‘Smartphone. I like to keep abreast of what my family’s up to, not that I see them.’
‘You had an altercation with Jim?’
‘Fancy word for him flattening me, a blow to the chin, another to the stomach. In Maidstone, so I’m told.’
‘I’ve been to see him. He gets out in a few months.’
‘How’s his mother, still putting it about?’
‘Not that we know of. Besides, we’re not investigating the foibles of your family, not unless they’re relevant.’
Isaac took a sip of his beer; not a connoisseur, not like Larry, but he knew it to be of the worst quality, the reason the pub could keep the prices low.
‘We’re not relevant. Janice went bad, but then, that was always going to happen.’
‘Because of her mother?’
‘She was on the game, not that you’d know it. Back then, when she was young, she was real class, dressed up nice, worked in Mayfair, a posh establishment, influential clientele.’
‘She married you.’
‘Her selling herself to the toffs didn’t last long, and they always want fresh meat, no shortage of supply. Six months in and she’s damaged goods.’
‘You had no issues with your daughter prostituting herself?’
‘I did with the drugs, but if she came to no harm.’
‘She did. She’s dead, murdered.’
Robinson was a despicable man who cared little for anyone, let alone his family. They hadn’t fared well without him, but it would have been worse if he had stayed.
‘She was pretty, more than her mother when she was young.’
‘According to your son, you would get drunk, start hitting your family.’
‘That much is true; I couldn’t handle my drink, that’s why I’ll only have three pints.’
‘Your wife accused you of ogling your daughter, but Jim said it wasn’t true; that you were fond of her.’
‘A good lad, is Jim, not like that hag. My own daughter? What kind of person do you take me for?’
‘I don’t take you for anything. I deal in facts. It’s not for me to judge you or anyone else, only to get the truth. Your daughter is murdered, yet you seem unconcerned.’
‘I control it better these days. If I got hold of the person who killed her, I’d be swinging on the end of a rope.’
‘Capital punishment was abolished in 1969, the last execution in 1964.’
‘I’d still kill the bastard.’
‘Any ideas?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You’re looking? What about the men who spent time with your wife, abused Janice?’
‘In time.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘In time, that’s what I said. If I find any of those that touched Janice, at the house or that bedsit, they’ll know my wrath.’
‘Premeditated murder is a life sentence.’
‘Not to me. The heart’s not so good, steroids when I was a serious bodybuilder. And now they tell me there’s cancer.’
‘I’d caution you against committing a criminal act.’
‘Caution all you want. There’s nothing you can do to me.’
Chapter 11
Forensics had taken the box from the cemetery, dried it out, and set up a meeting for eight in the morning. A preliminary report said that it could have been purchased in any hardware store and that it was almost new and had been in the ground for seven to fourteen days.
‘It doesn’t help,’ Larry said, the afterglow of his discovery still resonating in Homicide.
The cemetery employee had given a description of the man who had been seen at plot 15973, and even though it could have been the man in Godstone, the man who had killed the unknown woman, it was inconclusive.
Slowly, the lab technician lifted the lid of the small metal box. Larry craned his neck to look.
‘It’s an envelope,’ the technician said as he removed it with a pair of tweezers. ‘No water on it.’
The envelope was placed on his workbench. ‘I’ll need to check it before we open it,’ he said.
‘I’ll take the responsibility,’ Isaac said. ‘We need to know the contents.’
‘On your head, DCI. There could be fingerprints.’
‘They’ll be there after you’ve removed what’s inside.’
For now, the contents were all-important.
The letter was laid out on the bench. On it an address.
‘What does it mean?’ Isaac asked.
‘We’ll check it out,’ Larry said. ‘This is too sophisticated for drug smuggling.’
Isaac hoped it wasn’t anything to do with the secret service; he’d dealt with them before, and they played dirty. On a previous case, one of the deaths had been an assassination, and he had slept with one of their operatives, only for her to disappear when he started asking questions, then phoning him a year later, wanting to take up where they had left off. He had declined the offer, much as he had liked her initially: too much baggage, too much unknown, too dangerous.
***
Isaac hadn’t gained much from Hector Robinson, other than he was a surly individual who didn’t like the police. Apart from a run-in with the law in his twenties for stealing a car, and later convictions for various offences, he had kept out of prison, something his son hadn’t. His defence for taking the car had been that he was drunk, the keys were in the ignition, and he had thought it was his.
The judge accepted his version of the truth, as the cars were similar. The arresting officer’s view when he gave evidence was that the man hadn’t been all that drunk, just tipsy, and that his car was in the garage at home, and it was a different make, only the colour was the same.
It had been put forward by the prosecution that the Robinsons lived a hand-to-mouth existence. With the arrival of a child in the house, Jim, Gladys Robinson wasn’t working, and Hector, the sole breadwinner, was labouring, and had been unable to explain how he could afford a two-year-old four-door saloon car in
