‘It’ll do him good to be the centre of attention. The other children tease him mercilessly, but he’s harmless, just slow. Oxygen starvation at birth.’
‘You owe him a reward,’ Isaac said.
‘Do I?’
‘I promised him one. You’ll need to deal with it.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll think of something.’
***
The unexpected death of a member of the aristocracy was bound to cause a ruffling of feathers in Scotland Yard. It was not long before the expected reaction.
‘Lord Allerton. What’s going on?’ Goddard blasted down Isaac’s phone.
Isaac and Donaldson had just left young Terry Smith’s house. He had not been able to add much more to what he had seen. Billy, his elder brother, remembered that the driver of the Land Rover crunched the gears on the vehicle.
‘Allerton was involved,’ Isaac responded to the man he once admired, but could only feel contempt for now.
‘How do you know this?’
‘He told us.’
‘And it’s proven?’
‘It would have been, but someone beat us to him.’
‘Explain yourself, DCI. I’ve got the commissioner breathing down my neck, and the former commissioner is asking what’s happened.’
‘You mean Lord Shaw, your mentor?’ Isaac replied, remembering the close relationship his DCS had had with the previous commissioner; the same as he had previously had with his DCS.
‘As you say, my mentor. But the man’s in the House of Lords and one of their own has been murdered. It is murder, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I need something to keep Davies off my back.’
‘Very well,’ Isaac replied. ‘Earlier this morning, Lord Allerton phoned me to say he was coming into Challis Street to confess.’
‘Did he arrive?’
‘No. We were all here, and he had been clear that he would give names, including the person who has been running the drug syndicate.’
‘When he didn’t turn up?’
‘There wasn’t a lot we could do. It was only a few hours, and we had no information on where he was, or what car he was driving. Our assumption was that he had been delayed or had chickened out.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘No. We phoned the police station close to Allerton’s home to keep a watch for him. They saw him pass by, but fifteen minutes later, the man’s dead.’
Goddard let out an audible sigh of exasperation. ‘Keep me posted. I’m off to another earbashing.’
‘Commissioner Davies?’ Isaac asked.
‘Who else? Sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it.’
Isaac felt sympathy for the man who had guided his career, a willingness to see the best in his DCS. ‘Good luck,’ he said.
‘And you. Wrap this up soon or else.’
‘Or else the commissioner will wrap us up.’
‘You know the procedure.’
‘By now I should,’ Isaac replied. ‘As long as it doesn’t involve that obnoxious DCI Caddick.’
‘It probably will. The man hangs around like a bad smell.’
***
With no information to the contrary, Isaac and the team moved forward on the premise that Steve Walters had driven the Land Rover. Isaac, in possession of Allerton’s mobile phone number, had passed it on to Bridget who was accessing the records of calls made, calls received.
As Isaac was driving on the return journey to Challis Street, it would not be as quick as the trip up. Even so, they still expected to be back in the early hours of the morning. He knew the team would still be working, but he needed at least a couple of hours sleep. He agreed to meet up at seven the next morning in his office.
The phone which Inspector Corker had given him was in his pocket. The numbers in the phone’s memory could be of some interest, but whoever had arranged for the death of Allerton, or who Allerton may have spoken to, would almost certainly be recent and on record.
Wendy and Larry were in the office going through the spreadsheet that Bridget had supplied them. Most phone calls made from Allerton’s phone had been trivial and easily discounted. What was important to the team was that they did not alert Allerton’s criminal accomplices to what was going on.
It was clear that Hughenden’s and now Allerton’s deaths were the acts of desperate people. Larry was confident they were closing in, and he intended to stay in the office until they had something to tell their DCI in the morning. His wife, as usual, complained about the hours worked.
Wendy, on her own after the death of her husband, had no one complaining about her; she wished she had, but realised she never would. All she had were her two cats, the legacy of a cat-loving woman in a previous case who had died after seeing her dead son. Wendy had never been a cat person, but she had become fond of them. Larry had taken another of the cats, and it was well ensconced in the Hills’ household, so much so that he had to push it out of his chair every night when he got home.
Of the thirty plus numbers on the spreadsheet, several were deemed suspicious. It had been possible to identify Allerton’s family, as well as his lawyer and local tradesmen, yet some remained unclear. Why would he have been phoning an MP, and a well-known businessman? The men on the other end of the phone numbers could have been innocuous and completely innocent, but the team were very suspicious of everything and everyone.
Lord Allerton had appeared to be beyond reproach, but he had been willing to come in and confess. What about the MP, the businessman? Could they be innocent or was there something more?
‘Bridget,’ Wendy asked, ‘any correlation with the records from Eton College?’
‘Allerton went to the college with the two men.’
‘So they’re innocent.’
‘I’m just the office worker, you’re the police sergeant,’ Bridget replied with typical late-night humour.
‘Larry, how do you fancy
