Six Years Too Late
Phillip Strang
BOOKS BY PHILLIP STRANG
DCI Isaac Cook Series
MURDER IS A TRICKY BUSINESS
MURDER HOUSE
MURDER IS ONLY A NUMBER
MURDER IN LITTLE VENICE
MURDER IS THE ONLY OPTION
MURDER IN NOTTING HILL
MURDER IN ROOM 346
MURDER OF A SILENT MAN
MURDER HAS NO GUILT
MURDER IN HYDE PARK
SIX YEARS TOO LATE
MURDER WITHOUT REASON
DI Keith Tremayne Series
DEATH UNHOLY
DEATH AND THE ASSASSIN’S BLADE
DEATH AND THE LUCKY MAN
DEATH AT COOMBE FARM
DEATH BY A DEAD MAN’S HAND
DEATH IN THE VILLAGE
BURIAL MOUND
Steve Case Series
HOSTAGE OF ISLAM
THE HABERMAN VIRUS
PRELUDE TO WAR
Standalone Books
MALIKA’S REVENGE
Copyright Page
Copyright © 2019 Phillip Strang
Cover Design by Phillip Strang
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine, or journal.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
This work is registered with the UK Copyright Service.
Author’s Website: http://www.phillipstrang.com
Dedication
For Elli and Tais, who both had the perseverance to make me sit down and write.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright 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 36
Chapter 1
Marcus Matthews knew of three certainties as he looked out of the room’s small window. The first was that he was at the lowest point in his troubled life; the second, that he was the wealthiest he had ever been; and the third and most crucial, he was dead.
How had this come about, those who had never met him might have asked, but to Matthews life had always been a challenge.
The circumstances of his birth: a homeless shelter in the north of England, a mother who was a heroin addict when she became pregnant at the age of sixteen. He was six months old when she died, prostitution the only way she knew to feed her habit and her child.
When the teenage Marcus reached the age of sixteen, a woman had knocked on the door of his adoptive family’s home. Her name was Molly, the effects of a hard life all too visible.
‘Gwen, that was her name, although you must have known that,’ Molly said. That much Marcus knew. ‘She loved you,’ Molly continued. ‘I was there when you were born, when she died.’
An adolescent teen who had developed a penchant for graffiti and wanton vandalism did not respond to ‘love’, but he was interested enough to listen to the woman as she talked.
Marcus’s adoptive parents, Brenda and Gavin, sat quietly. They had always known that one day he would learn something of where he had come from; where he was heading back to if he did not mend his ways.
Brenda ruled the household. Marcus liked her more than Gavin, a well-meaning pen-pushing civil servant. Each working day, he would depart the house, and each night as his wife watched the numbingly boring television with its quiz shows and their inane questions, there he would be at the dining room table, checking figures, fretting over them. And then the money he brought home each week, a pittance. Marcus knew this because he was a thief, and he regularly helped himself to some of the contents of his mother’s purse, his father’s wallet. Not once did they complain, which meant to the unruly Marcus one of two things: either they overlooked what he did, or they were stupid.
On his twenty-fifth birthday, his luck had finally turned. He’d had a succession of pointless jobs, a result of failing to take notice at school. A fish and chip shop that produced the worst tasting food in the world, each and every day spent sweating over the hot fat, and the potatoes cut into chips, the fish that tasted of anything but fish. From there, a job in a metal fabricating shop, the constant hammering having almost destroyed his hearing, and even a turn at driving a taxi, but he got lost too often, eventually wrapping the vehicle around a telegraph pole late at night.
And then, there she was, two weeks later, next to him at the bus stop, his driving licence having been suspended. The bus trip was short, but they had started talking; he, a man with little prospects; she, a vision of loveliness in his eyes. Three months later, Marcus and Samantha were married in a registry office, with a reception at the pub, an argument later that night, a baby in a cot within seven months.
It was Samantha’s father, Hamish, who had made the decision about the wedding. ‘No daughter of mine is going to have a child out of wedlock,’ he had said, but he didn’t attend the wedding.
Hamish McIntyre was in jail for a botched robbery; there was no way that he was getting out of prison to do his duty by his daughter.
‘You made her pregnant, you marry her, and if you harm her, just once, you’d better hope that you can be like a chameleon, because I’ll find you, no matter how long it takes. Do you understand me?’ McIntyre had said when Marcus had visited the depressing prison to ask his permission to marry his daughter; a formality as a phone call from the prison a week earlier had sealed Marcus’s fate.
‘I understand,’ Marcus had replied. He would have said that he loved Samantha with all his heart, but the father was not a man for sentimentality. Apart from his daughter and the ugliest dog that Marcus had ever seen, he loved nothing else.
‘One word from Samantha and you’re dead meat, don’t you forget it,’ the parting words as Marcus left the prison, words audible enough to be heard by the other prisoners and the prison officers. McIntyre was a violent man; he did not intend to let anyone forget that fact, especially in a maximum-security prison. Marcus had left through the prison gate, his legs still shaking, needing a stiff drink to calm his nerves.
Marcus saw the love between him and Samantha as eternal. And her father’s offer of a job, once the man had been released, and enough money to buy a small place, was just what he needed.
For two years, peace reigned, but Samantha was flawed. An indulgent father, a husband who was at work, or only wanting to be at home with her and their child, was not what she needed: she needed a life.
A violent psychotic was how Marcus had come to see her father. No one could do what he did to a fellow human being a
nd be sane. He had witnessed the slaying of a rival, the knifing of the man, the smile on Hamish McIntyre’s face when he had finished.
‘No other bastard is going to cheat me,’ he’d said to Marcus. As strange as it was, Hamish enjoyed Marcus’s company, and the two would spend time together. One patting the other on the back, telling him to drink up; the other frightened that one wrong word and he’d be minus a part of the anatomy that wasn’t getting much attention from Samantha, and none at all for the last five months.
Hamish had not yet been told of the fancy man that Samantha preferred over her husband. He was eventually when, after a few too many beers, Marcus had opened up to his father-in-law.
The fancy man skipped town, or so the story went. That was what Samantha was told when her father instructed her to return to the marital bed and to do her duty.
It would be three years before the man’s body was found. By then, Samantha was still honouring her marital vows, and Marcus had become Hamish’s right-hand man.
***
Outside the small room at the top of the house, the sun was setting. It was going to be a clear starlit night, the night that lovers crave. However, Marcus Matthews was sure that it would be the night that he would die.
He had been a day and a night in that room, and apart from visiting the bathroom, he had not left it. He knew that he could; the door was not locked, and there was no one watching the house. No one would question if he left the city or the country, and he had money. Others might have questioned his reason for staying, but he did not.
He sat down at a small table and opened another chocolate bar, his diet since he’d made his way to the room, climbing stairs that were almost too narrow for a person to navigate. Samantha had been back with him for fourteen years since her lover had vanished, and, on the whole, they had been good years, he reflected.
A creaking on the stairs, the door opening. Marcus stood up as the person walked into the room.
‘A man who could always be trusted to keep his word.’
‘A man’s word is his bond,’ Marcus replied. He felt a sense of unease as a gun was pointed at him. ‘Come in. There’s always time to talk.’
‘It would be best if I do what I must and leave.’
‘Why so soon? We have much to talk about, you and I.’
‘It pains me to do this.’
‘It is what was agreed.’
The two men sat down at the small table. Marcus produced a bottle of wine and two plastic cups. He poured the wine into the cups and handed one to the man who was going to kill him. ‘Here’s to you,’ he said.
The other man laid his gun on the table and held his plastic cup up. ‘Here’s to better times,’ he said.
The air was charged with emotion, the tension palpable, yet the two men, one a murderer, the other a victim, passed the time talking and laughing and reminiscing about people they had known, people that had died. For nearly ninety minutes the conversation was animated and emotional, and then the bottle of wine was empty.
It was Marcus who spoke first. ‘It’s time,’ he said.
The man opposite offered his hand, which Marcus shook. He then picked up the gun and shot Marcus twice in the chest and once in the head. He then put the weapon in his jacket pocket and left the room.
If anyone had seen him, they would have seen the tears in his eyes. If they had been able to hear, they would also have heard, ‘I did what had to be done.’
With that, the man closed the door to the small room and descended the stairs.
Chapter 2
It had been the mother of one of the youths who had phoned the police after her son came in screaming about what he had seen. Billy Dempsey, the more daring of the two boys, a skinny youth with bad acne, had been the first through the window at the back of the house; the preliminary details relayed to Homicide by a Constable Hepworth who had answered the call.
‘We’ve had trouble with him before, stealing from shops, so we didn’t believe him at first. That’s why we checked before we called you,’ Hepworth said.
A pair of amateurs was what Gordon Windsor, the senior crime scene investigator, had called Constables Hepworth and Lipton, although he had added a few angry expletives. ‘They’re told there’s a body, and still they have to stick their collective noses and feet in.’
Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook, the senior investigating officer in Homicide at Challis Street Police Station knew that Windsor was right. A phone call in the late afternoon from Katrina Dempsey, Billy’s mother, and Hepworth couldn’t resist the chance to take the initiative and go with his offsider, a drinking buddy when off duty, to have a look.
‘It doesn’t look as if Constables Hepworth and Lipton have much of a future in policing,’ Isaac said after Windsor had calmed down.
Windsor had seen the damage the two men had done when they had forced the back door, and then their footprints in the house, not even having the sense to keep their hands in their pockets either.
‘It’s time we’ll waste. Was it made clear that there was a body?’ Windsor said.
‘According to Billy Dempsey and his friend, Andrew Conlon, that’s what they said. It was Dempsey’s mother who had caused the confusion, questioning her son’s veracity, and Hepworth had had dealings with the youth before. It appears that Billy Dempsey has a sense of the dramatic; lying and exaggerating come only too easily to him.’
Pathology had conducted a post mortem within twenty-four hours of the discovery of the body. Nothing had been found apart from an approximate date of death determined by what was left of the corpse, an empty bottle of wine, and an old newspaper on the table in the centre of the room, and that the man had been shot three times at close quarters. The crime scene investigation team had been over the room, checked for fingerprints. The two boys had not entered the room, neither had the two constables, a plus in that the murder scene hadn’t been contaminated.
Forensics had checked the bottle of wine at the crime scene, examined the cans and boxes of food in the cupboard and a plastic bag. The date of the wine’s purchase had been confirmed at a local off-licence.
‘It was on special,’ the licensee said. ‘Good value for the price, although it could have done with a couple of more years’ cellaring.’
The identification of the dead man wasn’t a problem either. Marcus Matthews had a criminal record: fraud, robbery when he was younger, fencing stolen goods when he got older, and then there was his known association with Hamish McIntyre.
***
A murder had been committed, but Isaac Cook did not feel comfortable with the reports he was receiving. There was no violence, and clear signs of two people sharing a bottle of wine: one of the two a murderer, the other a victim. It was as if two friends had sat down and decided on a course of action that resulted in the death of one of them.
Murder was not conducted in such a manner, Isaac knew that. The man who had died had remained in his seat. It couldn’t be an assassination: that required surprise, and usually a crowd to hide the assailant while he got close enough to take the shot, and then pandemonium for him to make good his escape. In that room, there had only been two people. The idea of an arranged killing had been considered, the victim dying of a terminal ailment, the pain such that the man had preferred death to life, but Marcus Matthews was found to be in good health, and his bank account had shown no financial difficulties. And the background checks had not revealed a man with a depressive outlook on life.
On the contrary, he had been a cheerful man, in spite of being a crook who had had more than his fair share of brushes with the law, even spending time in prison on two occasions as a young adult.
Larry Hill sat still, saying little. It was early, not yet seven in the morning, and as the team had expected, a new murder case meant that early-morning meetings were again the norm, and working long days and weekends was to be expected. Larry, a man who enjoyed a greasy breakfast at a café on Portobello Road in Notting Hill when he could, and one too ma
ny pints of beer of a night time, sat quietly as Isaac went over the case so far.
‘It’s murder, no matter the reason,’ Isaac said. He was standing up, looking out of the window of his small office, his carefully honed team watching him. Sergeant Wendy Gladstone, closing in on retirement but not there yet, did not like the rigidity of the office, certainly not the reporting, and computers to her were anathema. Bridget Halloran, a great friend of Wendy, was the office supremo and computer expert: if you needed information from the internet or from the various police databases, she was the best person for the job.
Larry Hill wasn’t too fond of computers either, but he could struggle by with them. He, like Wendy, preferred to be out on the street, and working his contacts, more often than not the local rogues and villains; drinking with them of a night at one or another pub was par for the course. Isaac understood that, so did Larry’s wife, a woman who looked for better in her life than a detective inspector’s salary could give her and who continued to remonstrate with him to be more ambitious, to improve his qualifications, to become a detective chief inspector, a commander. Not that she was going anywhere else, as regardless of her remonstrations, and Larry’s apathy, they were a couple still in love, still able to show affection for one another – but not on the nights when Larry came home having had a few too many beers.
Isaac was tall, dark because of his Jamaican heritage, and fit. He’d exercised every day before a recent trip to Jamaica with Jenny to visit his relations. He had proposed to her there – she had accepted as he knew she would – and now they were married, the blonde-haired wife with the porcelain complexion and the black man. Jenny ensured that he continued to exercise regularly.
***
Isaac’s penchant for the early-morning meetings did not sit easily with Larry; he was a late-to-rise, late-night person. The meetings did not suit Wendy Gladstone either; she still struggled with her arthritis, and the cold, damp mornings exacerbated the problem, not that she’d complain openly as ill health would be the quickest way to early retirement. Bridget Halloran had no such issue with the early starts, and the chance to be in front of her computer screen filled her with joy, not dread.
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