‘What’s it to you?’
‘Did you know what they did to me, all those years ago?’
‘Yes. Ed said it was necessary.’
‘Those files you gave Smythe are as worthless as you are.’
‘You set me up?’
‘I needed to know who I could trust.’
‘Helen?’
‘She has done her part. Now you must do yours.’
***
Isaac Cook received the phone call at 8 a.m. the next morning. It was not often that he spoke to self-confessed killers. Typically, they preferred to keep their deeds under wraps, but Malcolm Woolston needed to talk, to someone he hoped would understand. ‘I had to do it,’ Woolston said.
Isaac signalled to Bridget on the other side of the department. She came running. ‘Woolston,’ he mouthed to her. Bridget retreated to instigate a check on where the phone call was being made from.
‘Don’t bother,’ Woolston said. ‘Our phone conversation will not take long, and besides, it’s untraceable. Now listen.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Even if you do not understand, there are reasons why my original research must remain hidden. It is why I continue to remove people who jeopardise that wish.’
‘And what about your wife and daughter? Don’t you place them at risk?’
‘That is why they need protection.’
‘But we cannot guarantee total protection.’
‘I will help to ensure they are safe. You have met Sue Christie?’ Woolston asked.
‘Yes, on a few occasions.’
‘She was willing to sell out if the price was right.’
‘And what are you going to do.’
‘It has been dealt with.’
‘How?’
‘132 Craven Terrace, ground floor. I suggest you check it out.’
‘What will we find?’
‘Sue Christie.’
‘Is she?’
‘Dead. Yes, she’s very dead. An attractive woman in her time, but I could not let her live.’
‘This is madness. You kill people and then phone me up. What kind of person does that?’
‘Someone who understands who he is dealing with.’
***
‘The man’s psychotic,’ Isaac said as he stood in Sue Christie’s flat, the signs of a struggle clearly visible. A cat sat in one corner of the room; some flowers in a vase. The body of the woman sprawled across the floor. She had been strangled, her legs kicking out in her panic. Until now Isaac had been willing to concede that Woolston may have had an obscure, but valid reason for disposing of people, at least in his mind. Not that it excused him, but there had been murder enquiries in the past where the politics of the country had conflicted with the truth, and where the politics had taken precedence.
The average man in the street held the begrudging belief that the political masters had the best interests of the people at heart, but neither Isaac Cook nor his department, and certainly not his DCS, believed in that totally. Isaac knew of three deaths in previous cases that were government-sanctioned and would never be solved. But now he could no longer grant the man the benefit of the doubt. Woolston, for all his postulating, was a murderer without conscience.
‘You don’t need me to tell you who the murderer is this time, do you?’ Gordon Windsor, the crime scene examiner, asked.
‘It’s Woolston. I’ve no idea what the man is playing at. His wife and daughter are in plain view. He must realise the risk that he’s placing them under.’
‘And you always thought the man was rational.’
***
Malcolm Woolston sat in his flat. The nightmares that had plagued him before his time on the street were returning. He was losing his ability to rationalise between reality and fiction, his capacity to distinguish between right and wrong. Sue Christie’s death had been right, he was sure of that. After all, he had seen her give Smythe the files, or had she? She had left the office that day, deposited the files in the bin that he had told her to, and then carried on to meet one of the two military men that he had seen Ed with all those years before.
He had liked Sue, yet he had killed her, but what had she done, what could she do? The knowledge they wanted still resided with him.
She had struggled, he remembered that. Why had he enjoyed taking her life, he did not know. Maybe it was a deviancy, a repressed sexual desire, to want the woman, yet knowing he couldn’t have her. She had pleaded with him for her life, even would have let him make love to her in return, but what had he done? He had sucked the life from her and left. And now there were others that needed to die, and soon.
Ed was a certainty, but his wife had betrayed him, slept with another. Did she need to die as well? And what about his daughter? She had shown affection for Barrow, even allowed him to walk her down the aisle when it should have been his responsibility. How could she? He paced up and down the flat, feeling the walls pressing in on him, thinking thoughts, not sure if they had attempted to force the solution out of him or whether it had been a dream.
He knew that he needed help. He phoned the only person who would understand. ‘DCI Cook, I am not sure,’ Woolston said.
‘You’ve murdered Sue Christie.’
‘What if none of it is true? What if I only imagine it? Could it be that I spent all those years living rough because of madness?’
‘No one deserved to die, you know that. Why don’t you come into the police station and we can discuss it?’
‘Not yet. I need to decide.’
‘Decide what?’
‘If what I believe is true or not.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘I will wait. Rest, that is what I need.’
***
Richard Goddard was not in a good mood, which did not surprise Isaac. He’d let him express his customary criticism, his self-recrimination as to why
