The prime minister fidgeted. ‘All very interesting, but purely police matters as far as I can tell. Where is this leading?’ he asked frostily. ‘I deliver my end of conference speech in under an hour.’ He looked pointedly at his Rolex.
Andrea Makin was unfazed. Having managed to pull this meeting together by getting the Chief Constable of Lancashire to intervene directly with the prime minister and request it as a matter of urgency, she was not going to be hurried. ‘Please bear with me, sir,’ she said, equally frostily.
The timbre of her voice made him sit back.
‘I’ll fast forward it a little.’ She pressed the button, watching the counter click by, stopped it and pressed ‘play’.
Franklands was speaking again. He was in full flow and had a lot to get off his chest. This time the PM leaned forwards, elbows on the table, listening hard. His face dropped in shock.
FB’s face changed dramatically, too.
After ten minutes more, Makin stopped the tape, ejected the cassette and slotted it into its plastic box.
‘These are very serious allegations,’ the prime minister said gravely.
‘Which is why I wanted you to hear them, and no one else, for obvious reasons,’ Makin said.
‘Can they be substantiated in any way?’
Makin nodded. ‘As a result of what Franklands said to me, I arrested Vincent Bellamy and the other two implicated in the murder early this morning.’
Makin had taken a well-tooled-up arrest squad and raided the Berlin Hotel just after six that morning. Using a diagram of the hotel provided by Franklands, she and her teams quickly found the rooms of the suspects. She had gone for Bellamy. There had been no knocking — they had burst in unannounced, finding Bellamy, dressed as Adolf Hitler still, being fellated by the hotel receptionist with the tattoos on her breasts. Makin found that there were swastikas tattooed on her buttocks, too. The whole thing had been a sight to behold. .
She rid her mind of the montage and continued, ‘Once Bellamy realised he was being dropped in it big style, it didn’t take long for him to start running scared at first, and then to start boasting about his achievements for the people of Britain.’
‘And this is leading where?’ the PM cut in again.
Makin apologised. She was tired and rambling a bit. ‘I put to him the facts that Franklands had told me about Hellfire Dawn and its backers.’ She paused. ‘Incidentally there are two financial analysts already beginning to unravel accounts. . however, this is what Bellamy said.’ She dropped a new tape into the machine and pressed ‘play’.
‘We have been bank-rolled one hundred percent.’ Bellamy cackled on the tape. ‘A government minister has provided us with funds to finance our activities from his own resources — he is a multi-millionaire in his own right and believes in the work of Hellfire Dawn. He intends to change the face of British politics in response to the backlash across the country against the favouritism shown to blacks and ethnics. He intends to stamp out immigration and the ridiculous employment practices which ensure niggers and Pakis get jobs which rightfully belong to white folk. Where necessary we will drive them out of their homes, destroy their businesses. We will be his army. Hellfire Dawn will rule the streets — ’
Bellamy started ranting. Makin fast-forwarded the tape, commenting, ‘The guy is barking mad, of course, but very believable.’ She pressed play again. Bellamy now sounded proud. He was boasting.
‘Mastermind? Yes, I suppose so. I see the big picture. It was necessary to start a war of subtle attrition to support the overt war on the streets.’
‘Is that where David Gill came in?’ Makin asked on the tape.
‘A one-man killing machine, wound up, pointed in the right direction and set off. I gave him the targets and he struck — people who are part of the corrupt system which supports the injustice, people who had to be picked off one by one, anyone who helped the blacks, the women, whoever, anyone who had a hand in taking away the God-given rights of white men — ’
‘At which point my blood was boiling,’ Makin said
‘The piece de resistance was to dispose of the black wife of the prime minister, but Gill obviously got careless, got caught, killed himself — a pity.’
‘How did he intend to kill her?’
‘He had access to the Imperial Hotel. He was going to enter their bedroom suite and kill her — simple as that.’
‘And did this politician of yours know about this?’
‘And approved. Saw it as a way to step into the breach.’
‘Shit,’ said the prime minister.
Everyone looked quickly at him.
‘What is the name of this man again?’ Makin asked on tape.
There was a pause on tape long enough for Henry to zoom in on the prime minister’s reaction.
Vincent Bellamy named a name.
‘And this man,’ Makin cut in quickly, switching the tape off, ‘was one of the few who knew that there was an undercover police officer working in Hellfire Dawn. He knew because of his position in government, because he’s informed of all undercover police operations in the country. He must have passed that information on to Bellamy.’
The PM rose from the table. ‘It is apparent that I have been betrayed. Excuse me,’ he said. He ran across the restaurant, pushing his security men out of the way and dashed into the nearest male toilet where he was violently sick. He returned a few minutes later, after washing his face, and said to one of his guards, ‘I want to see Basil Kramer now.’
Epilogue
‘Hold my hand.’
Henry took the small, weak hand, squeezed it gently.
‘Now kiss me again. . but nothing sexual, you understand — I’m not up to that.’
He laid a soft kiss on her fragile lips.
Roscoe sat back. She tucked the blanket in under her knees. She and Henry were in the conservatory built onto the back of her house in Fulwood, near Preston. It was a week after the end of the conference. Roscoe had spent a couple of days in hospital after she had been found, now she was recuperating at home with the assistance of all the welfare support systems Lancashire Constabulary could offer, plus her husband who had stopped work indefinitely to care for her. She was being well looked after.
It had taken a full day for the search teams to find her in the Winter Gardens. The two night teams who had started the search had refused to go home and had continued searching when their day-shift colleagues came on.
It takes many weeks to search the Winter Gardens prior to a conference, so it was never going to be a doddle finding her, especially when every seal on every door, hatch, window, cupboard — whatever — had to be broken and everything searched again. To find her quickly would have been a matter of luck.
The Winter Gardens is an immense complex, much larger than most people imagine. It consists of theatres, ballrooms, play rooms, amusement arcades, bars, shop, plus an under-complex which the public never see which itself is a maze of corridors, passages and heating systems big enough for a grown man to walk through — the place was a nightmare.
As the teams got on with their job, Henry was baffled as to how Taylor had actually been able to get Roscoe smuggled into the place. Taylor himself could come and go at any time he got the opportunity, whether on or off duty, because he had kept hold of his official pass which he should have handed in after he had finished his pre-conference search duties. He could enter through the security checks with impunity, but how he had got Roscoe in was a puzzle which made Henry’s mind whirr and click.
But as Henry followed and chided the search teams — after he had showered and cleaned himself of the blood and gore from Captain Blackthorn’s eviscerated body — he thought he might have found the answer.