Two weeks had passed since Christy Nichols had been charged with the murder of Charles Sutherland. Sally Jenkins’ death had been put on the back burner.
Richard Williams’ death still occupied Farhan and Isaac’s time, but only minimally. Apart from the occasional discussion, there had been no further developments.
Linda Harris’s phone call, the only time she had contacted. Isaac was certain that he would not hear from her again.
Marjorie Frobisher, no longer in hiding, apparently no longer in fear of her life, was out and about, on the talk shows, in the magazines. Isaac found her a tiring woman, and he kept his conversations with her to a minimum. It was clear that the knowledge she had was not going to be revealed.
Farhan had met Aisha on several occasions, slept with her on some. The romance seemed solid, but without the constant pressure of a murder investigation that had dragged on for too long, he had begun to re-evaluate his life.
He loved her but was it a love that he could jeopardise his life and his career for? How much of it was genuine emotion? How much of it was the sexual awakening for him with a liberated woman? He realised that time would lessen the intensity for him and for her. With no further media scrutiny, her secret seemed to be safe.
Isaac had met up with Jess, although most times they planned to meet, she was too busy with her newly elevated position.
***
The accident occurred at exactly ten minutes past four in the afternoon. Widely reported, it marked another event in the turbulent life of Marjorie Frobisher.
As she left the restaurant in Sloane Street, Chelsea, apparently the worse for wear after a few too many drinks, she had inadvertently stepped in front of a taxi.
The verdict, after a short court case – the taxi driver had been charged with manslaughter – was recorded as accidental death. The defendant received a suspended sentence. It occupied the newspapers for a few weeks until the public tired of the accusation that the case was a whitewash.
Angus MacTavish duly reported to his superior. ‘It has been resolved.’
Deputy Prime Minister James Alsworthy was delighted. Invariably referred to as ‘His Lordship’ due to his aristocratic manner, he had renounced his hereditary peerage so he could sit in the House of Commons. He would reclaim it when he tired of politics.
The former Benjamin Marshall, the adopted son of an influential family in the north of England, would never know. As Ibrahim Ali, an Islamic Jihadist convert, and the most vocal, most eloquent promoter of the movement for the introduction of Sharia in England, he had within his grasp the title of Lord Alsworthy, a seat in the House of Lords, and a fortune valued conservatively at fifty million pounds. An impassioned orator, the son of Marjorie Frobisher and James Alsworthy could not be given the prominence that the House of Lords would allow him, nor the opportunity to promote his cause.
The End
Murder House
ALSO BY PHILLIP STRANG
MURDER IN LITTLE VENICE
MURDER IS ONLY A NUMBER
MURDER WITHOUT REASON
MURDER IS A TRICKY BUSINESS
MALIKA’S REVENGE
THE HABERMAN VIRUS
HOSTAGE OF ISLAM
PRELUDE TO WAR
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
.
Chapter 1
Number 54 Bellevue Street was a good address. At least, it was to Trevor and Sue Baxter. They had come down to London after a transfer from Trevor’s company up north in Manchester. Trevor specialised in corporate taxation; his wife Sue, a qualified teacher, saw no problems in her finding another position in London.
They both knew it would not have been possible to purchase such a house in Manchester, but in London there was the salary and the company offer of a low-interest loan for five years while Trevor Baxter established himself. The house, three storeys, built during the reign of Queen Victoria, excited them enormously, even if it needed renovating. It had ornate ceilings, solid double brick construction, and a basement originally designed for coal which Trevor hoped to convert into a wine cellar. The burning of coal had been banned long ago, due to the pea-souper fogs that belching chimneys had caused in the city back in the fifties.
They saw it as a shame they could not use the open fireplaces in the house. At least they would be open to view once a local handyman had removed the cheap panelling that covered them.
‘Always costly, home renovations,’ Ted Hunter, the local handyman said. ‘Everyone’s the same; thinks it’s easy, and it will come under budget. Mark my words, they never do.’ In his fifties, Ted was as fit as any man could be after thirty-five years with the tools of his trade. He had done it all: bricklaying, painting, fitting new ceilings, patching up old ones.
‘It’s more than we budgeted for,’ Trevor, the now more financially-encumbered mortgagor, said.
‘I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. You can get another quote, but they will hit you afterwards,’ Ted said. He had seen it all before: enthusiastic homeowners embarking on the great challenge, assuming a couple of coats of paint, a little bit of tender love and care would transform a pig’s ear into a silk purse.
Ted knew the costs would escalate once they attempted to deal with what could not be seen: dry rot, rising damp, even the foundations if the house had been built on swampy ground.
The first task in the house was to remove the encumbrance that covered the fireplace in the main room. Ted Hunter knew the house had been rented out in the past, each room converted into a depressing bedsit, with a toilet and a bathroom on the first floor, and money in a meter for hot water.
Sue Baxter had made a special effort to be present for the great unveiling of the centrepiece of the room, the fireplace. Ted had warned her that it would not be pleasant: twenty years of pigeons trapped inside the chimney as well as accumulated dust and decay. She could not be dissuaded and even wore a mask for the occasion. She was compiling a photographic history of the renovation, and she had a camera ready in her hand.
‘Just ease it over to your side,’ Ted said to Kyle Sanders, a thickset twenty-something of limited words and intelligence. A good worker, even if he was likely to get stroppy of a night time down the pub. He was known at the police station for putting a few smart-arses in hospital. Still, to Ted, he was trustworthy, always turned up to work on time: the ideal employee in his estimation.
‘It’s heavy,’ Kyle said.
Jimmy Pickett stood to one side. A sullen man of forty-two, he had neither the love of work nor the strength of Kyle. Ted had only taken him on as a standby, and then only as a favour as he was married to his wife’s sister. Jimmy’s function, according to Sue Baxter, was to stand to one side and offer verbal encouragement liberally peppered with expletives. Not that Sue would have minded, but April, the eldest child, was upstairs after taking a day off from school, and she did not want her exposed to the foul language.
‘It’s coming free,’ Kyle said. He was down on his knees with a lever inserted between the wall and the covering. Ted, standing up on the other side of the f
ireplace, was attempting a similar exercise. Both were blanketed with copious amounts of coal dust mixed with the occasional feather as they progressively freed the structure.
‘Jimmy, secure the top, stop it falling over,’ Ted shouted.
‘I’ve got it,’ Jimmy said. He had reluctantly been pressed into service and was coughing. Sue Baxter was unimpressed. She had spent too many years as a teacher not to know a faker when she saw one.
‘It’s an open fireplace,’ Ted said. ‘Looks to be in good condition.’
Excited, Sue pressed forward, camera in hand. Ted warned her to stand back. She could not be dissuaded.
‘What’s that at the bottom?’ Sue asked.
‘No idea,’ Ted said. ‘Wait till we get it free.’
Jimmy had relocated some distance away due to the coal dust exacerbating his asthma. Two minutes later, the old wooden structure was placed to one side, resting on the far wall.
April had come down to see what was happening, and Sue was taking photos. Ted had seen plenty of old fireplaces in his time, and this one, even though it was bigger than most, would need to be removed and renovated.
Down on his knees again, Kyle prodded at what appeared to be blankets in the bottom of the fireplace. There were some ropes wrapped around it.
Ted warned him to be careful on account of the dust. Jimmy had left the room. April and Sue were hovering close to Kyle.
Ted told them all to stand back. It did not look right to him. He slowly cut one of the ropes. A bone fell out.
‘You’d better call the police,’ he said to Sue.
Chapter 2
As the Senior Investigating Officer of the Murder Investigation Team, Isaac Cook could see that the chance of a few days off looked unlikely. There had been a couple of cases lately which had taxed his people, a well-crafted team of professionals. Everyone, not only Isaac, was looking for time off, or at least the chance to go home to the family at a reasonable hour, instead of close to midnight, as had been the case for weeks. They had just wrapped up the murder of a child, a crime that always depressed everyone in the office. It had proved hard to pinpoint the murderer until the elder brother, only eleven, admitted he was angry after the younger brother took his bike without asking. Isaac Cook knew the Youth Court would struggle with an appropriate sentence, as the child came from a good home with good parents.
The other murder, of a derelict down behind the railway station, was found to have been committed by four hooligans spaced out on crack cocaine.
‘It’s clearly murder,’ Gordon Windsor said over the phone after a cursory inspection of the body wrapped in blankets. He and Isaac had worked together before, and if Windsor said it was murder, then it was. Isaac, as the senior officer in the department, knew it was time to bring the Murder Investigation Team back to full mobilisation, even though, after so many years, the death could be classified as a cold case.
‘Your initial evaluation?’ Isaac asked.
‘The body’s been here for thirty years, I’d say.’
‘Did you say thirty years?’
‘That’s a guess at the present moment. We found some old newspapers under the body.’ Gordon Windsor, the crime scene examiner, had been out to the scene within two hours of the body being discovered. The first person at the scene, a local detective inspector who had responded to a phone call from a distraught woman.
‘What’s the story?’
‘Unusual. The owners are renovating the house. They removed an old wooden structure that had been built around the fireplace. That’s when they found it.’
‘Male or female?’
‘Probably male, judging by the clothes.’
‘Age?’
‘Indeterminate. I’ll hazard mid to late thirties.’
‘Who’s there at the present moment?’
‘There’s a uniform out the front of the house, plus a local detective inspector, Larry Hill. He says he knows you.’
‘We’ve worked together,’ Isaac replied.
‘You’d better get down here before we remove the body.’
‘Give me twenty minutes.’
***
‘We only moved in six weeks ago, it’s not what you expect to find,’ Trevor Baxter, who had rushed home from work, said.
‘Sorry about that, but now it’s a murder investigation,’ Isaac Cook said.
‘Does that mean we’ll have to move out?’
‘For a few days.’
‘I don’t want to stay here,’ Sue Baxter said. ‘I never want to come back here again.’
‘I can understand your sentiment,’ Isaac Cook said. ‘It’s easier to deal with in time.’
‘Are you sure it’s murder?’ Trevor Baxter asked.
‘Wrapped up in a couple of blankets, tied with rope and thrust in a fireplace.’
‘You’re right. What else could it be?’
The husband was correct with his question, the DCI conceded. So far, there had been no cause of death, no weapon, no inspection of the body, other than of a leg bone which had fallen out when the tradesman had investigated the blankets in the fireplace. There were too many indicators to believe it could be anything but murder. Gordon Windsor would be working overtime to follow up on a definitive cause of death. If it was not murder, then the concealment of the body indicated foul play, and failing to report a death was still a crime.
The Baxter family checked into a hotel for the night, while a full investigating team went over the house with a fine-tooth comb. There was a lot of work to do before the house would be available for habitation again. The history of the house needed to be checked: who had lived there, who had owned it, and who may have had a motive for concealing a body. Bodies always give off an odour as the decaying process commences, so someone must have smelt something, or the house was empty, which seemed unlikely.
***
Forty years earlier, Bellevue Street, where the body had been found, had been no more than a seedy part of London, where the influx of immigrants from the Caribbean, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent had been deposited in slum dwellings. Isaac Cook’s parents had lived in a ground floor room in a similar street when they first arrived in the country from Jamaica at that time. By the time Isaac had been born, their situation had improved, and they had secured a loan on a two-bedroom flat not far from Hyde Park. He remembered their conversations on how hard it had been on their arrival, with the aggressive landlords and their escalating rent demands. He was thankful that the protection of the tenant had improved dramatically since then, although he had had a difficult landlord before buying his flat in Willesden.
Isaac Cook had planned an early night, but that was clearly off the agenda now. He was hopeful that Jess would be sympathetic. They had met on a previous case, and she had moved in with him. He had been confident that the romance would last, but even now it was looking shaky. There had been a few arguments in the last couple of weeks, and every time, as he had expected, the name of Linda Harris had been brought up. ‘You slept with her, and don’t give me that nonsense that it was vital to the case. When does screwing form any part of a police investigation?’
He always knew it would cause a problem, even though they had not been an item then, merely a flirtation, but Jess never saw it as that.
***
Isaac summoned his team together. Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Goddard, their boss, attended as well. The addition of ‘Chief’ to his title had come about a few months previously, after a particularly trying case, where Isaac had met and bedded Linda Harris, and flirted with Jess O’Neill. Since that one night, Isaac had not heard from Linda except for a brief phone call, when she stated that she had not murdered anyone, but he was never sure as to the truth. Even though he wanted to settle down with Jess, he could see that the romance was heading to an inevitable conclusion.
Larry Hill was pleased when Isaac offered him the vacant detective inspector’s position in his team. He would be transferred officially to Challis Street Police Sta
tion within the next week.
Farhan Ahmed, the previous detective inspector, had taken the opportunity of a transfer and a promotion up north. Isaac had wished him well, although the detective inspector’s involvement with a former high-class escort, now a lawyer, was hampering further advancement opportunities.
Constable Wendy Gladstone was on board. He would see if she could be made up to sergeant, even though her abrasive nature had precluded this in the past, and exhaling cigarette smoke as she entered the office annoyed Isaac, and he had still not spoken to her about it. He knew that he should, but she had enough on her plate with a husband in a parlous state, even looked close to expiring due to a respiratory condition. Wendy did not speak about him much, only to say that dementia had set in, and he was too difficult for her to handle. Reluctantly, she had placed him in a nursing home, although she visited every day.
Bridget Halloran had been brought in closer to the team on Wendy’s request. Previously the CCTV viewing officer, she had taken on extra responsibilities in collating all the documentation for the team. Wendy was pleased, as she was a good friend.
***
‘DCI Cook, a summation please,’ Detective Chief Superintendent Goddard asked, anxious to start the meeting. Isaac could do without his constant input, his need to be updated and to offer advice, but they went back a long time. Two people separated by age and rank, although each regarded the other as a friend, not just a work colleague. Richard Goddard had asked Isaac to call him Richard on social occasions, but it was too hard for him to acquiesce. It was either ‘sir’ or ‘Detective Chief Superintendent’.
Larry Hill had arrived earlier, pleased that he was joining the team. He and Isaac had met on a previous case when the DI had been the investigating officer.
‘This is the situation so far.’ Isaac commenced his outline of the case. ‘54 Bellevue Street, Holland Park. Family of four, husband, wife, and two children, both under thirteen. They had recently moved in after the husband transferred down from Manchester. The house, judging by its condition, needs a lot of renovation. Would you agree, Larry?’
The DCI Isaac Cook Thriller Series: Books 1 -3 Page 34
