Chapter Nine #2
“Good plan.” I gripped the cuffs that sat on my belt and imagined them clasped around that asshole, Nigel Strand. And when he was cuffed, just for shits and giggles, I’d crack his jaw and take out a kidney or two. Sick cunt.
We stopped once for coffee, got caught in some sticky motorway traffic, but eventually found ourselves on skinny moor roads surrounded by rolling hills and grazing sheep.
Remote was an understatement.
“According to my investigations, it’s about another mile up this side road.”
Jamie hunkered left and immediately had to slow to navigate potholes.
I stared out of the window. The place was beautiful in an isolated, off-the-beaten-track kind of a way. The sort of place you could properly brainwash people and there would be no one around to talk them down.
Eventually, over a hillock, a settlement emerged. It was fenced in, a proper fence, not an animal enclosure, more like a fortress. From the hill it was easy to see a scattering of houses within it and what seemed to be a few long barns.
A place where secrets were buried deep.
“Must be it,” I said.
“So we just knock?”
“I guess, knock and wing it.” I paused. “There’s one guy I want to speak to. Nigel Strand. Proper asshole and the ringleader. Bible obsessed and totally believes Jesus is going to land soon and they’ll be His first port of call. I saw a picture of him online, serpent in a fucking suit, I tell you.”
“Nut job.”
“That, and I’d put fucking serious cash on it that he’s only in it for the money. Not sure how at this point, but I’ll damn well find out.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Jamie parked beside tall gates that had three signs nailed onto them.
Keep Out
No Trespassing
Welcome Jesus Our Lord
“They don’t like visitors of the non-messiah kind, huh.” Jamie grunted.
“Tough shit.” I got out of the car and yanked my stab vest into position, then straightened my phone in its holder. A stiff easterly wind blew in, bringing with it the scent of peaty earth and sheep.
“No damn reception here,” Jamie muttered, glancing at his mobile.
“So we’re on our own. Not for the first time.” I winked at him.
He chuckled, obviously remembering a time we took out a rapist and murderer in Blackbird Leys together. It had been fortuitous that we’d been in the right place at the right time, but we’d made the most of it and rid the world of one more scumbag.
His body was never found. Not surprisingly after how we’d disposed of it.
We walked over the hardened mud to the gate.
Jamie pointed to a brass bell. “Want me to ring that?”
“Go for it.” I peered through a crack in the fence. No dogs from what I could see. A few people milling about and a group of kids playing what seemed to be marbles.
Jamie rang the bell. It was loud in the quiet countryside, and the sound clattered over the undulating terrain, echoing into the distance.
Nothing.
We waited.
“Do it again,” I said.
Jamie was just about to but stopped when he heard a voice.
“Who are you?” Male. Gruff.
“Police, open the gate.”
“You come about Jeremy? Have you found him?”
I frowned. That had not been the reaction I’d been expecting. “Not yet, but we have a few questions that will help us with our enquiries.”
“Oh, okay.” Disappointment.
“Who is Jeremy?” Jamie mouthed.
“Amy’s brother,” I whispered then shrugged. “That’s all I know.”
The gate clunked as though bolts were being thrown, then it opened.
Before us stood a man who appeared to be in his late fifties. A graying moustache and long sideburns gave him a hippy vibe, and his blue eyes were the same shade as Amy’s.
Was this her father?
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “May we come in?”
“Sure.” He gestured for us to step into the compound.
That was easier than I’d anticipated.
“And you are?” I asked, pulling a notebook and pen from my pocket. Might as well give the appearance of being official.
“Abraham.”
I wrote it down. “Abraham…?”
“Just Abraham, we don’t do surnames here, we are all one big family.”
Jamie cleared his throat and looked around. “These kids get formal education?” His deep voice and public school accent always gave him an air of authority. Being six feet two and handsome enough to adorn glossy magazine covers helped as well.
“They’re homeschooled, a curriculum that has been approved by local authorities.” Abraham tightened his jaw. “And you are?”
“Detective Inspector Morris.” Jamie flashed the ID. “We’ve got a few questions for Nigel Strand.”
Abraham’s eyebrows shot up. “Nigel?”
“Yes, can you take us to him?” I guessed he had the best accommodation in the compound. The one I could see to my right that was bigger and newer than the others with a painted blue front door.
“Nigel has been with the Good Lord for over five years now.” Abraham pointed to a fenced-off patch of land to his left that held a large wooden cross in the center. “He’s buried there.”
Fuck! There went my chance to subject the asshole to some serious pain. “He’s dead.”
“Yes.”
I guess that explained why their online presence had deteriorated.
Behind me the children laughed and clapped; likely there’d been a marble victory.
“How did he die?” I asked.
“Heart attack. He was giving a sermon. God chose that blessed moment to take him.”
I nodded. “Can you remind me when Jeremy went missing?”
“Don’t you know? I reported my son’s disappearance six months ago, surely it’s in the file.”
Ah, so this was Amy’s father.
“Just fact-checking, we’re new on the case,” Jamie said.
Abraham clicked his tongue and gestured for us to take a seat around what appeared to be a burnt-out campfire.
“Children, children, math time.” A woman rounded up the playing children. “A prize for the winner of the adding-up contest and then it’s cookery lesson.”
The kids whooped and jumped up, clearly happy with the plan.
Abraham smiled as he sat and crossed his long legs that were encased in faded sweats. “Cookery is one of their favorite lessons because they get to eat whatever they’ve made for lunch. Today it’s pizza, I think.”
I couldn’t deny the surprise that went through me. What I was seeing was very different from Amy’s descriptions. Had Nigel’s death changed the ethos of the commune? Had the nightmares of the past been buried with him?
It was too soon to know.
“Jeremy had been having mental health issues,” Abraham went on with a sigh. “After his twin sister left.”
“His twin sister?” Jamie asked, also sitting.
I followed suit, folding down onto the log.
“Amy, yes, he really went into a depression, for years. A dark place, you know. Wasn’t interested in anything. Even Nigel couldn’t bring him out of his slumber. It was as though his faith had gone with her, not just in God but in us.”
Good boy, you found your moral compass. I’d never met the lad but I was proud of him.
“For years I feared he’d hurt himself,” Abraham said. “He talked about going out onto the moors and not coming back. I think he did wander at night a few times. We tried our best, all of us. But he had no interest in our mission, in contributing to our mission.”
“Which is?” I wanted to hear the crazy from the horse’s mouth. I leaned forward, elbows on my thighs.
Abraham rubbed his forehead which had deep creases running horizontally. “We are a safe place for the second coming, we are readied, we understand what He will need. Nigel, as a prophet, knew that we were the chosen ones.”
“That Jesus is coming to Yorkshire?” Jamie said, unable to keep the disbelief out of his voice.
“I know we are mocked, but we will be proved right.” He tightened his jaw. “And there are enough of us now, here. We can protect and provide for Him.”
“There are enough of you?” I asked. “You mean you are happy with the population of the commune?”
“Yes.” He paused. “When Nigel died, after a few months we knew there would have to be changes and we implemented them. This is a place of love and support, families, and a sense of being with nature. We provide for ourselves, mostly.” He pointed to a large vegetable patch.
“And that makes us happy. Well, most of us, not Jeremy. He still couldn’t shake the black cloud that hung over him. ”
I tapped my pen on the notepad. I was itching to ask about orgies and forced pregnancy and children barely knowing their parents, but that might jeopardize my investigations.
Jamie turned to the right.
A woman was pushing a pram with a toddler at her side. She stopped to help the toddler investigate a chicken coop and pull out an egg. Her happiness was evident, as was the child’s.
“The big barn there,” Abraham said. “Is apartments for families. I’d hoped Jeremy would choose a wife and start his own family, but his darkness wouldn’t let him, and then one day…
that was it…gone. We set up a search party, kept at it for days.
Nothing. The same with the police, even the helicopter, no luck.
” His eyes sparkled. “I just need to know he’s okay; he’s my eldest son. ”
“You said he was a twin,” Jamie said.
“Yes, his sister…Amy…has been gone a long time.”
“And did you file a missing person report for her?” I asked, beating down the anger that I felt.
Amy had told me her father, this man, wouldn’t have saved her from a public gang rape, in fact, he’d celebrated the idea. I gripped the pen until I felt it crack.
Jamie glanced at me, frowned almost imperceptibly, and then harnessed Abraham’s attention. “We couldn’t see one, a missing person report for a woman.”
“No, we didn’t file it. She wanted to be missing.
It was her choice. I’m not sure if she was of sound mind or not, Nigel certainly didn’t think so, but I persuaded him not to look for her.
She was an adult by then.” He paused and sucked in a breath.
“A beautiful young woman. And if she’d decided not to be one of the chosen, then so be it. ”
“And you don’t know where she is now?” I asked, almost feeling the weight of her on my lap and smelling the scent of her shampoo.
“No, not a clue. I hope she’s happy.”
Jamie glanced at me.
I cleared my throat. I was working on that. “Can you show us around? The more we feel like we know Jeremy, his state of mind, where he grew up, the easier it might be for us to work out his whereabouts.”
“So you don’t have any leads? Not even from that Bristol University leaflet we found under his bed?”
“Not easy when we don’t have a surname, Abraham.”
“We told the other officer.” He clicked his tongue. “For the love of Jesus, we told him, it’s Bailey, he would have used Bailey, a name that used to be mine before I came here.”
“Ah, yes, we did read that in the file.” Jamie nodded. “Apologies.”
I wrote Bailey in my notebook alongside Bristol Uni. Maybe I’d have something to go on.
Find Jeremy?
Did I want to?
Would he want to be found?
Amy certainly wouldn’t want to be found.
Abraham stood. “Please, come, I’ll show you around. It’s a busy time of day. Everyone has chores in the morning, and the kids are at school as you saw.”