Jerome Jaden confirmed that Tricia Warburton would never get the programme she had signed a contract for. And he had inferred that Otto McAlister was a possible replacement host and that he had covered his losses and didn’t care either way.
‘I still don’t understand,’ McAlister said. A legal aid sat to one side, not saying much, unlikely to get a chance. Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook of the Challis Street Police Station, Homicide, was on a roll. He wasn’t about to be stopped by anyone.
‘Then let me spell it out in simple terms that you’ll understand,’ Isaac said. ‘Otto McAlister, you murdered Tricia Warburton, not through neglect, but because you saw Mike Hampton standing near you. How did you expect to get away with it?’
‘I saw him there. I assumed he wanted to talk to me, to have it out with me, and pressure me not to tell Ashley Otway any more. And hasn’t he confessed to both murders?’
‘He has, but Mike Hampton’s no fool. He had suspected his sister, not because he wanted to, but because he had told Deb that he wanted Simmons dead, to pay him back for what he had done to him. Deb Hampton had a rough life as a child and then as an adult, and she has admitted that madness ran in the family. She killed Simmons for her brother, for herself.
‘Mike Hampton confessed to two murders, not because he had committed either, but his confession of Tricia Warburton’s death would not be easy to disprove. After all, he had been there, and if he had confessed to one murder, then the other one wouldn’t be doubted, not if his condition continued to improve. He saw a solution on how to protect his sister, not that she had ever admitted it to him, but the bond between Mike and Deb is deep, deeper than any of us would understand. And you, Otto McAlister, would have got away with murder.’
‘If he thought all that up, he’s as mad as his sister,’ McAlister said.
‘He might be, but that’s not why we’re here. When did you decide to kill Tricia Warburton?’
‘I didn’t. Why should I?’
‘Here’s what I reckon,’ Isaac said. ‘You’re up there. You’ve checked the cord, taken a jump. It’s safe for Tricia Warburton, and you know that if she’s successful, your chance of a job with Jaden is slim. You’re enamoured of fame, of being recognised as someone important, a better class of women. After all, you had Ashley Otway, and you want more women like her, not the usual easy lays, but you can’t see a way around it.
‘You’re committed to making sure Tricia’s safe, but there’s Hampton. He’s disguised, but you know the man well, can see that it’s him standing there. You’re on the bridge, a split-second decision, knowing that we will recognise Hampton in time and he’ll get the blame.’
‘I deny it.’
‘I’ve not finished. It’s a decision you could make on a mountain, whether to cut the climber’s rope below to save your skin and that of others. Have you ever made such a decision?’
‘No.’
‘Has Mike Hampton or Angus Simmons? Was it Simmons who caused Hampton to fall, or was it the other way around? Or was it an accident?’
‘Who knows?’
‘Precisely. It might have been Simmons for all we know, but that’s unimportant. The bridge, a split-second. You kneel, we’ve got that on camera, the bungee jump crew jostling to get their faces on the television. You can see that Hampton had walked away, probably decided it wasn’t worth it. Is that how it was?’
‘You can’t prove it.’
‘Can’t we? What if I told you there was another camera focussed on that bridge, a keen amateur making home videos?’
‘Okay, it was me. I wasn’t sure if it would break, but I reacted impulsively, saw a way out of the malaise of my life.’
‘So, you destroy a life for selfish reasons.’
‘If you led my life, you’d understand.’
‘I wouldn’t. A full confession?’
‘Prison can’t be much worse.’
‘You had Ashley Otway. That was a benefit,’ Isaac said.
‘A highlight, but what does it matter?’
Isaac could have told the man that prison would be a lot worse. He had killed a beautiful and popular television personality, the type of woman that men in prison lust after. His life would be hell. It was what he deserved.
In the corridor outside, Larry spoke. ‘I don’t remember an amateur photographer.’
‘Nor do I. Go through the footage we have, check McAlister’s house, conduct an extensive search under the bridge, look for a knife. We’ll find it. I’m sure of that.’
Two days later, Maddox Timberley left for the Caribbean. One week after Jerome Jaden resigned as his company’s chief executive officer, Tom Taylor met with Ashley Otway.
The End
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 racing results on the back pages.
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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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The Horse’s Mouth – A DI Tremayne Thriller – Book 9
A day at the races for Detective Inspector Tremayne, idyllic at the outset, soon changes. A horse is dead, the owner’s daughter is found murdered, and Tremayne’s there when the body is discovered.
The question is, was Tremayne set up, in the wrong place at the right time? He’s the cast-iron alibi for one of the suspects, and he knows that one murder can lead to two, and more often than not to three.
The dead woman had a chequered history, though not as much as her father, and then a man commits suicide. Is he the murderer, or was his death the unfortunate consequence of a tragic love affair? And who was in the stable with the woman just before she died? There is more than one person who could have killed her, and all of them have secrets they would rather not be known.
Tremayne’s health is troubling him. Is what they are saying correct, that it is time for him to retire, to take it easy and put his feet up? But that’s not his style, and he’ll not give up on solving the murder.
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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 corpse 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.
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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.
The Hero's Fall (DCI Cook Thriller Series Book 14) Page 25