The rock removed, the CSI withdrew a box. It was metal, in good condition, and blue.
‘Nothing special,’ Meston said. ‘What’s inside is important.’
Larry knew they would not find that out at the site. Forensics would take that responsibility, subjecting the box to a drying process, water ingression was a probability. Whatever happened, it would be twelve to fourteen hours before any clues were revealed.
It was, however, excellent police work, and Isaac had been on the phone to congratulate him, as had Chief Superintendent Goddard.
Larry was pleased with himself; he only hoped his wife would be, considering that his previously black, shiny leather shoes were now a shade of mud grey.
***
In the interim, Larry returned to Challis Street. He was behind on his paperwork, the bane of any police offficer; a vital component of modern policing, Chief Superintendent Goddard would say. But then he was a political animal, careful to say the right words, anxious to let his superiors know as to how professional those under his command were, not that it helped with the Met’s commissioner sitting in his office at Scotland Yard. The man had taken an instant dislike to Goddard and had tried to unseat him on more than one occasion, succeeding briefly once, careful not to repeat the mistake of having to rescind the order and to have Goddard placed back in his old position.
Goddard didn’t like the man any more than he disliked him; excessively cordial when they met, buttering up each other, a metaphorical knife poised to inflict the fatal blow.
Isaac, after Maidstone Prison, had phoned Bridget. It took her no more than ten minutes to find an address and a phone number. If the Robinson patriarch had been in hiding, or just keeping away from his family, he hadn’t done it very well.
Hector Robinson was not what he had expected. Isaac had tracked him down to the Durham Arms in Canning Town. Isaac rarely visited the area, known for drug gangs and violent crime, so much so that courier companies were refusing to deliver there, and the police entered in groups. The pub was on a corner site; the railway across the other side of the narrow road, a scruffy recycling plant to one side, and on the other side, down Wharf Street, a factory, empty from what Isaac could see. The pub had a website; it was in an industrial estate, make as much noise as you like, don’t worry about the neighbours. Isaac didn’t understand how that concept operated, nor how they had unrestricted hours, and the photo of the pub in better times didn’t match what he saw, a two-storey building, the upstairs painted off-white, the ground floor covered in out-of-date green tiles.
Robinson sat in one corner; it was four in the afternoon, and the crowds that the barman had said would be in later weren’t even trickling in. There was just Robinson, Isaac and the barman, and two of them didn’t look to be good company, the barman obviously three-quarters of the way to being drunk and the missing father not pleased to see him.
Isaac regretted that he hadn’t brought support with him. He made a phone call, an inspector at a police station nearby, a colleague from their uniform days.
‘You must be mad,’ the inspector had said, colourful expletives included. But that was Bill Ross, a rough knockabout type of guy who had lived up north, run with a gang in his teens, realised the error of his ways, joined the police. As he said when he met with Isaac occasionally, ‘Not much job security running with a gang, although we were mostly harmless, but better money. Now I’ve got the security, a mortgage that kills me, and not much else.’
It was the way the man spoke, but after he had called Isaac a fool a few more times, he phoned a patrol car to get out to the Durham Arms and make its presence known. It was daylight, they’d do that, but come nightfall, it would be at least six officers and two vehicles, weapons available if needed.
‘What do you want?’ Robinson said as he downed his pint, looked over at the barman.
‘I’ll pay,’ Isaac said.
‘There was never any dispute about that.’
Isaac could see why Jim, as a youth, hadn’t laid the man out until he had been fourteen. Robinson was not tall, barely to Isaac’s shoulder, but he was broad, with bulging muscles and a nose bent to one side, a street fighter or a one-time boxer.
‘We’re investigating a couple of murders.’
‘I killed no one. If you’re here about Janice, I’ve heard.’
‘How?’
‘Not from you.’
‘We didn’t know where you were.’
‘You’ve found me now. What was so hard before?’
Isaac hadn’t an answer. Robinson hadn’t been in hiding, and with the name of the suburb from Jim, it had been easy enough to find him. If Homicide hadn’t been so busy, and if the father had been regarded as important, it would have been possible to trace him. Even now, he was a person of interest.
‘I’m here now.’
A uniform stuck his head around the door, nodded over at Isaac.
‘Back up?’
‘I’ve been told it's dangerous.’
‘It is. The reason I’ll be making myself scarce after you’ve bought me two more pints.’
‘The price of friendship?’
‘We’re not friends, not you and I. Brad’s out for a night of fun with some floozy, a good sort is she? And then, Janice is murdered.’
‘You seem remarkably well-informed, Mr Robinson.’
‘Only people who want money from me call me that. The name’s Hector.’
‘In that case, Hector, how
