The DCI Isaac Cook Thriller Series: Books 1 -3

  Murder Boxed Set

  Murder is a Tricky Business

  Murder House

  Murder is Only a Number

  Phillip Strang

  Dedication

  For Elli and Tais, who both had the perseverance to make me sit down and write.

  Copyright Page

  Copyright © 2017 Phillip Strang

  Cover Design by Phillip Strang

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine, or journal.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This work is registered with the UK Copyright Service.

  Author’s Website: http://www.phillipstrang.com

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  Murder is a Tricky Business

  ALSO BY PHILLIP STRANG

  MURDER IN LITTLE VENICE

  MURDER IS ONLY A NUMBER

  MURDER WITHOUT REASON

  MURDER HOUSE

  MALIKA’S REVENGE

  THE HABERMAN VIRUS

  HOSTAGE OF ISLAM

  PRELUDE TO WAR

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 1

  ‘Murder is a tricky business when you don’t have a body, a suspect or a motive,’ Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook mulled out loud in the confines of the office. He may as well have called it home ‒ he had spent so many hours there of late.

  ‘What do you mean, “no motive”? The woman was a bitch,’ Detective Inspector Farhan Ahmed replied. He was a dedicated cop, destined as was his senior officer, Isaac Cook, for great success in the police force: London’s Metropolitan Police, politically correct and aiming to fast-track anyone of superior ability with a non-Anglo-Saxon background, a display of embracing all cultures, all religions, and all colours.

  It was the ideal place for two ambitious men. Cook, the first generation English-born child of Jamaican parents and Ahmed, ten years in the United Kingdom, initially for training, and with no intention of going back to Pakistan. It irked some of the older police officers ‒ Anglo-Saxon and white ‒ now being overlooked for the late arrivals. The occasional disparaging comment in the corridors of Challis Street Police Station, discreetly aimed in their direction, was shrugged off, although it sometimes upset the young Pakistan-born DI.

  ‘Who told us she was a bitch?’ DCI Cook asked as he looked out of the window.

  ‘Admittedly, those she worked with.’

  ‘Being a bitch is not much of a motive. And we’re still assuming she’s been murdered,’ DCI Cook said.

  ‘We’ll find the body. You know that. It’s just a case of knowing where to look.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Not yet, but we haven’t rummaged in the dirt yet. If we dig enough, we’ll find her, or what’s left of her.’

  ‘So where do we start?’ Isaac asked.

  ‘Her fellow actors on that damn-awful soap opera.’ It was an unexpected outburst by the detective inspector.

  ‘I’ve not heard you speak in that manner before.’ Isaac felt the need to comment.

  ‘It’s my wife. She’s obsessed with the programme.’

  ***

  The death of Billy Blythe did not come as a surprise, forecast as it had been for several weeks. The final week before his death the magazines were awash with front page speculation. Eight million, five hundred and sixty thousand viewers, a new record the night he was bashed to death in the local playground by three youths.

  The executives at the television station were delighted: record advertising revenue, premium rates. The only one assumed not to be delighted was the actor who played his fictional sister: she had gone missing. They had spliced in some earlier footage of her for the episode to conceal the truth from the viewing public.

  The programme was pure fiction, but for millions across the country, compulsory viewing. Whether they recognised the soap opera for what it was, or whether it was an escape from their mundane lives, was for psychologists to analyse, advertising executives to take advantage of, and television stations to profit from.

  The melodrama had been on the air for twelve years. The lives of an apparently benign group of individuals in a small provincial town had kept a nation enthralled. There had been murders, rapes, thuggish behaviour, even incest, but the characters still played out their parts in the innocence of a community where nothing ever changed. One week, it was a murder, the next, a wedding, and Billy Blythe, the local villain, had had his fair share of weddings: at least one every eighteen months to two years and none had lasted.

  The country, or, at least, the less discerning – according to Charles Sutherland, the actor who had portrayed the erstwhile Billy Blythe – had been enthralled by his nuptials, but he had become fat and unpleasant, due to a more than adequate salary and an inappropriate fondness for alcohol and junk food.

  Marjorie Frobisher portrayed his elder sister, Edith Blythe, in the series – her character matronly and demure, ashamed of her brother, hoping he would reform.

  Isaac Cook considered the situation. He was a smart man, not given to extravagance and not inclined to speak without some forethought.

  ‘So why does everyone assume it’s murder? She’s only been missing for three weeks. She could have just gone incognito, decided it was time for a break.’

  Farhan saw the situation differently. ‘The newspapers continue to put forward the idea that she’s probably dead, even if it’s not murder.’

  ‘And we base our evidence on what the papers say?’ Isaac Cook had not achieved the rank of detective chief inspector on the basis of ‘someone said something’ or ‘what the newspapers are reporting’. He needed evidence, and so far there was none, only innuendo.

  ‘Of course not,’ Farhan replied.

  ‘We deal in facts, not what the press and the gossip magazines print.’

  Farhan continued. ‘Marjorie Frobisher is at the height of her profession. She had just been given another three-year contract, at a monthly salary five times what you and I receive in a year, and there is her record of service.’

  ‘What do you mean by record
of service?’

  ‘In the twelve years since the programme first went on air, she has only missed five episodes, and that was because she had no part to play.’

  ‘Where do you get this information?’ Isaac had asked the production company for some updates when they had first been pulled in to investigate, and he knew less than his colleague.

  ‘From my wife, where else?’

  Isaac sarcastically asked, ‘Does your wife know what happened to the body?’

  ‘According to my wife, there was a similar situation in another series about six years ago. One of the characters went missing for no apparent reason. Ted Entwhistle, the local butcher on the programme, just disappeared. You must remember, headline news for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘So what happened to him?’

  ‘They dragged it out, milked it for all it was worth. They thought they were dealing with a fictional disappearance, not a real-life murder. It appears that the actor portraying Ted Entwhistle had been messing around with an actress in the series, on-screen and off. Her off-screen husband got wind of it, strung him up on a meat hook in an old derelict barn. Poetic justice, the husband said when they caught him. Anyway, that’s what my wife is saying.’

  ‘A copy-cat killing inspired by a soap opera. Are you suggesting we seriously consider it?’

  ‘Why not? Marjorie Frobisher’s missing, and according to Detective Superintendent Goddard, she’s probably been murdered.’

  ‘Is that what’s happened here?’ Isaac had heard it all in his time as a policeman. The idea that a murder could be committed based on what a scriptwriter at the lower skill end of his craft could make up seemed implausible.

  ‘Ted Entwhistle was real enough. Fiction often overlaps with reality on the television these days.’

  ‘But you said you don’t watch it.’

  ‘That’s true, but it’s always on at my house.’

  ‘If your Ted Entwhistle could be found strung up on a meat hook, what would Marjorie Frobisher’s fate have been?’

  ‘According to my wife…’

  ‘Facts, please.’

  ‘What I was going to say was that Marjorie Frobisher’s character, Edith Blythe, had been the headmistress at the local school. In retirement, she took over from the church organist,’ Farhan said, a little annoyed by Isaac’s oblique criticism of his wife.

  ‘Let’s go out on a limb. What’s does your wife believe happened?’ Isaac felt there was no need for an apology.

  ‘I know it sounds crazy, but she believes she’s in a church.’

  ***

  Charles Sutherland, a classically trained actor, or he felt he was, was not classical enough or not trained well enough, or the casting agents were defective in their recognition of genuine talent. He believed it was the latter. Early in his career had been a few walk-ons at some of the best theatres in the country in some of the most prestigious dramas. But they did not last long. It soon became apparent that he was deficient in two critical areas: his ability with accents and his attitude to fellow cast members.

  Isolated and penniless, he had over the years been relegated to soap operas: the one area where he had achieved success. Billy Blythe had been his latest reincarnation after other long-running shows of a similar vein. He had been an undertaker, a shopkeeper, a philanderer, even a man of the cloth, but Billy Blythe had been his pièce de résistance.

  They had killed his character; it was as if they had killed him. He knew it was the pinnacle of a disappointing career, and that he would neither forget nor forgive.

  It had been assumed that his fictional sister would take on the mantle of bereavement, with the small, tight-knit community rushing to her side. The only problem was that she wasn’t there. The executive producer was the first to react to his leading actress’s disappearance with alarm.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ he had screamed at a meeting of his production staff two weeks earlier. The programme was always recorded one week in advance, so there was time to work round an integral character. ‘Marjorie’s gone and done a disappearing act on us. Has anyone any idea where she is?’ Richard Williams had been in the business almost for ever. He had reluctantly entered the world of soap operas as a script writer on a now defunct episodic programme. A plausible plot about an inner-city school full of delinquents and idealistic teachers in the north of England, it had somehow failed to capture the viewing public’s approval.

  He had left the University of Sussex over forty years earlier with a BA in Journalism, and a desire to be a war correspondent, travelling the world, helmet and bulletproof vest, ducking the bullets and bombs, ‘bringing you the news from the front line’. The farthest he got was a protest outside the Iranian Embassy in South Kensington, when the police had come in with tear gas, and he had received a severe dose and a rock to the head for his troubles.

  He was soft-spoken yet authoritative. He had guided this soap opera through its early years to where it stood now, predominant in the United Kingdom and sold to twenty more countries around the world. Nowadays, he mostly left it to others to deal with the daily episodes. It was rare for him to leave his elegant office with its sweeping views of London and to venture to the production facilities, a prefabricated town of frontages, held up by plywood and paint, located in what had once been an old industrial wasteland. He had reached his sixty-third year. He was not an attractive man, a little short, yet slim. His hair, once black and thick, now came courtesy of a bottle and an expensive hair.

  ‘Marjorie is nowhere to be seen, hasn’t been seen for a few days.’ The script producer, Ray Saddler, had been with the soap opera for the last six years, and he had moulded a formidable team of script writers.

  ‘Has anyone looked for her?’ Williams asked.

  ‘Of course, we have,’ the series producer, Jessica O’Neill, said. She had joined the production team six months earlier. There had been dissension in the ranks on her appointment. Her demanding manner and excessive attempts at perfection, resulting in numerous retakes, sometimes late into the night, irritated some of the older hands in the business.

  ‘Milady,’ an antiquated term of respect for a female member of the British aristocracy, was often used in derision behind her back. Charles Sutherland had said it to her face once, but he had been drunk.

  The meeting had not been going long before Richard Williams made a pronouncement, as he was apt to do when presented with an imponderable. ‘Write her out, and if the woman turns up, we’ll deal with it then.’

  ***

  Isaac Cook had one uncertainty which concerned him greatly. Why, as a senior investigating officer, had he been pulled out of the homicide incident room to search for a missing woman? He needed to ask his superior officer. Detective Superintendent Goddard was a decent man, a man that DCI Cook respected enormously – their relationship based on mutual respect and friendship.

  Challis Street Police Station, an impressive building, at least on the third floor where the detective superintendent had an office with a good view. Goddard sat behind an impressive wooden table with a laptop and a monitor to the right-hand side. In the centre, there was a notepad. A bookcase stood against one wall, full of legal books. A hat stand stood in one corner, where the detective superintendent’s jacket and cap hung.

  It was the office of an efficient man: a man who had an admirable habit of not going home at night to his wife unless the desk was clear and all the work for the day had been concluded and filed away. Some days that meant staying late into the night, but that was how he worked, and no amount of cajoling from his wife or his colleagues would change the habit of a lifetime.

  He rose and walked around the table as Isaac entered. A firm handshake and both men sat down on comfortable black leather chairs placed to one side in the office.

  ‘Sir, why are we chasing after a missing person?’ Isaac asked.

  ‘Do you know who she is?’

  ‘She’s just an actor in a mundane television drama.’ The detective chief inspector, t
he only child of Jamaican immigrants, had been a diligent student at school, in part due to his parent’s decision not to have a television in the house. His appreciation of the missing woman and her fame was limited.

  ‘Marjorie Frobisher is hardly just an actor in a mundane drama; she’s one of the major celebrities in this country.’ Detective Superintendent Goddard understood the reluctance of his best detective to become involved.

  ‘So why are we looking? There’s no body, no motive and certainly no reason for us to be involved. It should be registered with missing persons.’

  ‘Agreed, but you don’t understand the situation.’

  ‘What don’t I understand?’

  ‘Influential friends…’

  ‘Is that a reason?’ Isaac asked, although he had heard it before. Someone with influence using it to get preferential treatment.

  The detective superintendent had hoped to avoid this conversation, and that Isaac would have continued with the case and got on with it. He realised now that it would have been best to have told him upfront. ‘What do you know about Marjorie Frobisher? Apart from the fact that she’s an actor of little note in your estimation.’

  ‘I’ve no idea whether she is good enough for an Oscar or a bit part in the local drama society’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest.’

  ‘Are you telling me to keep looking for this woman?’ The respect between the two men separated by nearly twenty years and rank allowed a little impertinence.

  ‘This is highly confidential. It must never come into your discussions with anyone. Don’t tell anyone in your office.’

  ‘Okay, give it to me straight.’

  ‘There is a very senior member of the government applying pressure to find this woman.’

  ‘Any names?’

  None that I’ve been told, but it’s clear that this woman either knows something about someone, or she’s important to someone influential for reasons unknown.’

  ‘Is that the best I’m going to get?’ Isaac asked.