with anyone just to prove a point. Or score one. Punishing the communists when they’d been bad. Especially the children. Especially the girls. But even her monstrousness wasn’t as bad as the other player.’
‘Who?’ said Fennell.
‘Richard Shaw.’
Phil couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Not Tricky Dicky Shaw? The gangster?’
‘The very same. Apparently when he came to the Garden he was genuine about it. Looking to change his life. Start over. That’s what he said, anyway. And he was believed, welcomed in. Gave another name, of course.’
‘Not Robin Banks, by any chance?’ asked Phil.
Donna, arm curled round the sleeping Ben, laughed.
‘No. George Weaver.’
Phil nodded. ‘Of course. Makes sense.’
‘We still don’t know if he was just hiding out, lying low. Or whether he was genuine. Doesn’t matter now. He told them he was an artist. Began to paint. And began to take an interest in horticulture. So he became one of the Elders too. Called himself the Gardener.’
‘This Garden place,’ said Donna, her voice quiet so as not to wake Ben. ‘Is it the same one as Faith talked about in her book?’
Don looked towards Fennell and Clemens.
‘We’ll come to that,’ said Clemens. He looked at Don. ‘Keep going.’
‘Well the next thing that happened was that Banks and Shaw took over the running of the place. Sidelined the rest of the Elders, kept the Missionary on the streets the whole time.’
‘And Clunn?’
‘Made sure he was always doped up, out of his head. Permanently. There were rumours of ill-health, but nobody believed them. That was just a smokescreen so they could take over. Do what they wanted. And they did. Then it turned bad. Really bad.’
‘How bad?’ asked Donna. Fearful, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.
‘The communists were starved, driven half mad. They were pimped out to whoever wanted them, to do whatever they wanted with them. Some of them never made it back. Some of them wished they hadn’t.’
‘I’ve heard all this,’ said Phil.
‘Sorry,’ said Don. ‘That’s when we raided the place.’
‘And they were all gone,’ said Phil, finishing for him.
Don nodded. ‘They were gone. And that was the end of the Garden.’
Silence. Fennell and Clemens exchanged glances. Fennell nodded.
‘No it wasn’t,’ said Clemens.
100
‘The Garden didn’t die,’ said Fennell. ‘It continued.’
‘No it didn’t,’ said Don. ‘We searched for it everywhere. We hunted down the properties owned by the Garden, looked there. Checked them all out. We couldn’t find it anywhere. They sold the house, made it into a hotel.’
‘It kept going,’ said Fennell, brooking no argument. ‘And it’s still going now.’
‘Yeah,’ said Donna, ‘it is. Faith escaped from it. She wrote about it. That’s what’s in the book. She got away from them. Someone she’d been hired out to bought her off them. And Ben.’ Donna shuddered. ‘An’ he was just as bad. So she took Ben and ran. That’s how she ended up with me. Well, eventually.’
‘And she was trying to make a bit of money by selling the book to Glass,’ said Clemens. ‘The stupidest thing she could have done.’
Donna said nothing. Just glared at him.
‘So where is it, if it’s still going now?’ asked Phil.
‘We’re not exactly sure,’ said Fennell.
‘But it does still exist,’ said Clemens. ‘And in a lot of respects, it’s the same as it used to be. They still pimp out the communists.’
‘Except they’re not really communists any more,’ said Fennell. ‘More like prisoners.’
‘But they’re still sold and hired.’
‘You don’t know where from, though?’ said Phil.
Clemens shook his head. ‘We know it’s somewhere in the area. But we don’t know any more than that.’
‘And,’ said Fennell, ‘it’s still run by the Elders.’
‘What,’ said Don, ‘the same ones?’
‘No,’ said Fennell. ‘Not exactly. Tricky Dicky Shaw disappeared after the raid. June Boxtree was never heard of again. The first Missionary never went back. We don’t know what happened to him.’
‘What about the others? Robert Fenton?’ asked Phil.
‘Resurfaced eventually,’ said Clemens. ‘Retrained as a solicitor. Opened a practice in Colchester.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Don. ‘Wasn’t he arrested or anything?’
Fennell shook his head. ‘Some kind of deal was struck. You know the kind of thing.’
Phil looked at Don. He could tell his father wasn’t happy about that.
‘And the rest of them?’ said Don, bitterness showing in his voice.
‘Like I said, Tricky Dicky was never found. Paul Clunn disappeared too.’
‘Mind you,’ said Clemens, ‘he was so addled and mind-fucked by that time that he could have wandered off a cliff and not noticed. Probably thought he could fly.’
‘They didn’t replace Clunn when he went. Didn’t need to.’
Phil was thinking. The tramp. Paul? Hadn’t that been his name? ‘I think I’ve met him,’ he said. He told them of his encounters with the tramp. Most of them. Not what he had discussed with him.
‘I let him go,’ he said eventually. ‘Didn’t think he could have done it. Like you said, brain completely addled. But he did have moments of lucidity. Few and far between.’
‘What about Gail Banks?’
Phil could tell Don wasn’t taking the news well. He didn’t blame him. Something that had obsessed him all his working life – and beyond – reduced to these prosaic terms. He hoped that kind of thing wouldn’t happen to him. But knew it probably would. It happened to every decent copper.
‘Gail Banks?’ said Clemens. ‘Died of an Aids-related illness back in the nineties.’
‘So who are the Elders now, if the original ones are all dead or retired?’
‘Their titles are more code names now, really,’ said Fennell.
‘Something they use in case we’re listening in.’
‘And were you?’ asked Don.
‘When we could,’ said Clemens.
‘But that’s inadmissible in court.’
‘Which is why we want to catch Glass in the act,’ said Fennell.
‘Besides,’ said Clemens, ‘the names were something they could use in court anyway. Claim they weren’t really pimping and selling people to rich perverts, just playing at secret societies. Pathetic.’
Phil thought for a moment. ‘So how did you find out about all this? You were watching Glass.’
Fennell and Clemens both looked at him.
‘Oh,’ said Phil.
‘Exactly,’ said Clemens.
‘He’s one of them,’ said Don, the fact piling bitterness upon bitterness for him.
‘He’s their new Lawmaker,’ said Fennell. ‘That’s how we found out about them. Robert Fenton’s son, Michael Fenton… ’
‘Of Fenton Associates,’ said Phil.
‘The very same,’ said Clemens.
‘… is the new Portreeve,’ finished Fennell.
Don shook his head. He looked like he was broken, thought Phil. Like he had been betrayed by his
