Confessor Read Online Free Page B

I have to do a deal.”
    “Call off the Plod and use one of our own sleuths?” Brook queried.
    “Call off the Plod and use Herb.”
    Kruger growled, “Now I play Sherlock?”
    “That’s the way it goes. Our Lord and Master is talking to the Chief Constable of Wiltshire e’en as we speak, but that won’t keep everyone off our necks.” Worboys looked hard at Kruger. “So, give it to us, Herb. Words of one syllable, eh? Your immediate thoughts.”
    “Alka-Seltzer and a long lie-down.”
    “Immediate thoughts about Gus.”
    “Impressions?”
    “Impressions, Herb.”
    “I believe he’s dead. I seen the car. I seen where he went off the road.”
    “But you have reservations?”
    “Many. Gus, or I presume Gus, was seen pulled off the road talking with someone a few minutes before it happened. No skid marks. Road as dry as dust. Deep ruts into the grass—not skids, but ruts. Heavy, like he drove straight off, then boom.”
    “Boom?”
    “Boom, as in, shit, I’m on fire and the car’s in little pieces. Shouldn’t be surprised if Gus was also in little pieces. When we get the medical stuff? Autopsy?”
    “Maybe later today. If we’re lucky.”
    “You think he was definitely pushed, then?”
    “’Course he was pushed. Old Gus wouldn’t just drive off a road only ten minutes from home and detonate himself into oblivion. If Gus wanted out, he’d make it stick like a real accident, if only for the insurance. For Carole.”
    “Then who’d want to do away with old Gus?” Worboys said it quietly, as though he were not really asking.
    “You want a head count?” Herbie prized himself out of his chair. “How many people did Gus put in the pokey during his long and varied career? How many secrets he take to the grave, eh?”
    Martin Brook turned back into the room. “He was writing his memoirs, Tony. People still alive, gentlemen in England, now abed, would possibly get their names all over the Sunday funny papers. There’s motive for you.”
    “Sure.” Herb sounded as though he did not believe a word of it.
    One of the six telephones on Worboys’s desk began to chirp.
    It was the Chief, calling from Warminster. Worboys covered the mouthpiece with his right hand and whispered, “Wants to talk with you, Herb.”
    “Yes, Chief.” There were no jokes and no tripping over his English. It was all business, a serious, sober Kruger. They all felt the change, and heard the grave note in his voice.
    At last Herbie put down the telephone and turned to look each of them in the eye. He blinked once before speaking. “He called me Herbie, and he’s new to the beat.”
    “He’s a quick study.” Brook grinned.
    “It seems that I am to be dear Gus Keene’s vengeance.” Even Worboys shuddered at the way Herbie spoke. Only a couple of times in his long dealings with Kruger had he heard the big man talk like this. On both occasions there was hell to pay.
    “The Chief says I can have anyone and anything I want as long as I find out the why and the who. I tell you exactly what I want, Tony. Okay?”
    “Okay, but you’ll get an anti-terrorist copper in tow, sooner or later. Possibly sooner.”
    “I’ll have to live with that, then, won’t I?”
    Kruger spent the night at a safe house he had known for years. A tall, narrow four-story place in a pretty little square behind Kensington High Street. It was there that, in his own way, he mourned the death of Gus Keene and reflected on his own mortality.
    Before going across the river to Kensington, he had spoken to the Chief, who called from Warminster. “I’m not going to ask you to sign on again, Herbie,” the Chief said. “Though we’ll give you anything you want. I’m just concerned about finding the truth of this business. You think it was an accident?”
    “No.” Herbie’s replies were now mostly monosyllabic.
    “Suicide?”
    “No. Someone had Gus killed, sir.”
    There was a noncommittal grunt at the other end of the line, and the Chief repeated