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CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

CHELMSFORD, ENGLAND

FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 2023

9:00 A.M.

At the end of March, when DI Wallace had been about to bring the hammer down on Ed Scoggins’s head for the murder-for-hire homicide of Adrian Willoughby, he had been furious to be called into the chief’s office and told he needed to put his arrest warrant on pause. Word had come down from on high that Inland Revenue was launching a major investigation into Mr. George Smythe, and they didn’t want DI Wallace’s findings in his petty little homicide to spook the man. Their people would speak to the people in charge at Essex Police when the time was right for him to take further action.

Grinding his teeth, DI Wallace had reluctantly put his arrest warrant on hold. He’d kept an eye on the man, however. Obviously, Scoggins had recently come into some money. He’d moved out of the house-sharing situation on Albany Road into a flat of his own, and he’d upgraded his aging vehicle, too, by ditching the ten-year-old VW Crafter for a model that was several years newer.

Once the old van was sold, DI Wallace made it his business to know exactly where it had gone. After locating it at a junkyard, he’d had it seized as potential evidence in his investigation, and he hadn’t been wrong. The Essex Police forensic team had indeed located traces of Adrian Willoughby’s DNA in the back of the discarded Crafter.

So while he and DS Frost had continued to amass evidence, they hadn’t been able to do anything with it. Then, on the morning of Friday, June 2, DI Wallace was summoned into the chief’s office.

“It’s a go,” he was told. “Inland Revenue will be taking Mr. Smythe into custody at noon today on charges of money laundering and tax evasion. The homicide charges for Mr. Willoughby’s murder will be added on once he’s in custody.”

“So we can bring in Mr. Scoggins now?” Wallace verified.

“Indeed you can,” the chief said, “the sooner the better. I’m more than ready to mark this case closed.”