Chapter 70

CHAPTER 70

MARPLE WAS IMPRESSED again. It had taken Rebecca Tran only a few minutes to hack into a cache of Brexit surveillance files that MI5 had apparently been collecting for the past twenty years. Top secret cases. Eyes-only files.

“Will you get into trouble for this?” Marple asked.

Tran turned to her with a stern expression. “No. You will.” She held the look for a second, then broke into a conspiratorial smile. “Just kidding. Dodgett will probably get you diplomatic immunity.”

Marple was really starting to like this woman. She pulled her chair close as the analyst skimmed through grainy videos of edgy skinheads, fringe politicians, and eccentric billionaires. The speeches had been captured over the years in public squares, conference centers, and dingy meeting rooms. The common themes of the diatribes were “pushing back the wave” of immigrants and “saving British tradition.” The tone was universally belligerent, often ominous.

On a panel alongside the videos, Marple noticed an audio visualizer, showing a running graph of sound levels, often spiking into the red zone. The Brexit radicals were a high-decibel bunch. Mostly, but not exclusively, men. Marple found herself shifting her eyes from the images of the speakers to the electronic dance of the audio signals.

“Can you filter by frequency?” asked Marple. She had an idea.

“Frequency of appearance?”

“Audio frequency. Can you isolate higher-pitched speakers?”

“Not sure,” said Tran. “I’ll try.” She tapped out a new set of instructions on the keyboard. After a few seconds, she leaned forward in her chair. “Okay. That helps.”

Now, instead of hundreds of speakers in the video queue, there were only three.

Three women. Tran clicked the isolated links one by one.

The first showed Ellie Babitch, a wealthy pot-stirrer from the fringe of the Conservative Party. Marple recognized her from the tabloids. Babitch’s Brexit garden parties had been famous but relatively innocuous. Most guests had come for the free drinks, and for a chance to rub shoulders with Babitch’s much-younger husband, a retired striker for the Arsenal football team.

Next up was a lithe, foul-mouthed woman with a German accent speaking in a deserted factory. She delivered her profanity-laced speech beneath a painted symbol that evoked the Reichsadler, the imperial eagle symbol from Hitler’s era.

“Who’s the storm trooper?” asked Marple.

Tran quickly pulled up a profile on another screen. “Else Schmidt. Deported three years ago.” She scrolled down. “Serving a ten-year sentence in Stadelheim Prison on a weapons charge. I’d count her out of the picture.”

One left. The last video in the queue had been captured by a cell phone in some kind of club. More like an underground bunker. Low ceilings. Dim light. Graffiti-scrawled walls. The crowd was scruffy and frantic, chanting a single word over and over again: “Regal! Regal! Regal!” Most of them were women.

The camera tipped toward the front of the room as a slight figure emerged from behind a makeshift curtain. The shape was waifish but clearly female. There was no ID available on the face, even in close-up. The woman’s entire head was covered in stocking material stenciled with the Union Jack.

As she started to speak, a banner unfurled behind her. Spelled out in large letters was the word “REGAL,” in bold, widely spaced capitals.

“An acronym?” Marple theorized.

Tran typed it into the system. The response took less than a second.

“REGAL,” she read out loud. “Restore English Glory and Language.”

“Pithy,” said Marple.

Tran scanned the highlights from the accompanying intelligence report. “Small group. No more than fifty at their peak. On a watch list for a couple years in the late twenty teens. Maybe disbanded or inactive. No social media tracks for years.”

“Maybe they’ve moved on to other activities,” said Marple.

“Here’s one of their old posts,” said Tran. She enlarged the image and sharpened it. Beneath a close-up of the fine-boned woman in the flag mask, the text read, “Make Britain White Again.”

Marple heard her phone vibrating in her bag. She reached in and pulled it out.

On her screen was a text. All caps.

COME BACK. SOMEONE’S ABOUT TO BE MURDERED.

It was from Holmes.

He always knew exactly how to get her attention.