DCI Isaac Cook Box Set 2

by Phillip Strang

  ‘How do you feel about him?’

  ‘The man went his way, I went mine.’

  ‘He’s a criminal, you know that?’

  ‘He was a friend as a child; that’s who I remember. What caused him to do what he has, I don’t know. I prefer not to dwell on him, no more than I have to.’

  ‘It’s not so easy now, is it? What with Marcus Matthews and his wife, Jacob Wolfenden, the Palmers. Do you remember a Charles Bailey?’

  ‘The name doesn’t ring a bell.’

  ‘He lived next door, your mother and his used to talk over the garden fence, your sister used to babysit him when he was young.’

  ‘She might know, but she’s fourteen years older than me, not in good health.’

  ‘You know Samantha Matthews, though.’

  Gwen Wilkinson fussed around, clearing the plates from the table, topping up the cups of tea. She acted as though she wasn’t listening, but Wendy could see she was.

  ‘Samantha lived not far from here. She used to go in the Stag occasionally, and if we saw her on the street, we’d have a chat. That’s all.’

  ‘Yet you knew what her father was.’

  ‘You can’t blame the sins of the father on the child, can you? That’d be uncharitable.’

  ‘Charles Bailey moved away when he was nine or ten. He changed his name, became an eminent person.’

  ‘A criminal?’

  ‘He became a Queen’s Counsel, a judge.’

  ‘And he lived next door?’

  ‘His father was in the Merchant Navy.’

  ‘I can’t remember much back that far,’ Wilkinson said. ‘Too busy running around the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Mrs Wilkinson?’ Wendy said.

  ‘Don’t ask me. I grew up thirty miles from here. If it hadn’t been for a job here, I’d still be back there.’

  Isaac struggled with Wilkinson’s answer. The man wasn’t senile, far from it, and even if it had been almost sixty years, the man should have remembered something of the past.

  ‘Marcus Matthews, you knew him?’

  ‘I knew that he was with Hamish. I couldn’t forgive him for that, but he was a decent enough person.’

  ‘Did he hate his father-in-law?’

  ‘I don’t think we spoke about him. He liked a pint, the same as I do. I didn’t pry.’

  ‘You were indiscreet with Inspector Hill, told him about Bob Palmer, what he was asking, who he was looking for.’

  ‘Maybe I’d had a few drinks, the alcohol talking.’

  ‘You knew what you were saying, certain that your relationship to McIntyre gave you some immunity.’

  ‘I don’t like the man, what’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing. Were you helping us to make a case against your cousin? Would you have been pleased if he had been arrested?’

  ‘The man’s corrosive. His daughter, who had never harboured an evil thought, commits murder. It’s in the man’s blood; he destroys those who are close to him.’

  ‘You’ve not answered the question.’

  ‘Lock him up, throw away the key. That’d be too good for him.’

  ‘Marcus, we believe, wanted to do the same. Do you remember Stephen Palmer?’

  ‘Where’s this heading?’

  ‘Marcus killed Stephen Palmer.’

  ‘Not Marcus? A crook he may have been, but murder, that’s another thing.’

  ‘Hamish McIntyre forced him to kill Palmer. We know that now. Your time in the Army, did you kill a man?’

  ‘I was a soldier in Northern Ireland, elsewhere.’

  ‘Is that a yes or a no.’

  ‘Gwen doesn’t like me talking about it. She thinks that war is cancer, that we should love our neighbour, turn the other cheek.’

  ‘Did you kill?’

  ‘I did my duty, the same as any other soldier would.’

  ‘The answer’s yes, isn’t it?’

  ‘War’s a dirty game, sometimes it’s unavoidable.’

  ***

  Larry returned to Challis Street at one in the afternoon, not long after Isaac and Wendy. His face was flushed, his breath heavy with the smell of beer.

  ‘You can give me the lecture later,’ he said to Isaac. ‘And besides, I kept it to two pints, no more.’

  Isaac didn’t believe the two pints, but he’d let it pass for now. He’d done all he could with his inspector. If the man wanted to head down the slippery slope to recurring alcoholism, that was between him and his wife, not Homicide. His team, Isaac knew, needed dependable and sober people, not men with addictive personalities. Once the current investigations were completed, he’d consider the options, decide if Larry was to be moved out.

  Bridget handed Larry a black coffee in a mug. ‘You’d better get this down you,’ she said. ‘And suck on a mint.’

  ‘People are willing to talk, more than they were before,’ Larry said. ‘That’s why I was in the Stag Hotel, talking to another barman. He goes back a long time, and he does relief when the regular man takes a day off or calls in sick.’

  ‘What did he have to say?’

  ‘Marcus Matthews used to go in there regularly.’

  ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘He knew him well enough, remembered when he disappeared. He reckoned it was strange at the time, as the man had seemed contented enough.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘He also remembered Stephen Palmer. He said it wasn’t until the man’s body was found that he thought back to when he had last been seen. He said that Matthews had been in the pub nine or ten days after the man had been murdered, not that he knew that at the time. Matthews had kept to himself, slowly drinking, getting drunk. Once or twice, he’d gone outside, lit up a cigarette, and vomited. Not that it stopped him drinking though.’

  ‘What are you telling us?’

  ‘Matthews wasn’t a drinker, but after Palmer had been murdered, the man’s there drinking away, trying to forget. It confirms what we’ve been told.’

  ‘We’ve been working with that premise. How does it help our case?’

  ‘The barman said that Marcus, once he had stopped drinking himself into oblivion, started to become friendly with Fred Wilkinson, long chats together.’

  ‘Is Wilkinson involved?’

  ‘Wilkinson, a model citizen; Matthews, a man who had been forced to kill. There’s enough there to raise the possibility.’

  Isaac looked over at Bridget. ‘Wilkinson was in the Army. His records should be accessible. Check it out, and see if there are fingerprints.’

  ‘It was a long time ago; they may not be on a database.’

  ‘If they’re not, then find out if they’re stored on microfiche somewhere.’

  Two hours later, Bridget came back. ‘It would be easier if you get them from the man himself. It depends where he served, if the records are still available, and if they’ve been stored correctly.’

  ‘Leave it to us,’ Larry said.

  ‘Are you suggesting we make the man give us his fingerprints? We’ve not charged him with any crime,’ Isaac said.

  Larry, who had in the interim taken the opportunity to sober himself up and to wash his face, comb his hair, replied, ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’ll need to find him, ask him if he’ll agree. And if he doesn’t, then we’ll charge him. This could go pear-shaped. There’s no evidence against him, other than he was friendly with Matthews, and he disliked his cousin.’

  ‘DCI, it’s not the first time you’ve acted on a hunch.’

  ‘It’s my skin, your hunch.’

  ‘It’s ours, skin, that is.’

  They found Fred Wilkinson in the Stag Hotel. The man was sitting with his wife; she was drinking a sweet sherry; he held a glass of beer in his hand.

  ‘We need to eliminate possible suspects,’ Isaac said. ‘Mr Wilkinson, we need your fingerprints.’

  ‘I’ve no objection. Where? Down at the police station?’

  Larry produced a mobile fingerprint scanner and placed it on the table
.

  ‘What’s this for?’ Gwen Wilkinson said.

  ‘Technology’s caught up with us,’ Isaac said.

  Fred Wilkinson said nothing, only looked at his wife and the two police officers. He complied and placed his fingers on the scanner.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Wilkinson,’ Larry said.

  The man hadn’t been charged, and he had previously not been a suspect. He picked up his glass of beer and took a drink from it. He said nothing.

  Larry moved away from the table and found a quiet spot in the bar. He then sent the prints via his mobile to Forensics, a person there waiting to receive them.

  ‘I think we should go,’ Wilkinson said to his wife. ‘I’m not feeling well.’

  The husband and wife stood and headed to the door of the pub. It was Larry who stood in their way.

  ‘What’s the result?’ Isaac said.

  ‘They’re a match. It’s your arrest,’ Larry said.

  ‘It was your hunch, it’s only right that you do it.’

  A deathly hush settled over the pub, all eyes focused on the Wilkinsons and the two police officers, as Larry arrested Fred Wilkinson and put the handcuffs on him. Gwen Wilkinson, the loyal wife, stood by, unable to comprehend the situation, a tear rolling down her right cheek. Another woman who had been in the pub put her arm around her and led her away.

  A marked police car arrived after a few minutes, and Fred Wilkinson was placed in the back.

  Neither Isaac nor Larry were pleased with themselves. A man who had caused no harm to anyone, had even served his country with distinction, was going to jail for a very long time.

  ‘The villains still get away with it,’ Larry said later that night back at Challis Street, the cell once again occupied.

  ***

  Fred Wilkinson sat in the interview room; his wife waited outside. The man explained how he and Marcus had formed a friendship over many years, the result of hatred for one man. How, in time, a pact was agreed that one or the other would kill the man, the other assisting as he could.

  ‘It had been thirteen years. Marcus said that he would complete the task within one year, and if he didn’t, then I was to kill him.’

  ‘But why? That makes no sense,’ Isaac said.

  ‘You’d not understand, but Marcus did. I knew about his early life; I knew about the death of Stephen Palmer.’

  ‘Will you testify that Hamish McIntyre was present when Palmer died?’

  ‘It would be pointless. I shot Marcus; I’ll admit to that. But it wasn’t murder, it was an agreement between two men who held strong views.’

  ‘Your Army training?’

  ‘In part. But I had grown up with Hamish; I knew what the man had become.’

  ‘It’s bizarre,’ Larry said. ‘We could arrest McIntyre with your testimony.’

  ‘He’ll die in his bed. I’ll die in a prison cell. Marcus died in the room at the top of a house. I only hope that my wife is looked after.’

  Fred Wilkinson sat there and wrote out his confession. He had not requested legal aid. In the end, he stood up and was taken back to his cell.

  Isaac knew that the man was right; he’d die in a prison cell, alone but not unloved. His wife would always be at their house, waiting for the day he would come home.

  ***

  Wally Vincent and Larry visited Charles Stanford’s house in Brighton.

  Outside the house, an eerie silence. In the house, no lights were visible, nothing to indicate that the man was at home.

  Larry knocked on the front door; nothing could be heard from inside.

  The two men walked around to the back and tried the back door; it was locked.

  ‘I’ll break a window,’ Vincent said.

  ‘He may have a key hidden,’ Larry said.

  They looked under a potted plant to one side of the door.

  ‘I’ve found it,’ Vincent said.

  Inside the kitchen, the hum of the refrigerator.

  ‘Something’s up,’ Larry said.

  They put on shoe protectors. Both men had gloves on. Progressively they moved through the house, careful what they touched. They used the torches on their phones to guide their way.

  On the second floor, the man’s bedroom. On the bed, the body of Charles Stanford.

  ‘There’s a letter,’ Vincent said.

  ‘Leave it. This place is for the crime scene investigators. It’ll be a confession about how he became involved with Wilkinson and Matthews.’

  ‘And I thought he’d told us everything.’

  ‘He was always smarter than us. How did he die?’

  ‘Poison, probably. It doesn’t matter, not now, does it?’

  Outside the house, a dog walked by on Stanford’s side of the street. Unable to run away, it started yapping.

  Wally Vincent knelt down and patted the dog on its head. He didn’t have the heart to give it a swift kick; not that day.

  The End

  Grave Passion

  Phillip Strang

  Chapter 1

  Brad Robinson was about to break the law, not that he knew it, and he was in too much of a hurry to worry anyway. He was a bright child, his mother would say, but then she had a soft spot for him, seeing that he was the only one of her three children who wasn’t taking drugs, incarcerated in prison, or, in the case of her daughter, selling herself. To the sixteen-year-old’s mother, it looked as though he might make his way in the world without resorting to crime, even becoming a worthwhile member of society, which she had aspired to but had failed to achieve.

  Jim, the eldest of her three children, had at twenty-two seen the inside of more than a few prison cells. He had had to grow up hard; his father was a criminal as well as a drunk, and on many a night, he had beaten his mother senseless.

  At the age of fourteen, Jim, strong for his age, had taken on the bane of the Robinson household and thrashed his father mercilessly with a cricket bat. The upshot was that Jim, the saviour of his family, spent time in a young offender’s institution, and his father, once the wounds had healed, had briefly returned to the family home, a squalid council house with little charm, picked up his clothes, packed them in a suitcase and had left; not a word of farewell to anyone in the house, other than a pat on the shoulder for the eight-year-old Brad.

  The second eldest, Janice, was an attractive blonde-haired child until puberty hit. After that, she had discovered boys, and then men, and then drugs. She was now twenty-one and living a transient life, moving from one place to another, eking a living by selling herself, injecting when she could, eating whatever food she could afford.

  Brad tried to see her every couple of months, but it wasn’t easy. He was sixteen, and his life should have been a time for exams and sport and chasing girls. Not that he tarried on the latter, as he had grown up a good-looking lad, and the genetic traits that had made Jim violent and Janice a tart hadn’t touched him. He was more like his mother, except that he had tried alcohol on a couple of occasions and never found a love for it. He was glad of that.

  The house wasn’t somewhere you took Rose Winston. Brad didn’t want to destroy her impression of him. She lived not far away in a better house and her parents owned it; her father was a professional man and her mother was a schoolteacher.

  Rose had made it clear that sex was the next step in their relationship; after all, they had passed through passionate kissing and heavy petting. The next stage was the final act, where he, the over-eager Brad, and Rose, the expectant female, would come together in a crescendo of drums, the sound of waves lapping on the shore, an abandonment of themselves as they became one.

  That was how Rose, an avid reader of love stories, saw it. Brad, sensitive as only a sixteen-year-old male could be, knew that wasn’t how it was, but he wasn’t about to tell her the truth, not just yet. It was messy, he could have told her, over far too quickly, and if she wanted banging drums and the music, then she’d better take a radio with her.

  The best he could hope for was a balmy summer’s nigh
t, a secluded spot in Hyde Park. He had purchased a cheap bottle of wine and taken a blanket from home, the cleanest one he could find. His mother wasn’t strong on cleanliness, although she was on vodka.

  Brad, in his reflective moments, wondered about his parentage. His mother was a short woman, whereas he was tall for his age and slim, although her facial features showed in him, as they did in his brother and sister. But Janice was as short as her mother, and Jim wasn’t much taller, and the father of the three had been short as well. His mother, who had read about it in a magazine, her usual window on the world, apart from the incessantly-on television, said his height and physique were a genetic throwback to an ancestor. Not that he could see it, as his grandparents on both sides were equally short, and at family gatherings, not held since Janice had taken to prostitution, he had stood head and shoulders above the rest.

  Jim’s all too frequent brushes with the law were regarded as an occupational hazard, as the Robinsons regarded petty thieving and crime as a vocation, and the occasional incarceration as an inconvenience. However, Janice’s fall into degradation had stunned them all, and her name was never mentioned by her mother, who in between drinking herself into a stupor was a regular churchgoer.

  The evening was balmy, the love that Rose felt for Brad was that of a fifteen-year-old, which was what she was. The age of consent was sixteen, although Brad wouldn’t have known that, and so what, everyone was having sex at the school they both went to. Rose had been feeling the pressure from her peers for the past year after she had inadvertently blurted out that she was still a virgin.

  Rose had always felt that intimacy with another should be within the bond of marriage, and if not that, then part of an intense interdependency of one human on another, a person she could trust. And Brad was that person, she had decided five weeks previously when they had first gone out together. He had been the perfect gentleman, not once grabbing at her breasts or trying to put his hand up her skirt in the back row of the cinema; not like some others that had tried and been rebuked. The reason some at the school had accused her of being a prick teaser. She wasn’t; she was just a good girl, about to become a woman, about to give herself to Brad.