The Judgement Book (14 page)

Chapter Fourteen

A
WONDERFUL WASH OF
warm relief enveloped Dan as he walked into the MIR. Claire smiled to see him, and it was genuine. His chest lost its tightness and he could breathe again. He smiled back, tried not to make it too pathetically delighted, and felt a sudden ache behind his eyes. Tonight they would cuddle up together at her flat and talk about the new house. If she wanted an Aga, she would get it, no matter what it took. She deserved it.

Adam sat on the edge of a desk, Claire stood next to him. Michael was leaning against the windows at the back of the room, looking down at the passing traffic. He turned and gave Dan his nervous smile. Eleanor stood at the front, by the green boards. She looked like a teacher about to give a lecture, and played the part.

‘Settle down please class,’ she said with her gentle smile. ‘Now, I haven’t said that for a few years.’

Dan quickly perched on the edge of a desk next to Adam. He could feel the anticipation in the room. On the table beside Eleanor was a pile of Sunday newspapers.

‘This code wasn’t too tricky to break,’ she said. ‘And I’m suspicious that was deliberate. In fact, perhaps there’s even a pattern emerging.’

‘Like what?’ Claire asked.

‘That first code, Freedman’s, it was a tough one to crack. I wonder if it was designed that way, so he couldn’t solve it. The second one, Linda’s, was probably easier, as she cracked it. This one wasn’t difficult either.’

‘And why would the Worm do that?’

‘Perhaps because of meaning what they say about giving people a chance to crack the codes and save themselves. So the Worm needed Freedman to fail, to justify exposing him. And with that, came all the publicity to start off the game. For the Worm, it was like the official and spectacular launch, if you like.’

‘But the next two codes?’

‘Easier because they don’t matter so much. The game is underway. You know five notes are coming. You’re working against the clock. The media interest is building. The pressure on you is growing.’

Claire smoothed a lock of hair behind her ear. ‘Which would answer a question that’s been bothering me. Why set the codes at all? So it has to be a taunt. Aimed at us, the police, as a figurehead for the “authorities” the Worm’s hitting out at.’

Eleanor smiled again, her face softly lined with a grandmother’s wisdom. ‘That would be my guess. But I’m straying outside my specialism here. That’s a matter for you, and Adam.’

He nodded thoughtfully, looked more relaxed than earlier. His face had lost some of its tautness, but his voice was hoarse and he sounded tired as he said, ‘All thoughts welcome. So, come on then, Eleanor, tell us about the code.’

She picked up a couple of the papers. ‘It was the misspelling of “tel” that gave it away. I immediately thought our blackmailer wouldn’t make a mistake like that. So, look at the sentence.’

Eleanor pointed to it, highlighted in Osmond’s note on the board behind her. ‘Why would “Now tel me” have special significance on a Sunday?’

The room was quiet as they all stared at the words.

‘Newspapers,’ said Dan slowly. ‘Now means News of the World. Tel means Telegraph. M and E mean Mail and Express.’

‘Or Mirror and Express,’ said Eleanor. ‘But you’re right, yes, it did turn out to be the Mail. The words all refer to Sunday newspapers.’

‘Clever,’ said Dan. ‘Simple, but clever.’

‘So what about the numbers?’ asked Claire. ‘What do they mean?’

Eleanor picked up a copy of the News of the World. ‘That was what took me a little while. I wasn’t quite sure and it needed a bit of experimenting.’

Dan silently cursed himself for being so slow. He should have seen that code, he thought. But then, he had been rather preoccupied with other things. Covering the story, managing the media for Adam and worrying about Claire. He glanced at her, and she winked from the corner of her eye.

The sun shone in his sky. Life was feeling so very much better.

‘Take the first number, 1112,’ continued Eleanor. ‘I think each of the blocks of figures refers to one of the newspapers the blackmailer’s given us. So we’re looking for four words, one from the News of the World, one from the Telegraph, one from the Mail and one from the Express. The numbers give us the location of the word we want within the paper they refer to.’

‘Blimey,’ grumbled Adam. ‘How?’

Eleanor smiled indulgently, a classic teacher’s look for a struggling pupil.

‘Take 1112,’ she said. ‘It means go to the News of the World, page one, column one, line one, word number two.’

She held up the paper to show them and traced her finger along the front page, past the screaming “Three-in-a-Bed Sex Shocker” headline about some snooker player Dan had never heard of.

‘Column one, line one, word number two, and you get the word “the”’.

‘The?’ repeated Adam dubiously.

‘Yes,’ Eleanor replied. ‘Bear with me. That’s only the first part of the answer.’

Adam drew in a heavy breath. ‘Well, I’m glad we’ve got you here to solve these things for us. I would never have cracked it. But as time is pressing, rather than taking us through the other words would you mind putting us out of our misery and just telling us the answer?’

Eleanor tutted. ‘That goes against my teacher’s principles. I should make you work through the other numbers to show me you understand. But as you asked so nicely, when you do all that the code reads, “the answer is memorial”’.

There was a silence. ‘Memorial?’ said Adam, finally. Dan couldn’t tell if his voice was more full of disbelief or scorn, but there was certainly plenty of both.

‘Yes,’ replied Eleanor calmly. ‘Memorial is your answer for part three of the Worm’s riddle.’

Adam stood up from his desk and walked over to the green boards.

‘Memorial,’ he said again. ‘So put that together with the other clues and we’ve got “Open original memorial”, plus two missing words to come.’

He folded his arms and stared at them. “Open original memorial.” How the hell does that help us?’

The expression on each face made it clear that was exactly what they were all thinking.

The damage wasn’t serious, but it looked impressive. The image on the TV screen steadied and focused on a window, a fist-sized hole in its centre, a radial pattern of jagged cracks spreading from the wound. The camera panned quickly to the next window. It had suffered a similar assault. Shards of glass littered the patio surrounding a couple of half bricks, the missile of choice.

The front of the old Victorian building had been a proud white, but was now daubed with sprays of royal blue paint. The black wooden door had taken a splash of streaks of blue too, but the mainstay of the pot had been reserved for the brass name plaque. The legend “Plymouth Traditionalist Association” was barely discernible through the repeated attacks of the flying paint.

Adam stopped the DVD player. ‘Recorded earlier by the bobbies who were called. They found Yvonne Freedman waiting outside to be arrested. She’s down in the cells. Let’s go have a chat.’

They followed him down the stairs to the basement. Dan was so tired he had to concentrate on each step. He noticed Claire was holding the banister carefully. She must be struggling too, particularly if she wasn’t feeling well.

At the thick black metal bars which marked the entrance to the cells complex, Adam paused. ‘Claire, will you take the lead on this please? I think she responded better to you the last time we spoke.’

Yvonne Freedman was sitting on the edge of a thin blue plastic mattress covering a hard, metal shelf which passed for a bed. She looked up expressionless as they walked in. It couldn’t have been often the custody suite hosted such an unlikely criminal. She was still dressed smartly in the outfit of widowhood, a white blouse, black jacket, knee-length black skirt, and black shoes.

The cells were cold, but she didn’t seem to have noticed. Her expression was vague, as though her focus was inside herself, the world around merely of passing interest.

Dan and Adam stayed standing in the cell doorway, Claire sat beside her, said gently, ‘Hello again, Mrs Freedman.’

She didn’t reply, just stared straight ahead at the whitewashed brick wall, her hands in her lap.

‘How are you feeling?’ Claire asked. ‘How’s Alex?’

Again no reply. ‘How are you coping?’

Still no response. Claire and Adam exchanged looks. ‘Why did you do it, Yvonne?’ Claire persisted. ‘Why attack the building? Was it because of Will?’

Now her head slowly turned and she muttered something they couldn’t catch.

Adam took a step forwards. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Freedman. I didn’t hear that?’

She looked up at him, her eyes widening. For a few seconds there was silence, then the shock of her voice, sharp and strong.

‘I said, because they took my husband away! Because they turned him into someone who could only think about their damned party and his bloody self and not his family. Someone who could go off with some teenage tart! And then take the bloody coward’s way out. Now charge me. Charge me and I’ll go to court and tell the world what these people are like.’

The venomous words echoed from the hard brick walls. From the cell opposite came a couple of drunken cheers and the sound of arrhythmic applause.

Claire reached out an arm, placed it around Yvonne’s shoulders. She initially resisted, tried to shrug it off, pull away, then collapsed into Claire’s shoulder and began a muffled sobbing.

Adam sighed, folded his arms. ‘There won’t be any trial, Mrs Freedman,’ he said gently. ‘There won’t even be any charges. The Traditionalists don’t want to take the matter further. You’re free to go, but please, no more of this. It doesn’t do anyone any good. I’ll get someone to drive you home.’

She looked up at him through tear-soaked eyes, swallowed hard and gasped, ‘No charges?’

Adam shook his head. ‘No.’

Yvonne Freedman struggled to catch her breath and her face darkened into a scowl. ‘Then I’ll find some other way … some way to tell people what they’re really like. I’ll get them somehow.’

Dan felt a dense, smothering fatigue overwhelm him when they got back to Claire’s flat. He’d been fighting it all day, but now it had grown into an irresistible force. In the half-light of the stairwell, he briefly closed his eyes and the memory of chasing the joyriders and that knife lunging at Adam’s chest flashed back into his mind. He shuddered.

He could see Claire was exhausted too. She slung her jacket untidily over the back of a chair, slipped off her shoes and put her feet up on the coffee table. She lay back, rested her head on a cushion and cupped her hands over her stomach. Dan made them both a cup of tea and looked for a take-away menu in the kitchen drawers. Neither of them would be up to cooking tonight. He wondered if he was too tired even to eat.

Her Art Deco mantelpiece clock said it was just past eight. After seeing Yvonne Freedman, they’d spent a couple of hours at Charles Cross working on the parts of the code they’d cracked, but made no progress. Open original memorial – what memorial? Where? And why original? Were there two? Or more? They’d started to get irritable with each other and Adam had sent them home for the night, telling them to get a good sleep so they could start again early tomorrow.

Then, they would talk to Julia Francis, the solicitor who represented Linda and Osmond. Dan had met her before, back when he’d first worked with Adam. She had a ferocious reputation and had already made it clear they shouldn’t expect much help. But the detective had insisted on seeing her. Dan got the feeling he was looking forward to another confrontation. He was in a bloody mood.

A mix of harsh streetlight and the gentle glow of the dusk seeped through the windows.

Dan closed the curtains. It felt time to shut out the world.

Claire opened her eyes. ‘Don’t worry about food for a minute,’ she said. ‘Come and sit with me.’

Dan did, cuddled into her on the sofa. She wrapped herself around him. Claire looked flushed. She was sweating a little and wiped a frond of hair from her face.

‘You OK?’ he asked. ‘You look hot. Is your stomach bothering you again?’

‘Kind of,’ she replied, closing her eyes and lying back.

‘Shall I give it a rub for you?’

‘No, probably not a good idea. It’s growing more and more sensitive each day.’

Dan nodded understandingly. ‘Sure. I know what it’s like when you’ve got a bad stomach. You don’t want anyone near it. It’s a horrible feeling. Maybe Adam was right. Perhaps you should see a doctor. It’s been going on for a while.’

‘I am going to see a doctor. But I thought I’d talk to you first.’

Claire reached up and cuddled into his neck. She said something he couldn’t catch.

‘Sorry, what was that?’

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘It was nothing.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yes.’

Dan struggled up from the sofa. ‘Well, I’d better start seeing about some food before it gets too late to eat. I thought we might get a take-away delivered.’ He walked over to the kitchen and opened a couple of cupboards.

‘Where do you keep your take-away menus?’ he said, over his shoulder. ‘I can’t find them anywhere.’

There was no reply. He rummaged on, still without success. When he looked back at Claire he stopped, stricken. She was crying, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. Her chest shook and she sobbed gently, the noise rising until she began gasping and coughing.

‘Claire, what is it?’ He strode back over to her. ‘Claire? What’s the matter? What is it? Claire!’

Her face was soaked with tears, crumpled in deep, miserable lines. He held her tight, tried to make her talk to him.

‘Claire? Claire! What is it? What’s the matter? Claire! Is it your stomach hurting you?’

She grabbed some tissues from the coffee table and dabbed at her face, tried to breathe deeply to calm the sobbing.

‘Yes,’ she managed finally. ‘Yes, it is my stomach.’ She took both his hands in hers and looked into his eyes. ‘It’s my stomach. There’s something I have to tell you.’

‘Shit!’ he gasped. ‘Oh no – you’re not saying …’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh shit! I can see it now – how did I miss it …’