‘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 many 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
