‘She wouldn’t have been the first. It usually worked; the men too ashamed not to pay.’
Tim Winston sat in the interview room at Challis Street Police Station. He was reminded that by his own admission he had slept with Janice Robinson and Meredith Temple. He was told that he had lied and he had slept with Cathy Parkinson as well when she had been in one of her most drug-crazed moods.
In the end, he admitted that he hadn’t wanted his wife to find out, and after Janice had died, he thought that he could not deal with Cathy’s demands for money. The confession came quickly, and the man cried, as did Wendy. Not for Tim Winston, but for his wife and daughter.
Outside the interview room, after Winston had been charged and taken down to the cells, Wendy sat with Maeve Winston.
‘I knew about Janice,’ she said. ‘I would have done anything to keep the family together. He didn’t need to kill her.’
‘I’m afraid that in time you and Rose will need to make a different life for yourselves.’
‘We will, not here, a long way away.’
Wendy knew of only one certainty at the end of a long day and a much longer murder enquiry: the budding romance between Brad Robinson and Rose Winston was doomed.
The End
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ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
DI Tremayne Thriller Series
Death Unholy – A DI Tremayne Thriller – Book 1
All that remained were the man’s two legs and a chair full of greasy and fetid ash. Little did DI Keith Tremayne know that it was the beginning of a journey into the murky world of paganism and its ancient rituals. And it was going to get very dangerous.
‘Do you believe in spontaneous human combustion?’ Detective Inspector Keith Tremayne asked.
‘Not me. I’ve read about it. Who hasn’t?’ Sergeant Clare Yarwood answered.
‘I haven’t,’ Tremayne replied, which did not surprise his young sergeant. In the months they had been working together, she had come to realise that he was a man who had little interest in the world. When he had a cigarette in his mouth, a beer in his hand, and a murder to solve he was about the happiest she ever saw him, but even then he could hardly be regarded as one of life’s most sociable people. And as for reading? The most he managed was an occasional police report, an early-morning newspaper, turning first to the back pages for the racing results.
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Death and the Assassin’s Blade – A DI Tremayne Thriller – Book 2
It was meant to be high drama, not murder, but someone’s switched the daggers. The man’s death took place in plain view of two serving police officers.
He was not meant to die; the daggers were only theatrical props, plastic and harmless. A summer’s night, a production of Julius Caesar amongst the ruins of an Anglo-Saxon fort. Detective Inspector Tremayne is there with his sergeant, Clare Yarwood. In the assassination scene, Caesar collapses to the ground. Brutus defends his actions; Mark Antony rebukes him.
They’re a disparate group, the amateur actors. One’s an estate agent, another an accountant. And then there is the teenage school student, the gay man, the funeral director. And what about the women? They could be involved.
They’ve each got a secret, but which of those on the stage wanted Gordon Mason, the actor who had portrayed Caesar, dead?
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Death and the Lucky Man – A DI Tremayne Thriller – Book 3
Sixty-eight million pounds and dead. Hardly the outcome expected for the luckiest man in England the day his lottery ticket was drawn out of the barrel. But then, Alan Winters’ rags-to-riches story had never been conventional, and some had benefited, but others hadn’t.
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Death at Coombe Farm – A DI Tremayne Thriller – Book 4
A warring family. A disputed inheritance. A recipe for death.
If it hadn’t been for the circumstances, Detective Inspector Keith Tremayne would have said the view was outstanding. Up high, overlooking the farmhouse in the valley below, the panoramic vista of Salisbury Plain stretching out beyond. The only problem was that near where he stood with his sergeant, Clare Yarwood, there was a body, and it wasn’t a pleasant sight.
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Death by a Dead Man’s Hand – A DI Tremayne Thriller – Book 5
A flawed heist of forty gold bars from a security van late at night. One of the perpetrators is killed by his brother as they argue over what they have stolen.
Eighteen years later, the murderer, released after serving his sentence for his brother’s murder, waits in a church for a man purporting to be the brother he killed. And then he too is killed.
The threads stretch back a long way, and now more people are dying in the search for the missing gold bars.
Detective Inspector Tremayne, his health causing him concern, and Sergeant Clare Yarwood, still seeking romance, are pushed to the limit solving the murder, attempting to prevent any more.
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Death in the Village – A DI Tremayne Thriller – Book 6
Nobody liked Gloria Wiggins, a woman who regarded anyone who did not acquiesce to her jaundiced view of the world with disdain. James Baxter, the previous vicar, had been one of those, and her scurrilous outburst in the church one Sunday had hastened his death.
And now, years later, the woman was dead, hanging from a beam in her garage. Detective Inspector Tremayne and Sergeant Clare Yarwood had seen the body, interviewed the woman’s acquaintances, and those who had hated her.
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Burial Mound – A DI Tremayne Thriller – Book 7
A Bronze-Age burial mound close to Stonehenge. An archaeological excavation. What they were looking for was an ancient body and historical artefacts. They found the ancient body, but then they found a modern-day body too. And then the police became interested.
It’s another case for Detective Inspector Tremayne and Sergeant Yarwood. The more recent body was the brother of the mayor of Salisbury.
Everything seems to point to the victim’s brother, the mayor, the upright and serious-minded Clive Grantley. Tremayne’s sure that it’s him, but Clare Yarwood’s not so sure.
But is her belief based on evidence or personal hope?
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The Body in the Ditch – A DI Tremayne Thriller – Book 8
A group of children play. Not far away, in the ditch on the other side of the farmyard, lies the body of a troubled young woman.
The nearby village hides as many secrets as the community at the farm, a disparate group of people looking for an alternative to their previous torturous lives. Their leader, idealistic and benevolent, espouses love and kindness, and clearly somebody’s not following his dictate.
The second death, an old woman, seems unrelated to the first, but is it? Is it part of the tangled web that connects the farm to the village?
The village, Detective Inspector Tremayne and Sergeant Clare Yarwood find out soon enough, is anything but charming and picturesque. It’s an incestuous hotbed of intrigue and wrongdoing. And what of the farm and those who live there? None of them can be ruled out, not yet.
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DCI Isaac Cook Thriller Series
Murder is a Tricky Business – A DCI Cook Thriller – Book 1
A television actress is missing, and DCI Isaac Cook, the Senior Investigation Officer of the Murder Investigation Team at Challis Street Police Station in London, is searching for her.
Why has he been taken away from more important crimes to search for the woman? It’s not the first time she’s gone missing, so why does everyone assume she’s been murdered?
There’s a secret, that much is certain, but who knows it? The missing woman? The executive producer? His eavesdropping assistant? Or the actor who portrayed her fictional brother in the TV soap opera?
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Murder House – A DCI Cook Thriller – Book 2
A cor
pse in the fireplace of an old house. It’s been there for thirty years, but who is it?
It’s murder, but who is the victim and what connection does the body have to the previous owners of the house. What is the motive? And why is the body in a fireplace? It was bound to be discovered eventually but was that what the murderer wanted? The main suspects are all old and dying, or already dead.
Isaac Cook and his team have their work cut out, trying to put the pieces together. Those who know are not talking because of an old-fashioned belief that a family’s dirty laundry should not be aired in public, and never to a policeman – even if that means the murderer is never brought to justice!
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Murder is Only a Number – A DCI Cook Thriller – Book 3
Before she left, she carved a number in blood on his chest. But why the number 2, if this was her first murder?
The woman prowls the streets of London. Her targets are men who have wronged her. Or have they? And why is she keeping count?
DCI Cook and his team finally know who she is, but not before she’s murdered four men. The whole team are looking for her, but the woman keeps disappearing in plain sight. The pressure’s on to stop her, but she’s always one step ahead.
And this time, DCS Goddard can’t protect his protégé, Isaac Cook, from the wrath of the new commissioner at the Met.
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Murder in Little Venice – A DCI Cook Thriller – Book 4
A dismembered corpse floats in the canal in Little Venice, an upmarket tourist haven in London. Its identity is unknown, but what is its significance?
DCI Isaac Cook is baffled about why it’s there. Is it gang-related, or is it something more?
Whatever the reason, it’s clearly a warning, and Isaac and his team are sure it’s not the last body that they’ll have to deal with.
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Murder is the Only Option – A DCI Cook Thriller – Book 5
A man thought to be long dead returns to exact revenge against those who had blighted his life. His only concern is to protect his wife and daughter. He will stop at nothing to achieve his aim.
‘Big Greg, I never expected to see you around here at this time of night.’
‘I’ve told you enough times.’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ Robertson replied. He looked up at the man, only to see a metal pole coming down at him. Robertson fell down, cracking his head against a concrete kerb.
Two vagrants, no more than twenty feet away, did not stir and did not even look in the direction of the noise. If they had, they would have seen a dead body, another man walking away.
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Murder in Notting Hill – A DCI Cook Thriller – Book 6
One murderer, two bodies, two locations, and the murders have been committed within an hour of each other.
They’re separated by a couple of miles, and neither woman has anything in common with the other. One is young and wealthy, the daughter of a famous man; the other is poor, hardworking and unknown.
Isaac Cook and his team at Challis Street Police Station are baffled about why they’ve been killed. There must be a connection, but what is it?
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Murder in Room 346 – A DCI Cook Thriller – Book 7
‘Coitus interruptus, that’s what it is,’ Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook said. On the bed, in a downmarket hotel in Bayswater, lay the naked bodies of a man and a woman.
‘Bullet in the head’s not the way to go,’ Larry Hill, Isaac Cook’s detective inspector, said. He had not expected such a flippant comment from his senior, not when they were standing near to two people who had, apparently in the final throes of passion, succumbed to what appeared to be a professional assassination.
‘You know this will be all over the media within the hour,’ Isaac said.
‘James Holden, moral crusader, a proponent of the sanctity of the marital bed, man and wife. It’s bound to be.’
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Murder of a Silent Man – A DCI Cook Thriller – Book 8
A murdered recluse. A property empire. A disinherited family. All the ingredients for murder.
No one gave much credence to the man when he was alive. In fact, most people never knew who he was, although those who had lived in the area for many years recognised the tired-looking and shabbily-dressed man as he shuffled along, regular as clockwork on a Thursday afternoon at seven in the evening to the local off-licence.
It was always the same: a bottle of whisky, premium brand, and a packet of cigarettes. He paid his money over the counter, took hold of his plastic bag containing his purchases, and then walked back down the road with the same rhythmic shuffle. He said not one word to anyone on the street or in the shop.
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Murder has no Guilt – A DCI Cook Thriller – Book 9
No one knows who the target was or why, but there are eight dead. The men seem the most likely perpetrators, or could have it been one of the two women, the attractive Gillian Dickenson, or even the celebrity-obsessed Sal Maynard?
There’s a gang war brewing, and if there are deaths, it doesn’t matter to them as long as it’s not their death. But to Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook, it's his area of London, and it does matter.
It’s dirty and unpredictable. Initially, it had been the West Indian gangs, but then a more vicious Romanian gangster had usurped them. And now he’s being marginalised by the Russians. And the leader of the most vicious Russian mafia organisation is in London, and he’s got money and influence, the ear of those in power.
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Murder in Hyde Park – A DCI Cook Thriller – Book 10
An early-morning jogger is murdered in Hyde Park. It's the centre of London, but no one saw him enter the park, no one saw him die.
He carries no identification, only a water-logged phone. As the pieces unravel, it's clear that the dead man had a history of deception.
Is the murderer one of those that loved him? Or was it someone with a vengeance?
It's proving difficult for DCI Isaac Cook and his team at Challis Street Homicide to find the guilty person – not that they'll cease to search for the truth, not even after one suspect confesses.
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Six Years Too Late – A DCI Cook Thriller – Book 11
Always the same questions for Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook — Why was Marcus Matthews in that room? And why did he share a bottle of wine with his killer?
It wasn’t as if the man had amounted to much in life, apart from the fact that he was the son-in-law of a notorious gangster, the father of the man’s grandchildren.
Yet, one thing that Hamish McIntyre, feared in London for his violence, rated above anything else, it was his family, especially Samantha, his daughter; although he had never cared for Marcus, her husband.
And then Marcus disappears, only for his body to be found six years later by a couple of young boys who decide that exploring an abandoned house is preferable to school.
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Murder Without Reason – A DCI Cook Thriller – Book 12
DCI Cook faces his greatest challenge. The Islamic State is waging war in England, and they are winning.
Not only does Isaac Cook have to contend with finding the perpetrators, but he is also being forced to commit actions contrary to his mandate as a police officer.
And then there is Anne Argento, the prime minister’s deputy. The prime minister has shown himself to be a pacifist and is not up to the task. She needs to take his job if the country is to fight back against the Islamists.
Vane and Martin have provided the solution. Will DCI Cook and Anne Argento be willing to follow it through? Are they able to act for the good of England, knowing that a criminal and murderous action is about to take place? Do they have an option?
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Standalone Novels
The Haberma
n Virus
A remote and isolated village in the Hindu Kush mountain range in North Eastern Afghanistan is wiped out by a virus unlike any seen before.
A mysterious visitor clad in a spacesuit checks his handiwork, a female American doctor succumbs to the disease, and the woman sent to trap the person responsible falls in love with him – the man who would cause the deaths of millions.
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Hostage of Islam
Three are to die at the Mission in Nigeria: the pastor and his wife in a blazing chapel; another gunned down while trying to defend them from the Islamist fighters.
Kate McDonald, an American, grieving over her boyfriend’s death and Helen Campbell, whose life had been troubled by drugs and prostitution, are taken by the attackers.
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