthern.”

  “Ah, some tree hugging nobody I’m sure. The kind who wants roads for hedgehogs.”

  “Firstly, I like hedgehogs, secondly… it’s George Stevens, aka, Rupert Hume, of the self-declared
Patriot Party.”

  “Rupert!” the editor said spitting widely as he stood in surprise.

  “Yes. He had a press conference today and luckily we sniffed it out and were present.”

  “Fucking hell. Fuck in hell. Rupert Hume is going to stand for it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Susan hadn’t been expecting the editor to turn an actual worried shade of red. “We have to react.” He said sternly “This is a problem.”

  “It is? Isn’t he a joker?”

  Stremp looked at Susan with the most honest look he’d ever given. “I am a candidate of the old world, the print press. Hume is a savvy operator in the new world, the internet. I do not take his candidacy lightly. Which is why you will also cover him for me.” It was clear Stremp hadn’t anticipated this and was worried about what it meant.

  “Is that… a compliment?”

  “It will be after I get elected.”

  “Fair dos. Do we get any more money?”

  “Fuck off now and get working.”

  “Also, fair dos.”

  “Did you watch that documentary last night?” asked one of the men on reception.

  “No,” replied the other receptionist, who was looking down at his newspaper.

  “It was good, really good,” said the first man, bored to tears.

  “Alright, alright, I’ll ask, what was it about?”

  “It was about the police in Newcastle.”

  The paper was folded up and put down to make a point. “You work for the Morthern police, but you went home and spent your precious free time watching a documentary about… the police.”

  “Yeah, you make it sound silly.”

  “Because it is silly. It’s not even the police in Africa, or America or something. You watched the police in the same country.”

  “Yeah but it was interesting.”

  “Oh yeah of course it was, so tell me, what crime did they have that we don’t have here?”

  “What?”

  “What fascinating thing happened on it we haven’t already bumped into and handled well ourselves…”

  “Erm…”

  “Anything?”

  “No, no I got nothing. But it was…”

  “Busman’s holiday.”

  “Now what are you saying?”

  “Wasting your free time on the same thing you work on. Busman’s holiday.”

  “Wasn’t that a game show?”

  “Excuse me,” said a new voice as the door to reception opened.

  The reception staff turned and saw a mismatched pair coming in. One was an old woman, perhaps seventy, hunched over, and another was a man of around twenty-five.

  “How can we help you?” both men on reception said in unison.

  “We,” said the man.

  “Are representatives,” said the woman.

  “Of the Morthern Media Watch.”

  “Great,” a receptionist said writing this down, “and forgive me for asking, but what is that?”

  “We monitor the media to guard against immoral and criminal activity,” said the voice of the older generation.

  “Toxicity and hate,” said the younger one.

  “Television, newsprint, radio.”

  “Social media too of course. Gotta check those tweets.”

  “And,” the elder said, “outside events. In this case outside events.”

  “Right, I see, so what are you in for today?”

  Both visitors pulled themselves upright. “We wish to make an official complaint about St. George Stevens of the Patriot Party and the hate filled language he has been using recently.” The words came out with a sense of moral certainty that was also found in criminals.

  A pen started to write this down and a question was asked “an official complaint of hate crime?”

  “Yes.”

  Now the receptionist turned his head to his fellow. “St. George Stevens?”

  “Yes,” the complainers said in unison. “About his recent rally.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking,” one receptionist said.

  “Aye I am,” the other receptionist picked up a phone and dialled. “Hello, is that Detective Constable Grayling? Yes? Well good news for you, it is very much your lucky day. I’d get down to reception as soon as you can. Bring snacks.”

  He turned to the complainants. “I have just summoned the most senior people currently working on hate crime, they will take your complaint in full detail.”

  “That’s very kind of you!”

  DCI Wick looked at his computer screen and realised it was time for a break because he’d just reread the same sentence five times and still couldn’t tell you what it said. He went to stand up, when he heard a knock on his door and two people, a male and a female, in unison half singing ‘Oh Chief.”

  Wick opened the door and did indeed find Maruma and Grayling stood there. “You two look like you’re posing on Drag Race,” he said.

  “How do you know what Drag Race is?” Grayling asked with genuine interest.

  “Green’s been telling me all about it.”

  “Yeah, that figures,” Grayling replied.

  “What are you knocking me up for?” he asked.

  “Word of advice chief, don’t use that phrase for banging on your door, but… we have something to show you.”

  “Advice noted. What is it?”

  Grayling grinned and waved a sheet of paper. “A group of concerned local citizens have just issued an official complaint about St. George, and you know what that means…”

  “Our hate crime unit will deal with a hate crime complaint, which means Atkins.”

  “Oh.”

  “Only joking, look into it, if only for the fact you’ve done the ground-work and you’ll be saving us all time.”

  “Awesome.”

  “But!”

  “But?” Grayling checked.

  “You are only investigating the complaint. You are not going full on at this.”

  “Okay sir, point taken, we’ll keep it focused,” which they all knew meant they would not keep this focused in any way.

  The pair walked back into the office and sat at their desk. “So, the parameters,” Maruma started.

  “The complaint relates to the speech we briefly attended. So, we know there was a mob and he did say something. Morthern Media Watch have provided us with a video recording and a written transcript, so we will work off those. Obviously, the video will go to forensics so we can see if it’s been overdubbed or anything, but for now… we go over the speech and break it down, see what we can find.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Lindleman walked into the Bunker, stopped and looked at the white board. “So… what the fuck are you two doing?”

  Grayling and Maruma came over, pens in hand. “Hello, we’re examining a speech someone made.”

  “Oh, right, cos I thought we were gonna have to call in HR and sort this shizzle.”

  Maruma grinned, “it’s not just us then, this looks racist right?”

  Rob nodded. “It’s a list of words including immigrant, benefits, paedophile, eastern Europeans, no-go zones, national language… yeah when lined up like this it’s a pizza of racism. So, who said all this shit? That St. George guy?”

  “Yes, yes he did. And here’s the thing,” Maruma went and drew a perfectly straight vertical line on the board. “That is the legal line to the right of which is racist language we can prosecute, and to the left is racist language you can get away with. Now, here is where George is in relation to that line.”

  There was a pause, before Lindleman noted “you haven’t moved.”

  “It’s literally the same line. Grayling and I have been into this with a fine comb and other clichés, and we can’t find a damn thing to charge him for. It’s clever, so, so clever really, he’s walked exactly the right path to be as corrupting as possible but get away with it.”

  “Wow, shit always gets real when the intelligent racist turns up like a fucking satanic
unicorn.”

  “Exactly. And now he’s standing to be mayor.”

  Lindleman almost dropped his coffee. “He’s doing what? That’s mental! Still there’s one thing you can do.”

  “Oh yes there is, and we’ll be doing it.”

  Maruma and Grayling were sat in their stationary car. Both had their phones out looking at things, while making sure to look at all the traffic which passed. “You know our plan was to wait for George/Hume outside his house, then unsettle him when he arrived home by asking him some questions.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well he’s parked up and is walking towards our car with his bodyguards.”

  Grayling looked up as the sunlight darkened and three men stood outside. Two large ones, and the newly suited Hume. But the constable wasn’t fazed, and she wound her window down and let them look in.

  “You’re parked outside my house,” Hume said acidly.

  “I’m Detective Constable Grayling and this is Constable Maruma, and we were waiting for you to return home so we could speak to you.”

  “You have a card or something?” he asked. When Grayling waved it at him, he smiled. “Well you can’t be too careful. I get plenty of threats from left-wing lunatics, perhaps you should ring to say you were coming.”

  “Shall we go in and have a chat then?” Grayling asked.

  “No. I won’t talk to the police without my lawyers. And don’t give me any nonsense about how guilty that makes me look, you must be aware every good lawyer says even perfectly innocent people shouldn’t talk to the police without expert help because their words can and will be twisted round. So, you either arrest me and I call my lawyer, and then we talk, or you go on your merry way.”

  “You want to be arrested?” Grayling asked.

  “A harassment angle would help my campaign greatly. I am entirely confidant I haven’t said or done anything which would let you win a case so… up to you.”

  Hume turned and walked away, the bodyguards following like dogs.

  “We could arrest him,” Maruma said out loud.

  “He’s right,” Grayling said sadly, “we concluded we can’t find anything in that speech. We’d be better off waiting until we have a better shot. As annoying as this is. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll choke to death on a nut or something.”