The Judgement Book Read online

  The Judgement Book

  Simon Hall

  Published by Accent Press Ltd – 2012

  ISBN 9781907726149

  Copyright © Simon Hall 2009

  The right of Simon Hall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, The Old School, Upper High St, Bedlinog, Mid Glamorgan, CF46 6RY.

  For more information about our books please visit

  www.accentpress.co.uk

  About the author…

  Simon Hall

  Simon Hall is the BBC’s Crime Correspondent in the south-west of England.He also regularly broadcasts on BBC Radio Devon and BBC Radio Cornwall.

  Simon has also been nominated for the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger In The Library Award.

  For more information please visit Simon Hall’s website

  www.thetvdetective.com

  Acknowledgements

  My detective friends, for their endless patience, guidance, and not being too phased by my weird imagination, also my medical advisers for stretching their Hippocratic oaths to help with my murderous plots. The librarians and literary festival organisers who do so much for writers and books lovers, often with little recognition, and Jess and all my friends for keeping me writing and reassuring me that turning 40 hasn’t been quite such a rocky voyage as I feared. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, my readers – getting published was a big surprise, people actually reading the books was a shock, and the fact that most seem to enjoy them was stunning. Thank you!

  Other titles in the series:

  Prologue

  THE JUDGEMENT BOOK SLIPPED from its secret place and sighed open on the old wooden table. It had been almost two weeks since it was last freed and it felt starved and greedy, as if it again longed to gorge itself on depravity. It would soon have its fill of rich deceit.

  The pages turned and the list of the condemned passed, their names spelt out in capitals on the top of each sheet. Below was lovingly written the text of their cheating, corruption, envy and hate, a vibrant spectrum of destructive human failings. Today, it was a familiar diet, but no less delicious for that. Today, sex would fill its hungry pages.

  Lust, sex, lies and hypocrisy.

  He would become the star of the great show that was about to begin. The first truly famous name to feed the Judgement Book, the one for whom it had waited so patiently. And how he had blessed it. He’d been a wonderfully despicable man. The neat newspaper cuttings of some of his speeches and pronouncements littered the table, a pile of shouting banner headlines and tight black print.

  “FREEDMAN FIGHTS BACK FOR THE FAMILY!”

  It was a speech to the Traditionalist Party’s Women’s Guild, a table-thumper the reporter called it. He’d attacked the ever-slackening morals of modern society and promised a return to old-fashioned family values when the party was back in government. The audience had devoured it. A standing ovation, cheers of delight. The interviews with some of the women called for immediate promotion. The reporter concluded that such an elevation would not take long. Will Freedman was a new political star, rising fast.

  The Judgement Book would see to that.

  The calm hands shuffled the cuttings, straightened and stacked them tidily in the corner of the battered old table. The glossy colour picture of Will and Yvonne Freedman had worked its way to the top. It was fate’s confirmation of the righteousness of what was about to unfold, the justice that could finally be delivered.

  The couple’s fourteen-year-old daughter Alex stood between them. All three were smiling at the camera. It was a feature from a magazine, a double-page spread, fawning and sickening.

  “The Perfect Political Family.”

  He dominated the picture with his height and the jutting, angular jaw of leadership. His eyes brooded, seemed to draw in the camera’s lens. She was the classical antidote to his masculinity; blonde, petite, holding his hand dutifully, looking up to his mastery. Alex stood between them with the slight awkwardness of a teenager, the strength of her father’s features seeding an etched beauty in her face.

  The perfect family indeed. The Judgement Book knew better. It understood the reality, and would soon reveal it to the world.

  It was time for the truth to be written.

  Will Freedman is an adulterer, a frequenter of prostitutes, a liar and a hypocrite.

  In March he attended a three-day mini-summit on economics in Blackpool. It was organised and funded by the Traditionalist party. There, he spent a night in a hotel with a high-class call girl. He paid the woman five hundred pounds in cash for the privilege of two hours of her services. She was a young woman, probably no more than nineteen or twenty years of age. It’s hardly necessary to point out this is only a handful of years older than Mr Freedman’s daughter, but I do so anyway, just to be sure the implication is not missed.

  The prostitute uses her youth to aid her profession by specialising in dressing and acting as a schoolgirl. It is, in the economic terms of the summit, her unique selling point.

  Will Freedman believed he had safely hidden his indiscretion by meeting the girl at a hotel, which was not the one he was staying in. He wore a false pair of glasses and a hat when checking in to further limit the small chance anyone might recognise him. It was not the kind of hotel where great attention is paid to the guests, so he calculated the chances of getting away with his deception were good.

  She arrived in a long, beige raincoat, her school uniform concealed underneath. He paid for the room in advance, in cash, to ensure no trail was left. His excitement when she knocked on the door he described as ‘volcanic’. He later referred to the two hours he spent with the girl as being among the best in his life, the fulfilment of a long-cherished fantasy. As an aside here, I note that when interviewed by the media, Will Freedman would say the best times of his life were his wedding, the birth of his daughter, and his election as an MP – a rather different response. He had sex with the woman twice, and wished he was a younger man so he might have been able to manage more. He would have preferred not to use a condom, but did so to reduce the risk of contracting infection. The woman carried a cane in her bag, which he used to spank her. She described that as an optional extra. It was one he found irresistible. It cost him another fifty pounds, but he said it was very well worth it. They had sex on the bed of the hotel room and in the bathroom.

  Will Freedman said he knew he should not have done this, with Yvonne and Alex at home and his career to consider. But he’d seen the woman’s services advertised on the internet when he was doing some “research” on his laptop computer in his room. He’d had a few drinks, and couldn’t resist the lure of the fantasy. He also said that he may do it again, if the chance arose. It would be one of the perks of having to travel for his job. The experience didn’t leave him feeling guilty he said, but newly alive.

  Will Freedman is an adulterer, a frequenter of prostitutes, a liar and a hypocrite.

  The pen rested and the emotionless eyes stared at the words, unblinking, until they lost their focus, shifted and slid across the page. Just forms and patterns but with such momentous power. The force of truth.

  A rare commodity in this rank society.

  The Book was so disarmingly mu
ndane, just an ordinary pocket diary, bound in cheap black leather, but with a world of sin festering inside, the neat words carefully inscribed on the rows of faint blue lines. A calm finger rested on the coolness of the cover. It felt wonderful.

  It was a work of art. And it would soon be appreciated.

  By millions.

  Will Freedman MP was not alone in occupying the Judgement Book. By no means. He was accompanied by many others of his kind. The Book was swollen with their lies and longing to disgorge their secrets.

  And it would. Soon now, so very soon.

  Freedman had the honour of being the first chosen. As he would discover tomorrow. The grand game was about to begin.

  But first, it was time for the joke, to leave them all in no doubt about what was to come. Public humiliation, ridicule and scandal. For the pompous, they were the most telling of lessons and they would be ruthlessly applied. The little Book would fill hours of television and radio time, acres of newspapers and magazines, thousands of internet pages and would infuse the huddles of people in each gossip corner of every office and street and bar across the country.

  The note was written, the typeset letters stuck firmly in place on the sheet of paper. The wiring was convincingly untidy, the tangle of red, blue and green spilling from the top of the rucksack, and the battery was bulky and heavy.

  The bomb was ready.

  Thursday mornings were one of his favourites. The week was more than half done, the working mountain scaled, now it was the descent towards the brief release of the weekend. No more murders, rapes and robberies for a couple of merciful days.

  He’d been sitting in his office, sipping at a coffee and working through a surveillance report on a gang of suspected people traffickers when the call came in. He was the most senior officer in the station. He had to react, and fast, and he had.

  ‘Police! Clear the area! Now! I said now!!’

  Some faces stretched with awakening alarm, others crinkled with amusement as he ran towards them, shouting and waving his arms. They thought he was mad. That was the trouble with CID. The lack of a uniform meant a loss of the instant authority of the shiny buttons of a beat cop.

  Detective Chief Inspector Adam Breen reached into the pocket of his suit jacket, found his warrant card and held it high. ‘Now!’ he bawled. ‘Clear the area! There’s a bomb!’

  At last they were shifting, some walking fast, some stumbling into lumbering, unfamiliar runs. There were a couple of shouts of alarm, the lightning forks of panic spreading quickly in the crowd. The dense pack of people oozing through the shopping centre was dissolving. The reflected sun blazed from the shining steel of the Sundial sculpture in the growing gaps of the fast-thinning crowd. Other cops converged from different directions, arms waving, all moving the milling shoppers away from the danger.

  Not bad, thought Adam, as he caught his breath. He’d run from Charles Cross Police Station, just outside the shopping district, shouting gasped instructions to the handful of officers they could quickly muster. Only nine minutes ago the warning was phoned through and the shopping centre was almost cleared. They’d been ready for anything like this since the London suicide bombings of 2005. Every police force was.

  The navy’s Bomb Squad was already here, a couple of men standing outside their grey armoured jeep, pulling on heavily padded flak jackets and helmets with dense black visors. Another pair held up binoculars, trained them on the Sundial.

  A few hundred yards up each of the four spurs of the High Street crowds of onlookers were being held back by blue-and-white police tape and uniformed officers. Some of the crowd were holding out mobile phones, videoing the scene.

  A rucksack leant on the top of the four concrete steps that led up to the Sundial. A tangle of wiring spilled from it. The bag bulged, looked heavy, menacing. Adam wondered if he should have the crowd moved further back. There was plate glass in the shop fronts, heavy and reinforced, the splinters lethal if propelled by the force of an explosion, thousands of flying daggers.

  He grabbed the radio, gave the order. Along the spurs of the streets officers started herding the pack of people. Adam wasn’t surprised to see many complain and resist. A bomb threat was an irresistible spectacle, well worth the risk of your life. Or it might have been the stories of the tens of thousands of pounds the media offered to people with pictures of the moments after the London bombings.

  Sometimes dealing with human nature could be such a delight.

  The two Bomb Squad men in their heavy khaki coveralls began a slow walk towards the Sundial, a surreal sight in the familiarity of the lines of shops, bright special offers shining from each window. One stopped, put a pair of binoculars to his mask, leaned over to the other man. They held a brief conversation, then moved on, faster now.

  A crowd of pigeons fluttered out of their way. The men walked straight up the steps, leaned over and delved into the rucksack. Adam resisted the urge to turn away, step back, curl up, hide his face, ready himself for the shattering attack of the blast.

  One of the men rummaged in the bag, fished out a piece of paper, stared at it, then took off his helmet. The other sat down on the top step, also removed his helmet and leaned back, looking at the clear blue sky. He lit a cigarette, blew smoke into the air. Adam hesitated, hissed under his breath, then walked carefully over, but found himself stopping thirty yards away. He shouted an introduction.

  ‘I’m the officer in charge. Is it safe?’

  The balding man with an old-fashioned handlebar moustache shook his head.

  ‘It was never a danger. Come have a look, you don’t need to worry.’

  Adam paused, then walked on, climbed the steps to the sundial. The man held out the piece of paper.

  ‘A pretty crude hoax,’ he said, sounding disappointed. ‘Easy enough to do. Pad out the rucksack with paper and rags, stick a heavy battery and a few bits of wire in the top and it’s enough to make sure we have to turn out and treat it as the real thing. We’ll be off now. Over to you to try to work out who did it.’

  Adam looked down at the paper. It was full of individual letters cut from different newspapers, a jumble of fonts of headlines.

  “The REAL ExplosiONs Start soON. The JUDGEment BOOK is Opening.”

  Chapter One

  ‘KEEP BIDDING,’ DAN GROVES hissed forcefully to the man in the ill-fitting black jacket by his side.

  ‘For my best camera’s sake, we’re up to twenty grand,’ he moaned back, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. ‘I can’t afford to get lumbered with that kind of bill. I’ll be bankrupted. I’ve only got a few quid in the bank.’

  ‘Keep going,’ whispered Dan again, checking quickly around him.

  There were a couple of hundred people packed into the room and it was getting hot, a hovering fug of sticky atmosphere feeding the anticipation in the crowd. He’d stationed them in the dimly lit corner farthest from the auctioneer and was trying to look as if he wasn’t with the man next to him. He couldn’t risk being recognised as the source of the bids.

  ‘You’ll be OK,’ whispered Dan, trying to sound reassuring. ‘Just keep going until I say stop.’

  The auctioneer looked over expectantly, and Dirty El raised a reluctant hand.

  ‘Twenty-two thousand pounds. Thank you, sir.’

  Dan tried to glance nonchalantly at the other side of the room. He screwed up his eyes to peer through the throng of people jammed in under the low ceiling. He couldn’t see the auctioneer’s assistant making a bid. Dan felt his body tense.

  He had got it right, hadn’t he? If not, he and El had some explaining to do. They’d be twenty-two thousand pounds worse off, a sum Dan couldn’t imagine raising. He had only a few hundred in savings. They’d probably be under police investigation too. It was effectively fraud, what they were doing. Forcing someone to part with a very large sum of money, albeit for a good cause.

  Dan checked his memory of earlier in the day. Half the newsroom’s staff were away on a teambuilding course. He prid
ed himself on avoiding such worthy initiatives, always said he was quite content working in a team consisting of himself. But that meant a temporary demotion from Crime Correspondent for Wessex Tonight to reporter on anything Lizzie, his editor, fancied being covered for that night’s news. And that meant the annual charity paintings auction.

  Well-known local artists each donated a work. They were then sold off for a variety of local charities. Earlier, Dan had trooped dutifully down to the Plymouth Auction House with Nigel, his cameraman, they’d filmed the paintings displayed around the walls and interviewed Peter, the owner.

  They’d been about to leave, to cut the story for the lunchtime news when Peter had taken an important call from a man who couldn’t make the auction but wanted to bid for a rare Richard Bass work. The artist was one of the region’s most celebrated, famous for his colourfully naïve depictions of Devon and Cornwall life. Dan lingered outside Peter’s office and pretended to take down a couple of extra notes on the paintings while he eavesdropped shamelessly.

  ‘Yes, Mr Parkinson, we’d be delighted to help. The Bass? Yes, it is a rare and beautiful picture. Yes, I think it would look wonderful in one of your pubs. I think it’ll probably fetch up to about eight or nine thousand pounds. Yes, I think if you say you’ll go up to a maximum of thirty thousand you’ll definitely get the picture. I doubt it’ll cost you more than about ten, but it’s as well to be sure.’

  Peter had returned, they’d said goodbye, Nigel drove them back to the studios and Dan had cut the report. That afternoon, he’d had an idea. It was another of those he knew he shouldn’t allow to tempt himself, but as ever that just made it more irresistible.

  Christopher Parkinson was a notorious loudmouth local businessman. He’d made his fortune from the pub trade. He promoted happy hours, drinking games and all the binging incitements that made his pubs rowdy, unpleasant, and more like a boxing ring than a relaxing inn.