‘You know what I require?’
‘It’s already been agreed.’
‘In writing? Barrow asked.
‘No one will claim responsibility if this goes wrong.’
Ed Barrow could see that he had to trust the man. He did not like Smythe, despised him in many ways. His father had been working class and a decent, hardworking individual who had never cheated on his taxes, helped the old dears on and off his bus. Smythe, Barrow knew, would help no one.
The conversation had been brief, a handshake on their meeting, another on leaving. Barrow knew that he was placing his trust in a man he did not like, but he had no option.
Two days later, as Malcolm Woolston hobbled down the corridor outside his room at the hospital, an order came through signed by Commissioner Davies for his immediate release. Another two hours and Woolston stood on the street in the company of two men dressed in suits. ‘Ed Barrow?’ he asked.
‘We’re just the delivery men,’ the shorter of the two said.
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘You’ll see.’
A vehicle drew up alongside, its windows tinted. Once inside, and with Woolston pinned between the two men on the back seat, one of them took out a syringe from his pocket and injected him in the neck.
‘How long will he sleep?’ the other one asked.
‘Long enough.’
***
The first Isaac and his team heard of the events at the hospital was a phone call thirty minutes later.
‘They’ve released Woolston,’ Richard Goddard said.
‘Who’s they?’ Isaac asked.
‘Davies received a directive.’
‘And he released the man? He may be the commissioner of the Met but he doesn’t have the authority.’
‘He had no option.’
‘Protecting his job, is that it?’
‘Isaac, you may well be upset, so am I, but we all have someone we report to.’
‘Even Davies?’
‘We’ve been there before. You know how it works.’
‘Security of the state?’
‘They’re the government. We do what we’re told.’
Isaac called in the team to his office. ‘They’ve released Malcolm Woolston.’
‘All charges dropped?’ Isaac asked his DCS on the phone.
‘The charges still apply.’
‘Gwen Barrow?’
‘There’ll be a trial.’
‘A whitewash?’
‘What do you think?’
***
Isaac and Larry left the office soon after their DCS’s phone call. They found Ed Barrow at his house. ‘Were you involved?’ Isaac asked.
Barrow sat calmly on a chair. He fiddled with his smartphone. Isaac wanted to pick it up and to throw it out of the window, as angry as he was.
‘Woolston?’ Barrow said, pretending not to know.
‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know. He’s gone, that’s all I know.’
‘You’ve sold out.’
‘Sold out to who and what?’
‘Those who wanted him.’
‘It’s not a matter that I can talk about.’
‘Why?’
‘Official Secrets Act. You’ve heard of it.’
‘I’ve heard of it. What did they offer you? A salary increase, a promotion.’
‘I didn’t do it for that.’
‘Then for what?’
‘My family, that’s who.’
‘Your wife is still in jail.’
‘She is safe, as is Sally and her child. That’s what Malcolm wanted all along. I’ve done what he couldn’t.’
Within one week Gwen Barrow was released on bail; six weeks later the charge against her was dropped.
In another country, in a secure establishment, Malcolm Woolston worked at the project he had tried to avoid for so many years. He was aware of the penalty for failure to complete it, the penalty for any attempt on his part to delay it.
‘Malcolm, they’re safe. That’s all that’s important,’ Ed said to him in the small room that constituted Woolston’s living quarters.
Woolston nodded his head weakly, knowing that it had all been in vain. They would have their weapon, and he would never see England or his family again.
The End
Murder in Notting Hill
Phillip Strang
Chapter 1
A smart upmarket terrace house in Holland Park, a council flat in Notting Hill, and they appeared to have nothing in common apart from one significant fact: a murder at each location. In Holland Park, Amelia Brice, a socialite, the young daughter of a well-respected and very white media personality; in Notting Hill, Christine Devon, a forty-year-old domestic cleaner with no money, three children, and black. The deaths were identical: a plastic bag over the head, clearly garrotted.
Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook, a man who appreciated the occasional weekend off but rarely seemed to get it, knew that once again the Homicide department at Challis Street Police Station was in for a busy few weeks. Not one murder this time, but two on the same day.
‘I’d say they were killed within one hour of each other,’ Gordon Windsor, the station’s crime scene examiner, said. A man used to death, he expressed neither remorse nor delight. He was a man doing his job, without emotion.
Isaac, a tall, good-looking man, Jamaican by heritage, English by birth, and his colleague, Detective Inspector Larry Hill, a man now in his mid-forties, and putting on weight much to the chagrin of his wife, formed a good team. Their sergeant, Wendy Gladstone, staving off retirement, somehow passing the medicals, even if her arthritis was not getting better, was back at the station.
‘Any ideas?’ Isaac said to Larry. Both men were in Notting Hill, looking at the body of Christine Devon, the black woman. It was clear that she had put up a struggle.
‘What ideas? From what I’ve been able to gather from the youngest son, fifteen, a bit of a tearaway, he came home at four this afternoon and found her dead.’
‘Tearaway?’
‘Gang member probably. We’ve got enough around
