DCI Isaac Cook Box Set 2

by Phillip Strang

  It allowed Larry to visit his favourite café in Notting Hill and to enjoy a full English breakfast; he reckoned it gave him the energy lift to see him through the day.

  Wendy could see as she sat opposite him that it gave him the makings of a double chin and an imperfect complexion, not that she was complaining as she was enjoying the same food.

  Gwen Pritchard, younger than the two by more than a few years, kept to toast and jam. Larry looked over at her, approved of what he saw. She was aware that adolescent boys and grown detective inspectors were alike in that they all looked. It had been a problem when she had first joined the police force; the stalwarts of the male bastion who took her to be a bit of fluff, a hobbyist until she became pregnant and left.

  However, DI Hill didn’t seem to be that sort of person, nor did DCI Cook. She had done some checking, found out that Larry Hill was a man who could mix it with the less desirable, and that Wendy Gladstone was the best there was, diligent, never giving up, able to find people who didn’t want to be found.

  As for her, Gwen knew that the police force was where she wanted to be, not as a constable in uniform, but as a chief inspector, a superintendent in time. She intended to fast track the process, and if the occasional chauvinist got in her way, she’d deal with them through charm, professionalism, and sheer hard work, and if they still persisted she’d complain about discrimination and sexist behaviour. Behind the agreeable exterior beat a determined and indefatigable heart.

  Notting Hill was a good starting point for their renewed search, even though Kensal Green was the focus. After all, Holland Park was near to Notting Hill, and that was the first place where Analyn had been seen.

  Larry laid out the plan after he finished his breakfast. ‘Gwen, stay around the house where Naughton and Analyn were, ask questions on the street, show the photo. Wendy, ask in the pubs, the shops. As for me, I’ve got a few people to meet with, some not polite company.’

  ‘Criminals?’ Gwen asked.

  ‘Businessmen, they’d tell you if asked, but yes, the usual riff-raff.’

  Gwen would prefer to meet with Larry’s people, real policing, rather than showing a photo.

  Outside the café, even though it was early, the locals were heading to Notting Hill Gate Station, the tourists starting to flow in, looking in each and every window, others going to Westbourne Park Road to get a selfie outside the blue door made famous in the movie Notting Hill, some even having the temerity to knock on the door, hopeful of an invite in, not realising that behind it wasn’t a rundown house, but an upmarket residence.

  Larry was the first to leave. His car was parked around the corner, not far from his first meeting. Gus Vincent, a local man of limited means and a schoolteacher’s pension, had been born and bred in the area. He was in his late sixties, with a grey goatee beard, a bald head, and wiry thin. Naturally slim he would say, but Larry knew about the man’s incessant drug-taking. Not heroin – not for me, not the hard stuff, he would say – but anything else he was game for: ganja, speed, ecstasy, cocaine if he could get it, and his hand-rolled cigarettes contained more than tobacco.

  He was a walking advert for keeping away from drugs; a man who would be dead before his time, although Larry liked him. Charismatic, well-spoken, educated and articulate, Vincent lived in a depressing block of council flats, not far from Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, where seventy-two people had died in a fire caused by a malfunctioning fridge-freezer on the fourth floor. Vincent’s building was of the same era and similar construction.

  There was no question that what had happened at Grenfell could happen elsewhere, and council regulations had been tightening up, not only on council-owned properties but on the owner-occupied and those with absentee landlords.

  A teacher in his younger years, Gus Vincent had taught the young Isaac Cook and more than a fair share of the criminals in the area.

  Larry knocked on the man’s door. Inside, Gus Vincent shook his hand warmly; Larry dashing to open a window as soon as his hand was released.

  ‘Sorry, Gus, I don’t want to leave here high as a kite.’

  ‘Look at me, not a day sick in ten years.’

  ‘Impossible for any germ or infection to survive,’ Larry said.

  Vincent went into the kitchenette – too small to call it anything else. He pushed a cat that was sitting on a cushion on the kitchen top to one side, squeezed the kettle between the tap and the unwashed dishes in the sink. ‘You’ll have a cup of tea,’ he said.

  ‘If it’s only tea.’

  ‘English Breakfast, none better.’

  Outside the window, the burnt-out tower loomed.

  ‘Some of them want to go back,’ Vincent said.

  ‘How about you? Willing to stay here?’

  ‘My needs are few. If not here, then I’ll sleep on the street.’ Which would not happen, Larry knew.

  The most successful of the gang leaders, Spanish John, on account of his having been born in Spanish Town, the former capital of Jamaica, owed his success to Gus Vincent, the man who had recognised his intelligence and had given him extra tuition.

  Not that it led Spanish John to get a job in an office, to become an accountant or a solicitor. However, it had helped him to use his intellect to wrest control of his gang and the lucrative ecstasy market.

  Gus Vincent had a benefactor, disreputable, but still a man who would not let his teacher be without a roof over his head, some food in his belly, a ready supply of narcotics.

  ‘I’ve got a photo,’ Larry said, handing it over to Vincent. ‘If you could take a look, tell me what you reckon.’

  Vincent held it in his hand, moved over to the window where there was more light. ‘Asian,’ he said.

  ‘I need to find her.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’

  ‘Eyes and ears. She’s important.’

  ‘Not so many Asians around here, although you’ll find Thai women in the massage parlours, a happy ending if you pay extra, and there are others in rooms with fairy lights and soft music. But this woman,’ Vincent said as he waved the photo at Larry, ‘she’s not Chinese, not Vietnamese, and definitely not Thai.’

  ‘We’re certain she’s from the Philippines.’

  ‘An illegal?’

  ‘We don’t know, probably not. I met her once, but now she’s an important witness in a homicide.’

  ‘There’s not much I can do, and why around here?’

  ‘She was at a house in Holland Park. That’s where we met her, and before that, she had been at a murder site in Kensal Green Cemetery. Whoever, whatever, she’s involved, voluntarily or otherwise, we don’t know.

  ‘You used to be friendly with Rasta Joe; he could have helped you,’ Vincent said.

  ‘A former pupil of yours, but he’s dead.’

  ‘A few are. Isaac Cook turned out alright.’

  ‘He did, but I need to get traction, I need to meet Spanish John.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now, or in the next couple of hours. He won’t talk to me, not after the last time.’

  ‘Arresting his brother for stealing cars, two years in prison.’

  ‘Spanish John’s brother was lucky. Not that bright, driving around the area, showing off.’

  ‘Still, it was his brother.’

  ‘He’ll not like women being murdered either, and that’s what we’ve got, two so far.’

  Vincent picked up his phone, made the appointment. ‘I better go with you,’ he said.

  ***

  It wasn’t unexpected, certainly not to Detective Inspector Bill Ross; he had seen it before.

  An early-morning jogger, down by the River Lea in Newham, no more than half a mile from the Durham Arms, had found the body.

  ‘Every morning, rain or shine,’ Barry Bosley said. Looking at the whippet-thin man, expensive trainers, a tee shirt with a running man logo, Ross thought that he would definitely run the London Marathon every year, placing with the lead amateurs.

  Rain or s
hine was appropriate, as, by the time he had arrived at the site, the heavens had opened up. Bill Ross was perishing cold, but steam appeared to be coming off Bosley as he jogged on the spot.

  ‘Can’t afford to cool down,’ he said. ‘I came down from my flat in Maltings Close, crossed the river on Twelvetrees Crescent and then took the path down by the river. Never seen anything like this before.’

  ‘Firstly, Mr Bosley,’ Ross said, ‘you can forget about completing your run today. We need a full report from you, times, what you saw, who you saw.’

  ‘The time is when I phoned you up, and as to what and who, nothing, unless you include a few ducks.’

  Ross looked at the body. It was on the river bank, and judging by its condition, it hadn’t been in the water, although there were concrete blocks tied to each leg.

  ‘I’d say you interrupted what they were doing. It was dark when you got here?’

  ‘It makes no difference to me. I know the way.’

  The amount of blood could only have been caused by knife wounds. Even though he was face down, there was to Ross no mistaking the clothes the man was wearing, nor the phone in his pocket; he had rung the number on arrival.

  ‘Do you know him?’ Bosley asked. Resigned to his fate, he had stopped jogging and started to feel the cold air, exacerbated by the proximity of the even colder water.

  ‘He was a suspect in a homicide. And why jog down here? This is a dangerous part of the world. You never know who you’re going to meet.’

  ‘Not in winter. The troublemakers are fair weather, keep gentlemen’s hours.’

  ‘I’d agree. Definitely not the hours that determined runners and police officers keep. In summer?’

  ‘I drive out to Victoria Park, run around there. It’s not as good, but safety first.’

  Ross phoned Larry who phoned the team. ‘Preston’s been killed,’ he said.

  ‘Any reason for us to get involved?’ Larry asked.

  ‘Not yet. I was expecting it. They wouldn’t have trusted him after two days in the station, no matter how much he denied. It’s one thing to thumb your nose up at the police, to spend a night in the cells, but Preston got out without a charge.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘He was guilty of murdering Hector Robinson, the same as they all were. In their ignorance, they would have been certain that he had struck a deal, a plea bargain, and that he’d turn Queen’s evidence for a reduced sentence.’

  ‘Rough justice.’

  ‘Don’t look to me for sympathy. I’ve got to deal with the paperwork, try and find out who killed him,’ Ross said.

  ‘Who? You must know that,’ Larry said.

  ‘It’s the proving that’s the hard part. His so-called former friends will keep a low profile for the next week. I’ll try and find Waylon Conroy, but if I do, he’ll have an alibi, and he’ll come the sob act, deprived childhood, absent father, the usual.’

  ‘Evidence at the site?’

  ‘I’ll know later today, but I don’t expect much. He was meant to go in the water, which means our jogger friend missed them by minutes. There’s an APB out for them already.’

  Chapter 16

  The death of Warren Preston didn’t faze anyone at Challis Street and few more in Canning Town. One more low-life wasn’t going to be missed, although Bill Ross had to deal with a grieving mother in the station – telling him what a good child he had been, never forgetting her birthday, always looking out for her, especially after his father had done a runner.

  Always the same after the event, Ross thought. Where had been the parental guidance, the discipline needed, the push for their child to attend school, to better himself? But he knew that was harsh. These were marginalised people, largely ignored by government services, dismissed by the police as a criminal element, condemned by poverty. Ross knew that you didn’t need to go far to find the third world; it was close to his police station, and the violence and the poverty were not getting better. It was a losing battle.

  Warren Preston had soon been processed, the victim of a gang conflict; a gang that was maintaining a low profile. Crime was marginally down on account of the gangs keeping their heads down, and any that poked them up soon enough found themselves at the police station and in the interview room.

  Not that it gave the police any concern, although social services would soon be around, as would legal aid, including the female lawyer that had represented Preston before. All of the do-gooders, heads up high, vocal in their condemnation of the police and their heavy-handed tactics in dealing with the deprived and the disadvantaged.

  Bill Ross wanted to say to them come out with me of a night, see the truth of it, where they live, but he didn’t.

  As if somehow it was him and the police that were to blame, not the society that left them isolated, the government that had seen the short-term gain in cheap labour from overseas, the unwillingness to resolve the mess they had created.

  But it was, he knew, the human condition. The cream rises to the top, the milk settles just below, and those who don’t make the grade are condemned to purgatory. That had been Warren Preston, from a council flat in a fifties red-brick monstrosity where the lifts smelt of urine, and in the area outside a few swings for the children, most of them broken, and graffiti on the building and inside the lifts and the common areas. A war zone that the police only visited in groups of four, with another two outside in a locked car, ready to call for backup if needed.

  Waylon Conroy, the leader of Preston’s hoodies, lived in a similar monolith honouring depravity. Bill Ross had made the climb up eight floors – the lifts were not working, no one willing to repair them, knowing that soon enough they would fail again.

  Bill Ross had banged on Conroy’s door, the bell no longer working. After a couple of minutes, it opened, a child of ten standing there. A pretty little girl, Ross acknowledged.

  ‘Waylon?’ Ross said.

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘Your mother? father?’

  ‘Not here.’

  A child conditioned to lie, Ross knew. He entered the flat, the child following him. Inside was as expected: clean, basic and unloved. He placed the child on a chair and called over to one of his constables. ‘See if there’s any food in the house, otherwise go out and get her something to eat,’ he said as he handed over a twenty-pound note. ‘McDonalds if there’s nothing else.’

  ‘How long since you ate?’ Ross said to the child.

  ‘Not today.’

  ‘How long have you been here on your own?’

  ‘I’m not. Mummy’s in the other room, on the bed.’

  Ross gestured to a uniformed sergeant to check around. He soon found the woman unconscious underneath a bear of a man. Two other uniforms went into the room and wrested the black man off the grossly-overweight woman, the mother of the small child and of Waylon Conroy.

  The naked man lay flat on his back on the bed, a female constable administering assistance to the woman. ‘She’s not dead. Paralytic drunk, that’s all.’

  The young child entered the room. ‘He’s not my father,’ she said. ‘That’s Ernie.’

  ‘He lives here?’ Ross said as he shepherded the child out.

  ‘He’s mummy’s boyfriend. I don’t like him. He hits Mummy.’

  Generational, parent to child, Ross could have told social services. Waylon Conroy, beaten as a child by a succession of his mother’s men; the sister of Waylon, neglected at the age of ten, inured to domestic violence, almost certain to be abused by a drunken friend of the mother once she reached puberty, the cycle repeating itself ad infinitum.

  Preston and Conroy, along with the young girl and the vast majority of young criminals in the area, were not the cause, they were the symptom.

  The mother, semi-conscious, sat in a chair in the living room; her gentleman friend remained in the bedroom, his hands cuffed behind his back. A couple of uniforms had managed to put a pair of trousers on him. He was bare-chested and bare-footed; he would remain th
at way when he was taken to the station for further questioning. The man was known to police, and Bill Ross intended to throw the book at him, first questioning him about the little girl. She would be checked out by a doctor for malnutrition, neglect and abuse, and subject to his findings, social services would take the child into care, or return her to the mother, who would be carefully supervised; not that it would do a lot of good in the long run.

  A uniform handed Waylon Conroy’s mother a hot drink, which the woman clasped with both hands as she lifted the cup up to her mouth.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘My head, it hurts.’

  She wasn’t an attractive sight, even after she had put on some clothes, an ill-fitting top too tight for her ample bust, a skirt too short for her age. Once, Ross could see, she’d had a pretty face, reflected in the young daughter, but time and multiple lovers had rendered the woman haggard. Black, as were her children, although the daughter was a couple of shades lighter than the mother.

  The young girl sat in another bedroom munching a hamburger, grabbing the french fries with her small hands.

  ‘Waylon?’ Ross said. ‘We need to find him.’

  ‘He comes and goes.’

  ‘Your daughter?’

  ‘Gladiola, what about her?’

  ‘Neglected.’

  ‘I do my best, but it’s not easy. I can’t find work, and Waylon doesn’t help, other than to come here and shout at me.’

  ‘Hit you?’

  ‘Not Waylon, not that.’

  ‘The man in the other room?’

  ‘Sometimes, when he’s angry, but I love him.’

  Ross felt like vomiting. He had heard it before, but he never got used to it. Next, it would be how the government had let her down, never given her a chance; and as for Waylon and Gladiola, her treatment of them similar to what she had experienced as a child.

  ‘Did you know Warren Preston, they called him Wazza?’

  ‘I don’t know. If he came here, I wouldn’t have been introduced.’

  ‘He’s been killed. We need to ask your son some questions.’

  ‘I could do with another drink, something to eat.’