Dare To Think: A Melissa Raeburn Novel

By Belle Currer

Three years into her new life as a police office in remote Cornwall, Melissa Raeburn is ordered to investigate the disappearance of two State Security Bureau officers and the inexplicable Penzance deaths of their families. Returning to the world of secrets and deception she’d left behind, it soon becomes impossible for Raeburn to distinguish friend from foe, fact from lie, and acceptable risk from dumb bravado. When she begins to uncover the sinister truth about earlier investigations in the South-west – and discovers the likely involvement of national figures in a chilling conspiracy – she endangers her own life, and the lives of those around her. In following her conscience and seeking justice for the dead, Melissa Raeburn will be forced to question her loyalties, her principles and even her understanding of her own tragic past.

Set in Cornwall, in a future eerily reminiscent of the 1950s, Dare To Think, and its troubled, courageous protagonist are welcome additions to English crime fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Sep 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781922328021

Book preview

Prologue

Three pre-war double story terraces have been joined and transformed into holiday lets, managed from a fourth terrace further down the street.

In one upstairs apartment, there is a woman rather like me – blonde, thirtyish and fair skinned – with two little girls, probably two-year-olds, all deceased. In a second apartment: a middle-aged male, an early-teenage boy and a younger girl, all dark-haired and olive skinned – all, once again, deceased.

The woman and two girls are in a king-sized bed – the little ones nestled on either side of their mother. The older male next door is slumped in an armchair in front of the radio. There is a glass of red wine on a low table beside him. Down the hallway, the teenager is under the covers, while his sister – probably aged seven or eight – lies face-up in the other bed in the same room, clutching a doll to her chest.

All six of the dead have their eyes closed, as if mid-sleep.

Roses in a wide range of colours perfume most of the rooms. In both apartments, the electric heating is off and the windows are closed. The rooms are cold, the bodies are colder … and I am freezing.

There is no obvious cause of death. There is only, from each apartment, a view of the rooftops, of the bay beyond, and of St Michael’s Mount in the distance.

Three things, apart from the obvious, trouble me.

A man is absent from the dead females’ apartment; his shaving gear is in the en suite vanity and a freshly ironed shirt hangs in the wardrobe in the principal bedroom.

A woman is, likewise, missing from next door. Evidence of her expected presence is, once again, to be found in the bathroom and the main wardrobe.

Finally, there is a phrase written in the same shade of reddish lipstick in upper case letters on the main stretch of wall in each of the combined kitchen/dining/lounge rooms.

It changes everything. Without it, I’d be speculating about adultery-fuelled murder or a combined murder/suicide. Instead, the text stamps the deaths as ones of a quite different sort and relieves me of the need to do much beyond securing the scene.

I know that in the street all eyes will be on me. My colleagues will want the apartment manager to have been stupidly mistaken about events, because of the children. But they will also want to see if this incident – again, because of the children – is the one to breach my defences. They want to be reassured that I am, after all, just like them.

But I’m not like them. The past is always with me.

CHAPTER 1

I walk downstairs and, before I open the door, pull the zipper of my tracksuit top up to my neck. I stretch the sleeves over my hands, then centre myself. I close my eyes and slow my breathing.

There is talk in one of the ground floor apartments. I can hear the ticking of a clock, a three-wheeler climbing a nearby hill and snatches of singing: one of the old religious songs from well before the war. Then, out of nowhere, I see my sister-in-law and nieces, being taken from their Camden terrace to a waiting van.

I push these images to one side, focusing on my breathing, but the last of them returns. I can see the fear in Catherine’s eyes and the confusion on the children’s faces. I see all this detail, even though I am watching from a van at the end of the street.

Flicking everything away, again, I focus on my breathing, before visualising myself – the very personification of calm – stepping onto the footpath and confirming to Angove and Hellyer that there are six bodies upstairs, in two different apartments, and that the State Security Bureau should be notified.

I rehearse the required words in my head, adding mention of the deceased children, and see Hellyer reacting as he normally does to bad tidings – looking to his left and checking the knot on the threadbare tie he's probably worn for every one of his 40 years as a detective. I see Angove running her right hand through her curly red hair, trying not to think about the safety of her own children.

When, though, I do, finally, step outside, my attention is drawn away from the little group of police standing on the other side of the street, to a dozen brown-robed figures on their knees in front of a shop selling radios and records players, five doors down. They are the singers I heard earlier, now silent, their eyes closed in prayer.

Hellyer, who is the only male in the police group, follows my gaze. A faint smile plays on his lips but if any of the others are entertained by my irritation, they have the good sense to mask it.

Someone move that lot on, I hear myself say.

Ma’am? Angove enquires.

Why she needs clarification, I don’t know.

The fundamentalists, I say. Kindly move them on.

I’ll do it, Ma’am says Hellyer, but what do I tell them?

Tell them Angove is about to summon the State Security Bureau.

No one asks the obvious question. Hellyer limps down the street towards the fundamentalists and Angove heads in the direction of the apartment manager’s office to make the required phone call. The two uniformed officers who are left would also like to be busy, well away from me.

Pam, I say to the older one, guard the top of the stairs. No one in.

Except the State Security Bureau, she replies.

Except the SSB, I confirm.

She crosses the street and enters the building. Her colleague, a pale young woman whose name I forget, and whose jacket was tailored for someone more substantial, looks at Hellyer addressing the fundamentalists.

And you guard the front door, I say.

She remains focused on events at the shop front.

If it’s not inconvenient, I say.

Yes Ma’am, she replies, watching Hellyer’s liaison skills bear fruit as the fundamentalists rise to their feet.

This door behind me, I say, finally recalling her name, Gloria.

Yes, Ma’am, she replies.

Sometime soon?

Righty-o, Ma’am, she replies, without moving.

I give up. I’ll be in the manager’s office.

Yes, Ma’am, she says, watching the fundamentalists rushing away.

Perhaps the front door will be guarded at some point; perhaps not. In Southwest Cornwall, I’ve learned, things happen, if at all, in their own good time. And, anyway, no amount of haste will change the fact that there are six dead people upstairs and two others either missing or on the run. We will be on a terror footing as soon as someone can complete the paperwork.

CHAPTER 2

Angove, as the empathetic face of modern regional policing, comes with me to visit the occupants of the three ground floor apartments, while Hellyer – the dour face of a very different era of law-enforcement – sits with the receptionist, the manager and the cleaner. Guests and staff are to go nowhere and talk to no one.

None of the holidaymakers is happy to be kept from planned activities. In all three cases, though, mention of the State Security Bureau’s imminent arrival forestalls grumbling.

Angove and I then wait in the only available sunshine on the opposite side of the street. She probably wants me to detail what I saw upstairs and explain why the SSB is involved. She is, however, well versed in need to know. We wait in silence, our hands in our pockets, facing the sun. Neither of us is a morning person.

When Prentice, the local SSB commander arrives, I am surprised that he is on foot and by himself. He is dressed in the usual black suit. In order to be here so promptly, he’s exerted himself; he is sweating, despite the chill in the air.

Good morning, says Angove.

I was part-way through my breakfast, Prentice replies, looking in a disapproving way at my tracksuit top and bottom.

As a youth, he’d have been attractive enough, but in middle age he’s expanded in all the wrong places and the extra weight makes him seem deceptively soft.

Why is this incident mine? he asks me.

I haven’t spoken to anyone about it, I say, mostly to explain Angove’s brevity on the phone.

She turns to leave, assuming that I’m not prepared to talk detail in her presence.

Don’t bother, Prentice says to her. I’ll see for myself.

The two upstairs apartments, I say. You don’t need keys.

The constable minding the front door, who earlier displayed little interest in attending to her duties, is now irrationally zealous and requires the SSB commander to produce identification before entering. He says something to her which neither Angove nor I can hear. She blushes and steps aside to let him through.

He isn’t upstairs for more than a minute.

Their ID cards? he asks me.

The manager’s office is up there, I reply, pointing along the street. The shopfront with the ‘Apartments to Let’ sign.

I’d never have guessed, he says.

She’s only trying to be helpful, says Angove, bravely.

I’m sure she is, says Prentice.

While he is away this time, four of his people arrive at high speed and full volume in a big black sedan. They leave the siren on and the roof light flashing for longer than they need to. People emerge from shops further down the street and some bicyclists enter from a side street. Angove moves them all on.

The SSB newcomers, all dressed in dark suits, include Peck and Lewis, the two agents most frequently assigned to keeping tabs on me. They don’t acknowledge my presence. None of them seems keen to ask questions; the SSB never likes to appear reliant on others, and especially not on the domestic police.

He’s in the manager’s office, I say.

The one with the ‘Apartments to Let’ sign, says Angove pointing in the relevant direction.

Hellyer appears in the doorway seconds later. There is jostling as he attempts to exit while the newcomers try to enter.

Angove gives me her special aren’t men silly? look.

Prentice is excited about the adults’ IDs, Hellyer announces, when he reaches us.

And? asks Angove.

He’s calling London.

Even my interest is piqued by this disclosure.

The four SSB subordinates exit the manager’s office and hang around the doorway, casting the occasional hostile look in our direction, perhaps because we have monopolised the sun and because Cornwall spring mornings can be to-the-bone cold.

The manager, receptionist and maid are next out. They stand further down our side of the street in front of a butcher’s shop, in their own little group.

Then Prentice appears at the doorway. He gestures me to join him. The four subordinates reluctantly let me through.

Immediately inside, on the left, is a counter. Behind it is a desk on which there is a newish looking black telephone and an empty three-tiered metal filing tray. Behind the desk is a tattered coloured poster featuring an overdressed woman pushing a little girl on a swing. They are observed by a man in a dinner suit and black tie. The caption reads ‘Fun all year round on the English Riviera’. These words are helpful because the poster, without sun, sea or verdant greenery, could as easily be an advertisement for Glasgow as for Penzance.

Prentice motions for me to sit in one of the vacant chairs in front of the desk.

I’ve called London, he says.

I try to appear surprised.

Because of these.

He pushes two ID cards, photo side up, across the desk. One image is of a blue-eyed balding male, probably in his mid-30s, with close-cropped hair and a cheeky grin. The other is of a slightly older, darker-haired female with a prominent nose and a severe expression.

The missing two? I ask.

He nods.

They look, at first glance, to be an improbable couple but there is something about the male that women of a certain type would always find difficult to resist. And the photographed woman is definitely of the right type. It’s the eyes that give her away. Her severity is a protective veneer. Underneath there is a very different person. I tell myself that it would be unwise, this early in the piece, to discount romance as a reason for their absence and even for the deaths of their family members.

Why have these two troubled you? I ask.

You haven’t seen them before?

I look again at the images. Not that I recall.

He unbuttons his tie and thinks for a moment. Maybe they were gone by the time you turned up.

This morning? I’m confused; of course they were gone … assuming they were present in the first place.

Forget about it, he says. He recovers the two ID cards and, looking at the reverse side of each, seems even more troubled.

Something up? I ask.

No. All fine, he says, putting the cards into one of the drawers. Tell me why you believe the deaths upstairs warrant investigation by SSB.

SSB officers never refer to 'the SSB' like the rest of us do. For them it’s just 'SSB', as in SSB knows everything about you, SSB requires you to detail anything that SSB may not know about you… and SSB will certainly prosecute you in the Security Court if it turns out that you have failed to mention things which SSB should have been told about you … even if you thought SSB was unlikely to be interested in those things.

I saw the slogan on the walls.

Go on.

It has terrorist connotations.

That’s all?

I considered it to be enough.

And do you recall anything about the terrorists who used this slogan?

I remember that two decades earlier there were individuals in London who’d killed their family members before blowing themselves up in crowded public places. The same slogan had been painted, in each case, on an interior wall of the homes their loved ones had died in.

Anything?

I recall what they did, I say.

And you think these murders, today, could be connected?

Dead family members are indicative, I say, but Western Cornwall isn’t London. Not a lot of bombing opportunities here. And anyway, it’s been more than 20 years.

So, your conclusion is?

Anything is possible.

The phone rings. He answers it and, placing his hand over the mouthpiece, asks me if I can step outside for a moment.

Of course. I get up and join the SSB men on the footpath. Conversation stops. I am an unwelcome presence. Only for a moment, gentlemen, I say to them.

They avoid eye contact.

I’ll get tea, says Peck to the others.

I’ll help you carry, says Lewis.

At this point Angove would probably have said ‘mine’s strong and white with one,’ but I know better than to make fun of SSB officers in front of their peers.

We’ll come, too, say the remaining pair.

I don’t have an aren’t men silly look of my own to give Angove. Besides, Prentice is in the doorway, asking me to come inside.

We resume our previous places behind and in front of the desk.

I’m under instructions from London, he begins, to tell you that SSB has no direct interest in this case and that it is, consequently, yours.

Mine?

It’s been formally allocated to the Southwest Cornwall Police.

Despite the apparent terror connection?

Yes.

And even though something about the IDs worried you enough to call London in the first place.

All I’ve been told is that I’m to leave the case to you, after informing you that the two missing adults are both SSB agents from Newcastle, previously from here, and that London will soon be in touch.

I don’t know which of these revelations is the more surprising.

It seems you’re popular, again he says, merrily.

I’m not sure I want to be.

I suppose you can tell that to London when you have your little chat.

We look at each other. He should be irritated but is, instead, vaguely amused.

You said the missing adults were local SSB?

In theory they worked for me, for a brief time after I arrived, but they spent most of that period packing, preparing to move. I met but didn’t know them.

So, you can’t be of any help, backgrounding me?

No help at all, I’m afraid. And the rest of my staff, as you’re probably aware, arrived after me – all new, every last one of them.

That was odd, in itself.

Your pensioner– he probably means Hellyer –can tell you more.

He gets up to leave.

But, in summary, I say, the SSB has no interest in multiple deaths connected to two of its agents, previously stationed in Cornwall, even though those deaths are likely to be murders with a terrorist dimension, and even though there is some likelihood of danger to the public, if not to the two agents, themselves.

Normally I’m not so brave in my dealings with the SSB. Prentice is, unsurprisingly, taken aback.

Correct, he says, after a moment’s consideration.

A sheep as for a lamb. And are you aware of any other situations involving crimes by or against SSB officers or their families, here or elsewhere, which have been left to the local police to deal with?

None at all, he answers, cheerfully.

Cases involving possible terrorism?

Again, none.

What about ones where SSB officers may have been turned?

Most definitely not, he answers, getting up.

Me neither.

We’ve all got to do what we’re told, he says, moving around the desk.

But it makes no sense.

I wish you luck with your investigation.

And that’s it?

London will be in touch, he says, pulling the door closed behind him.

I look at the newish telephone, the empty three-tiered filing tray and the poster for the English Riviera, and want to cry or rage or both.

CHAPTER 3

When I am again calm, I inspect the accommodation register on the counter. Four adults, with attendant children, are down for only a single night’s stay – both tariffs paid in advance by a single postal order – and the receptionist or the manager has noted receipt of all four adult ID cards. It’s all, on the surface of things, nicely compliant with the relevant regulations.

I go through the desk, looking for the ID cards. They are in the third drawer down, along with those of the other adult guests.

I put my head out of the front doorway. Prentice and the SSB men are nowhere to be seen. The manager, receptionist and maid look at me hopefully from the other side of the street. I notice for the first time that they’re all redheads, like Angove.

Just a few more minutes, I say, before gesturing my two detectives over.

Inside, we sit around the table.

I can confirm that there are six deceased people in the apartments down the street. Four are children.

Children, says Hellyer.

I try not to look at Angove

There is no obvious cause of death. An adult male from one family and an adult female from the other appear to be missing. The connections, if any, between their absence and the deaths of their families are not clear, even though there is a terrorist slogan written on the wall in the main room of each apartment.

A terrorist slogan? Angove says.

Which is presumably why you called in the SSB, says Hellyer.

Yes, but on instructions from London, they have declined involvement, even though the two missing adults are serving SSB officers – are in fact ex-SSB Cornwall officers: a George Carlyle and a Jane Salter.

I place the missing pair’s passes face-up on the table.

Angove gasps and Hellyer’s eyes widen.

George and Jane, right enough, he says, but not Carlyle and Salter, no.

And not your run-of-the-mill SSB busybodies, either, says Angove.

Most certainly not, says Hellyer, turning the passes over to reveal the names I announced moments earlier. Because despite what it says here, these two are really George Knox and Jane Miller.

Knox and Miller are, I know, straight from the SSB Hall of Fame and, before my arrival in Cornwall, had uncovered the biggest coding conspiracy in recent English history. More than a dozen individuals had been exposed and had, in the parlance of the security justice system, been removed from the community, along with their immediate families. A big swathe had thereby been cut through South-west Cornish society.

I produce the passes of the two dead adults: the spouses. The names on them are consistent with the false names in the register and on their partners’ passes.

They’ve also changed their appearance in little ways, says Hellyer, staring at the photos.

But why would you bother with a haircut and a name change, says Angove, also peering at the passes, if you were coming back here, where people were always going to recognise you?

Why come back at all? asks Hellyer, looking at me. At least one attempt was made to kill the two of them before they left for Newcastle. And no one in Penzance was going to be happy to see them, again.

And I’m advised that none of their ex-colleagues are still here, I say. They can't have been visiting old friends.

Not that they’d have been any more popular in those quarters, says Angove.

George was something of a ladies’ man, Hellyer explains for my benefit, and our Jane was a sour, miserable cow.

Was there anything between them at any point? I ask.

She wasn’t his type, says Angove. Too bright; too serious.

Him or her? I enquire. 

She was much too clever for him.

And she was the Psychologist in their work pairing, says Hellyer. She’d have known, pretty smartly, what made him tick.

Fair enough, I say.

I still don’t understand why they would come back, says Angove. If we – Hellyer and I – could recognise them and see through their false identities, others were bound to. And Jane Miller’s husband was a teacher; every second local kid would have known him.

But not the apartment operators, says Hellyer. They’re newcomers, from Bristol, who do everything, including reception and cleaning, for themselves. They’re probably the only accommodation folk in town who wouldn’t have twigged.

How do you know the apartment people do it all, themselves? asks Angove, impressed.

I have a cousin who worked here before the new lot took over.

All very interesting, I say, Prompting the question: why would the families come here if they’d be forced to stay inside, in their apartments?

We mull over these points and it seems to me that if Knox and Miller were in hiding or on the run, Penzance would probably be the last place you’d look for them. In this connection, I want to know how they arrived and whether they came in secret. My guess is that they wouldn’t have come by the usual method i.e. on the train.

I also want to know how the bodies came to be discovered.

But even if someone had recognised them, Hellyer says, and became aware of their false identities, which is unlikely, who would they alert? They’re hardly likely to complain to the SSB or to us, are they?

That’s true, says Angove. No one would want to be involved.

We all think about that.

Putting the risk of exposure aside for the moment, says Angove, I come back to the central question: why come here at all? They needed around-the-clock protection before they left.

Maybe they weren’t all here in the first place, Hellyer says.

You think the missing two weren’t here, asks Angove, at any point?

Maybe, Hellyer says. Maybe their partners checked the families in and were waiting for Knox and Miller to arrive … but they never turned up.

It wouldn’t be the first time an accommodation manager has broken the rules, Angove says.

Or maybe, I say, all four checked in but the SSB two then went somewhere else, perhaps to talk together or meet someone.

Time to talk to the staff? asks Angove, gesturing in the direction of the street.

Can we hear about the slogan, first? says Hellyer. He’s probably deduced that we’re not in any rush because, if Knox and Miller have fled or been abducted, our prospects of catching them are poor. They are likely to be long gone, either way. And if they were never here …

The slogan, I say, of course.

I’m assuming, says Angove looking at the poster on the wall, it wasn’t ‘Fun all year round in sunny Cornwall’.

Hellyer gives her a disapproving look.

Dare to Think, I say, is from something written by the French philosopher, Voltaire, as part of an instructive conversation between two characters. However, it could just as well go back to the Roman poet, Horace. I have a vague recollection, too, that one of the 20th century Chinese leaders also used it.

The things you know, Ma’am, says Hellyer.

If only any of it was useful, I say, but thank you for the acknowledgement.

Why do these words trouble us, now? asks Angove, patiently.

Ah, yes. The phrase was more recently connected, perhaps twenty years ago, to a series of suicide bombings in London.

Neither of them indicates they can recall anything relevant. This is hardly surprising. Like me, Angove would have been a child and obvious acts of terror weren’t widely publicised then, just as they aren’t now.

The bombers wrote the words on the interior walls of the homes where they dispatched their families.

I beg your pardon? says Angove.

Before going out to blow themselves and lots of their fellow citizens to kingdom come, they killed their families and wrote the words Dare to Think on their lounge room or kitchen walls.

They killed their children? Angove asks.

And their spouses. Sometimes their parents and in-laws, as well.

To put them beyond the reach of the state? Hellyer enquires.

Or because they believed their lives had so little value: that the liberties we all forego, to have safe and fulfilling existences, were too high a price to pay.

We have now touched on the two most sensitive subjects able to be broached by citizens in modern England, other than the governance of the nation, itself. No one with any sense readily talks about the state’s treatment of the families of suspected terrorists; no one readily talks about its control of our daily lives.

I realise that I shouldn’t have let things get this far. It wasn’t in the least necessary to speculate on why the bombers killed their families. We needed only to understand that they did it. It was my responsibility, as the most senior officer present, to have kept things on a tighter rein.

Our only way ahead is recourse to the Declaration of Faith, but who will begin? It would probably look best, should Angove or Hellyer decide to inform on me, later, if I was the one to start. Then again, commencing it, myself, might later be viewed as an admission of guilt, which would not, strategically, be in my best interests, in the event of any formal inquiry.

As it turns out, Angove decides the matter for me.

The state protects us, she says, and guards our right to labour.

All must work; all work is valued, continues Hellyer, because he is to Angove’s right.

In work lies dignity and purpose, I say.

The only intelligence is human, we say, together, and the price of liberty is unceasing vigilance.

This seems to clear the air. I wonder, nonetheless, if I might still be reported and whether I should break my own long-standing rule by getting in first. After all, it was Hellyer who took things off course by talking about the reach of the state. A simple phone call to Prentice could do the trick and Hellyer might never know who had informed on him.

I decide, instead, that preventive contextualising is the best option. I’m not yet up to ratting on my colleagues. 

I wouldn’t have permitted talk about any of the matters we’ve just mentioned, I say, had the SSB proceeded with this case.

Of course not, says Hellyer, who seems anxious to defuse things. 

And we needed to understand what we’re dealing with here, says Angove, apparently on-side.

Maybe all is well, again, I conclude, and there is nothing for me to worry about.

Yes, I say, something complicated has happened here and if the SSB don’t want any part of it, it isn’t because they think we’ll do a better job than they could.

While criticism of the state is unthinkable in any circles, it’s perfectly all right in at least police circles to speak ill of the SSB. I nonetheless stop short of saying what my instinct tells me is true: that we’ve been set up for failure.

Well, soonest started, soonest finished, says Hellyer, getting out his notebook.

And who knows, says Angove, without