Instead of just standing there and enjoying the smell of the cool, damp night, he walked around the back of the building toward the big car park. Glancing around the corner, he saw Motcombe and the Leeds skin standing by Mot-combe’s black van talking. The car park was badly lit, so Craig found it easy enough to crouch down and scoot closer, hiding behind a rusty old Metro, watching them through the windows.
It didn’t take long to figure out that they were talking about money. As Craig watched, the Leeds skin handed Motcombe a fistful of notes. Motcombe took a box out of his van and opened it. Then he placed the bills inside. The skin said something Craig couldn’t catch, then they shook hands and he went back inside.
Motcombe stood for a moment glancing around, sniffing the air. Craig felt a twinge of fear, as if Motcombe had twitched his antenna, sensed a presence.
But it passed. Motcombe opened the box, took out a handful of notes and stuffed them in his inside pocket. Then he squared his shoulders and strutted back in to work the crowd again.
FIVE
I
“The Albion League,” said Gristhorpe in the Boardroom on Wednesday morning, his game leg resting on the polished oval table, thatch of gray hair uncombed. Banks, Hatchley and Susan Gay sat listening, cups of coffee steaming in front of them. “I’ve been on the phone to this bugger Crawley for about half an hour, but somehow I feel I know less than when I started. Know what I mean?”
Banks nodded. He’d spoken to people like that. Still, some had said the same thing about him, too.
“Anyway,” Gristhorpe went on, “they’re exactly what they sound like in their pamphlet – a neo-Nazi fringe group. Albion’s an old poetic name for the British Isles. You find it in Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser and lots of other poets. Anyway, according to Crawley, this lot took it from William Blake, who elevated Albion into some sort of mythical spirit of the race.”
“Is this Blake a Nazi, then, sir?” Sergeant Hatchley asked.
“No, Sergeant,” Gristhorpe answered patiently. “William Blake was an English poet. He lived from 1757 to 1827. You’d probably know him best as the bloke who wrote ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Tyger, Tyger!’”
“‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright’?” said Hatchley. “Aye, sir, I think we did that one at school.”
“Most likely you did.”
“And we sometimes used to sing the other one on the coach home after a rugby match. But isn’t Jerusalem in Israel, sir? Was this Blake Jewish, then?”
“Again, Sergeant, no. I’ll admit it sounds an ironic sort of symbol for a neo-Nazi organization. But, as I said, Blake liked to mythologize things. To him, Jerusalem was a sort of image of the ideal city, a spiritual city, a perfect society, if you like – of which London was a pale, fallen shadow – and he wanted to establish a new Jerusalem ‘in England’s green and pleasant land.’”
“Was he green, then, sir, one of them environmentalists?”
“No, he wasn’t.”
Banks could see Gristhorpe gritting his teeth in frustration. He felt like kicking Hatchley under the table, but he couldn’t reach. The sergeant was trying it on, of course, but Hatchley and Gristhorpe always seemed to misunderstand one another. You wouldn’t have thought they were both Yorkshiremen under the skin.
“Blake’s Albion was a powerful figure, ruler of this ideal kingdom,” Gristhorpe went on. “A figure of which even the heroes of the Arthurian legends were mere shadows.”
“How long have they been around?” Banks asked.
Gristhorpe turned to him, clearly with some relief. “About a year,” he said. “They started as a splinter group of the British National Party, which turned out to be too soft for them. And they think they’re a cut above Combat 18, who they regard as nowt but a bunch of thugs.”
“Well, they’re right on that count,” Banks said. “Who’s the grand Pooh-Bah?”
“Bloke called Neville Motcombe. Aged thirty-five. You’d think he’d be old enough to know better, wouldn’t you?”
“Any form?”
“One arrest for assaulting a police officer during a BNP rally years back, and another for receiving stolen goods.”
“Any connection with George Mahmood and his friends?” Banks asked.
Gristhorpe shook his head. “Other than the obvious, none.”
“Surely the Albion League isn’t based in Eastvale, sir?” Susan Gay asked.
Gristhorpe laughed. “No. That’s just where Jason Fox’s parents happen to live. Luck of the draw, as far as we’re concerned. Their headquarters are in Leeds – an old greengrocer’s shop in Holbeck – but they’ve got cells all over West Yorkshire, especially in places where there’s a high percentage of immigrants. As I said before, they’re not above using the yobs, but there’s also that element of a more intellectual appeal to disaffected white middle-class kids with chips on their shoulders – lads like Jason Fox, with a few bobs’ worth of brains and nobbut an a’porth of common sense.”
“How strong are they?” Banks asked.
“Hard to say. According to Crawley, there’s about fifteen cells, give or take a couple. One each in smaller places like Batley and Liversedge, but two or three in a larger city like Leeds. We don’t really know how many members in each cell, but as a rough estimate let’s say maybe eighty to a hundred members in all.”
“Not a lot, is it? Where does this Motcombe bloke live?”
“Pudsey, down by Fulneck way. Apparently he’s got a nice detached house there.”
Banks raised his eyebrows. “La-di-da. Any idea how they’re financed – apart from receiving stolen goods?”
“Crawley says he doesn’t know.”
“Do you believe him?”
Gristhorpe sniffed and scratched his hooked nose. “I smell politics in this one, Alan,” he said. “And when I smell politics I don’t believe anything I see or hear.”
“Do you want Jim and me to have a poke around in Leeds?” Banks asked.
“Just what I was thinking. You could pay the shop a visit, for a start. See if there’s anyone around. Clear it with Ken Blackstone first, make sure you’re not treading on anyone’s toes.”
Banks nodded. “What about Motcombe?”
Gristhorpe paused before answering. “I got the impression that Crawley didn’t want us bothering Mr. Motcombe,” he said slowly. “In fact, I think Crawley was only detailed to answer our request for information because they knew down there that we’d simply blunder ahead and find out anyway. The bull-in-a-china-shop approach. He was very vague indeed. And he asked us to proceed with caution.”
“So what do we do?”
A wicked grin creased Gristhorpe’s face. “Well,” he said, tugging his plump earlobe, “I’d pay him a visit, if I were you. Rattle his chain a bit. I mean, it’s not as if we’ve been officially warned off.”
Banks smiled. “Right.”
“One more thing before you all go. These letters at the bottom of the Albion League’s flyer.” Gristhorpe lifted the pamphlet from the table and pointed. “Http://www.alblgue.com./index.html. Now you all know I’m a bloody Luddite when it comes to computers, but even I know that’s a Web page address. Don’t ask me what a Web page looks like, mind you. Question is, can we do anything with it? Is it likely to get us anywhere? Susan?”
“It might do,” said Susan Gay. “Unfortunately, we don’t have access to the Internet over the station computers.”
“Oh. Why not?”
“I don’t know, sir. Just slow, I suppose. South Yorkshire’s even got their own Web page. And West Mercia.”
Gristhorpe frowned. “What do they do with them?”
Susan shrugged. “Put out information. Community relations. Crime stoppers. Chief constable’s opinion on the state of the county. That sort of thing. It’s an interface with the community.”