War Game by Anthony Price

another moment they would be in a staring match.
    “I gather he was your man on the spot.” He shifted the stare to the sergeant. “In fact, very much on the spot.”
    He took in the younger man in detail for the first time. Younger was right; over the years he had grown accustomed to the truth of the cliché that police constables grew younger and younger as one advanced into senility. But now the sergeants were growing younger too: if Weston passed as a middle-aged country doctor, Sergeant Digby could have been a first-year medical student, no longer wholly innocent but as yet unmarked by his profession.
    Another baby to make him feel old and jealous.
    And another clever baby, if what the Brigadier had said was to be believed.
    “You’ll have read his statement, then. And the others.” Weston’s voice cut through his line of thought.
    “His statement?” Audley frowned stupidly. Maybe they weren’t babies after all—a month of humid Washington and a few hours’ flying, and he couldn’t keep his mind on the job for five consecutive minutes. Maybe they weren’t babies at all —maybe he must just be getting too old.
    Weston heaved a carefully-controlled breath. “Transcripts of all the statements taken in the course of the investigation so far have been sent to the Home Secretary.” He paused, watching Audley impassively. “I assume you’ve studied them, sir.”
    Statements.
    Of course there had been statements. Dozens of statements, hundreds of statements. Names and occupations and places and times and facts. Statements to be checked and cross-checked and double-checked. Statements to be read and re-read and sieved and strained and refined.
    That was what a murder investigation was: not a brilliant tour de force by a Sherlock Holmes, but an organised routine carried out by dozens of men and women working sixteen hours a day.
    Of course there would be statements. In fact, with the Ratcliffe investigation the way it was that was all there would be at this moment. Just statements.
    And nine times out of ten the police could be pretty sure, that somewhere in that mass of paper was the name they wanted, and that if it was there they would get to it in the end. Not by luck—the whole system was built to eliminate luck as far as possible, because luck had to be arbitrarily good or bad in equal proportions—but by the cold mathematics of routine multiplied by team work multiplied by sixteen hours a day.
    Only this had to be the tenth time; the time when there was no name and all the multiplication was ruined by a final zero factor. And if Superintendent Weston was half as good a policeman as Cox believed him to be, then he would know it. The trick was to make him admit it. …
    Why not the truth ? thought Audley suddenly.
    He smiled at Weston. “No. I haven’t read any statements.”
    “No … sir?” Weston’s impassivity was a work of high art.
    “Not one single word.” The truth was supposed to set men free, perhaps it might set them both free now. “Just two newspaper reports.”
    Weston continued to stare at him expressionlessly, reserving his right to burst into laughter or tears.
    “Four hours ago …” Audley consulted his watch casually “… actually rather less than four hours ago … I’d never even heard of either the Ratcliffe family or Swine Brook Field. As a matter of fact I was on a jet from New York four hours ago—minding my own business.”
    At last the hint of an emotion showed on Weston’s face: one corner of his mouth twitched.
    “But now you have to mind ours for us?”
    “It does rather look that way.” Audley nodded slowly, then converted the nod into a negative shake. “But I wouldn’t have read the statements anyway.”
    “No?” The twitch became the beginning of—it might be a snarl or it might be a smile.
    “No.” The implications of that he had to let Weston work out for himself: it had to be either an insult or a vote of confidence, according to whether Cox’s