Peter Robinson - Blood At The Root

“Not a lot, is it? Where does this Motcombe bloke live?”

“Pudsey, down by Fulneck way. Apparently he’s got a nice detached house there.”

Banks raised his eyebrows. “La-di-da. Any idea how they’re financed – apart from receiving stolen goods?”

“Crawley says he doesn’t know.”

“Do you believe him?”

Gristhorpe sniffed and scratched his hooked nose. “I smell politics in this one, Alan,” he said. “And when I smell politics I don’t believe anything I see or hear.”

“Do you want Jim and me to have a poke around in Leeds?” Banks asked.

“Just what I was thinking. You could pay the shop a visit, for a start. See if there’s anyone around. Clear it with Ken Blackstone first, make sure you’re not treading on anyone’s toes.”

Banks nodded. “What about Motcombe?”

Gristhorpe paused before answering. “I got the impression that Crawley didn’t want us bothering Mr. Motcombe,” he said slowly. “In fact, I think Crawley was only detailed to answer our request for information because they knew down there that we’d simply blunder ahead and find out anyway. The bull-in-a-china-shop approach. He was very vague indeed. And he asked us to proceed with caution.”

“So what do we do?”

A wicked grin creased Gristhorpe’s face. “Well,” he said, tugging his plump earlobe, “I’d pay him a visit, if I were you. Rattle his chain a bit. I mean, it’s not as if we’ve been officially warned off.”

Banks smiled. “Right.”

“One more thing before you all go. These letters at the bottom of the Albion League’s flyer.” Gristhorpe lifted the pamphlet from the table and pointed. “ Http://www.alblgue.com./index.html . Now you all know I’m a bloody Luddite when it comes to computers, but even I know that’s a Web page address. Don’t ask me what a Web page looks like, mind you. Question is, can we do anything with it? Is it likely to get us anywhere? Susan?”

“It might do,” said Susan Gay. “Unfortunately, we don’t have access to the Internet over the station computers.”

“Oh. Why not?”

“I don’t know, sir. Just slow, I suppose. South Yorkshire’s even got their own Web page. And West Mercia.”

Gristhorpe frowned. “What do they do with them?”

Susan shrugged. “Put out information. Community relations. Crime stoppers. Chief constable’s opinion on the state of the county. That sort of thing. It’s an interface with the community.”

“Is it, indeed?” Gristhorpe grunted. “Sounds like a complete bloody waste of time to me. Still, if this Albion League thing’s worth a try, is there some way you could have a peek? Or should I say surf?”

Susan smiled. “Browse, actually, sir. You surf the Net, but you browse the Web.”

“And is there any wonder I’ve no patience with the bloody machines?” Gristhorpe muttered. “Whatever you call it, can you get a look at it?”

Susan nodded. “I’ve got a hook-up from home,” she said. “I can certainly give it a try.”

“Then do it, and let us know what you find. Alan, did those lads from West Yorkshire find anything on Jason Fox’s computer?”

Banks shook his head. “Clean as a whistle.”

“Clean as in somebody washed it?”

“That’s what they said.”

Gristhorpe grimaced as he shifted his bad leg and shook it to improve the circulation before standing up. “Right, then,” he said. “That’s about it for now. Let’s get cracking.”

Susan enjoyed the unexpected surprise of being able to go home during working hours, even though she knew she was there to work.

First, she kicked off her shoes and put on the kettle. Then she looked through her collection of different tea varieties and settled on Autumn, a black tea dotted with small pieces of apple, perfect for the drizzly, blustery day. On impulse, she put a pinch of cinnamon in the pot, too. While the tea was brewing, she put on her CD of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s greatest hits, smiling as she thought how much Banks would hate it, then she poured herself a cup of tea and got down to work.

The computer was in her bedroom because her flat was so small. It was the one room where she never received visitors. At least not yet. But she wasn’t going to allow herself to think about DC Gavin Richards right now.

Cup of apple-and-cinnamon-scented tea steaming beside her and “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” drifting in from the living room, Susan curled her feet under her on the office chair and logged in. Then she typed in the address from the flyer and clicked her mouse.

The screen remained blank for a long time as the various bits and pieces of the document coming in over the telephone line added up, then suddenly it turned black.

Next, a multicolored image began to appear, line by line from the top of the screen down, and soon the Albion League’s emblem, a swastika made out of burning golden arrows, appeared in full. Probably, Susan thought, remembering Superintendent Gristhorpe’s words and the Blake song, it was some sort of image of Blake’s “arrows of desire.”

Around the top of the swastika, the words THE ALBION LEAGUE curled in a semicircle of bold Gothic script.

It took a couple of minutes for the rest of the document to transfer. When it was complete, Susan started browsing through it. “Memory” floated in from the living room.

Unlike pages in a book, Web pages have an extra dimension provided by hypertext links, highlighted words or icons you can click on to go to another, related site. At first, Susan ignored these links and concentrated on reading the text. It was much the same as the pamphlet she had seen, only there was more of it.

The first paragraph welcomed the reader to the page and explained that the Albion League was a fast-growing group of concerned citizens dedicated to ethnic purity, freedom of speech, law and order, and the establishment of the true English “homeland.”

After that came a number of links. Some were closely related sites, such as the British National Party’s home page or Combat 18, and some were American or Canadian, such as Stormfront, Aryan Nation and the Heritage Front. They varied from the fairly literate to the downright unreadable, but some of the graphics were imaginatively conceived. Susan had never thought members of white-power groups to be particularly creative or intelligent. She had to remind herself that, these days, you didn’t have to be an Einstein to work a computer. Almost any kid could do it.

She opted for the league’s “News” icon and was soon treated to a number of recent stories from the unique perspective of the Albion League.

The first item concerned the amount of public money being channeled toward the huge new mosque under construction between Leeds and Bradford, and contrasted it with the shocking state of disrepair of most of Britain’s churches.

The second contended that a leading academic had “proved” humans were actually descended from paleskinned northern tribes rather than from “hairy Africans.”

And so it went on: a Tory MP known for his stand on morality and family values had been surprised by a police raid on a homosexual brothel in Sheffield, wearing only a blond wig and a tutu; Leeds City Council had voted to rename one of the city’s streets after a black revolutionary “scum”…example after example of government hypocrisy, just deserts and cultural decay.

One story concerned a white schoolboy who had been stabbed just outside the gates of a Bradford comprehensive school by three members of an Asian gang. It was a sad-enough tale – and Susan remembered reading about it in the Yorkshire Post only a couple of weeks ago – but according to the Albion League, the tragic stabbing had occurred because the local council was dominated by “ethnics” and by their brainwashed, politically correct white lackeys, who had all known about the school’s problems for years but had never done anything. The victim could, therefore, be seen as “a sacrifice to the multiracial society.” Susan wondered what they would make of Jason Fox’s death.