The DCI Isaac Cook Thriller Series: Books 4 - 6: Murder (The DCI Isaac Cook Thrillers Series Boxset) Read online

  Murder Boxed Set

  Murder in Little Venice

  Murder is the Only Option

  Murder Without Reason

  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 in Little Venice

  Phillip Strang

  ALSO BY PHILLIP STRANG

  MURDER IS ONLY A NUMBER

  MURDER HOUSE

  MURDER IS A TRICKY BUSINESS

  MURDER WITHOUT REASON

  THE HABERMAN VIRUS

  MALIKA’S REVENGE

  HOSTAGE OF ISLAM

  PRELUDE TO WAR

  Chapter 1

  To those who lived on the houseboats that lined either side or the cyclists and the walkers who regularly used its towpaths, the Regent’s Canal was a place of beauty. Only a few would know of its history, and that two hundred years previously it had been busy with barges shipping cargo from the seafaring vessels that docked at Limehouse on the River Thames, to connect with the Grand Canal, and then up through England.

  Even fewer would know that it was named after Prince Regent, a frivolous man, the son of a mad King. He was better known for his grossly expensive tastes in decorating palaces and wasting money, although some others may have known of his penchant for mistresses, including the infamous Mrs Fitzherbert.

  Such history was far from the mind of Mary Harding as she walked her dog along the towpath between Westbourne Terrace Road Bridge and Harrow Road in an area of London known as Little Venice. It was still early, and it was only her and her dog, a sprightly Jack Russell. She had walked that stretch of the canal many times before and still enjoyed the atmosphere. She looked up at the elegant Regency houses as she walked; wished she could afford to buy one but knew she probably never would. She glanced over at the water, and sometimes into the open windows on the houseboats: some were modern and luxurious, others were run-down. The smell of early morning cooked breakfasts pervaded the air.

  Mary Harding maintained her pace, trying to rein in the dog as it tugged on its lead. A waste of money for dog training, she thought.

  ‘Stop barking,’ she said, knowing full well that people were still sleeping in their boats no more than six feet from where she was. She had had problems with the dog before in the flat she shared with two others, just two hundred yards from the canal, although separated from the houses close to the canal by several million pounds in real estate value. The dog, of which she was uncommonly fond, would have to go, she knew that. A good home in the country where its barking would not offend anyone.

  Mary Harding moved forward to grab the dog and to scurry away with it in her arms. The dog took one step forward, peering into the water, barking incessantly.

  ‘Shut that damn dog up,’ a voice bellowed from within the confines of a houseboat. A nervous woman, Mary Harding apologised as best she could, but the dog continued to defy her.

  Looking into the water, the woman could see why. There, in the water, wedged to the rear of the belligerent man’s houseboat, was what appeared to be a dead animal.

  She found a stick nearby and prodded the carcass; it turned over. Stricken with horror, incapable of using her phone, she hammered on the side of the houseboat. ‘Help, help!’ she screamed.

  The man who had criticised the dog came out within seconds. ‘What the –?’

  ‘There, behind your boat.’

  Still barefooted, and only wearing a tee shirt and shorts, the houseboat owner looked over into the water where the dog had been barking. Then, still half asleep, he rushed back to the houseboat, picked up his phone and dialled the emergency services on 999.

  ***

  ‘It’s enough to turn your stomach,’ Crime Scene Examiner Windsor said. They were the man’s first words apart from the pleasant early morning courtesies on arriving at the scene. The former towpath, now a footpath, had been blocked off at both ends from upstream at Westbourne Terrace Road Bridge down to Harrow Road – the people who would normally walk down there relegated to Warwick Crescent. From there the curious could watch the investigation unfold.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ DCI Isaac Cook asked. It was still early, and he would have preferred to be in bed, but when the phone rang, he had been out of the door within five minutes. After apprehending the murderer in his previous case, the psychotic Charlotte Hamilton, he was once again the shining star at Challis Street Police Station, especially after she had stabbed him in the shoulder, although he wondered if the murders in the area would ever reduce in numbers.

  ‘What’s left has been in the water for less than a day,’ Windsor’s reply. Gordon Windsor had been assigned to Challis Street for some years, and the man knew what he was talking about. Isaac Cook knew that the on-the-spot analysis from the CSE would be enough for him to bring the full team together. The pathologist and the autopsy would reveal more about the body, or what remained of it, on the towpath by the rear of the houseboat.

  Jim Parsons, the owner of the houseboat, and Mary Harding, the dog’s owner, were both sitting down at the other end of the boat drinking cups of tea. Larry Hill, Isaac’s DI, was interviewing them. Parsons, previously annoyed with the barking dog, was patting it.

  ‘White, male, age uncertain,’ Windsor said.

  ‘Any chance of an identity?’ Isaac asked.

  ‘DNA, missing persons. It may be possible, but there’s not much to be going on with here.’

  Isaac looked at the body, shielded from public view by a hastily-erected crime scene tent. He could see the CSE’s reluctance to be more precise. It was clear that whoever had done it had been a butcher. It was evident why the woman had thought it was a slab of meat that was bobbing up and down in the water. Apart from a torso, nothing else remained: no head, no legs, no arms. Even Windsor had felt a lump in his throat on seeing the body for the first time, and some of the other police officers, uniforms, had vomited into the canal.

  ‘The cause of death?’ Isaac asked.

  ‘I’d have thought having your head cut off would have been as good a way as any,’ Windsor replied.

  ‘Dead before decapitation?’

  ‘Pathology may be able to tell you, but I can’t be more precise. I’d say after death, but don’t quote me on that.’

  ‘Any injuries to the body?’

  ‘None that I can see.’

  ‘Murder?’

  ‘It hardly seems to be an accident, does it?’

  The two people integral to the discovery could not help with the details about the
body; one was walking her dog, the other was asleep. Both Isaac and Larry stayed at the crime scene for two hours before returning to Challis Street. The uniforms had commenced interviewing people walking past, and Wendy Gladstone, Isaac’s sergeant, would conduct a door-to-door later in the day down Warwick Crescent and then up Delamere Terrace, although it was a long shot. Unless the team knew how long the body had been in the water, and the flow of the water in the canal, it would not be possible to ascertain where the body had entered it. It was believed, not certain, that what had been found at the rear of the houseboat had come from upstream, but where? DCI Isaac Cook and his Homicide team needed to meet.

  ***

  Detective Chief Superintendent Goddard put his head round the door of Isaac’s office to give the obligatory words of encouragement before leaving. ‘I’ve total confidence in the team, hopeful of an early result, keep up the good work.’

  Isaac could only reflect on the insincerity of the man. Goddard had always been his mentor, but now the man’s political manoeuvring, his attempts to ingratiate himself with the commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, his ability to suck up to politicians had started to grate.

  Sure, on the previous case with little progress on catching the killer he had held on to Isaac for as long as he could, but in the end he had been dumped as the SIO and supplanted by a downright miserable sod of a man by the name of Seth Caddick. Isaac knew that if he hadn’t played his hunch right and arrested the serial killer, he would no longer be at Challis Street. Almost certainly out of London, maybe a remote station in the country or demoted.

  Mid-morning, the key members of his team gathered in Isaac’s office: Larry Hill, his DI, Sergeant Wendy Gladstone and Constable Bridget Halloran, the department’s case prosecution officer. ‘An update, sir?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘I’ve already started work on the paperwork,’ Bridget said.

  ‘This is what we have,’ Isaac said. ‘At 6.05 a.m. a body was discovered in Regent’s Canal at Maida Vale. The woman who found it was walking her dog.’

  ‘And the woman now?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘Once she’d given her statement, she was taken home. Also, the owner of a houseboat gave a statement as the body was wedged under the rear of his boat. There is no suspicion attached to either person.’

  ‘Any indication as to how long the body had been there?’

  ‘According to Gordon Windsor, the condition of the remains indicate that it had not been in the water for long so we must assume it had drifted down the canal. As for a more precise time? That’s up to Pathology, but it may prove difficult.’

  ‘Why?’ Bridget asked.

  ‘The body had been dismembered, and there is no head.’

  Both Wendy and Bridget looked shocked.

  ‘Murder?’ Wendy asked after clearing her throat.

  ‘That would be the logical conclusion. Gordon Windsor assumes it would have been a blow to the head or a bullet, but with no head, there’s no way to prove it.’

  ‘How do we establish the identity?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘DNA may help, or at least it may give us an approximation of its background: Anglo-Saxon, Asian.’

  ‘African?’ Bridget suggested.

  ‘The body’s white.’

  ‘Where do we go from here?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘Missing persons. You and Larry can do some checking. In the meantime, we need someone who understands river flows, especially the Regent’s Canal. Camden Lock is about three miles downstream, there are no locks upstream, at least none that should affect the flow. We need to put together some names of possible victims, and hope Pathology is able to do some reconstruction analysis: height, age, ethnicity.’

  ‘Long shot, sir,’ Wendy added.

  ‘Agreed, but let’s go with what we have.’

  ‘We’re dealing with savages here,’ Larry said.

  ‘That’s understood, unless there was a reason for concealing the identity.’

  ‘It’s still savage, and if the body’s not been there for long, then maybe he’s not been missed yet.’

  ‘Regardless, we have a murder case. No easier, no harder than our previous cases, and we managed to solve all of those. We’ll solve this one, I’m sure of it,’ Isaac said.

  He had to admit he was becoming tired of the endless succession of murders. London crime figures, especially murders, were down, yet his area of London was continuing to accumulate the numbers. True, he knew that he and his team had solved them all, even when the odds were not stacked in their favour, and when others within the Met were looking for them to fail, or at least, him. Not that it concerned him unduly. He knew how it worked, although it was a distraction. The best he could do was to get on with it and prove to his doubters that they were wrong.

  ***

  Larry observed prior to entering the Canal and River Trust’s building located next to Westbourne Terrace Road Bridge on the western side of the canal at Little Venice that the water flow was negligible.

  Once inside, George Ashburton, one of the Trust’s employees, confirmed his observation. ‘Minimal. Just enough to keep the water flowing towards the Thames, although if there’s a lot of water upstream, then it’ll flow a little faster.’

  ‘If an object was thrown in the water, let’s say within the last twenty-four hours?’ Larry asked.

  ‘We always have to deal with that problem. The locals are the worst, but so are some of the tourists with throwing in plastic drink bottles, stolen bikes. You’d be surprised what turns up if we drain part of the canal.’

  ‘Do you do that often?’

  ‘It’s necessary sometimes. The canal silts up, and the banks need restoration work. The canal’s been here for two hundred years, so it’s bound to require maintenance.’

  ‘And the houseboats?’

  ‘They need to find somewhere else, but there are precious few places for them to go.’

  ‘You’ve heard about the discovery in the canal today?’ Larry asked.

  ‘Who hasn’t? It’s not every day a body is fished out.’

  ‘It was hardly a body.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It was only a torso.’

  ‘No head and limbs?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘It’s a first for the canal, although we’ve had the occasional body in there; some murdered, the occasional drowning. It’s not deep, no more than six feet in most places, but it can be mighty cold sometimes. They jump in after a drunken night out, sometimes for a dare, at other times because they’re too daft not to, and what happens? The water can be close to freezing under the surface, and then they find out they’re not as good a swimmer as they thought they were.’

  ‘Expensive around here?’ Larry asked. He had admired the houses as he parked his car.

  ‘That’s why there are so many houseboats. They’re in the best part of London at a fraction of the cost of a building on land. Mind you, they still have to pay for mooring, and the maintenance can be expensive, but all in all they're an excellent way to live.’

  ‘You live in one?’

  ‘For the last thirty-five years. Once I retire, I intend to travel the canals of England in my home.’

  ‘If we could come back to the body in the water,’ Larry said. ‘Could it have come from one of the houseboats?’

  ‘It’s possible, but if, as you say, it’s been dismembered, it would make an awful mess. Have you been inside a houseboat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There’s not a lot of space. It’s more like a long caravan than a house. I wouldn’t be looking there for an answer, and besides, why?’

  ‘Why someone dismembered the body, instead of taking it to the Thames and weighing it down with concrete blocks or burying it in the ground?’

  ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘That’s a question we need to answer,’ Larry acknowledged.

  ***

  Meanwhile, as Larry was discussing the case at the Canal and River Trust, Wendy was mov
ing up and down the road adjacent to the murder site. Warwick Crescent, affluent and expensive, with an elegant Regency terrace house on the corner which fronted onto Westbourne Terrace Road at the western end close to the bridge. Next to it was a large block of flats. To Wendy, they looked to have been built fifty years previously, an attempt to blend into the surroundings by painting the exterior off-white and affecting a fake Regency styling. The real estate signs in the area indicated that they were for sale, but she knew they would be outside her price range. The signs plastered on the railings outside stated that any bikes chained to them would be removed and disposed of. Wendy was not sure if they were strictly legal, but she was there to ask questions, not debate a point of law. There appeared to be over one hundred flats. She had been joined by a couple of uniforms, although without a time of death other than in the last day, she felt that their efforts may well be wasted. She was adamant that this one road was to be the limit of her knocking on doors until she had more specifics.

  ***

  Isaac busied himself in the office. It had been rough for a while on his previous case when he had been sidelined, but now he was back in his seat, safe and secure. Or, at least, as confident as anyone could be with a commissioner who’d had his nose put out of joint after his man, DCI Seth Caddick, had failed to make his mark. Isaac had only spoken to Caddick on a couple of occasions and neither time had been an enlightening experience. Still, the man had not disturbed his office too much; even managed to water the plant that Bridget and Wendy had bought him in the past when he had been going through a difficult patch in his love life. Even now, that was patchy, almost non-existent, if he was honest.

  Larry Hill had told him to find a good woman and settle down, and he had wanted to with Jess O’Neill, but it had not worked out. They kept in contact, met up occasionally for a social drink, but there seemed no way they could rekindle the previous intensity: too much water under the bridge, too many unspoken truths, or at least one, Linda Harris. Not that he had heard from her for a long time, and Isaac still did not know for sure whether she had committed a murder or not, but it was moot, as the case had been closed, and there was no way the current government would allow it to reopen.