“Particularly when the problem is no longer pressing,” added Green.
“Here you are, William,” said Wanda, carrying in the little quiche. “Can you eat it all? Please do if you can, because I hate having left-overs.”
“Just to please you, love,” replied Green, holding out his plate.
“Pig,” said his wife.
*
As soon as Masters entered his office the next morning, Lake handed him a telex. “I thought you should see this. It came in early this morning from the Leicester police.”
“Thank you. While I’m reading this, would you see if Reed and Berger are ready and check whether the DCI has got the warrant?”
“Warrant, Chief? What for? An arrest?”
“Yes. You didn’t know?”
Lake shook his head. “I knew you were pretty close, of course, and I guessed you were almost there, but I didn’t know for sure.”
“I believe we’ve done it. I’ll tell you the full story later. The AC will want a comprehensive report. I’d be glad if you’d do that for me.”
“It’ll be a pleasure.”
Thank you.”
Lake returned to his desk to use the internal phone. Masters read the telex and sat thoughtfully until Lake returned to him.
“You read the message, Chief?”
“Yes, thank you. File it please.”
“Does it help?”
“Help? Oh yes, it helps.” Masters sounded so bitter that Lake made no attempt to continue the conversation. He left Masters alone to fill his pipe, automatically, his mind on other things.
Green entered.
“Everything fixed, George.”
“Right, Bill. Let’s get it over.”
As they made their way westwards through the Saturday morning traffic, Green said: “Something’s biting you, George. What’s up, chum?”
Masters waited a moment before replying.
“I’m a little puzzled as to why a chap like Wilkin, who was tied so closely to his mother, should go away on holiday by himself, as he obviously did when he went to the Isle of Wight.”
Green replied immediately. “I asked myself the same thing last night after we got home from your place—in view of what you’d been saying about the ossified link with his mother.”
“What conclusion did you reach, if any?”
“This may be a bit too easy for you to accept, George . . .”
“Try me.”
“Wilkin came down here to get a job . . .”
“Why?” asked Berger. “If he was living all nice and cosy with mummy up in Leicester? Why go out into the hard, hard world alone?”
“A good question, lad,” said Green surprisingly. “I asked that one myself. Lockyer told us he was in a dead-end job in a small firm. So what drove him out into the hard, hard world as you put it, was hard reality. He had no prospects in the firm that made batteries. He was probably badly paid, and cold economics told him he had to move if he was ever going to get a worthwhile salary.”
“But would that appeal to him? Wouldn’t he just go on economising and stay safe?”
“A man without his knowledge and ability might have done. But I suspect Wilkin knew his worth, and I reckon ability such as his must give rise to ambition.”
Masters nodded.
“And,” went on Green, “we mustn’t forget that we know Wilkin is a chap who bears grudges. He’d be well aware that he wasn’t getting what he was worth in Leicester. He’d have a grudge against his firm because of it.”
“Anybody would.”
“Right. But there was probably little he could do about it except get out. He’d do it from a different motive. Most of us would do it to please ourselves and to get more lolly. Wilkin probably did it to deprive the battery firm of his services, which they were getting on the cheap. In other words he did it to make them sorry for not paying him more.”
“It’s a good assessment,” said Masters. “I like it.”
“So.” continued Green, “Wilkin started applying for jobs much more in keeping with his qualifications, and he got taken on by Locklabs. That meant he had to leave his mother and go into digs down here. I reckon he found being on his own wasn’t too bad. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he grew to like it.”
“Good point,” said Masters. “Lockyer hinted that he seemed to be happier and was settling down better.”
“Until his mother joined him,” said Green.
“Why bring her down, then?” asked Berger.
“Well he would, wouldn’t he? Before he left to come down here, he probably promised he’d find a house. But that doesn’t matter. His Nibs is worried as to why Wilkin went off on holiday alone. All I’m saying is he got to like it on his own when his mother wasn’t with him, and he made up his mind that after she rejoined him he was going to go about without her. That explains how he could trot about the country buying and placing his tins in Derby, Somerset, Colchester, Bournemouth and wherever. He took lone trips and lone holidays.”
“I think you’ve set my mind at rest on that score, Bill. Thanks.” Masters glanced at his wristwatch. “Hurry it up a bit, Reed. It’s after nine o’clock and I don’t want Wilkin to be out and about before we get there.”
“Sorry, Chief. All the grockles are out. They never look at a car all week, but come Saturday and Sunday—especially when the weather’s like this—they’re out getting their full road-fund’s worth.”
*
It was a new maisonette, on the ground floor.
“Looks all quiet, Chief,” said Reed. “The milk’s still on the doorstep.”
“There’ll be another way out—through the kitchen most likely,” said Masters. “Go round there, please, Berger. And while you’re there see if he has a car.”
“Right, Chief.”
They gave him a moment or two to get down the narrow concrete path, but there was no need to knock. The door opened and a small, shrewish woman enquired their business.
“We’re police officers, ma’am. We would like to speak to Mr Wilkin.”
“Police officers? Dressed like that? I’ve been watching you through the window. You’re up to no good.”
“Mr Wilkin, please.”
“He’s not in.”
“Then please tell me where he is:”
“He’s out, I tell you.”
“Chief!”
It was Berger. Reed stepped back to look along the path. “He’s here,” shouted Reed.
They trooped along the side of the little house. “A moped,” said Reed. “He was just about to be off.”
“Glad we caught you in time, son,” said Green heavily. “You weren’t about to go to the grocer’s, I hope?”
“What if I was?”
“You were?”
“I was going for a run down to the coast.”
“Any particular place?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
“No? Brighton perhaps? Or some other town with a Redcoke store and about fifty thousand holiday-makers doing their weekend shopping.” Green took him by the arm. “Inside, Mr Wilkin. We want a word with you.”
“You leave my Stevie alone!”
Mrs Wilkin was standing at the back door, watching closely.
“Inspect the panniers and his bag,” Masters said to Reed. “Handle anything there very carefully.”
“What do you want with my boy?”
“We want to talk to him, madam, so please stand aside.”
“I won’t. This is my house.”
“No, it’s not, mother,” asserted Wilkin. “It’s mine. Please get out of the way.”
There was only one room besides kitchen and bedrooms. Wilkin led the way in. “See his mother stays out,” said Masters to Berger. “I don’t want any tantrums from her.”
‘Right, Chief.” Berger turned in the room doorway to block it to Mrs Wilkin. “Not you, madam. You’d be best in the kitchen.”
“I want to know what’s going on.”
“Th
at’s probably your trouble,” said Berger, closing the door. “You come and make yourself a cup of tea and stay out of things.”
“I’m going in there.”
“You’re not, you know. And if I have any bother I’ll handcuff you to the kitchen table.” He ushered her out of earshot of the voices in the room.
Masters and Green sat at the modern dining-table which occupied one end of the room. Somehow they managed to get the small Wilkin between them—overpowering him with the mere presence of their bulk.
“Now, Mr Wilkin,” began Masters, “you can save time and tell me exactly where you put your contaminated tins, so that we can recover them, or we can go into matters in detail.”
“I don’t think I know what you’re talking about.”
Masters glared at him. “Let me make my position quite clear, Mr Wilkin. Five days ago I was told that somebody was criminally contaminating tins of food with botulism. I was ordered to find that somebody. When I first heard of it, I wondered what sort of a fiend he could be who would poison food so that people—all strangers to him—should be taken seriously ill, some to die. Yes, to die. Children. Who would kill innocent young girls and boys?
“I supplied my own answer, and I vowed that once I caught up with that man . . . well, shall we just say that I am interviewing you here in your own house rather than in a police station because here I can’t be said to be holding you. I’m not arresting you and I’m not charging you, so you can’t get on a phone and ask for a lawyer, and I don’t have to warn you to watch your tongue. Because I’m going to have the story, Mr Wilkin, in every detail, and you stay right where you are until you do tell me. No food, no drink, nothing. My sergeants have your mother, so she can’t do anything to help you. So now, talk.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Have it your way. Detective Chief Inspector Green and I can take it in turns to go out for a drink or a bite to eat or to stretch our legs.”
“I want to go to the lavatory.”
“Hard luck, chum,” said Green. “You can do it in your pants. There are four of us here, and we can call on as many more as we want to take a turn watching you.”
“Thanks for the reminder, Bill,” said Masters. “Call Inspector Lake and his two men. Tell them to stand by to relieve us at six o’clock this evening. The phone’s in the hall.”
Green got to his feet and left the room. As he did so, Reed came in.
“Four tins, Chief. All strip cans. In his bag.”
“After the DCI has finished with the phone, call Dr Moller at the forensic laboratory. Ask him to send a messenger for them.”
“Right, Chief.”
Masters turned to Wilkin. “How long do you think it will take the forensic laboratory to find out that you’ve tampered with those tins—removed their labels and injected them with that concoction I found in a cylinder in your laboratory? Come on, Mr Wilkin, you’re a research physicist. How long would it take you to find the hole with an ultrasonic apparatus? How long to compare your finger-prints on the tins we’ve just found with those on that cylinder and on the other contaminated tins. We’ve got science on our side, too.”
Green came in. “All fixed.”
“How did you . . .?”
“How did we what, Mr Wilkin? Get on to you?”
Wilkin nodded miserably.
“Easy,” said Green, as if to spare Masters the embarrassment of having to reply. “You made the mistake of using type E botulism. Comes from the sea, doesn’t it? Or didn’t your text books tell you that? Well, all we had to do was find some cranky scientist who’d done something like hauling canisters out of the sea on the Isle of Wight and we were half-way home. The things in your lab told us the rest.”
“Come on now, Mr Wilkin, let’s get it over with.”
“I want to go to the lavatory.”
“Not yet. Why were you trying to ruin Redcoke Stores?”
No reply.
“Was it because Redcoke in Leicester had prosecuted your mother for shoplifting?”
Green raised his eyebrows. Masters, realising Green had not been told of the telex, nodded.
“No,” said Wilkin fiercely, “it wasn’t.”
“But your mother was prosecuted for shoplifting, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t just because they’d taken her to court.”
“Why then?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” said Wilkin bitterly.
“I might. Tell me.”
“Don’t you people bloody well see what happened? I’d got away from her. Got down here on my own. You’ve no idea how that felt. No, she wouldn’t come with me. She’d never leave Leicester. I was ruining her life by coming here. She tried to blackmail me into staying. But I came and for the first time in my life I knew what freedom was. Just to be able to do some things that I wanted . . . it was marvellous.”
“Go on,” said Masters quietly.
“And then Redcoke prosecuted her. Can’t you see what happened? ‘I can’t stay here, now. I’m ruined. You’ve got to give me a home with you, where people don’t know me. I’ll never be able to lift my head up again in Leicester’, and so on and so on.” Wilkin looked up with tears in his eyes. “You’ve no idea what that did to me. I couldn’t refuse her, and I was back again, back in all the dreary old nagging routine I’d broken away from. And that’s what Redcoke did. They didn’t only prosecute my mother, they robbed me of the only freedom and happiness I’d ever known. Do you wonder I hated them?”
He collapsed, head on hands, sobbing on the table. Masters looked at Green, who said: “Come on, Mr Wilkin, you wanted to go to the lavatory.”
“It’s too late.”
Masters strode to the door. “Reed.” When the sergeant appeared, he said: “Take Wilkin to the bathroom to clean himself up and let him change his clothes. After that I want him taken to the Yard. We’ll charge him there.”
“Where will you be, Chief?”
“I’ll ring for another car for you and Berger and Wilkin. I’ll drive the DCI back in the Rover.”
“Right, Chief. You got something important to do?”
“As a matter of fact I have. I want to ring Stratton—the managing director of Redcoke—to tell him that he can test all his tins with an ultrasonic apparatus and then put them back on the shelves. And while you’re at it, Reed, try to get Wilkin to tell you in which shops he actually placed his contaminated tins.”
“Right, Chief. See you later.”
“And that,” said Green as Masters pulled away, heading for London, “is that. Poor little sod. He wanted his freedom. I wonder how much freedom he’ll get, spending the next decade three to a cell in one of the monarch’s maisonettes?”
Masters didn’t reply. All he could think of was a child dying in fear, throat too paralysed to cry out. And he cursed Wilkin silently, savagely, knowing that had that child been his, Wilkin, too, might now be dead.
Chapter Eight
When Masters and Green reached the Yard, they found a message from Anderson awaiting them. He had recalled the members of the original conference held in his office a few nights earlier. He wished them to join him as soon as they arrived.
Anderson, Convamore, Moller and Wigglesworth were awaiting them. Anderson wasted no time in calling the meeting to order.
“George, all we know is that you have found your man and have arrested him. The rest of us here want to know the full story and your proposals for cleaning up any trouble this fellow, Wilkin, may have left behind. Because we’re not out of the wood until we can be positive we have mopped up behind him.”
“I think we can be confident we can clear the matter up satisfactorily, sir.”
“Good. Give us the details.”
Masters was about to start when there was a knock at the door and Dr Cutton of the DHSS was shown in.
“Sorry if I’ve kept you all waiting,” he said toothily. “Affairs of State, you know.”
Masters heard Green groan loudly, a
nd silenced his subordinate with a look. Green sucked his partial denture with a disgusting wheeze like that of the piston in a pump that has run dry. It was lost on Cutton, who loftily took his seat and looked around as if giving the assembly permission to carry on.
Masters’ account was listened to in silence. Everybody there, including Cutton, seemed to appreciate that though unmentioned, the investigative skill behind the baldly-stated events was of a very high order. It was Wigglesworth who, at the end, said: “Are you telling us, George, that this chap Wilkin went to those lengths to kill people unknown to him, just because his mother had gone to live with him?”
“That is the excuse he has given us.”
“It’s a bit thin as a motive, isn’t it?”
“Hatred? Perhaps so, but it is one of the stronger emotions all of which, as you must know, have driven men to murder before now. Love, jealousy, greed, lust . . . they’ve all caused tragedy.”
“Right, young Masters,” boomed Convamore. “The longest pleasure.”
“What’s that?” demanded Anderson. “The longest pleasure?”
“Hatred. Byron said it. ‘Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.’”
“I see.”
“Convamore is quite right,” said Cutton surprisingly. “And so is Masters. He’s produced the basic motive. When prosecuting counsel gets his brief he will, of course, elaborate what Masters has given him. And he’ll go to medical men for help. Any of them worth their salt will soon show him that Wigglesworth’s complaint that such a motive is thin is rubbish.”
“Well . . .” began Wigglesworth.
“Are you worth your salt, Doc?” demanded Green.
Cutton grinned toothily. “Trying me out are you?”
“Quoting your own words back at you.”
“Right. If you’ll bear with me, Anderson, I’ll try to show you what I mean.”
“Please go ahead.”
Cutton turned to face Masters and Green. “As a medical man I should say that what you have uncovered in Wilkin, is an obsessive-compulsive neurosis. Am I right, Convamore?”
“Not exactly my line of country, but I’d say you were correct.”
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