***
With some resolution to three murders, Isaac and Larry returned to Challis Street. ‘It’s not very satisfactory, is it, guv?’ Larry said.
‘We’ll have the man off the street, but you’re right. There’s not much more we can do.’
Caddick walked into the office. ‘You’ve had some luck,’ he said to Isaac.
‘Luck?’
‘Finding the woman. Rape her, did he?’
Isaac glared at the man. ‘Don’t you check your messages?’
‘Why? Should I?’
‘I messaged you from the hospital. The woman was untouched.’
‘Good, good,’ Caddick said. Isaac could see that he revelled in the salacious and that his mind was in the gutter. ‘Convictions for the murders?’
‘We can prove Dave Dallimore’s murder.’
‘Who?’
‘The homeless man in my reports. The ones I sit in this office until late at night preparing.’
‘I don’t have time to read them. I’m too busy.’
‘Then why am I preparing them?’
‘I’ll read them in future,’ Caddick said. Isaac knew he wouldn’t.
There had been another terrorist attack in the city, two people killed. The rumour was that Davies’s hold on his position as commissioner was in question again. Caddick was looking for brownie points to impress whoever he was sucking up to. Isaac had no intention of giving him anything other than the facts.
‘We’ll not prove Samuel Devon’s murder, probably not Rasta Joe’s,’ Isaac said.
‘But you know who killed them?’
‘Unless they confess we’ll not get a conviction. We’ll secure a conviction against two of them for the murder of Dave Dallimore. The other one will serve time for kidnapping.’
‘It’s not much to report,’ Caddick said. Isaac felt like telling the man to get off his back. Sure, it wasn’t the result they wanted, but it was a result.
Caddick left before he could irritate them anymore.
‘You’ll take his job when they move him out,’ Larry said.
Isaac did not comment. There were still two murders to solve.
Chapter 27
Gwen Waverley watched the news on the television at home. At her side, the newborn infant. Her husband was still in his office at the bank. She wondered whether he was checking the figures, or he was with his personal assistant, having sent her father’s PA on extended leave while they figured out her retirement package.
Her father, she knew, had been having an affair with his PA for thirty-five of the forty odd years that she had worked for him. The discretion of both of them had been absolute, and Gwen had only become aware of it when she was in her mid-twenties. Her father, a kindred spirit, had confided in her, knowing that her reaction would not be one of shock, only of acceptance. And if her father could sleep with his PA, then so could Quentin, her husband.
Gwen looked over at the baby and realised that life was as it should be: two healthy children, a loving husband, even if he strayed occasionally. She switched off the television and picked up her child. She knew that Quentin would be looking for ways to secure the controlling interest in the bank, but she would never allow it. Men such as her husband were to be admired for their resolute desire to succeed at any cost, and without any compunction about who they trod on or hurt on the way, although there was no way that her husband would ever get the better of her.
She put her child back into its bassinet and went and poured herself a drink. She then phoned her husband.
‘I’m busy,’ Quentin Waverley replied. He omitted to say that it was busy with his PA, busy cementing their relationship in George Happold’s old office, now his.
‘I just want to let you know that we make a good team and that you’ll do a good job looking after the bank,’ Gwen said.
It was rare for his wife to phone him, even more unusual for her to comment positively on their relationship, but then, he had noticed her predilection for drinking more than she should in recent months, and with her father recently dead and a new child, he thought it understandable. Her timing could not have been worse.
His PA, a younger woman than Gwen, and very capable professionally, as well as personally, took advantage of her elevated position in the bank. No longer the mistress of a senior director, she was now the mistress of the chairman. It was a life she chose for herself, and Quentin Waverley was not difficult to manipulate, especially for a beguiling female intent on seduction. She knew about him and Gwen, and before that, Amelia. She did not want the involvement of a marriage or children, she wanted the life of a liberated woman, and the new chairman had ensured that for the last year, and she knew he would in the future. She also knew that some of his financial dealings had not been altogether legal and that he had been syphoning bank funds into a separate account overseas. She admired the man that she had taken as her lover. And on the phone was his wife, pretending to care about her husband when she did not.
She had observed Gwen Waverley since before she had married Quentin. It took a woman to know a woman, and she had seen it from the start, that she and Gwen were the same, although one was the daughter of a bank chairman, the other the daughter of an accountant.
There was begrudging respect from each woman for the other, she knew that, but also a battle for dominance. She knew who would win if she could only keep her boss under control, and she had the goods.
When Gwen Waverley’s phone call ended, the PA focussed back on the chairman. After the lovemaking in the
