‘I don’t understand.’
‘No, I don’t imagine you do, Clive. You really don’t seem to understand much of what I say to you.’
‘But what does this MP have to do with me?’
Kennedy sighed. ‘That’s rather the point, Clive. It’ll be a random killing by someone with severe but sadly undiagnosed mental health problems.’
‘But I don’t have—’
‘You’re really not terribly bright, are you, Clive?’
Clive looked around at the others in the room, hoping someone else here would be able to expose this for the madness it clearly was. But there was no sign that they were prepared to do anything except listen to Kennedy’s ravings. Rowan and Charlie seemed like different people from those he’d encountered previously, to the point where he’d initially wondered whether they were under the influence of some drug. But after a while it had struck him that this was more the adoration offered to the leader of a cult.
Kennedy knew how to manipulate people and he had this group under his spell. Rowan had said he’d helped them through some kind of ‘spiritual journey’ during a difficult point in their life. Perhaps that kind of emotional leverage enabled Kennedy to behave as he did. It was the kind of controlling behaviour that, in other contexts, led to death cults and mass suicides.
In reality, he understood all too well what Kennedy was telling him. It sounded like utter madness, but the scheme itself was clear enough. He just couldn’t begin to envisage how they might expect to get away with it. The whole thing sounded so absurd, he almost didn’t even feel frightened.
Almost.
Except Rowan had mentioned people being bumped off, and the MP’s near miss at the hands of a gunman had been all over the news. He might feel as if he’d slipped through into someone else’s fantasy, but this was all too real. He hadn’t yet made a serious effort to escape, but from the way he was being watched by Charlie and the others, he knew they would have no difficulty in preventing him.
His only hope was that, if they really were serious in their threats, they might prefer not to do anything here in Kennedy’s own house. If they moved him, that might give him the only chance he was likely to have.
For the moment, Clive’s only real option was to keep Kennedy talking. Kennedy clearly loved the sound of his own mellifluous voice, and was only too eager to respond to Clive’s questions, however inane they might be. From the time that had passed since his arrival, Clive also had the sense that Kennedy himself was playing for time, waiting till whatever they were planning was all set up. ‘But I don’t understand what this MP’s supposed to have done? This can’t be just because you disagree with her politics?’
Kennedy laughed. ‘As it happens, I do disagree with her politics. Pretty fundamentally. She’s the type who’d tax us till we can’t pay any more, who’d destroy business, who’d want to stop me making a decent profit as a landlord. I wouldn’t be sorry to see her go on those grounds alone. But that’s not really what this is about. She’s become a direct irritant.’
‘In what way?’
‘She’s spent her time in Parliament campaigning against the ways in which we make most of our money. She believes we’re exploiting the poor benighted communities up here.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘We provide services people need. Accommodation, quick cash, even drugs. If we didn’t do it, someone else would.’
‘I thought it was your route to enlightenment?’
‘Perhaps you’re finally beginning to understand, Clive. That’s exactly it. It’s not our job to change this world. Our role is to embrace it, extract what we can from it and find our own form of nirvana.’
‘And this MP would stop you doing that?’
‘She’s gradually been building a dossier of cases from around her constituency. A lot of them relating to our network. She’s not come close to connecting them with our businesses because of the way we’ve organised ourselves. We’re at the centre of the web, and she’s only teasing at the edges. But eventually she’ll get to a point where she starts to join the dots. Her partner’s a police officer, and at some point, if she continues, this could begin to feel uncomfortable for us. So, best she isn’t allowed to continue.’
‘But if she’s killed, the police will be raking over everything. Isn’t that more likely to put you in the spotlight?’
‘This takes us back to where we started, Clive. Not if they think this was a random act by someone with mental health problems. Even if they decide it was politically motivated, they’ll think the killer was just a fanatic.’
‘You’ll never make this work. It’s ridiculous.’
‘I think we will, Clive. This is also a test, an initiation process. I think I mentioned earlier how we initiate our neophytes. We’ve had a few of those recently, and we ask them to prove their worth by working with Eric. Eric, of course, would be only too happy to do this work by himself. He gets his pleasure that way. But we also ensure all our newcomers work alongside him to gain experience and show their full commitment to the movement.’
‘So they’re fully implicated, you mean?’ Clive was finally beginning to get an inkling of what Kennedy was talking about, and he felt a cold finger running down his spine.
‘You might say that. Of course, some of them succeed and some of them fail. If they fail, Eric deals with them. If they succeed – well, ask our friend Mo here.’ He gestured towards the man Clive had recognised as the far-right activist. ‘Mo’s become an active member of our senior team. He helps recruit young people to our cause through his political activism. And he helps us deal with those who don’t meet our high standards. Isn’t that right, Mo?’
Henley nodded. ‘Like little scumbags who start dipping their hands in the till.’ His voice was soft, unexpectedly posh-sounding, and undoubtedly menacing.
‘Mo and Eric have dealt with a few of that kind in recent weeks, as well as issuing a few warnings to those who might have crossed us in the past. As we grow the movement, we like to have the occasional clear-out. It helps to keep everyone honest.’
‘I still don’t understand.’ Clive had decided he had no choice but to keep pushing this now. The more he knew about Kennedy’s plans, the more he might have a chance to find a way to disrupt them. ‘You’re never going to persuade anyone that I’m some kind of fanatic.’
‘You don’t think so?’ Kennedy sounded genuinely surprised. ‘Your interests are a little – eccentric. Unexplained phenomena. Conspiracy theories.’
‘That’s still a long way from murderous fanatic.’
‘Perhaps not when there’s evidence in your house of an obsession with your victim. When the police find your house filled with suitably fanatical material. Far-right politics.’ He laughed. ‘Some of the more sensationalist material linked to the “left-hand path”. The knives that were used in the recent apparently ritualistic murders. Not to mention the firearm used in the previous unsuccessful shootings. There’ll be enough there to convince them. Along with your body, of course.’
Clive felt a new clutch of fear in his stomach. ‘My body?’
‘That’s obviously how this all ends, Clive. You commit suicide in a way that appears suitably deranged. As a bonus for us, you die in a way that links you to other recent murders in the area. It all slots neatly into place, or at least neatly enough that no one’s likely to be inclined to look much further.’
‘You’ll never make that work,’ Clive said. ‘Apart from anything else, how are you going to get all that stuff into my house?’
Kennedy’s mobile phone buzzed on the table. He picked it up and glanced at the screen, then rose to his feet. ‘I think we’re ready to go. As for placing the evidence in your house, Clive, well, it’s part of the initiation process. We’ve already received a great deal of help in this. Tonight we hope to welcome another neophyte into the movement.’