Free The Wharf Butcher by Michael K Foster Page B

at the best of times, but the contrast between the imaginary world of virtues, and the real world of vices, couldn’t be plainer. Clouding the issue was the fact that Gilesgate Construction was Europe’s leading company in the building of national sea defences. Six billion pounds, as Vic Miller had said, was an enormous sum of money. But that’s what the UK’s Environment Agency had spent on climate change initiatives in 2010. The figures were mind blowing, let alone the potential business opportunities that were slushing around in the system. Vast fortunes were being made out of other people’s misery, and Sir Jeremy was a central figure in all of it.
    Mason clicked the keyboard, and suddenly felt an adrenaline surge.
    There, jumping out at him, were the answers he’d been looking for. Charles Anderson and Derek Riley were not only major shareholders in Lowther Construction; they were listed on Gilesgate’s Board of Directors.
    How convenient was that.
    Scribbling down the details, he decided to call it a day. At least for now, that is. Spring had arrived, and after weeks of continuous bad weather, things had changed for the better. Pleased with his findings, the sun was shining when Mason finally drove south towards the outskirts of Newcastle. The traffic wasn’t particularly heavy, but at the roundabout with the A69 he swung east into West Road and suddenly ground to a halt. Typical, he cursed. Not the best of places to be stuck in traffic.
    Fingers tapping the steering wheel, he mentally ran back over Charles Anderson’s last known movements. The truth, all of them said, was hidden in the detail. This had to be a vendetta killing, and not as David Carlisle had predicted – the work of a serial killer. The day Anderson was murdered, he’d met with a fellow business client and lifelong friend, Bert Lawson. After outlining plans for a new £260M innovative flood development system in the heart of Newcastle’s banking sector, four hours later he was dead.
    Had the Profiler got it wrong? Misread the facts? He wondered. Whatever it was that was going on inside David Carlisle’s head, it didn’t make sense anymore. There again, ever since the reorganisation, things hadn’t quite turned out as Mason expected they would. Everything had been cobbled together, disorganised, make do and mend. What’s more, his old workmate wasn’t the same person anymore. Not since the tragic loss of his wife, that is. In his opinion, Carlisle was far too emotionally withdrawn nowadays, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Maybe he should never have taken him on in the first place – gone it alone, and done things differently. He hadn’t, and he was now under enormous internal pressure himself. The mechanics of a murder investigation could be quite overwhelming at times, but something had to give. If not, he could soon find himself with another dead body on his hands, and that prospect didn’t bear thinking about.
    What a bloody mess!
    As the traffic eased forward, two things were preying on Jack Mason’s mind. The first was Gilesgate, and the second, Lowther Construction. Past experience had taught him that where huge sums of money were involved, it usually meant trouble. With that amount of money slushing around in the system, someone would usually get greedy. Whatever it was that Anderson and Riley had been mixed up in, it certainly wasn’t good. Maybe they’d been lured into some kind of dodgy transaction, a deal gone wrong perhaps? If not, then he couldn’t think of another plausible explanation as to why they’d been murdered.
    Then he had another inspiration.

 
    Chapter Twelve
    Deep in thought, David Carlisle pulled his Rover P4 100 into the overgrown car park and switched off the engine. The Sat Nav coordinates were right, but the location was all wrong. This wasn’t the operational headquarters of Lowther Construction, surely not. To one side and dominating the skyline, he noticed the ruins of a