“Ah. Do tell”

“Prospective Deform councillor?”

“That’s him”

“Well, I traced his Bookface and Twix accounts, and then I redacted the identifying stuff, and took the results to our local experts for assessment. Um, Debbie and Marlene”

“What did they say?”

He didn’t actually turn pale, but his face clearly wanted to.

“Debbie, Marlene, aye? Obviously, they don’t know him, personally, but they recognised the type. Different words, but the same meaning: dangerous chaser. Marlene gave me a steer, and I found two more accounts, on two different trans hook-up sites”

“Next moves? I know you’ll have ideas, Jon”

“Yeah. I want to do some exploratory stuff with the admin on those dating sites, but I need an opener. He needs nicking first, and preferably charging. Nicking for Maddy, I mean. I ran the sites past Marlene, of course, and she is far from happy. Wanted to know if it was local, if she needed to warn anyone. I had to be a little… I had to lie, just a bit”

That was one of the hardest parts of the job, in my opinion. The urge to tell all to those on our side, those in the group being harmed, fought so hard against the absolute requirement to keep quiet until the bastard in question was suitably stitched up.

I ran the info past Sammy, and he face-palmed.

“Thise character references are just getting worse, Di. Anything come up with any of the crunchy links, such as Lodge membership, family in the local Force?”

“Not yet, but Jon’s still trawling”

“Good. I said this at the start, but this one has bent copper all over it. Like that Mersey View place”

“That bent sergeant? Yup. I really regret not being able to do a Cooper on that bastard”

“Most inconsiderate of him to snuff it before you could, I would say. Di?”

“Yes?”

“We can’t give that closure thing to everyone. It’s not a failing, not the fault of anyone on the team. It’s just the way things are. If we can’t do it for Mr Strachan, then nobody is to beat themselves up. Sadly, there’s always another case in the queue”

“I know. Still…”

He smiled this time, rather than grinned.

“I know, and I actually do have a collection of very heavy hints for our next major job. Not now, though: get this one weighed and paid before thinking about the one to follow.”

I did my best, but he was so right. I was someone who really couldn’t see such a case as a puzzle to solve without dwelling on its effects on the victims.

It was a week before Jon produced another little nugget, and it was a surprise in one way, because of Forbes’ ‘Freeman of the Land’ idiocy. Self-described FOTL are believers in any law being, in effect, a case of take it or leave it. They have some mangled phrase from the Magna Carta that speaks of something like ‘private conveyance’, and as a result they claim that motoring rules, such as speeding, vehicle emissions tax, parking restrictions and so on don’t apply to them. They are children in adult bodies screaming ‘Don’t wanna!’, and so their relationship with anyone in the police is unlikely to be a positive one. Why was there such reluctance to investigate Maddy’s death properly?

Jon’s little nugget had popped free from its coating of shit once he had done some serious social media digging, and it was rather like one of those Russian dolls. One account led to another, but each account also led to a widening array of ‘followers’ and ‘following’. Blake and Candice both volunteered to follow some of the links, but it was Jon himself that produced the key on some Reddit or whatever ‘substack’. I read the page description with disbelief.

“Sorry, people, but how the fuck do we end up with a sodding secret society in the police? I mean, we all know about funny handshakes, but this?”

Jon coughed,

“It’s ‘these’, Di. I have another group. This one’s run from outside the Job, but there are supposed to be serving coppers involved”

There was only one specific bit of common ground between the two groups, and that was virulent hatred of trans people. The sort of external body added in a load of other bigotries, but their core and original message was rabid transphobia. Jon showed me how one of the main people worked hand in hand with some extremely prominent far right people and groups, but I was beyond surprise, having gone from ‘are they linked to other hate groups?’ straight past ‘which ones?’ to ‘why aren’t they linked to this hate group?’

The answer to that one, of course, is usually explained by reference to Monty Python’s People’s Front of Judea and Judean People’s Front.

Splittists.

When the DNA was logged by the West Mids boys, we had our lab people compare it with what we’d got from Neil, and it gave us a match to one of the three strains present. We’d taken a sample from Neil for elimination, and the obvious assumption was that the second person out of the three detected must have been his poor dead wife, but number three was wearing a Barbour jacket and driving a cloned Range Rover. I took the results via Sammy to the Super, all neatly packaged by Ellen and Abby, and produced a very displeased piece of Brass.

“This is not good, Sammy. These… organisations. I believe we may need to do some house cleaning here, just in case. I will not have secret bloody societies in my Force! Um, the Chief Constable’s Force, but you take my point. How much has been shared outside your unit?”

Sammy looked at me to answer.

“Usual rules in play, sir. West Mids and North Yorks are aware of the cloning issue, and the Brummies in particular have guessed that there are other matters, but that’s as far as it goes”

“Good. Schtumm for now and…”

He took his glasses away to rub his eyes, then smiled wearily.

“There is more than enough here to convict Forbes, in my view, at least on the harassment front. That will be for Cheshire to lead on, as is the case with what I consider to be corruption. Before I send this over to them, did you manage to extract any actual names of serving officers?”

I nodded.

“What ranks, Diane?”

“Three Constables and, er, and an Inspector. Jon knows his way around the internet”

“Any of them in Traffic?”

“Two of the three PCs”

“Then we have an uplift to any action if they can be tied to the cloning in any way, and NO, Diane. This is a repeat of Evans and Pritchard, so no sympathy, Their actions were facultative”

“Sorry?”

“They made an active choice to be corrupt. I don’t care how they justify their odious beliefs, they made that choice knowing it was illegal. It goes with the Job, after all. Now, the other case I hinted at will be given to you next week. It is… what is that joke phrase your team uses for out of area jobs?”

“Oh, er, ‘Forn Parts’, sir”

“Ah, yes. This one will be extremely ‘forn’, if it goes ahead. There are some very delicate negotiations underway. Congratulations, by the way, for the package I am sending over to Chester. Your team never ceases to surprise me with what you are able to turn up. ‘Keep up the good work’ doesn’t even begin to cover things. I will be speaking to the Chief Constable on that issue later this week, and this is excellent ammunition”

So much of our work was like that. The days of local biker wars, of a dogfighter brandishing a rifle on a warehouse roof, they remained a hard but thankfully infrequent part of our work. After that first, awful, run of cases, we were now far more likely to be tasked to produce a package for someone else to do the hairy bits.

We still had to wade through shit and poison, though, in filtering the evidence, and more often than not we remained the interviewers of the cream of humanity. I settled down with the team over the next fortnight as we worked through our other cases, nothing at all coming either back from Cheshire or downstairs from Bev Williams.

At least the Evans building cases were pretty straightforward, the only variety in them coming from the odd case where the victim was stupid enough to admit paying cash to evade tax, or had a particularly interesting account of threatening behaviour. I didn’t get to hear any of them first hand, of course, due to that little bit of raping we had shared when I was sixteen, but as a manager I got to read the statements. Such a fulfilling role.

Far more interesting, to my surprise, was a luxury car exporter, because we actually had bills of lading for hundreds of cars sold and shipped to people abroad. The main problem with a rather lucrative business model was at the other end of the business, as the owners didn’t believe in paying list value for their stock of cars. They didn’t actually believe in paying anything, to be honest, so we were working on a long list of both thefts and robberies, the thefts being everything from simply driving off an unattended car, several times having been when the owner was in the till queue at a petrol station while the keys were still in the car, to burglaries aimed at lifting car keys. We were, as usual, covering them in historical order, so we hadn’t yet arrived at the days of special scanners from outside the owner’s house.

I had a wry smile each time I dug into a new theft file, as it brought to mind our dear friend Nigel, and his ‘two for one’ Range Rover. Several of the exported cars had left the country on cloned plates linked to similar legal vehicles.

Want to clone a plate for your car? Simply look for another of the same make, model, age and colour, note its licence plate number, and get some plates made up. Just remember not to copy a local plate, boys and girls. Even Nigel knew that one.

The fertiliser hit the rotating ventilation device three weeks after we had delivered our package for Cheshire, and it hit the news in a variety of forms.

The Heil and the Torygraph went with a ‘persecuted for their legally protected beliefs’ angle, both ignoring the small matter of colluding with a civilian to evade tolls and speeding penalties, plus loads of DARVO about needing to hide their beliefs because of ‘institutional capture by gender ideologues’, continued p94.

An equivalent angle was taken by a formerly reputable Sunday paper, which blamed it all on trans people insisting on continuing to breathe.

The BBC did mention the offences, but brought in a transphobe to give ‘balance’ to their report.

The Indy covered the crime/corruption part nicely, mentioned the transphobia in passing, and added a wonderfully funny associated piece on ‘Freemen of the Land’, with pictures of Nigel as illustration.

That, though, was what was reported on three ordinary coppers. What happened with the Inspector was of a different order.

There is a thing with police officers that they get done one way or the other in terms of sanctions, either disciplinary or the criminal route, because they are prone to lose more than a ‘civilian’ for a given offence. In everything but the most serious of offences, therefore, the penalty is one or the other. The coppers were dismissed for misconduct, but kept their pensions. The Inspector was charged with perverting the course of justice.

Bev gave me and Sammy that little nugget as Mr Sedgewick smiled almost as nastily as feral Sammy, who simply said “Privilege of rank, then”

Mr Sedgewick nodded.

“We wanted those three out ASAP. They’ve been booted for the secret society stuff, that’s all, but there is another case being built by our own intel, and that is related to ANPR. West Mids had put the clone on the system due to all the unpaid tolls. There is evidence of our former colleagues disregarding alerts issued by their in-vehicle terminals. Multiple times”

I gave Sammy a quick look before opening my mouth, and he nodded me to say my piece.

“Sir, well, I think it’s obvious that the chances of them encountering him on the road are pretty low. Prearranged meetings?”

“Yup. He lets them know when he’s off somewhere that might pick him up, so they arrange to follow him for a bit. Not that many traffic cars about these days, but seeing one already in place would put any others off”

“So the ANPR would be going ‘alert alert alert’ until he was out of their sight?’

“Or until they had both stopped so he could swap plates in plain sight”

Sedgewick sighed.

“They will be charged with that next week, and that should result in a custodial, plus a substantial financial hit to compensate the tolls people. They are not aware this is imminent. I do not feel there is a need for you to attend---er, sorry. That came out wrong, Diane. The corruption case will hit the Inspector as well, but her charge is directly related to Mrs Strachan’s case. Forbes will be arrested tomorrow, and it will be on charges of fraudulent evasion of tolls, a plethora of related motoring charges which will result in the seizure of his, what do you call them? Wankpanzer”

He suddenly grinned,

“Bevan told me, as well as the other term. ‘Yankpanzer’, I believe. As I was saying, our Freeman will be lifted tomorrow evening if he is at home, on those charges as well as one of criminal harassment, and the evidence you provided will be put to him as well as our soon to be former colleague. She will be asked why she made no mention of the voluminous evidence in the inquest into Mrs Strachan’s sad death”

He made a face, then continued, tone much harsher.

“The constables are idiots, Diane. Hateful bigots, of course, but I suspect that they are of a kind with others who simply feel a need to hate someone and seek an excuse to do so. Their version of perverting the course was in ignoring evidence, turning a blind eye to criminality. Our Inspector, on the other hand, actively suppressed evidence in a case that involved the death of an innocent woman. And yes: she is a personal friend of Forbes. Now…”

He leant forward, almost rubbing his hands with delight.

“We will be interviewing Forbes tomorrow at the earliest. You have a choice: you or Candice as second Officer. I don’t believe you are familiar with our HQ, but we have a similar set-up to that of Carlisle. This time, we can leave the sound on, so neither of you has to miss out on the amusement”

I won the coin toss with Candice.