DCI Isaac Cook Box Set 2

by Phillip Strang

  ‘It depends if he was paid to kill the man,’ Wendy said. She felt tired, and she’d need to eat before going to bed, as well.

  ‘That’s not what my research would indicate,’ Bridget said.

  ‘You’d better explain,’ Isaac said.

  ‘Hamish McIntyre is a killer, although he only becomes involved if it’s personal,’ Bridget said, glancing down at the paperwork she held in her hand.

  ‘Are there examples?’

  ‘The file that you all have a copy of shows seventeen murders with Hamish McIntyre’s name pencilled in as involved. Fourteen of them classified as murder, the other three regarded as suspicious. One victim had fallen out of a building, the tenth floor, another had electrocuted himself, and the third had been hit by a car while cycling home.’

  ‘Which ones are attributed to him personally?’ Larry asked, his stomach cramping up again.

  ‘It’s in the file,’ Bridget said. It was clear that Inspector Larry Hill hadn’t read the file that she had given him the day before, not in detail anyway. ‘Archie Slocombe. The man owned a club two doors from McIntyre’s.’

  ‘The year?’ Isaac said.

  ‘1998. Archie Slocombe, a fifty-eight-year-old male, owned a dozen or more strip clubs and gentlemen-only clubs in London and Manchester, financial interests in a dozen more. He had the financial clout, and Hamish McIntyre was eating into his empire, slowly opening clubs near Slocombe’s, poaching the girls with more money.’

  ‘And better drugs?’

  ‘Probably, but that’s not in the report. One of McIntyre’s men had mysteriously died three months earlier, threw himself off a bridge with a couple of concrete blocks attached to his ankles. A suicide note was found at the scene; the dead man had recently left prison, five years for grievous bodily harm. Not one of life’s gentlemen, and not missed by anyone, certainly not a man he put in a wheelchair permanently, and another a vegetable after the man with the concrete adornments, Paddy O’Hare, had slammed his head into a brick wall, repeatedly.’

  ‘Charming,’ Larry said.

  ‘We’ve seen his type before,’ Isaac said.

  ‘The word on the street was that McIntyre and Slocombe were heading for a violent confrontation and that it was either one or the other. As I said, three months later, August 28th 1998, Archie Slocombe was fished out of the river, fifteen days after he’d gone missing. Either he’d been taken by a shark, or someone had gone at him with industrial tools.’

  ‘Industrial tools?’ Wendy quizzed.

  ‘Chainsaws, angle grinders, electric drills. The police checked into it, but the mood on the street was sombre, and no one was talking, more afraid of McIntyre than the authorities. With no evidence against him, Hamish McIntyre soon acquired all of Slocombe’s assets, bargain prices by all accounts. No one was willing to argue with the man or debate the price. He cleaned up, secured his fortune, bought the fancy house that Inspector Hill and Wendy visited.’

  ‘Any more?’Isaac said.

  ‘I think we’ve had enough, DCI,’ Wendy said.

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Isaac said, ‘but please read the other cases against him.’

  ‘Not if I want to sleep tonight.’

  ‘Then tomorrow,’ Isaac said. ‘Let’s wrap this up, meet tomorrow morning, the usual time.’

  ‘Early,’ Larry’s final word that night.

  ‘Doing it tough?’

  A nod of the head from Larry.

  Chapter 11

  Liz Spalding, one of Stephen Palmer’s girlfriends, and the object of his brother’s unsatisfied lust, had proved not so easy to locate. In the end, Bridget found her in Polperro, in Cornwall, a small village close to the sea, picture-postcard beautiful, the sort of place that Wendy loved, the kind of place where Isaac would last for a week.

  Two days had passed since Larry had gone cold turkey on alcohol and pub lunches, and he had suffered that first day and night, although the second day it had been easier, and Larry, not that he’d tell anyone, had had his wife’s loving attention for the first time in a long time.

  ‘Three times, considering another one,’ Liz Spalding said as she sat in the garden of her cottage overlooking the sea. Larry looked at the view to his right, then at the woman opposite, but mostly at the woman. Even Wendy would have admitted that Liz Spalding, Stephen’s paramour, Bob’s fantasy, the wife of three men, the mother of two children, was a stunner. The tan on her face and arms, the perfect hair, the gleaming teeth, the firm bust – even though she was in her fifties, she looked ten years younger.

  ‘This is our weekend retreat,’ Liz Spalding said. ‘Oh, yes, I remember Stephen, who wouldn’t. I was mad for the man, but then he disappeared.’

  ‘He was murdered,’ Wendy said. The suntan and the perpetual smile did not sit so easy with her as it did with Larry. She could see that he was enamoured of the woman.

  ‘I was upset when I heard. I never knew the reason he left me.’

  ‘He left everyone. Did you take it personally?’

  ‘At the time, but now we know it wasn’t me.’

  ‘His brother believed you wanted Stephen to marry you.’

  ‘And you listened to him?’ Liz said.

  ‘We listen to everyone, not necessarily believe them,’ Larry said.

  ‘Yes, I wanted Stephen to marry me, although he wouldn’t have unless I had been pregnant.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Stephen wasn’t the settling down type.’

  ‘An honest answer,’ Wendy said. ‘Now let’s get down to the basics, find out about you and what you can tell us about Stephen that we don’t already know.’

  ‘Please don’t read me wrong. Three husbands, another one soon enough, doesn’t make me an empty-headed floozy. I’ve still got a brain in my head, and your inspector trying to look down the top of my blouse isn’t doing either of you any favours.’

  Larry averted his eyes, shifted uneasily in his chair. The truth hurt, and he’d been caught out. He was red in the face; Wendy was ready to burst out laughing.

  In the end, it was Liz Spalding who defused the situation. ‘I suggest we all have a glass of wine and forget what I just said,’ she said. ‘Shock tactics were needed. I can’t blame Inspector Hill for looking, and I can’t say I mind. I do, however, get upset when I’m judged, openly or otherwise, of being something I’m not. For the record, my first husband died before his time; the second left me; the third left me for his boyfriend. How I would have fared with Stephen, who knows?’

  With Liz inside the house organising the wine, Larry and Wendy looked at each other.

  It was Wendy who broke the ice. ‘How do you feel? Or is that a silly question?’

  ‘The woman’s no pushover; hardly Bob Palmer’s type.’

  ‘She’s manipulative; used to putting people, more likely men, on the spot, and then coming on coy and innocent, wheedling her way to get any man she wants in her bed. Just make sure you’re not one of them, and stop looking down her blouse.’

  ‘Not so easy when she thrusts her breasts at me all the time. She made sure that the sun was shining on her blouse; I could see straight through it.’

  ‘If she’s as hard as I just said, then why was she crying her eyes out at Stephen Palmer’s funeral. It makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Crocodile tears?’

  ‘Why not? She had Bob Palmer wrapped around her little finger, making him believe in her sadness. What if it wasn’t?’

  ‘For what reason?’

  Liz Spalding returned with a bottle of wine and three glasses. Larry eyed the wine, a pinot grigio. He wasn’t a wine drinker, only when his wife was entertaining the local social-climbing set at his house.

  ‘You’d better have just the one glass,’ Wendy said to him. ‘You’re driving on the way back to London, so you’d better be careful.’

  ‘My second husband had a fondness for drink,’ Liz said, having overheard the exchange between the two officers.

  ‘Did he stop?’


  ‘It was either the bottle or me; it didn’t stop him, in the end, walking out on me.’

  Larry said nothing, careful to avert his eyes. Wendy could see that the woman was a tease. Larry, even if he had been there on his own, would have left the cottage with no more than a handshake and a sore head. A detective inspector would not have kept her in the luxury that she was accustomed to, although Stephen Palmer might have.

  ‘There are several questions that come to mind,’ Wendy said as she downed her first glass. Larry sipped at his, his hand shaking slightly: the taste of alcohol was good. The desire to down it in one go and to pour another glass was too tempting. He put his glass back on the table and pushed it to one side.’

  ‘Not to your liking, Inspector?’

  ‘I’m afraid the opposite is true.’

  ‘A beer?’

  ‘Not for me. I’ll just sit here while you two drink,’ Larry said. ‘Bob Palmer said that you clung to him at the funeral.’

  ‘He was the nearest there was to Stephen.’

  ‘And that he had wanted to spend time with you; that he had wanted to ever since you had both been at school.’

  ‘He was a complete dork at school. Every spare moment, there he would be sitting down reading a science fiction book or Moby Dick or Treasure Island, or something like them.

  ‘But not you.’

  ‘Now I thrive on reading and the documentaries on television, but back then, all I wanted was to be with my girlfriends making silly talk, and after I turned fourteen, it was the boys I went for.’

  ‘You played the field?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘Harmless kissing around the back of the bike shed.’

  ‘Harmless?’

  ‘It wasn’t even a bike shed, and there were plenty of places to disappear if you wanted. Many a young lad found out about the facts of life in that school.’

  ‘Bob Palmer?’

  ‘Not with me, he didn’t. There was one girl, a plain-faced girl with horn-rimmed glasses who was after him. No idea what happened to her, no idea what happened to my girlfriends either.’

  ‘Is this young woman important?’ Larry asked.

  ‘To Bob, she may be.’

  ‘Palmer is distraught, his brother’s in the ground, you’re the closest person to Stephen other than him. What happened after the funeral?’

  ‘I went to Bob’s house after the funeral. Bec Johnson was there, as was the vicar. We had a few drinks, reminisced over his brother. Strange how agreeable those get-togethers can be.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘I stayed that night with him. Is that what you wanted me to say?’

  ‘We want the truth,’ Wendy said.

  ‘Stephen was dead, and Bob was as upset as me. It seemed the right thing to do. I slept with Bob that night, and left him in the morning, a smile on his face. I never saw him after that.’

  ‘Did the experience help you?’

  ‘Not really. Stephen was fond of his brother, not that you’d know it. He would have approved of what I did.’

  ‘Did you approve?’

  ‘I believe that I left that house calm. I never shed a tear for Stephen again.’

  To Wendy, the woman’s action, even if a little extreme, seemed plausible.

  How Bob Palmer would have accepted that the woman of his dreams had loved him and left him was not known. However, it didn’t seem relevant; they were there to find what they could about Stephen’s death, how to prove that Hamish McIntyre had killed him. They needed the reason, and Liz sleeping with Bob after his brother had been murdered was not a motive.

  ‘At the funeral,’ Larry said, taken aback by the woman’s honesty, ‘there was a third woman. She was dressed in black, a wide-brimmed hat, a veil, black stiletto heels.’

  ‘It was a long time ago, and it’s not a time and place that I choose to remember. But yes, I do remember her.’

  ‘What can you tell us about her?’

  ‘She was one of Stephen’s playthings.’

  ‘Any more?’

  ‘She was married, about my age, maybe a little older.’

  ‘How do you know she was married?’

  ‘She was my rival, I instinctively knew. I knew he had another woman that he was keen on, keener than he was on me.’

  ‘But why? You were free, attractive, and you wanted him,’ Wendy asked. It was late in the afternoon, and in another hour it would be dark. She was glad that she had put a small overnight case in the back of the car. It was a five-hour drive back to London; she didn’t relish the trip that late at night.

  ‘Why do we love certain people and not others, why did he? After Stephen’s disappearance, I met my first husband, a doctor. The man could make paint peel off the wall of any room he entered, yet I loved him for his decency and his love for me. It was refreshing after Stephen.’

  ‘He sounds like Bob Palmer.’

  ‘Bob was a dreamer; my husband was not. He gave our children and me a great life, and if sometimes I wished he could have been more romantic, there’s something seductive about being comforted in the warmth of a loving family.’

  ‘You were married when you slept with Bob Palmer.’

  ‘It was once; no one ever knew, not my husband, certainly not my children. I couldn’t see it as being unfaithful as there was no emotional connection with Bob, no intention to leave my husband or to deceive him. It was a necessary act of compassion in a moment of weakness. Maybe you don’t understand, but it matters little now. My husband died, our eleventh year, and some were good, some were not, but I had no intention of leaving him, and I never looked at another man during that time.’

  ‘You never answered the question as to why you knew she was married.’

  ‘I think I did. He was with me, but he wanted her. But he couldn’t have her, the reason was obvious. And there she was at the funeral, the woman that I had despised.’

  ‘You didn’t confront her?’

  ‘What for? Time had moved on, I was married, and Stephen was dead. I didn’t want to talk to her, but I couldn’t hate her. To me, she didn’t exist.’

  ‘We need to find her.’

  ‘I can’t help you there, and I didn’t study her that closely at the funeral. I’m afraid your trip here today has been wasted.’

  Wendy would have said it hadn’t, in that Bob Palmer had lied about him and Liz.

  The verdict was out on whether Liz Spalding was a good or a bad person. Wendy would be willing to concede that she was the first of the two; Larry, if asked, would have reserved his judgement for later.

  Chapter 12

  Hamish McIntyre prided himself on his orchids, and he wanted nothing more than to spend his time with them, ensuring the pH of the soil was just right, the humidity and the temperature of the conservatory were at the optimum, and that he could focus on their colour and variety, and not on the past.

  Five years ago he had decided that the aggravation, the stomach ulcer, the high blood pressure, weren’t worth it any more and he’d passed on to a colleague the mantle of leadership of his criminal empire. The clubs, as well as the drug importation and distribution businesses, were no longer his.

  McIntyre now preferred to forget his dubious past, but he could not, because it reared its ugly head too often. It had happened twice in the past five years, and now it was happening again.

  Gareth Armstrong, the ever-loyal butler, and now confidant of the gangster, had entered the conservatory. ‘Hamish, the word on the street is that the police are sniffing around.’ Whenever there were visitors in the house, Armstrong would not address his boss by his first name, but when it was just the two of them, then a degree of informality ensued.

  McIntyre put down the small trowel, removed his gardening gloves, and sat down on an old wooden folding chair.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked as he raised a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice to his mouth.

  ‘Does the name Stephen Palmer mean anything to you?’

  McIntyre trusted Armstrong with his l
ife, but he could not trust him with the truth, not this time. ‘No, never heard of him.’

  ‘It’s just that the police have reopened the enquiry into his death; they’ve been asking questions, meeting up with his brother, old girlfriends.’

  ‘How do you know this, and why should I be concerned?’ McIntyre said nonchalantly.

  ‘The word is that Palmer was a used car dealer who was murdered twenty years ago. They’re trying to pin his death on you.’

  ‘The police were always trying to stitch me up for one crime or another, never succeeded. Why bother now? I’ve retired.’

  ‘Were you involved?’

  ‘If I were, I’d tell you, but I wasn’t, so that’s that. Anything else?’

  ‘I thought that if you were involved, I could help in any way I could,’ Armstrong said, purposely ignoring his boss’s denial.

  ‘Thanks, Gareth, but I’m not. Where did you find this out?’

  ‘The police have been around to where the man died, where he’s buried, not that there’d be much to see. His death was violent, so they say.’

  ‘Gareth, don’t be obtuse. How much do you know? Who’s feeding you this information?’

  ‘I’ve a contact, works with the police, an informer, although he doesn’t tell them anything they don’t already know. Sometimes he feeds them nonsense, gets paid for doing it.’

  ‘Whoever was involved, and it isn’t me, what were you told, in detail?’

  Armstrong pulled up a seat. He wanted to loosen his tie as the conservatory was too warm, but he did not. He enjoyed the respectability that the position of butler at the mansion afforded him. For too many years, he had struggled, wanting to be honest, unable to be so as the cost of living was too high, the life of crime too easy. He knew, even though he was not a smart man, that the mention of Stephen Palmer had hit a raw nerve with his master. He would help regardless.

  ‘There are plain-clothes asking questions nearby to where this Stephen Palmer lived; who were his friends, who were his girlfriends. It seems the man used to put it about.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘An Inspector Hill and a Sergeant Gladstone spoke to the man’s brother, met with a woman in Oxford.’