***
Wendy Gladstone was the only one in Homicide at Challis Street Police Station who remembered Isaac as a uniformed police sergeant. Even back then, she had seen a uniqueness in the tall, black police officer, as had others. The London Metropolitan Police, aiming to be racially embracing, tolerant of all colours and creeds, had even featured him in promotions back in the early days. And then there had been his meteoric rise up through the ranks to an inspector and then to chief inspector, only to find his promotion opportunities now stagnating.
Commissioner Alwyn Davies, an unsmiling Welsh man, the head of the august police service, only two years in the position, did not like Chief Superintendent Richard Goddard, Isaac’s mentor and senior. By default, Isaac was tarred with the same brush, and if Goddard couldn’t progress, neither could he.
Sergeant Wendy Gladstone was unable to advance further due to her approaching retirement age, and Larry Hill, Isaac’s detective inspector, was held back due to insufficient academic qualifications and an unwillingness to put in the necessary effort to acquire them.
Isaac had recognised Hill’s attributes in a previous investigation, the reason he had brought him into Homicide. Larry Hill was a man-on-the-ground type of police officer, a breed who believed that on the street was where investigations were solved, not behind a computer screen or in an interminable meeting.
It was a view shared by Wendy, and in part, by Isaac. But Isaac had benefited from a university education; he saw that with technology and the dramatic leaps forward in forensics and pathology, crimes could be solved in the sanctity of an office.
Wendy preferred it out on the street, although her aching bones troubled her, not that she would ever complain, knowing that others in the police station were ready to pension her out of the force.
Bridget Halloran, Wendy’s friend and Homicide’s wizard with a computer, dealt with the department’s general running and the ancillary staff.
‘Where was the shot taken from?’ Isaac asked Larry, who was standing in the street looking up at where the man had fallen from. Isaac, sartorially elegant, a made-to-measure navy suit, a white shirt, a matching tie; Larry, his clothes off the rack, and even though his wife had ironed his shirt that morning, it still had a faraway look, one of the collar points heading into space, his tie askew, the top button of his shirt undone, and his shoes a dull sheen compared to the chief inspector’s mirror shine.
Isaac knew that Larry was on a slippery slope that would not end well. His wife, a good woman and loyal, was a social climber, always pressuring her husband to extend the mortgage, to place the children in a more expensive school, whereas he would have preferred a quieter life. He knew that some social climbers, those with aspirations of grandeur and fame, were up to the hilt in debt and that behind closed doors, when the designer clothes and the makeup were off, husbands and wives fought like cats and dogs.
Larry had tried to explain to his wife that a comfortable house, happy children and a loving environment were more critical than depreciating assets and shallow friends. Still, she wasn’t having any of it.
‘I’ve got uniforms checking high-rise buildings in the vicinity, looking for where the shot was fired,’ Larry said.
‘Keep me posted,’ Isaac said as he walked over to his sergeant.
‘Not a lot,’ Wendy said. She had just finished talking to another witness.
‘No one saw anything?’
‘They saw him climbing, saw him fall, saw the mess on the ground, but no one saw the shot, not that you’d expect them to.’
‘It may be best if you talk to the television crew, find out who had a grudge against him: discarded lovers, people who owed him money, others he had shafted.’
‘All-round good guy, Angus Simmons?’ Wendy said.
‘No one’s squeaky clean,’ Isaac said. ‘The man’s got hidden depths to him, vices we don’t know about. According to his co-host, he wasn’t quite the macho man that he appeared to be.’
‘If he wasn’t, he kept it concealed.’
‘It may not be accurate.’
‘Tricia Warburton’s not all she seems.’
‘Observation or a personal opinion?’
‘Too confident, full of herself, prick teaser if I was crude,’ Wendy said.
Isaac disregarded her comments, aware that his sergeant had strong views, too quickly expressed some times. ‘Any proof?’ he said.
‘Not yet, but she was here, egging the man on. She knows more than she’s letting on.’
A commotion on the other side of the road, a woman shouting. Both Isaac and Wendy looked over, acknowledged the uniform who was manning the barrier. Isaac raised his hand, the uniform nodding in return. A woman dressed in a white blouse and a short skirt, wearing stiletto heels, rushed forward.
‘Are you in charge?’ she said to Isaac.
‘I’m the senior investigating officer, that’s correct, Detective Chief Inspector Cook. And you are?’
Isaac playing by the book, Wendy knew. Everyone knew who Maddox Timberley was: Page 3 girl, centrefold in most men’s magazines, the object of many a young man’s lust, many an older one who should have known better.
‘Maddox Timberley. It’s Angus, isn’t it?’
‘Did you know he was going to do this?’
‘He told me, said it’d be good for the ratings, good publicity for the both of us. He’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘I’m afraid he is,’ Isaac said. ‘This must come as a shock to you.’
Wendy expected the woman to break down in tears; Isaac didn’t. To him, there was a hardness in her, similar to Tricia Warburton.
‘It is. Angus,
