DCI Isaac Cook Box Set 2

by Phillip Strang

  ‘My wife and I, we’re liberal people. We understand the modern generation, been there ourselves, but when it's your daughter…’

  ‘We all react to type, isn’t that the truth? Anyway, take it easy for a couple of days, and I’ll be in touch again. The eyes see, but the mind doesn’t always register.’

  ‘I’ll not do anything. Brad Robinson?’

  ‘He’s not been in trouble, not according to us.’

  ‘His family?’

  ‘The sins of the parent, or in his case his brother and sister, are not visited on the youngest member of the family.’

  ‘If she had waited, chosen someone more suitable…’

  ‘She’s chosen him, and from what I can see, he’s a normal teenage male. We can’t blame him for his older brother.’

  ‘His sister?’

  ‘Nor her. She’s been at the police station for soliciting, but that’s all.’

  ‘Is she…?’

  ‘Is your daughter still pure and chaste, is that what you’re about to say?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘According to her, she is, but you’ll not stop her, just hope that she exercises good judgement.’

  ‘We know, but Brad Robinson. She’s such a timid soul, forever reading mushy romance novels.’

  Wendy left the father and walked over to where DCI Cook and DI Hill were standing.

  ‘Any luck?’ Isaac said.

  ‘Two young kids getting up to mischief, nothing more.’

  ‘But they saw the murderer?’

  ‘It looks that way. We’ll get what we can from them tonight, but it’s dark in there. At least it was till the CSIs set up their lights. They wouldn’t have seen a lot, and besides, murder wasn’t part of their plan for tonight.’

  ‘We’ve all been there,’ Larry said.

  ‘Not with a fifteen-year-old, I hope,’ Wendy said.

  Larry thought back to his youth. ‘I might have.’

  Wendy had to admit it was an honest answer.

  Gordon Windsor came over. ‘You’ll want a brief report,’ he said.

  To Isaac, Windor’s verbal report was as good as a detailed one from the pathologist. The salient facts would be given, enough to commence the murder investigation, to start to bring the perpetrator to justice.

  ‘We would,’ Isaac said.

  ‘Very well. Female, Caucasian, brunette, between thirty-five and forty-four years of age. Pathology can confirm that better than me.’

  ‘Identification?’

  ‘Nothing that we’ve found, and apart from the knife in the back, no other sign of violence.’

  ‘A random killing?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘No sign of a struggle would indicate that the woman was there voluntarily, which means she would have known her killer.’

  ‘A romantic tryst?’ Isaac asked.

  ‘In a graveyard?’ Windsor’s response.

  ‘A sense of the macabre.’

  ‘If it is, then you’ll need to prove it. We can’t see any signs of recent sexual activity, certainly not rape. Yet again, I’ll defer to Pathology on that. Whatever the reason, the only identification is an inscription tattooed on the woman’s right leg.’

  ‘What does it say?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘I’ll send you a photo. You can figure it out. We’ll remove the body in the next hour and take it for autopsy. I’ll need the area secured, and we’ll be back tomorrow morning to look through the place, see if we can follow the shoeprint, not confident that we can.’

  It was close to two in the morning, and the traffic on Kilburn Lane had reduced. Across the road, Wendy saw Rose getting into the front seat of her father’s Jaguar, Brad getting into the back seat. Rose was correct that her father was a good man. The folly of youth, she thought, only to be thrust front and centre into a murder investigation. Whoever it was that they had seen, he had to be regarded as dangerous, and she hoped the two young lovers weren’t to become more inextricably involved.

  Wendy remembered a time long ago in Yorkshire, up on the moors. She had been fourteen at the time, well developed for her age, and precocious. It had been her and a fifteen-year-old boy from the next farm and a haystack. They’d only been heavy petting, not that her father understood when he caught the two of them. She didn’t sit down for two days afterwards; the boy, she couldn’t remember his name now, had taken his punishment like a man, attempted to defend her honour. However, it didn’t stop her father laying him out cold with a punch in the stomach and a fist, hardened by manual farm labour, in the face.

  Times had changed for the better. Tim Winston, upset and disappointed by his daughter, angry with the young Brad, could at least act rationally and treat the two teenagers with the civility and sensitivity required.

  Chapter 3

  The crime scene yielded little more. The CSIs went through the place extensively, and even though the shoeprints found alongside the body were confirmed with a high degree of probability as those of the murderer, no more were found on the footpath that cut across from Harrow Road to Kilburn Lane.

  Pathology confirmed certain facts about the dead woman, including agreeing with Gordon Windsor about her age. It was also confirmed that she was not a drug addict and in good health. No sign of sexual activity at the time of her death, which precluded sex as a motive. A notice had been placed at both entrances of the path that Brad and Rose had traversed, with officers questioning those passing by – the cemetery was closed to pedestrian traffic – as to whether they had walked through in the last couple of days, and if they had seen anything suspicious, anyone loitering, in particular in the vicinity of the grave that the woman had died on.

  The only piece of luck to come from the questioning was that one man confirmed he had walked through at 9.36 p.m. and had seen nothing. The time had been checked against the bus he had alighted from, found from the bus company to be on schedule, and confirmed that the bus stop was next to the Kilburn Lane entrance. The man, a salesman in a menswear shop on Oxford Street, had admitted to having had a few drinks after work and feeling slightly tipsy, but was adamant he had seen nothing, although he would have if there had been any noise, or anyone hanging back in the shadows. A timid man, Larry thought, when he was interviewed at Challis Street later in the day, the sort of man who’d jump out of his skin if someone said boo to him. However, his testimony was regarded as sound, which narrowed the stabbing of the woman to between 9.38 p.m. and 10.14 p.m., the latter time based on Rose arriving two minutes late at Harrow Road, and the time it took to walk through the park.

  Pathology agreed with the time of death, more accurate than usual, but it did not help with who had murdered the woman. She was marginally overweight, with poor muscle tone which indicated little exercise, white, presumed to be English, but with the recent wave of new arrivals in the country, that couldn’t be stated with more than a ninety per cent accuracy. The clothes she wore, a blue skirt, a white top, sandals on her feet, could all have been bought in a hundred high street stores in London, as well as on the continent. It was an avenue of enquiry to follow up on, and a couple of uniforms were given the task: an eager policewoman in her early twenties and an unattractive policeman in his thirties who Wendy didn’t like, believing the man had a chip on his shoulder and an unhealthy attitude to women, on account of his condescending manner when she had instructed the two police constables on what they were looking for, and how to go about the questioning.

  ‘We might get a quicker result if we go online,’ Constable Kate Baxter suggested before she and Constable Barry Ecclestone walked out of the door. Ecclestone, judging by his face, Wendy could see, was not pleased to be held back in the office for any longer than necessary. He was a slovenly man who would just do his duty, Wendy surmised, never rising above the melee, not amounting to much in life and in the London Metropolitan Police; definitely not a man for Homicide.

  Wendy left the two of them to it, and they went to the back of the office, found themselves a couple of desks. Kate Baxter opened up a
laptop, Ecclestone checked out the coffee machine and what he could buy from a vending machine in the hallway outside.

  What was of more interest than the clothing was the inscription on the dead woman’s leg, found to be a Buddhist chant in Sanskrit that translated to ‘Strength through adversity’, which meant that the woman had experienced hardship, or she adhered to a belief in Buddhism, or she just liked the inscription. It had been professionally tattooed, which would help in identifying the tattoo shops that were capable of such detail and quality. Yet again, pounding the streets, but Wendy would undertake that herself.

  Bridget Halloran stayed in the office; she dealt with the paperwork, prepared the prosecution cases, coordinated the support staff who dealt with the collecting of evidence, the filing of it, the documentation, the peripheral activities. She was a great friend of Wendy’s, and they shared a house now, since the death of Wendy’s husband, and after Bridget had kicked out her last live-in lover, although Bridget, younger by seven years than Wendy at forty-eight, still had the occasional man to the house; not that Wendy was concerned, as she was always discreet. The only consternation to her was that she didn’t have the success that Bridget had, although at fifty-five and suffering from arthritis and now high blood pressure, she knew that she had not maintained the same vitality as her friend, the spark that men found attractive.

  And besides, Wendy had to admit that it didn’t worry her either way, not that much, not anymore, but still…

  ***

  Apart from the clothing and the inscription, no further indications as to the woman’s identity were found. As Isaac Cook saw it, that was the primary focus, and if the man had killed once, a seemingly premeditated crime as the woman had apparently been at the graveside willingly, he could kill again.

  The grave’s occupant had died on 15th September 1873, which seemed unrelated, but it did raise questions as to why that grave, did it have a significance, and why that night at that hour.

  In his office, Isaac sat in his chair. It was eight in the evening of the second day. Across from him, Larry, Wendy and Bridget. They were the core team that he had moulded; they were the best there was. Wendy could find people who wanted to stay hidden better than anyone else; Larry’s contacts out on the street invaluable, but his propensity to drink too much still of concern; and finally, Bridget Halloran, who had joined Homicide on Wendy’s recommendation. The woman was a genius with a computer and an internet connection, able to find information that others preferred to keep hidden.

  Bridget was an office person, whereas Larry and Wendy were glad to be out of it as much as possible, although Isaac, a self-professed workaholic, always insisted on a daily end-of-day wrap-up meeting to discuss the day’s results, to plan for the next.

  ‘Larry, what have you found out?’ Isaac asked.

  ‘The woman’s not on any criminal database, and until we have a positive identification, we’re flying blind, asking questions, not even sure they’re the correct ones either.’

  ‘Did anyone see the woman on the night?’

  ‘No one we’ve found, which isn’t surprising. She had no distinguishing features, average in terms of height, weight, blood type, hair colour. Apart from the tattoo on her leg, that is.’

  ‘Bridget, you’ve been researching it, any luck?’

  ‘I can give you a dozen places within walking distance of the police station that could have done it,’ she said.

  Isaac felt he was asking questions to which he already knew the answer. However, when everything has been exhausted, asking again can sometimes uncover a hitherto hidden fact, a not previously considered possibility.

  ‘Any luck with the inks used?’

  ‘I’ll visit the most likely places tomorrow,’ Wendy said. ‘It’s unlikely they’ll know who she is; a lot of women, some men, have Buddhist chants tattooed on them, but usually on the shoulder.’ Wendy thought back to the holiday in Greece with Bridget, the effects of too much ouzo, the small stars tattooed on their left ankles. They still laughed about how silly they’d been back then.

  ‘Strength through adversity. It could be significant,’ Isaac said.

  ‘Or it could mean nothing. It’s attractive to look at, not that I’d do it myself,’ Wendy said, looking over at Bridget.

  ‘Check on inks, batch numbers, samples of the most likely inks used and when. It could help.’

  ‘I’ll get what I can and get it over to Forensics, see what they can make of it.’

  ‘Larry, let’s focus on where you’re at.’

  ‘As I said, no criminal record and nobody seems to know anything about her. A Jane Doe at this time.’

  ‘Unless she took public transport or drove there, she would have to be a local.’

  ‘I’m looking. Give me a couple of days. I should turn up something.’

  ‘That’s the problem, we don’t have the luxury of time. It’s a clear case of murder, a woman in a cemetery, a man she had obviously known, a knife in her back. Any luck with the knife?’

  ‘Any department store in London, the cutlery section. An eight-inch knife, the sort that most houses would have; it’s not a name brand, generic Chinese, but sharp.’

  ‘Sharp enough to have killed the woman with one stab? Not even a frenzied attack.’

  ‘How could he be sure that she would be dead within a few minutes?’

  ‘The blade pierced the left atrium of the heart. The chances of survival are rare.’

  ‘Does that mean it was luck that he stabbed her in the right place or he knew where to direct the knife? The latter would indicate medical knowledge; the former, more than likely.’

  ‘Or he could have had military training. If he had killed under orders, he could have been trained in how to take out a man without making a noise,’ Larry said.

  ‘We’re postulating here. The man saw the two youngsters walking through.’

  ‘He could have got a good look at them, even if they hadn’t seen him,’ Wendy said.

  ‘Dependent on the man’s state of mind, professional or gifted amateur, he might not want loose ends,’ Isaac said. ‘We need to follow up on the young lovers.’

  ‘I’ll go and see them, tell them to be careful, find out what more I can.’

  ‘Before you go tonight, phone them both up, make sure there’s a uniform outside each house until tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ve got one person already,’ Wendy said, thinking of Constable Ecclestone who had been absent most of the morning, following up on a lead he had said. The man was on night duty, sitting downstairs, taking it easy. He’d not like it, but she didn’t care. To her, people who didn’t pull their weight got what was coming to them. She’d find another constable for the other house, but not Kate Baxter, who was doing a sterling job.

  ***

  The following day it started to rain, an English rain, the type that overseas visitors to London remember only too well. At the cemetery, the crime scene investigators had gone as far as they could, and apart from the tape around the grave and the small patch of grass surrounding it, people were starting to walk through again and to begin visiting the graves, although few did.

  Larry went with Wendy to the first house for that day, the Robinson residence. Brad Robinson and his mother lived in a nondescript row of red-brick houses; not the upmarket terraces of Holland Park and Bayswater, more downmarket than that, as far removed from the wealth of the area as could be.

  On the next-door neighbour’s front lawn, a motorcycle with its engine removed. Looking at the rust, Larry could see that it would never run again. A dog barked from inside another house, a yapping sound that grated on the nerves, a street where the animal would meet an unfortunate ending, poisoned bait.

  Two knocks at the door and Brad Robinson’s mother opened it. She was a woman who had seen better days, Wendy conceded, but she had a cheery disposition and an easy smile. A woman, Wendy thought, who had been dealt a cruel hand by her upbringing, her lack of education, a family that skirted the boundary between leg
al and illegal, slipping over into the latter on more than a few occasions.

  Larry knew Jim Robinson, the woman’s elder son, in passing and had spoken to him a few times, the man not averse to a beer and a fifty-pound note in exchange for information; not that it had ever been any good.

  ‘You’ll be wanting Brad,’ Gladys Robinson said. ‘He’s expecting you, but he’s got school later.’

  ‘We’ll make sure he gets there,’ Wendy said.

  ‘Not in your car. People are sensitive around here, recognise a police officer from a mile off.’

  It was true, Larry knew. He drove a regular car, dressed as others, but in an area where crime abounded, they always knew he was the police.

  The house was clean enough, although there was an air of decay, not necessarily on account of its occupants, but because the local council had through experience realised that if you gave something too pristine to those who could only afford the low rents that they paid, they wouldn’t respect what they had been given. The Robinsons had clearly tried, but even so, one of the drawers in the kitchen was broken, a windowpane was cracked, and the cooker had seen better days.

  Larry shook Brad’s hand as he came into the kitchen wearing his school uniform.

  ‘We’ve a few questions,’ Larry said.

  ‘Her father’s been on the phone,’ Gladys Robinson said. ‘None too happy. Accused Brad of seducing his daughter, and her only fifteen.’

  ‘He dropped Brad home on the night,’ Wendy said.

  ‘He did, and I grant you that it was the right thing to do.’

  ‘Your son and Rose Winston?’

  ‘I’ve nothing against it. I’ve seen her, not spoken to her, but she’s a pretty little thing. I can see why Brad likes her, and if they want to go out, then it’s fine by me.’

  ‘She’s underage, not at the age of consent.’

  ‘I’ve known her father almost our entire lives; grew up with him, went to the same school. He wasn’t so posh back then, and as for his wife…’