Free The Hand of God by James Craig

and skipping down the stairs. ‘And after everything that’s happened in that family, she probably couldn’t care less.’
    Back at the entrance to the estate, Carlyle was even more relieved to find the police Escort waiting for them still in one piece, its driver unmolested. Clearly the locals were off their game today. As they reached the car, he turned to Callender and smiled. ‘Sorry it was a wasted trip.’
    The inspector scratched his head, careful not to leave a single slicked-back hair out of place. ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ he smiled.
    ‘But what did you get out of Claire Marshall? Nothing, as far as I could see.’ Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t even remember the inspector asking the woman any substantive questions.
    ‘I didn’t come here to see her,’ Callender explained, reaching for the door handle.
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘No, not really.’ Callender stood on the kerb, carefully looking Carlyle up and down as if unable to make his mind up about something. ‘Can you keep your mouth shut?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Carlyle a tad too eagerly. ‘Of course I can.’ It was one of the few things he knew he
could
do.
    Callender pondered it for a moment longer. ‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘Let’s go and see someone who will be a lot more useful than Claire bloody Marshall.’

11
    Martin Palmer reached the bottom of the page and blinked. Unable to focus on the text in front of him, he blinked again. With some dismay, he realised that he couldn’t remember a single word he’d just read. Maybe it was an imbalance in his brain, a lack of a particular protein or something, another consequence, no doubt, of his mother’s attempt to place him on a starvation diet. Clearly it was having a terrible effect on his short-term memory. Then again, words had never been one of his strong points. They brought back memories of school. Unhappy memories.
    Pushing thoughts of 4B from his mind, he closed the file and pushed it across his desk. Leaning back in his chair, he laced his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. It needed a coat of paint. Just like the rest of the place. As far as anyone knew, the last time the department had enjoyed a decoration budget it was managed by Kim Philby.
Explains the drab, Soviet-style decor
, Palmer reflected drily.
    Philby, one of the most infamous traitors of all time, had been the subject of not one but
three
books by Hugh Scanlon. There had been another two about the Cambridge Five, the spy ring of which he was a leading member. Compared to them, who was Maurice Peters? Little more than a complete nobody. It was arguable whether the man was even a traitor at all. But a senior ex-service operative writing his memoirs was a clear breach of the Official Secrets Act. The
Daily Mail
had described it as a ‘truly shocking threat to national security that could put the lives of untold agents in the field at risk’.
    That’s the problem with people these days,
Palmer mused,
they simply have no respect for anything, whether it be signed contracts or national security. Always bleating about the so-called ‘public interest’ in order to justify their shallow and venal behaviour.
It was all just too much.
    Peters, feeling cheated over his pension, had pocketed a six-figure advance from an American publisher and signed Hugh Scanlon as his ghostwriter. With the book due to be published abroad, beyond the reach of the British courts, the powers-that-be had decided that more drastic action was required. That was where Palmer came in.
    He had no idea whether Peters’ memoirs contained anything of any interest to anyone. Of course, the newspapers speculated about the ‘explosive revelations’ contained therein, but then they would, wouldn’t they? The draft manuscript that Brewster had retrieved from Scanlon’s study was safely behind lock and key in her office. Palmer wouldn’t be reading it even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. All he was concerned about was finishing the