‘What are you hoping for?’ Wendy said.
‘If he wants to protect his daughter, he might be forced to open up more than he’d like. There’s a possibility he’ll open himself to prosecution.’
***
Armstrong, immaculately-dressed as usual, steered the Mercedes around London, McIntyre in the back seat. Outwardly calm, inwardly fraught with worry, Armstrong tried to focus on what his boss was saying, watching out for the traffic at the same time. He was not handling either well.
‘What is it?’ McIntyre said. ‘You’re not yourself today. A conscience over deeds committed?’
‘I’m fine, Hamish.’
McIntyre knew that something was amiss with the man, but he wasn’t his priority. Samantha was in serious trouble, and her protection was paramount.
That was why Stephen Palmer had died, as had his brother and Jacob Wolfenden, a man who had never wronged him, never said a word out of turn. He knew that Wolfenden had known things about him when he was starting out in crime. The man could have fingered him back then, but he never had. He had to admit to feeling remorse over his death.
‘Are you sure you completed those tasks successfully?’
‘I did what was asked,’ Armstrong said, although after the event, and still basking in what he’d done, he had driven back past the area, seen the police car at the end of the track.
‘I’m sorry about Wolfenden,’ McIntyre said. ‘The man never did me any wrong.’
Armstrong offered no comment.
Hamish McIntyre realised he was getting old, sentimentality had crept in. ‘Take me back to the house. Samantha will outsmart them, I’m sure of it.’
***
It was late in the evening, and Challis Street Police Station had adopted its night-time look, with most of the offices in the building closed, the lights dimmed. The only places where activity continued were in Richard Goddard’s office and in Homicide. Goddard was dealing with the onerous task of the monthly report, justifying the station’s expenditure, the results that hadn’t been achieved, and what he was doing to rectify matters.
A political animal, he knew how to finesse the wording, to make the positive take precedence, yet it had been a bad month. Crime in general was up in the area; there had been an upsurge in drug-related crime, a terrorist incident averted.
Homicide offered the best hope for the report to glow, rather than simmer. That was where he was headed.
In Homicide, Isaac sat in his office, his hands clasped together behind his head. He felt exhausted from the weeks of burning the candle at both ends: the early-morning meetings, late home every night, the necessary seven days a week schedule.
‘Tough going?’ Goddard said. Isaac opened his eyes to see his senior sitting opposite him.
‘Just thinking, going through the case.’
‘You were catching up on lost sleep, don’t deny it.’
‘We’re waiting.’
‘What for?’
‘Gordon Windsor’s got lights out at McIntyre’s farm. They’ll be working late. Down in Plymouth, DI Greenwood is staying with his people, waiting for Forensics to sign off that Diane Connolly’s Subaru was in Polperro.’
‘I need you to come up trumps within the next day.’
‘You say that every month.’
‘You never let me down. What about Windsor?’
‘Larry’s there. We’ll phone him for the latest.’
‘Is the man going to make it?’
‘So far, so good. He’s kept off the alcohol and the all-you-can-eat breakfasts. I hope so.’
‘They don’t often, you know that. We see too much sometimes, the need to forget can be overpowering.’
‘I’ll protect him as long as I can.’
‘I know. Call your inspector.’
A stifled yawn from Larry Hill as he answered. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said.
‘How about the others?’ Goddard asked.
‘No one’s giving up, sir.’
‘What have you found?’
‘Two items of significance. We can thank Bridget and Wendy for one of them.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Bridget took photos of McIntyre’s Mercedes when it was at Challis Street, including the tyres. Wendy took a photo of the tyre marks next to the barn. Bridget easily confirmed they were one and the same. But now the crime scene team have confirmed that the rear off-side tyre, scuffing on one side of it, is a match to Bridget’s photo. We’ll need the car, but it’s conclusive.’
‘Why hasn’t that been done yet?’ Isaac said.
‘It’s the second item that’s more important,’ Larry said. ‘A good job that Wendy’s not here, not with her sensitive stomach.’
Isaac understood what his inspector was referring to. He’d been out at crime scenes with her. A body decaying, or one that had been subjected to a violent and cruel death, and she’d be outside, vomiting.
Isaac knew that he had lost more than one girlfriend, that is before he had met Jenny, because of his apparent ambivalence over what he had seen, his unwillingness to discuss what had happened during his workday. At the scene, he could be tiptoeing around the blood and guts, feeling nothing, and that night he could be at home eating his meat and potatoes, drinking a glass of Chablis, the day’s horrors forgotten.
One girlfriend had been persistent, and he had opened up. Five minutes after he had started describing the scene, the horrors inflicted by the perpetrator on his victim, and she was in the bathroom in tears. The next day she had moved out, and now nothing would possess him to tell anyone else what he had seen, although Jenny never asked, and he was thankful for that.
‘What is it, Inspector?’ Goddard asked.
‘A 44-gallon drum outside. They lifted the lid, a revolting smell. There’s a body inside, or should I say, was.’
‘What’s the state of decomposition?’ Isaac said.
‘The CSIs reckon it’s sulphuric acid.’
‘Identification?’
‘Not by looking at what remains. Although I know who it is.’
‘How?’
‘Bridget compiled a report
