Isaac phoned Larry. ‘We have the whole story. How did you get on with the gun that killed Slater and his receptionist?’
‘We dug up the vegetable patch at Adamant’s house. We found a rifle.’
‘Forensics?’
‘They’re checking now. It’s the right calibre.’
‘How did you know where to look?’
‘Instinct. I just thought where I’d hide it.’
‘Have you spoken to Adamant?’
‘He’s admitted to his guilt.’
Isaac phoned Detective Chief Superintendent Goddard who called Commissioner Alwyn Davies. Davies was delighted, singing the praises of the best detective chief inspector in the London Metropolitan Police. Isaac knew he did not mean it.
The End
Murder of a Silent Man
Phillip Strang
Chapter 1
No one gave much credence to the man when he was alive. In fact, most people never knew who he was, although those who had lived in the area for many years recognised the tired-looking and shabbily dressed man as he shuffled along, regular as clockwork on a Thursday at seven in the evening, to the local off-licence. It was always the same: a bottle of whisky, premium brand, and a packet of cigarettes. He paid his money over the counter, took hold of the plastic bag containing his purchases, and then walked back down the road with the same rhythmic shuffle. He said not one word to anyone on the street or in the shop.
Apart from the three-storey mansion where he lived, one of the best residences on one of the best streets in London, with its windows permanently shuttered, no one would have regarded him as anything other than homeless and destitute. Just a harmless eccentric, until the morning when he was found dead in his front garden.
‘Never spoken to him, and that’s the honest truth,’ Jim Porter said. He was a lean man with a pronounced chin, and a strong Cockney accent. ‘I’ve been delivering letters down this street for the last twelve years. Seeing him lying there was the first time I’d ever seen him. Down at the sorting office we called him Ebenezer, no chance of a tip at Christmas, not so much as a thank you. No doubt we shouldn’t have, but he’s lived in that place for over thirty years, and not one word to my predecessor or me. Weird, if you ask me.’
Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook looked at the postman. ‘You found the body?’ he said. Tall, the son of Jamaican immigrants, and the first in his family to go to university, the first to join the police force, Isaac Cook was an impressive man, as well as a good police officer. Others had told him so, but he was not a man susceptible to flattery, even if he had to admit there was a modicum of truth.
‘More by chance. I could see the letterbox was full, the letters no longer going through the slot, and I couldn’t take them back with me,’ Porter said.
‘What do you do when that happens?’
‘I can’t remember it happening before. Mind you, not many people get letters these days, only bills. I knew about the man inside, so I thought I’d look around, see if I could find a stick or something to push the letters through. Otherwise, he could have been lying there for God knows how long.’
‘The lawns are mowed regularly,’ Larry Hill, Isaac’s detective inspector, said.
‘You’re right, but it’s winter. Once a month would be sufficient. Strange, isn’t it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The neglected house, the garden neat and tidy.’
‘Is it neglected?’
‘I’d say so. I was here once, and I looked through a crack in one of the shutters. There was a single light in the ceiling and some old furniture, decay everywhere. It gave me a cold shiver, almost like one of those horror movies that you see on the television.’
Isaac Cook was not sure about the man. He looked over at the letterbox, noticed that the slot was clear. If the man had found a body, why would he have cleared the letterbox? Isaac decided to say nothing. Once back at Challis Street Police Station, he’d ask Bridget Halloran to check out Jim Porter, the postman, as well as the mansion’s owner, Gilbert Lawrence.
***
‘Never a word, not Mr Lawrence,’ Molly Dempster said. She was a small woman with a slight stoop.
Isaac Cook and Larry Hill were standing in the hallway of her house. The only information they had about the dead man had been a note to Molly, and an invoice in her name with her address as well.
‘That’s how Mr Lawrence liked it. I’d come in twice a week, iron and press, not that there was much to do. I’d tidy around the few rooms at the back, make him food for the next few days and put it in the fridge.’
‘He never spoke?’ Isaac asked.
‘The last time I heard him speak was over twenty years ago, and then it was only for a couple of minutes.’
‘What did he want?’
‘A toothache. The man was in agony, and he wanted me to find him a dentist.’
‘And you did?’
‘I did. But he was generous, at least to me. And you can’t understand how good it was to have an employer who never complained, always paid on time.’
‘It’s still unusual,’ Larry Hill said.
‘You must have formed an opinion of the man,’ Isaac said.
‘I’ve been cleaning for Mr Lawrence for over fifty years. Back when I started, his wife was still here, a lovely woman, although she plastered on the make-up, but always beautifully dressed. Quite the picture she was.’
‘She’s dead?’
‘There were some, gossip mongers, who said he killed her, buried her in the garden, but I don’t believe that. I’d seen them together, always loving, never a cross
