The Hero's Fall (DCI Cook Thriller Series Book 14)

by Phillip Strang

  Isaac reserved his judgement until more was known about Skinner, another mountaineering legend, one of only three hundred and forty-four who had completed the ascent of the seven summits, the tallest mountain on each continent: Kilimanjaro in Africa, conquerable by a fit individual, Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains of Europe, Aconcagua in South America, Vinson in Antarctica, Denali in Alaska, and then Everest in the Himalayas. Carstensz in Indonesia, although technically not in Australia, made the seventh, as its tectonic plate allowed its inclusion. On the Australian mainland, Mount Kosciusko was no more than a Sunday afternoon climb up a gravel path.

  Mike Hampton had completed six, and Angus Simmons had ascended five, not considering Kilimanjaro as a worthy inclusion.

  At the television station, an air of benign introspection.

  ‘A public relations disaster, this constant negativity over Simmons’s death,’ Jaden said.

  On the receiving end of his anger, Karen Majors, the head of sales, the person who was there to generate advertising revenue, but wasn’t. She didn’t speak, not because she wasn’t capable of holding her own in a conversation, but because it was her job on the line. Given a chance, she’d shift the blame, find a scapegoat: Tom Taylor would do.

  After all, she’d been opposed to his appointment. The only thing that had been in his favour was that he was sleeping with Alison Glassop, the perpetually smiling female, a favoured niece of Jaden’s.

  Another person present, the wily Bob Babbage, a capable orator, able to twist the truth, or a non-truth if it suited. He was keeping quiet, letting Jaden rant on, taking in what was being said, ready with a defence when needed.

  Tom Taylor kept glancing over at Alison, looking for moral support.

  ‘And how do you explain this headline?’ Jaden continued.

  ‘It was Jim Breslaw’s idea,’ Karen Majors said, judging it time to pass the buck.

  ‘No use to me, is it? The man’s gone, paid off. We, or should I say you, need to do something.’

  ‘We ride it out,’ Babbage said. ‘It’s a glitch, not only us, all the other television stations are feeling the pinch, and advertising revenues are down across the board.’

  Tom Taylor looked out of the window, nothing to say, nothing that would make any sense. Alison moved alongside him, gave him a nudge, a subtle wakeup call.

  Taylor opened his mouth, knowing that he had to say something, but no words emanated.

  ‘Say it, Tom,’ Jaden said.

  Red in the face, wishing a hole in the floor would open up and swallow him, Taylor cleared his throat; better to say something than nothing, to be shot down in flames if that was to happen, go back to administration, an accounts clerk if it was to be.

  ‘We weren’t responsible for him making the climb, regardless of what the newspapers are saying,’ Taylor said, hesitantly at first, but as he spoke, he became more confident, more fluid in his delivery.

  ‘Yes,’ Jaden asked. ‘So, what are you suggesting?’

  ‘We can’t alter public opinion, but we can mould its perception. Bob’s right, revenue’s down, that’s a fact, which means we need a bigger slice of the pie.’

  ‘Spouting from a textbook doesn’t get us anywhere,’ Jaden said. He could see himself in Taylor at a similar age, unsure, tongue-tied.

  ‘Maybe it doesn’t, but Karen saying it was Jim Breslaw’s fault is a good idea.’

  Karen Majors looked over at Tom, gave a small smile, realised that Taylor, behind the greenness and the face of youth, had the makings of a shrewd operator, someone to watch, to cultivate.

  ‘We infer that Breslaw was aware of Simmons’s foolhardy attempt and that he had approved it without seeking authorisation,’ Taylor continued.

  ‘But he had,’ Babbage said.

  ‘Had he? Is it recorded?’

  ‘You weren’t there, but Karen was, so was Jerome.’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ Karen said. She did, but she knew where Taylor was taking the discussion.

  ‘I was distracted,’ Jaden said. ‘I can remember him bringing it up, but I believe we categorically forbade it, thought it was a crazy idea, climbing without permission, no insurance.’

  Babbage, who had been there and knew the truth, concurred with the majority. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Jim Breslaw disobeyed orders. A court-martial offence.’

  ‘His actions were treasonous, placed us in a quandary.’

  From a corner of the room, a whisper of a voice. ‘If I may speak,’ a bespectacled woman said. ‘You asked me to attend.’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct, Helen,’ Jaden said. ‘You were going to give us a rundown on our financial status.’

  Helen Moxon stood up. She was even shorter than Jerome Jaden, a rotund insignificant woman who most people at the station avoided, a smell of cats, a desk in a dark corner of the building.

  ‘I asked Helen to conduct a financial analysis of the current situation,’ Jaden said. ‘When you’re ready, Helen.’

  The woman passed around a sheet of paper to each of those present. ‘I’ve kept it short,’ she said. ‘If needed, I can detail it, put up a PowerPoint presentation.’

  ‘Short is fine.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Jaden.’ As a lowly-paid functionary, a junior accountant in the company, over-familiarity was not appropriate.

  Helen commenced. ‘Advertising revenue is down by fifteen per cent this quarter. That’s nearly thirty per cent down from the same period last year, although the station has reduced expenditure by eight per cent this year.’

  ‘Which means?’ Tom Taylor asked.

  ‘Mr Jaden’s seen the detailed figures, but in simple terms we are, on an adjusted monthly basis, running in the red, to the amount of eight per cent each month.’

  ‘The conclusion?’ Karen Majors asked.

  ‘Six months, unless one of two things happens.’

  ‘Which are?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I should think that’s damn obvious,’ Jaden said. ‘I asked Helen to give the facts, not a convoluted spreadsheet with more columns than there are letters in the alphabet. What she prepared is based on advertising revenue, operating costs, money in the bank.’

  ‘And best and worst projections,’ Helen said.

  ‘Thanks, Helen. If you could leave us, that would be appreciated.’

  The woman left the room as silently as she had come.

  ‘To answer your question,’ Jaden continued, coming back to Tom’s earlier question, ‘we either reduce costs or increase advertising revenue. The banks are not going to help us, not this time.’

  ‘We could go under,’ Babbage said.

  ‘If we do, you can all forget your performance bonuses, your stock options, severance pay.’

  Babbage had been prepared for such an ultimatum; he had made plans to leave before the final curtain came down, but foregoing severance pay and stock options weren’t on his agenda. ‘We need to save the station,’ he said.

  ‘Can I speak again?’ Taylor said. ‘My idea of what we should do.’

  ‘The floor’s yours,’ Jaden said.

  Tom Taylor stood up, Alison squeezing his left hand as he rose, unseen by the others, although Karen Majors had picked up a discreet glance between the two. He moved to the end of the table, the side diametrically opposite Jerome Jaden. Full of confidence now, the aphrodisiacal power of importance. ‘We crucify Jim Breslaw, heap all the blame on him.’

  ‘Even if it’s not true,’ Babbage said.

  ‘It’s survival of the fittest, not the most honest nor the saintliest, and certainly not of those who care for the truth.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Jaden said.

  Karen Majors was not without compassion for Jim Breslaw, a man who had dealt with programming for twenty-three years, through the halcyon period when viewer numbers increased each year, and advertising revenue rose exponentially. Then, the drop as social media, streaming video and fake news took off.

  ‘We lay the blame on him, tell the world that Jim had done everything to p
rotect his job, not concerned for anyone’s safety, only his generous salary, willing to take down the station, to sack who he could, to place the blame wherever.’

  ‘And we sacked him once we found out, only to discover that he had approved Simmons climbing that building, Tricia Warburton believing that we agreed to it,’ Jaden said.

  ‘Jerome, you’re right. As I said, crucify Jim Breslaw, a press conference, reveal that Tricia Warburton is coming back on board, a revamped format, guest stars, and travelling the world. Beef her up, a tight skirt, low-cut top.’

  ‘She’ll not go for it,’ Karen Majors said. ‘She’s not that stupid, nor is she a tart.’

  ‘I never said she was. And besides, that was always the plan. I’m just saying to up the rhetoric, to lay it on thicker, to push harder. Pay her what she wants, put it in her contract that she’s to act accordingly, get the male viewers excited, the women envious, press releases about her past life, her lovers, current romances, make up a few.’

  ‘How much is this going to cost?’ Jaden asked.

  ‘Plenty. Get Helen on the job, run the numbers. It’s either make or break.’

  ‘Don’t forget that someone killed Simmons,’ Babbage said. ‘The police will still be sniffing around.’

  ‘Let them. Denigrate Breslaw whenever possible. Any good with a gun, Breslaw?’

  ‘An amateur shot,’ Jaden said.

  ‘All the better.’

  ‘And how do you expect to lay the blame on Jim?’ Karen Majors asked.

  ‘Social media. If you can’t beat it, use it. There must be companies out there that will post anything anywhere.’

  ‘In this country?’

  ‘No idea. It’s social media; they can be anywhere. Feed them what we want, let them run with it, and you, Karen, work your arse off, grab all the revenue we want, screw the other stations.’

  ‘Can this work?’ Babbage asked.

  ‘It can and will,’ Jaden said. ‘Tom, you can take control of this. Is that okay with you?’

  ‘It is if I can have Alison to help.’

  ‘You can have Alison any way you like,’ Jaden said, the smiling Alison blushing.

  ***

  A flaming head of red hair, a bushy beard, a moustache covering his upper lip, Justin Skinner looked every part a mountain man.

  Taller than Isaac, broad-shouldered and muscular, Skinner shook Isaac’s hand firmly, a bear-like grip, and then Larry, patting him on the chest. ‘Could do with a bit of exercise,’ he said. ‘Your chief inspector, he’s looking fit, fit enough for rock climbing. How about it, DCI Cook, interested?’

  ‘Not now, I’m not,’ Isaac said. Skinner’s repartee wasn’t unexpected. After all, they were standing in a draughty barn in Snowdonia in northern Wales, the headquarters of Skinner’s training centre for budding rock climbers and mountaineers.

  ‘You should. Good for the spirit; make a man out of you or a woman if you’re female. You’re here about Angus, I suppose.’

  ‘We are,’ Larry said. ‘A few questions.’

  ‘If I was sleeping with the lovely Kate Hampton?’

  ‘That’s one,’ Isaac said.

  A young woman in climbing boots, wearing an overlarge woollen jumper and a pair of faded jeans, passed over three mugs. ‘Hot chocolate, just the thing for a day like this,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks, Rachel,’ Justin said. ‘I was telling the chief inspector he’d make a good climber.’

  ‘A good something else as well,’ the woman said, winking at Isaac as she left.

  ‘Good sort is Rachel. She climbed Everest, first attempt. Not many do, makes the rest of us look like amateurs.’

  ‘She’s only a slip of a girl,’ Larry said.

  ‘Tougher than she looks. We’ve got a thing going, not sure how long it’ll last. Rachel’s a free spirit, takes her climbing seriously, not much else.’

  ‘There’s a style about you, not what we associate with climbers,’ Isaac said.

  ‘You mean my easy-going nature?’

  ‘Angus Simmons was a serious-minded individual, although Mike Hampton, we couldn’t form an opinion about.’

  ‘Hampton was always that way, a glass half empty outlook on life, although Kate reckoned, he had another side to him, not that I ever saw it. Angus was a serious individual, ambitious and determined, but me, I’m a natural showman, a big mouth.’

  ‘When you’re climbing?’

  ‘A singular focus, getting up to the top, staying safe, getting down again.’

  ‘Hampton didn’t?’

  ‘Accidents happen, mistakes are made. You can’t be that precise, and if you waited until the risk was negated to zero, you’d never go. If you go up Mount Everest, you must be prepared to die, to let loose if you make it back, to party on once you get back to Kathmandu. Have you been there?’

  ‘Neither of us have,’ Isaac said.

  ‘You should go; a great place.’

  Isaac and Larry hadn’t driven since four in the morning just to chat with Justin Skinner, no matter how interesting and entertaining the man was. It was still a murder investigation, and Skinner had become a suspect due to Gwyneth Simmons’s statement.

  ‘Kate Hampton?’ Isaac said, reminding Skinner that he had brought up the woman’s name.

  ‘It can’t be much fun for her, stuck with Mike,’ Skinner said.

  ‘According to information we received, she’s finding her fun somewhere else.’

  ‘Not from me, not unless I’m down south.’

  ‘And if you are?’

  ‘There’s no harm done. What’s good for one is good for the other.’

  ‘Mike Hampton?’

  ‘Not sure if he’s capable, not after that fall, stuck in that wheelchair all day. If it was me…’

  ‘A high cliff, propel yourself over the side?’

  ‘Not me. It’s all to do with mental willpower, force the challenge, take on the impossible. He could still climb, not the same as before, but small challenges, each one more difficult than before, and he could abseil, use his arm muscles.’

  ‘Kate Hampton?’

  ‘Why not? No harm done, and Mike, he doesn’t know.’

  ‘A regular occurrence?’

  ‘Once every few weeks. She tells him she’s off to see a friend for a long weekend, tells Mike it’s a female.’

  ‘He doesn’t realise?’

  ‘That’s up to him. I can’t give him sympathy, and as far as I’m concerned, he’s a nobody, blaming Simmons the way he did.’

  ‘Is it possible that Mike Hampton attempted to kill Angus on Cerro Torre?’

  ‘Not on the mountain. I told you, once you’re climbing, it’s a different mindset.’

  ‘Hampton thought Angus was having an affair with Kate before they went to Patagonia. Was it you?’

  ‘It could have been, but then I wouldn’t know if she had anyone else. Angus wasn’t much of a lover, so I’ve been told, but Kate liked him.’

  ‘Who told you about Simmons’s lovemaking?’

  ‘Kate. I’ve not thought about it before, but she was double-dipping, Angus and me, even Mike.’

  ‘Does that upset you?’

  ‘Should it?’

  ‘Rachel?’

  ‘She’s a whirlwind, that one, serious about climbing, lost a husband in the Alps, there when he fell, heard him scream.’

  ‘Her reaction?’

  ‘On the mountain, professional. Down on the ground, inconsolable, took her a year before she climbed again. She’ll not get emotionally involved, too hard on the soul, seeing someone you love die.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Not me. Life’s a ball, enjoy it, don’t get stuck with a nine-to-five existence,’ Skinner said.

  Likeable as Justin Skinner was, neither Isaac and Larry wanted his life. Isaac had Jenny and their son; Larry had his wife, and even though her social-climbing could be irritating, he still loved her.

  Chapter 11

  Charles Simmons met with his former wife, a woman
he had once loved intensely, the mother of his only child. The meeting was tense: unspoken sorrow, unresolved issues, forgotten love.

  ‘You’re looking well, Charles,’ Gwyneth Simmons said. She had dressed for the occasion, remembering that the man she had once loved was a stickler for appearance, always dressing for dinner, no sitting around a kitchen table of a night, a bottle of wine on the table, a couple of plastic cups, a pizza from a shop around the corner.

  Gwyneth had grown up in the Highlands, a subsistence farmer for a father, a mother who taught at a local school. She had loved them, yet abhorred their indifferent attitude to the world outside of the valley where they lived.

  It was her father who was the more intractable, a legacy of his father returning home from the trenches, from the Battle of the Somme, missing not only his lust for life but also one arm and the use of one eye, blinded by a mortar.

  The grandfather, bitter about life, had married his childhood sweetheart, a rosy-faced highland lass, seventeen years of age, who had borne him two children, one of whom was Gwyneth’s father, the other child dying in a German prisoner of war camp in 1943.

  The McLoughlins, Gwyneth’s maiden name, were a hardy bunch but mostly unsuccessful. Her father barely made a profit from his farm, relying in no small part on the meagre stipend of his wife, Gwyneth’s mother. And then, her mother was dead, before her time, a reason never disclosed, not to the child, thirteen years of age at the time.

  What happened to her father, Gwyneth never knew, for after the age of fourteen, fostered to a second cousin of her mother’s, she never saw him again.

  As for Charles, life had treated him better. Incurious as a child, spoilt as he had been, then a good education, an apprenticeship with his father, soon rising through the company.

  At the age of twenty-six, he had struck out on his own, purchased a half share in an agency mainly selling land and farms, some in Scotland, which is where he had met Gwyneth, two years younger than him, working on reception at the hotel where he was staying.

  They were married within two months, living back in London one week later, and unbeknown to either, a child on the way.

  At first, Gwyneth, the dutiful wife, eager to please, took care to dress well, went to the hairdresser’s, bought only the best clothes, ensured that her husband’s meal was on the table when he came in. But over time and with a child, the effort required to look after one outweighed the other. And then, Charles Simmons, a demanding man, strayed, returning one night reeking of perfume, his collar marked with lipstick.