Murder is a Tricky Business (DCI Cook Thriller Series Book 1)

by Phillip Strang

‘I’ll let her give it to you if she wants.’

  ‘Where are we meeting?’

  ‘Hyde Park, close to Marble Arch. You’ll find her at the entrance to the park. She’ll be wearing a blue jacket. I’ll send you a phone number so you can call her when you are there.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘Midday, she works nearby. You can pretend to strike up a conversation with her, admire the flowers, whatever.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘My pleasure, at least under other circumstances it would be.’ Farhan sensed the cryptic sign.

  ‘What other circumstances?’ He rose to the bait.

  ‘You’re a good man. You look as if you have a few problems. Maybe they could do with some assisting.’

  ‘You’re right of course, but I’m not a wealthy man, just a humble policeman trying to do his best, make a difference.’

  ‘I know, but let me know if it becomes too much. Money is not the issue.’ He wasn’t sure if she was flirtatious, slutty or genuine. He let the conversation rest and moved it back to a more official stance.

  ‘And the other woman?’

  ‘Tomorrow, but she is married and would prefer to stay that way. Her husband would probably not understand. He thinks she pays the mortgage on the money she earns working in an office somewhere.’

  ‘You have to trust me on this. If they’re not involved, then we will refer to them as X and Y.’

  ‘I trust you, Detective Inspector. Remember if the tension gets too much, give me a call.’

  ‘I will, thank you.’ He hung up, embarrassed and flustered. There had been other situations over the years. Even his first year out of training and before his parents had fixed up a marriage for him. Farheen looked to be a good match, his mother had checked her out. Said she had a body for childbearing and for a while he had been excited. He had met her several times, and he had to admit she had a pleasant face and a wholesome body. Not that he could see much, concealed as it was under layers of clothes. The wedding date had been set: she a virgin, he a virgin. Six weeks before the nuptials ‒ an elaborate and unnecessarily expensive affair - with two hundred guests, all looking to be fed, and he had been out on a case to the south of London. He was just a constable then, part of a team investigating a bank robbery. The thieves had netted close to half a million pounds and were nowhere to be seen. It was clearly a professional operation and failing any clear leads, the team had decided to re-enact the robbery, hoping that someone in the area may have seen something, no matter how insignificant.

  The robbery had occurred on a Wednesday night. The building next to the bank, a hardware store closed for renovations, the entry route. The robbers had managed to tunnel underneath the two buildings and had come up no more than three metres from the bank vault. From there they had to break into the safe. It would have taken a master safe-breaker to execute the opening of the vault. Normally, there would have been no more than one to two hundred thousand pounds, but an influx of money, four hundred thousand pounds at least, had come in the night before, the result of a transaction in cash between two local property developers. The bank robbers’ windfall, put down to luck and not inside knowledge.

  Farhan had been nominated as the getaway driver for the re-enactment. It was known that a Toyota van had been seen close to the bank that night. A camera mounted inside a shop down the road ‒ it should have been pointed in looking for shoplifters - inadvertently dislodged and looking out. It had picked up the van driving away at two o’clock in the morning. The occupants only showed in silhouette, although three persons could be seen. The re-enactment, scheduled for two in the afternoon, and then another team would go through the area asking the local residents if they were up at two in the morning ‒ most were not ‒ or if they had seen suspicious activity in the two days previous. The two days were important as the workers on the hardware store’s renovation had gone on strike just before. The work had continued unabated, with a different team in the back of the building. The instigator of the strike, Kyle Sanderson, the legitimate renovation’s foreman was found to be involved. He repeatedly stated that it was five thousand pounds and only phone conversations. The police incarcerated him pending trial as an accomplice.

  The two others in the re-enactment: Constable Harold Brighton ‒ came from money, disobeyed the family who wanted him to manage the family business ‒ preferred the life of a policeman. He saw himself as a future commissioner which to Farhan did not seem an improbability. He was certainly well-spoken, educated and personable. Elaine Goddard, attractively verging on overweight, which appealed to Farhan, came from a family in the north which had neither affluence nor a family business. Her father was a butcher and proud of it. It was clear that she worshipped her father. She and Farhan had met briefly during training; purely an introduction and a few shared courses. It was only when they were assigned to the same police station, post training, that they really hit it off.

  ‘Missed opportunities there, Farhan,’ she had joked when they met again several weeks after training.

  ‘What do you mean?’ He had been slightly embarrassed, not sure how to react. Before he had entered training, he had led the life of a subservient, where his father made the rules and his mother fussed over him. Initially, the close proximity to women at the training school had given him some anxious moments. A frustrated male in his sexual prime was not used to scantily clad females within the corridors of the training school. Too many times he had walked past an open door in the dormitories and seen naked bodies entwined. Too many times he had retreated to the sanctuary of the toilets to relieve himself.

  ‘I was there as the vestal virgin saving myself for marriage, and he didn’t have the decency to wait. As soon as I was on my way to training, he was out screwing my best friend.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Don’t worry, there were much better men at the college,’ she said.

  ‘You made up for it there?’

  ‘Not at all. I was upset for a while, and then I decided not to screw around for the sake of it. To be honest, I’m not too bright.’

  ‘Don’t say that. You look fine to me.’

  ‘Slightly dyslexic. I had to work harder than the rest just to keep up and I was determined. I had told my parents that I was going to do it, and I was not going to let them down.’

  ‘That’s good, but what do you mean by, “missed opportunities”?’

  ‘You and me at the college. There you are, a good Muslim boy waiting for his parents to choose a bride for him, and there I was, the vestal virgin. We would have been right for each other.’

  ‘I would have appreciated your company.’

  ‘Never too late,’ she said.

  In the interim up to the re-enactment, they had become closer, more flirtatious. Neither had made a move towards the other and Farhan had seen it as harmless fun and besides his parents had chosen a bride for him, a good Muslim girl.

  The re-enactment had gone as planned. The three actors, Farhan, Harry and Elaine, had dressed appropriately, acted in a suspicious manner, moved equipment from the van to the shop and back again. Another six policemen walked up and down the street asking whoever they could waylay if they had seen anything suspicious. Nobody had, and the exercise had been deemed a failure.

  A debriefing back at the hotel that night - it was too late to return to London. With the debriefing completed and Farhan, three pints of beer the worse off and Elaine, four and still sober, they found themselves outside her room. Farhan’s bed remained unused that night.

  It was several weeks later back at work in the station that they realised the relationship was doomed before it started. Even though they both had strong feelings for the other, he was a conservative Muslim and she, a Roman Catholic. They remained friends, but he had been transferred out a few weeks later. Personal reasons, he had said. No more was asked.

  Chapter 16

  The first thing Isaac noticed when he entered Richard Williams’ office was that the lovely ‒ availa
ble if you drove a Ferrari ‒ Sally Jenkins was absent. In her seat sat another equally vivacious and no-doubt mercenary woman. She introduced herself as Linda. Another rent-a-lay, Isaac thought.

  ‘Sally Jenkins, what happened to her?’ Isaac asked as the new woman showed him into Williams’ office. She hadn’t been employed when Marjorie Frobisher had disappeared, and she was clearly another prick-teaser.

  ‘I had to let her go.’ Williams replied in an offhand manner. It wasn’t a good enough explanation.

  ‘It’s important. Where has she gone?’

  ‘I had to sack her.’ A curt reply. Still not good enough.

  ‘I need details. She may well be a material witness. I may need to talk to her again.’

  ‘No doubt she will tell you the story. She was just a bit of entertainment. I’d take her out, buy her expensive jewellery, nice clothes, drive her around in a nice car and she’d give in return. A good arrangement but they’re all the same.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They see love when love is not there. She started talking marriage and settling down, having a few children.’

  ‘And you don’t want that?’

  ‘I’m still paying one silly bitch who managed to get me down the aisle. She made sure she was pregnant before we got that far. Still bleeding me for all she can. It takes my lawyers all their time to keep the situation under control. You’re a tall, good-looking man, you must have similar issues?’

  ‘True enough, but I only have a policeman’s salary.’

  ‘You’re young, plenty of stamina. I need a good dose of Viagra to get going. They’re with me for the money and the good life. Why can’t they leave it like that?’

  ‘The woman outside?’ Isaac asked.

  ‘Until she starts professing love.’

  Isaac thought it was, at least, a refreshingly honest answer. He had never regarded the numerous women he bedded in such a manner, and certainly, he would never have spoken about them to other men. ‘I need to talk to you about Charles Sutherland,’ he said.

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘Suspected poisoning.’

  ‘Fine, it’s a murder investigation now. I can’t really avoid you anymore, or you’d have me in the back of a police car and down to the station for an all-night grilling.’

  ‘A little melodramatic, wouldn’t you say?’ Isaac replied.

  ‘A great storyline. The masses would love it, but as you say, a little melodramatic. But when has our programme been factual. Maybe once this is all over, we’ll incorporate into a storyline.’

  ‘I would advise against it for now,’ Isaac reminded him. ‘This is an official visit.’

  ‘I know that. What happened to Marjorie? Any updates?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to discuss. We are following up on various leads.’ Isaac thought it a somewhat dumb response.

  ‘You don’t know where she is, correct?’

  Isaac chose to ignore Williams’ evaluation, unfortunately accurate. He returned to Charles Sutherland.

  ‘Did anyone have a grudge against Charles Sutherland, a reason to want him dead?’

  ‘A few, but murder? That’s a whole different issue.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A person’s death may make certain people more comfortable, but killing that person…’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Isaac realised Williams knew something.

  ‘Murder and it’s twenty-five years, hard labour, breaking rocks.’

  ‘You’re being melodramatic again. There are no rocks these days. I believe that the matter of Sutherland’s demise requires you to elaborate on who would want him dead.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Williams picked up the phone to the outer office and asked for the new PA to bring in some freshly brewed coffee. It gave him some time to think as to what to tell the persistent policeman and how much.

  Five minutes later, and the latest plaything who managed to give a good impression of being competent, entered and placed the two mugs on the desk. She gave Isaac a pleasant smile as she left. He gave one in return. Sally Jenkins was clearly a prick-teaser, a rich man’s entertainment. Somehow, Isaac could not see the new employee in the same light, but then maybe he was biassed ‒ he fancied her for himself.

  Isaac continued. ‘I need you to detail who may have had an issue with Charles Sutherland.’

  ‘I understand that. Where do you want me to start?’

  ‘Just detail them.’ Isaac could see procrastination. He thought it reasonable. Nobody likes dishing the dirt on someone else, and a murder enquiry always puts everyone on the defensive.

  ‘Marjorie, obviously.’

  ‘Why Marjorie?’ Isaac knew there was mutual antagonism, but wanting someone dead indicated something more serious.

  ‘He was always sticking his nose in, attempting to listen in on other people's conversations.’

  ‘Is that a reason to want him dead?’

  ‘For Marjorie, it would have been.’

  ‘It is clear that you are not inclined to give a clear answer.’

  ‘Confidentiality seems more important to me.’

  ‘The seriousness of the situation demands your full compliance.’

  ‘I know, but as the executive producer, I make it a habit to maintain the confidence of all the people that I am responsible for. As long as it’s not criminal, then I don’t care if they are adulterers, closet gays, incorrigible gamblers or whether they cheat on their tax.’

  ‘I can understand, but this is a murder enquiry. You know I could take you down the station for questioning.’

  ‘Not without my lawyer, you couldn’t. Okay, here’s what I know.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Sutherland had picked up some dirt on Marjorie, enough for her to be seriously worried, enough for her to come in here and demand his withdrawal from the programme.’

  ‘You agreed?’

  ‘I tried to reason with her, but she was adamant.’

  ‘She threatened to walk out of the production?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So why did you agree?’

  ‘I ran it past the scriptwriters first to see how we could get rid of him.’

  ‘Once you had a storyline, you let him go.’

  ‘He was going anyway. Marjorie and I go back a long way.’

  ‘I believe that has been mentioned before. Maybe you could elaborate.’

  ‘Nothing sinister. We were both starting out. I saw myself as the great international news correspondent; Marjorie, the next great movie star.’

  ‘Neither of you achieved your aims.’

  ‘That may be the case, but we’ve both been successful.’

  ‘It’s hardly a reason to accede to her demands.’

  ‘We lived together for nine months. The first great love for both of us, and we have helped each other over the years. Shoulder to cry on, if needed. I would do anything for her.’

  ‘You don’t seem concerned that she is missing.’

  ‘Marjorie, what could happen to her? She’s a survivor, same as I am. She’ll reappear when the time is right.’

  ‘You seem remarkably confident.’

  ‘I’ve known her for too long to believe that she has been murdered and besides, what proof do you have?’

  ‘Apart from a confirmed sighting up north.’

  ‘Malvern, I knew about that.’

  ‘Have you been withholding information?’ Isaac raised his voice. What else does Richard Williams know? he thought.

  ‘I’ll rephrase. I assumed that was where she had gone. It was her hideout in the past. I have been there a few times in the past to meet with her.’

  ‘Are you still maintaining a relationship with her?’

  ‘You make it sound dirty. When she was upset, she would disappear for a few days. It didn’t happen often, but she would always phone me, ask me to come up. She would have done the same for me.’

  ‘You slept with her?’

  ‘When?’
r />   ‘When you went up to Malvern.’

  ‘No, not at all. You don’t understand. We have a lot of history. She knows about my skeletons, or, at least, most of them. I know about hers.’

  ‘Is there something I should know about her skeletons?’

  ‘Charles Sutherland knew something. Believe me, I don’t know what it was.’

  ‘Enough to kill him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Everyone knew about Marjorie and her open marriage, and she could be a bitch, but murder!’

  ‘Anger, dislike and hatred easily gravitate to murder,’ Isaac said.

  ‘I’ve been too long in this business, too many scripts, to realise that administered poison is not a spur of the moment action. It’s premeditated and by someone with knowledge of poisons.’

  ‘You should have been a policeman,’ Isaac had to admit the man was correct. ‘Who else would not be sad about Sutherland’s death.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll find anyone in mourning.’

  ‘I’ve deduced that. Anyone else who would have been pleased?’

  ‘There’s only one.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Jess O’Neill.’ Isaac sat up straight, visibly so, which caused Richard Williams to offer a comment.’

  ‘I see that you know the lovely Jess.’ Williams smiled. Yet again, Isaac severely embarrassed that he was allowing personal to interfere with professional.

  ‘I’ve spoken to her a few times.’

  ‘And found her delightful?’

  ‘She is an attractive woman; I’ll grant you that.’

  ‘I tried it on when she first arrived.’

  ‘I assumed you would have, but I’m led to believe it was not successful.’

  ‘I even took her away to an exhibition up north. We went up in the Ferrari, best hotel, few too many drinks, but she wasn’t swayed. Looking for love, I suppose.’

  ‘Any hard feelings after that?’ Isaac visibly relaxed at Williams’ affirmation of what Jess had told him.

  ‘Not at all, but be careful. You’ve got a murder investigation, and it’s clear that you are attracted to her.’

  ‘Why should I be careful?’

  ‘Not in regards to Jess, but you’re here on official business. It would not seem proper to show preferential treatment to one witness over another, would it?’