‘I had let Doug in the back door.’
‘Doug?’
‘He’s one of the regulars. He’s harmless.’
‘What’s his story?’
‘I’ve no idea. You’ll need to ask him.’
‘Let’s go back to after you had let Doug in.’
‘Bob always likes to know if someone’s being signed in, regardless of the time. I knocked on his door, but he wasn’t there. I know that he’s pedantic about it, in case anyone is slipping in with drugs.’
‘Then what?’
‘He wasn’t in the building, so I put on my coat and walked around the block. That’s when I found him.’
‘Out the front?’
‘Where he is now. I tried to shake him but nothing. In the end, a couple with their dog came by and phoned for you.’
‘The two men sleeping rough?’
‘You’re wasting your time. They’re both out of it.’
‘Alcohol?’
‘Their brains are stewed. They’ll not be able to tell you much.’
‘I’ll talk to them later. In the meantime, any more you can tell me? Any enemies, people with a grudge?’
‘Not with Bob. He could be tough if anyone snuck in here with drugs or alcohol, and there’s a few who are not allowed in, but killing the man, I don’t think so.’
‘Will you be alright, no relapse?’
‘Bob wouldn’t like it. I’ll stay clean in his honour. And besides, someone needs to keep this place running.’
‘If you need any help, let me know.’
‘I will. Thank you for not recognising me.’
‘As you said, the past is the past. What you make of the present is more important.’
Isaac left Katrina Ireland busying around the place, organising the breakfasts, making sure everyone was out at the agreed time and that the beds were ready for the next night.
***
There were few people that Isaac Cook liked more than Bob Robertson. In a part of town populated on the periphery by the wealthy, there still remained an unsavoury element hovering in some of the rundown parts of the area. In Bayswater, it was expensive real estate and people with expensive cars and expensive appetites, judging by the prices at some of the restaurants, but with Bob Robertson, his meals came free. As far as the man had been concerned, your race, your religion, and whether you slept rough or not were unimportant.
Gordon Windsor, Challis Street Police Station’s crime scene examiner, was soon at the crime scene. It was replete with the obligatory crowd of onlookers, the plain nosy and the disinterested, with nothing better to do than stare and offer comments, and a reporter from the local newspaper hoping to get a photo and a story. Not a chance, Isaac thought.
There were enough instant journalists with their smartphones and social media as it was, and the last thing he wanted was to make small talk to any of them or the local press, although he knew it would be required eventually.
It had been relatively quiet for a few weeks for the detective chief inspector, so much so that he had taken the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks in Jamaica visiting his relatives. He had to admit that a lifetime in England had not prepared him for the heat of the place, nor the hustle and bustle. He knew that he was glad to be back in London, but not to be taking control of another homicide investigation. There had just been too many, and even if he should be inured to the sight of a dead body, he wasn’t. Not that Bob Robertson looked particularly distressed in death – he’d seen worse, but the man had been a friend. Isaac knew that the man’s death was personal.
Inside the hostel, the uniforms were taking names and addresses, although most would only claim no fixed abode and a number of the names would be bogus. Isaac knew it would be only a matter of time before immigration was on the scene checking for any that had overstayed their visas. Under normal circumstances, Isaac may have been interested to find out if there were undesirables taking advantage of Bob Robertson’s kind nature, but not now. For now, he had a dead body, and he knew that invariably one body leads to another. In that neighbourhood, Bob Robertson had been sacrosanct, the person you could approach when life was becoming too difficult or when your husband was beating you.
Isaac had warned him about covering for those who needed to be dealt with by the law. They had had some rigorous discussions on the subject of helping people in need, easing them through their bad times, criminal or otherwise, or whether they should be locked up.
Isaac never won the argument, and often he had to admit that Robertson was right. Better to have a sinner repent and not sin again than to have him locked up. That had been Robertson’s philosophy, and in the area around the hostel there was not a lot of crime. The gangs maintained the peace for the man, the drunks kept their distance, and the drug pushers did not come within a square mile.
Isaac knew that Bob Robertson had been a pragmatist, always seeing the best in people, understanding the realities, and now he was dead.
***
The two men who had been sleeping close to the murder scene should have been the best witnesses, but Isaac could not place much credence on their testimony, even if they had been awake. Thirty years ago it was all too common: the alcoholic down on his luck, unable to afford to drink in the pub, relegated to cheap alcohol. Nowadays, it was hard drugs that affected the younger generation, and there were plenty of them making their way down the slippery slope from respectability to being degenerate and lost. The first of the two men, toothless and reeking of alcohol, was the more coherent, but even that was debatable, at least
