Is Belinda giving Rupert hush money?

What a difference a month makes! Was it really only a few weeks ago that Rupert was bragging about having shown up outside Christ Church Primary School one morning, and claiming that people with connections to the fictional cult were just about to “spill their guts” to him?

A month ago, in his own mind at least, he was the heroic investigator, pushing through while others were arrested and detained, getting ready to attend “important rallies”, sticking it out in the face of adversity and dwindling funds.

And then shit got real for poor Rupert.

Three officers showed up at the door, and instead of boxing their ears for their temerity, or sprinting off and evading them, Rupert discovered that even though many British police don’t carry sidearms, they are nevertheless not to be trifled with.

Ah well, live and learn.

Since his arrest in September, Rupert has gone almost completely silent online.

Instead of bragging about how he’ll be cracking the imaginary cult wide open, Rupert has now completely changed his tune:

He is finally admitting he bit off more than he could chew. In fact, his most recent GoFundMe update sounds positively desperate:

But that doesn’t mean his friends have forgotten about him. At least, Belinda certainly hasn’t! She’s been loyally tossing bits of cash his way via his GoFundMe account, as recently as Friday:

This is on top of her donation two weeks ago…

…and two weeks before that:

This makes us wonder: Belinda never gives something for nothing. We know she keeps various people on a monthly retainer (seems that £1,000 is the going rate), but it’s not out of the goodness of her stone-cold heart.

She expects value for money.

Sure, those she pays can expect to face the brunt of the law, but not to fret! Belinda will turn up at your court hearings, and mouth all the right platitudes for her cameraman du jour to post on YouTube. She’ll stage vigils in your honour, and bring bags of sandwiches to nourish your cadre of supporters. She’ll take notes and talk about how this is all a farce, and she’ll give that dry little laugh and explain that this is how the powers that be keep us all down.

And in the end, if you’re lucky, you’ll only be slapped with a restraining order or possibly a minor prison sentence, while she walks away whistling quietly to herself.

Such is the price of doing business with Belinda.

So the question is, why is she sending cash to Rupert? And why did she start doling it out only after he was arrested?

We wonder whether it could have something to do with this:

Let’s put it this way: Rupert was granted access to the inner sanctum of the Hoaxtead Pusher-in-Chief.

We know he attended meetings attended by Belinda, Sabine, Angie, Kevin Weaver and others, where they sat around and watched what he called “MKULTRA porn”:

What he saw seems to have repulsed him, to the point where he claims to now “agree with the cops” and “feel bad for Dearman”.

From Belinda’s perspective, this cannot be good news. Rupert was a bought-and-paid-for commodity, whose purpose was to have been to help penetrate the seemingly indifferent American market with the Hoaxtead story.

So what’s all this “agreeing with the cops” malarkey, then? Could it mean agreeing with them to the point where he might be tempted to grass up his former employers?

When in doubt, Belinda’s strategy is to shower her stooges with money and saccharine praise, in hopes that they will remember where their loyalties ought to lie.

Granted, $580 in a month isn’t quite the £1,000 stipend she generally doles out, but to a man who’s desperate and hungry, stuck in London’s south-east corner with hosts who are no doubt sick and tired of him by now, it might be enough to ensure tight lips.

Besides, there’s always the fear factor: Rupert admits that he’s afraid to speak out publicly against his erstwhile hosts, as he knows “the constituency here” will “fuck him up”. He’s probably right on that score.

He’s spent time with them, and he knows their tactics: they won’t hesitate to turn on him if they think he’s done them wrong. He’s seen the damage they can do; he understands now how they have destroyed RD’s life, and he knows he could be next.

Belinda has been playing this game for years, and she’s well aware that the combination of fear and desperation can lower the going price of a pawn. So she’s tossing him scraps, knowing he must accept them, and hoping that when push comes to shove, Rupert is exactly the sort of coward she believes him to be.