Page 53

FIFTY-TWO

Brightwell thought that the whole ‘enemy’s enemy’ thing made a fair amount of sense, so under normal circumstances he’d see anyone who hated the police as being worthy of a decent hearing.

Those whose pain seemed genuine and whose grievances sounded as heartfelt as his own.

The men and women – and there were always plenty of women – gleefully professing an urgent desire to ‘stab up da copz’ or ‘roast the pork’.

Christ, though, some of them . . .

Digging just a little deeper into the threads on those message boards where he’d first lurked and then posted, where he’d been thrilled to discover that he wasn’t alone, he couldn’t believe the reasons people gave for being there. The nature of their complaints.

Not being respected.

A burglary that remained unsolved.

Being done for speeding.

Now he could see that they were idiots, all of them, and it annoyed him that they were taking up space somewhere serious people like him could meet to exchange serious views.

Of course, he had sympathy for those who had acceptable cause to feel aggrieved – who’d been stopped and searched for being the wrong colour or beaten up by thugs in uniform for no apparent reason – but not paying your road tax did not give anyone the right to feel the same hatred he did.

It was an insult to him and to Peter, to anyone who’d actually suffered .

He got angrier, the more he trawled.

How could anyone think that these people were anything more than moaners and time-wasters who were only on the Dark Web at all because they had a bit of IT nous and thought it made them edgy or alternative?

Gave them hard-ons they couldn’t get sounding off in all the regular, vanilla places.

They belonged on Twitter or Facebook. Better yet, on one of those nauseating neighbourhood forums where people complained that their bins hadn’t been collected or that there was never a copper around when you wanted one.

Righteously furious as he was, Brightwell smiled to think he’d done his level best to make that problem just a little worse.

As it was, he hadn’t been in the best of moods when he’d logged on.

He was still irritated that Andre Campbell had only done half a job on Craig Knowles.

The injuries sounded reasonably bad, mind you, so there was always the hope Knowles would die eventually and even if he didn’t, he’d probably never be able to shit properly again.

That thought gave Brightwell some comfort as he began posting a few messages of his own.

Letting these imposters know just how pathetic they were, reminding them what real hatred was and what serious people did about it.

Hinting, at any rate. It wasn’t like he was about to confess online, however secure his VPN was.

He was still receiving information, so he knew they were continuing to monitor his online activity.

He knew they’d reviewed the footage from the prison and that a new photo had been sent out.

He was still none the wiser about who was sending those very helpful messages, even if lately they hadn’t included anything he could really use.

They were more like operational updates really, but he remained grateful for the support, all the same.

There was at least one other serious person out there somewhere.

While his cursor blinked expectantly at him, Brightwell sat and thought about the only person to whom he had actually confessed. Now, she’d had a proper grievance, and it had been dealt with, thanks to him.

And then what had she done?

The worst thing Alex Brightwell could ever imagine; the worst betrayal.

He began to type.

If his enemy’s enemy was his friend, what did that make his enemy’s friend?