Gunrunner by Graham Ison

remember that it has yet to go to probate. Is there anything else you’d like to know?’
    ‘Not at present, no,’ I said, ‘but I may have to come back to you.’
    ‘Fine. You can always email me, of course, if it’ll save you a visit.’
    ‘Thank you.’ I forbore from saying that I wasn’t into emailing.
    ‘Well, Dave,’ I said, once we were back at Curtis Green, ‘that rather points a finger at Nicholas Hammond.’
    ‘So he knew about the will, despite having denied all knowledge of it.’
    ‘So it would seem, but perhaps secrecy comes naturally to him.’
    ‘I reckon Kerry’s topping’s got to be down to him, guv.’
    ‘It’s beginning to look that way, although how the hell we’re going to prove it without having him into the nick, I don’t know.’
    ‘Well, I know what I’d do,’ said Dave. ‘I’d nick him and let the secret squirrel you saw across at the Yard pick the bones out of that. Anyway,’ he added, ‘I thought that MI5 weren’t supposed to operate outside the UK, but you said that he’d been to the States to talk to the CIA.’
    ‘There are a lot of things they’re not supposed to do, Dave, but it doesn’t stop them.’
    ‘There are a lot of things we’re not supposed to do, either,’ said Dave, ‘but we do them. Like nicking people on suspicion whether they’re spies or not.’
    ‘If only it was that easy, Dave,’ I said.
    ‘There is another aspect, guv,’ said Dave thoughtfully. ‘Given the possibility that Bligh is ignorant of the will’s contents, he might’ve been under the impression that he was going to get the company when Kerry died. And that would make for a motive.’
    ‘Yeah maybe, Dave, but we’ve got to find some solid evidence.’
    I was surprised that we had managed to achieve so much, given that it was New Year’s Eve. Britain grinds to a standstill between the twenty-fourth of December and the second of January, or even longer if our revered government has thrown in an extra bank holiday or two. Consequently, it’s a miracle that anything at all gets done.
    I decided that I couldn’t do a lot more on New Year’s Day, so I didn’t try. Instead, I spent a lazy day with Gail, drinking too much and eating too much.
    On the Thursday morning, however, I resolved to speak to Bernard Bligh again, mainly to see his reaction to the news that his new boss was to be Nicholas Hammond.
    ‘There can’t be anything else you want to know, surely?’ Bligh’s reaction to our visit was a little more wary than hitherto, and I wondered whether it was because he’d had something to do with Kerry’s death.
    ‘Not at the moment, no.’ Dave and I accepted Bligh’s invitation to sit down in his pokey little office. ‘I was wondering whether you’d heard about Mrs Hammond’s will.’
    Bligh’s eyes narrowed. ‘What about it?’
    ‘It seems that Nicholas Hammond gets everything, and that of course includes the control of this company.’
    For a few moments, Bligh stared at me, stunned by the disastrous news I’d just given him. ‘I don’t bloody believe it,’ he said eventually. ‘Kerry wouldn’t do something like that to me. Are you absolutely sure, Chief Inspector?’
    ‘I spoke to the company solicitor the day before yesterday, and she assures me that Nicholas Hammond is the sole beneficiary of his wife’s will.’
    Bligh shook his head in disbelief. ‘But Kerry told me that if anything happened to her, and that included serious illness, she would hand the company over to me. She always looked to the future, even though she was in the best of health.’ He pulled open a drawer in his desk and took out a bottle of whisky. He poured a substantial measure of Scotch into a glass and drank it down neat. ‘Oh, would you like a drink?’ he asked, as an obvious afterthought.
    ‘No thanks.’ It’s a fallacy that policemen don’t drink on duty, and I’m not usually averse to accepting one, but I make it a practice never to drink with suspects. And