At the pier-end sat a small lighthouse. It was disused, had long since stopped emitting any light. Over the years the exterior of the lighthouse had been left to deteriorate, the white paint, now flaking, replaced with sprayed-on graffiti slogans. At its extreme point, facing the sea and adjacent to the harbour mouth of the port of Ayr, the lighthouse still held a prominent position, but it was a sad and fallen symbol. It was possible to buy postcards of the landmark, pictured in better days, but nobody in the town regarded the lighthouse as anything other than a remnant of lost glory. A sorry, sad image of decline and deracination.
Valentine looked up at the thick swirls of concentric glass plates, where the magnified rays of light were once sent over the waves and rocks. He thought about the passage of time, about childhood. He’d once helped his daughter make a lighthouse for a school project, a pathetic cardboard and plasticine effort with a tiny torch bulb on top. He’d wired the rough model up to a battery and he smiled now to remember the look on Fiona’s face when she first saw the bulb light up. He felt another glow in his heart forming, just to recall the precious memory.
‘You’re miles away,’ said Rickards. ‘What’s on your mind?’
Valentine smirked. ‘Would you believe, my own daughter?’
‘Yes, I would. It’s only natural. I went through the very same justification process. It’s alien to you to believe that there are people out there who will do these things. You think of your own family and how you feel about your daughters and you can’t imagine anyone ever feeling any differently towards their own offspring.’
‘That’s what I’ve been going through. I’m struggling to understand that it’s possible to behave this way.’
‘Like I said, it’s natural. I felt like that. But, you have to get over it, Bob, you have to give yourself the freedom to believe that your outlook is only one way of seeing the world and there are others who don’t share that outlook. Their view is different, very different.’
They set off round the base of the lighthouse, seeking the sheltered lee, out of the wind. The sound of the sea lapping at the rocks below was interspersed with the occasional spray of a larger breaker and, once in a while, a wave would breach the pier completely and splash loudly on the surface flags, calling attention to the sullen climate.
‘Run through how this works, then,’ said Valentine.
‘It’s a complex process, until you understand it, and then it becomes incredibly simplistic,’ Rickards told him. ‘The ultimate objective is to create something known as a control file.’
‘A control file?’
‘A blackmail file might be more apt. Think of a politician, in any country of the world, that a criminal cabal might seek to control, how would they go about achieving that end?’
‘You’ve already answered your question: blackmail, bribery.’
‘There’s those. But what if they don’t go for that, or what if it ceases to have the desired effect? That’s when a little more creativity is required. In the past, you might have noticed a disproportionate number of our politicians were homosexuals; that wasn’t a coincidence, it was because they were easy to blackmail back then. Today there’s a disproportionate number of paedophiles in power, because it’s the ultimate taboo, and the ultimate blackmailable transgression.’
‘You’re saying paedophiles are actually sought out and manoeuvred into positions of power because they are easy to blackmail?’
‘You must have heard of the dossier that was handed to the Tory government in 1984, and subsequently went missing.’
‘I saw it made the news cycle for quite some time.’
‘When a political paedophile scandal makes the news it tends to follow a familiar pattern of disinformation. The accusers are discredited and the perpetrators are excused, unless there’s a deceased paedophile who can be thrown under the bus to let the living ones carry on regardless.’
‘Sounds familiar.’
‘It’s an international issue, Bob. I’ve seen cases involving a former prime minister, a president of the United States and even a member of the royal family. I’ve also seen evidence that there’s been more than a hundred cases similar to the one in that dossier that have been scattered to the four winds.’
‘What have you seen in those files?’
‘You might call it a modus operandi. They locate a mark, an ambitious politician or diplomat they want to influence, and they target them. Sometimes it’s a simple honey trap, other times it’s a more complicated brownstoning set-up.’
‘Brownstoning?’
‘Yeah,’ Rickards said, ‘it’s a term they use. It involves exposing the mark to a hedonistic party lifestyle, getting them in bed with young women, or boys if that’s their thing, and gradually introducing younger and younger girls or boys until you have the mark in bed with a child. The event is filmed and there you have your control file. It’s documented evidence of wrongdoing used for the purpose of blackmail.’
‘And this is common practice?’
‘Bob, this is common practice at the milder end of the scale. Some of the information I’ve been exposed to would make this look like a mild misdemeanour. We’re talking about a Luciferian cabal who take their beliefs and practices very seriously. This is why we’re dealing with such high levels of secrecy; this is the reason for the shutdown of my investigation. Any one of these cases has the potential to fell giants. To be frank with you, Bob, and you must know this by now, there’s no way they’re going to let you get close to the truth.’
‘Going on what you’ve told me so far, I’m surprised I haven’t been pressured already.’
‘You haven’t got close enough yet. There’s only so much you can uncover in a week, but once you get close to that third rail, you’ll feel the heat. These occultists operate at the pinnacle of our society; it’s a criminal gang and how they draw in those outside the gang is through blackmail. Those that are brought in will display all the enthusiasms of the convert, because it’s in their interest to.
‘And those that don’t?’
‘They’re not given a choice. They either join and progress, or they die.’
‘Killed?’ Valentine asked, already knowing the answer.
‘Of course. This is standard operating practice in all criminal fraternities, you must know that.’
‘I’ve heard of drug gangs demanding new recruits carry out a murder to show their loyalty.’
‘The very same thing, though in this instance the recruits won’t be asked to tattoo a teardrop beneath their eye. This criminal gang guards its privacy fiercely; if they were exposed then the fallout would be felt in every area of our society.’
A low gust, a westerly, blew around the base of the lighthouse, bringing a sandy effluvium whipping at Valentine’s shoes. For a moment he watched the miniature sandstorm swirling, until it finally settled in a sloping, granular buttress against the pier wall. A rusty Pepsi can was dislodged from its hiding place in the next burst of wind and started to rattle along the concrete path. The sound, sharp and jangling, was an outrage the detective couldn’t handle and he pointed back towards the town.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.
‘It’s getting a bit blowy, I suppose.’
The two men walked silently until the end of the pier, ducking the threat of the hovering gulls overhead. The darkening sky was descending, like a low smoke haze that threatened to engulf them completely. There would be a greyer, dimmer sequence of events to unfold in the heavens, thought Valentine, as he withdrew his gaze to the ground beneath him.
‘Tell me more,’ he said, bitterly.
‘What would you like to know?’
‘It’s hard to say that I’d like to know any of this really.’
‘I understand that, too.’
‘But given I still have unfettered access to this investigation, I need to be able to continue digging while I can.’
‘Has any of what I’ve told you rang any bells – with your investigation, I mean?’
Valentine peered closely. ‘Some.’
‘I can get into specifics, make assessments, if you like. But, I’m not sure how you’d feel about exposing the actual case files of an ongoing investigation to a cop who’s been kicked off the force.’
‘This case has stretched my moral fibre to just about snapping point. I wouldn’t rule anything out, if I don’t get the result I want.’
Rickards hesitated. ‘Well, the offer stands. But in the meantime, why don’t you just hit me with anything that’s causing you particular concern.’
Valentine gathered his thoughts before he spoke. ‘There is something. It bothered me right from the start and I haven’t been able to come up with any explanation for it whatsoever. Even listening to you today, there’s nothing in what you’ve said that hints at reasoning for it.’
‘Go on.’
‘When we found the girl, Abbie, she was naked, all except for a pair of tennis shoes on her feet. The shoes had clearly been put on in the normal fashion – they were laced up, not rushed into, or just thrown on.’
‘This struck you as strange, right?’
‘Yes. Like, she’d been given a get-out, or a chance to escape by her attacker, but why would anyone do that? There’s no reason I can comprehend.’
Rickards turned to the sky, and his face became conscience-stricken. There seemed to be a thought process forming in him, a conflicted set of emotions vying for prominence with each other. ‘This could be worse than I thought.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Valentine.
‘Some cases, like the ones I detailed to you earlier, are simple enough to untangle because they have a clear motive. But, this is different.’
‘In what way?’
‘Bob, I don’t think you’re dealing with a straightforward case of occult abuse, or a control file blackmailing. I think you’re dealing with something bigger than that, if my understanding of what you’ve just told me is correct.’
‘And this is based on the tennis shoes?’
‘What you’ve described is a situation I’ve never actually come across before, but it’s something I’ve heard of. You won’t be aware of a phenomenon known as the most dangerous game.’
‘No. I’m not.’
‘This is an undertaking of a particular section of the elite that like to push the boundaries of their occult rituals. It’s strictly for those at the very pinnacle of the cabal, those that take an extremely perverse interest in the suffering of their victims.’
‘I’m struggling to see how what you’ve already told me could be any worse, but go on.’
And so Rickards went on. ‘There’s an adrenal gland in the neck that secretes a particular chemical called adrenochrome. This gland produces the substance under one set of circumstances alone: fear. When a human being is exposed to the very limit of terror, the gland’s production is believed to be a delicacy by the highest order of the elite.’
‘This shouldn’t shock me, after learning of the child sacrifices and the blood drinking and flesh eating, but somehow it does.’
‘Could it be because you see where I’m going with this?’
‘I want to know what this dangerous game is, Kev.’
‘Not any game, the most dangerous. In its most simple term, for people like you and me, it’s hunting. We’re talking about putting another human being through the same torment and torture that animals are subjected to for perverted pleasure.’
‘Hunting people?’
‘That doesn’t do it justice. Remember, Abbie McGarvie was a child. If you found her the way you did, I’d wager she’d been stripped, abused, and was limbering up to be sacrificed in the most terrifying of occult practices.’
‘Who would do this?’
‘Someone with a taste for adrenochrome. Someone who, in my experience, would most definitely know exactly what they were doing. Those people aren’t bottom feeders; they’re the ones holding up the keystone. I’ve never heard of a victim of the most dangerous game to have been found. If you have a victim’s corpse to prove this practice took place then you can be guaranteed that something went very, very wrong.’