The DCI Isaac Cook Thriller Series: Books 4 - 6: Murder (The DCI Isaac Cook Thrillers Series Boxset)

by Phillip Strang

  He remembered from his conversations with Robertson over the years that before he opened the hostel he had been a sportsman, although Isaac already knew that as he had been an avid fan of cricket, and the dead man had played for England on more than one occasion.

  ‘Why a hostel for the homeless?’ Isaac had asked him once.

  ‘I spent a few years after my career was cut short out on the street, bottle in hand. I know what it’s like.’

  Isaac had not asked much more, as Robertson was not a man to dwell on himself, only on others, and he had achieved a great result. The hostel had been well run; he’d helped many of the downtrodden, even rescued a few teenagers from the slippery slope from ganja to heroin and the inevitable time in a prison after first resorting to prostitution and then to crime.

  Katrina Ireland had not been one of those, Isaac remembered that. She had come to London from the north of the country. He remembered her when she had first presented herself on the street corner: in her teens, attractive, with dark hair, and slim.

  The first time he had seen her, he couldn’t understand why she was there, although it was not long before he had arrested her.

  In time, he had observed that her initial sweetness had soured, and the fresh-faced look had been replaced by a vacant acceptance of whatever happened to her. He remembered the time he had seen her gyrating around a pole in a sleazy strip club. He had been there as part of a drug raid, as it was known that the club was a front for distributing drugs around the area. He and a couple of other police officers had gone in through the front door, pretending to be paying customers, knowing full well that no one would be fooled about why they were there. Around the back of the club there’d been a frantic effort to conceal the evidence and to rush out of the back door. And that was where the other officers were, handcuffs at the ready.

  On that pole, her body still lithe, her face vacant, her gyrations predictable, he could see that Katrina Ireland did not care. Now in her mid-thirties, her years of degradation had left their mark, but with Bob Robertson and the hostel she had blossomed.

  Isaac had to admit that he had liked the woman’s personality even when she was in her worst condition, and now, in the hostel, she was the model of efficiency. He wondered how many others on the street had a story to tell, how many others were once upright citizens, able to conduct themselves in the manner that society required. Some would have families who no longer knew where they were, some would have suffered tragedies, others would have been seduced by alcohol, and the younger generation would have succumbed to the readily available supply of drugs that would rot the brain and destroy the body.

  There were too many drugs in the area, although it was not Isaac and his Homicide team’s responsibility. That was for another department, although they were not having much success as the drug pushers were better funded, more able to operate outside the law than the police. Too many rules and regulations, Isaac sometimes thought. When he had first joined the police force, he’d been idealistic, but later he came to believe that following the book, ensuring convictions was paramount, but that the system was against the police. With a sharp lawyer the criminal would be out on the street again, especially if he had enough cash, the one thing that those involved in drug trafficking had no shortage of.

  Not that it had helped Katrina Ireland the first time he had arrested her. The most she had to her name was twenty pounds and a black eye from the man who had cheated her out of the remaining eighty. ‘The bastard screwed me and then refused to pay,’ she had said.

  It was strange, Isaac realised on reflection, that back then she swore like a trooper, gave herself freely to any man who had the money, even if they did not always pay, but with Bob Robertson in that hostel he had never heard her swear.

  ***

  As expected, those on the street and in the hostel, were reluctant to give their names, other than the names that the street gave them. Gazza, Lonely, Toothless – these were not helpful in a case of homicide. Larry’s approach had been to inform those inside the hostel that none were under suspicion, but their payments from the government were in jeopardy if they did not assist. Larry realised that most had complied, though some hadn’t. He thought that one or two were probably in the country illegally, which made no sense to him. If they weren’t taking advantage of the financial benefits of England’s welfare system or working, then why stay. Not that he dwelt on the reasons why the people were in the hostel in the first place, only whether they were implicated in the murder.

  Katrina Ireland was trying to get them out of the building, Larry was keeping them in. A few had attempted to sneak out of a side door, only to be stopped by a uniform.

  ‘Did you see anything suspicious last night?’ Larry asked an old lady.

  ‘That’s Mattie,’ Katrina Ireland said to Larry.

  ‘You’ll need to speak up,’ the old woman said.

  ‘Deaf as a post,’ Katrina said. ‘She’s got a hearing aid, Bob arranged it for her, but she refuses to wear it. And besides, she’s been in here since yesterday morning. She won’t have seen anything, and if she had, she’s hardly likely to remember.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Larry asked.

  ‘Too many years on the street, too many bottles of whatever she could get hold of.’

  ‘Who here might know something?’

  ‘Big Greg would be your best bet, but he’s not here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was here last night, but he left before lockup time.’

  ‘Lockup time?’

  ‘Eleven at night, we padlock the door.’

  ‘Draconian,’ Larry said.

  ‘That’s what Bob wanted. It can be rough around here; best to keep the druggies out, or else they’ll be causing trouble.’

  ‘You mentioned Big Greg? What’s his full name?’ Larry asked. He had spoken to the others in the hostel, at least those that the uniforms had managed to get some sense out of, and none had been able to help.

  ‘Big Greg, that’s all any of us know. He’s here every day for a meal, sometimes spends the night here.’

  ‘Alcoholic?’

  ‘He’s a strange character,’ Katrina said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Apart from his appearance, you’d not understand why he’s on the street.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s educated, polite and speaks well, better than anyone in here, even better than Bob.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘He doesn’t even smoke. Bob never knew much about him, though they used to talk occasionally. Big Greg would help out here sometimes, although he could smell. I doubt if he had taken a shower for a long time.’

  ‘I thought Bob Robertson was a stickler for hygiene,’ Larry said.

  ‘If they were staying the night. If it was just a meal, he’d turn a blind eye. And besides, Big Greg would help out the others on the street: read their letters if they ever received any, advise them on how to deal with welfare, even arranged for one of them to be admitted to the hospital for a hernia operation.’

  ‘I thought Bob did that.’

  ‘He did, but Big Greg could do it better.’

  ‘Where do I find him?’ Larry asked.

  ‘He moves around. He’ll be here for a meal later on.’

  ***

  The team returned to Challis Street. Gordon Windsor and his crime scene team were still at the hostel, wrapping up their activities. Bob Robertson’s body had been removed and sent to Pathology. Two uniforms were stationed at the hostel awaiting the arrival of Big Greg, an important person as far as Larry Hill could see.

  Whoever the mystery man was, he appeared crucial to moving the investigation forward. Katrina Ireland had given as much information as she could, but she had been inside at the time when Robertson had died, and according to Windsor, a significant amount of force had been required to wield the pole that had crushed the dead man’s skull. Windsor, as always, made his preliminary evaluation at t
he crime scene, although the Homicide team knew that if he made a statement, it was invariably validated later by Pathology.

  ‘We need to go through what we have so far,’ Isaac said. As the senior member in the office, he was also the senior investigating officer. For him this meant dealing with DCS Goddard, which he did not cherish, organising the team, which he enjoyed, and dealing with the paperwork, an activity that left him cold.

  He regretted that his seniority confined him to the office more often than he liked, and he wanted nothing more than to be out there with Larry Hill, his DI, probing here, asking there, attempting to unravel the fiction from the fact.

  ‘No one saw anything,’ Wendy said, pleased to be back in the office. She was no longer always gasping for a cigarette after kicking the habit of a lifetime. It had been hard, and the nicotine patches had helped, although a cancer scare, eventually discovered to be a false alarm, had firmed her resolve. Wendy missed her husband, but he had suffered from dementia at the end, and Bridget, a few years younger than her, had kicked out her live-in lover after he had started to throw his weight around, expecting her to wait on him hand and foot. Purely platonic, Wendy told the plain nosy if they ever asked about her and Bridget sharing a house.

  Wendy turned a blind eye if Bridget brought home a man, but it was not frequent, and there was certainly never a man in his underwear sitting across from her at the breakfast table. Sometimes, Wendy would hear her friend and her paramour in the room two doors down from her bedroom, and sometimes regretted that she did not feel the passion, but it was not a big issue. Wendy knew that a cigarette would have been preferable to a sweaty man anyway, not that that option was available either.

  And besides, she wanted to stay with the police force, and it was becoming harder to pass the medicals. Apart from arthritis, her breathing was laboured due to insufficient lung capacity, the effect of forty cigarettes a day for nearly thirty years. She could feel that there had been an improvement in the six months since she had finally kicked the habit, and each day without fail she’d be out of the house at six in the morning for a walk around the block, no more than twenty minutes, but it was helping. However, with another murder, six in the morning would indicate the time to leave for the office. Isaac, their DCI, always preferred an early meeting to plan the day’s activities, and this time, a friend of his had died.

  She knew that the man would be upset by Robertson’s death, not that he’d show it, but he was a sentimental man, a man she admired greatly. She remembered when they had first met, fifteen years previously, when she had been newly transferred to Challis Street from a police station to the north of London, and back then he had been in uniform, the same as her. Even then, he had been a good-looking man: tall, dark and handsome the apt description. Many times, she and Bridget had joked about his love life, and how they wished it was them on his arm instead of the invariably attractive female. They had enjoyed those nights out together, joking, romanticising, getting drunk, but now that did not seem so important to either of the women. Wendy still appreciated the occasional glass of wine, and Bridget would sometimes down a half bottle, but having to be helped into the house by a taxi driver no longer occurred.

  Chapter 4

  Big Greg knew that life was hard on the street, moving from one place to the next, avoiding the drunken louts who on the way home from the pub wanted to bang dustbin lids. Or else evading the police or sometimes decent-minded citizens aiming to help. Regardless of all the negatives, there was one thing that Big Greg knew above everything else: he wanted to be left alone.

  He remembered the day well, the day when his life changed, not for the better, but for the inevitable. There were, he knew, others who were still looking for him, others who would take the information from him by force, others who would kill him on the spot.

  If Bob Robertson, a friend, and Big Greg knew he had precious few of them, had not become inquisitive, then he would still be alive. And what if there was someone out there monitoring the internet? Someone so savvy that one of his formulas entered into the search bar would be triggering an alarm, an IP address, a location.

  Bob Robertson had opened a can of worms, a can of intrigue and deception. Big Greg wondered if it would ever close again. He knew that he could be violent – hadn’t that happened that last day of his suffering.

  He remembered it so clearly, even though it had been over eleven years ago. There he had been, a member of a team attempting to solve an imponderable that had confounded many for years, still did, yet it had been him who had come up with the solution. He remembered those who had held him captive for the next ten days after he had refused to give them what they wanted, and had beaten and tortured him relentlessly, drugged him with truth serum.

  It had been a feat of superhuman strength that he had overpowered the men holding him, allowing him to escape. There had been bad years after that, years when he could not communicate with his family, never let them know that he was still alive, although he had kept a watch from a distance. He saw them daily: his daughter now a grown woman with a family of her own, his wife with another man.

  It saddened him that he had been forced to kill another man to protect himself, but it was the solution, contained in the complex formulas and the technical drawings, that was all important. He had considered taking his life, but that was not the answer, and if he did, then what? Who would keep an eye on his family, who would protect the people of the country from what he had discovered? There were others, members of his team, who were still working on the problem, getting nowhere, but if they did, if he believed that they were getting close, he would have to act; he would have to kill again.

  There had been one, a smart young woman whom he had admired. Her genius level intellect was close to his. It was unfortunate, the day he had to push her in front of an express train as it passed through the railway station where she was waiting for the train to take her back to her small flat. That had caused him anguish for some months afterwards, but his secret had remained safe.

  It had not been easy, after killing Bob Robertson. He had kept out of sight since then by hiding in an abandoned warehouse, scavenging at night for scraps of food. He knew the police would be looking for him, not necessarily as the murderer, but he had been at the hostel that night, and he had disappeared after the killing. He knew the police were not stupid, and that they’d put two and two together and realise that he was a principal witness. He knew that he had perfected his disguise: the beard, the old clothes, the rank smell. He didn’t like any of them, but the alternative was not preferable.

  The tenuous political situation all those years ago remained the same today. Some people would take the efforts of his research and use it as a weapon. The death of a few individuals and his less than satisfactory lifestyle were a small cost.

  Big Greg sat in a corner of the warehouse, its construction half complete. He missed those who had become his friends, the downtrodden, the incoherent, the brain-addled, yet he did not know why. He had grown up in a comfortable middle-class household, shown brilliance at a young age, left Oxford University with an honours degree in mathematics.

  The mandate of his last position in the government research department had been clear: the development of low-cost energy. Idealistic, he had thought at the time, but he and the others had applied their collective wisdom to the solution.

  That had been fine for the six years they had worked as a team on the problem. It had been him who had come up with the final solution, the stabilising of the energy, the directional control of the microwave beam from the solar collectors in low-level orbit, and he was willing to reveal it at an upcoming presentation, including to his team, but then he had overheard their director talking in the conference room to some men in uniform.

  Three men. One was the director of the government department where the research department was located, a decent man, idealistic, the same as he was, Big Greg knew that. The other two were clearly military. The discussion: the military impli
cations of what he alone had solved.

  Big Greg, although that was not how he was known then, realised that what the military men saw was that the potential of low-cost and virtually limitless energy could also be directed towards weapon development. He also knew that the director would be forced to hand over all the information regardless of his protestations, or else…

  Even though he was now relegated to the street and its deprivations, Big Greg knew that it was a small cost if it protected those he held dear. If they, the scurrilous element in the security services and the military, knew that he still lived, then his wife and his daughter, even his grandchild, could be threatened.

  ‘We only need the solution,’ the lead torturer had said.

  Big Greg remembered him well: short, swarthy, a London accent. The man revealed that he had been assigned to an army base in Egypt to oversee Egypt’s treatment of Al Qaeda fighters they had brought in from Afghanistan. How he had signed the papers to allow the waterboarding, the electric shock treatment, the beatings, and the sleep deprivation.

  ‘You’ve held up better than they did,’ the sadistic man had said once. ‘You’ll not leave here without telling us all we want, or else it’s your family. I’ve seen your wife, pretty isn’t she, and how about your daughter? What we could do with them,’ he had said.

  Cornered, Big Greg was unable to reason with the man, to explain that what they wanted him to give them was too dangerous to be in the hands of malevolent dictatorships or governments; it was the ultimate weapon, that could generate energy for the betterment of mankind or to destroy vast sections of it. He knew they would not let him leave alive, and if his family were the lever, they’d use them.