DCI Isaac Cook Box Set 2

by Phillip Strang

  In Canning Town, a depressed mood pervaded, so sharp it could almost be sliced with a knife. Outside the station: graffiti everywhere, a lone man walking down the street, two women pushing prams, covered from head to toe in black.

  England to him was fish and chips, a pint of beer, each to their own, mind your own business.

  Yes, Larry thought, Canning Town was somewhere he could make a difference, not in Notting Hill or Bayswater or Holland Park, and even the gangs up there were becoming gentrified with their illicitly-gained affluence, now put into honest pursuits.

  ‘Inspector Ross,’ Isaac said.

  ‘He’ll be out in a minute,’ the sergeant said.

  Canning Town Police Station was equipped for twice the number of police officers, but few wanted to be there, and coercion was oft used; postings for the most miserable and disreputable, those who did no credit to the Met.

  Bill Ross burst through the door behind the duty sergeant. ‘A result,’ he said, ‘and you must be Larry Hill,’ warmly grabbing Larry’s hand and shaking it. ‘A low-life, out back in the interview room. You’ll want to see him, no doubt.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Isaac said. ‘A confession?’

  ‘Sometimes it’s as easy as picking fruit off a tree,’ Ross said. ‘We pulled him in last night for public drunkenness, not sure why we do, as they claim a deprived childhood, discrimination, no money, and so on.’

  ‘Then why?’ Larry asked.

  ‘We need to maintain our quota. The superintendent, he’s a stickler for performance, after us every other day.’

  ‘We’ve got one of our own,’ Larry said.

  Enough of the banter, Isaac thought. Time to see what Bill Ross had.

  In the interview room, a youth of nineteen, in a hooded jacket with the hood pushed back.

  ‘Your name?’ Ross said. Isaac sat to one side of him; Larry was outside.

  ‘You know it. I told you before,’ the youth said. He was of Caribbean descent, probably Jamaican, born in England.

  Legal aid had been provided. Across from Isaac, an Asian woman dressed in neat and tidy blue jacket and trousers. She looked competent.

  ‘It’s important that you answer,’ the woman said.

  ‘My friends call me Wazza.’

  ‘It’s a game they play,’ Ross said, looking over at Isaac. ‘Thinks it makes them look big, coming in here and wasting our time. A badge of honour, us asking them questions, the magistrate letting them off. Street cred, the only qualifications they are likely to ever have.’

  Isaac could sympathise with Bill Ross, and it was true, the young man was part of a legion of unemployed, straight out of school, no chance of a job, onto the street and surviving the only way they knew. It was a failing of the government, he knew, the government that had condemned his parents to purgatory and slum landlords when they had arrived in the country before he had been born. Back then, there had been racial prejudice, and although he rarely experienced it, he knew that in Canning Town he still would.

  Nothing changes. The underdog would always be there, as would crime and prejudice. The young man with the contemptuous attitude was the result of a system that had let him down, a democratic belief in equality, a fair go for all, that had gone wrong.

  ‘Warren Preston,’ the youth said.

  ‘Mr Preston, thank you. You were in the cell cooling off after a night of drinking. Not like your people to drink, more often it’s ganja or ecstasy.’

  ‘It was my birthday. The boys took me to the pub.’

  ‘The boys range from fifteen up to twenty-three,’ Ross said, looking over at Isaac once again.

  ‘Not older?’

  ‘A few will end up in prison; some will die at the hands of another gang, or kill themselves with drugs. One even froze to death last winter when we had that cold snap.’

  ‘Is this relevant?’ the legal aid said.

  ‘I’m just setting the scene for DCI Cook. He’s not from around here; He operates out of Challis Street, up near Notting Hill, more your part of the world.’

  ‘Where I live is not relevant, my client is.’ A sharp rebuttal. The woman was all business, Isaac could see. No doubt efficient, almost certainly believed that Preston was of little worth, but she’d do her job.

  ‘All of you, ganging up on me. What chance do I have?’ Preston grabbed hold of his corner of the metal table, attempted to lift it in an act of defiance.

  ‘It’s bolted to the floor,’ Ross said. ‘You’re wasting your time. Now, why don’t you just sit there and tell your lawyer what you said to me last night? After you’ve done that we can take your statement, have you up before the magistrate and then find you a cosy cell in prison until your trial comes up.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘If this is badgering my client, I can’t allow it,’ the legal aid said.

  Bill Ross took no notice. It wasn’t Challis Street, and he was pushing hard, probably too hard, running the risk of a confession given under duress by a man who, if not illiterate, was clearly unable to understand the seriousness of the position he was in. Isaac had used the technique before, but he had had some evidence behind him; he hoped Ross did.

  ‘When you were hauled into the station, and I asked you about a man being knifed down near the Durham Arms, you told me that you knew about it.’

  ‘So what, everyone knows what goes on, and why worry? One of us dies, and you don’t care. And you, the black man, are you on his side?’ Preston said, looking over at Isaac.

  ‘I’m on the side of law and justice. The only problem in this room is you. I was with the dead man not long before he was killed. It could have been me; the question is should it have been, was it me they wanted?’

  ‘If I talk, what are you going to do?’

  ‘Are you willing to drop charges against my client if he cooperates?’ the lawyer said.

  ‘He’s here for public drunkenness. I’m willing to consider it.’

  ‘That’s a yes,’ the lawyer said, looking at her client.

  ‘Okay. It was the night he died. There was six of us. A man approached us.’

  ‘Describe him?’ Isaac said.

  ‘White, dressed like you.’

  ‘Well-spoken, educated? He should have been frightened. Why wasn’t he?’

  ‘He handed each of us a couple of fifty-pound notes, said there was more if we cooperated.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Not me, but some of the others did.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘I’ll not grass, not on the gang.’

  ‘Loyalty or fear?’

  ‘I don’t want to end up the same as that man, a knife in my gut, my balls stuffed in my mouth.’

  ‘He was knifed, not castrated.’

  ‘He wasn’t a member of our gang.’

  ‘Tell the police what they want, and we can get out of here,’ the lawyer said. ‘It’s getting late, and I have other clients to deal with.’

  ‘Canning Town?’ Isaac said.

  ‘Everyone has the right to justice, to legal representation, or don’t you believe in that?’

  Isaac did, so did the lawyer, but she had no intention of remaining in the area any longer than necessary. She’d do what was required, but no more.

  ‘He said five hundred pounds to anyone who did what he wanted, no questions asked.’

  ‘Who agreed?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  He was putty in Bill Ross’s hands. Warren Preston could have kept quiet, fronted the magistrate, received a fine, probably not paid it, but he wasn’t smart enough to realise that. His legal aid lawyer wasn’t about to interrupt him either. He was small fry, not worth more than a modest stipend to her. She would have more prestigious clients, those that would make it worth her time.

  ‘What did he want?’ Isaac asked.

  ‘He said for us to check you out in the pub.’

  ‘Which you did?’

  ‘I didn’t; they did. I wasn’t involved.’

 
; ‘Did you see anyone?’ Ross asked Isaac.

  ‘I wasn’t looking, but someone could have looked in the window.’

  ‘We had a patrol car there.’

  ‘It was before that,’ Preston said.

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘Not to me. Not that I cared, I wasn’t going to kill anyone.’

  ‘Because you couldn’t?’

  ‘Preston’s killed, another gang’s member, not that we’ll ever prove it,’ Ross said to Isaac.

  ‘Is that it?’ Isaac said. ‘Mr Preston, you’ve killed?’

  ‘My client will not answer that question. Now, if you don’t mind, I suggest we wrap this up, let my client leave.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ Ross said.

  ‘He said he wanted the old man killed; to make it look as though it was a robbery,’ Preston said. ‘We weren’t asking questions, not with that amount.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just take it from him?’

  ‘There was a car nearby, a man inside. He had a gun, one of those that fires lots of bullets, real expensive.’

  ‘Pointed at you?’

  ‘At all of us.’

  ‘The car, describe it?’

  ‘A BMW, dark blue.’

  ‘Registration number?’

  ‘I wasn’t looking, nobody was.’

  Larry, listening from the other room, took out his phone and called the police in Godstone.

  ‘Describe the man with the money, the other one in the car.’

  ‘It was dark; we only saw the gun. The other man, he wore a hat, the collar on his coat turned up.’

  Ross turned to Isaac. ‘You’ve got twenty-four hours, forty-eight at a push. We’ll be holding Mr Preston here until then.’

  ‘The charge?’ the lawyer asked. Her coat was across her lap, her handbag on the table, the case file closed. She was going, regardless.

  ‘Mr Preston will be held on suspicion of murder. You may wish to believe him, but I don’t, nor does DCI Cook. It’s not the first time that Mr Preston and I have crossed swords. It might be the last.’

  ***

  It wasn’t possible to provide security to the level required to ensure the safety of the Robinsons and the Winstons, not that Tim Winston hadn’t been insistent, furious as he had been about Rose being at the Robinsons’ house again.

  The front room of the Winstons’ house. On one side of the room, Tim and Maeve Winston, on the other, sitting on a hard chair, Wendy. Rose maintained a neutral position, a book resting in her lap, pretending not to be involved, but she was.

  Jim Robinson was going to identify his father the next day, and Brad would be taking the morning off school to accompany him.

  Tim Winston was not interested in the Robinsons, only his family, a natural reaction, and so far Wendy hadn’t told him about the detention of an individual in Canning Town.

  No longer regarded as a robbery or a random killing, Hector Robinson’s death had all the hallmarks of an assassination.

  Nobody at Challis Street could make any sense of it. It was illogical why a criminal organisation would remain secret, yet focus attention on themselves through a concerted attempt to eliminate anybody who was somehow associated with the murder in the cemetery.

  Rose and Brad had only seen the body, had a brief glance at the murderer, and Hector Robinson had not been involved at all, nor had Janice Robinson. It was a modus operandi that Homicide couldn’t make sense of.

  ‘Who next?’ Tim Winston said. Wendy was on her own, Larry and Isaac on their way back from Canning Town, and besides, she didn’t need assistance to talk to the family, only had something to tell them.

  ‘We have no reason to believe that you or your family is under threat,’ Wendy said. It was the official line for her to take, but she didn’t believe it.

  Winston sat close to his wife, holding hands; Maeve listening to all that was said but saying little. It was clear she did not know yet of her philandering husband and the weekly meetings that he had enjoyed with Janice Robinson.

  It was bound to come out eventually, and Wendy was curious to see the reaction, to see if Maeve Winston was as placid as she seemed, as forgiving and loving of her husband as Gladys Robinson had suggested.

  ‘Brad’s father? Random or something else?’ Winston asked.

  ‘It’s under investigation. A local youth, a member of a gang, has been detained.’

  ‘That’s not the question.’

  ‘It’s all I can tell you at this time.’ All that Wendy was willing to say. If it was an assassination, elimination of those close to the murder in the cemetery, then doubling the police presence at both houses, ensuring that patrol cars circled the area every hour on the hour, wasn’t going to achieve much.

  Wendy wanted to believe that Rose was safe, that they wouldn’t harm her, but she knew that was wishful thinking.

  Was it, as she had read about overseas, a breakdown in government and policing, anarchy rearing its head, as in Northern Mexico, parts of South America, America during prohibition; criminal organisations taking over the role of government, installing their own people.

  It was a frightening thought. Society was becoming fragmented, with ghettos springing up throughout London and the other major cities. Violence was on the rise, the court system was under strain. Was Warren Preston to go free?

  The young man with no hope of a future, perpetually unemployed, not even looking for a job, just his dole payment and what he could steal or scrounge or trade: what of him and the thousands like him? Even in the area of Challis Street Police Station, there were other ‘Warren Prestons’, disenfranchised, looking for something, not knowing what, causing trouble.

  ‘Do we keep Rose at home?’

  ‘I suggest you continue as before,’ Wendy said. She had no more to say; nothing that would help. The police were as powerless as the Winstons; it was in the hands of Homicide. It wasn’t a comforting thought.

  Chapter 13

  It was, as Chief Superintendent Goddard said, a complete stuff up. The man was livid, and his DCI, Isaac Cook, was on the receiving end of the man’s blunt assessment.

  ‘Not only do you have an armed response team out to a house in Holland Park, I’ve had Commissioner Davies on the phone, asking me to front in the morning with a written report and an explanation about what’s going on and what I’m going to do about it.’

  It was the angriest that Isaac had seen his senior. As the SIO in Homicide, he had to take the blame. The investigation had been conducted correctly by the team, and they had put in the hours, filed the reports, but had always been one step behind.

  ‘I stand by my team,’ Isaac said. He could see a long night ahead of him. It was Jenny’s birthday. She would be disappointed that the planned celebration would have to be curtailed. He felt bad about it, but there was no way he could substitute, not tonight.

  Even if Larry had been up to it, which he wasn’t, not when the commissioner was involved, he was in Godstone, meeting with the local police, trying to understand how a BMW that had sat in a garage for weeks had mysteriously disappeared.

  ‘We had no reason to impound it,’ the sergeant had said. ‘No reason at all. As far as the estate agent was concerned, the payments on the house were up to date, the outside had been maintained. If the people, God knows why, wanted to leave it empty, that’s their business, not ours. No law broken, no action from us.’

  ‘You were keeping a watch. Didn’t you see it was missing?’

  ‘We kept a watch on the house. The agreement was, if I remember correctly, to phone you if we saw someone, to talk to them, find out a phone number.’

  They were right, Larry reluctantly agreed. The address belonged to a woman who had purchased sandals at the shop. It didn’t mean that she was dead, or that Ian Naughton was the man in the village and in Holland Park.

  Larry spoke to the waitress in the coffee shop that he had frequented on past visits to the village, ordered a latte and a croissant.

  ‘It’s official,’ he s
aid. ‘If you’ve got a minute.’

  ‘There was someone there two days ago,’ she said after she had given him his order.’

  ‘Are you able to give me a description, and why didn’t you phone me?’

  ‘Forgot, I suppose. Or we could have been busy.’

  Or didn’t want to get involved, more likely, Larry thought. He’d keep his opinion to himself on the waitress, a pleasant woman, carrying more weight on her hips than she should and a bright red lipstick that didn’t suit her. Apart from that she was Godstone born and bred, had never travelled, and regarded London as somewhere for Christmas shopping and the New Year sales.

  ‘Was it the man and the woman that you saw?’

  ‘I can’t say I got a good look. It was a woman, Asian, I think.’

  ‘Think or know?’

  ‘Short, slim, straight jet-black hair. I wasn’t close, and she never came in here. All I saw was the garage door open, the car reversing out, and then she closed the garage and drove off. Not there for more than a few minutes.’

  ‘Asian? Certain?’

  ‘I believe so. Does it help?’

  ‘It does.’

  ***

  Isaac, Larry, Wendy, and Bridget worked late into the night, going through the case so far. They had to provide a concise report for Chief Superintendent Goddard.

  ‘Save his bacon,’ Larry had jested, the one attempt at humour that night.

  Isaac, who had more experience of Commissioner Davies than the others in the department, knew that their boss was going to have an uphill battle with the commissioner. The man was a no-holds-barred police officer who had earned his stripes in Wales, played the politics well, ingratiating wherever, adopting a Machiavellian approach to those who threatened him.

  Goddard was an adroit political animal, but he still played fair most of the time; Davies had no time for such subtleties. The man would use the current case to unseat Goddard, to bring in the unpleasant and obsequious Seth Caddick.

  Re-examination of the case had confirmed that the house in Holland Park was significant and that Ian Naughton was not an innocent bystander, and, as Larry had determined in Godstone, the description of the petite Asian woman pointed to Analyn, the woman who had opened the door in Holland Park.