The Dark Web Murders

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Wednesday, 22nd August. Evening 

Sheehan replaced his phone on its receiver and went to the door of his office. "They're raiding The Club," he called over to Stewart who was working at her desk. "I'm taking a run over there now. Serious and degrading stuff, I'm told." He hesitated and looked at his watch. "You don't need to come. You can go on home if you want to." 

Stewart bridled. "Sir, it's enough I have to fight about stuff like this with Tom without you starting." 

"I only meant—" 

"You only meant that I'm a woman, sir, somebody who needs to be protected from the darker side of police work." She got up from her desk and faced him. "I said it to Tom, and I'm saying it to you. I'm a fully trained detective sergeant, sir. I take what the job throws at me, just as Tom does, just as you do, good or bad, pretty or ugly, safe or dangerous. It's my duty. The fact that I'm female is utterly irrelevant." 

Sheehan held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean—" 

"You did, sir," Stewart snapped, still irked. "You're the one who's always talking about unconscious bias—" 

Sheehan cut in. "Okay! Okay! You're right. You've made your point. My mistake. It won't happen again. Now let's go." He stalked out of the room, but stopped just outside the door and said, with one finger in the air, "BUT, if you had let me finish what I tried several times to say, you'd have discovered that my concern was about making you work unpaid overtime by accompanying me. It's day's end. That's why I suggested that you could go home if you wanted to." He ignored her open-mouthed reaction and added, "Okay, go and get the car. I've one call to make. I'll meet you at the gate." 

She nodded and edged past him, clearly mortified. Sheehan watched her as she went down the corridor. Shaking his head, he muttered, "Women." Then, aware of the irony, he grimaced. Oh, crap. Good job she didn't hear that. He headed back into his office, shaking his head and fighting a sheepish grin. 

Pulling his phone to his ear, he dialled the Station Desk Sergeant. When the sergeant replied, Sheehan spoke fast and urgently. "Harry, DCI Sheehan here. There'll be all sorts of fancy arrests coming in shortly. You might recognise some of them. Listen to nobody. Y' hear me? Tell anybody with funny ideas that your instructions come from me." 

"Okay, Chief. What do you want me to do?" 

"Whatever about the other suspects, and there will probably be several of them, make sure that Judge Adams, Permanent Secretary Oliver Kane,Professor Edith Gallagher, and Industrialist Jaclyn Kennedy, are all kept separate and fully isolated from each other. Got that? They are not allowed to communicate in any way, and that goes for their lawyers, too." 

* * * 

"Well, that explains it," Sheehan muttered, as Stewart coasted slowly along a country road searching for the private road that would lead to The Club. 

"Explains what, Chief?" 

"Why there have been no complaints about large cars coming and going at all hours of the day and night." 

"Middle of nowhere, Chief. These people pay for privacy as much as anything else, and they've got it here in spades." 

Sheehan pointed. "There y'are. There's your entrance." 

"I googled the map of this place earlier, Chief. There's still nearly a mile to the house." 

"Huh! They sure weren't going to be disturbed." 

They drove on in silence until they emerged on a large expanse of ground covered in red pebbles in front of a magnificent three-storey Tudor house, built sometime in the 1930s. Dark wooden beams relieved the white walls, which were adorned with large bay windows, and topped by turrets and a red slate roof that featured a large number of heights and ridges. There was no indication that an extension had ever been added to the house, but Sheehan noted that it was exceptionally long and, while he could not see the back part, he could easily imagine that the house contained many rooms of different sizes and shapes.