‘I’d beg to differ, Commissioner,’ Isaac said. He knew that he could not sit silent and allow the man to take the credit when his team were nearby, listening in to the conversation.
‘Beg as much as you like, Caddick made the difference. How many has this man killed now?’
‘Three.’
‘I’m not going to let this go as far as ten.’
‘We’re sure we’ll have him soon,’ Goddard said. ‘I’ve every confidence.’
‘That’s what you said last time, and I let you carry on. Believe me, this time I’ll act. One more murder and I’ll bring in Caddick. That man knows how to get results.’
Davies stood up and walked out of the door. Isaac noticed him ignore the other departments as he strolled along the corridor. Within two minutes, he had left the building.
‘He’s not a bundle of fun, is he?’ Larry said.
‘He’s still the man who controls our fate,’ Isaac replied.
Goddard returned to the department. ‘We’ve got to head this man off at the pass,’ he said.
‘Diplomacy’s not his strong point,’ Isaac said.
‘The hatchets are out for him. He doesn’t need to indulge in diplomacy, only to get the results. And if that means all of us, he’ll not hesitate to chop us off at the knees.’
‘But Caddick?’
‘The commissioner’s playing a strategic game. If he replaces the heads of departments, places the blame on them, he’ll gain a honeymoon period; gives him another three months.’
‘The end result will be worse.’
‘Isaac, you’d not make it as a politician if you can’t see what he’s up to. The man’s protecting himself, the results are dispensable.’
‘He shouldn’t be in his position then.’
‘An admirable sentiment. Naïve, but admirable. Besides, let’s not give him a chance to act. What do you have?’
Larry and Wendy, as well as Bridget, had been present when Isaac and their DCS had had their conversation, a clear sign that Goddard trusted them.
‘We’ll wait to see if we have a fingerprint match,’ Larry said.
‘And if they don’t match.’
‘We’re compiling a dossier of Harold Hutton’s associates,’ Isaac said.
‘The man must have had plenty,’ Goddard replied.
‘We realise that; that’s why we’ll cross-reference them against known associates of George Arbuthnot.’
‘Bob Robertson?’
‘That seems circumstantial. We may be wrong there, but Robertson had no government involvement and no association to Arbuthnot.’
‘What’s with this Arbuthnot?’ Goddard asked.
‘We believe that he was trading arms under the auspices of the British Government.’
‘You know what that means?’
‘Powerful friends. It’s not the first time we’ve been there, is it?’ Isaac said.
‘Not the first time, and every time it gets mucky and dangerous. Are we opening something we might not be able to close?’ Goddard asked.
Isaac could see the worry in the man’s face. Yet again, he, they, were about to be thrust from a murder inquiry into involvement with the government, and each time that happened the death count went up, and not always at the hand of the primary suspect.
‘Harold Hutton was into scientific research, not weapons,’ Wendy said.
‘Who do you think funds scientific research?’ Goddard said. ‘The man may have been interested in research for noble reasons, but he would have been a pragmatist; after all, he was a politician. If funding depended on directing research towards the military, he would have embraced it.’
‘Reluctantly?’ Isaac asked.
‘Who knows? He could have been an ardent pacifist, or a man out for whatever he could for his own interests, not caring at what cost. You can research him, although you’ll probably not find very much dirt on him. For whatever reason, your tramp thought that he should die, and unless Hutton’s death is purely random, then he was in deep. Find the link between Hutton and Arbuthnot, and you’ll find your murderer.’
Chapter 15
Ed Barrow was a worried man, and not only because he was married to Malcolm Woolston’s widow. If Arbuthnot and Hutton had died, then he’d be next. The solution to the dilemma was not clear. If he told his wife, Gwen, that the man was still alive, how would she react?
Would she feel the need to transfer her emotions from him to her previous husband, Lazarus resurrected?
Malcolm Woolston had been dead for over a decade; if he continued to stay dead, at least to his wife and daughter, then all would be well, but where was the man, and would he be capable of ordering his assassination? Barrow knew the answer to the question.
It had been him that had co-signed the authorisation to detain his friend and subject him to the horrendous treatment that had been meted out to him. He had watched for some time, a morbid interest in the subjugation of one person by another. He had watched Arbuthnot and the other torturer hitting Woolston with all the force that he could muster, Arbuthnot standing close by, taking part when the first man took a break. It had only been three men in that room, the victim and the perpetrators, with a viewing hole in one wall.
Barrow could not feel any sadness at the deaths of Arbuthnot and Hutton. One was a parasite who did the bidding of others, sold weapons to governments who would use them against their own people, against other countries, other religions. And then there was Hutton, sanctimonious, expansive in his support of scientific research for the betterment of the country, the betterment of mankind, willing to make deals with the military in exchange for their funding.
It had not concerned Woolston initially, as he had believed the spiel put forward by Hutton, but
