Chapter 20
Lauren and Fraser arrive at work to find a ‘Congratulations!’ banner suspended from the ceiling tiles.
‘Surprise!’ Bahnaz pulls the string on a party popper. Nothing happens. ‘Oh, crap. It’s left over from my thirtieth – it must have got damp.’ She looks around. ‘Who’s got the confetti?’
‘What’s going on?’ Lauren mentally adds confetti to the list of things she still needs to do for the wedding. Not paper – she vaguely remembers the vicar saying it wasn’t allowed – so . . . petals? Rice? Uncooked, presumably. She has a sudden image of dollops of basmati flying across the cobbles.
‘It’s your wedding shower!’ Sonya is waving a clipboard. ‘No excuses, boss; this is the express version. Matt, the prosecco?’
‘It’s no wonder you’re single,’ Matt grumbles, but he produces two glasses of fizz in plastic tumblers.
Lauren laughs. ‘It’s eight o’clock in the—’
‘It’s Nosecco,’ Sonya stage-whispers, before raising her voice theatrically. ‘And now . . . ladies and gentlemen . . . oh, and Kenric—’
‘Oi!’
‘We proudly present the Caldwell-Hogan Mr-and-Mrs Quiz!’ There’s a burst of applause, during which Lauren finds herself escorted to a stool, Fraser perching on a second stool on the opposite side of the makeshift stage.
He has somehow acquired an oversized badge reading Groom, and now Bahnaz appears with a clip-on veil for Lauren.
‘Oh, God, really?’ Lauren makes a face.
‘Go on, boss, it’s a laugh!’
She gives in, and Sonya takes up position between her and Fraser, brandishing the clipboard like a weapon. ‘Fraser, you’re up first. What is Lauren’s favourite colour?’
‘Green,’ Fraser says, without hesitation. Lauren makes herself smile. Briefing starts in fifteen minutes, and she still needs to speak to forensics about—
‘Boss?’ Sonya spins to face Lauren. ‘Fraser’s fave colour?’
‘Oh! Um . . . yellow.’ She looks at Fraser, who looks as though he’s finding the whole experience as awkward as she is.
‘Yellow?’ Fraser laughs. ‘Since when?’
‘No answers till the end!’ Sonya says. ‘Now, name a food she can’t stand.’
Fraser grins. ‘Mushrooms. Next question!’
‘Boss?’
Lauren tries to think. ‘Pineapple on pizza?’
And so it goes on. Favourite film, worst habit, first film you saw together. Who said ‘I love you’ first, where was your first date, what was his first pet called . . .
‘That’s my banking security question,’ Fraser says. ‘You can’t ask that!’
Lauren calls a halt after fifteen minutes, partly because there’s work to be done and partly because she sees that the next question on Sonya’s clipboard is At what age did they lose their virginity? – which is definitely a boundary she isn’t prepared to cross.
‘Scores on the door!’ Sonia motions to the rest of the team to drum their feet on the floor, creating such a noise Lauren is certain it’ll bring the rest of the station running to see what’s going on.
‘Fraser, out of twenty-four questions you got . . . twenty--two right! Nice one!’ She turns to Lauren.
‘Boss, you got . . .’ She looks around the room, drawing out the dramatic pause. ‘Three.’
The others laugh and Lauren takes it in good spirit. She gets down from her stool and gives in to the shouts of Give him a kiss, then, boss!
‘What is your favourite colour?’ she asks, as Fraser gives her a squeeze.
‘Red.’
Lauren pulls away, affronted. ‘You never wear red!’
‘Who said anything about wearing it?’
Matt claps Fraser on the back. He winks at Lauren. ‘Good of you to let him win, boss.’
‘Bring on the stag party!’ Kenric holds his glass aloft, prompting more cheers from the male members of the team.
‘I’m thinking paintballing, then pub crawl.
Fancy dress, obviously.’ He looks at Fraser.
‘I reckon you’d rock a Snow White outfit.
There’s a -fancy-dress shop near me does the Seven Dwarves outfits, and we could—’
‘Fancy-dress shops!’ Lauren snaps her fingers, turning to Kenric. ‘Check which ones have realistic police uniforms and see if any of it was hired out immediately before the murder.’
A polite cough comes from the doorway, where a man in a pinstriped suit is watching them with mild curiosity. ‘I’m looking for DCI Caldwell.’
‘That would be me,’ Lauren says.
‘Detective Inspector Jules Stratman.’ He walks towards her. ‘We’ve not met, but I took over from you—’
‘—on the counter-terrorism unit – of course!’ Lauren snatches off her veil, mortified at being caught messing about.
‘I hope I’m not interrupting?’ He takes in the glasses of fizz and the scattered confetti.
‘A brief moment of levity.’ Lauren gives a businesslike smile. ‘How are you settling in? The new Prevent package looks pretty robust.’
‘There are still a few teething problems, but we’ll get there.’ Jules gives a self-assured shrug. ‘We’re having to redirect a lot of resources into domestic extremism.’
‘That’s worrying.’ Sonya is chucking plastic glasses into a black bin bag. ‘As if we didn’t have enough to worry about from other countries.’
‘That’s why I’m here, actually,’ Jules leans against the edge of a desk.
‘You made an enquiry with the financial investigation unit about a card used to secure a booking at a village hall?’ He doesn’t wait for confirmation.
‘The same card is flagged on our intelligence system as being linked to a white supremacy organization currently taking root in the UK.’
From the corner of Lauren’s eye, she sees Kenric swiping at the Congratulations!
banner with a ruler. She frowns at him, and he leaves it hanging drunkenly from one side.
She thinks about Golding’s prints on the bottle of lighter fluid used to set fire to the convenience store, and a sense of foreboding builds inside her.
‘Neo-Nazis, you mean?’ Matt asks. Slowly, the team has moved closer, and now they’re all grouped around Lauren.
‘Not exactly,’ Jules frowns. ‘There are overlaps, but the group’s ideology is more rooted in cultural and religious nationalism. Their stated aims are . . .’ he makes air-quotes with his fingers ‘ . . . “the preservation of British values”—’
‘Racist-speak for if you’re not white you don’t belong here,’ Kenric says drily.
‘—“and the protection of British children”,’ Jules finishes.
Sonya grimaces. ‘Just hearing this sort of shit makes me want to bleach my eyeballs. Protection from what? Learning about other languages and cultures? Protection from growing into tolerant, inclusive adults who aren’t bigoted arseholes?
Poor Nadeeka, discovering Jamie wasn’t the person she thought he was. ’
‘He might genuinely have loved her,’ Matt says.
‘You know more about that particular relationship than I do,’ Jules says, ‘but for what it’s worth, their latest leaflet refers to immigrants as cockroaches.’
‘Nadeeka isn’t an immigrant.’ Matt looks around. ‘She’s – what – third generation? Second at least.’
‘That’s a little too nuanced for white supremacists,’ Lauren says, exchanging a glance with Jules.
‘Right, but Jamie’s own views might have been nuanced. Even within an extremist organization, there have to be people who are more extreme than others.’ Matt shrugs. ‘Nadeeka’s statement says the two of them never talked about current affairs.’
‘Very wise,’ Fraser says, bringing a smile to Lauren’s lips. Not long after they’d got together they’d also realized that it was best to implement a ‘no politics’ rule.
‘What’s this organization called?’ Lauren has been trying to think of all the far-right organizations she came across during her time on counter-terrorism – Blood and Honour, Combat 18, the English Defence League, the National Front.
But it won’t be one of those, she realizes suddenly. Because even before Jules answers, Lauren knows what letter it will begin with.
‘They’re called New Dawn,’ he says.
ND.
There’s a beat as everyone processes what this means.
Jamie Golding wasn’t meeting a woman. He was meeting a movement.
Foreboding pools in Lauren’s stomach. It’s clear now that Jamie’s intentions were at the very least disingenuous, and very likely predatory. But did those intentions die with Jamie? Or is Nadeeka still a target?